Shadows (34 page)

Nothing seemed to happen at all.

“Did you do it?” someone asked. “Didn’t it work?”

Engersol smiled. “Why don’t you wave your hand in front of the cat’s eyes?”

The boy did. There was no response at all.

Engersol refocused the laser and triggered it again. Now the cat was deaf as well as blind.

Yet as far as Josh could tell, it had exhibited no evidence that it was in any pain at all. Indeed, a few seconds after its eyesight had been disabled, it seemed to have decided that it was time to sleep, and its eyes had closed. But when he reached out and touched it, the eyes flicked open again and moved as if the cat was attempting to see despite its blindness.

Engersol kept working, and half an hour later removed the bonds from the cat’s limbs, body, and head. “As you can see,” he explained to them, “the cat is now totally helpless. It is deaf and blind, and has no sense of either smell or taste. Nor can it feel anything, for its pain centers, too, have been disabled. Yet you can see that it is far from dead. It still breathes, and its heart still beats, for all the normal functions that are carried out by the autonomic nervous system are still working perfectly. But I want you to look at what we’ve done.”

The boys shifted away from the lab table and gathered around a computer monitor that was currently displaying a highly detailed graphic image of the cat’s brain. “This is what it looks like under normal conditions. Now let’s feed the computer data about the areas of the brain we’ve destroyed, and see what happens.” He typed some instructions into the keyboard. Almost instantly the image began to change.

Certain areas of the brain—areas that had been burned away by the perfectly focused laser—turned red on the screen.

As Josh and his friends watched, the red stain spread through the image on the monitor, until surprisingly little of the brain was left its original white.

“Now let’s mark out the areas of the brain that are solely taken up with keeping the cat alive, with keeping its heart beating, its lungs breathing, and all the rest of its organs functioning.”

Now a blue stain began to spread through the brain, and soon there was little left of the original white color.

“What’s left,” Engersol told them, “is what the cat has to think with. As you can see, by far the majority of the creature’s brain is occupied with the simple tasks of accepting stimuli and maintaining bodily functions. Small wonder, then, that the lower animals aren’t known for their intelligence. They simply don’t have the available brain power. But can you imagine what would happen if you eliminated some things from the cat?”

His fingers flew over the keyboard once again, and the blue stains began to retreat.

“What I’ve done is eliminate the autonomic nervous system. Notice how much of the brain it occupied.”

“Yeah,” Brad Hinshaw replied. “But without it, the cat’s dead, isn’t it?”

Engersol nodded. “It certainly would be, yes. But as you can see, we’ve eliminated a lot of other things, and the cat is still surviving.”

“But it can’t eat,” Josh pointed out. “Didn’t you say it’s totally paralyzed now?”

“Yes, it is,” Engersol agreed. “We could feed it, however. It’s a simple matter of an IV tube. But the point is that destroying certain parts of the brain has not killed the cat.”

Josh frowned. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What does any of it have to do with intelligence? The cat isn’t any smarter, is it? All you did was cripple it.”

“Perhaps that is all we did,” Engersol agreed. “But we’ve also learned something. We’ve learned how much of the brain is used for things that have nothing to do with intelligence, or, if you will, with
thinking
. We’ve learned that much of the brain in a cat—and in a human being, too, for that matter—is used for nothing more than maintenance of support systems. But suppose the brain didn’t need to
maintain those systems? Suppose it could use its entire mass for reasoning. What do you suppose would happen?”

Jeff Aldrich grinned. “We’d be a lot smarter,” he said.

Engersol beamed. “Exactly. And not only that, but—”

He was interrupted as the door to the lab was flung open and Jeanette Aldrich appeared, her face flushed, her hand quivering as she clutched a crumpled piece of paper.

“Come here, Jeff,” Jeanette commanded, her voice harsh. “I want to talk to you. Right now!”

Jeff, startled by the cold fury in his mother’s voice, obeyed her order before he even had a chance to think about it. A second later he was out in the hall, and his mother was glaring down at him.

“How dare you?” she asked. “How dare you lie to me yesterday, and how dare you keep on with your tricks this morning?”

Jeff, paling in the face of her anger, shrank back against the wall. “What?” he breathed. “What did I do?”

“This!” Jeanette spat the word at him, then shoved the paper holding the message from “Adam” in his face. “Don’t tell me you don’t know anything about this,” she told him, her voice trembling.

Jeff stared at it. “But I don’t, Mom,” he protested. “I don’t—”

“Don’t lie to me, young man. You’re coming home with me right now.”

Jeff’s eyes widened. “H-Home?” he asked. “You mean you’re taking me out of school?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Jeanette replied. “Now come along!”

She took Jeff’s arm and tried to lead him toward the building’s front door, but Jeff jerked free. When she turned to look at him, he was glaring at her with a fury just as cold as her own.

“No,” he said, his voice low. “I won’t go. And you can’t make me. If you do, I’ll do the same thing Adam did. I swear I will!”

Jeanette stared at her son, the words slashing into her consciousness like knives. “N-No,” she stammered, stag
gering back half a step. “Don’t say that, Jeff. Don’t even kid about it.”

“I’m not kidding, Mom,” Jeff told her, his voice flat and emotionless now. “I’m just telling you what I’ll do. If you make me leave the Academy, I’ll do what Adam did. And then you won’t have any kids left at all.”

After a moment that seemed to go on for an eternity, a faint sound erupted from Jeanette’s throat. A sound that was part fear and part utter pain.

Then she turned and fled from the building.

“I
s she really going to take you out of school?” Josh asked. The seminar was over, and Josh was trying to hurry Jeff Aldrich by cutting across the lawn toward one of the new buildings that flanked the mansion. They only had another two minutes before Steve Conners’s English class was to begin, but Jeff refused to be rushed, ambling along as if he had all the time in the world.

“Nah,” Jeff replied. “Shell let me do anything I want. Parents are easy that way—all you have to do is know how to push their buttons. And if I threaten to kill myself, they’ll let me do anything I want. Especially after what happened to Adam.”

Josh shot the other boy a sidelong glance. “I thought you didn’t think Adam was dead,” he said.

The same mysterious expression that had appeared on Jeff’s face on the day of Adam’s funeral now twisted his mouth into a scornful grin. “Who do you think’s sending those notes to my mom’s computer?”

Josh stopped walking and turned to stare at the older boy. “Come on,” he said. “Everybody knows—”

Jeff’s voice turned cold. “Nobody knows anything,” he said. “All anybody thinks they know is that Adam died. And that’s bullshit. Adam didn’t want to die. He just wanted to get out of this dumb place. The only thing he liked about it was Dr. Engersol’s class, and his computer.”

“But—But where’d he go?” Josh asked.

Jeff smiled sardonically. “You’re supposed to be smart. Figure it out. It’s not really very hard. At least it shouldn’t be for you.” Then, laughing, he dashed ahead, and before Josh could catch up to him, disappeared into the building.

The bell rang just as Josh was approaching the door to Steve Conners’s classroom. He ducked inside, hoping the teacher wouldn’t notice that he hadn’t quite made it on time. But to his surprise, Conners wasn’t there at all. The rest of the class sat at their desks, already buzzing among themselves, speculating on what might have happened to the teacher. As Josh scurried up the aisle to his own desk, next to Amy’s empty one, Jeff Aldrich snickered softly.

“Boy, are you lucky,” he said as Josh passed him.

Josh said nothing, sliding into his seat and doing his best to look as though he’d been there for at least a couple of minutes as he heard the door open. But it wasn’t Steve Conners who entered. Instead it was Carolyn Hodges, one of the university graduate students, who worked part-time assisting Hildie Kramer. The girl walked to the front of the classroom and turned to face the students, whose buzzing had died away as they realized that something unusual was happening.

Carolyn, who hadn’t yet gotten over feeling intimidated by the Academy’s children—most of whom already seemed to know everything it had taken her nearly twenty-two years to learn—smiled nervously at the group before her. “Mr. Conners isn’t here this morning,” she announced. “We’ve been trying to find someone else to teach his classes, but—”

“Where is he?” someone asked from the back of the room. “Is he sick?”

Carolyn hesitated, then shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. All I know is that he isn’t here, and that Hildie Kramer has decided we should use the hour as study time.”

“Well, if he isn’t sick, what happened to him?” someone else asked.

“We don’t know that
anything
happened to him,” Carolyn replied. “But I’m sure if you have any questions, Hildie can answer them for you at lunchtime.”

Though Josh sat quietly at his desk, his mind was racing.
Had Steve gone out looking for Amy this morning? And even if he had, why hadn’t he come to school? Unless he’d found Amy, and something had happened to her. Josh was wondering how he could find out where Steve was, when Jeff Aldrich’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Is it okay if I go study in the library?” Jeff asked. “I have a project for Dr. Engersol’s seminar that I need to do research on.”

Josh turned to look at Jeff, whose face reflected all the innocence the boy was capable of summoning up. But what project was he talking about? An instant later Josh was sure he understood. Jeff was just trying to get out of the classroom.

“I—I suppose that would be all right,” Carolyn Hodges said. “As long as you’re studying, I—”

Josh’s hand shot up. “May I go with Jeff?” he asked. “I’m working on the same project.”

Carolyn’s expression reflected her sudden doubt. Her eyes shifted to Jeff. To Josh’s relief, the other boy instantly backed him up.

“It’s a project on the biology of intelligence,” Jeff explained, improvising as he went along. “We have to do some research on the relationship between hormones and intelligence. Dr. Engersol says—” He was prepared to go on, but Carolyn Hodges held up her hands in protest.

“All right, both of you, and anyone else who wants to, can go to the library. But you’re on your honor, all right?”

Instantly, the class mumbled their agreement, then gathered up their things and headed out the door. A moment later they tumbled out of the building, most of them actually setting off toward the large library a hundred yards away, on the university campus. Josh MacCallum, though, fell in next to Jeff Aldrich.

“Do you know where Steve lives?” he asked.

Jeff’s brows rose. “You mean you don’t want to go to the library and work on our project?”

Josh flushed slightly. “Thanks for not telling her,” he said. Then: “Do you really have a project you have to work on?”

Jeff laughed out loud. “Shit, no! I just didn’t want to sit
there for an hour. So how come you want to know where Conners lives?”

Josh’s tongue ran nervously over his lower lip. “I—I just want to find out what’s going on, that’s all. I mean, if they don’t even know where he is, what’s going on?”

“So you want to go see?”

Josh nodded. A moment later the two boys set out, heading across the lawn toward the university in case anyone was watching, but then cutting away from the campus as soon as they were out of sight of the mansion.

Fifteen minutes later they stood on the sidewalk in front of the house on Solano Street, behind which was the little guest house Steve Conners had rented. Josh looked around, searching for the teacher’s Honda.

There was no sign of it.

“Want to go look in the windows?” Jeff suggested, already starting down the driveway. Josh hesitated, his eyes going to one of the front windows of the house.

An elderly woman was peering out. When Josh realized she was staring at them, he waved, then ran up and knocked at her door. A few seconds later the front door opened and the old woman gazed out at Josh.

“Shouldn’t you boys be in school?” she asked, her voice projecting disapproval.

“We’re looking for Mr. Conners,” Josh explained. “He’s one of our teachers, and he didn’t come to school today.”

The woman’s brows rose a notch. “You’re from that school for smart kids, are you?”

“Y-Yes, ma’am,” Josh stammered, glancing toward Jeff, who was still standing in the driveway, obviously enjoying his discomfort.

“And they just let you run around town all day?” the old woman went on.

Josh squirmed with embarrassment. “We just came looking for Mr. Conners,” he repeated. “We just wanted to see if he’s here, that’s all.”

“Well, he’s not,” the old woman said. “I heard his car leave this morning, just before dawn, just like always. Don’t know why he can’t just run around the block if he’s a mind
to, but I suppose there’s no accounting for young people nowadays. Anyway, he hasn’t been back since.”

“Run around the block?” Josh asked. “Why would he do that?”

The old woman’s eyes narrowed and her voice rose. “He doesn’t! Aren’t you listening to me, young man? I said that’s what he ought to do! But instead he drives up to the point, then runs two miles up the road and two miles back. Doesn’t that beat all?”

“The point?” Josh asked, “mere—?”

“I know where it is,” Jeff called from the driveway. “Come on!”

Josh hesitated, but the irritation in the old woman’s voice, combined with the fact that Jeff was already headed down Solano Street toward the beach, made up his mind for him. “Thanks,” he said, then jumped down the three steps that led to the porch and darted across the lawn.