“What is this about?” she asks.
He ignores her question, turns to me. “And you too. Come with me now.” He pivots around and walks out, not bothering to look back.
Something is off; I sense it as we fol ow the staffer outside and along the brick path toward the library. His pace is more than just brisk and urgent; there is fear propel ing his boots forward. No one speaks.
Walking through the front doors and into the library feels like walking into the lion's den.
Inside, the fi rst thing I sense are bodies. Lots of them, perhaps two dozen, staffers and sentries standing just inside the foyer. all of them are wearing shades, all off to the side, standing stiffl y at attention.
Don't swivel your eyes back and forth. Don't.
Nobody moves. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness slowly, taking long, sustained breaths. It's cold inside.
Nothing good is going to come out of this. The only silver lining: They don't know yet. That I'm a heper. If they knew, I wouldn't still be standing here. They'd have pounced on me the second I entered.
I hear his voice before I see him.
“I trust you have found these accommodations to your satisfac-tion?” the Director says in a tempered tone. He is standing in the center of the room, just off the side of a table, the right side of his face lit by a mercuric lamp, his left side blanketed in blackness. His lithe fi gure, cutting an inconspicuous line in the room, possesses the thinness of a slashing razor. As he speaks, even the books on the shelves seem to tilt slightly away from him.
“Yes, they have been wonderful. Thank you.”
His head arcs upward as if fol owing a fl ock of birds hastily taking fl ight. “We worried about the size of the sleep- holds. They weren't custom- fi t for you. We apologize for that.”
“They were a coincidental y good fi t.”
“Were they now?”
“Yes.”
He gazes casual y at me with seeming disinterest, but beneath his stare a keen coldness lingers. Without warning, his feet suddenly lift off the ground as he leaps toward the ceiling. His body spins upward, his feet a half second later locking into the sleep- holds, the very sleep- holds I have never used. Minutely, his body sways lan-guorously, like the pendulum of an ancient grandfather clock. His eyes, upside down, are still locked cool y on mine.
“Amazing how different the world is from this position, when everything is turned on its head. Do you fi nd that to be true?”
“Yes. I do,” I answer.
“Makes you see things from a different perspective. And that's why I'm upside down, looking at you now.”
“Sir?”
“Because I'm trying to see you in a different light. Trying to see what's so special about you. Trying to see why the Palace is singling you out, giving you the royal treatment.
Because I just don't see anything about you that's distinguishing.” He closes his eyes, luxu-riating in a long, drawn- out blink.
“Royal treatment, sir?”
“Ah, playing dumb, I see.”
I don't say anything.
“Take a look around,” he whispers, “at this whole wide library that is yours alone. It's even bigger than my chambers! And you tel me the Palace is not giving you the royal treatment.” He descends slowly from the sleep- holds and lands unnervingly close to me, an arm's length away.
I fi ght the urge to step back.
“You know, just a few minutes ago, I received yet another directive from the Palace. Concerning you. Again.” He pauses, a glint in his eyes. “There are very few things in life that leave me at a loss.
But this kind of attention from the Palace for someone as bland and insignifi cant as you . . . wel , quite frankly, it's left me fl ummoxed.”
“I confess I'm not sure what you're referring to. Another directive, sir?”
“No confessions, please.” He takes a step back to a nearby desk, his fi nger trailing along the back of a chair. He pul s it out, sits down. And that's when I notice the two attaché cases. On the table, refl ecting the faint gleam of the mercuric lights. They stand straight up like everyone else in the room, at attention. But with an ominous air.
“If there's one thing I disdain, it's being kept in the dark. It's a cold stiff arm of disrespect. And the Palace has been doing this repetitively over the past few weeks. To me.
Random directives arriving on my desk daily, without explanation or rationale, last minute twists and turns regarding the Hunt. Fortunately, my bright intel ect helps me see the method to all the madness of these directives.” His lips downturn. “Except when it comes to you.”
Standing off to my right, Ashley June hasn't moved. Her arms hang still by her sides, her face lost in the dark shadows.
“I've done my research on you. Apparently, you're quite an intel-lectual standout at school, not nearly as dumb as you've been pretending to be here. Quite the brains, so they say. A natural, despite your only moderately above par grades. How did the report put it?
Ah, yes, that yours was a stupendous and prodigious intel igence not ful y tapped. That's the intel on you, anyway.” He pauses.
“Could that be what garners all this attention, favoritism?
Your so-cal ed intel igence?”
he says, staring condescendingly at me with the naked disdain of someone feeling threatened. “Tel me: What do you think this Hunt is about?”
He's testing me. Sizing me up. “Hunting hep—”
“And don't say ‘hunting hepers.' Because it's never been about hunting or hepers or hunting hepers. So don't use any of those words separately or in combination.”
“It's all about the Ruler,” I answer, strangely emboldened.
His eyes snap to mine, but there is no menace in them. “Ah, the lad might have a mind, after all . Expound, then, if you wil .”
I pause. “I'd rather not, I think.”
His head snaps back. “You'd rather so, I should think.”
After a pause, I speak, in as even- keeled a voice as I can muster.
“The Ruler knows that his popularity rating has been sagging recently. This is unfair because he is a truly dynamic leader, the best this land has ever known in all its storied and glorious past. But our Ruler is not so much interested in his popularity numbers as he is in the happiness of his people. And nothing else brings as much communal bliss and sense of societal camaraderie as a Heper Hunt. It is to that end that he plans and executes the Heper Hunt with such adroit skil . Of course, it is merely incidental that— as history bears out— nothing will help his numbers as much as a Heper Hunt.”
“Bingo,” the Director whispers, his eyes closing in ecstasy.
“My, my, my. The boy wonder surprises after all .” He scratches his wrist.
“But that was an easy question. The warm- up.”
A slight shake of the head and then he sets his eyes on mine, a hardness fl itting across his face. “Explain to me . . .
all of this,” he says, his arms fl oating above him momentarily like a bal erina. “Explain the reason for this training orientation. After all , who needs training to hunt down hepers? Why the idiotic lectures, workshops, training sessions? And explain the festivities, the fanfare of the Gala, explain the reason for the media, reporters, and photographers fl ooding into this Institute as we speak. And explain why on earth we are arming the hepers with FLUNs.”
“I'm sorry, I don't know.”
“Don't say sorry,” he says. And he waits.
“I don't know.”
“Not so smart after all . Are you?” His upper lip snarls up re- proachful y, exposing the lower half of his fangs. “Fact is, you're just like everyone else around here, all the incompetent staff who need to be hand- fed intel igence, my intel igence. Clueless. Brainless. Empty-headed.” His eyes stare out at me, fl aring down his nose and upturned chin.
“Empty as this Institute,” he says, bitterness souring his words. “Empty as this Institute,” he says again, quieter.
He turns his back to me, stares out the window. When he speaks, the cratered emptiness of his voice surprises me.
“It wasn't always this way. The hal ways used to hum with foot traffi c; classrooms spil ed over with the very brightest fi rst- rate minds; laboratories were hives of activity, brimming with experiments conducted by top- notch scientists. And the heper pens! They were fi l ed, from top to bottom, with dozens of hepers, young to old. Our breeding program— my breeding program— was about to really take off.
There was energy about this place, a spark running along the wal s.
We had purpose, recognition, admiration, respect, even envy. We had everything.” He stops speaking, stops moving, his chest so still , it is as if he has stopped breathing. “Everything but self- control.”
And then his eyes turn to the sentries and staff standing stiffl y around us, his icy stare pinning each of them like moths to the board.
“Until one day, we had virtual y no hepers left,” he continues, turning to face me. “This will be the very last Heper Hunt.
The Ruler knows this. But he is most unwil ing to have what's been a popularity cow for him come to an end. So he has devised a way to keep feeding off this Hunt for years to come, in perpetuity, even.”
Ashley June, off to my right, hasn't moved. Not a sound out of her.
“A book. A nonfi ction account of this Hunt. The public has always been insanely curious about the Hunt. The good citizens, who salivate over every detail of the Heper Hunt, wil keep this book on the best- sel er list for de cades. And this book will not be a dry journalistic work. No; rather— and here is the stroke of genius— it will be a memoir penned by the winner. The winner of this Hunt.”
He strokes his cheek with the backs of his fi ngers, up and down, up and down. “Do you see how everything fi ts together now? Do you see why we have a training period?
the Gala? the media fl ooding the Institute?”
And I see it. It all makes sense now. “It's all for the book,” I whisper. “To draw out the Hunt, stretch it out to a week- long event, to provide material for the book. To make it all the more exciting.