She peered out of the window. Labyrinth was below the horizon at this hour, but off to the east, according to the Marglom Center library, the artifact would appear as a seventh magnitude object in the evening sky. It would be just too faint to be seen with the naked eye. There was no way that Labyrinth could have remained undiscovered, if it had been there since Jerome’s World was first colonized. Darya sank back in her seat, deep in gloomy introspection. Apparently Quintus Bloom was right again: Labyrinth was a new Builder artifact. The first new artifact in three million years.
It was dusk when Darya emerged from the bus and stood gazing around her. Fogline had been electronics, Rasmussen was genetics. Both towns were at the minimum threshold size for automated factory production, so that although round-the-clock processing was performed, some elements of the work were still done by human effort. There were people on the streets, going to and from work.
When in doubt, ask. Rasmussen couldn’t have that many teachers.
“I’m looking for Orval Freemont. He works at the school.”
The third try produced results. A woman in a sable fur coat over a sheer silk lamé dress with golden thread — maybe not everyone on the street was an industrial worker — pointed to a building whose red roof was just visible along a side street.
“Better hurry,” she said. “Orval lives by himself, and he’s an early-to-bed type.”
The woman seemed sure of herself, but the man who opened the door to Darya’s knock made her wonder if she had the right house. Darya had imagined an elderly, stooped pedant. The cheerful, robust figure who stood in front of her didn’t look any older than Quintus himself.
“Orval Freemont?”
The man smiled. “That’s me.”
Darya went into her speech — a lie came easily, the twenty-fifth time around. Five minutes later she was sitting in the most comfortable chair of the little house, drinking tea and listening to Orval Freemont’s enthusiastic reminiscences of Quintus Bloom.
“My very first class, that was, when I was just a youngster in Fogline and none too sure of myself. Of course, your first class is always special, and you never forget the children in it.” Freemont grinned at Darya, making her wish he had been her first teacher. “But even allowing for that, Quintus Bloom was something special.”
“Special how?”
“I’ve probably taught other children as smart as Quintus, but never, then or since, have I had anyone who wanted so much to be Number One. He wouldn’t have heard of the word ambition, that first day in my class. But he already had it. Did you know, that very day he changed his own name? He came to class as John Jones, but he’d already decided that was too ordinary for what he intended to be. He wanted a special name. He announced that from now on he was Quintus Bloom, and he refused to answer to anything else. And he tried so hard, it was frightening. He’d do anything to be top, even if it meant cheating a little and hoping I wouldn’t notice.” Orval Freemont noticed Darya’s expression. “Don’t be shocked; all children tend to do that. Of course, part of the reason in his case was that he was a bit of an outcast. You know how cruel little kids can be. Quintus had this awful skin condition, big red sores on his face and on his arms and legs, and nothing seemed to clear them up.”
“He has them still.”
“That’s a shame. Nerves, I suspect, and I bet he still picks at them when he thinks nobody’s looking. Whatever the cause, it didn’t make his sores and scabs any less real. The other kids called him Scabby, behind my back. He didn’t say much, poor little lad, just put his head down and worked harder than ever. If you had come to me, even then, and asked me which of my pupils over the years was most likely to succeed, I’d have said Quintus Bloom. He needed it, the others didn’t.”
“Had he any other special talents that you noticed?”
“He sure did. He was the best, clearest writer for his age that I’ve ever met. Even when he got something wrong, I’d sometimes give him a little extra credit just for the way he said it.”
“I don’t suppose you kept anything that he wrote, back from his first years in school?”
Orval Freemont shook his head. “Wish I had. It didn’t occur to me that Quintus would become so famous, or maybe I would have. But you know how it is; the little kids grow older, and the next class of young ones comes in, and your mind is suddenly all on them. That’s what keeps you young. I remember Quintus, and I always will, but I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about him.”
Darya glanced at her watch and stood up. “I have to get back to Fogline, or I’ll be away another whole day. I really appreciate your time. You know, I’ve dealt a lot with teachers, and I’ve learned to appreciate the good ones. If you wanted to, you could be teaching in a university instead of an elementary school.”
Freemont laughed, took Darya’s cup as she handed it to him, and walked with her to the door. “You mean, if I were willing to make the sacrifice, and give up the rewards.” He smiled gently at her bewildered look, “By the time that you reached university age, Ms. Lang, you were already formed as a person. But come to me as a little girl of five or six, and I can have a real say in what you’ll become. That’s my reward. That’s why I say I have the best job in the universe.”
Darya paused on the threshold. “Do you think you did that with Quintus Bloom — shaped him?”
Orval Freemont looked thoughtful, more than he had at any point in their whole meeting. “I’d like to think so. But, you know, I suspect that Quintus was formed long before I ever had a chance to work with him. That drive, that urge to be first and to succeed — I don’t know where and when it came, but by the time I met him it was already there.” He took Darya’s hand, and held it for a long time. “I hope you’ll write something nice about Quintus. Poor little devil, he deserves his success.”
Darya hurried away, through the cold night streets of Rasmussen. She had just a few minutes to make the last shuttle. As she slipped and skated on the thin coat of ice that covered the sidewalks, she tried to measure the value of her trip to Fogline and Rasmussen. She knew Quintus Bloom much better now, that was certain. Thanks to Orval Freemont she had confirmed his strengths, and learned a little of his weaknesses.
As Darya arrived at the terminal, just in time, she realized that her visit to Jerome’s World had given her something else, something she might have been happier not to have. She had seen Bloom through Orval Freemont’s eyes: not as the self-confident and arrogant adult, but as a driven child, a small, lonely, and sad little boy.
Maybe the visit to Orval Freemont had been a big mistake. From now on, no matter how obnoxious he was, Darya would find it harder to hate Quintus Bloom.
Chapter Thirteen
Darya Lang and Quintus Bloom were not the only people speculating about changes in Builder artifacts. Hans Rebka was full of the same thoughts, and was possibly in a better position than the other two to take the idea seriously. He was the only person who had listened to Quintus Bloom’s seminar, and then heard firsthand from Louis Nenda about the changes on Genizee and the total vanishing of Glister.
But what should he do with the knowledge? He was the action type, a general purpose trouble-shooter. He was no Quintus Bloom or Darya Lang, with their encyclopedic knowledge of every artifact in the spiral arm and their ability to detect even the slightest modification of form or function. A change would have to stand up and hit Hans in the face before he recognized it.