Brainboy and the Deathmaster by Tor Seidler Page B

pillow aside and climbed down out of the luxurious bed and put on her glasses.
    Eyeing her from across the plush room was a young acrobat. She’d happened across the painting, by Picasso, a couple of months ago, while surfing through Art on her remote, and she’d left it up ever since because it reminded her of Boris.
    Picking up the remote, she went to Music, and soon her favorite song filled the room. She’d found it, too, by chance, while surfing through Campfire Songs.
    When the world is gloomy and glum,

I only know one thing to do;

I remember the moon and the sun

And then I remember you. …
    The moon and the sun, she thought as the wall panel slid back and she walked into the blue-tiled bathroom.How wonderful it would be to see Boris and the outdoors again! Then they could join the circus and become the Flying Rizniaks, just as they’d planned. And he would get her contact lenses, as he’d promised, so she wouldn’t have to worry about her glasses falling off when she was somersaulting through midair. They would become famous and make a fortune, but when their father came to beg money from them, Boris would pretend not to know him, and when their father said, “But I’m your father!” Boris would say, “The one who beat me with his belt?” If their father denied it, they would give him nothing, but if he admitted it, they would give him a thousand dollars, so long as he promised never to come begging again. And she and Boris would buy a house so big, they could practice their trapeze act in the living room, and there would be a whole wing for their hamsters and gerbils and monkeys and dogs and cats and parakeets and turtles. …
    Her mood entirely changed, Nina bounced out of the dressing room in a sky-blue jumpsuit and sun-yellow jelly shoes, her face washed, teeth brushed, curly blond hair combed as well as it could be. But once she left room seven and the hopeful song behind, her mood soured.
    She trudged down the carpeted corridor into the dining hall. When she’d first joined the others here afterher orientation, the dining table had been oval shaped, but a couple of months ago a new one had replaced it, shaped irregularly, like a cross section of the G-17 molecule. As she took her place there—things at Paradise Lab tended to be numbered, and there was a 7 on the back of her chair—six of the seven kids already there regaled her with a chipper chorus of “Morning, Nina.”
    “Morning, everybody,” she said, doing her best to sound chipper back.
    The kitchen door swung open, and out shuffled Hedderly with a steaming platter of scrambled eggs. He gave it to Ruthie Katz, who was eighteen and sat at the head of the table.
    “Very good, Hedderly,” Ruthie said in the tone a parent would use on a small child.
    Hedderly wasn’t a small child. He was a balding, two-hundred-fifty-pound man. But as with Abs and Snoodles, there was something docile and childlike about him. He had the same vacant eyes and the same crescent-moon scar on his forehead.
    After spooning herself a portion of scrambled eggs, Ruthie passed the platter to Mario Hernandez in chair number two. Though small for his age, Mario was seventeen. He took some eggs and passed them to sixteen-year-old Billy O’Connor, who had flaming red hair and flaming red pimples. In chair number four sat PaulPettinio, who was fifteen and, in spite of Abs’s efforts to get him to do calisthenics, extremely fat. Chair number five was Suki Yamashita, also fifteen, with long, straight, jet-black hair that Nina envied. Next came Greg Birtwissel, the prissy fourteen-year-old in chair number six, who passed the eggs on to Nina. She spooned some onto her plate and passed them on to the boy with messy dirty-blond hair in chair number eight—the one who hadn’t said “Morning, Nina,” probably because he didn’t know her name. She’d seen him a couple of times with Abs up on E, but he’d been in orientation, so she hadn’t bothered trying to make