Truancy Page 10

  “Surely someone here must be able to make a recommendation,” the Mayor said.

  There was silence as the cabinet scratched their collective heads. It was broken by the wildest of suggestions.

  “It sounds like we’d need a child, sir,” a cabinet member said boldly.

  There was a sudden silence as everyone in the room froze. The Mayor looked at the man in surprise.

  “A child?” the Mayor mused.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, now looking unsure if he had been wise to bring up the proposition. “Fight fire with fire and all that.”

  “A child … a prodigy … if we can control one … if we can use it…” The Mayor seemed lost in thought. “You are all briefed on the boy occupying District 19?” he asked suddenly.

  A half-dozen heads all nodded around the conference table. The Mayor began to rub his chin in thought.

  “It would be unwise to approach that boy himself for aid,” the Mayor said, raising a hand to stop the men whose mouths had just opened in protest. “He has little reason to love us, and I do not wish to upset him. However, I know for a fact that he has made something of a hobby of teaching other talented kids in the past.”

  “So should we resume surveillance of District 19?” one of the men asked eagerly.

  “No,” the Mayor said firmly. “We don’t want to provoke him, or he might decide to go over to the Truancy. Instead, I want you to pull up all the old surveillance files, find out who he used to see regularly, find out where they are now.”

  “That won’t be easy,” the man warned.

  “I didn’t say it would be,” the Mayor countered, sounding heartened all the same.

  “How do we know that recruiting one of his old friends won’t anger the boy?” another man asked.

  “I trust Umasi not to do anything drastic just because we approached one of his old acquaintances,” the Mayor said, “for old times’ sake, if nothing else.”

  The Mayor sounded so uncharacteristically sentimental that the cabinet members shot each other surprised glances.

  “Well, now that that’s settled, let us return to the subject of the Truancy,” the Mayor said briskly. “The murder of our Chief Enforcer cannot go unpunished. It’s time that we retaliate.”

  “Retaliate, sir?” A cabinet member spoke up cautiously. “But we don’t know where they—”

  “Yes, I know that,” the Mayor snapped. “I don’t mean attack the Truancy itself—let us instead hit them where they’ll hurt. I’ve drafted a new proposition here that I want to become well-publicized law by tomorrow evening.”

  The Mayor pulled an official-looking document from an open briefcase at his feet. The entire cabinet eyed the paper apprehensively, and a few of them seemed to cringe as the Mayor slid it forward. One of the braver cabinet members reached for it and read the title out loud.

  “The ‘Zero Tolerance Policy,’” he read.

  “Indeed,” the Mayor said in satisfaction. “The Truants may have escaped our schools, but we still have hundreds of thousands of hostages—their friends. We can still harm their trapped peers. The Zero Tolerance Policy will provide for the interrogation and immediate expulsion of any student that commits any minor infraction. Any rule breaking, anything that can be construed as a threat, will be severely punished.”

  “But sir, surely this is a bit extreme.” One of the cabinet members spoke up bravely. “With your recent decree that all expelled students be executed … I mean, the students that stay in school are the ones that remain obedient! We should reward them, not punish them!”

  “This will show the Truancy that we will not yield,” the Mayor said. “Their morale will drop when they see what we can do to the friends that they are powerless to help. We need to assert our authority, prove that we are the ones in control.”

  The same cabinet member, seeming to forget the things that tended to happen to people who questioned the Mayor, opened his mouth to protest again. Another cabinet member, seeing the danger, suddenly headed him off.

  “I think it’s a great idea, sir,” the man said quickly.

  “Brilliant,” another added.

  “Show them who’s boss, Mr. Mayor.”

  The Mayor shut his lighter as he stood up, turning towards his open window to look out at the City.

  “Then it is unanimous. If we cannot punish the Truants, the students will just have to suffer in their place.” The Mayor turned around, looking appraisingly at the men sitting at the table. “And I still want regular progress reports on finding a child from District 19. You are dismissed.”

  9

  ZERO TOLERANCE

  “What the hell, it was just a joke!”

  “I suppose you find killing funny then, eh, kid?”

  Approaching the cluster of frightened students on his way to his next class, Tack soon discovered what the inexplicable commotion was all about. There was an adult arguing with a kid, and it was well-known that whenever an adult addressed a student outside of class, the student was usually in trouble. Curiosity getting the better of him, Tack joined the throng, shouldering his way past a smaller boy so that he could get a better view.

  What he saw shocked him.

  “I didn’t do anything!” a dark-haired boy protested loudly as he was violently shoved against a wall by a security guard.

  “You passed this note saying that you wished your teacher would die,” a second security guard said, waving the paper aggressively as his partner grabbed the boy’s arms and pulled them behind his back.

  “That didn’t mean anything!” the boy shouted as the second security guard slapped a pair of handcuffs onto his wrist. “This is a mistake!”

  The sound of running footsteps echoed through the now-silent hallway, and Tack turned to see a half-dozen other guards racing to the scene.

  “What happened here?” one of them demanded.

  “Just enforcing the Zero Tolerance Policy,” the first security guard explained, shoving the handcuffed boy onto the ground.

  “What did he do?” The head guard pulled a notepad and pencil out from her pocket.

  “Made a death threat against a teacher.”

  “I see.” The guard quickly scribbled something down onto her notepad.

  “That’s a lie; I just made a joke!” the boy shouted from the floor.

  “Is that so? Well, we’ll see how funny you are after a few hours of interrogation.”

  “But he didn’t do anything!” a girl protested suddenly, stepping forward. “He just passed me a note about classes. It was just stupid stuff; it wasn’t serious!”

  The security guards looked at each other decisively.

  “So you were conversing with him about how his teachers should die, eh?” the head security guard demanded, bearing down on the girl.

  “Well … yeah,” the girl said, now looking uncomfortable.

  “Sounds like conspiracy.”

  “Take her,” the guard with the notepad ordered.

  Ignoring the girl’s shrieking protests, the other security guards cuffed her hands and shoved her onto the ground next to the boy.

  “Now, was there anyone else here involved with this?” the head security guard demanded, glaring at the crowd of students, which immediately fell silent. Satisfied that there wasn’t, the security guard turned back to her fellow guards.

  “I don’t think we should take any chances. Cuff their feet too; we’ll bring out some stretchers to carry them out.” She marched down the hall, the others in tow, leaving the two original guards to watch the prisoners.

  “This is crazy!” the girl shrieked from the floor.

  “You kids brought this upon yourself,” one guard snapped, glaring at the pair of students restrained on the floor, then turning to address the crowd. “Things have changed. It looks like you haven’t been informed about the Zero Tolerance Policy, so I’ll warn you, just this once; if any of you are caught breaking any rules, making any threats, or showing any disrespect, you’ll get the same that t
hese two got.”

  “You can’t do this; this can’t be legal!” the restrained boy said angrily.

  “Gag them too,” the other guard suggested, kicking the boy in the belly, knocking the wind out of him.

  Tack watched, horrified, as the guards produced a roll of duct tape and firmly taped over the two students’ mouths. At this, the students thrashed so violently that it took both guards to hold each of them still so that their legs could be cuffed. By this time, the other guards had returned with stretchers. The guards lifted the struggling students onto them, and walked off, shooting threatening glances at the stunned students behind them.

  As the students around him immediately burst into a flurry of note passing about the “Zero Tolerance Policy” and what it might mean, Tack stood still, his blood slowly reaching the boiling point. In all his time as a student, he had never witnessed anything so unjust, and it infuriated him. As he stood there, very nearly late for class, dangerous thoughts began to run through his mind, and he wondered for a moment if those thoughts might lead him to being handcuffed and dragged out of school.

  The Educators were grasping for a new level of control, Tack realized. He wondered what that meant. Could the resistance that Umasi had told him about be gaining the upper hand?

  * * *

  “I asked for a progress report on the search, not excuses,” the Mayor said icily.

  “Sir, before the observations were terminated, you ordered very specifically that the District 19 surveillances be discreet,” one of the cabinet members protested. “It is unreasonable to expect—”

  “It’s not wise to tell me what to and what not to expect,” the Mayor said, instantly silencing the speaker. “You want to warn me that I’m going to find whatever you’ve found to be less than satisfactory—duly noted. Now show me.”

  The six other men around the oval table quickly shuffled through their papers. One of them laid a number of fuzzy black-and-white photographs on the table while another quickly slid a thin folder containing several printed documents over to the glowering Mayor. The Mayor flipped through the folder, examining the photographs.

  “Give me a summary,” he ordered.

  “Our cameras had caught a number of different potential candidates on tape,” one of the men said, pointing at each of the photographs in turn. “We’ve narrowed it down to three or four individuals that have visited the boy.”

  “Now, as you’ve probably noticed,” another man spoke up tentatively, “the quality of the pictures is poor.”

  “Yes, I did notice,” the Mayor said sardonically.

  “We don’t have a clear shot of any of their faces. We cannot even reliably determine gender. The best that we can do is distinguish between each of the individuals and the boy himself, though even in that there is some guesswork involved.”

  “So you’re not certain about anything,” the Mayor summarized coldly.

  “No, sir, I’m not,” the man admitted. “However, the folder I gave you contains written observations on a couple of individuals that we suspect came in contact with the boy. In every instance they outmaneuvered the Enforcers that encountered them, clearly displaying the types of characteristics we’re interested in.”

  “How did you come by this information?” the Mayor inquired, looking over the papers with interest.

  “I believe that you personally ordered in an Enforcer to spy on the district about two years ago,” the man said cautiously. “It was just a matter of looking over the archives. The details should be somewhere in there.”

  “Ah yes, I remember that.” The Mayor fingered his lighter idly. “He crawled back crippled, I believe. Shattered kneecaps, was it?”

  “Yes, sir,” the man confirmed, “all we ever got out of him was that a blond-haired male who appeared to be around fourteen or fifteen did it to him. It’s the only physical description we have of any of the children that visited District 19, and it’s a vague one, but it’s all that we have to go on.”

  “No names?” the Mayor asked, still examining the photographs.

  “None,” the man confirmed.

  “Well, it could have been worse, but it could have been a lot better,” the Mayor muttered. The other men in the room were relieved to hear satisfaction in his voice. “I expect the matter to be given top priority. The sooner I have this blond-haired kid sitting in my office, the better. Now, on to other matters—let us proceed to the new report on Truant activity.”

  “‘We have been discovering an increasing number of abandoned areas that show signs of previous inhabitance.’” A new cabinet member spoke up, reading off a clipboard. “However, going against previous trends, the areas have been uniformly stripped of all supplies and anything useful. This seems to indicate that the Truants are beginning to consolidate into larger cells.”

  “So if we find one, we’ll find the rest?” the Mayor asked.

  “We think it unlikely.” The man shook his head. “The Truants have always been exceedingly cautious, so we believe that the majority of them will still be divided into multiple cells—but at this point it is not unreasonable to believe that they are more tightly concentrated than before.”

  “They’re planning something.” The Mayor opened his lighter.

  “The Enforcers suspect that, yes.” The man nodded. “Not only have they begun to group up, but it also seems that all Truancy activity has ceased—there have been no attacks, no thefts, no assassinations, nothing so much as a misdemeanor.”

  “And do the Enforcers have any idea what they might be planning?” the Mayor demanded.

  The man frowned. “No, sir.”

  “Typical.” The Mayor clicked his lighter shut. “Well, if nothing else, I’m sure that our media coverage of the Zero Tolerance Policy will force their hand. Execute the first batch of expelled students today. We’ll see what they’re up to soon enough.”

  * * *

  In one of the many abandoned districts of the City, there was a large, run-down office building. In better times, the building had been office space for a large company. Now, however, the desks had all long since been cleared out, the paint was peeling from the walls, and hardly any of the lights still worked—not that they would have been lit even if they could be, for the building was now a Truancy hideout, and lights shining in a supposedly abandoned district would be a bit of a giveaway.

  The electricity and water in the building still worked fine, which was all that was needed to suit the Truancy’s purposes. In one of the confined offices with boarded-up windows, a television had been plugged in. This particular television, one of several in the building, was reserved for special use—only two people were allowed into the office where it rested. That very evening, both of them stood there, their outlines silhouetted by the blaring television in the otherwise total darkness.

  “The new Educator report released today shows an unprecedented and disturbing increase in classroom violence,” the anchorwoman onscreen said. “To counter this trend, the Mayor immediately signed into law a daring new set of countermeasures.”

  “We must identify the children in our schools that pose a threat to their peers, and we must do it before they strike,” the Mayor declared from a podium in front of City Hall, his usual contingent of Enforcers almost obscuring him from view. “Only by dealing with these individuals harshly at the first sign of trouble can we ensure the continued safety of our children.”

  “Unbelievable,” Zyid murmured as the figure next to him stirred uncomfortably. “He’s going to kill them all.”

  “Along with the Mayor’s announcement came a new warning to all students as a whole,” the anchorwoman continued. “Students are cautioned not to joke in any way about performing any act of violence, nor are they to break any rules, as leniency will not be shown. Any student suspected of having any rebellious tendencies at all can be arrested, interrogated, and even expelled on the spot.

  “The tough new policy went into effect this morning, and since then dozens of students ha
ve been detained, and dozens more are expected to be apprehended in the coming week. The Mayor’s Office was quick to denounce any rumors of Enforcer brutality during interrogations as ‘lies disseminated by the irresponsible families of these uncontrollably violent youths.’”

  “I believe,” Zyid said suddenly, “that I’ve seen enough. Unless you have any objections, Noni?”

  “None, sir,” the figure next to Zyid replied quietly.

  Zyid reached for the television, shutting it off. The room was instantly plunged into total darkness, leaving the angry sound of Zyid’s heavy breathing to fill the void.

  “So,” Zyid hissed. “He has decided to take this war to a new level of depravity. If he cannot get at me, he will instead destroy the ones I intended to save.”

  “They are not yet being destroyed, sir,” Noni pointed out softly.

  “It’s only a matter of hours,” Zyid said dismissively. “This slaughter is only the first step—he will have it escalate until he lures us out into the open.”

  “But of course you won’t let that happen,” Noni said passively.

  “Indeed I won’t,” Zyid agreed briskly. “This may yet work to our advantage. The Mayor formulated this plot out of frustration and desperation—he evidently wasn’t thinking clearly. There is an obvious flaw in this ‘Zero Tolerance Policy.’”

  “What’s that, sir?” Noni asked emotionlessly.

  “He’s putting an unreasonable amount of pressure on the students,” Zyid said in satisfaction. “It’s too much, too quickly. He might’ve been able to get away with something like this if it were staggered in over time, but something this sudden will meet opposition. These are students that previously were complacent. The harder he pushes them, the more of them will decide to push back. Dropouts and runaways will increase, and when they drop and run, we will be waiting to catch them.”

  “You’ll make this Zero Tolerance Policy the center of our recruiting effort,” Noni observed softly.

  “Essentially correct,” Zyid affirmed. “Now, it looks like tonight will be busier than I anticipated. I must address the rest of the Truancy.”