When he was appointed cabin boy of the RLS Legacy, the last thing Jim Hawkins expected to have to do was study. For one thing, he didn't consider literacy as being highly important to either his duties on the ship, or to his future as a spacer. Furthermore, he didn't have time to so much as pick up a book; he was far too busy following Silver's almost constant stream of orders. Therefore, books were the last thing on Jim's mind during the voyage-- until Dr. Doppler somehow got it in his head that Jim's education shouldn't be put on hold just because he was working twelve hours a day on the ship.

Jim had appealed to Captain Amelia, all in vain. Unfortunately, she took Doppler's side of the issue and even "helped" by giving Jim a stack of books from her stateroom to read. He carried them to the cabin he shared with most of the rest of the crew and stowed them with his belongings, wondering sullenly why Amelia had to choose this issue on which to take Doppler's side.

"They fight like cats and dogs the rest of the time," Jim muttered under his breath, shoving the heavy tomes under his clothes. "Why do they have to start getting along now?" He reluctantly selected the smallest, thinnest book from the stack and shoved it in his pocket before trudging back to his deck-swabbing duties.

He managed to forget about his assignment for the rest of the day, until the crew had finished dinner and he was helping Silver clean up the destruction that came in the wake of every meal. But when Jim leaned across the table to pick up the last bowl left from dinner, the book dug into his thigh, making him yelp.

"Ow! Stupid book," Jim grumbled as he dropped the dish into a pot of sudsy water.

"Eh?" Silver glanced up from where he was holding a pot for Morph to lick. If Amelia knew about that, she'd have his head, Jim thought wryly.

"Oh, Dr. Doppler's decided I need to 'improve myself' by studying," Jim replied sarcastically, scrubbing at the bowl with more force than the poor dinnerware deserved. "And Captain Amelia chipped in with a stack of books. Like I don't have enough to do."

"Yeah? Well, I don't think it's a bad idea."

"Not you too," Jim groaned. He wiped off the bowl and picked up another. "I thought you'd be the last person to tell me to study."

Silver chuckled faintly. "Why's that, lad?"

"I bet you never had to watch books when you were my age!"

"No. . . but if I'd had to, I probably wouldn't be cleanin' galleys fer a livin' today."

"Better than studying." Jim threw down the sponge he was holding and drew his knees up to his chest sulkily. "You're plenty smart without all of that. They just think it doesn't count unless a person's book smart."

"And apparently ye think it does count if ye just sit next to the sponge without usin' it. Finish those dishes."

Jim made a pretense of grumbling and complaining, but he didn't really mind. While he didn't exactly enjoy his duties as cabin boy, he did feel satisfied when he worked. He felt like he was helping the ship on its mission, and most importantly, like he was helping Silver.

"I s'pose I could let ye go when ye finish that stack, so ye can get started on yer book."

"You don't have to. Really." Jim lifted his eyes without raising his head, glancing up at the cyborg through his hair. "You know, if you told Captain Amelia that you were way too busy to spare me, I bet she'd--"

"I'll do no such thing." Silver gave the table a final wipe with the dishrag, then surveyed the much tidier galley. "If the cap'n tells ye to study, ye study."

Jim sighed and slumped over his dishwater. "You're so mean. I thought you'd be on my side."

Silver was quiet a minute, then he sat down on a chair near where Jim was hunched over the pot of soapy water. "I am on yer side, lad. That's why I'm tellin' ye to do what the cap'n tells ye. Trust me, ye may think I'm 'plenty smart'-- and I guess I am, in a way. But the people like her and that loopy doctor a' yers, the ones who think academic education is the only kind that counts-- they're the ones in charge, mostly. Ye've got to play by their rules if ye wanna get ahead."

Jim looked up at him again, tossing his hair out of his face impatiently. "Oh come on. You'd never play by their rules to get ahead-- you'd just. . . just take what you wanted, and to hell with everyone else!"

The look on Silver's face in reaction to his words surprised him; it was almost guilty. "Maybe so. But that's far too dangerous a way to do things, especially for someone like ye."

"What d'you mean, 'someone like me'?" Jim muttered sullenly.

"As young as ye are, ye don't need to be burnin' no bridges. And Jimbo. . . to do things the way I do 'em, ye gotta be able to command respect from the kind a' people on this crew." Jim scowled, but Silver pressed on, "Now don't give me one a' those sulky looks a' yers until ye hear me out. Maybe ye think the crew respects the cap'n, but if ye knew 'em the way I do, ye'd know how wrong that is. They don't respect her or Arrow, and certainly not Doppler."

"Well, that doesn't exactly surprise me," Jim muttered.

"In fact, Jimbo, they don't even respect me much farther than they could throw me. What respect I do have from 'em, I got from sheer force, the way I pulled Scroop off a' ye that day. Don't get me wrong, lad, but ye can't command that kind a' respect, not yet anyway. Yer young and good-lookin', and they'd eat ye for lunch before they'd listen to a word ye had to say. When ye've been through it like I have, then ye can try doin' it the hard way."

Jim looked down at the dish he was holding-- the last one, thank the stars-- to hide the warm blush he could feel on his cheeks. Good-looking? He dried the plate, then rose with the stack of dishes and began putting them away.

"Okay, okay, I'll start the book soon as I finish this, then."

"Good lad." Silver got to his feet. "What book is it, anyway?"

"I dunno. It's by somebody named Platto."

"I think ye mean Plato," Silver returned, pronouncing the name with a long "A".

"Oh. You've heard of him?"

"Well, I didn't say I'd never seen any books," the cyborg chuckled. "One a' the first cap'n's I worked for had a stateroom full of 'em. I did look at a few."

"Is he any good?" Jim put away the last dish, then leaned against the cooled stove, reluctant to leave.

"Depends on which book it is. I only watched a couple of 'em though."

Jim pulled the book out of his pocket and held it up. "I can't even pronounce the name."

Silver looked at the title-- Phaedrus-- then frowned. "Oh. That one." He turned away and picked up the pot of dishwater to empty it.

"That bad, hunh?" Jim said dismally. "You don't look very pleased to see it."

"Well, it wasn't bad, far as I can remember. Just borin'. All about rhetoric-- how ye use speeches to convince people to do what ye want."

"No wonder Captain Amelia had it in her library." Jim looked down at the book and sighed heavily. "Guess I might as well get this over with."

"Ye can stay down here if ye like," Silver said, still not looking at him. "No one'll bother ye, and ye can concentrate better."

"All right. Thanks." Jim watched him ascend the stairs out of the galley and disappear without another word. Morph chittered at Jim cheerfully, then followed his master.

"Looks like it's just you and me," Jim said to the book as he sat down at the table and opened it.

The book promised from the very start to be incredibly boring; two men were walking around talking about a speech one of them had heard that morning. He cringed even more when the character announced that the speech he had heard was about love. Jim stared off into the dark recesses of the galley instead of at the animated figures of the characters as he listened. As the first character related the speech he had heard, Jim caught something about an argument that it was better not to love the person you were in a relationship with.

Whatever, he thought boredly, although he was starting to wonder whether Silver was mixed up about the book. So far there hadn't been so much as a peep of rhetoric. The second character, a guy named Socrates, apparently thought the speech wasn't good enough and launched into his own version of it. Jim didn't think it started off all that much better; it sounded more like a fairy tale than an argument.

"Once upon a time there was a boy, or rather a lad, who was exceedingly handsome."

Yeah, yeah, thought Jim. Get on with it.

"Among his many admirers there was one subtle person, no less in love than the rest, who had, however, persuaded the lad that he was not in love with him. And once in the course--"

Wait a minute. Jim blinked down at the book. He flipped to the previous page then back, making it replay the last few sentences.

". . . who had, however, persuaded the lad that he was not. . . ."

It did say "he." This whole thing's talking about a man seducing the boy, not a woman! Jim felt his cheeks grow hot as he looked down at the two characters innocently chattering away. What kind of book is this? He wondered if Captain Amelia really knew what it was about. Then he wondered if Silver knew.

No, Jim assured himself, he said it was about rhetoric, and there's nothing about that. He had the wrong book. Still, his hand shook a little as he flipped the page again, actually listening to the words this time.

Socrates was still arguing that the boy should choose a lover who didn't love him back; yet he seemed to think that the man in question really did love him, though he pretended not to. He took a good four pages to say as much, ending with the line "As wolves for lambs, so lovers lust for boys."

"Stars," Jim hissed, shutting the book for a moment. "What kind of planet did this thing come from, anyway?" It sounded like a world so different from Montressor, certainly from the small world comprised by the Legacy and its crew. Jim tried to imagine a planet where men pursued boys like that-- where they actually had to pay someone to write speeches to win the favor of someone not much different from Jim himself. Where his crewmates would not only respect him and listen to him. . . but try to seduce him. Jim shied away from that idea; the last thing he wanted to think about was being seduced by someone like Scroop.

And yet. . . . Jim looked down at the book, over which his fingers were curled, and felt his heart pound faster. The kind of person Socrates talked about, the one "no less in love" than anyone else but who hid it so well, the boy never suspected. . . .

Jim quickly opened the book again before he thought any more along those lines. Not satisfied with two speeches, Socrates gave still another one, this one in favor of being in love. Most of it was cloaked in so many metaphors, Jim lost interest. The one part that did retain his attention was the description of how the boy would finally come to love his admirer.

". . . the constant kindness that he meets with in close companionship with his lover strikes the beloved with amazement; he realizes clearly that all his other friends and relations together cannot offer him anything to compare with the affection that he receives from this friend. . . ."

When the speech was finally over, Jim closed the book once more to pause the recording. He can't have known this was in it, he thought wildly. He can't. He would have said something, told me not to read it, laughed at it, something.

Jim was nearly finished with the book; he resolutely opened it once more, steeling himself for yet another speech. To his relief, there seemed to only be dialogue left as the two characters started talking about what made good writing, and some inane metaphor about calling a donkey a horse. Then, slowly, a realization dawned on Jim: that was rhetoric.

Sure enough, Socrates went on to use the speeches to demonstrate to his friend just how words could be used to convince an audience of anything. Jim barely heard him.

Silver did have the right book. He knew exactly which book this was. . . .

Jim didn't realize that the book had ended until it had sat silently for several minutes. He closed it slowly, recalling the passage where the boy lost his heart to his lover. He could have been writing about me, Jim thought, stricken. That's just how I feel when I'm with him. . . .

Jim got up from the table and shoved the book back into his pocket. He decided he'd somehow sneak into Amelia's stateroom and put it back so that he wouldn't have to discuss it with anyone. Not with her, not with Doppler, and certainly not with Silver.

He trudged above deck, intending to see if he could return the book that very night. It had taken him a couple hours to get through the whole thing, and all but the crewmembers on the first watch that night had already retired. He found the stateroom locked, as he had expected, but he began to work at the knob anyway, confident that he could pick the lock without too much trouble.

"All right, what's goin' on here?" Silver's voice interrupted. Jim winced and let go of the knob as the cyborg rounded the corner.

"Oh, it's you, lad," Silver said more kindly when he saw Jim. "I thought it was one a' the crew, bein' indiscriminate as always."

Jim felt like he himself was being pretty indiscriminate, but he just nodded sheepishly. "I was going to return the, uh, book tonight if I could get in. Thought I might get out of answering Dr. Doppler's questions about it if I put it back without anyone knowing."

"Eh, sorry Jimbo, but I ain't got a key. Ye'll just have to hold onto it."

"Yeah."

Jim had started to slink towards his cabin when Silver asked, "So ye finished it then?"

"Oh. Yeah." Jim forced himself to smile innocently. "You were right, lots of rhetoric. The captain'll probably expect me to make a speech or something once she finds out I've read it."

Silver chuckled. "Hope ye paid attention then. See ye in the mornin', lad."

"Yeah, night."

Jim hurried below deck as quickly as he could. Silver had been so nonchalant about the whole thing, Jim began to wonder if he really did know what the book was about. Maybe he's forgotten, he thought as he pulled off his boots and climbed into his hammock. He must have. Jim wished he could forget-- not so much what the book had said as how the beloved boy reminded him of himself. . . and how the "subtle person" who secretly loved the boy reminded him of Silver.

It's your imagination, he told himself firmly. Wherever that was written, it was another world and another time. Things don't work like that anymore.

Still, the penultimate phrase of Socrates' first speech echoed in Jim's mind: As wolves for lambs, so lovers lust for boys.

Stars, Jim thought as he closed his eyes tightly and hoped for sleep, I wish.

The End