"He shouldn't be here," his class teacher declared. "Cadel just doesn't fit in. He never will."
"You think he should be transferred to a state school?" the principal responded. "A gifted-and-talented program?"
"I think he should be sent off to Harvard University. MIT. Somewhere like that."
"Somewhere far away," another teacher said and, upon receiving a quizzical look from the principal, added, "I don't like the way he hangs around the office at lunchtime."
"He's probably trying to grab a bit of time on someone's computer," the principal suggested. "Or he might not feel welcome in the playground. He doesn't have many friends, you know."
"He doesn't have
any
friends."
"It's a problem," the principal admitted. "But I prefer to regard problems as challenges. After all, it's not as if Cadel has ADD, or a personality disorder, or learning difficulties. Imagine how rewarding we'll find it, trying to unlock all his potentials."
"I don't know..." Cadel's class teacher shifted uncomfortably. "It's not so much his fads, or his questions, or even his manner. It's just that sometimes when he talks to me, it's as if he's studying some form of alien life." She shivered. "Have you seen
Village of the Damned?
"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," the principal snapped, and the meeting moved on to other, safer topics.
Shortly afterward, school broke up for two weeks. On the first day of the new term, the teachers arrived back to discover that every pupil was absent—except Cadel. When the assembly bell rang, only Cadel appeared, a small figure standing in the middle of a vast stretch of gray concrete. The sleeves of his jacket fell over his pale hands. The hems of his trousers were puddling around his ankles.
The sight of him there roused his class teacher's suspicions. While the principal and deputy principal made frantic phone calls, she approached him across the asphalt, arms folded.
"What's happened, Cadel?"
He gazed up at her with innocent eyes.
"Nothing," he said.
"Where are the other kids?"
He looked around. "I don't know," he replied, and shrugged. "Did you tell them something?"
"What do you mean?"
"Cadel, how come
you've
turned up when no one else has?"
Cadel put a finger to his chin, scanning the grounds with a blank expression.
"Because I don't have the flu?" he suggested.
Within an hour, the teacher discovered that a newsletter from the previous term had been tampered with. At the back, near the sports results, a notice had been inserted warning parents that the first day of the next term would be set aside for teacher training.
No one could ever work out how that notice had been slipped into the newsletter.
"It was on a disk I sent for printing," the principal fretted. "Could someone have messed with the disk?"
"Probably."
"But why? Because someone wanted an extra day's holiday?"
"Which rules out Cadel as a suspect. He came to school."
"Yes, he did. You don't find that suspicious?"
"I don't know. Do you?"
"I find it hard to see how anyone
else
could have pulled this thing off."
Despite the concerns of the teaching staff, it was never proven that Cadel had sabotaged the newsletter. Of course the principal invited Cadel into her office and pressed him for the truth. She flattered him, reassured him, and finally threatened him—all to no avail. Cadel knew better than to admit to anything. Thaddeus had warned him against it, over and over again.
So he simply sat there smugly, his feet in their expensive running shoes dangling a good five inches off the floor.
Finally, the principal had been forced to shelve her suspicions. Three weeks later, she told one of her staff to do the same thing when he accused Cadel of siphoning the gasoline out of the tank of his Nissan Pulsar.
"I filled it up yesterday morning. It was full. But I ran out on my way home. I was on the highway, near my turnoff—"
"Could there be a leak in your tank?" the principal suggested.
"No! I always check for leaks! Someone
stole
my gas!"
"I see." The principal frowned, drumming her fingers on the literacy reports. "And what makes you think it was Cadel?"
"Because I've been giving him lifts home! Because he borrowed my owner's manual!"
"Still..."
"I know it was him. I
know
it was. This morning he asked me if I was stuck in yesterday's traffic jam, like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth." The distressed teacher scowled at his boss. "After all these years, I think I know when a kid's been up to something. It's an
instinct.
Believe me—I know."
The principal sighed. She, too, had been caught in the previous afternoon's traffic jam, which had been of monstrous size. Almost three-quarters of the city's main roads had clogged up, for just over three hours. Footage on the evening news had shown impassable intersections, trapped commuters—even a car left abandoned in a two-mile gridlock.
It occurred to the principal that running out of gas on the Pacific Highway certainly could not have improved matters. But she didn't for one second connect Cadel with the chaos that had overtaken the city a few hours before.
Only Thaddeus knew who was really to blame.
"So," he declared when he next admitted Cadel into his office, "I hope you realize that
I
was caught in your god-awful mess, young man. I was stuck in my car for three hours on Tuesday night."
Cadel blinked sleepily, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. It was hard to conceal his own delight in what he'd done—the colossal feeling of satisfaction. But he tried.
"Oh," he said.
"I was told by a friendly policeman that the Harbor tunnel was closed because of a bomb scare."
"Really?"
"That's why I couldn't believe, at first, that you were responsible." As Cadel's smile faded, Thaddeus peered at him with hooded eyes. "A bomb scare?
Another
bomb scare? Cadel, have I told you what
modus operandi
means?"
Cadel stared, his expression somber.
"It means 'method of operating,'" Thaddeus continued. "It's Latin. Perhaps you haven't come across the term. It's a favorite way of establishing who might have done something. A
modus operandi,
Cadel, is like a signature. You might as well have spray-painted your name across the tunnel wall."
"That's not true," Cadel muttered.
"It is true. Suppose someone connects the traffic-jam bomb scare with the rail-delay bomb scare? Have you thought of that?"
Cadel's chin dropped, in a characteristic gesture.
"It worked before," he replied.
"And it won't work again. No more bomb scares, Cadel. They're clumsy. Unimaginative." Thaddeus surveyed the child in front of him. Cadel looked sulky; his bottom lip was sticking out in a way that made Thaddeus laugh. "Now, now," he said. "Don't be upset. The bomb scare might have been ill-advised, but the burst water main was good. The burst water main was
very
good." Thaddeus cocked his head. "How on earth did you manage it? Did you amend some kind of online sewage-system record? Tap into a radio communication frequency? Were you waiting for something like that to happen? How did you
know
it had happened—you were stuck at school, weren't you?"
Cadel, who had been pouting at the floor, glanced up. His scowl faded. His appearance couldn't have been more disarming.
"I don't know what you mean," he said.
But there was a naughty twinkle in his eye.
A few weeks later, Cadel was examining the cistern in a school bathroom stall when he heard some boys talking.
The boys were huddled near the hand dryers. They were older than Cadel, who knew only one of them—Jarrod—by name. They were talking about the railway detonators that Jarrod had found in his uncle's shed.
"I exploded 'em," Jarrod declared proudly.
"How?" asked his friend.
"I hit 'em with a pipe."
"Cool."
"Are there any left?" another boy inquired.
"Nah."
"You should have kept one."
"Why?"
"Because I've never heard a detonator. Are they loud?"
"Course they're loud, you moron! They're
supposed
to be loud!"
Silence fell as one by one the four boys became aware of Cadel's presence. Having finished with the plumbing, he had drifted out of his toilet stall.
Jarrod scowled at him. "What are
you
staring at?" he said rudely. "Piss off."
"Piss off, you girl," his friend added.
Cadel looked from face to face. The contempt he saw on each of them made him reckless. He said, "You don't need railway detonators to make a big bang."
"Huh?" said Jarrod.
"You don't need railway detonators to make a big bang," Cadel repeated.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that you can make explosives out of anything." Cadel reeled off a list of bomb ingredients available in almost every storeroom, garage, laundry, or supply cupboard. Then, seeing how riveted his audience was, he explained how a mercury-switch detonation device could be constructed out of an ordinary thermometer. "Bags of potato chips can be highly flammable," he added, "especially in a small space. And you can build yourself a ten-minute fuse with a cigarette and a book of matches."
At that point the school bell summoned them back to class, and Cadel was forced to conclude his lecture. He was already beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake.
The next day, he knew he had: Word went round that Jarrod had blown off his left thumb trying to plant a bomb in a sports-equipment cupboard.
Jarrod wouldn't talk much about the incident. He admitted that he hated doing gymnastics, and never wanted to do it again. He did
not,
however, mention Cadel.
Nevertheless, Thaddeus wasn't fooled.
"So you've been blowing up your classmates?" he said to Cadel during their next session together.
"No. Of course not," Cadel replied.
"Oh, I understand that it was an
accident.
" The psychologist's tone was sarcastic. "But really, Cadel—bombs again? What have I told you about bombs?"
From the transmitter screen, Dr. Darkkon added, "And as for that Jarrod character, what are you doing, putting your faith in some sixth-grade thug? Cadel, you can't trust people like that." By this time Dr. Darkkon's arthritis-bangle transmitter had been confiscated and he was using a pair of spectacles instead. Cadel's image was projected onto the lenses of these spectacles, and a transmitter embedded in their metal frame captured Dr. Darkkon's image for Cadel. Usually, Dr. Darkkon was able to remove his eyewear entirely and place it on a surface some distance away so that Cadel could have a better view of his father's face. When he was being closely monitored, however, Dr. Darkkon was forced to leave the glasses on, and Cadel caught a glimpse only of his father's right eye, greatly enlarged. "How could you have been so careless, Cadel?" Dr. Darkkon continued. "People of that sort can't be entrusted with
anything.
They're
hound
to screw up."
"You were right not to plant the device yourself," Thaddeus remarked from his crimson couch. "There's no need, when you can always delegate. The skill lies in choosing the correct tool."
"But I didn't choose anyone!" Cadel protested. "I didn't
ask
that boy to plant a bomb; he did it himself!"
"Naturally, we wouldn't expect you to admit it—," Dr. Darkkon began.
"But I
didn't! Honestly!
" Cadel was quite upset. "I'm telling the truth!"
There was a short silence. Then Thaddeus said, in his silkiest tones, "You'd like us to believe that you really did blurt out all your hard-won information about pipe bombs just to impress a few blockheads in sixth grade?"
Cadel flushed. He didn't know how to respond. Should he admit that he had enjoyed basking in the awestruck attention of Jamboree's toughest kids? It would make him look almost simpleminded—on the same level as stupid Jar rod and his dumb friends. At the same time, Cadel was alarmed that neither Thaddeus nor his father had believed him. And he was very confused. Should he have
known
that Jarrod would go off and make his own bomb? Was there something about Jarrod that should have warned him?
He was disappointed in himself for failing to anticipate the possibility. He felt that he had let his father down—his father
and
Thaddeus.
"Cadel," said Thaddeus, leaning forward and fixing him with an intent look, "if this whole episode was unplanned, as you say, then you have a lot to learn. Your father has told you, again and again, to
keep a low profile.
You won't do that by trying to impress people. You'll find it all too easy to impress most people, and then where will you be? Constantly watched. Admired. Pursued."
"It's bad enough that you're skipping years," Dr. Darkkon added. "I'd be happier if you were following a more normal educational pattern. You've already been identified as highly gifted. Now you'll be the subject of constant scrutiny."
"You have one advantage," Thaddeus went on, "and that's your face. People with pretty faces aren't expected to have brains."
"They stand out, though," Dr. Darkkon said gloomily. "They're noticed. They're watched."
"Perhaps," Thaddeus conceded. "So Cadel will have to learn to fade into the background. It really isn't hard. The right clothes, the right stance, the right attitude—"
"Like not boasting to morons," Dr. Darkkon interrupted.
"Like that, yes.
We
admire you, Cadel. You don't need the admiration of idiots like Jarrod."
Cadel stared at his lap, legs swinging. Occasionally—very occasionally—he still felt like a freak. It happened sometimes when he made a remark and a teacher stared at him as if he'd just sprouted another arm. Or when the other kids started giggling behind his back because he'd been staring at a handball game for fifteen minutes, trying to calculate velocities and outcomes. Or when Mrs. Piggott came home in a bad mood and blamed him for the fact that the thermostat in the hot-water system wasn't working. In these situations, Cadel always felt a powerful urge to tell everyone about his infamous traffic jam, or his brief penetration of the Pentagon security protocols.