Stupid. He should have known better.
The woman drew out a tablet and began typing, brow furrowed. The man who had first greeted Noam swiped at his holoreader with a frown on his face. The black-haired colonel was bland and utterly unreadable.
Lehrer just sat there, chin resting on the heel of his hand, watching Noam.
The silence was relentless, broken only by the obnoxious click of the woman’s overlong nails on her screen. Probably typing about just how fucking useless Noam would be in Level IV, considering he couldn’t do shit.
“Do that again.”
The typing stopped. The older man froze as well, pen in hand. All looked to Lehrer, who had straightened in his seat, leaning slightly toward Noam. His voice was sharper than before. This was not the calm and collected man Noam had seen on television or even the mild one he’d met in person.
Noam faltered, hands curling into fists.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said after a long pause. “I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t do anything.”
Lehrer made a dismissive gesture. “No. You did something. I felt it. I want you to do it again. What was that just a few seconds ago, right before I spoke?”
“Nothing,” Noam said incredulously, shaking his head and forcing himself to flex his fingers. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“I was imagining what she was writing.” He nodded toward the woman.
Lehrer’s brows flicked up. “What did you imagine? Verbatim, please.”
“Despite negative antibody staining present at very low dilution, one in two, prospect shows no signs of useful magical skill or ability. Do not recommend for officer candidacy.”
From the moment Noam started speaking until the last bizarrely specific word dropped out of his mouth, as naturally as if he’d been reading off a sheet of paper, it felt as though his heart stopped beating. Lehrer watched him the entire time, perfectly unruffled. And when Noam was done, the woman slid her tablet across the desk for Lehrer to see. He peered at the screen, scrolled down a few lines, then glanced up.
“Exactly correct,” he said. He sounded pleased but not surprised.
“Telepathy?” the woman said, aghast and staring at Lehrer with wide eyes. “What are the odds, after—”
Lehrer shook his head. “Technopathy, unless I miss my guess. Equally rare, as presenting powers go. I don’t think I’ve ever met a presenting technopath before.” He was still smiling, the expression small and oddly private, like it was meant for Noam alone.
“I seem to recall from your file that you have a lot of experience with computers,” the older man said, finally showing some interest in Noam now that he was useful.
“One of my jobs is at a computer repair shop, and I do some programming on my own time.” No doubt that file was full of all the felonious details.
Which, it seemed, they were all polite enough to ignore.
Well. Polite.
“And yet,” the man continued, tapping at his holoreader without looking up to actually meet Noam’s eye, “you never graduated from the eighth grade. Is there a reason for that?”
Noam’s mouth twisted. “Sure, there’s a reason.”
“Your mother’s suicide?” the woman said archly. Noam nodded. “Were you suffering from depression yourself?”
“No.” At the disapproving looks his tone received, Noam revised, softening his voice as best he could: “No. My father was sick. I left school so I could work to support us. It’s not uncommon. At least, not where I grew up.”
“Perhaps not.” The black-haired man was as cool and crisp as crushed ice. “But it is quite uncommon for Level IV. You may not be aware, given your limited education, but magic requires specific knowledge in order to be used. To move a ball across the room without touching it, one must have some understanding of physics. To deflect a tornado from hitting the city, one must know meteorology.”
“I know that,” Noam snapped. “I’m not a total idiot.”
“Then you also know you can’t attend the same classes as the other students without passing a placement exam. Without knowledge, magic is useless. We expect our Level IV students to develop abilities beyond their presenting powers, but you’ll never amount to anything more than a technopath.”
Abilities beyond his presenting power?
Noam knew that was possible; of course he did—no matter what these people seemed to think, he’d cracked open a book a time or two. But if being a witching was rare, and being a technopath rarer still, having more than one ability was . . .
Noam had never met someone like that.
Only that wasn’t true, was it? He glanced at Lehrer, whose unreadable smile lingered.
“I can learn,” Noam said, staring back at Lehrer. “I don’t need to go to the shitty Ninth Street public school and sit in a tiny overheated classroom with three hundred other students to figure that two plus two equals four; I can read pretty well on my own. Let me take the test.”
The adults exchanged glances. Most looked to Lehrer for their cues. For one reeling moment, Noam was certain he was about to get thrown out on his ass, but Lehrer’s expression remained unchanged.
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t let him try,” the woman said.
Could Noam sense a change when she shut off her holoreader—as the electrical cells stopped spitting data back and forth and went to sleep? Or was he only imagining it?
“He can take the exam this afternoon while the others are in class,” she continued. “We’d be fools to pass on a low-antibody technopath just because he comes from a spotty background.”
Noam wasn’t sure he liked being discussed as a business acquisition much more than he liked being looked down upon for his parents’ nationality, but this time he kept his mouth shut. There was probably some cosmic quota for the amount of sass you could get away with in one day, and Noam wouldn’t be surprised if that cold black-haired man was keeping score.
“Why not?” the older man agreed after a moment. He looked to his left. “Ivar?”
The colonel sighed and arched a brow, which the others seemed to take as sufficient response.
“Excellent. Mr. Álvaro, you’ll return to the barracks in the meantime. Colonel Swensson will be along later in the afternoon with your exam materials, and then we’ll see about where to put you.”
A dismissal, even if it wasn’t phrased that way. Noam fought the urge to bow or salute and instead simply inclined his head in their direction. Mostly for Lehrer’s benefit. Lehrer was the only one who had stood up for him, after all.
Upstairs, everyone was still out for classes, the barracks empty except for the paper shuffling Noam could hear from Dr. Howard’s office. He found a few basic textbooks gathering dust in the corner of one of the bookshelves and tried to learn at least a thing or two about physics.
Turned out, learning physics required a little bit more than knowing how to read. Growing up in a bookstore, surrounded by the classics, by everything he’d ever want to learn about the British Empire, books upon books written in dozens of languages, didn’t begin to lend him the kind of knowledge he’d need to answer a question about organic chemistry. Who cared that Noam read fluent Russian or that he could hack his way into the housing association’s servers in less than six minutes? The only thing he remembered from science class was that the cell membrane was a lipid bilayer. Helpful.
Maybe, Noam thought when two o’clock rolled around, maybe he could use the time set aside for the exam to try to access test records and change his score to reflect a passing grade. He’d never tried cracking a government firewall before, but if he really was a technopath, he could probably figure it out. Right?
But when Colonel Swensson arrived, he carried a folder filled with printed paper and a black pen. Analog. The sardonic look he gave Noam as he slid the exam packet onto the kitchen table suggested he knew what Noam had been planning—knew and thought less of him for it.
“You have three hours,” Swen
sson said and sat himself down just across from Noam. Presumably to make sure he didn’t find some other way to cheat.
Don’t panic, Noam ordered himself as he finally reached for the pen and wrote his name in block letters on the first page. It’s fine. It’s just critical thinking. You can do this.
But it wasn’t, and he couldn’t. The questions weren’t logic based; they were factual, designed to appeal to someone skilled in rote memorization. Whether Noam was or wasn’t that kind of person was irrelevant since he’d never memorized the right things. Despair had settled like a black rock in his gut by the time Swensson’s stopwatch went off, and he passed the exam materials back.
“Dr. Howard will let you know your results either way,” Swensson said, his cool gaze traversing Noam’s face. “Therefore I’m sure we won’t meet again.”
I’m still a witching, Noam reminded himself once Swensson was gone, lying on the plush sofa with an arm flung over his eyes to block out the window light. He could do magic. He’d done it in that room, even. If he didn’t pass this test—although he didn’t pass this test—he’d still have a place in the military, even if just as an enlisted soldier.
Not that he’d ever go to Charleston. The whole point of signing up for Level IV was that it brought him close to Lehrer—and, by extension, to Sacha. If he wasn’t here, in the government complex, then fuck it. Noam would take his power and go rogue, figure out some way to use technopathy to erase every piece of data on the government servers.
Great plan.
Noam swung his legs off the sofa and crossed back into the kitchen to grab Invitation to a Beheading off the table. He carried the book over to the chair by the window, setting it open facedown on the armrest, as if he’d abandoned the book midway through reading. He hoped this Dara, whoever he was, had a conniption.
As Swensson promised, Dr. Howard found him a few hours later, after Noam had raided the fridge for expensive-looking snack items but before he’d chosen a new book from the broad library collection. He spun around a bit guiltily when she said his name, even though he’d technically done nothing wrong.
“I failed, didn’t I?” Noam said, deciding to preempt the soft breaking-of-the-news he could tell Howard was working herself up for. “It’s all right. I figured.”
“I’m sorry,” Howard said. She genuinely did seem sorry.
Noam’s heart felt strange, like it was being crushed in a giant fist. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. “Cool. Guess I don’t need to pack.” It wasn’t like he owned anything. “Mind if I keep the toothbrush?”
“You’ll stay here,” Howard told him, perfectly matter-of-fact. “You failed the exam, but Minister Lehrer has offered to personally oversee your remedial education until such a point as you can join your peers in regular course work.”
What? “What?”
Howard repeated herself, the words the same as before. Lehrer had offered to tutor him. Defense Minister Lehrer, socialist revolutionary hero of the catastrophe, was going to teach Noam algebra? It was the most ridiculous thing Noam had ever heard. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, clenching them tight, as if he could cast off the insanity of the situation and see things more clearly. But when he opened them again, nothing had changed.
“I don’t understand,” he said, and goddamn it, his voice was quivering. “Why? Why would he bother?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. He’s a very busy man. But then again, he finds time to give private lessons to Mr. Shirazi as well. Perhaps he sees you as an investment.”
Noam frowned.
Interesting. So, Calix Lehrer had a good use for technopathy, did he?
What was he planning? And more importantly, was Noam smart enough to stay one step ahead of him?
“Okay,” Noam said. “But tell him if I’m doing this, I want a new computer. And I want to be allowed to keep my job at the corner store and to keep volunteering at the Migrant Center.”
Noam wouldn’t be one of those assholes who turned his back on where he came from. Besides, if Lehrer wanted Noam here badly enough to give him private tutoring, he’d agree. And if he agreed, that in itself would be useful data.
Howard gave him an arch look. “Tell him yourself. You start lessons tomorrow after lunch.”
In the archives of the Carolinian Ministry of the Interior: a documentary, never broadcast
FADE IN:
INT. CAROLINIAN NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM – DAY
Focus on an exhibit displaying instruments of torture used in US witching research programs during the catastrophe.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
By 2011, over two million witchings had already died at the hands of the US government. Dr. Granley is a history professor at Duke University and a world-renowned expert on the catastrophe.
INT. DR. GRANLEY’S OFFICE
DR. GRANLEY
Especially powerful witchings—usually those with multiple abilities or unusual presenting powers—were enrolled in massive federal experiments designed to understand how witchings attain new powers, with a secondary goal of developing a vaccine against magic. The . . . the sheer sadism of these experiments cannot be understated.
INSERT – PHOTOGRAPH OF ST. GEORGE’S HOSPITAL
NARRATOR (V.O.)
One such hospital is famous, not only for particularly extreme cruelty but because of the famous witching who survived it.
In 2015, four years after the US began rounding up witchings for extermination or experimentation, Adalwolf Lehrer’s militia liberated the witching patients of St. George’s Hospital near the historical town of Asheville, North Carolina.
INSERT – PHOTOGRAPH OF ADALWOLF LEHRER AND HIS MILITIA, VICTORIOUS AFTER THE BATTLE FOR S. CAROLINA
NARRATOR (V.O.)
Of the patients they saved, only one ultimately survived: Adalwolf’s own brother, the future king of Carolinia, sixteen-year-old Calix Lehrer.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I’m glad you’re staying,” Bethany declared over dinner that evening, with the decisive tone of someone who’d considered her thoughts on the matter carefully. “We need new blood.”
“Aw, sick of us already?” said Ames, smirking.
“I grew up with all y’all since I was eight. Of course I’m sick of you.”
Taye snorted.
Ames popped a hush puppy into her mouth. “Nah, you love me, B. You know it, I know it, even the new kid knows it. I’m lovable.”
“Since you were eight?” Noam interrupted before Ames could keep going—and she looked like she wanted to. “How young do people usually start?”
“I was nine,” Taye said helpfully. He wasn’t eating a proper dinner, just picking the red pieces from a bag of sour candies. He’d accumulated quite the pile next to his lukewarm potatoes.
“Seven,” said Ames.
Seven. No wonder none of them thought Noam belonged here. They’d spent their formative years studying Rousseau and physics; Noam had spent his taking shifts at the corner store.
He abandoned his dinner, propping his elbows up on the table and clasping his hands in front of his mouth.
Why was Lehrer letting him stay?
It was all well and good to talk about antibody levels and “dynamics,” but Swensson was right. Noam couldn’t learn additional powers. Not quickly, at least. He was little use to Carolinia as a soldier either, considering his record for undermining legal authority. Was technopathy just that good?
Of course, working for Lehrer wasn’t the same thing as working for Sacha. There’d been a big scandal in all the papers a couple years back, right after Sacha’d been elected. The two loathed each other, or so the gossip went. Lehrer thought Sacha too capitalistic, too eager to build Carolinia’s economy at the expense of the working class, that the only thing Sacha cared about was making peace with the notoriously antiwitching Texas and Britain. And Sacha kept trying to push through all these reforms: health care, pensions, lower taxes . . .
So Lehrer had threatened to step down as min
ister of defense.
Whatever Sacha thought of Lehrer personally, he’d backed off right quick after that. No one wanted to be the chancellor who made Calix Lehrer resign.
“I suppose Lehrer must think I can catch up,” he mused aloud. “Otherwise he wouldn’t tutor me.”
That got their attention.
“Lehrer’s tutoring you?” Taye asked through a mouthful of candy; he’d moved on from picking through his sweets to devouring them.
“You are talking about Minister Lehrer, right?” Ames said dryly.
Noam shrugged. Taye and Ames exchanged looks. Taye lifted an eyebrow, and Ames shook her head ever so slightly.
Bethany set down her fork. “I guess that means you’ll be sharing lessons with Dara. I can’t imagine Lehrer has time to teach both of you separately.”
Right. The mysterious Dara.
“I suppose. Howard said Dara’s getting tutoring from Lehrer too.”
At least Noam wasn’t the only one so far behind.
Taye waved a dismissive hand. “Dara’s a special case. He’s top of our class. Lehrer raised him since he was four.”
Oh.
“Yeah, I heard he’s a prodigy,” Ames said, and both she and Taye snickered at some indiscernible inside joke. Even Bethany smiled.
Noam sat in silence, at the same table as the rest yet not there at all.
He wished he had an excuse to get up and go back to the bedroom. Maybe sit on the floor of the shower and pretend for a while that he was back home in the bookstore. That any second now a neighbor would rap at the door, demanding he hurry up. That his father waited back in their apartment, gazing out the window across his city.
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