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."
"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 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 or right to be 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...
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.