Or perhaps she was
hoping
that he would steal something from her fellow occupants? She certainly didn't seem to like them very much.
Cadel picked up the sticky beige receiver of the telephone and punched in the number of Sonja's local library, which he now knew by heart. After two rings, the call was answered by a female voice. Cadel asked for Beatrice.
"Speaking," said the voice.
"Oh." Cadel took a deep breath. "Look, I'm sorry to bother you," he said, "but I need to talk to Sonja. The girl in the wheelchair? She should be there now."
"Sonja Pirovic?"
"Uh—yes. She told me she'd be there."
"Hang on."
Canned music intervened, and Cadel breathed a sigh of relief. The first hurdle was cleared. As the minutes dragged by, however, he began to grow nervous. What was going on? Wasn't Sonja at the library? Had something happened to her?
At last there was a click, and then someone spoke.
"Hello? Is that Cadel?"
It was Kay-Lee.
"Where's Sonja?" Cadel exclaimed. "Isn't she there?"
"She's here."
"I have to talk to her!"
"It's awkward, Cadel. She's right here, but that Dynavox—"
"Did she get the photos? Did she see them?"
"Yes."
"And?" Cadel couldn't keep the urgency out of his tone. "Well? Were they the same guys?"
A pause. At last Kay-Lee said, "Yes. They were."
"I told you! Didn't I tell you?"
"Hang on." There was a brief interval during which Cadel heard the muffled noise of stilted conversation. Finally, Kay-Lee addressed him again. "Sonja wants to know if that was you in the photo with the bald guy? You wearing boys' clothes?"
"Yes, of course, but—"
"She says you ought to be an actor. She says you look like a movie star in that photograph."
"Well, thanks." Cadel was somewhat taken aback. "But that's not important. Right now I have to talk to her. Will you let me talk to her, please?"
"You know we're at the borrower's desk, here—"
"Yes, I know! But I have to talk to her! You don't understand! It's
important.
"
Kay-Lee sighed.
"I'll have to hold the receiver up to her ear," she said, "so make it quick."
"I'll try." Cadel suddenly thought of something. "And don't pretend!" he warned. "Don't pretend, because I'm going to ask her something that only she would know!"
"Oh, for god's sake," Kay-Lee growled. "Don't get your knickers in a knot—she's not going to
let
me pretend, you idiot. She'd run me over if I did. All
right,
Sonja, it's okay. He wants to talk to you."
Suddenly there was silence. Only it wasn't really silence. Listening hard, Cadel realized that he could catch the faint sound of someone's hoarse breathing.
"Sonja?" he said—and she made a noise. It was a wordless noise, but it was unmistakable.
"Listen," he continued, "I'm going to tell you something. You can't tell anyone else. It's my father—my real father. The one in jail. His name is Dr. Phineas Darkkon, and after we're finished, you can go and look him up on the Internet. But not on your own computer. On the library computer—Kay-Lee can help you. Because if you do some research on Dr. Darkkon, you'll realize why I'm acting the way I am. Sonja?"
"It's me," said Kay-Lee, suddenly. "She wants me to tell you something." Another long pause, full of distorted voices. "She says she knows who the man is," Kay-Lee finally announced. "And now I'm putting you back on."
Again, the rasp of heavy breathing.
"Okay." Cadel himself was breathless. He sat down on one of the filthy white couches. "So you know who he is. Well, that's who I'm trying to dodge, Sonja. That's who sent those two agents posing as policemen. Those two men are the man who adopted me and the man who's teaching me about computers. They're in Dr. Darkkon's pay. You probably think I'm mad, but it's the truth. And he'll get you, Sonja, if he ever finds out we're still talking. That's why I have to ... to get away. To find myself a hiding place. If I do that, maybe we can talk again. I'll be
free
then."
His heart lifted at the thought. Free! He couldn't picture it—though he
could
imagine the feeling it would give him. Then Kay-Lee said, "Sonja wants to know how she can help. Even though she shouldn't be—ow! Sonja!"
"Let me talk to her again." Cadel waited until he could hear Sonja snuffling away at the other end of the line. "Sonja? Listen. There's one thing I do need. One thing that you'll do much better than me. I need a conundrum. A mathematical conundrum. Something—something like the formula for pi, or a factoring puzzle. Something really, really clever, that will keep a brilliant mind fully engaged and distracted. Maybe something that one of your mathematician friends has been working on. But nothing widely known. Nothing that's been doing the rounds. Do you know what I mean?"
A pause. "Yes," Kay-Lee said. "She's—hang on. She's saying
yes.
"
"Put her back on."
"I hope she didn't just agree to do anything stupid, Cadel."
"It's a math problem, all right? A math question! Now
put her back on!
"
Kay-Lee obeyed. Cadel continued. "I need it fast," he said. "As fast as you can get it to me. And you can't e-mail it. You can't post it. Oh! Wait a minute—you
can
post it." Cadel had remembered Abraham's post-office box. He gave the details to Sonja. "My father doesn't know I have access to that address," he explained. "If I check it in a few days, I can always say ... well, that I was doing it for someone else." For Abraham, perhaps. "And if everything works out, I might be able to email you sometime. Soon." He found that he had suddenly run out of things to say. He had given her his instructions. Now all he had left was a strange, tired, weepy feeling. "Is—is there anything you want to tell me?" he croaked. "I wish we could talk properly. I wish we were on our computers."
A clunk. A long break. After a lot of confusing noise, Kay-Lee addressed him again. "She wants to know"—Kay-Lee sighed—"if she can keep the photo. The photo with you in it."
"Oh," said Cadel. He couldn't help feeling pleased, even though it was an alarming request. "The thing is, I don't know if that's a good idea. You really ought to destroy it. Just in case."
More conversation: Kay-Lee's murmurs and Sonja's honks.
"She says she'll hide it," Kay-Lee finally informed him. "She says it's her payment. For whatever you've asked her to do—and I sure hope it won't get her into any trouble, my friend, because—what? Hang on." Murmur, murmur. "We've got to go, Cadel. We're hogging the line here."
"Oh, wait!" Cadel cried. "Tell Sonja—tell her..." Tell her what? "Tell her I'll be in touch. I will. Tell her everything's different now. I'll never do anything like Partner Post ever again."
"Yeah, right," said Kay-Lee, then hung up.
***
Cadel had planned to go to Strathfield next to check Abraham's post-office box. But that was now out of the question. He couldn't go there yet—not until Sonja had sent her conundrum. If he went anywhere near Strathfield post office, Thaddeus would hear of it, and the box might be plundered. He couldn't risk having Thaddeus find any sort of communication from Sonja.
So he headed straight back to the institute. On the way, he reviewed his situation—something he was doing more and more. The trip to Abraham's house could be fully explained. Abraham had told him to fetch various possessions from the house and deliver them to the hospital. A trip to Strathfield post office could also be explained, if the occasion arose. And the trip to his old school? Well, that would fall under the heading "Mrs. Brezeck." Thaddeus wanted Cadel to do something about her. Cadel would claim that the school trip was part of his cunning plan to sabotage Mrs. Brezeck's attack on him.
Of course, having the excuse prepared was one thing. Presenting it to Thaddeus was another. While Thaddeus had often praised Cadel for being a good liar, Cadel dreaded lying to the psychologist. He had a feeling that Thaddeus would see right through him.
This was one reason why he had to get away. Quickly.
It was ten thirty when Cadel arrived at the institute. After letting himself through the front gates, he saw that everything was very quiet. Not a single figure was flitting across the rolling green lawn, or traversing the parking lot. The high walls surrounding the complex seemed to shut out every strident noise from the city that lay beyond them. "C" block's steel roof shone like a flame in the sunlight, so brightly that it hurt Cadel's eyes. The seminary building, in contrast, seemed to absorb the light, its gray slate and brown stone providing a grave and dignified backdrop to one shimmering spray of water that arched across the lawn, jetting up from a concealed sprinkler head.
To the untrained eye, it was a serene and reassuring sight. But Cadel's eye wasn't untrained. He saw the blinking electronic security lights embedded in the black steel fence posts that ringed the lawn. He saw the shrouded windows on the top floor of the seminary building. He saw the elaborate configuration of antennae attached to its turrets, and the black smudge beside one door, and the scowling faces of the gargoyles. He saw the glint of Clive Slaughter's memorial plaque, and the black van parked near the breezeway.
Cadel lowered himself onto one of the concrete seats placed on either side of the front path. From there, he had a perfect view of the whole campus. He watched as a small figure scurried from "C" block to the seminary building, its shoulders hunched. Once again, Cadel's trained eye took note of a significant detail: The figure was dragging its right leg.
Yet another "accident" among the institute's rapidly diminishing student body, no doubt.
Cadel took a deep breath. This, he thought, is what I'm up against. This and the Yarramundi campus. I'll have to research that campus—perhaps even visit it.
Meanwhile, there was an entire teaching staff to master.
Hugging his backpack, Cadel gazed across the flawless stretch of green. There was a knot of apprehension in his stomach. He felt very small and isolated. He also felt as if the shadowy windows of the seminary building were staring back at him with a grim, hard-edged glare.
So he got up and went to join Gazo in Maestro Max's class.
Cadel missed half of the Maestro's class but behaved himself very well the rest of the day. He listened patiently to everything Max said about genetic time frames, and how the concept of eons reduced the idea of good and evil to a mere nothing. He concentrated hard on the photographs presented to him by Alias, who wanted him to identify the same person in ten different disguises. (He managed eight.) He even earned Dr. Deal's guarded approval by rattling off a quick but thorough description of the forensic applications of X-ray diffractometry, ICP spectrometry, and infrared spectroscopy.
"Very good, Mr. Darkkon," the lawyer drawled, eyeing Cadel in a quizzical manner.
"We've covered some of this stuff in Art's class," Cadel explained. "Soft X-rays, gas chromatography..."
"Just because it's covered doesn't necessarily mean it's absorbed. I'm impressed," said Dr. Deal. "Of course, forensic matters aren't the primary focus of this course. I'll be even more impressed if you can give me, at our next meeting, a one-thousand-word description of what constitutes 'reasonable apprehension' in the context of an assault charge, using at least three demonstrative cases. That goes for you, too, Mr. Kovacs."
"Uh..." Gazo cleared his throat. "Right—um..."
"It's all written down," Dr. Deal said smoothly, handing out his usual buff-colored homework envelopes. Though never sealed, these envelopes were always used. Dr. Deal seemed reluctant to expose any document to public scrutiny. Something to do with the legal mind, Cadel thought. "I'll accept efforts up to fifteen hundred words," the lawyer continued, "but nothing longer. Thank you, gentlemen."
Glumly, Gazo accepted the envelope. He wasn't coping well with the reduced size of the first-year class. It left him very exposed, especially when Cadel was the only other student. The contrast between them was too stark. While Cadel was able to answer every question thrown at him, Gazo could barely manage to keep up.
"I'm gonna fail," he'd said gloomily earlier that day, after he and Cadel had been dismissed from Alias's lesson. "I can't do nuffink right. I even missed the
shoes.
"
"They were easy to miss," said Cadel, whose mind was on more important matters. "I think I'll have lunch now. What about you?"
Gazo didn't seem to hear.
"Yeah, but what'll happen if I do fail?" he fretted. "Will they send me back to England? Will they give me a job here? A cleaning job?"
"I don't know."
"Cadel." Gazo put a sheathed hand on Cadel's shoulder. "Wait. I wanna ask you somefink."
Surprised, Cadel turned his blue gaze on his companion. He saw Gazo glance around fearfully. Although they were standing outside, halfway between "C" block and the seminary building, Cadel understood his friend's caution. At the Axis Institute, every blade of grass could be wired for sound.
"You don't fink I'll get the chop?" Gazo inquired, as quietly as he could in his sound-absorbing headdress. "They wouldn't ... you know ...
do
somefink? Just because I failed me courses?"
Cadel blinked. The possibility had never crossed his mind. Nothing, however, would have surprised him about the institute.
"Why?" he said cautiously. "Have you heard anyone say anything?"
"No." Gazo sighed. "It just worries me. Well, you know."
"I know," said Cadel, with complete understanding. He thought for a moment, his brow furrowed. Then he shook his head. "I can't remember my father ever implying that good grades were a matter of life or death. Not once. Thaddeus, either." Again, he looked up at Gazo. "I wouldn't put it past them, though," he confessed.
Gazo hissed through his teeth. "What am I gonna do?" he muttered, his hands tucked beneath his armpits. "I dunno what to do. If I run away, they'll find me for sure."
Cadel suddenly felt a profound sympathy for Gazo. And when he squeezed his friend's insulated arm, he wasn't surprised by the startled look he received. It was the first time that he had ever touched Gazo.