Читать книгу Time - Stephen Baxter - Страница 26

Tuesday.

Well, June, I had my meeting with Principal Bradfield. She’s still determined she won’t take Tom back.

At least I found out a little more.

Tom, well, he isn’t the only one. The only supersmart kid, I mean. There are three others they’ve identified at the school, and a couple more they’re suspicious about. That makes it a couple per thousand, and that’s about right.

It seems this is some kind of nationwide phenomenon. Maybe global.

But the numbers are uncertain. The kids are usually identified only when they get to school.

The Principal says they are disruptive. If you have one of them in a class they get bored and impatient and distract everybody else. If there is more than one, they kind of hook up together and start doing their own projects, even using their own private language, the Principal says, until you can’t control them anyhow.

And then there’s the violence. The Principal wasn’t about to say so but I got the impression some of the teachers aren’t prepared to protect the kids properly.

I asked the Principal, why us? But she didn’t have an answer.

Nobody knows why these kids are emerging anyhow. Maybe some environmental thing, or something in the food, or some radiation effect that hit them in the womb. It’s just chance it happened to be us.

Anyhow the school board are looking at some other solution for Tom. Maybe he’ll have a teacher at home. We might even get an e-teacher, but I don’t know how good they are. I did read in the paper there have been proposals for some kind of special schools just for the smart kids, but that wouldn’t be local; Tom would have to board.

Anyhow I don’t want Tom to be taken off to some special school, and I know you feel the same.

I want him to be smart. I’m proud that he’s smart. But I want him to be normal, just like other kids. I don’t want him to be different.

Tom wants me to download some of the stuff from his Heart for you. Just a second …