First Meetings (8 page)

“Oh, you can believe it,” he said. “Practically everything
in my school records, for instance, is a lie, and yet I never tell anybody.”

Again it took her a moment to get the joke, but this time she answered with one yip of laughter. Progress.

“Ms. Brown,” he said, “I really did want to talk to you about ideas from class. Whatever you might have thought, I wasn’t coming on to you with some line, and I’m not trying to be clever with you. I was just surprised that you seem to be teaching a version of Human Community that isn’t like the standard stuff—I mean, there’s nothing about it in the textbook, which is all about primates and bonding and hierarchies—”

“We’ll be covering all that.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had a professor who knew things I hadn’t already learned through my own reading.”

“I don’t know things,” she said. “I’m trying to find out things. There’s a difference.”

“Ms. Brown,” said John Paul, “I’m not going to go away.”

She stopped at the door of her office. “And why is that? Apart from the fact that I
could
take that as a threat to stalk me.”

“Ms. Brown,” said John Paul. “I think you might be smarter than me.”

She laughed in his face. “Of course I’m smarter than you.”

He pointed at her triumphantly. “See? And you’re arrogant about it, too. We have so much in common. Are you really going to shut this door in my face?”

She shut the door in his face.

Theresa tried to work on her next lecture. She tried to read several scientific journals. She couldn’t concentrate. All she could think about was them taking her project away from her—not the work, just the credit. She tried to convince herself that what mattered was the science, not the prestige. She was
not
one of those pathetic on-the-make grad students who were all about career, with research serving as no more than a stepping stone. It was the research itself that she cared about. So why not recognize the political realities, accept their quislingesque “offer,” and be content?

It’s not about the credit. It’s about the Hegemony perverting the whole system of science as a means of extortion. Not that science is particularly pure, except compared to politics.

She found herself displaying the data of her students on her desk, calling up their pictures and records and glancing at them. In the back of her mind she knew she was looking for John Paul Wiggin. What he had said about his school records being a lie intrigued her. And looking him up was such a trivial task that she could do it even while fretting over what they were doing to her.

John Paul Wiggin. Second child of Brian and Anne Wiggin; older brother named Andrew. Born in Racine, Wisconsin, so apparently he was an expert on what weather was appropriate for sweaters. Straight
As
in the Racine public school system. Graduated a year early, valedictorian, lots of clubs, three years of soccer. Exactly what the admissions people were looking for. And his record here was just as good—nothing less than an
A
, and not an easy course on the list. A year younger than her. And yet…no declared major, which suggested that even though he had enough credit
hours that he could graduate at the end of this year, he still hadn’t settled on a field of study.

A bright dilettante. A time-waster.

Except that he said it was all a lie.

Which parts? Surely not the grades—he was clearly bright enough to earn them. And what else could possibly be a lie? What would be the point?

He was just a boy trying to be intriguing. He spotted that she was young for a teacher, and in his school-centered life, the teacher was at the pinnacle of prestige. Maybe he tried to ingratiate himself with all his teachers. If he became a problem, she’d have to ask around and see if it was a pattern.

The desk beeped to tell her she had a call.

She pressed
NO PICTURE
and then
ANSWER
. She knew who it was, of course, even though no identity or telephone number appeared.

“Hello, Father,” she said.

“Turn on the picture, darlin’, I want to see your face.”

“You’ll have to search through your memory,” she said. “Father, I don’t want to talk right now.”

“Those bastards can’t do this to you.”

“Yes they can.”

“I’m sorry, darlin’, I never meant my own decisions to impinge on you.”

“If the Buggers blow up planet Earth,” she said, “because you aren’t there to stop them, that will impinge on me.”

“And if we defeat the Buggers but we’ve lost everything that makes it worth being human—”

“Father, don’t give me the stump speech, I’ve got it down pat.”

“Darlin’, I’m just saying that I wouldn’t have done this if I’d known they’d try to take away your career.”

“Oh, right, you’ll put the whole human race at risk, but not your daughter’s career.”

“I’m not putting anything at risk. They already have everything I know. I’m a theorist, not a commander—it’s a commander they need now, a whole different skill set. So this is really just…what, their fit of pique because my leaving the I.F. was bad public relations for them and—”

“Father, didn’t you notice that I didn’t call you?”

“You only just found out.”

“Yes, and who told
you?
Someone from the school?”

“No, it was Grasdolf, he has a friend at the foundation and—”

“Exactly.”

Father sighed. “You’re such a cynic.”

“What good does it do to take a hostage if you don’t send a ransom note?”

“Grasdolf is a friend, they’re just using him, and I meant what I said about—”

“Father, you might think, for a moment, that you’d give up your quixotic crusade in order to make my life easier, but the fact is you won’t, and you know it and I know it. I don’t even
want
you to give it up. I don’t even care. All right? So your conscience is clear, their attempt at extortion was bound to fail, the school is taking care of me after their fashion, and hey, I’ve got a smart, cute, and annoyingly conceited boy in one of my classes trying to hit on me, so life is just about perfect.”

“Aren’t you just the noblest martyr.”

“See how quickly it turns into a fight?”

“Because you won’t talk to me, you just say whatever you think will make me go away.”

“Apparently I still haven’t found it. But am I getting warm?”

“Why do you do this? Why do you close the door on everybody who cares about you?”

“As far as I know, I’ve only closed the door on people who want something from me.”

“And what do you think
I
want?”

“To be known as the most brilliant military theorist of all time
and
still have your family as devoted to you as we might have been if we had actually known you. And
see?
I don’t want this conversation, we’ve been through it all before, and when I hang up on you, which I’m about to do, please don’t keep calling me back and leaving pathetic messages on my desk. And yes, I love you and I’m really fine about this so it’s over, period, good-bye.”

She hung up.

Only then was she able to cry.

Tears of frustration, that’s all they were. Nothing. She needed the release. It wouldn’t even matter if other people knew she was crying—as long as her research was dispassionate, she didn’t have to
live
that way.

When she stopped crying she laid her head down on her arms on the desk and maybe she even dozed for a while. Must have done. It was late afternoon. She was hungry and she needed to pee. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and she always got lightheaded about four if she skipped lunch.

The student records were still on her desk. She wiped them and got up and straightened her sweaty clothing and
thought, It really is too warm for a sweater, especially a sloppy thick bulky one like this. But she didn’t have a shirt on underneath so there was no solution for it, she’d just have to go home as a ball of sweat.

If she ever went home during daylight hours she might have learned to dress in a way that would be adaptable to afternoon temperatures. But right now she had no interest at all in working late. Somebody else’s name would be on anything she did, right? Screw them all and the grants they rode in on.

She opened the door…

And there was the Wiggin boy, sitting with his back to the door, laying out plastic silverware on paper napkins. The smell of hot food nearly made her step back into the office.

He looked up at her but did not smile. “Spring rolls from Hunan,” he said, “chicken satay from My Thai, salads from Garden Green, and if you want to wait a few more minutes, we’ve got stuffed mushrooms from Trompe L’Oeuf.”

“All I want,” she said, “is to pee. I don’t want to do it on insane students camped at my door, so if you’d move to one side…”

He moved.

When she had washed up she thought of not going back to her office. The office door had locked behind her. She had her purse. She owed nothing to this boy.

But curiosity got the better of her. She wasn’t going to eat any of the food, but she had to find out the answer to one question.

“How did you know when I was coming out?” she demanded, as she stood over the picnic he had prepared.

“I didn’t,” he said. “The pizza and the burritos hit the garbage half an hour ago and fifteen minutes ago, respectively.”

“You mean you’ve been ordering food at intervals so that—”

“So that whenever you came out, there’d be something hot and/or fresh.”

“And/or?”

He shrugged. “If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Of course, I’m on a budget because what I live on is whatever they pay me for custodial work in the physical sciences building, so this is half my week’s wages down the toilet if you don’t like it.”

“You really are a liar,” she said. “I know what they pay part-time custodians and it would take you two weeks to pay for all this.”

“So I guess pity won’t get you to sit down and eat with me.”

“Yes it will,” she said. “But not pity for you.”

“For whom, then?” he asked.

“For myself, of course,” she said, sitting down. “I wouldn’t touch the mushrooms—I’m allergic to shiitake and Oeuf seems to think they’re the only true mushroom. And the satay is bound to be cold because they never serve it hot even in the restaurant.”

He wafted a paper napkin over her crossed legs and handed her a knife and fork. “So do you want to know which part of my records are a lie?” he asked.

“I don’t care,” she said, “and I didn’t look up your records.”

He pointed to his own desk. “I long since installed my
own monitoring software in the database. I know whenever my stuff gets accessed, and by whom.”

“That’s absurd,” she said. “They sweep for viruses on the school system twice a day.”

“They sweep for known viruses and detectable anomalies,” he said.

“But you tell your secret to
me?
”

“Only because you lied to me,” said the Wiggin boy. “Habitual liars don’t rat each other out.”

“All right,” she said. Meaning, all right, what’s the lie? But then she tasted her spring roll and said, “All right,” again, this time meaning, Good food, just right.

“Glad you liked them. I have them cut down on the ginger, which allows the taste of the vegetables to come through. Though of course I dip them in this incredibly robust soy-and-chili-and-mustard sauce, so I have no idea what they actually taste like.”

“Let me try the sauce,” she said. He was right, it was so good she contemplated pouring some on her salad as dressing. Or just drinking it from the little plastic cup.

“And in case you wanted to know what part of my records is a lie, I can give you the whole list: Everything. The only true statement in my records is ‘the.’”

“That’s absurd. Who would do that? What’s the point? Are you some protected witness to a hideous crime?”

“I wasn’t born in Wisconsin, I was born in Poland. I lived there till I was six. I was only in Racine for two weeks prior to coming here, so if I met anybody from there, I could talk about landmarks and convince them I’d really lived there.”

“Poland,” she said. And, because of her father’s crusade
against the population laws, she couldn’t help but register the fact that it was a noncompliant country.

“Yep, we’re illegal emigrants from Poland. Slipped past the web of Hegemony guards. Or maybe we should say, sub-legal.”

To people like that, Hinckley Brown was a hero. “Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I see. This picnic isn’t about me, it’s about my father.”

“Why, who’s your father?” asked John Paul.

“Oh, come on, Wiggin, you heard the girl in class this morning. My father is Hinckley Brown.”

John Paul shrugged as if he’d never heard of him.

“Come on,” she said. “It was all over the vids last year. My father resigns from the I.F. because of the populations laws, and your family is from Poland. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

He laughed. “You really are suspicious.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t get Hunan wontons.”

“Didn’t know if you’d like them. They’re an acquired taste. I wanted to play it safe.”

“By spreading a picnic on the floor in front of my office door, and throwing away whatever food got cold before I came out? How safe can you get?”