Shadows (27 page)

“Of course not,” Hildie replied. “Now come on. Let’s the two of us go have a talk with Dr. Engersol.”

Her hand clutching the housemother’s, Amy left her untouched lunch where it was. Maybe, after all, things were going to be all right. She’d actually done what she’d said she was going to do, and told on Dr. Engersol, and instead of being mad at her, as she’d been expecting, Hildie was on her side!

But as they left the house and started toward Dr. Engersol’s office, another thought came into her mind.

With Hildie taking her side, wouldn’t Dr. Engersol be even madder at her than he already was?

When they reached his office, on the top floor of the
building that housed the artificial intelligence laboratories, Dr. Engersol didn’t seem to be mad at her at all.

In fact, he appeared worried about her. He didn’t even seem angry when she told him she didn’t want to take the special seminar anymore.

“Everything we do seems like it’s being mean to the animals,” Amy said. “And I can’t even think about what we’re supposed to be doing. I just worry about the animals.”

“But, Amy,” George Engersol explained one more time. “We’re really not hurting them. Even the cat we were working with today is going to be just fine. In a month the fur on his head will be all grown out again and he’ll be just like he’s always been.”

Amy’s face set stubbornly. “It’s just not right to hurt poor little animals,” she declared. “And Hildie says I’m right.”

Engersol turned to his administrator. “Is that true?”

Hildie hesitated, then nodded. “I’m afraid it is, George. I had no idea you were wiring up cats in that seminar. You know how I feel about that kind of experimentation.” The two exchanged a long, probing look. “If it’s going to continue,” Hildie said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to resign.”

“And we’ll tell the SPCA on you, too,” Amy chimed in.

Engersol took a deep breath, then let it out. “Well, the two of you aren’t really leaving me much choice, are you? I don’t want to lose either one of you, and I suppose I can find other ways of teaching the class. So we won’t do any more animal experimentation. Agreed?”

Amy hesitated. “Then what
will
you do?”

Engersol smiled at her. “How’s this sound? Instead of trying to figure out how animals think, we’ll try to figure out how human beings think.”

“How?” Amy asked, her brows coming together suspiciously.

Now Engersol chuckled out loud. “I’ll tell you what. This afternoon, we’ll do the experiment I talked to you about last week, and then you’ll know.”

“But you didn’t tell me anything about it,” Amy protested.

“And I’m still not going to,” Engersol replied. “If I did,
it wouldn’t be valid anymore. But I’ll promise you this. I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to do, and you can stop the experiment anytime you want. And we’ll have Hildie there, just to make sure no one tries to talk you into anything. Okay?”

Amy’s mind worked rapidly, searching for a trap. But if Hildie, who was on her side, were there, how could there be a trap? Finally she nodded. “All right. But I won’t do anything I don’t want to do!”

“And I won’t ask you to,” Engersol repeated.

A few minutes later Amy left the director’s office, once again unaware that she had been manipulated into doing exactly what George Engersol wanted her to do.

“What happened this morning?” Engersol asked when he was alone in his office with Hildie Kramer.

Hildie smiled, but without the warmth she always managed to summon up for the children. “She spent it alone in her room, and when she came down, she wouldn’t even talk to any of the other kids. Not even Josh MacCallum.”

Engersol nodded with satisfaction. “Then the last thing any of them remember is that she was very angry, and very upset?”

“And withdrawn,” Hildie added.

“Perfect,” Engersol murmured. “Just like Adam Aldrich.”

A
my looked up at the clock on the wall. Only five more minutes until her last class of the day ended.

She wished it would go on for the rest of the afternoon, right up until dinnertime, for every minute that went by brought her one minute closer to the experiment.

“But he
said
you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Josh had insisted when she’d talked to him an hour ago, during the break between history and math. “What are you so scared of?”

Instead of answering his question, Amy had said nothing at all, for the image in her mind was still the one of the cat in the cage, wired to the computer, being subjected to electrical shocks, frightening sounds, and the stinking odor of the skunk.

Her trepidation hadn’t been eased at all when Mrs. Wilson, her math teacher, had handed her a note at the beginning of the hour, instructing her to appear at the gym at three-thirty.

The note had been signed by Dr. Engersol.

Why did he want her at the gym? Was that where the experiment was going to be held?

“Amy? Amy, are you listening at all?”

The voice of Enid Wilson, the math teacher, punched through the worries that were churning through the little
girl’s head. Startled, Amy automatically sat up straight in her chair.

“Haven’t you been listening at all, Amy?” Mrs. Wilson, a tall, angular woman whose gray hair was pulled back into a severe bun pinned at the back of her neck, was glaring at her over the rims of her glasses. The stridency in her voice made Amy cringe.

“I—I was thinking about something else,” she said, her voice trembling.

“Obviously,” Enid Wilson replied, her voice crackling. “But when you’re in my classroom, I expect you to pay attention to me.” She rapped the pointer in her hand on the chalkboard behind her. “Can you solve this equation, or not?”

Amy stared at the complicated algebraic equation that was written out on the board, knowing that she should be able to solve it in her head. She concentrated, her eyes squinting and her brow furrowing as she began to do the calculations, visualizing the numbers in her mind as clearly as if she were working with a pencil and a scratch pad.

“Come now, Amy, it’s not that difficult,” Mrs. Wilson prodded. “It’s really nothing more than a simple reduction!”

Amy swallowed hard, trying to clear the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. In her mind, the numbers faded away, and she lost her place in the equation. “I—I can’t do it,” she breathed.

The teacher’s eyes fixed on her, making her want to sink through the floor. “Then perhaps you can do some extra homework this evening,” Mrs. Wilson told her while the rest of the class tittered at her discomfort. “If you’re not going to pay attention in class, you’ll simply have to do the work in your room.” Smiling thinly, Mrs. Wilson addressed the rest of the class. “Work out the first fifteen problems at the end of Chapter Three,” she told them. “Amy Carlson will do the rest of them for you.”

Amy’s eyes widened. If Chapter Three were like the first two, there were fifty problems to be solved. And she had a chapter of history to read, and a story to write for Mr. Conners. How would she ever do it? And all because she hadn’t been able to solve one stupid equation!

The bell rang. As the rest of the students hurried toward the door, intent on getting out into the afternoon sunshine, Amy lingered where she was. When the room was at last empty save for herself and the teacher, Mrs. Wilson finally gazed questioningly at her.

“Is there something you want to talk to me about, Amy?” she asked.

For a second Amy wondered if it would do any good to tell Mrs. Wilson how much other studying she had to do that night. She decided it wouldn’t. Mrs. Wilson wasn’t like Mr. Conners, who was always willing to listen to his students’ problems. Mrs. Wilson didn’t seem to care how much work they had to do for their other classes. “It’s simply a matter of planning your time,” she’d told Brad Hinshaw last week, when he’d complained that the assignment was too long. “You’re all gifted children, and we’re here to challenge your intellects, not coddle the habits you developed in public school. I know everything has always been easy for all of you, but life isn’t like that. You must learn to do what is asked of you without complaining.”

“She’s sure a bitch,” Brad had muttered as they’d left her room that day. When some of the other kids had giggled, Mrs. Wilson had recalled them to the classroom and demanded to know what they were laughing about.

And then she’d doubled Brad’s assignment.

“N-No, Mrs. Wilson,” Amy finally said as the teacher’s eyes bored into her. “I’m okay. I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention.”

Enid Wilson’s lips relaxed into a semblance of a smile. “Very well,” she said. “Your apology is accepted. As,” she added, the smile disappearing, “will your homework be tomorrow. Now I suggest you get about your business. Dr. Engersol doesn’t like to be kept waiting, you know.”

Nodding quickly, Amy pulled her book bag out from under her desk and left the room. Emerging from the building, she turned left and started toward the gym on the other side of the campus.

She paused in front of the door to the women’s locker room, screwing her face into her habitual tight squint of concentration.

What if she changed her mind
right now?

Was it possible the experiment had already started?

She glanced around. There were a few of the college students lying around under the trees and walking along the sidewalks, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to her.

And she didn’t have that creepy feeling on the back of her neck that she always got when she felt like she was being watched.

Sighing, she decided the experiment hadn’t begun yet, and walked on into the locker room. It was empty except for Hildie Kramer, who stood up as Amy came into the humid room.

“I was starting to wonder if you were going to show up at all,” Hildie said, smiling. “Dr. Engersol wants you to put on a bathing suit and go out by the pool.”

Amy’s lips pursed. “The pool? Is that where the experiment is?”

Hildie nodded. “Do you have your own bathing suit here?”

Amy shook her head. “It’s in my room. Nobody said I should bring it. Should I go get it?”

She had already started toward the door when Hildie stopped her. “It’s all right, Amy. We have plenty of bathing suits. I’ll bring you one.”

Amy went to her locker and started undressing, and a minute later Hildie reappeared, carrying with her one of the shapeless maroon tank suits with which the gym was stocked. “Yuck,” Amy said, eyeing the suit with distaste. “I hate those things!”

Hildie chuckled. “Doesn’t everyone? But I tried to find one that doesn’t look too worn-out.”

Amy took the suit from Hildie, then finished stripping off her clothes and pulled it on. Poking her arms through the straps and wriggling, she pulled the piece of material over her body, then looked hopefully up at Hildie. “Is it really awful?”

Hildie cocked her head critically. “Well, I don’t suppose you’d win the Little Miss America contest, but it could be a
lot worse. At least it fits, and it doesn’t have any holes in it. Ready?”

“I guess,” Amy agreed. She followed Hildie through the locker room to the showers, then into the foot bath that filled a shallow pan sunk into the concrete in front of the door to the pool. Suddenly Amy’s nerves got the best of her. She gazed pleadingly up at Hildie. “Can’t you please tell me what the experiment is?” she begged.

Hildie’s warm laugh filled the locker room, the sound itself making Amy feel a little bit better. “Why don’t you just stop worrying about it?” she asked. “You know I’m not going to tell you anything about it, except that it’s not going to hurt you at all. And if you don’t want to take part in it, you don’t have to. As soon as you know what it is, you can turn around and walk away, if that’s what you want to do.”

Amy took a deep breath and considered the situation. Should she trust Hildie? Hildie had been on her side over the animal experiments, after all. So whatever this experiment was, it couldn’t be too bad. She stepped through the door to the pool.

And stopped, startled by what she saw.

At the far end of the pool, a curtain had been hung, so the diving boards were completely invisible.

Ten feet away from her, sitting near the pool, was a chair. Next to the chair was a table on which sat a computer and what looked like some kind of headset.

There were video cameras in various places around the pool, all of them trained on the empty chair.

Dr. Engersol was sitting in a second chair, facing the computer screen. Seated around him were the other members of the seminar.

Did they all know what was going to happen? Was she the only one who wasn’t in on it?

She felt betrayed.

Her first impulse was to turn around and run back through the door, but her friends were already watching her, staring at her as if they were sure she was going to chicken out before it even began.

And it wasn’t just her friends.

Her eyes shifted away from the group of children gathered
around the computer to the small grandstand that faced the pool from the other side.

Sitting on the benches were at least fifty of the college students, and they were watching her, too.

Amy felt herself burning with embarrassment. Were all these people really here just to watch her? But why? What was going to happen?

Behind her, she heard Hildie’s voice. “Are you all right, Amy? Do you want to go ahead?”

What Amy wanted to do was fall through the concrete and have the earth swallow her up. Why were all these people here? Why wasn’t it just the kids in the seminar, who were at least people she knew? And what would happen if she turned around and ran back into the locker room?

They would laugh at her.

All of them. They would know she was a coward, and even though they might not laugh out loud, inside they would be laughing at her.

Tonight, in the dining room, she would hear the clucking as all the rest of the kids made chicken sounds.

Even her friends would laugh at her, and she would feel just like she had back in public school, when everyone acted as if she was some kind of freak or something.