it’s harder when you’re stupid)

Suddenly his mind was a fugue.

He heard Rachel: But he won’t be the same person.

Then another voice: Maybe not, but he’s not the same person he was with pigeontoes. He’s better, more capable. Look how high he was when he slid home yesterday. Imagine his ego growing up without a mental handicap.

And Rachel again: What about accepting him as he is?

Not if we can do better for him.

But what if he loses his interest in music and sports? Or if his personality changes?

Not going to happen. Malenko said so. Look at Lucinda. Look at all the nameless enhanced kids in Harvard at fifteen. Look at this kid on the screen. Calm, cool, collected. Brilliant.

Martin glanced at Dylan lying on the couch, his eyes drooping. He hated that mushroom haircut. It made him look like a young Bluto. But it was what all the kids on the team sported. And Dylan wanted to be like them.

We can change that for him. A chance of lifetime.

It was time for the million-dollar question. Philbin and the audience were charged. Lincoln Cady looked as if he might start yawning. The kid was remarkably impressive. Cool incandescence.

“Okay, here goes. For one million dollars.”

The screen lit up with the question and the four choices: “What 1959 novella was the basis for the 1968 movie Charly?”

The four answers given were: (a) Odd Man Out, (b) A Case of Conscience, (c) Flowers for Algernon, (d) The Duplicated Man.

Cady nodded as he scanned the answers. He hesitated as the music played up the tension. Then, after several seconds, he said: “The answer is (c) Flowers for Algernon. Final answer.”

Regis Philbin looked teasingly at the camera then back to Cady. Then he beamed: “You just won yourself one million dollars.”

And the audience went wild. Lincoln Cady smiled thinly and shook Philbin’s hand as the applause continued and confetti rained down on the set.

Dylan had slept through the whole drama.

Martin muted the set and dialed Rachel on her cell phone. She answered on the third ring. “Did you see the show?”

“Some of it. The nurses had it on. And in case you’re interested, my mother’s doing fine.”

“Great. Give her my love. Jack, too. So, what did you think? I mean the kid—Lincoln Cady. Is he a whiz, or what? I mean, talk about photographic memory.”

“He was very impressive,” Rachel said.

“Impressive? That doesn’t come close.” Her lack of enthusiasm was so typical.

“He also looked as if someone had shot him with a tranquilizer dart.”

“What does that mean?” Martin couldn’t disguise his defensiveness.

“Just what I said. He looked stiff, robotic.”

She was purposely downplaying a spectacular performance, and Martin was getting more irritated by the second. “How about it was just cool confidence. I mean, the kid’s a genius.”

“Martin, can we change the subject, please?”

Christ! he thought.

“Because she’s doing so well, I’ll probably be coming home Tuesday. How’s Dylan?”

“He’s fine.” There was a pause. “Rachel, you’re aware that Dr. Malenko has got to know pretty soon.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “We’ll talk about it when I get back.”

“Well, I’m just saying. He’s pressed for time.”

“Look, stop pressuring me. This isn’t something I’m going to rush into.”

“We’ve been thinking about it for weeks. I mean, how much more time do we need?”

Her voice tightened. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. I’ve got enough on my mind.”

Shit! “Well, think fast because he’s leaving the country in a couple weeks.”

He looked across the room at the sleeping figure of his son. It struck Martin just how much he looked like him when he was young. In fact, he could have passed for seven-year-old Martin on a pony in the photograph sitting on the fireplace mantel.

“Then if we do it, it’ll have to be when he gets back.”

Martin did not say anything more about it.

According to Malenko there would be a three-to-four-week recovery period, which meant that if they waited too long, Dylan would miss the first weeks of school in the fall. But if they did it soon, he could stabilize and miss nothing. Then over the next few months, he would begin to show signs of improved cognition. It would be subtle and progressive, which meant that by next year at this time, Dylan would have begun to plateau. Then by the fall of that year, they could enroll him in a different school where nobody would know his academic history, which, in this state, was confidential—a fancy private school whose entrance exam he’d ace. Not like what he did on the Beaver Hill qualifiers.

As Malenko had said, he would by then have grown into his own new mind.

And what happens when he’s suddenly brilliant and Uncle Jack, Aunt Alice, and Granny come to visit? How are you going explain the fact that Dylan’s a little whip? How he’s reading Dr. Seuss on his own when just last year he couldn’t get through the alphabet? Whatcha gonna tell them, huh? That his new tutor is something else? Or that the school he’s attending has some great new breakthrough strategies on learning? Or that they put him on an all-ginkgo biloba diet?

None of that.

Well, you see, we found out about this secret little brain operation that jacks up IQs?

Not that either, because Dylan was still young. And because Jack and Aunt Alice and Granny knew little about his cognitive status. Rachel had mentioned how Dylan hadn’t passed the Beaver Hill entrance exams, but she hadn’t gone into detail. She had not told anyone his IQ. It wasn’t anybody else’s business, even family. So all they knew was that Dylan was a sweet, handsome little boy who hit a mean T-ball and who sang like a bird. Sure, he had some language problems, but many kids do. And he just grew out of them like millions of other slow starters, that’s all. Like his old man, for instance.

After they hung up, Martin walked over to the couch and looked at his sleeping son for a long moment. Even his profile resembled Martin’s. Like father, like son.

Yep, just grew into his own mind.

52

It was almost too easy how Greg found the Nova Children’s Center.

He got the name from information and discovered that it was located in Myrtle, Massachusetts, just twenty minutes northwest of Hawthorne.

Around noon on Monday, he drove to the place, which was a grand old Gothic Revival building with turrets, a dunce-cap roof, and fish-scale slate shingles. He wouldn’t have known that from Disney, except that Lindsay had been interested in architecture.

He went inside, uncertain what he was looking for, uncertain if he was pursuing a bona fide lead or more white rabbits. His only certainty was his suspension if Lieutenant Gelford learned he was here. And that was the reason he didn’t contact the local police. If he asked the investigator on the Watts case to keep their exchange quiet, that would make the officer suspicious of Greg’s credibility.

The receptionist said the person to speak to was Dr. Denise Samson. However, she wouldn’t be back until after lunch, about one. That was cutting it close, since it would take him almost two hours to get back to the office,

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