Shadows (22 page)

Engersol smiled. “Very good, Hildie. Those are exactly the two candidates I had in mind. Rearrange their schedules for them to start tomorrow.”

As Hildie left his office, Engersol reviewed the files of the two students one more time. He agreed. They were perfect for the seminar.

Josh MacCallum. indeed, had already attempted suicide once.

If he did it again, and succeeded, no one would think a thing about it.

J
osh MacCallum and Amy Carlson sat nervously on the bench outside Hildie Kramer’s office. The house was quiet, for the rest of the kids had already headed for their first classes of the day. But during breakfast Hildie had come into the dining room and instructed the two of them to come to her office at the beginning of the first period. Josh and Amy exchanged an apprehensive glance. For his part, Josh was convinced he was in trouble. Deep trouble: Jeff must have told his parents what he had said yesterday afternoon after the funeral, and Mrs. Aldrich must have called Hildie. But what was so wrong with wondering if maybe Adam hadn’t really killed himself? And Jeff hadn’t been mad at all—in fact, Josh thought, it seemed Jeff had believed him.

Amy, though, thought they’d been summoned by Hildie Kramer for a different reason. “I bet our moms decided to take us out of school,” she said. “I bet they talked to Monica’s folks, and now they’re going to make us go home, too.”

Josh had stared speculatively at the empty chair at the next table, which Monica Lowenstein had habitually occupied until this morning. He shook his head. “How come grown-ups always start acting weird? Monica wasn’t going to do anything. She thought Adam was really dumb to kill himself. And it can’t be that, anyway. If my mom was going
to take me home, she’d have done it yesterday. Besides, she told me she’d decided not to. And your mom and dad didn’t even come to the funeral, so how could they have talked to Monica’s folks?”

Amy made a face at him. “Haven’t you ever heard of the telephone?”

“That’s dumb,” Josh replied. “Monica’s folks probably don’t even know where your folks live.” Amy had made no reply, but instead poked disconsolately at her oatmeal. “Maybe we’re really not in any trouble at all,” Josh suggested.

“Oh, sure,” Amy said, scowling at him. “Did you ever get called to the principal’s office when you weren’t in trouble?”

For that argument, Josh had no reply at all. The two of them had sunk into a dejected silence for the rest of breakfast. Nor had it helped when the other kids had begun teasing them as they left for their various classes.

“See you later,” Brad Hinshaw had called. “If you’re still here!” Laughing, he’d shoved his way through the front door into the bright morning sunlight, while Josh and Amy perched on the bench outside Hildie’s office, the relative gloom of the large foyer doing nothing to improve their mood.

Finally the door to Hildie’s office opened and Hildie herself stepped out to usher them inside. “Well, look at the two of you,” she said, smiling at them. “From those long faces, you must have done something I haven’t heard about yet!” As Josh and Amy eyed one another nervously, she burst out laughing. “If I’d known you were going to worry yourselves to death, I wouldn’t have said a thing at breakfast. I’d have just stopped you on your way to class. Now come on in.”

Warily, the two children followed Hildie into her office. For some reason both of them felt vaguely relieved when she didn’t close the door. Hildie, noting their response, smiled to herself. Long ago she’d discovered that all the kids got nervous when she called them in for a closed-door conference. It was as if they instinctively knew that a closed door meant some kind of dressing-down. Conversely, she’d
also discovered that the simple act of closing the door was enough to strike terror into the heart of the occasional troublemaker.

“I was talking to Dr. Engersol last night,” she told them, settling herself into the chair behind her desk as Josh and Amy perched anxiously on the couch. “With Monica leaving school, there are two vacant places in his seminar. He and I both think you two are ideal candidates to take their places.”

Josh felt a quick thrill of anticipation, remembering Jeff telling him a week ago about the seminar, but refusing to talk about exactly what they were doing. All he knew was that it involved computers—something he’d loved since the first moment he’d seen one, when he was only five—and that only a few kids in the school were allowed to be in it.

The smartest, most talented kids.

Adam and Jeff Aldrich, and Monica Lowenstein, and a few others.

Jeff. What about his place? Was it possible that he was coming back to school after all? He voiced the question even as it came into his head, and Hildie’s smile broadened.

“He’s coming back tomorrow,” she told him. “Which should make you happy, right? He’s your best friend, isn’t he?”

“Except for Amy,” Josh replied. “Is he still going to be in the seminar?”

“As far as I know.”

“But what’s it about?” Amy asked. “None of the kids who are in it ever talk about it.”

“Well, it’s hardly a big secret,” Hildie replied. “Basically, it’s a class in artificial intelligence.”

Josh’s eyes widened. “Wow. You mean like in teaching computers how to think?”

“Exactly. And since both of you seem to have remarkable abilities in math, we think you’d fit in very well.”

Amy looked uncertain. “I don’t really like computers,” she said. “All the games are kind of dumb, once you’ve played them a couple of times. I mean, it’s always the same stuff, over and over again.”

“And why do you think it’s always the same stuff?” Hildie asked.

Amy looked puzzled by the question, but Josh saw the answer instantly.

“Because all a computer does is put things together the way it’s told to. It can’t figure out anything new, because it can’t think like people can.”

Amy’s brows knit as she concentrated on the idea. “But how could a computer ever think like a person?” she asked.

“That’s what the seminar is all about,” Hildie explained. “Most of what Dr. Engersol is trying to do is learn how people think. In a way, our brains are like computers, but there’s a big difference. Somehow, we manage to put all the data in our heads together and come up with new ideas. Computers can’t do that. A lot of people think that if we can figure out just how our brains come up with new ideas, we might be able to design a computer to do it, too. That’s what artificial intelligence is all about”

“But what would we be doing?” Amy asked.

Hildie shrugged. “Dr. Engersol will have to explain that to you. But I can promise you, you’ll like the seminar. Everyone who’s been in it loves it.” She smiled ruefully. “Unfortunately, I don’t think I understand it enough to know quite
why
they love it, but they do.”

“I don’t know,” Amy said, fidgeting on the couch. “Do I have to take it? What if I don’t want to?”

“Well, I’m sure if you don’t want to, Dr. Engersol will understand,” Hildie told her. “Of course, you probably won’t get to move down to the second floor, but it’s entirely up to you.”

“The second floor?” Amy asked, her interest suddenly engaged. The rooms on the second floor were much larger than the ones on the third, which had originally been the servants’ quarters when the mansion had been built. “Why would we get to move downstairs?”

Hildie smiled as if it should have been obvious. “It has to do with the seminar. All the students in Dr. Engersol’s class are issued special computers, and the rooms on the third floor are just too small. And since Adam’s room, and Monica’s, are empty …” She left the bait hanging. As
she’d been certain would happen, both Amy and Josh snatched at it.

“Could we move downstairs today?” Amy asked eagerly. “This morning?”

Hildie chuckled. “You can move right now, if you want to,” she told them. “Does that mean you both want to join the seminar?”

The two children agreed eagerly. Hildie took two pieces of paper out of a file folder that was already lying on her desk. “In that case, here are your new schedules. Starting tomorrow, you’ll both be going into the new class first period. Amy, you’ll be moved into the mathematics class that meets at two, and I’ve put you into the same one, Josh.”

Josh broke into a smile. “Since we’re taking another class, does that mean we can stop doing P.E.?” he asked eagerly.

Hildie made a face of exaggerated disapproval. “No, it doesn’t mean you can stop doing P.E. But it does mean,” she added, as Josh’s face fell, “that we’ll be making some changes in that, too. So as soon as you leave here, I want you both to go to the gym behind the college field house and see Mr. Iverson. I’ll give you a note telling him why you’re there, and he’ll give you some tests and then help you set up a gym schedule that won’t interfere with any of your classes. Okay?”

Both children, slightly dazed by the sudden change in the schedules that had been set up little more than a week ago, nodded silently, and Hildie handed them the note for Joe Iverson, who headed the university’s physical education program. Years ago, working closely with George Engersol, Iverson had designed a special regimen for the children in the Academy, emphasizing individual sports over team activities.

“None of the kids we’re targeting is going to grow up to be a team player,” Engersol had explained even before they’d taken in their first students. “They’ll all be unique kids, and most if not all of them will have had nothing but bad experiences with team sports. If they’re forced into situations where they have to curtail their intellects in favour
of someone else’s physical superiority, they’ll only resent it, and I don’t intend for this Academy to be an unhappy experience for any of them. We’ll have a few kids who love baseball and football, but for the most part physical competition just won’t mean anything to our kids. So I want you to design a program that will give them the exercise they need, but not bore them. Is it possible?”

Iverson had nodded. “Anything’s possible,” he’d agreed, and set to work. What he’d come up with was a program emphasizing swimming, which he knew most kids loved to start with, and gymnastics, which, if one was to achieve any sort of proficiency, demanded nearly as much brain power as muscle development. Furthermore, the sports he’d selected for the kids were individual enough that most of them were able to work their P.E. sessions in at their own convenience, merely appearing at the pool or gym when they had time, so long as they put in a minimum of five hours a week.

For Josh and Amy the choice had been easy—an hour a day in the pool was more like playing than anything else.

Now, they left Hildie Kramer’s office and headed across the lawn and out the gate, then turned left into the main university campus, on the other side of which were the field house, a smaller gym, the pool, and the football stadium. Amy gazed curiously at Josh.

“How come they have to change our P. E.? Why can’t we just keep going swimming every day, like we have been?”

Josh shrugged. “Maybe they have something special for the kids in the seminar.”

“But why?” Amy pressed. “What’s dumb old P.E. got to do with artificial intelligence?”

“Who cares?” Josh grinned. “We get new rooms and new computers, don’t we?”

Amy nodded halfheartedly. The new room was great—she was already looking forward to that. But she didn’t really care about the new computer, and the thing with changing her P.E. program seemed stupid. She started to say something else, then changed her mind. After all, Josh didn’t know any more about the seminar than she did, and the other kids in it hadn’t ever said a word.

That, too, seemed weird to her. How come they all acted like it was a big deal? It was just another class, wasn’t it?

Or was it?

Why did she feel that she’d gotten talked into doing something she didn’t really want to do?

Well, it didn’t matter, really. If it turned out she hated it, they’d probably let her quit. After all, so far they’d never made her do anything she didn’t really want to do.

Or had they?

In her mind she began reviewing the days since she’d first come to the Academy, and the way Hildie Kramer had treated her.

Hildie’d always been very nice to her, but in the end-as she had the day she’d run out of her room and hidden in the Gazebo, where she’d met Josh—she’d always wound up doing what Hildie wanted her to do.

And now Hildie and Dr. Engersol wanted her to take this class.

Why?

   Joe Iverson grinned at the two children who stood nervously in front of his desk, and slipped the note from Hildie Kramer under the metal clamp of his clipboard. “So Dr. E’s got two more hot prospects for his class, huh?” he asked. Josh and Amy exchanged a nervous glance, but nodded. “Well, then, let’s get started, okay?”

“But what are we doing?” Amy asked. “How come we can’t just keep on swimming, like we’ve been doing? We
like
swimming!”

Iverson’s brows arched. “Who said you’re not going to?” he asked.

Amy cocked her head. “Hildie. She said you had to do a special program for us. But I don’t see why.”

“Tell you what,” the coach replied. “Why don’t you two go change your clothes, then meet me in the gym. Okay? Then I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.”

Ten minutes later, when the two children emerged from their respective locker rooms and entered the empty gym, they found Joe Iverson waiting for them. “Mostly what
we’re going to do right now is see what kind of condition you two are in,” he told them. “I don’t know if Hildie explained this to you, but Dr. E’s not just teaching you in his seminar. He’s studying you, too.”

Josh frowned suspiciously. “Studying us how?”

Iverson laughed out loud at the expression on the boy’s face. “Well, it’s not like guinea pigs,” he replied. “But he figures that since the brain affects practically everything in the body one way or another, you kids should be different from kids whose IQs are in the more normal range. So he tries to keep track of everything about you, not only mentally, but physically, too. What I’m going to do this morning is weigh you and measure you, take your blood pressure and pulse and all that kind of thing, then give you some exercises and check your blood pressure and pulse again.”