didn't recognize. Maybe Russian? And the speaker was just a kid! "We're patrolling now. You come back again, we'll hunt and kill you again, and again, and again. You understand me, Chinee?" Not just a kid: a
girl
-- a little girl, threatening him from somewhere in the world.
"Who put you in charge,
missy
?" he said. "And what makes you think I'm Chinese, anyway?"
There was a nasty laugh. "Missy, huh? I'm in charge because I just kicked your ass, and because I can kick it again, as many times as I need to. And I don't care if you're in China, Vietnam, Indonesia -- it doesn't make a difference. We'll kill you and all the farmers in Wonderland. This game isn't farmable anymore. I'm done talking to you now." And the black knight decapitated him with contemptuous ease.
He flipped back to the guild channel, ready to tell them about what had just happened, his mind reeling, and that's when he looked up into the face of his father, standing over him, with a look on his face that could curdle milk.
"Get up, Leonard," he said. "And come with me."
He wasn't alone. There was Mr Adams, the vice-principal, and the school's rent-a-cop, Officer Turner, and the guidance counsellor, Ms Ramirez. They presented him with the stony faces of Mount Rushmore, faces without a hint of mercy. His father reached over and took the earwig out of his ear, gently, carefully. Then, with exactly the same care, he dropped the earwig to the polished concrete floor of the resource centre and brought his heel down on it, the
crunch
loud in the perfectly silent room.
Leonard stood up. The room was full of kids pretending not to look at him. They were all looking at him. He followed his father into the hallway and as the door swung shut, he heard, unmistakably, the sound of a hundred giggles in unison.
They boxed him in on the walk to the vice-principal's office, trapping him. Not that he'd run -- he had nowhere to run
to
, but it still made him feel claustrophobic. This was not good. This was very, very bad.
Here's how bad it was: "You're going to send me to
military school
?"
"Not military school," Ms Ramirez said. She said it with that maddening, patronizing guidance-counsellor tone. "The Martindale Academy has no military or martial component. It's merely a very structured, supervised environment. They have a fantastic track record in helping students like you concentrate on grades and pull themselves out of academic troubles. They've got a beautiful campus in a beautiful location, and Martindale boys go on to fill many important --"
And on and on. She'd swallowed the sales brochure like a burrito and now it was rebounding on her. He tuned her out and looked at his father. Benny Rosenbaum wasn't the sort of person you could read easily. The people who worked for him at Rosenbaum Shipping and Logistics called him The Wall, because you couldn't get anything past him, under him, through him, or over him. Not that he was a hardcase, but he couldn't be swayed by emotional arguments: if you tried to approach him with anything less than fully computerized logic, you might as well forget it.
But there were little tells, little ways you could figure out what the weather was like in old Benny. That thing he was doing with his watch strap, working at the catch, that was one of them. So was the little jump in the hinge of his jaw, like he was chewing an invisible wad of gum. Combine those with the fact that he was away from his work in the middle of the day, when he should be making sure that giant steel containers were humming around the globe -- well, for Leonard, it meant that the lava was pretty close to the surface of Mount Benny this afternoon.
He turned to his dad. "Shouldn't we be talking about this as a family, Dad? Why are we doing this here?"
Benny regarded him, fiddled with his watch strap, nodded at the guidance counsellor and made a little "go-on" gesture that betrayed nothing.
"Leonard," she said. "Leonard, you need to understand just how serious
girl
-- a little girl, threatening him from somewhere in the world.
"Who put you in charge,
missy
?" he said. "And what makes you think I'm Chinese, anyway?"
There was a nasty laugh. "Missy, huh? I'm in charge because I just kicked your ass, and because I can kick it again, as many times as I need to. And I don't care if you're in China, Vietnam, Indonesia -- it doesn't make a difference. We'll kill you and all the farmers in Wonderland. This game isn't farmable anymore. I'm done talking to you now." And the black knight decapitated him with contemptuous ease.
He flipped back to the guild channel, ready to tell them about what had just happened, his mind reeling, and that's when he looked up into the face of his father, standing over him, with a look on his face that could curdle milk.
"Get up, Leonard," he said. "And come with me."
He wasn't alone. There was Mr Adams, the vice-principal, and the school's rent-a-cop, Officer Turner, and the guidance counsellor, Ms Ramirez. They presented him with the stony faces of Mount Rushmore, faces without a hint of mercy. His father reached over and took the earwig out of his ear, gently, carefully. Then, with exactly the same care, he dropped the earwig to the polished concrete floor of the resource centre and brought his heel down on it, the
crunch
loud in the perfectly silent room.
Leonard stood up. The room was full of kids pretending not to look at him. They were all looking at him. He followed his father into the hallway and as the door swung shut, he heard, unmistakably, the sound of a hundred giggles in unison.
They boxed him in on the walk to the vice-principal's office, trapping him. Not that he'd run -- he had nowhere to run
to
, but it still made him feel claustrophobic. This was not good. This was very, very bad.
Here's how bad it was: "You're going to send me to
military school
?"
"Not military school," Ms Ramirez said. She said it with that maddening, patronizing guidance-counsellor tone. "The Martindale Academy has no military or martial component. It's merely a very structured, supervised environment. They have a fantastic track record in helping students like you concentrate on grades and pull themselves out of academic troubles. They've got a beautiful campus in a beautiful location, and Martindale boys go on to fill many important --"
And on and on. She'd swallowed the sales brochure like a burrito and now it was rebounding on her. He tuned her out and looked at his father. Benny Rosenbaum wasn't the sort of person you could read easily. The people who worked for him at Rosenbaum Shipping and Logistics called him The Wall, because you couldn't get anything past him, under him, through him, or over him. Not that he was a hardcase, but he couldn't be swayed by emotional arguments: if you tried to approach him with anything less than fully computerized logic, you might as well forget it.
But there were little tells, little ways you could figure out what the weather was like in old Benny. That thing he was doing with his watch strap, working at the catch, that was one of them. So was the little jump in the hinge of his jaw, like he was chewing an invisible wad of gum. Combine those with the fact that he was away from his work in the middle of the day, when he should be making sure that giant steel containers were humming around the globe -- well, for Leonard, it meant that the lava was pretty close to the surface of Mount Benny this afternoon.
He turned to his dad. "Shouldn't we be talking about this as a family, Dad? Why are we doing this here?"
Benny regarded him, fiddled with his watch strap, nodded at the guidance counsellor and made a little "go-on" gesture that betrayed nothing.
"Leonard," she said. "Leonard, you need to understand just how serious
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