Neurolink (22 page)

“Students, I mean to have order in this classroom!”

The teacher stood in front of an improvised blackboard at the far end of the room. She was short and chubby, with plump arms and a double chin, and she wore a billowing smock over her prote uniform. Her hand still held a chunk of white chalk, poised to write.

“Damn me. It’s a school.” The NP snickered.

“You’ve brought your boy to the right place.” The teacher stuck out her chin and pointed her chalk at Benito. “Your son’ll learn the truth here.”

What good luck, thought Dominic. A school. He’d been looking for the right place to settle Benito. Yes, he could leave the boy here with good conscience. He set Benito on his feet, brushed the dirt from his striped shorts and smoothed his hair.

“His name’s Benito. He’s very bright, although he doesn’t say much. I think he experienced some trauma.”

“Humph! And I’d like to know who hasn’t!” The teacher arched her eyebrows and wrote “Beeno” on the board.

“Wonderful. He’s enrolled. Let’s get going,” the NP said.

“Your son can sit on the floor,” said the teacher.

“You don’t mind that, do you, Benito?”

The teacher shrugged and began strutting in front of the blackboard, gripping her chalk and continuing her interrupted lecture. Her round shoulders were drawn up in a permanent hunch, and her eyes protruded in an unhealthy way. He thought it must be the strain of trying to see in the darkness. Why didn’t she arrange a better light source?

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he looked closer at the lab equipment. The gas jets weren’t connected to anything, and most of the test tubes and beakers were cracked. The equipment must have been salvaged from the
Benthica’s
assay lab. What a pathetic classroom, he thought. Still, he tugged the boy’s arms loose from around his neck and gave him a gentle push toward the other children. Benito sucked his pencil and wouldn’t budge.

“Go on, Benito. The more you learn, the greater your worth.” Dominic bit his lip. Those were his father’s words. How spontaneously he repeated them. But of course, he had never doubted the value of knowledge. He knelt beside the boy, and while the teacher continued her lesson, he whispered, “You’ll learn chemistry, Benito. Molecules. Bonded pairs. That’s how the world is put together.”

He squinted at the dim classroom walls, hoping to find a Periodic Table of Elements that he could explain, to help Benito get a head start in class. But all he saw was a slogan scrawled on the blackboard. The chalky handwriting was hard to read, but he finally made it out: “Exectives eet ther yung.”

“What’s this?” Dominic stood and pointed at the slogan.

“How many times are you gonna disrupt my class?” The teacher jammed one fist against her paunchy hip. “Executives eat their young. It’s why they live so long.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Dominic.

“Who cares?” said the NP. “Let’s go.”

The pudgy teacher bent forward at the waist. “They grow fetuses in tanks and eat ’em to stay young. And they have white blood, like milk. And their brains pick up radioactive waves from the moon. Yes, it’s all documented facts.”

Dominic raised his voice. “That’s crazy!”

“You call me a liar? In front of my class?” White blotches mottled the teacher’s cheeks, and her bulging eyes radiated passion. She gripped her chalk like a weapon. “This school teaches the truth. If you can deny any of my points, I’d like to hear it.”

Lightning burst across Dominic’s retina as the NP said, “Are you gonna waste time debating a prote?”

“Let me tell you a story,” the teacher said in a commanding tone. “Students, listen up. You’ll be tested on this.”

“Who cares what a prote writes on a chalkboard?” the NP said, but Dominic was too angry to answer.

The teacher walked slowly among the children, and they followed her with their eyes. “Once upon a time, I had a daughter. She was about your son’s age. That’s right, just as sweet and innocent as your own child.”

Dominic didn’t want to hear what happened to this woman’s daughter. Some horrific industrial accident, no doubt, which this bereft woman chose to blame on the hapless exec in charge. The mean glint in her eye told Dominic the whole story.

“I’m sorry your daughter died, but—”

“She didn’t die!” The teacher gripped her chalk so hard, it broke in two pieces and fell to the floor. “They took my daughter and trained her in triage! She’s alive, working in a Copenhagen clinic.” The woman raised her chalky fist as if she wanted to split the world in two. Children scattered out of her way as she took another step forward. “My daughter does triage!”

“Triage?” Dominic was nonplussed. He couldn’t remember what that word meant.

The NP supplied a definition. “It’s our criteria for rationing medical care. We allocate resources to patients who get the most benefit.”

Dominic asked the teacher, “What’s your problem with triage? It’s a necessary skill.”

“It’s perverted.” The teacher stomped her foot.

“We can’t provide unlimited medical care to billions of people. We need criteria for rationing.” Dominic crossed his arms. He knew this line of reasoning well.

The teacher’s eyes seemed to swell even larger. She lowered her head like a charging animal. “Med care goes to execs first, workers last, dependents never. That’s the triage they taught my daughter.”

“But—”

“They taught you, too. I can tell.” The teacher’s nostrils curled, and her voice deepened to an ominous undertone. “My daughter learned their values. Do you know how execs define values?”

“Cost versus benefit,” Dominic answered automatically. Then for the first time, he faltered backward.

But the teacher had stopped moving toward him. Her plump body sagged against the countertop. “The execs perverted my daughter. That’s why I teach the truth. Whether the damned council likes it or not!”

Dominic read the words on the blackboard and ground his teeth. This wasn’t what children should learn. They should study atoms and molecules. This teacher wanted to indoctrinate them in malice. He tried to recalled his own early education. What had he studied? Market systems. Return on capital. Cost-benefit analysis.

Values, yes. How slippery that word could be. He’d been trained to think of values as logical numbers based on the calculus of supply and demand. Over long evenings at his desk, his father had taught him how to compute their shifting relativities, given any set of variables. He knew that in his father’s system, medical triage was as clear as quantum mechanics. But here among the runaways, values became hazy and laden with intangibles. Protes resented the clear-cut definitions of price, and they assigned worth on an entirely different plan, call it sentiment or subjectivity, some insubstantial system without edges. Yet he sensed that, in a manner he failed to grasp, these people defined value as a constant.

Benito’s fingernails cut into his kneecap and jolted him back to the present. The boy had hidden behind Dominic’s legs, and some of the other children were shouting insults and pelting the boy with rock chips.

“Stop this foolishness.” The teacher marched over, gripped Benito’s forearm and yanked him free. When his yellow pencil clattered across the floor, the teacher pounced on it “Excellent. I can use this.”

Benito struggled in the teacher’s grip and let out a strangled cry. “Hn!”

“That pencil belongs to Benito,” Dominic said.

The woman nodded. “Your son’ll be fine with us. You said you had urgent business.”

“Urgent’s the word,” the NP said.

“Give back the pencil,” Dominic said aloud.

“Forget the damn brat!” As the NP’s fireworks exploded, Dominic pressed the heel of his hand into his eye socket.

“Something in your eye?” The teacher sneered.

Dominic blinked, and one big salty tear rolled down his cheek. “Give Benito his pencil, or I’ll take it by force.”

“Is that so?” The woman stuck out her jaw, and her flabby chin wobbled. “This pencil is a resource, and I need it. I teach a roomful of young minds, whereas this child, what does he do? You talk about rationing criteria. Okay, use it.”

Dominic pictured grabbing the woman and shaking her upside down until the pencil fell from her pocket. But that seemed vulgar, and besides, the children were watching. He didn’t want to set an example of violence. Their “young minds” were already imbibing enough crackpot ideas.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said to the teacher. “That yellow pencil means a lot to the boy. I’ll give you two writing implements in trade for that one.”

“Two for one? I don’t believe you.” The teacher’s eyelids closed to slits over her large globular eyes. “Where are these two writing implements?”

Dominic smiled and opened his hands. “It stands to reason, as a teacher, you need a supply of writing implements. How long will one pencil last? Why not have two instead?”

The teacher poked her nose in the air as if she could sniff out Dominic’s scam. “Show me.”

“It’s obvious your mind is full of ideas.” Dominic gestured at the children. “You need to record your vision for posterity. Writing’s the way to do that.”

“I don’t trust you,” the teacher said, but she was listening.

Dominic felt a rush of the old pleasure in pursuit of a deal. He gazed at the teacher with affection, as a predator might gaze at its next meal. “Maybe your ideas will change the world someday. These students, they’re just the beginning. Think of what you could do if you write down all your thoughts.”

The teacher squinted up at him. She was much shorter than Dominic, and her fleshy head lolled back between her hunched, rounded shoulders. She was wavering. Dominic played his favorite gambit—he turned to leave.

“If you won’t trade, I have to go,” he said, disappearing through the door.

“Wait.” The teacher pulled the yellow pencil out of her pocket and studied it.

Dominic paused in the doorway, pretending to ignore the pencil, but from the corner of his eye, he observed her indecision. Benito struggled again to break free from her grip, but Dominic gave him a discreet hand signal to quiet down.

“Two for one,” Dominic said again, very softly.

The teacher glanced at her students. Her lips parted, ever so slightly, and her heavy shoulders rose and fell. When she exhaled, Dominic knew the deal was done.

“Okay, I’ll buy,” she said. “Here’s your ratty pencil. Where’s my two?”

In one motion, Dominic seized the pencil from the teacher’s hand and bent to the floor to sweep up the two broken pieces of chalk she’d dropped earlier. As he tossed them in her direction, he grabbed Benito and sprinted out the door.

“You cheated me!”

Dominic paused in the corridor and laughed. “All transactions balance.” Then he clasped the boy in the crook of his elbow and charged through the crowd.

“Stop that thief!” the woman called out behind him.

People turned to gawk as Dominic rushed headlong through the crowded tunnel. In his haste, he slammed into a woman who fell to her knees. Her belly was distended in pregnancy, and she carried a toddler strapped in a backpack. When Dominic offered to help her up, she started weeping.

“Thief!” the teacher continued to yell in the background.

Someone pointed at Dominic. “That’s him. He stole something from that mother.”

“He stole her child!”

“He’s a kidnapper!”

Aghast, Dominic spun around. Everyone was staring at him. A circle widened around the weeping mother and Dominic, who still gripped Benito firmly in his arm.

“Drop the brat,” the NP said. “You don’t always like my advice, but take it now.”

“Hn!” Benito’s eyes were wide with fear. He scrambled up to grip Dominic’s neck.

An object struck Dominic’s shoulder. It was a stone. Another hit his back. Then another. Dominic turned to face the stones. “I didn’t steal anything! This boy, he doesn’t belong to her. He’s…”

When Dominic hesitated, more stones flew, and when one of them ricocheted off the floor and struck the woman’s leg, she shrieked.

“Stop it, you stupid fool!” Dominic pushed through the crowd toward the teacher, who was throwing stones.

Then several people laid hands on him, and someone tried to wrest Benito away. Dominic lost control. He swung and fought, blindly hammering his meaty fists at anyone who came near. He heard the brutal wet impacts of flesh against flesh, the ugly grants, the screams. Finally, he broke through the crowd and fled up the passage, sweat burning his eyes, no longer caring who got in his way.

“Stop that man! He’s a thief!” the teacher yelled.

“Drop the kid and run!” the NP shouted.

Dominic ran full out, gripping Benito to his chest. He ran until he was gasping for air. Because he was taller and healthier than his pursuers, he eventually outran them. Their cries echoed and faded, and still he kept running. Then his long legs began to buckle, and when he spotted a dark niche in the wall, he slipped in to hide.

Benito’s face was red and wrinkled. At first, Dominic didn’t realize the boy was quietly crying. He held him tight and stroked his bony little shoulders. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” he repeated, over and over, as he slowly recovered his breath.

What had just happened? Those people accused him of theft, but he wasn’t to blame. He only took back what belonged to the boy. It was that teacher! He hadn’t intended to knock anyone down. Hardly ten minutes earlier, he’d been thinking how much he admired these protes. But that teacher!

Dominic drew farther back into the dark crevice and waited for his heart to stop pounding. Would they have stoned him to death? For taking a pencil? These protes were more dangerous than he realized. Again, he silently blessed the major’s insistence on disguise.

“Did you hear me, son? We gotta shut this place down. Surely, you see why.”

“Yes,” Dominic said. He could still picture the pregnant young woman, weeping on her hands and knees, and the people circling around, pointing. The episode left him rattled.

He leaned out of the crevice and looked both ways. No furious posse of vigilantes. Only a stream of haggard passersby. He wriggled out of the hiding place and started up the corridor, carrying the exhausted boy in his arms.