CHAPER THREE--The Test

Tobias grinned at his friend Matt across the room and tossed the wadded-up piece of paper over the heads of the rest of the students. Matt grinned back and raised up his hands to catch the oncoming wad, but in mid-arc it was snatched out of the air by a larger, more wrinkled hand.

Mr. Stevens was the meanest teacher in all of Highpoint Advanced Academy, and Tobias's fourth grade class resented having him as their teacher. His dæmon was no more amiable; the wicked looking crow perched infernally upon the overhead projector, defiantly eyeing the students' dæmons who grimaced and made faces at her depending. Glaring terribly, Mr. Stevens uncrumpled the piece of paper, muttering, "How many times have I told you little pests not to pass notes!" Tobias didn't care; he was bored in class anyway, although he dare not say so. They had tried to move him up years ago, but he barely avoided it by purposely doing badly on the achievement test; the last thing he wanted was to leave all his friends. Now, however, he was wishing whimsically that he had accepted the offer, as he despised Mr. Stevens with a passion.

While the teacher was reading aloud the note to the class (which contained quite a bit of graphic thoughts about him) Tobias yawned sleepily as he submerged his mind into Mr. Stevens's, but quickly withdrew as he found that the teacher was not thinking about the note, but about a particular lady friend whom he apparently thought horrid thoughts about. So Tobias engaged in dipping his mind into several of his fellow students' until Mr. Stevens's sharp voice cut through the mounting giggles of the class due to the note he had just stopped reading.

"Tobias Bergen! This is absolutely disgraceful! And this is the last time I'm warning you. It's time for you to visit the office, you little punk!"

Tobias rolled his eyes and stood up, stretching exaggeratedly. His own dæmon, who was presently in the shape of a cat, uncurled and hissed silently at the scowling crow dæmon. Tobias yawned and blinked, smirking slightly, at the glaring teacher. "Did you say something, Mr. Stevens? I must have dozed off there for a second."

His ruddy face flushed with anger, he grabbed the boy by the shoulders and pushed him none-too-gently through the door. Without saying a word, he slammed it shut and returned to class.

Tobias found himself in the empty hallway with Aerotsierma, who changed to a sparrow and lit on his shoulder. "Haha!" she giggled as Tobias ambled down the hall. "You sure showed him. So are you really gonna go to the office, or not?"

Strolling through the empty steel-and-plastic halls, Tobias chortled, "Yeah right. Who cares?"

So Tobias and his dæmon merely strolled down the winding hallways of the huge academy. Although he was only ten years old, Tobias knew almost the entire school very well by heart. And it was indeed very large--grades one up through twelve with hundreds of students per grade. It was a school for advanced children--only the smartest were allowed to enter, and the tuition was quite high.

They were strolling down the hallway near the twelfth grade physics classrooms when Tobias noticed that one of the classroom doors was ajar and the lights were off. "Hey, Aero, this looks like fun," he whispered, slipping into the classroom. Aero became a bat and fluttered into the darkness.

Aero presently informed Tobias that the room was, in fact, empty, so he switched on the light and closed the door.

"I've never been in this classroom before," he said, looking around. He had, in fact, sneaked around the school so much that he had been in most classrooms.

Aerotsierma transformed into a weasel and leapt around the room, sneaking into small corners and disappearing under the desk. Tobias smiled defiantly to himself as he went about his rebellious way, going through the desk drawers and was just heading across the room to the filing cabinet when the blackboard caught his attention and he stopped, gazing up at the mighty equation that filled half of the huge board.

He stood there for a few minutes in silence. It had obviously been put there for someone to figure out, as there was a scribbling mention of extra credit near the top, and from the look of the chalk, it had been there for quite a while. No one had figured it out yet.

Finally his dæmon fluttered over as a kestrel and perched upon his shoulder. "What is THAT?" she asked, but Tobias, deeply engrossed, said nothing.

Several minutes went by in silence, the analogue clock upon the wall ticking out the seconds, seeming so loud that it echoed. At long last he stepped forward, picking up a new stick of chalk and resting his hand tentatively against the slate. "I. . ." he began, as the kestrel upon his shoulder transformed into one of her favorite forms, the red fox, and sat by his side, gazing up at him in question. He continued. "I think I might know how to do this."

Aerotsierma leapt onto the teacher's swivel chair and curled up, watching him curiously. "You actually know how to make sense of that big maze of numbers and letters?" Tobias fiddled with the chalk and muttered, "Yeah. . .I think I actually might. At first it didn't make any sense. . .but I think I kinda get it. . ."

And so he set to work, scribbling out another huge set of letters, numbers and symbols on the empty side of the board. He paused from time to time, squinting at his numbers; once or twice he would erase a little bit and put something different in its place. After a half an hour he erupted into a coughing fit, having inhaled a bit of chalk dust, and was covered in it as well. He ran out of chalk eventually and had to scrounge around the classroom for a new piece, and then another, and then a third.

An hour and a half had passed when finally Tobias breathed a heavy sigh and sat down hard on the floor, leaning his head against the wall and closing his eyes. He was covered with white chalk dust and his hand felt like it was going to fall off from cramping. Aero climbed into his lap and said, "Are you. . .finished?" Tobias stood up and was about to reply when suddenly he jumped in fright as the door creaked open.

Tobias recognized the young professor who entered as someone he had seen in the halls before but never spoken to. Professor O'Brian, was it? Tobias considered him to be a fairly decent guy, as teachers go, from what he had heard. His lynx dæmon padded silently from behind him and sat, licking her paw stoically. "Hey. . .what are you doing in here, kid? You didn't mess anything up, did you? Whose class are you in?"

Tobias opened his mouth to speak, a little scared now, but no words came forth. Just as well, because at that moment Professor O'Brian's eyes moved to the blackboard behind Tobias. He stared for a moment, then took off his glasses, squinted through them, and replaced them. "What the bloody hell. . ." he muttered in disbelief.

Tobias gathered up Aerotsierma, who, as a bobcat, was inspecting the professor's dæmon, and rushed toward the door, stammering, "I--I'm sorry, professor sir, I didn't mean. . ."

But O'Brian said nothing, merely took a few more steps slowly toward the board and stared at it in open-mouthed disbelief. "You. . .surely YOU didn't do this, did you, kid?"

Tobias shrugged, tugged on the doorknob. . .but it was locked. "Um. . .yes sir, I. . .I’m sorry. . ."

The professor moved his finger through the air along each line of the rather lengthy answer Tobias had written. It took him several minutes but at last he turned to the young boy and murmured, "It's right. . .it's completely right. . .this is incredible. . .how old are you, boy?" Tobias shrugged again. "Ten."

The teacher shook his head in wonder. "How ever did you learn this? Did you already know it? Memorize it or something?"

The boy shook his head. "No sir. I just came in here. . .uh. . .for whatever reason, and I saw it, and I worked through it and I guess it just kind of came to me. I've been here since. . .around noon, I guess."

Professor O'Brian glanced at his watch. He took a step closer to Tobias. "You mean to tell me," he began, his voice sounding less friendly now, "that a ten-year-old boy sneaked into my classroom and completed the same equation in an hour and a half that took a renowned team of physicists years to prove?"

But Tobias's agile mind was already several steps ahead, and he realized, far too late, the mess he had gotten himself into and the danger that loomed on the horizon. "I gotta get back to class now. . .old Stevens is gonna be really mad at me. . .they're probably looking for me already. . ."

For a moment the young professor's demeanor changed. "You mean that you were skipping class?" Tobias winced, but realized now, with panic rising, that this was the least of his problems. "Well, yeah, kinda."

But O'Brian gazed up at the chalkboard and realized that gee, he didn't care either. He put a hand to his forehead and muttered, "Ugh. . .I gotta lie down. . ."

Finally the professor stood again, adjusted his glasses, and took hold of Tobias firmly by the arm so that he couldn't escape as he unlocked the door. "This is serious, boy. We need to take you for testing RIGHT NOW."

And so Tobias and his dæmon sat on the small bench outside the principal's office, listening to the voices from within.

"I tell you, the boy solved the Wagner-Raven theorem equation just now! I put that damn thing up for extra credit for my advanced physics class! He said it took him like an hour and a half!"

Tobias could hear a brief rustling of papers, and then the principal's voice. "Whatever you say, O'Brian. You do know what this may mean, eh? I suppose that we should have him tested anyway, hmm?"

"We should most definitely have him tested! As soon as possible!"

"Now will do."

The door opened and Principal Grey gently ushered Tobias into his rather spacious office, his snowy owl dæmon watching intently with large amber eyes from his desk. Aerotsierma changed to a lizard and disappeared into Tobias's jacket pocket. Grey didn't talk at all with Tobias, merely pointing to his personal computer where a test program was already opened.

Tobias looked questioningly at Professor O'Brian, who merely shrugged, looking a little more apprehensive now. Tobias, totally bewildered, sat down at the computer chair and stared at the screen, although his mind was elsewhere. Inside Professor O'Brian's, actually. The professor was highly worried at the moment, thinking, I like Tobias; he's a good kid. I hope he doesn't have. . .

But at that moment his mind was yanked back in to reality as the principal said, "Tobias, you have until this time tomorrow to complete this test. It is so important that you may not move from this room during the whole twenty four hours. We will contact your parents; you may sleep in here, but there are surveillance cameras, so don't do anything bad. We will leave you alone now."

Tobias's mind was reeling. Aero climbed onto his lap as an ermine and muttered, "What the hell was that all about?" Tobias shook his head. "They're too far out of range for me to read their minds. Something's going on, and I don't like it."

Aero replied, "What are you going to do?"

Tobias stared resolutely at the computer screen, where quite a few test questions had appeared. "I'm going to purposely fail, of course. They're not going to try and move me up again. Haven't they learned yet?"

And so Tobias set about promptly failing the test, not knowing the horrible trap he was putting himself and his family in as he did so.

Chapter Four --->

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