“Why not, Scary Sherry?” said Art Wawo. “Because they’ll getcha? How come Hilter and Bwahngo and Ace Chang’s ghosts never came back to get anyone, then?”
“I’ll bet it isn’t even true, Master Cunny Roberts,” Microphone went on. “I’ll bet he just dropped dead of a heart attack and you fantasy-perceived him in the pool and all that gunk about how he looked and—”
“I’m not a fancier!” Cunningham shouted, jumping up to face her. “I’m a reality perceiver and I know what I found in the ’natorium—”
That was when Princeps Cage came in and the 08:00:00 bell started chiming. Everybody else plunked down in their consoles right away. For a second Cunningham just stood there like a dummy. Then he started to sit, but the princeps had already got a good look at him.
“Just one moment ...” Princeps Cage adjusted his glasses, ruffled through the printout sheets in his hand, found one and glanced back and forth between it and the consoles. “Cunningham. So that’s you, eh? You’ve received your directive to report for disciplinary action?”
A couple of kids snickered. A lot of them had known about the bet anyway, even before M. Sapperfield got mixed up in it.
“Uh, no, sir,” Cunningham confessed.
The princeps frowned at him. “Are you trying to make sport of me, Cunningham?”
“No—no, sir.”
“Well, you have your directive directly from me. Report to my sanctum today immediately after school. Directly from your last session. Do not pass ‘Go.’ Meanwhile, we will not discuss what you found in the aquanatorium.” He looked around at the homeroom students, all sixteen of them in their half-circle of consoles below the professor’s carpeted platform. “Death is a very private matter. Even more private than most matters of life. The dead can no longer choose for themselves whether they will allow other human beings to share their privacy or not. So we must always assume their wish for privacy, and honor it as far as humanly possible. How the late M. Sapperfield, uh, passed on is not for us to discuss or even think about here. I trust that anyone in this room who has started rumors or in any way brought up the subject—” He frowned at Cunningham again—”will not do so again. You of the late M. Sapperfield’s own homeroom have an especially heavy responsibility, and it will be for you to blank any rumors you may hear in the rest of the school, and choke all questions any fellow scholars with ... more curiosity than courtesy may try to ask you. Very well, Cunningham, you may sit.”
Cunningham sat, feeling miserable. There was supposed to be a detention cell beneath the princeps’ sanctum, for very bad kids. A lot of kids who said they’d seen it were fanciers, and a lot of big kids, seniors and postgrads, were probably making up stories to scare froshies and sophs, but even subtracting all that, there had to be something fierce behind the stories.
And then, he knew he shouldn’t have talked about finding M. Sapperfield like that. Mom had reminded him again, just before letting him out at the footwalk across the school lawn, that it was something to talk about only at home or with a grownup counselor in private. He didn’t think Senior Sergeant Lestrade would like his loosemouthing it, either. But when he came into Homeroom Six and saw Big D and Microphone and a bunch of the other kids laughing about the notice on the announcement screen—”M. Sapperfield deceased Friday night. Homeroom Six will greet Princeps Cage and resource guest this morning. Prepare to debate Reality Perception vs. Fantasy Perception”—just that much, nothing else, and them standing there cracking jokes that it was about time, snapping rubber bands at a cartoon someone (probably Eric Disney) had etched on the lightscreen of M. Sapperfield stepping on that doggone cobra ...
Maybe it had seemed like, if Cunningham told them about it, if they knew how M. Sapperfield looked, if they could get the picture what it must be like to get caught beneath the pool cover that way, maybe they’d stop making fun of him.
Most of them had, but no one tabbed the button to blank the lightscreen till Harry Wentosa gave a false alarm that the princeps was coming. Cunningham hoped he just gave the false alarm so they would blank that stupid cartoon.
Or maybe he’d just told them about it to show off. Creamy way to show off, when he hadn’t even won the bet. Big D probably thought he was trying to squelsh out of paying up for not making it through all night. In fact, he had the three tridols in his pocket right now. He just didn’t feel like handing it over when Wally the D was saying things like, “About time somebody did Old Stickysap in.”
If he passed the money during homeroom, Princeps Cage would confiscate it. That way, Big D wouldn’t get it but Cunningham would be in the clear about paying. No, that was still a cheat. He’d give it to the D later, look him straight in the eye while he handed it over, and say, “Bet you murdered him yourself, Big D. Think I’d better tell the pollies.” Of course he wouldn’t, but it might scare Wally Dutois for a while, anyway. “I bet that’s why you dared me to camp out in the school plant overnight, isn’t it, Big D?” he’d say. “So you could frame me, huh? Yeah, I bet you just knocked him in and tabbed the button ...”
His thoughts were getting too ugly. He tried to clamp them off the way Woodstock taught him to handle bad vibes. Too late. He was flashing back to Friday night at the poolside, alone in the big, empty building with Old Stickysap ... For a minute, he’s forgotten it was real himself, he’d started making a game out of it, just like Wally and the Microphone. What a kids’ trick, what a fancy-class trick.
What would Mom say if he ever played a dumb trick like fudging Wally that way? Or Woodstock—what’d he say? His father was a fancier, but no snitch. Or Senior Sergeant Lestrade? She’d never play a mean trick like that, not even to make a suspect sing. Maybe her sidekick would, but she wouldn’t.
Chapter 12
Lestrade and Click spent most of the period from 08:00 to 08:55 in the school’s computer lab. In Click’s words, it had been a waste of sleeping time to come so early. Homeroom classes turned out to be sacrosanct at Owlsfane Garber, as the princeps’ aide and hall monitors reminded them: not to be disrupted for anything less urgent than sudden sickness or natural disaster.
That made everyone on Lestrade’s two lists—the anonymous tipsheet and her own candidates for M. Informer—unavailable for immediate interviewing. Swanneck and Tintorelli had their own homerooms to teach (“to moderate” it was called at Owlsfane Garber), and Wallace Dutois was in Homeroom Six, along with Cunningham and Sheryl Hawthorne. Cunningham’s friend “Badger” Badderley was in Homeroom Three. Mandra Lotus was absent. Pinesweep did not report to the school plant until 11:00. The senior sergeant was not sorry to have had a few minutes with Princeps Cage, but she hadn’t counted on his taking over Sapperfield’s homeroom. It was the kind of short-term executive decision that executives were not always conscientious about logging.
Click had suggested they use the hour for home visits to Cunningham’s family out in Novoposhni Restates, the Greene Bungalow on the north side, M. Paolo Pinesweep in his residence, any or all of the above. Lestrade wasn’t sure whether he was half joking or half serious. For an 09:30 riser by preference, he had his share of early morning energy. But by about 08:45 there should be a chance at Esther Rivers, the girls’ swimming coach, before her aquanatorium class. So after a study of the school floor plan, they each chose a terminal in the computer lab and settled down for half an hour.
First Lestrade checked on Mandra’s absence. It was based on a parental excuse of sickness, correctly entered as per school guiderules, but the policewoman had trouble picturing Mrs. Abigail Greene as a computer literate. Maybe Mandra herself, or her older sister Virginia, had entered the words and typeface signature, leaving their mother to supply only the thumbprint. Funny that a household like that used a mother’s excuse in preference to a father’s. Mrs. Greene wasn’t on record as widowed or separated, and yesterday she had referred to “Art” as a potential cause for current concern.
Next the policewoman
locked her terminal into closed mode and doodled with private notes and plans of attack. For all she knew, her junior partner could be back with the Tibbald Narcine affair or some other case. Maybe not even police work. If he wanted to kill the wait with one of his hobbies, that was his conscience. As if it wasn’t enough to be in the all but vanished minority who still worked an official forty-hour week (even if the stress-hour factor sometimes halved the clock record), pollies put in more than their share of unacknowledged overtime.
Suddenly Click chuckled. “Come around and take a look at this, Les. I’ve searched up something here that should make your day.”
She came around and stared at his collation of lines from Names and Prints records. Virginia Wang Greene, her birthdate, fingerprints, dates of choosing provisional first and final names, registered perception persuasion “R,” parents’ names and prints. And Mandra Wang Lotus, ditto except for perception persuasion which she was underage to change legally from “F.” Arthur Wang Greene, their father, ditto information, “R.” And the Metterkranz filing on Arthur Wang Greene’s prints.
“The name’s right but the prints are wrong,” Lestrade observed. Whoever had registered his name and prints as Arthur Wang Greene and fathered Virginia was not the man who was on record as Mandra’s father, under the same name but with a different set of fingerprints.
“And here’s the Metterkranz I.D. on Arthur Greene the father of Mandra Lotus.” Click tabbed, and after a nanosecond, three more lines appeared on the screen, identifying one Millard Cleveland Madden, with a string of earlier first and final names and the dates he had changed them. For two years including the time of Mandra’s birth, he had worn the registered name Arthur Wang Greene.
“So our Mrs. Abigail Greene is a doppler,” Lestrade said softly.
“No wonder she was irked to find out you were a fellow female! She’d probably been grooming you for the next Arthur Greene, Les. A few more visits, and her eyes would have remolded you to whatever face and form she saw when she looked at her other Arthur Greenes.”
Lestrade sighed. “In her world, she’s a faithful wife.”
“A regular museum-piece WASP, from what you tell me. How did she ever accept a husband named Wang?”
“She may be in so deep that even a name can come through distorted. She might see and hear it as ‘Lang’ or ‘Lane.’ Anyway, chances are she thinks of Greene as the true family name. And whoever registered Mandra’s father at Names and Prints was too lazy or too genial to check up and insist he register as Arthur Cleveland Greene instead of Arthur Wang Greene.”
“Well,” said Click, “my offer’s off. I’m not interviewing Mrs. Greene alone and risk getting tabbed as the next Arthur Wang-Lane Greene.”
“We’ll go in together. If we have to go back at all. Where does the older sister spend her days?”
Dopplers were strictly forbidden as legal witnesses, almost equally useless in preliminary legwork. And Lestrade doubted that the husband—if there was a regular, fulltime Arthur Greene at present—would be much more help than Mrs. Abigail. That left the two daughters, both juveniles. At least Virginia was old enough to have changed her perceptive persuasion to legal, Standard-tested realizer.
Chapter 13
The resource guest finally came in, and Princeps Cage introduced him—some fancier who’d had some kind of accident and turned into a realizer. Cunningham might have been interested in the accident, but they didn’t tell what happened, only that the guest was trying to recover and meanwhile he was in a great scenic view to appreciate the pros and antis of both conditions. Fanciers weren’t very interesting, except the ones you knew in person and a couple others like Hopalong Autrey Rogers the Singing Cowhand who rode shotgun for Brinks, with a mailbag of old-fashioned paper letters across his saddle, and had a staff of realizers to outfit him and his horses for the part. But anybody who made it from fancier to realizer and then wanted to go back had to be pretty stupid. Some grownups and older kids said Hopalong Rogers was a realizer playing a fancy role for the money, like an actor. Cunningham kind of hoped it was true. Besides, the old Reality Perception vs. Fantasy Perception debate was stale software by the time you got to midschool. At least to kids like Cunningham, who had known which way they were going ever since they were sophomores in primeschool. Kreez! He hated to think about two or three more years of classes like this. So he let his mind wander, the way he always did when the Stale Old Debate went on.
But today he couldn’t think about anything except Friday night at the ’natorium, and tonight in the princeps’ sanctum. He would have etched cartoons on his notecom, except that here in midschool profs could look right down and see your whole console panel, and they got suspicious if you kept your head down and your hands below the paneltop. He was in too much trouble already to risk it. So he sat and tried to look interested, and all he could think about was stuff like,
“Old Sticky once stepped on a cobra ...”
His eyes were wide open, and his face was all ...
“His politeness so tickled the cobra, that it weeps every day on his grave.”
... all bloated and ...
“If they dropped an N-bomb on Owlsfane Garber, then M. Sapperfield would have the whole building to himself. How come? Because N-bombs only kill people.”
I wonder if M. Cage really does have a detention hole with stinging ants beneath the floor in the princeps’ sanctum.
“Block out the one that doesn’t fit: Hitler, Jack the Ripper, Gacy of Chicago, Old Stickysap? Stickysap, because the others are all dead.”
Not any more.
Finally, just to try and choke it off, he focused in on the debate. Somebody must have fed in the argument about fancy-class handicaps, because the guest was saying,
“... I’ve met fanciers living in the medieval world, even in Egypt of the Pharoahs, whose agility at the computer keyboard rivals that of Toka Suyo at the piano. They perceive computers as tools of alchemy or grimoires of arcane knowledge, but their proficiency is nonetheless as sure as if they were reality perceivers. A few fanciers living in speculative future worlds, like Dr. Asimov Clarke, have even been responsible for advances in the computer field. Of course, I must take all this on faith, being a computer illiterate myself. But computer literacy per se is no more a licensing matter than is print literacy. It’s true that one needs a license to drive a car, but any fancier whose world is set from about Nineteen Ten forward can learn the skill and obtain a license almost as easily as can a realizer. I am told that the basic operating principles remain remarkably similar whether the driver perceives the vehicle as internal combustion, battery-powered, or—”
Cunningham jammed his thumb down on his speak-tab.
Princeps Cage frowned and cut off the light-chime at the professor’s control panel. “Cunningham, do you make a habit of interrupting your professors?”
The guest lifted one hand and waved, sort of calming the air. “In this instance, I feel rather rescued than affronted.” He nodded down at the students’ consoles. “Well, M. Cunningham?”
Cunningham’s face felt hot, and now he thought about it, his argument was stupid and he knew better. But he didn’t have anything else ready to say and he had to go ahead and say something now or apologize in front of everyone for a false tabpress. “My father is a fantasy perceiver.” As soon as he spoke up, the guest stopped looking at the circle in general and looked straight at him. Maybe he hadn’t seen which knob lit up. Cunningham stumbled on, “Woodstock lives in the Nineteen Sixties, and he can’t drive a car.”
The guest nodded. “Can’t, or chooses not to? Not everyone drove cars even in the Nineteen Sixties. As well as such utopian groups as the Amish, called by some historians an advance strain of fanciers, there were the New Anachronists, Flower Children, semiphobes, and people who simply chose not to drive for much the same reasons many reality perceivers of today eschew the driver’s controls.”
(Several kids laughed. One said, “Gesundheit.” The guest just smiled, nodded, and went on explaining.) “In fact, a sufficiently motivated fancier whose perceptions are compatible with standard reality in some particular field may obtain a special license for virtually anything that realizers can do. Some politically-minded fanciers even take the adjusted-suffrage test for extra votes, with signal success.”
“But a fancier couldn’t do M. Pinesweep’s work!” Cunningham argued.
“Cunningham!” said the princeps. “Apologize at once for speaking out of form.”
The boy stood, stared at the floor, and mumbled, “I’m sorry, M.” Thinking, he was better off not to pay attention in homeroom classes. He had this speaking-out-of-form habit whenever he got interested. Not even Old Stickysap—M. Sapperfield—had broken him of it.
“I was not offended,” the guest said. “Speaking strictly for myself, of course. Not to question your academic protocol. Who is M. Pinesweep?”
“Our, er, plant maintenance engineer, M. Poe,” the princeps explained.
“Ah! Charged, among other duties, with the balance of your planetarium, terrarium, and ... other miniature ecosystems? Yes, it might not be easy, but I imagine a few borderline fanciers could qualify even for M. Pinesweep’s work.”
Cunningham thought of something else and thumbed his tab before he remembered he was jagging the princeps, which was a very stupid thing to do, especially today. He hoped this time they’d ignore it, but M. Poe nodded again and called his name before M. Cage said anything.
“But fanciers can’t ever be eyewitnesses, can they?”
“As in courts of law?” The guest frowned a little. “Actually, modern courts allow eyewitness testimony from anyone—realizer or fancier—only under certain strict conditions. Eyewitnesses generally play a far smaller role than most people suppose, especially in serious cases.”
“Uh, M. Poe,” said the princeps, “you needn’t, er—”
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 35
