Prodigy

by Dave Kalstein

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “This … this place means so much to me. It’s … my home, and I don’t want it to ever change. But the thing is…”

  “What?”

  “… It already has.” He stepped away from her and put his hand on the door handle. “I love you,” he said, looking down at her reflection in the white marble floor. And then he walked out into the corridor to join Cooley without looking back.

  Camilla walked back into Oates’s room, her first-class mind wrestling with a flood of strange emotional sensations to which she was not accustomed. She felt the med cycle’s chemicals push them away, far back into the hidden reaches of her psyche where they would not bother her again. But that was not what she wanted. Those sensations were strange, but … pleasant.

  “Fr … freeze Miss Moore,” came a dazed, pain-ridden voice behind her. One of the security detail officers—the one whose head Cooley used as a blunt instrument to ram against the Nature & Co. window—had regained consciousness. She whirled around and looked: he was holding a Colt M-8, aiming the pistol at her.

  “Excuse me, officer?”

  “I’m taking … taking you in … on charges of—” And like magic, Camilla somehow appeared right before him. She held his arm in a wrist lock and pain was shooting through his elbow. He dropped the gun. She kicked it across the floor and brought his face down into her knee. She heard cartilage pop. His body went limp.

  Camilla glanced around, getting used to the new feeling of adrenaline flowing through her body. She saw the world without the haze. For the first time in twelve years, she was alive. Honestly, she admitted, she wasn’t sure if she liked it, but her initial analysis of this altered state led one to postulate that—

  “Mr. Goldsmith’s in love with me,” giggled Camilla 2.0 out loud and to no one in particular. She felt herself blush for the first time in her life.

  * * *

  Cooley and Goldsmith rode away from the tower in the back of a Universal Taxi gyro and watched the rain as it poured down from the clouds in the dark afternoon sky. Lightning bolts flashed to and fro. Thunder rumbled in the distance then got closer, the booms rattling the cab’s windows.

  “News report says there’s a storm warning,” called out the cabbie from the front of the gyro, looking back over his shoulder at them. The sky lit up with another bolt. “Hope you kids don’t have a curfew. This mess keeps up, the S.A. transportation bureau’s gonna shut down the flight paths ’til it passes, and who knows how long that could take.”

  “Figures,” said Cooley. “They finally let you out of the tower and you don’t even get to see the sun.” Goldsmith stared out the window. “Bummer, isn’t it, Thomas?” He watched as Goldsmith frowned. “How come you can’t stand hearing the sound of your own name?” he asked.

  “That’s what my mom called me. I guess it just doesn’t sound the same coming from someone else, that’s all. It’s like every time someone else says it I forget what it sounded like when she said my name in the first place. Like other people’s mouths corrupt it.”

  “So, what’s Camilla 2.0 gonna say when you guys are getting it on?” he asked, his voice creeping up into a girlish falsetto, “‘Oh yeah, Mr. Goldsmith! Do it to me just like that Mr. Goldsmith … ’” Goldsmith shot him an angry glare. Cooley started cracking up. “Hey, I’m sorry man … I just thought it’d be…” He stopped apologizing when he saw Goldsmith crack a smile.

  “Hey,” Goldsmith said after a moment, “do you ever think about what you’re going to be when you grow up?”

  “Sure,” Cooley replied, trying to sound intelligent because he sensed Goldsmith wanted to have a meaningful chat. “I was thinking … um…,” he stammered, racking his brain for some made-up career goal that would sound suitably impressive to a straight-A Harvard-bound specimen. After a few awkward moments he gave up. “To be honest, man, I’ve got no fucking clue.” Goldsmith started laughing. “Hey, what’s so funny?” Cooley demanded. “Just because you’ve got it all figured out doesn’t mean you can laugh at guys like me.”

  “I’ve got no fucking clue, either,” said Goldsmith, the laughter beginning in small giggles, before erupting into big, infectious gales. Cooley cracked up.

  “So what are you gonna do after graduation?” asked Cooley.

  “Try to forget about the mess we’re in.”

  “Meaning you’re gonna get hammered and make a late-night Tabula call to Camilla?”

  “Yeah,” he grinned. “Pretty much.” He burst out into laughter.

  “Hey!” called out the cabbie. “Settle down back there! I’m trying to concentrate on the sky and not get us all killed!” But they kept on laughing and, from the sound of the thunder crashing outside, it seemed as if nature itself had joined in their brief moment of mirth.

  * * *

  On the twenty-third floor of the luxury condominium high-rise at 565 West Miller Avenue, Goldsmith and Cooley stood outside of door number 2309. “I guess this is it,” Goldsmith said, raising his hand, getting ready to knock.

  “What are you going to tell her?”

  “I was going to start off by giving her the secret valedictorian hand shake.”

  “You guys have a hand shake?”

  “That was a joke.”

  “Oh.”

  Suddenly, the door swung open and they came face-to-face with Miss Stella Saltzman. Even though she was only three years older than they were, she had the full, rounded figure of a woman. She wore a gray wool dress and a black shawl over her shoulders. To Cooley, she looked just like a nice librarian, and he had a hard time believing she could ever be tangled up in the business of dead former specimens or evil plots involving poisonous designer chemicals. He remembered telling Goldsmith his theory that she was starting a gang, recruiting all the other unbalanced kids for some unstated, perhaps sinister purpose, and started to feel more than a little foolish. An aroma wafted out from her apartment and into the hallway. She was baking banana bread.

  “Look at what we have here,” she said in a voice deeper than expected, as she looked Goldsmith up and down. “The little orphaned angel’s all grown up. And you,” she continued, shifting her gaze to Cooley, “must be the patsy.”

  “Miss Saltzman, are you aware that you might be in grave danger?” asked Goldsmith.

  She studied them, sized them up, weighed probabilities in her head. Finally, she gestured for them to enter. “Come in,” she said.

  * * *

  Back inside the tower, President Lang entered the headmaster’s office. He gestured for her to take a seat across from him. She stared at the pipe in his hand. “If you’re smoking again, I’m not expecting the news to be good.”

  “I just authorized Mr. Goldsmith to travel off campus,” he said. “He has Mr. Cooley with him.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Goldsmith identified a foreign toxin present in each of the dead alumni.”

  “And how, may I ask, did he do that?”

  “He said it was adamite-5.” He watched the chagrin disappear from her face as she leaned forward in her plush leather club chair, stunned, her mouth hanging open. The headmaster waited for more of a reaction but did not get it. He decided to continue talking. “As you know, five years ago we began testing our Attention Deficit Disorder vaccine on lab animals and every mouse injected with it died of a massive brain seizure. When the scientists removed the ADM+5 element from the formula, the cure worked so well, the results were so effective, that it was distributed to every single specimen, faculty member, and employee at Stansbury, and still is to this day. It was a triumph. We single-handedly eradicated ADD—perhaps the most frequently diagnosed behavioral disorder of the last fifty years. But what the public does not know is that, because like all vaccines, the dosage permanently shifts our physiology and inoculates us from the disorder, an adamite-5 injection—as unlikely as that would be in a normal specimen’s lifespan, given the rarity of that chemical—would be instantly fatal to anyone who was enro
lled here. Judith, a human body cannot sustain even a small amount of ADM+5 and survive after they receive Stansbury’s vaccination. The chemical combinations cause instantaneous death. Do you know what this means?”

  “Well, it could mean that—”

  “It means that whoever killed those five alumni had an intimate knowledge of this history. All of our meds have been billed as risk-free to the specimens, their parents, and the government—but as we both know, this isn’t always the case. However, there is no way that Mr. Cooley would know this history, much less how to get enough pure ADM+5 doses to become a serial killer.” He looked at Lang’s face. She was pale. The Senate Select Committee on Education was voting in less than two hours and he imagined that she was seeing everything slip away right before her eyes. “A penny for your thoughts,” he said, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

  “That reporter from the San Angeles Times is still moving around the tower and the security detail has not been able to track him down. We had him contained with Mr. Goldsmith and then Miss Moore, but the Cooley situation diverted their attention, and now we have what could be a monumental public relations disaster on our hands.”

  The headmaster picked up the desk phone. “I’m calling the police. You were absolutely correct about not trusting Senator Bloom’s intentions. I’m certain he’s behind these crimes. No one else has the motive or the means to see that they happened. There is a sixth former specimen who might be in danger. Goldsmith and Cooley have gone to find her.”

  President Lang put her finger down on the phone’s Off button, cutting off his connection. “Don’t be rash,” she said.

  The headmaster pulled the phone away from her. “The silence you need to procure a one-trillion-dollar grant for the school is secondary to the purpose of the school itself, which is to nurture its specimens. I am going to do everything in my power to protect my children,” he said, his voice rising. “I would think that you’d agree with me, given the … unique circumstances.”

  “Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. Cooley will be fine,” she said. “And so will Miss Saltzman.”

  The headmaster looked at her, vaguely puzzled. “I never said the sixth former specimen was Miss Saltzman.” They locked eyes. The Tabula inside Lang’s blazer started to ring.

  “Excuse me, it might be Senator Cass and—” She broke off her glance and reached inside her pocket, standing up from her chair. The headmaster watched her pull something out of her pocket—not a Tabula—and the next thing he saw was his right hand impaled against the wood of his desk by the laser needle of a Mont Blanc syringe, the very same one that he had bought for her as a congratulatory gift years ago. He felt something enter his bloodstream. His breaths got shorter and shorter before he started to gag. His mother-of-pearl pipe fell and hit the floor, breaking into two pieces. He tried to reach for the syringe to remove it from his hand but lacked the strength. The headmaster started to gag and felt himself vomit a mix of foamy bile and blood across the desk before collapsing, his head smacking against the blotter, blacking out for the last time in his life. He smelled the nutmeg of the still smoldering pipe at his feet, and in the endless haze of darkness he imagined that he was back at Dr. Stansbury’s ranch, waiting for his old friend to open the door and greet him. But Mr. Goldsmith answered the door. He was tall as ever, grown into a man. The headmaster faded away, so glad that the boy made it home without a scratch on him. None that could be seen, anyway.

  President Lang removed the syringe from the headmaster’s hand and watched the final shudders of his corpse before it lapsed into rigor mortis as she quickly sterilized the chamber, cleaning away all the traces of the adamite-5 she had filled it with just minutes before she was summoned. Her Tabula was still beeping. She removed it from her pocket and answered the call.

  “How was my timing?” asked Captain Gibson.

  “Cooley and Goldsmith are at Saltzman’s safe house.”

  “We looked for that address for the past five months and came up with zilch. How’d they get it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Trace Goldsmith’s Tabula and have the team intercept them. Now.” Lang disconnected the call and ruffled her carefully arranged hair. She made herself weep, feeling the tears running down her face and rubbing them away so that they smudged her makeup in just the right manner. She made a mental note to call in her stylist no later than half an hour before she was scheduled to simulcast to the Senate Select Committee on Education once more before their scheduled vote on the Stansbury bill at 5 P.M. And then the president dashed down the corridor as fast as she could, shouting for Mrs. Elton to call the medics with a frantic hysteria that impressed even herself.

  22

  Cooley and Goldsmith followed Stella into her apartment past a mammoth antique mirror with a wooden frame and built-in candelabras of brass. Its long, thick white candles actually flickered with real, hot orange flames, as opposed to the digitized holographic light to which the young men had become accustomed. The soft light continued to stretch down a long hallway with soft Persian rugs on the floor. The syrupy scents of cinnamon and warm banana bread hung in the air. The lady of the manor seemed to glide just above the floor with a grace that did not seem possible, given her generous proportions.

  The apartment seemed to go on forever, miles of dark wood; the only reminder that this was the year 2036 was the unending skyline of San Angeles outside the large wall-to-wall windows that unfolded as she led them into the living room. The long rows of tall jagged buildings and skyscrapers in the distance were punctuated by the intermittent bolt of lightning and seemed menacing, like a shark’s grin. Cooley noticed that inside this home he felt safe for the first time in a long while. He and Goldsmith sat down on a plush purple couch of aged worn velvet. Stella sat in a mossy green chaise longue across from them.

  “So tell me, Mr. Goldsmith,” she said, the knowing smile audible in her voice. “Have the awards and the medals started to lose their shine?”

  “I still believe in progress,” he replied, his voice a bit shaky, like that of a shipwreck’s lone, once-proud survivor who knew he was doomed but insisted on clinging to what remained of his dignity.

  “Progress?” She laughed. “They’re still selling the same bill of goods. ‘City on a hill’ and ‘the elite.’ Progress! Progress makes purses out of human skin, my friend.” Cooley watched Goldsmith for a reaction and half expected him to stomp out of the room in disgust at her comments regarding his beloved school. Goldsmith maintained his poker face, but Cooley suspected he was burning up inside.

  “Miss Saltzman, we’re here to—”

  “I know why you’re here.”

  “I’m betting you knew the five dead alumni. Their files indicated—”

  “They were killed with injections of adamite-5,” she said in that clinical, no-frills valedictorian tone. “I’m certain you already knew this. What you probably did not know is that adamite-5 is a substance fatal only to Stansbury specimens who have taken the school’s vaunted ADD vaccination. The ADM+5 creates an adverse reaction to the chemicals that the vaccination adds to the physiology, and produces an instantly fatal brain seizure.” She paused, looking from Goldsmith to Cooley, and smiled at him. He felt a warm tingle pass through his chest. A handsome woman, he thought. She was a proud, handsome woman who makes me feel safe. “Those five dead specimens were similar to you, Mr. Cooley. Living, breathing proof that all the money and technology in the world can’t teach a child how to grow up.”

  “I need to know if you think Senator Arthur Bloom is behind the murders,” interjected Goldsmith.

  Stella looked over at him. Cooley noticed that she and Goldsmith had the same sad expression on their faces: forlorn, resigned looks of dreamers recently shaken back into reality, only to find the wonderful world they thought they discovered after all this time was just a minutes-long illusion created by the combination of exhaustion, rapid eye movement, and foolish optimism. Goldsmith saw her face and looked out the window, knowing the answer woul
d not be of the one-word or easily explained varieties. But Cooley felt as if he were being left out of an unspoken conversation. He was not intuitive like them. Silent explanations weren’t enough and, unlike Goldsmith, he was not afraid of what the answers might have meant.

  “Why would Senator Bloom do something like this?” Cooley asked her.

  “Senator Bloom,” she said, “is not only my employer. He is my mentor, my patron saint, and the only human being in this world that I trust.” While the words came from her mouth, Stella was still looking at Goldsmith, as if she knew that her gaze was the only thing preventing him from falling apart into a million shattered pieces.

  “But that guy hates specimens,” said Cooley.

  “And if you’re working with him,” Goldsmith said, “how can we trust you not to be involved in the crimes? You knew the others, didn’t you?”

  Stella reclined in her chaise longue as if she was preparing for a blow to strike her body, or perhaps about to embark on an epic journey back over some dark territory she had hoped never to see again. The kind smile left her face as she began to formulate her answer.

  * * *

  After winning the Selmer-Dubonnet test back in the autumn of 2033 (Cooley and Goldsmith were only fourteen years old), Miss Stella Saltzman did not look forward to the distractions and stress of the valedictorian’s duties, but after twelve years of success at the school, she felt it was her obligation to fulfill them nonetheless. In fact, she began her tenure with the optimistic belief that her reign would be different: whereas her predecessors thrived on the inherently antagonistic relationship between their authority and the insubordination of those who violated policy, she would fashion herself as more of an advocate for them, a true diplomat shuttling back and forth between the delinquents and the administration. Stella did not make use of the traditional examination techniques detailed in the valedictorian’s manual. She did not permit her suspects to be hooded and disoriented, and did not require the security detail to bind their hands or legs during questioning sessions. Perhaps most importantly, she did not use the arsenal of psychological pressure and trickery on the unbalanced specimens that had come to be routine in the preceding years.