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"You practically lit up when Jarvis suggested his formula would do that."
Tirrell was silent for a long moment, long enough for Tonio to wonder if he
shouldn't have put it quite so strongly. "I've never told you this before,"
the detective said at last, "but perhaps you ought to know. I nearly became a
fagin's kid myself when I was eight."
"You?" Tonio stared at him.
"Me," Tirrell admitted. "Brace and I Brace was my roommate we'd already been
through all the movies and games Eights were allowed and were looking for
something else to do. And when he ran into a smooth-talking fagin..." He
shrugged. "The promises sounded awfully convincing, even though I could sense
that something was wrong with the whole setup. It took me two days to decide
not to join in. But Brace did... and I never tried hard enough to talk him out
of it. He deserted the hive and worked as a thief and smuggler until
Transition, when the fagin threw him out.
He paused. Tonio waited, afraid to break the silence.
"There was a big official debate as to what to do with him, and even though he
was eventually allowed Basic the whole thing made him pretty bitter. He quit
school twice, got into trouble fighting with the other teens, and was
eventually ordered out. He drifted through several low-skill jobs, but his
record kept tripping him up, and he slipped into various petty criminal
activities. Eventually... he became a fagin himself."
Tonio had sort of guessed where Tirrell's story was leading, but it still sent
a shiver up his back. "It doesn't make sense," he said, shaking his head. "He,
of all people, should have understood what he was doing to his kids."
"It doesn't seem to work that way," Tirrell said with more than a touch of
bitterness. "Along with all the other traumas of Transition, kids like that
wind up feeling rejected by both their fagins and by society, and that's a
pretty hard load to carry. Most of them hang on and eventually manage to fit
in reasonably well, but others spend the rest of their lives trying at least
subconsciously to get back in their fagin's good graces."
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A Coming of Age
"By becoming the same kind of people he was?"
"And by proving they're as good at it as he is." Tirrell sighed. "It's a
weird, self-destructive pattern, Tonio, but no less strong for all of that.
Martel was a fagin's kid, too, and you saw how calmly he was trying to pass
the poison on to someone else."
"Like Lisa," Tonio murmured. "It could have been her."
"And except for the grace of God and circumstance, it could have been you,"
Tirrell said gently.
"You and Lisa both found other interests when the hive's entertainments got
dull her with reading, you by applying to be a righthand. But either of you
could just as easily have gone the other way.
You see now why I think it's worth the risks to let Jarvis continue his work?"
"Yeah." Tonio stared out the window for a long time. "I guess maybe it's a
good thing then that I
wasn't able to get out of that furnace," he said at last. He wasn't really
sure he wanted to say this, but the memory of what he'd been halfway planning
to do in that darkened refinery what he'd thought
Tirrell wanted him to do there was proving to be as uncomfortable a burden as
a sore tooth. "If I'd had the chance, I might have tried to make sure "
Jarvis got killed, his mind prompted. But the three words remained stuck on
his tongue.
"It certainly is a good thing," Tirrell nodded. "You'd have come out smack
into that cyanide. I'd say the angel who protects policemen and other idiots
was working overtime that night."
Tonio opened his mouth to explain that that wasn't what he meant at all... and
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suddenly he realized that Tirrell had understood him perfectly, and that his
apparent misinterpretation was his way of saying that everything was all right
and that the issue was closed. "Thanks," he murmured.
"No problem." Tirrell glanced at him. "By the way, I know how hard this case
has been on you. If you want to resign as my righthand, I'll certainly
understand."
"No, I'll finish out my year." He grinned. "Remember, I went into this for
excitement in the first place. But... I'm not sure I'll want to stick with
police work after school. There are parts of it I'm not sure I like."
Tirrell shrugged. "You'll find you have to make deals and compromises in
practically any profession you go into. But it's your decision, of course.
There are certainly other good fields to go into."
"Big of you to notice."
Tirrell chuckled and fell silent, and Tonio settled himself for the long drive
ahead, wondering at the uneasiness still nagging at him. Everything seemed to
have come out okay... but he still didn't like what was being done to Colin.
Even with Tirrell's assurances it didn't seem either safe right to be or
experimenting with a real live kid. But until he hit Transition and could
start learning things on his own, he was just going to be stuck accepting
adults' words on such things.
Unless...
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A Coming of Age
A strange thought, at least for him but Lisa would be visiting Ridge Harbor
soon. Perhaps, if he could get up the nerve, he would ask her to teach him
reading.
It was worth thinking about, anyway.
Copyright © 1984 by Timothy Zahn
ISBN: 0-671-65578-7
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