Brothers to Dragons (13 page)

"I already know I can learn languages."

"Sure. But there could be things you might be even
better
at, only you've never run into them. That's what these tests do—tell how good you might be at something, before you ever try it."

He saw Job's hesitation. "Look, this isn't an urgent thing. Think about it, see if it appeals to you. Most people like to know what they'd be good at if they had a chance." He stood up. "Maybe we can talk about it more tomorrow. By the way, my name is Alan Singh, What's yours?"

"Job Salk."

Mistake!
His brain shouted the word at him. He had given his real name. It was on file at Cloak House and with the J-D center, more than likely it was on file in the Mall Compound.

But Singh was nodding and turning away, as though asking Job's name was no more than courtesy.

Maybe it was just that.

But Job was trembling. How much was due to fear, and how much to a perverse excitement, he could not say.

Chapter Nine

Escapegoat

Job had never taken a formal test in his life. The very idea of sitting at a table for three hours, just reading and writing, was peculiar—even without other distractions.

He fidgeted in his chair and looked around the room. He had thought that Professor Buckler's living quarters were full of books. But this place
was
books. From floor to ceiling every wall was covered with them. Bookshelves broke into the living space, so that just to move around the room you had to walk along long, narrow book-lined aisles. In fact—he stared around again—there
was
no living space. He could see no bed, no kitchen or bathroom.

Alan Singh was sitting at another little table about ten feet away. He saw Job's head movements and laid down the book he was reading.

"Look, when you are all through I'll give you a full tour if you want it." His accent in
chachara-calle
was improving, but Job thought that he would never fully lose his foreign twang. And when it came to difficult subjects or fast talking, Singh still preferred to switch to standard English.

"But those are
timed
tests you're doing," Singh went on. "If you don't start promptly, you'll never finish. I'm going to re-set the clock. Then I want you to stop gawking and begin reading and thinking." He pressed a button on the top of a curious round-faced clock that had been distracting Job with its loud ticking sound. "You're starting again—now. Get to it."

Job bent his head and began to read. Regardless of books and clocks he found it hard to concentrate. The journey here with Singh had been disturbing, and he was still not sure why he had agreed to come. He had told Sammy what he was going to do, and she had stared at him and told him he was mad. Singh was surely going to kill him or rob him.

It still seemed to Job that she might be right. They had meandered for miles through a warren of littered streets, to a totally unfamiliar part of town and a matched group of buildings of gray stone. Someone clearly lived in them, because the grass between some of the buildings was well tramped down, and anyway, someone lived
everywhere
in the city that a person could live. But Job saw no sign of people. And although Singh seemed to know his way around the place, he did not act as though this was his home.

Anything could happen to Job here, and no one would ever know it. He forced thoughts like that out of his head, and stared at the page.

A man is traveling in a country where there are only two sorts of people: those who always lie, and those who always tell the truth. The man meets a native at a crossroads, and wonders how to get to the next town. He is allowed to ask the native just one question to find out the right way to go. What does he say to the native?

After the first set of easy questions they were all like this. Weird. What sort of country had two such odd sorts of people?
Nobody
told the truth all the time, and probably nobody lied all the time. And
why
could the man ask only one question? What happened to him if he asked another one?

Some of the problems weren't questions at all. They were funny little drawings that you had to turn around or back to front or inside out, and then say which one was different from the others. Others asked about wood and metal balls dropped from the top of buildings, or weights placed into buckets of water.

The final set was strangest of all.

Three men are placed in a room with stickers on their foreheads. They are told that the stickers are either red or black, and that there is at least one red sticker. The first man who can say correctly what color the sticker is on his own forehead will be the winner . . .

Anyone in his right mind would peel off the sticker and look at it. But Singh said that sort of answer was not permitted. The men had to
reason
the color of the stickers.

Job frowned and puzzled and chewed at the end of the pen. He was amazed when the clock gave a loud pinging sound, and Singh said, "All right. Time's up. Don't write any more."

"I haven't finished all the questions."

"That's all right. Hardly anybody does. Hand it over."

It was Singh's turn to frown and concentrate, while Job wandered around and stared at books. Some of the titles made no sense. He found a whole section of books filled with nothing but numbers, strange symbols, and a few lines of writing between them. He stared at other shelves for a long time before he realized that they held books in other languages, some that he already spoke but had never seen written down. The spelling was often confusing, and didn't match the way that the words were pronounced.

"Well, that's one theory disposed of." Singh had finished his pondering, and was leaning back in his chair. "Damnation."

Job came to sit next to him.

"You've certainly got a talent," Singh continued. "But it's not what I hoped it might be." He was flipping through the pages that Job had filled out in his careful printing. "You answered correctly every question about words and language. How long did that part take you?"

Job looked at the pages. Singh was pointing to the easy questions at the beginning. "Not long. No time at all, I just filled them in."

"Most people can't get them right, even if they take their time doing it. You've got a first-rate memory and a pretty good grasp of logic and spatial relations. But I don't see any sign of unusual mathematical talent, or physical intuition."

Singh laid down the pages. "Probably just as well, from your point of view." He leaned back and rubbed at his black beard. "Did you ever have any courses in science or math?"

"Father Bonifant used to teach them at Cloak House. But when Colonel della Porta came he stopped that. He said the courses were 'useless and seditious.' "

"He was following the party line." Singh stood up. "Come on, let's go. I want to show you something."

He led the way from the book-lined chamber and out of the building. "This place used to be a university," he said. "Before the
Quiebra Grande
, when there was money for things like education, people a few years older than you would come here for four or five years."

They were cutting across a big square of ground covered with long grass, following a well-walked path. Job stared around, and saw no sign of stores or workshops. "What did they do here?"

"They learned—at least, some of them did. And I taught. In this building." They were entering a massive stone edifice that looked to Job like one of the old churches that still scattered the city. He thought of Professor Buckler, and his talk of being at a rich university. Maybe Alan Singh maintained the same delusion.

"This building, and this lab," said Singh. They had walked up two flights of littered and filthy stairs to an open door. The room beyond was long and wide. Within it were rows of benches covered with dusty equipment. It had all been cannibalized. Job saw broken lenses, ripped-out wiring, and smashed glass jars. At the front of the room stood a platform, and behind it was a set of three wide blackboards. Singh went forward and mounted the dais. He turned to Job. His face had become wistful, lacking its usual energy. "Three thousand mornings, I stood up here and talked. Now I wonder where all my words went. And where my students went."

Job was becoming uneasy again. Singh was full of some obsession with the past. It had been a mistake to come here. But as though reading that thought, the man on the dais suddenly smiled.

"You know, this is something I always wanted to do here, and I was never allowed to. Against university regulations." He pulled a black cigar from his pocket, lit it carefully, and leaned forward with his elbows on the podium. He blew a smoke ring towards Job. "So, Job Salk. You're not a scientist. Well, lucky for you. You won't become a scapegoat, the way we did."

"What's a scapegoat?" Singh had switched to standard English, and Job had never heard that word before.

"I don't know how to say it in
chachara-calle
. A scapegoat is someone who gets blamed for something."

"That's
apagano
. Same as a fall guy. Why are you one?"

"Me, and science too. You know how the word 'scapegoat' came to be used? Thousands of years ago, the high priest would take a goat, and lay on it all the sins of all the people in a big ceremony. And then the goat was sent off to the wilderness. All the sins were supposed to go away with it. Just the way it happened to us."

"I don't understand."

"That's because you're only ten. You're too young to remember what it was like before the
Quiebra Grande
. Science used to be
respectable
. Twenty years ago it was all right to call yourself a scientist. But bit by bit there was more garbage, and more acid rain, and toxic wastes, and runaway reactors, and the air got worse and the water got worse. And there were more and more people, and the cities began to fall apart. The sewage and transportation systems overloaded. And all that was
before
the big financial crash and the beginning of the real troubles. Governments all over the world were in deep
guano
. They didn't know how to solve any of the problems, but they needed their scapegoat. When the
Quiebra Grande
came and the population was up to nine billion, they picked their
pagano
: science. Scientists made technology possible. Technology produced wastes and pollution. Ergo, scientists were to blame for everything.

"Your colonel knew the party line. Science courses are seditious.
Science
is seditious. If you are a scientist, you have a choice: go into hiding, do something else for a living, study in secret, and hope you don't get caught. Or be sent to the wilderness. That's what happened to most of my colleagues. All that remains is the network. And even that . . ."

As Singh spoke, Job was becoming steadily more uneasy. The man was rambling on and on, apparently talking to himself more than to Job.

Job had known him for a couple of months, and in that time he had checked him out with the other street vendors. No one had anything bad to say, but when Job had agreed to come with him and try the tests he knew he had taken a risk, drawn by the strangeness of what Singh was proposing.

But the process could be looked at the other way round. Job had never talked of his own background to the other street vendors, so Singh knew less about him than he knew about Singh. What risk had
Singh
taken, bringing Job here? For all the man knew Job could be an informer, paid by the government to collect information on the streets. If Job had not been jaded, he could have made money by revealing what Singh had just told him.

For the man was talking freely—much too freely. Far older than Job, he was still hopelessly naive. And anyone who lacked the right survival instincts was too dangerous to be around. Unless Singh were
himself
working for the police, and testing job. In which case . . .

Or if he were
not
working for the police, but somehow interested in
remitting
Job. In which case . . .

There were as many involutions as in one of Singh's contorted test problems.

Job cut through the logical twists with a single stroke.
The Golden Ride: Don't get caught again. Never, never, never.
Even if nothing happened to him, this trip with Singh was violating the principle.

"I have to get back home. My people will wonder where I am."

That was complete fabrication, and if Singh had done his homework he would know it. Job had no people. Sammy would miss his money if he didn't come back, and she would wonder what had happened to him, but she would never dream of reporting the disappearance of a jaded person.

Job's words interrupted Singh in full flow. He frowned down at Job, then glanced around the room as though expecting to see rows of attentive faces staring up at him. His cigar was in his hand, but it had long since gone out.

"Those were good times, the old days," he said abruptly. He stared down at the dusty surface of the podium. "You know, sometimes I wish that I was in the wilderness, too. At least I would be with my friends."

* * *

After the trip to the university, Singh's interest in Job faded. Job had failed the test. He knew it; he was not what Singh had thought he might be. That was fine with Job. He still corrected the man's speech now and again, but he gradually and deliberately reduced the extent of their interaction. By the time that spring turned to summer and Job's shaded doorway had become a coveted prize, he thought that he was safe.

And doing well. The treasures from Sammy's house were vanishing, but Job had learned other vendor tricks of the trade. If you were willing to push a bigger cart, or better still could barter for the use of a small truck for a day and went far south and east of the city, you would find country places where goods were still available for trading. The first trip brought back terrible memories of the incinerator and of burning bodies, but after that Job began to enjoy the startling green of plants, horizon to horizon, and a brighter, haze-free sun.

In early July he made a trip many miles to the southeast, almost as far as the shore of the great bay, and returned late in the afternoon of the second day. The truck driver had no other business that night. He agreed to save Job the trouble of multiple cart trips to where the truck was garaged, by driving to the rear of Sammy's house and allowing Job to unload directly from there.