25
Josef did give them one boon immediately, which was an occasional extra day off. There were a number of the older students who were held to a less rigid schedule. They were given personal assignments that were often intended to lead into either their professional lives or higher training. Carey and her father adapted to their schedule and invited the twins to join them for dinners. Professor Havilland began these meals with a few questions about their work, but when they gave half-finished sentences that really didn’t say much at all, he let the matter drop.
Another two weeks passed, and their progress on the mind speech remained at ground zero. They basically stopped trying. Nothing they came up with made any difference. So the off days were spent lounging poolside, watching kids their age be, well, kids. All the things that framed the conversations that once were so vital had been stripped away. School, university applications, parents, jobs, girls, parties, cars . . . Sean and Dillon pretended to listen and kept their traps shut.
Carey’s job at the school had another three weeks to run, and there was a chance it would be extended through the rest of the summer. When she had a day off, she packed a lunch and took Dillon on long rides. The guy always returned wearing a smile that could only be described as goofy. Sean did not dislike those days. He did not resent his brother’s happiness. He did not feel angry at Carey for choosing his twin. But there were some hard times just the same, especially in the small hours when he was trapped alone on the balcony, without a thing to do but think of what he didn’t have.
Which was why, on one of those lonely afternoons when he saw the professor working over papers on the front patio, he wandered over. He brought a book he’d been trying to read for months, just in case he needed an excuse. But before he’d made it halfway down the walk, the professor had shifted his papers over to one side. “I must assume you’re Sean, since I would hate to think the wrong twin had slipped away with my daughter.”
“No, that would definitely be Dillon.”
“Come make yourself comfortable. Would you like a Coke?”
“Sure, thanks.” When the professor returned carrying two glasses, Sean said, “I was wondering if I could ask you something.”
“Of course. You know how I can tell you two apart? I say to myself, ‘Sean is the thinker. In ten years, he’s the one whose forehead will be creased from hours of concentration.’”
Sean sipped his drink and wondered if he’d also be the guy who was alone. “We need to check something out, and we don’t know how.” He had struggled to find some way to approach the impossible on the way over. “There’s a chance the blast that left us homeless wasn’t a gas pipe.”
If the professor saw anything odd in the admission, he did not show it. “Have you spoken with the police?”
“Sort of.”
“I take it they were not interested.”
“They said it wasn’t any of our concern.”
“Do you think you and Dillon were a target?”
Sean answered as honestly as he could. “I can’t figure out why that might be the case.”
“If you were,” Professor Havilland persisted, “are Carey and I in danger?”
“We have been assured over and over that there’s absolutely no risk.”
The professor accepted that with a slow nod. “So what makes you think there might be a culprit?”
“Dillon saw something. But the . . . police don’t believe him. I didn’t see it. But I felt . . . I guess . . . a wrongness.” Sean waited for the standard adult dismissal, even offered the guy a way out. “I know that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Actually, it makes more sense than you will ever know.” He turned his chair so he could stretch out his long legs. “Feelings can be great spurs to change. I could name you any number of great discoveries made by thinkers who reached a point where something didn’t ‘feel’ right. My field is cultural anthropology, which is focused on the study of people in their societies. We look at how people interact. How over time they develop their civilization, their art, their music, their value systems, their family structures. For over a century, my field has been divided into two very distinct groups, or perspectives. One side says there are certain underlying values and principles that all human civilizations employ or contain. Or, in some cases, these same elements are willfully turned away from. They are called absolutes. And the anthropologists who adhere to this are called structuralists, or classicists.
“The second group is known as cultural relativists, and these days they’re in the majority. They insist that nothing about human civilization is absolute. All ideas and conceptions are valid only so far as one particular group or nation, and time frame, make them so.” He grinned over at Sean. “Guess how well these two get along.”
“Not at all.”
“Correct. So here you have two groups of people who have dedicated their lives to the study of human civilization, and they look at the exact same evidence and come up with two completely different answers.”
“You’re saying that if it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone.”
“It is always a distinct possibility.”
“So what questions should I be asking?”
“There are two possible avenues you should consider. Weakness is one, motive the other. Often they prove to be one and the same. An established leader has every reason to protect his or her work from the attacks of others, even when they suspect the new direction is correct. Do you think the police might have a reason to protect a sacred cow?”
“I don’t . . .” Sean felt a faint buzz gather force in his brain, like a tiny drill working its way inside, trying hard to plant an idea. “Maybe.”
“Power and money can be strong motivations.”
“This is definitely not money.”
Professor Havilland glanced over, and Sean feared he was going to ask how he could be so certain. But after a moment’s inspection all the professor said was, “Power then. If it is power, you need to search for the motive that binds the explosion to some greater issue. But be careful there. People in power tend to get very touchy when they feel their position is threatened.”
Sean waited until after dinner and they were getting ready for bed to relate his conversation to Dillon. His brother didn’t respond until they were in bed and the lights were out. “You think that was wise, talking with the prof?”
“I went over because I was bored. But now . . . Yeah, I think it might have been a good thing.”
“He’s one smart guy.”
“Tell me about it.” With the screen flattened against the wall, their beds were separated by the loft’s lone dresser that grew two nightstands like stubby arms. Moonlight streamed through the balcony doors and the skylight over the living area, casting the loft in a silver gleam. “What do you think?”
“You’re the sage. You tell me.”
“You’ve never called me that before.”
“It’s how Carey describes you.”
“The sage,” he said, feeling a warm glow.
“I’ve come up with two questions we need to figure out. The first is, who or what was behind the Charger attack?” Sean crossed his arms behind his head, angling his gaze so he could study the silver pillar spilling down from the skylight. “But we can’t go straight at it. Everybody is doing their best to keep from talking about whatever those ladies really were.”
“There’s definitely some secret they figure we can’t handle,” Dillon agreed.
“So what we need to understand is how they do this.”
“Josef,” Dillon said. “Josef is the key.”
“Right, but to make that happen we’ve got to repeat the mind-speech. And I’m trying. Believe me.”
Dillon rolled so he could see his brother. “In the meantime we need to figure out why everybody is so scared of us asking this question.”
“If we can. Right.”
“So what’s question two?”
“What’s the link between the ladies in the Charger and the blast that leveled our house?”
Dillon agreed. “They’re too close together to be a coincidence.”
“If we can get a handle on that, maybe we can understand how Tirian was photocopied.”
“As if one of the guy wasn’t enough.”