“Well . . .” Shark tried to make it look like he was weighing a decision. “This is against the rules, you understand. But the First really is an exemplary group. I am open to making an exception. So ordered. As for Sphinx . . .”
“He is not one of the Leaders,” Godmother prompted softly. “So he is not the object of the present discussion.”
“Precisely,” Shark rushed to agree. “He is far from the most influential figure, let’s not waste our time. Denied.”
Darling went into a pout.
“We are not debating the actual candidates yet, but the proposal itself,” Godmother said to her by way of consolation. “Two of us for it, one against . . .”
“Emphatically against,” Raptor put in.
“Two abstained,” Godmother went on without so much as a glance at Sheep and Sheriff. “And one more is . . .”
There was a pause.
“Against,” Ralph said.
Godmother nodded, satisfied, as if this was exactly what she had expected him to do. She then made another pause and when he failed to make use of it, continued.
“Two ayes, two nays, two abstentions. I am, naturally, voting yes, and our esteemed principal . . .”
She turned to Shark, and that’s when Ralph decided he’d had enough. He was tired of looking at Godmother, tired of listening to her, and disinclined to perform the rest of the lines she’d written for him in this play.
“Excuse me,” he said, getting up. “I still have some important things to do.”
Shark’s expression promised a coming storm.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said. “What things could be more important than this meeting?”
“What things?” Ralph stopped at the door. “Oh, you know, of an urgent and unavoidable nature. Compose a resignation letter, type it up in duplicate. Pack, tidy up around the office a little. It’s amazing the way the dust just seems to stick to it. Return the linens to the laundry and some books to the library.”
“Oh god!” Raptor gasped. “Just what we needed . . .”
“Wait a minute!” Shark said. “I’m not signing that.”
“Don’t.” Ralph shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t care if your signature is on it or not.”
“Aren’t you the least interested in the results of the discussion?” Godmother said in a surprised voice. “In finding out who we are going to choose? Are you concerned about the welfare of your charges at all? Your childish behavior seems to suggest otherwise.”
Ralph smiled.
“I am reasonably sure that it will be my charges you are about to single out, and this is exactly why I am refusing to participate in this charade. As a counselor I am responsible for every single person in my groups. When someone pushes me aside and starts running their lives for them, the only thing that’s left for me is to say good-bye. I’m done here.”
Godmother grimaced.
“How easily you abandon your post. And how quick you are in forcing your responsibilities on others. It amazes me, frankly.”
“You just won’t believe”—Ralph glanced briefly at Shark, frozen in place—“the extent to which it amazes myself.”
He tidied the office, took a shower, and packed his black duffel bag. Used the old typewriter to type the resignation letter, signed it, and left it on the desk. Then, to his own surprise, he realized he was whistling a tune. So, is this really it? I am leaving forever? Just like that? Now that Shark and Godmother had revealed their plan, there was in this a justice of a sort. He wasn’t allowed to say his farewells properly to this place, to let the departure sink in, just as they wouldn’t be. Feeling ridiculously light and empty, he went out without even bothering to lock up. There wasn’t anything left in the office worth worrying about.
Ralph nodded to the on-duty Log (who undoubtedly took notice of the bag), crossed the hallway, and went up to the third floor.
The staff canteen was open until eight. It was cozy and quiet here, especially in the evenings. Round tables, on each one a wicker basket with bread, a massive wooden napkin holder, and an amusing salt-and-pepper set shaped like mice. Flower-patterned curtains. A neatly handwritten menu to the side of the serving window.
Ralph got two slices of meat pie and a tea, and went to sit at the corner table.
He was eating and looking at the photograph on the wall, under glass in an elaborately decorated frame. There were six of them in the canteen, all six utterly bewildering. Street shots. No people, no dogs, and none of the buildings caught in them could be considered of any interest. It was a mystery why these featureless images had to be printed in this large format, framed, and hung on the wall. Certainly not for aesthetic reasons.
Ralph studied the one closest to him and thought that, after he left, both it and the rest of them would forever remain an enigma, because without him no one would remember that these had been made by Flyers. They were of the Outsides. Flyers had photographed it haphazardly. The important thing had been to simply capture it. They returned to the House with their trophies, enlarged and printed them, framed them, and put them up in the windowless Horror Chamber on the first floor. The Chamber had existed specifically to cause discomfort. The children of the House liked scary stuff. There were other items in the horror storage, but the photographs of the Outsides were the undisputed highlight of the collection.
Then those who had created the Chamber of Horrors left, and the juniors who replaced them came to hate the exposition they’d inherited, so much that it had to be dismantled. The photographs ended up on the third floor. None of the current students had ever seen them; the entire thing happened before they had come here. Ralph often wondered what they’d feel if faced with them. Astonishment? Curiosity?
The shots might as well have been taken by Martians. A comprehensive detachment. Outsides distilled. That’s how it looked from their point of view. Not beautiful, not ugly, not anything at all. Even total strangers who happened to see the pictures couldn’t help being vaguely disturbed.
As Ralph looked at them, he realized that if, upon exiting the House, he really would be met with this faceless, scrubbed world of empty black-and-white streets, he would have felt much worse than he did now, and how lucky it was that for him the Outsides was not like that, and how unfortunate that he could not share that knowledge, that certainty with any of them.
Raptor and Shark came bursting into the canteen together, hooting and hollering as they saw Ralph there. Godmother entered quietly and unassumingly, and took her place at the next table.
“You bastard, making me sit and wait for your notice! Do you care at all?”
Shark dragged a chair over, plopped on it, moaned, and loosened his tie.
“Then we run to your damn office and see that damn notice on the desk! You couldn’t even be bothered to bring it over for me to sign! Planning to split on the sly, weren’t you?”
“You said you weren’t signing it.”
Shark noted Ralph’s duffel under the table, made a face, and told Raptor to get some pie for him too.
“Two slices. No, one slice and some scrambled eggs. And a coffee. I urgently need sustenance.”
Raptor went over to the serving window.
Godmother pulled her chair closer to their table.
“You have surprised and disappointed us. Couldn’t this public display of disapproval have been avoided?”
Ralph shrugged.
“It could. I’m just not used to being manipulated.”
She sighed.
“No one was manipulating you. Your perception of the situation is prejudiced.”
They were silent when Raptor returned with a tray. They were silent while Shark shoveled food in his mouth. Godmother’s hands rested on the table, palm to palm, the pristine cuffs setting off the grubbiness of the tablecloth, which had looked perfectly clean until she appeared. Ralph knew that Godmother wasn’t going to move until he finished his tea, until Shark was satiated, until Raptor stopped fidgeting. Like a statue. She didn’
t need to engage her hands, to shift her pose, to busy her mouth with idle conversation. She could simply wait. It was unbearable.
“You would make an excellent sniper,” Ralph said.
“Pardon?”
Shark pointed his fork at Ralph.
“Let it be noted that you haven’t proposed anything. Anything! And when the people who were desperately seeking a solution made suggestions, you went on a crusade against them and then washed your hands of the whole thing! How’s that fair? What is your problem with the decision to move up the date? Because I seem to have noticed it wasn’t to your liking either.”
“Then you probably also noticed that I wasn’t arguing with that one. I don’t like it, true, but it certainly has a chance.”
“Aha!” Shark said. “So what you didn’t like was not being among the elect, right?”
“Wrong. I don’t care about the exact date. Especially considering that it would be fairly easy to calculate.”
“Then what precisely do you object to with regards to that proposal?”
“Its cruelty.”
He was unprepared for the indignation that flashed in Godmother’s expression.
“Cruelty?” she repeated, and her voice trembled with suppressed emotion. “Do you mean to suggest that this is more cruel than what happened six years ago?”
“No. Which is why I didn’t argue.”
Godmother pursed her lips. Ralph again was overwhelmed by a suspicion that this was all a performance. At this particular moment she was playing the indignation that she wasn’t feeling. He didn’t understand why she would need to do that, just as he didn’t understand why she’d come here to persuade him to stay, now that she’d done everything in her power to make him leave. He didn’t understand too much of what this woman was doing, and the sheer volume of that ignorance was starting to affect him. Shark and Raptor were so engrossed in their exchange that they forgot all about the coffee. They looked like a pair of Bandar-Logs, only older—the same naked, shameless, prying curiosity.
“The first suggestion is simply dishonest. But the second is abusive. I will not tolerate my students being abused.”
Godmother’s face was a mask of equal parts weariness and disgust.
She blushes from the neck up, Ralph thought. And it makes her look older. What is she after? Power? A position on top of the pecking order? In a place where there’s soon going to be no one left to peck? Or is she in such a panic over the graduation that she’s honestly searching for ways out of the tight corner she’s been placed in, and the methods she’s employing are simply what come naturally to her?
He didn’t believe any of that. Not her panic, not her sudden desire to rule the roost, and least of all her selfless, breathless service to the principal. Godmother wasn’t cowardly, servile, or stupid. He did not understand her motives, and that made him vulnerable. He didn’t know what he was fighting against.
“Ultimately,” Godmother said, “we shall have to rely on your judgment. If you are certain that none of your charges represent a threat to the others at the time of graduation, it is incumbent upon us to try and share your conviction, and refrain from undertaking any additional measures.”
“I have no such certainty,” Ralph said.
“Just as I expected.”
“But I am also not certain that your so-called considered measures won’t make the situation worse.”
“Neither are we. We just prefer action to inaction.”
“Sometimes action is worse than inaction.”
Shark turned his head from side to side, as if tracking a tennis ball in play. Godmother lowered her glasses to the tip of her nose and pierced Ralph with a schoolmarm glance.
“Is it your position that a graduating student is irreparably harmed by the very fact of the graduation happening a few days earlier than planned?”
“Depends on the student,” Ralph said and stumbled, realizing that he’d just walked into a carefully prepared trap.
“Are you implying”—Godmother’s nostrils flared in anticipation—“that there are those who will be harmed by it and those who might not?”
“You could say that.”
“But wouldn’t you agree that it is precisely the person who is so ill-adapted to life outside the House that a mere change in the manner of his graduation could prove disastrous for him, that it is this person who represents a clear danger to his peers?”
Ralph was silent.
Shark smirked. Raptor avoided Ralph’s gaze. Godmother reached across the table and placed her hand on Ralph’s arm.
“There will be no voting,” she said firmly. “You will reach your own decision, and we will all abide by it. Who is the most dangerous? Only you, their counselor, are familiar with them well enough to answer that, to make that choice. And it therefore falls on you to guard them, to the extent possible, against grievous harm.”
That night Ralph attempted to get drunk. He was drinking alone, locked up in his office, and almost succeeded, but the desired oblivion eluded him, leaving behind only a dull headache and a sullen apathy.
Deciding to leave was simple. As he was packing and typing up the notice, he’d felt uneasy because of the suddenness of it all, but at the same time never doubted that what he was doing was right. That under the circumstances it was the only available option. Talking to Godmother had robbed him of that sureness. Deep in his heart Ralph realized that agreeing to participate in Shark and Godmother’s scheme was a sellout. Betrayal of one for the benefit of many was still a betrayal.
That right to choose, so graciously bestowed on him, was pure torture, all the more unbearable because in reality there was only one choice. He had no doubt that Blind was indeed dangerous, and would become extremely so at the moment of graduation. He also had no doubt that removing him from the House would only make matters worse. Someone would have to pay. He had a pretty good idea who that someone was, and it definitely wasn’t Godmother. Could that be the reason she was trying to make him stay? They needed a scapegoat, and Ralph was perfect for the assignment.
“A goat,” he whispered to himself. “You are so useful, my friend, you’ll make a nice goat . . . or maybe a lamb. A stupid sacrificial lamb.”
He cringed, realizing that he was behaving like a drunk, when he wasn’t drunk at all. A little, maybe. But mentally running through the conversation with Sphinx once Blind had been removed from the House was sobering him up quicker than a cold shower.
Getting comprehensively sloshed and meeting Sphinx with inane, drunk blabbering wasn’t going to cut it. Maybe he should listen to Darling and remove Sphinx as well? Ralph counted off the hierarchical structure of the Fourth on his fingers. Next step down from Sphinx they had—no, not Noble, but Tabaqui, strange as it may have seemed. As Ralph imagined Jackal in the position of the Master of the House he smiled, but the smile quickly became a fixed scowl. If that happened, drinking or not drinking would not make the slightest difference. Might as well really barricade themselves up on the third and wait. Tabaqui would disassemble the House brick by brick and only then agree to negotiate the terms of their surrender—if they were lucky. By that time everyone would be clamoring for Blind’s return. Did this mean he had to remove Jackal too?
Ralph went to the bathroom, stuck his head under the faucet, and then furiously rubbed his face with a towel.
Going over the list was completely pointless. Every single one of them was dangerous. Including that tacit mute, Alexander. It was not a good idea to push them. He had to make Shark understand that, and then let him duke it out with Godmother.
Ralph remembered that there had been cases of students who, having been sent out of the House, were then hastily returned, for varying reasons. Those had to be recorded somewhere. The former principal was a stickler for protocol and also liked to look for similarities and patterns in everything, so he surely had a file somewhere detailing all of those cases. Ralph should go and find it.
His headache subsided a little and Ralph knew h
e wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Why not go to the library, then, and look for that precious file? The more he thought about this, the more logical it seemed to him.
He put on a coat, to have a good pocket for the flashlight, checked the batteries in it, and went out into the night.
The old night guard, always short of breath, opened the door to the third floor for him and shuffled back to his glass-walled nest to continue napping, or watching TV, or both.
On the third the lights in the hallways did not go out at night. Ralph followed the threadbare carpet to the library. It was very different from the common library down on the first—in its compactness, its wide selection of specialized tomes, and the decent condition of the books.
Ralph turned on the lights between the stacks one by one as he moved to the last aisle. There, against the wall, stood a tall steel cabinet, its drawers flashing stickers denoting their content. On the bottom drawers the writing was clearly readable, by halfway up the paper was already graying and the letters became barely legible, and closer to the top the stickers gave way to random scraps until they disappeared completely near the ceiling. The contents of those were to remain forever a mystery. Fortunately Ralph had no use for them now.
He pulled out one of the lower drawers and shuddered at the sight of the files massed tightly together. He dragged the drawer to the little table in the corner and started taking out the files. He briefly thumbed through the stapled sheaves and put them aside, file after file, until he was satisfied that this drawer did not contain what he was looking for. He replaced it and pulled out another. Then another. The stack of files that he wasn’t able to stuff back in their drawers was growing, and Ralph hoped that at some point he was going to stumble on a half-empty one and dump them all in there, so as not to leave behind on the table a pile of paper.
At some point he looked up momentarily and noticed that the night guard was now sitting in the chair between the stacks. The guard, under his customary uniform cap with a green bill, looked asleep, but was in fact watching him closely.
“I wasn’t going to smoke here, if you came to warn me about that,” Ralph said.
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