“Okay. I can make it all better. Here. Swallow this—”
Norridge tapped a key, and the sound vanished. “Do you see?”
Cooper said, “You have the whole place bugged?”
“That was our solution for the first years. However, in a facility of this size, and given the outdoor spaces, the rough play, it’s impossible to assure coverage. Now we have a better way.” Norridge paused, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips.
Why would that be? What would make the man so pleased with himself?
“It’s not the school you wire,” Cooper said slowly. “It’s the children. Somehow you’re bugging the children.”
The director beamed. “Very good. When subjects enter an academy, Davis or any other, they are given a thorough physical examination. This includes inoculation against hepatitis, PCV, chicken pox. One of those shots implants a biometric device. It’s a dazzling piece of work, recording not only physiological statistics—temperature, white blood cell levels, and so forth—but also relaying an audio broadcast to receivers placed all over the school. It’s quite something. Advanced nano-technology, powered by the child’s own biological processes.”
Cooper felt dizzy. His job didn’t really entail any overlap with the academies, and so while there had always been rumors about them, he hadn’t really imagined they might be true. Yeah, every few years some journalist tried to write an exposé on the places, but they were never granted access, so he’d chalked up the more outrageous claims to sensationalism. After all, there were rumors about Equitable Services, too.
His first taste of the reality had come on his way in, when he’d passed a group of protesters on the road. Demonstrations had become a fact of everyday life, part of the background that people didn’t really notice anymore. There was always someone protesting something. Who could keep up?
But this group had been different. Maybe it was the size of the police response. Or that cops were arresting people rather than just containing them. Or maybe it was the protesters themselves, sane-looking people in decent clothes rather than shaved-headed radicals. One in particular had caught his eye, a woman with pale, slack hair who looked as if she might once have been lovely but now was shrouded in sadness; sadness draped her shoulders, sadness hugged her chest. She held a placard, two pieces of poster board stapled across a wooden handle. The sign bore a blown-up photo of a grinning child with her cheekbones and the markered text, I MISS MY SON.
As two cops closed in on her, she’d locked eyes with Cooper through the windshield and made a tiny gesture with the sign, just raised it an inch. Visually underlining it. A plea, not a screech. But with his eyes, he could see the turmoil beneath.
“Who’s the boy?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The boy who got beaten. What’s his name?”
“I know them mostly by transponder number. His name is…” Norridge clicked at the keyboard. “William Smith.”
“Another Smith. John Smith is the reason I’m here.”
“There are many John Smiths.”
“You know the one I mean.”
“Yes. Well. He was before my time.” Norridge coughed, looked away, looked back. “We’ve thought about discontinuing use of the name, but that seemed a victory for terrorism. Anyway, I’m afraid there’s no relation between this one and the one you’re looking for. We reassign all of the children’s names when they arrive. Every boy here is Thomas, John, Robert, Michael, or William. Every girl is Mary, Patricia, Linda, Barbara, or Elizabeth. It’s part of their indoctrination. Once a child is admitted to an academy, they remain here until they graduate at eighteen. For our work, we find it’s best that they not be distracted by thoughts of the past.”