“What a mind you’ve got, Dad. Besides, even if something like that did happen, it could only happen, at most, once. I’ll take a big hit in customers after the first time and lose them all if it happens again.”
“Not if you’re big enough. If you’re pretty much the only game in town, the customers will just shut up and start doing their own inspections. You do it yourself.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Sure you do. You advertise a job, and in the ad you say that it requires a diploma or degree or some kind of educational certificate. Your applicants can’t get through the door without the required papers, but you give every one of them a competency test, too, don’t you?”
“I do. The law says that if I want to test one, I have to test all.”
“Why? Why test anybody? It costs you, doesn’t it? I mean, they’ve all got the certificates you asked for; aren’t those papers worth anything?”
Jim paused. “You get the point, Dad, but I don’t concede the game. Not yet. Anyway, what’s this got to do with Barstow and Billy?”
“Let’s just say Barstow’s the inspector and Farlini’s a bad chip.” Dad waited.
Jim didn’t bite. “Go on, old man. I know you set me up but I don’t feel like giving you the satisfaction.”
“There are loopholes in the exam evaluations. If a student does poorly, the parents can claim that his learning was affected by some disruptive influence. From what I hear, Farlini used exactly that argument last year. They don’t really have to prove anything. The principal evaluates the complaint using the teacher’s records—like that note I got. Last year, Bongaro was forced to shill for the Farlinis. She fingered the Mathews kid, he got tossed to an Open school, and Farlini passed. This year it’s my turn in the barrel.”
“Why you?”
“It’s a Trad school, a private nonprofit in the public network. Public vouchers don’t cover expenses, but regulations prevent surcharges. So, donations are gratefully accepted to the endowment, the general fund, etcetera and so forth. Farlini’s a big giver. I’m not, not that big. Neither was Mathews.”
“Come on, Dad, if it’s just money I can help out. Gladly. You know that.”
“I do, and I thank you. But I don’t need your money. I don’t want it. This is a matter of principle.”
Jim made a face. “If it’s such a matter of high principle, Dad, then why are you telling Billy to apologize to Barstow?”
Dad was silent. After a time he said, “I guess because it’s my principles getting hammered, but, on the other hand, Kathy really wanted Billy in this school.”
It was Jim’s turn to be silent. At last he said gently, “Kathy’s dead, Dad.”
Dad looked suddenly old. “I know. Two years this coming Saturday, at 3:11 in the afternoon.” He looked at his older son and said, “I still miss her, you know,” as if apologizing for something.
Jim sighed. “I miss her, too, Dad.” They sat in silence a moment longer, then Dad took a deep breath and smiled. “Come on, let’s see what Billy’s up to,” he said.
They both rose, then Jim turned to the table. “Wait a sec. Let me grab this stuff. I promised Billy he could talk to Bunter.” He swept the cables and parts back into the zipper bag, grabbed it and the box and headed for the stairs.
Billy’s second-floor room was as traditional and old-fashioned as his school, or for that matter his father. Bed, desk, and computer were plain and functional surrounding a single window that looked out on the back yard. All the free wall space was taken up with built-in shelves. The set of shelves in one corner held several dozen books, many from Jim’s own childhood, the rest was occupied with kid litter typical for an eight-year-old. Billy sat at the computer assembling some kind of puzzle with pieces that giggled and moved around whenever he tried to fit one.
“Homework all done?” asked Dad.
“Yep,” said Billy, pointing to a battered folder on his desk labeled “Homework” without turning from his game.
“Let me check,” said Dad, took the folder and sat on the bed. Jim came in with Bunter and his accessories and Billy turned.
“Hey, Jim, great! You brought Bunter. Can I talk to him now?”
“Dad?” asked Jim. “Do you have everything you need for those tests you were going to run for me?”
“Hm?” Dad looked up from the folder. “Let me think—cleared prototype, a dump of this one and a backup… are you going to reset this one to clear?”
“Pretty much have to, Dad. You don’t need Billy running around with George’s phone book.”
“I don’t know. We might learn something. Tell you what—why don’t you give me another image dump of this one just after you clear it. I might want to compare initial conditions before we start training it. They should be the same, but you never know.”
“Will do,” said Jim. He turned the box over and snapped back a small cover to reveal a connector. “Hand me that case, would you, Mister Bill?”
Billy handed over the zippered case. Jim drew out a thing that looked like an old-fashioned hand calculator with a cable at one end and plugged the cable onto the connector in the back of the box. He looked around the room. “Got any blanks, Mister Bill?”
“What for?” Billy asked.
“I want to make extra dumps to be sure we have what we need for Dad’s tests. Then I need to erase everything he learned with George so he can start to learn fresh with you.”
Billy went over to a shelf and got down a fresh box of disks. “Why?” he asked as he handed the box to his brother.
“Why what?”
“Why make him forget everything he’s learned already? Won’t he just have to learn it all over again? And anyway, if he remembered the old stuff, wouldn’t that make it easier to learn new stuff? I mean, I have to remember most of the stuff from second grade to be in third grade.”
Jim looked at Billy speculatively. “You know, Mister Bill, I think you’d be right if Bunter was working the way I meant him to work; but he’s not. The stuff he’s already learned is kind of mixed up, so we’re going to erase it all and start over.”
“So you have to erase him because he made too many mistakes.”
“I guess that’s one way to put it.”
Billy thought about this while Jim opened the box popped a fresh disk into a slot on the side of the diagnostic unit. “If I could forget that I got stuff wrong, would I stop getting it wrong too? I mean, like with Miss Barstow today.”
Jim shook his head and looked at his brother. “Billy, you weren’t wrong at all; if anything, you were a little too right. Don’t worry about it. What Dad said is true. That trouble with Miss Barstow really doesn’t have anything to do with you or math problems.” He turned back to the job at hand.
“OK. First we make a copy of him the way he is now.” He pressed a few keys on the control panel and the drive whirred.
Billy watched in silence. “Is Bunter going to remember how to talk?”
“As soon as I’m done here, I’ll remind him how to talk to me. We’ll have to teach him how to talk to you.”
“How?”
“All you have to do is read to him.” Jim exchanged the disks one last time.
“What do I read?”
“Pretty much anything you want.”
Jim removed the disk, labeled it and set it aside. “Now we erase.” He entered some more keystrokes on the pad. “And now we take another image.” He popped another blank into the drive and entered still more commands. Once again the drive whirred. When it stopped he popped out that disk, labeled it and set it with the other. “And finally, we remind him what my voice sounds like.” he said. He reached back into the pouch, pulled out an already labeled disk, put it in the drive and set it to work.