First Meetings Read online

  “I don’t care,” she said, “and I didn’t look up your records.”

  He pointed to his own desk. “I long since installed my own monitoring software in the database. I know whenever my stuff gets accessed, and by whom.”

  “That’s absurd,” she said. “They sweep for viruses on the school system twice a day.”

  “They sweep for known viruses and detectable anomalies,” he said.

  “But you tell your secret to me?”

  “Only because you lied to me,” said the Wiggin boy. “Habitual liars don’t rat each other out.”

  “All right,” she said. Meaning, all right, what’s the lie? But then she tasted her spring roll and said, “All right,” again, this time meaning, Good food, just right.

  “Glad you liked them. I have them cut down on the ginger, which allows the taste of the vegetables to come through. Though of course I dip them in this incredibly robust soy-and-chili-and-mustard sauce, so I have no idea what they actually taste like.”

  “Let me try the sauce,” she said. He was right, it was so good she contemplated pouring some on her salad as dressing. Or just drinking it from the little plastic cup.

  “And in case you wanted to know what part of my records is a lie, I can give you the whole list: Everything. The only true statement in my records is ‘the.’”

  “That’s absurd. Who would do that? What’s the point? Are you some protected witness to a hideous crime?”

  “I wasn’t born in Wisconsin, I was born in Poland. I lived there till I was six. I was only in Racine for two weeks prior to coming here, so if I met anybody from there, I could talk about landmarks and convince them I’d really lived there.”

  “Poland,” she said. And, because of her father’s crusade against the population laws, she couldn’t help but register the fact that it was a noncompliant country.

  “Yep, we’re illegal emigrants from Poland. Slipped past the web of Hegemony guards. Or maybe we should say, sub-legal.”

  To people like that, Hinckley Brown was a hero. “Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I see. This picnic isn’t about me, it’s about my father.”

  “Why, who’s your father?” asked John Paul.

  “Oh, come on, Wiggin, you heard the girl in class this morning. My father is Hinckley Brown.”

  John Paul shrugged as if he’d never heard of him.

  “Come on,” she said. “It was all over the vids last year. My father resigns from the I.F. because of the populations laws, and your family is from Poland. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

  He laughed. “You really are suspicious.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t get Hunan wontons.”

  “Didn’t know if you’d like them. They’re an acquired taste. I wanted to play it safe.”

  “By spreading a picnic on the floor in front of my office door, and throwing away whatever food got cold before I came out? How safe can you get?”

  “Let’s see,” said Wiggin. “Other lies. Oh, my name isn’t Wiggin, it’s Wieczorek. And I have way more than one sib.”

  “Valedictorian?” she said.

  “I would have been, except I persuaded the administration to skip over me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Don’t want any pictures. Don’t want any resentment from other students.”

  “Ah, a recluse. Well, that explains everything.”

  “It doesn’t explain why you were crying in your office,” said the Wiggin boy.

  She reached into her mouth and took out the last bite of spring roll, which she had only just put in. “Sorry I can’t return any of the other used food,” she said. “But you can’t buy my personal life for the price of a few takeout items.” She set the morsel of saliva-covered spring roll on her napkin.

  “You think I didn’t notice what they did to your project?” asked the Wiggin boy. “Firing you from it when it’s your own idea. I’d’ve cried, too.”

  “I’m not fired,” she said.

  “Scuzi, bella dona, but the records don’t lie.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous…” Then she realized that he was grinning.

  “Ha ha,” she said.

  “I don’t want to buy your personal life,” said the Wiggin boy. “I want to learn everything you know about Human Community.”

  “Then come to class. And next time bring the treats there, to share.”

  “The treats,” said the Wiggin boy, “aren’t for sharing. They’re for you.”

  “Why? What do you want from me?”

  “I want to be the one who, when I telephone you, I never make you cry.”

  “At the moment,” she said, “you’re only making me want to scream.”

  “That will pass,” said the Wiggin boy. “Oh, and another lie is my age. I’m really two years older than the records say. They started me in American schools late, because I had to learn English and…there were certain complications about a contract that they asserted I had no intention of fulfilling. But after they gave up, they changed my age so nobody would see how chronologically misplaced I was.

  “They?”

  “The Hegemony,” said the Wiggin boy.

  Only he wasn’t a mere boy, she supposed. A man. John Paul Wiggin. It was wrenching to start thinking of him with a name. Unprofessional. Perilous. “You actually got the Hegemony to give up?”

  “I don’t know that they gave up completely. I think they merely changed goals.”

  “All right, now I’m actually curious.”

  “Instead of being irritated and hungry?”

  “In addition to those.”

  “Curious about what?”

  “What was your quarrel with the Hegemony?”

  “The I.F., actually. They thought I ought to go to Battle School.”

  “They can’t force you to do that.”

  “I know. But as a condition of going to Battle School I got them to move my whole family out of Poland first and set things up so that the sanctions against oversized families didn’t apply to us.”

  “Those sanctions are enforced in America, too.”

  “Yes, if you make a big deal about it,” said John Paul. “Like your father. Like your whole church.”

  “Not my church.”

  “Right, of course, you’re the only person in history who is completely immune to her religious upbringing.”

  She wanted to argue with him, but she knew the science his assertion was based on that showed the impossibility of escaping from the core worldview instilled in children by their parents. Even though she had long since repudiated it, it was still inside her, so that there was a constant argument, her parents’ voices sniping at her, her own inner voice arguing with them. “Even people who just quietly have lots of children get zapped by the law,” she said.

  “My older sibs were set up with relatives. Enough of us were boarded out that there were never more than two children home. We were called nieces and nephews when we ‘visited.’ ”

  “And they still maintained all this for you, even after you refused to go to Battle School?”

  “Sort of,” said John Paul. “They actually made me go to ground school for a while, but I went on strike. And then they talked about sending us all back to Poland or getting sanctions against us here in America.”

  “So why didn’t they?”

  “I had the deal in writing.”

  “Since when has that ever stopped a determined government?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t because the contract was particularly enforceable. It was the fact that it existed at all. I merely threatened to make it public. And they couldn’t deny that they had fiddled with the population laws because here we were, physical evidence that they had made an exception.”

  “Government can make all kinds of inconvenient evidence disappear.”

  “I know,” said John Paul. “Which is why I think they still have an agenda. They couldn’t get me into Battle School, but they let me stay here in America and my whole family, too.
Like the devil in all the old sell-your-soul stories, they’re going to collect sometime.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “I’ll deal with it when their plan emerges. So what about you? Their plan for you is already quite clear.”

  “Not really,” she said. “On the surface, it looks like typical Hegemony behavior—punish the daughter to get the highly visible father to cease his rebellion against the population laws. Unfortunately, my father grew up on the movie ‘A Man for All Seasons’ and he thinks he’s Thomas More. I think it only disappointed him that it was my head they cut off instead of his, professionally speaking.”

  “Only you think there’s more to it than that?”

  “The dean and my committee are still going to give me my degree and have me head the project—I’m just not going to get any credit for it. Well, that’s annoying, yes, but in the long run it’s trivial. Don’t you think?”

  “Maybe they think you’re a careerist like they all are.”

  “But they know my father’s not. They can’t actually think this would make him give in. Or that it would even get me to try to pressure him.”

  “Don’t underestimate the stupidity of the government.”

  “This is wartime,” she said. “An emergency they really believe in. The tolerance for idiots in powerful positions is very low right now. No, I don’t think they’re stupid. I think I don’t understand their plan yet.”

  He nodded. “So we’re both waiting to see what they have in mind.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And you’re going to stay here and head your project.”

  “For now.”

  “Once you start, you won’t let go until you have your results.”

  “Some of the results won’t be in for twenty years.”

  “Longitudinal study?”

  “Observational, really. And in a sense it’s absurd—trying to mathematicize history. But I’ve set up the criteria for measuring the key components of long-lived civil societies, and the triggers that collapse a civil society back into tribalism. Is it possible for a civitas to last forever? Or is breakdown an inevitable product of a successful civil society? Or is there a hunger for the tribe that always works its way to the surface? Right now it doesn’t look good for the human race. My preliminary assessment shows that when a civil society is mature and successful, the citizens become complacent and to satisfy various needs they reinvent tribes that eventually collapse the society from the inside.”

  “So both failure and success lead to failure.”

  “The only question is whether it’s inevitable.”

  “Sounds like useful information.”

  “I can tell them right now that population controls are about as stupid a move as they could make.”

  “Depending on the goal,” said John Paul.

  She thought about that for a moment. “You mean they might not be trying to make the Hegemony last?”

  “What is the Hegemony? Just a collection of nations that banded together to fight off one enemy. What if we win? Why would the Hegemony be permitted to continue? Why would nations like this one submit to authority?”

  “They might, if the Hegemony were well-governed.”

  “That’s the fear. If only a few nations want out, then the others might hold them all in, like the North did to the South in the American Civil War. So if you intend to break up the Hegemony, you make sure as many nations and tribes as possible detest it and regard it as an oppressor.”

  Well, aren’t I the stupid one, thought Theresa. In all these years, neither Father nor I has ever questioned the motive of the population laws. “Do you really think there’s anybody in the Hegemony who’s subtle enough to think of something like that?”

  “It doesn’t take a lot. A few key players. Why do they make such a divisive program the absolute linchpin of the war program? The population laws don’t help the economy. We have plenty of raw materials, and we’d actually accomplish more, faster, if we had a steadily growing world population. On every count it’s counterproductive. And yet it’s the one dogma that nobody dares to question. Like the way the class reacted when you just touched on the subject this morning.”

  “So if the last thing they want is for the Hegemony to last, why would they allow my project to continue?”

  “Maybe the people who push for the population laws aren’t the same people as the ones who are letting your project go on under the table.”

  “And if my father were still in the game, he might even know who.”

  “Or not. He was with the I.F. These people might be non-military. Might be within various national governments and not in the Hegemony at all. What if your project is being quietly supported by the American government while they make a show of enforcing the population laws for the Hegemony?”

  “Either way, I’m just a tool.”

  “Come on, Theresa,” he said. “We’re all tools in somebody’s kit. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make tools out of other people. Or figure out interesting things to use ourselves for.”

  When he called her by name, it annoyed her. Well, maybe not annoyed. She felt something, anyway, and it made her uncomfortable. “This was a very good picnic, Mr. Wiggin, but I’m afraid you think it’s changed our relationship.”

  “Of course it has,” said John Paul, “since we didn’t have one and now we do.”

  “We had one—teacher and student.”

  “We still have that one—in class.”

  “That’s the only one we have.”

  “Not really,” said John Paul. “Because I’m also a teacher and you’re a student, when it comes to the things I know and you don’t.”

  “I’ll let you know when that happens. I’ll enroll in your class.”

  “We make each other think better,” he said. “Together, we’re smarter. And when you consider how incredibly bright we both are apart, it’s downright scary to combine us.”

  “Intellectual nuclear fusion,” she said, mocking the idea.

  Only it wasn’t mockery, was it? It was quite possibly true.

  “Of course, our relationship is grossly unbalanced,” said John Paul.

  “In what way?” she asked, suspecting that he would find some clever way of saying that he was smarter or more creative.

  “Because I’m in love with you,” said John Paul, “and you still think I’m an annoying student.”

  She knew what she ought to feel. She ought to find his attentions touching and sweet. She also knew what she ought to do. She should immediately tell him that while she was flattered by his feelings, they would never lead to anything because she didn’t have those feelings toward him and never would.

  Only she didn’t know that. Not for sure. There was something breathtaking about his declaring himself like this.

  “We only met today,” she said.

  “And what I feel is only the first stirring of love,” he said. “If you treat me like a hairball, then of course I’ll get over it. But I don’t want to get over it. I want to keep getting to know you better and better, so I can love you more and more. I think you’re a match for me, and more than a match. Where else am I ever going to find a woman who just might be smarter than I am?”

  “Since when is that what a man is looking for?”

  “Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women. Surely there’s something about that in Human Community.”

  “So you saw me this morning and—”

  “I heard you this morning, I talked with you, you made me think, I made you think, and it was electric. It was just as electric a moment ago as we sat here trying to outguess the Hegemony. I think they ought to be scared to death, having the two of us sitting here together plotting against them.”

  “Is that what we were doing?”

  “We both hate them,” said John Paul.

  “I don’t know that I do,” said Theresa. “My f
ather does. But I’m not my father.”

  “You hate the Hegemony because it isn’t what it pretends to be,” said John Paul. “If it were really a government of the whole human race, with a commitment to democracy and fairness and growth and freedom, then neither of us would oppose it. Instead it’s merely a temporary alliance which leaves a lot of evil governments intact underneath its umbrella. And now that we know that those governments are manipulating things to try to make sure the Hegemony never becomes the thing we want it to be, then what are two brilliant kids like us to do, except plot to overthrow the present Hegemony and put something better in its place?”

  “I’m not interested in politics.”

  “You live and breathe politics,” said John Paul. “You just call it ‘community studies’ and pretend you’re only interested in observing and understanding. But someday you’ll have children and they’ll live in this world and you already care very much what kind of world they live in.”

  She didn’t like this at all. “What makes you think I intend ever to have children?”

  He just chuckled.

  “I’m certainly not going to have them,” she said, “in order to flout the population laws.”

  “Come on,” said John Paul. “I’ve already read the textbook. It’s one of the basic principles of community studies. Even people who think they don’t want to reproduce still make most of their decisions as if they were active reproducers.”

  “With exceptions.”

  “Pathological ones,” said John Paul. “You’re healthy.”

  “Are all Polish men as arrogant and intrusive and rude as you?”

  “Few measure up to my standards, but most try.”

  “So you decided in class that I was going to be the mother of your children?”

  “Theresa,” said John Paul, “we’re both at prime reproductive age. We both size up everyone we see as potential reproductive partners.”

  “Maybe I sized you up differently from the way you sized me up.”

  “I know you did,” said John Paul. “But my endeavor for the next while is to make myself irresistible to you.”

  “Didn’t it occur to you that saying it right out loud would be extremely off-putting?”

  “Come on,” said John Paul. “You knew what I was about from the start. What would I accomplish by pretending?”