tests. Your physical and mental condition will be monitored. You will eventually graduate to what we call Back Half, and there you will be given certain services to perform. Your stay in Back Half may last as long as six months, although the average length of active service is only six weeks. Then your memories will be wiped, and you will be sent home to your parents.”
“They’re alive? My parents are alive?”
She laughed, the sound surprisingly merry. “Of course they’re alive. We’re not murderers, Luke.”
“I want to talk to them, then. Let me talk to them and I’ll do whatever you want.” The words were out before he realized what a rash promise this was.
“No, Luke. We still don’t have a clear understanding.” She sat back. Hands once more flat on her desk. “This is not a negotiation. You will do whatever we want, regardless. Believe me on that, and spare yourself a lot of pain. You will have no contact with the outside world during your time at the Institute, and that includes your parents. You will obey all orders. You will comply with all protocols. Yet you will not, with perhaps a few exceptions, find the orders arduous or the protocols onerous. Your time will pass quickly, and when you leave us, when you wake up in your own bedroom one fine morning, none of this will have happened. The sad part—I think so, anyway—is that you won’t even know you had the great privilege of serving your country.”
“I don’t see how it’s possible,” Luke said. Speaking more to himself than to her, which was his way when something—a physics problem, a painting by Manet, the short- and long-term implications of debt—had completely engaged his attention. “So many people know me. The school . . . the people my folks work with . . . my friends . . . you can’t wipe all their memories.”
She didn’t laugh, but she smiled. “I think you might be very surprised at what we can do. We’re finished here.” She stood, came around the desk, and held out her hand. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”
Luke also stood, but he didn’t take her hand.
“Shake my hand, Luke.”
Part of him wanted to, old habits were hard to break, but he kept his hand at his side.
“Shake it, or you’ll wish you did. I won’t tell you again.”
He saw she absolutely meant it, so he shook her hand. She held it. Although she didn’t squeeze, he could tell her hand was very strong. Her eyes stared into his. “I may see you, as another saying goes, around the campus, but hopefully this will be your only visit to my office. If you are called in here again, our conversation will be less pleasant. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I know this is a dark time for you, but if you do as you’re told, you’ll come out into the sunshine. Trust me on that. Now go.”
He left, once more feeling like a boy in a dream, or Alice down the rabbit hole. Hadad was chatting with Mrs. Sigsby’s secretary or assistant or whatever she was, and waiting for him. “I’ll take you back to your room. Close at my side, right? No running for the trees.”
They went out, started across to the residence building, and then Luke stopped as a wave of dizziness came over him. “Wait,” he said. “Hold on.”
He bent down, grasping his knees. For a moment colored lights swarmed in front of his eyes.
“You going to pass out?” Hadad asked. “What do you think?”
“No,” Luke said, “but give me a few more seconds.”
“Sure. You got a shot, right?”
“Yes.”
Hadad nodded. “It hits some kids that way. Delayed reaction.”
Luke expected to be asked if he saw spots or dots, but Hadad just waited, whistling through his teeth and waving at the swarming noseeums.
Luke thought about Mrs. Sigsby’s cold gray eyes, and her flat refusal to tell him how a place like this could possibly exist without some form of . . . what would be the correct term? Extreme rendition, maybe. It was as if she were daring him to do the math.
Do as you’re told, you’ll come out into the sunshine. Trust me on that.
He was only twelve, and understood that his experience of the world was limited, but one thing he was quite sure of: when someone said trust me, they were usually lying through their teeth.
“Feeling better? Ready to go, my son?”
“Yes.” Luke straightened up. “But I’m not your son.”