again, Mrs. Sigsby leaned back to look at the doctor looming over her. “I agree that young Master Ellis’s intelligence doesn’t matter to our work at the Institute. He could just as well have an IQ of 75. It is, however, why we took him a bit early. He had been accepted at not one but two class-A schools—MIT and Emerson.”
Hendricks blinked. “At twelve?”
“Indeed. The murder of his parents and his subsequent disappearance is going to be news, but not big news outside the Twin Cities, although it may ripple the Internet for a week or so. It would have been much bigger news if he’d made an academic splash in Boston before he dropped from sight. Kids like him have a way of getting on the TV news, usually the golly-gosh segments. And what do I always say, Doctor?”
“That in our business, no news is good news.”
“Right. In a perfect world, we would have let this one go. We still get our fair share of TKs.” She tapped the pink circle on the intake form. “As this indicates, his BDNF isn’t even all that high. Only . . .”
She didn’t have to finish. Certain commodities were getting rarer. Elephant tusks. Tiger pelts. Rhino horns. Rare metals. Even oil. Now you could add these special children, whose extraordinary qualities had nothing to do with their IQs. Five more coming in this week, including the Dixon boy. A very good haul, but two years ago they might have had thirty.
“Oh, look,” Mrs. Sigsby said. On the screen of her computer, their new arrival was approaching the most senior resident of Front Half. “He’s about to meet the too-smart-for-her-own-good Benson. She’ll give him the scoop, or some version of it.”
“Still in Front Half,” Hendricks said. “We ought to make her the goddam official greeter.”
Mrs. Sigsby offered her most glacial smile. “Better her than you, Doc.”
Hendricks looked down and thought of saying, From this vantage point, I can see how fast your hair is thinning, Siggers. It’s all part of your low-level but long-running anorexia. Your scalp is as pink as an albino rabbit’s eye.
There were lots of things he thought of saying to her, the grammar-perfect no-tits chief administrator of the Institute, but he never did. It would have been unwise.
9
The cinderblock hallway was lined with doors and more posters. The girl was sitting under one showing a black boy and a white girl with their foreheads together, grinning like fools. The caption beneath said I CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY!
“You like that one?” the black girl said. On closer inspection, the cigarette dangling from her mouth turned out to be of the candy variety. “I’d change it to I CHOOSE TO BE CRAPPY, but they might take away my pen. Sometimes they let shit slide, but sometimes they don’t. The problem is that you can never tell which way things are going to tip.”
“Where am I?” Luke asked. “What is this place?” He felt like crying. He guessed it was mostly the disorientation.
“Welcome to the Institute,” she said.
“Are we still in Minneapolis?”
She laughed. “Not hardly. And not in Kansas anymore, Toto. We’re in Maine. Way up in the williwags. At least according to Maureen, we are.”
“In Maine?” He shook his head, as if he had taken a blow to the temple. “Are you sure?”
“Yup. You’re looking mighty white, white boy. I think you should sit down before you fall down.”
He sat, bracing himself with one hand as he did so, because his legs didn’t exactly flex. It was more like a collapse.
“I was home,” he said. “I was home, and then I woke up here. In a room that looks like my room, but isn’t.”
“I know,” she said. “Shock, innit?” She wriggled her hand into the pocket of her pants and brought out a box. On it was a picture of a cowboy spinning a lariat. ROUND-UP CANDY CIGARETTES, it said. SMOKE JUST LIKE DADDY! “Want one? A little sugar might help your state of mind. It always helps mine.”
Luke took the box and flipped up the lid. There were six cigarettes left inside, each one with a red tip that he guessed was supposed to be the coal. He took one, stuck it between his lips, then bit it in half. Sweetness flooded his mouth.
“Don’t ever do that with a real cigarette,” she said. “You wouldn’t like the taste half so well.”
“I didn’t know they still sold stuff like this,” he said.
“They don’t sell this kind, for sure,” she said. “Smoke