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but it wouldn't be safe - for either of us.
6
The tutor with an access card
How on earth did you track me down? Police files? I wasn’t actually
involved. I mean I didn’t know if he was Young Feller or Conrad or
whatever. It just seemed peculiar and I reported it; it didn’t even get
into the papers.
Here was I, just out of university then — honours, mind you, and
post-graduate courses but no hope of a job — scraping a crust by
coaching kids whose purblind parents thought education would help
them in a world run on opportunism and cunning.
And this boy came in.
He seemed about fifteen or sixteen — you know, gangly and not
quite shaped yet, but pretty big. He had these extraordinary eyes. Not
hypnotic or nonsense like that, but patient. He was only a kid but I felt
as though I was the teenager and he was putting up with me because
he knew I was doing my best. Frankly, I hated him, but if he had
money, I needed it. To hell with pride.
Anyway, he loomed up to my desk and said, ‘I want to learn biotopology.’Just like that! As if I could teach it!
So I asked him how much biology he had done, and he said the
most curious thing: that there were no biology books in his school --
And that, if only you knew it, was how I found you. From the start I knew
about the absence of bio texts; that was one advantage of having a knowing
Dad. So it was patent that this would be the knowledge sought. The rest was
legwork - and an old library record of bizarre quantities of bio texts and tapes
credited to one Access Card in a very short period. QED!
— and when I asked what sort of school that was, he put on his
patient look and asked again could I teach him. O f course I couldn’t;
I didn’t have the laboratory access to teach even simple biology. As for
Bio-top! I knew it. dealt with inter-gene structuring but it was for
computer experts, not struggling tutors.
He heard me out and retired behind his eyes for a bout of thinking,
as if I wasn’t there. I had to speak, just for the comfort of a familiar
sound, so I asked him how old he was.
Without even coming back from wherever, he said, as though a part
of his mind tossed it off without interfering with other activity, ‘Somewhere between twenty and three hundred.’
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George Turner
If you think that didn’t shut me up!
After a while he said, ‘No laboratory work; diagrams and photographs will do. A syllabus of reading. From elementary to the most advanced theoretical.’
It was impossible; I mean, nobody could learn an entire discipline
that way. But I was charging for my time so I explained that he would
need hours each day of expensive terminal time, hard-copy library
access, magazine subscriptions and a lot of data-crosslink search programs in the later stages. It would cost a fortune.
‘I can get what money is needed. Write it all down.’
And so help me, I did. ‘B u t’ I told him, ‘you will need a Library
Access Card.’
‘Get me one.’
‘It must be recommended by your sponsoring school.’
He thought for perhaps a second — retired and returned in a blink.
‘Have you such a card?’
‘O f course.’
‘Sell it to me.’
‘Oh, no! My living depends on up-to-date access.’
He counted out a thousand dollars and laid them on my desk.
‘Sufficient?’
‘No. You can’t buy my means of livelihood.’
He glanced at the list of requirements, put it in his pocket, stood up,
said, ‘You may keep the money,’ and left.
It took me about two flabbergasted hours to connect him with the
news story about a runaway from Project IQ. Nine day wonder, you
know; soon forgotten. So I called the police and they came round and
gave me absolute quiz-show hell for hours. Then they said, ‘Thank you
so much and keep your bloody mouth shut so he won’t know we’re on
his track,’ and that was all.
They never did catch him, but I guess that a real genius wouldn’t
have much trouble keeping a jum p ahead of them.
I didn’t mention the thousand dollars. Why should I? But I wonder
where he got it.
From the news reports, he got it by being the fastest mugger that ever
knocked off thirty/forty marks in one night. They never saw him and he never
hurt them. He was kind to animals that didn’t bite.
That isn’t all. Two days later I was robbed in the street. Not
mugged, just touched in passing. All that was taken was my Library
On the nursery floor
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Access Card.
Later that day I found it lying on my desk. It had been copied, I was
sure. The same night my Credit Survey showed a huge Library Access
account and I nearly had a fit at what he was doing to me. In the
morning, while I was dithering about going to the police again, a
packet of money was delivered by Courier Service, exactly twice the
amount of the Access bill. So I forgot the police. Wouldn’t you have?
This went on for two months — a tremendous account each night
and double payment in the morning. Then it stopped.
He must have found the job too big and given it away. I never saw
him or heard of him
