Savant by Nik Abnett

he could figure out something else, or maybe my thing was a small part of his thing. Anyway, it was pretty cool.
    “I went back to my room and got started on it. I was pretty pleased that he’d picked me for the assignment. It’s about time. I’ve been with him four years, you know?”
    They did know.
    Bello had uploaded Pitu 3’s profile before he’d entered the interview room. Every Drafted individual, however minor, however close to the margins of usefulness, underwent a series of psychometric tests before being placed at the College. Bello already knew that the interviewee liked to feel important, but didn’t like taking responsibility for anything. He knew that his observation skills were poor, but that he would happily switch facts around to fit the circumstances if there were gaps in his knowledge.
    Bello also knew that Pitu 3 was more ambitious than he was talented, and more selfish than compassionate. None of this boded well for Pitu 3 becoming Tobe’s next Assistant. Pitu 3 appeared to be the only one not to have realised that, self-awareness being one of his lowest scored, measurable characteristics. He also scored a virtual zero for empathy. The one useful trait he had, in abundance, was his tendency to the literal. It was what had got him into Tobe’s class in the first instance. He was stolid in his thinking, lacked imagination, and didn’t work at an aggressive pace, so he was the perfect choice as one of the anchors in the class, giving Tobe the continuity he needed.
    By extension, he did everything by the book, and never took a risk. Compared to the Student body, as a whole, he was 50 percent more likely to precipitate a Service Action. The benefit to Service, under Code Yellow, was that he was 70 percent more likely to be erroneous in his judgements and emotional responses. Service still hoped that the Code Yellow was an aberration.
    “That was the day before yesterday. So, then some stuff was cancelled,” said Pitu, “and I didn’t get another tutorial until today. I was first, again, so I guess Service, or someone, messed about with the Schedule. I just thought Tobe was working on something. Everyone thought that.”
    “Did you talk to any of Tobe’s other Students?” asked Bello.
    “I had the job, I had the maths to do, and I did it, too, so I didn’t want any of them taking the credit,” said Pitu 3, becoming flustered, the machine responding more and more to the tensions in his body. “I didn’t want to let on that I knew anything. They were all talking, you know, but I just kept quiet. I’ve been Tobe’s Student for a long time, longer than anyone... almost. I didn’t think he was going nuts or anything.”
    “By which you mean?” asked Bello.
    “Yeah, sorry. I mean, I didn’t know there was anything wrong until that second tutorial. I just... he looked so...
    “We’re trained, you know,” he said. “They train us to keep an eye on things. The Masters are important people, us Students look out for stuff. We spend time with them, more than anyone else, so we see things.”
    “But you didn’t see anything at the first tutorial, two days ago?” asked Bello.
    “No. Like I said, I just got on with what he told me to do. Then, when I went to the second 08:30 tutorial... well... You saw it,” he said, looking at Mudd. “There must be footage,” Pitu 3 insisted.
    “What exactly do you remember about what you saw?” asked Bello.
    Pitu 3 was leaning over the table, his arms outstretched across its surface, his chin almost touching the tabletop. He looked up at Bim, and said, “He opened the door. He didn’t look at me, or speak, or anything. He just opened the door and started to walk in. Only, he couldn’t walk because of all the stuff on the floor.
    “It was weird. He was tiptoeing through all this stuff: pages from books, and equations all over the place. I couldn’t even tell what it was. It didn’t look right.
    “We were trained,” he said. “We were taught