"Oh dear."
"My stomach, too. I feel sick."
"Oh Lord. I"ve got a meeting..." She was beginning to sound shrill. "Are you sure you can"t get up? Do you want to see a doctor?"
"No."
"Well...well..." Clearly, she didn"t know what to do. "Well how about I call Mrs Ang, and she can come in early? I"ll be back by lunchtime. Oh, trust Stuart to be away! He always is, in a crisis!"
Cadel buried his head in his pillow. He didn"t want to listen to Mrs Piggott complaining about her husband. (If he really was her husband.) After a while she left the room, returning a few minutes later with various sick-room accessories: a bucket, a box of tissues, a gla.s.s, a jug, a packet of pain and fever tablets. "Mrs Ang"s on her way," she informed Cadel. "When she arrives, I"ll go. But I"ll be back soon. It sounds like a migraine, Cadel."
Cadel said nothing. He retreated into a drowsy, muddled world that prevented him from thinking about anything except the pain in his head. After a while, his nausea drove him to the bathroom, where he threw up all over the floor. But by that time Mrs Ang was around, so she cleaned up the mess without complaint.
Cadel only vomited once. He spent the rest of the day dozing and staring at the wall, with the occasional trip to the toilet or short period propped up against a pile of pillows with a thermometer under his tongue. He didn"t do much thinking. He didn"t feel up to it. His mind lay dormant until half-past six, when the sound of a voice suddenly made every nerve in his body stand to attention.
"Cadel?" said the voice. "How are you feeling?"
It was Thaddeus Roth.
Cadel rolled over. He saw that Thaddeus was standing in the doorway of his bedroom, looking about ten feet tall. The psychologist carried a tin of travel sweets and was dressed in a dark suit under a generous overcoat that swished and swirled around his ankles.
"Since you couldn"t make it to your appointment, I thought I"d drop in on my way home," he remarked, entering the room. He sat down on Cadel"s typist"s chair, which creaked like a tree in the wind. "How are you feeling?"
"Okay. I mean, sick. But better. Than I was."
"Good," said Thaddeus, placing the travel sweets on Cadel"s desk. "These are for you. I always like to have them by, when I"m ill. Is it your chest again?"
"No, I a I don"t think so." For perhaps the first time in his life, Cadel wasn"t happy to see Thaddeus. A hot flush of guilt invaded his entire body, turning his face red. He didn"t want to talk to Thaddeus. He was too confused. Too . . . frightened?
"Lanna says you don"t have a temperature," Thaddeus went on. "Just a headache, nausea, fatigue."
Cadel nodded, clutching the covers around him. His eyes actually felt huge as he stared at Thaddeus, who regarded him with a pensive expression, his own eyes dark and unreadable.
"What a shame," said Thaddeus. "You didn"t eat something yesterday, perhaps? Something that might have disagreed with you?" His tone was tranquil, but Cadel knew exactly what he was getting at.
"No."
"It wouldn"t be a hangover, Cadel? You didn"t slip away to experiment with anything?"
Cadel blushed again.
"No," he repeated, and took a deep breath. "So the surveillance team lost me, did they?"
A brief pause. Thaddeus lifted an eyebrow.
"Yes," he drawled. "They did."
"I wanted to see if I could do it. Now that I"ve been studying disguise."
Cadel wondered if this explanation sounded as lame to Thaddeus as it did to him. Perhaps not. The psychologist was nodding sympathetically.
"Yes, of course," he murmured. "I wouldn"t make a habit of it, though. In the circ.u.mstances."
"I won"t," Cadel promised, perfectly aware that this was the closest Thaddeus would get to a warning. "But you don"t have to worry about Mrs Brezeck. She won"t do anything to me."
"She will if you don"t do something to her first," Thaddeus replied. "Have you, Cadel? Done anything, I mean?"
Cadel shook his head. "Not yet," he faltered.
"Ah."
"But I will."
"Good."
"I"ve got an idea. I would have done it today, only a "
"You were sick. Of course. I understand." Thaddeus rose. "Well, I won"t tire you out. You get a good night"s sleep and perhaps you"ll be up and about tomorrow."
Once again, Cadel nodded. He was just beginning to relax when Thaddeus stopped at the door and turned back.
"Nothing"s troubling you, Cadel?" he asked gently. "There"s nothing on your mind?"
Cadel forced himself not to swallow.
"No," he squeaked. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, I just thought. Stress can sometimes manifest itself in physical symptoms: fatigue, headaches, that kind of thing." The dark gaze bored into Cadel. "No one"s bothering you at the inst.i.tute, for example?"
"No." That wasn"t a lie, in any event. Cadel could speak calmly and firmly. "Not at all." "You wouldn"t be frightened of going there? After the incident last week? Because if you are, Cadel a "
"I"m not. Really. I"ll be going tomorrow."
Cadel summoned up every bit of energy left within him and offered Thaddeus an earnest, wide-eyed expression that must have convinced the psychologist to some degree. After directing a long, searching look at Cadel, Thaddeus shrugged, and glanced away.
"Well, that"s a relief," he said. "I"d hate to think you were unhappy there, since I was the one who recommended the place. I"ll tell a certain person that you"re ill, of course. He"ll be sorry to hear it."
"Yeah." Cadel spoke awkwardly. "Tell him a tell him I"ll see him on Wednesday."
"I shall," Thaddeus replied. Then he smiled, lifted a hand, and withdrew.
At which point Cadel discovered that he was sweating.
He fell back onto his pillows, pulling his blankets over his head.
What if Thaddeus was right? What if he wasn"t really sick? What if he was simply stressed, and the headache was his brain"s way of trying to wriggle out of a nasty situation? He felt the tears rising, and pressed his hands against his eyelids to hold them back. He was so tired. So confused. And Kay-Lee a Sonja, rather a what was he going to do about her? How could he go on, if they weren"t able to email each other?
I don"t want this to be happening, he thought desperately.
But it was.
THIRTY-FOUR.
Cadel had only one cla.s.s on Tuesday a his Forgery cla.s.s a which was scheduled for ten o"clock. Despite feeling rather sluggish when he woke up, he was well enough to go. He wanted to go. He had things to do, information to track down. So he tucked a packet of aspirins into his backpack (along with his old school hat, blazer and tie), and caught his usual train to the inst.i.tute.
He didn"t know if he was being followed. He didn"t really care. As he sat in the swaying carriage, he occupied himself with the question of how he was going to make contact with Sonja the next day. The question of finding a computer no longer troubled him. He had solved that problem in the early hours of the morning.
"Cadel! Where have you been?" exclaimed Gazo, when they met in front of Seminar Room Four. "You had me worried!"
"I was sick," said Cadel. He looked around. There was no one else in sight.
"Good job you came," Gazo went on, jigging from padded foot to padded foot as if he needed to empty his bladder. "Abraham wants to see you. He"s in hospital. Royal Prince Alfred."
"Huh?"
"He rang me at the dorm. From hospital. He"s real sick. He didn"t know your number."
"He wants to see me?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Dunno."
Cadel found it hard to concentrate on this particular piece of news. He had to force himself to stop thinking about Sonja and the Piggotts.
"That"s not all," Gazo continued, with an air of importance. "Did you hear about Kunio?"
"Kunio?"
"He killed himself."
Cadel stared.
"Committed harakiri. Or whatever it"s called," Gazo explained. "Happened on the weekend."
"Why?" asked Cadel, dully. So much had been thrown at him recently that he found it difficult to absorb this latest shock. "I mean, why did he do it?"
"Dunno." Gazo didn"t seem to know anything much. Cadel surveyed the corridor again. It was empty.
"So we"re the last ones in the cla.s.s," he said. "Is that right?"
"Yeah." Gazo paused, studying Cadel with obvious concern. "You"re feeling all right, aren"t you? I mean, you"re not really sick."
"No. I"m fine."
"You always look so pale, it"s hard to tell."
Then Art arrived and the lesson began. It was an interesting one, about forging seventeenth- and eighteenth-century doc.u.ments. Art showed them how to burn a piece of eighteenth century leather to extract its tannic acid for ink that would date correctly. He lectured them on the characteristics of antique paper, explaining that blank sheets could be torn from the ends of old books. He demonstrated how a certain fungus could be chemically applied to this paper to create the yellow stains found on aged doc.u.ments. Finally, he placed a forged doc.u.ment in a gla.s.s chamber and charged the air inside it with an electric spark. This spark generated ozone, which bleached and oxidised the new ink, making it appear old.
He also encouraged them to practise their copperplate.
"All this kind of thing is pointless unless you can reproduce the handwriting correctly," he declared. "And even then, you won"t convince anyone unless you get the spelling and syntax right. I once saw a forgery of a nineteenth-century letter in which the forger had used the word "scatty". That word wasn"t invented until 1911."
He made no comment about the reduced size of his cla.s.s.
As homework, Cadel and Gazo were given different kinds of handwriting to copy with different kinds of nibs. They were then dismissed. Gazo followed Cadel out into the sunshine.
"When are you going to visit Abraham?" Gazo inquired. "He said it was urgent."
Cadel sighed. "I don"t know. I"ve got a lot to do."
"When"s your next cla.s.s?"
"Uh a tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" Gazo seemed surprised. "Then why don"t you go today?"
Exasperated, Cadel turned on his companion. "Why don"t you?" he snapped, and Gazo slumped.
"I would, if I was allowed. I"d afta take off me suit. They don"t like it when I wear this suit off campus a not unless I"m in a car."
"Oh. Right." Cadel was abashed. He had forgotten about the suit. It no longer looked strange to him. "Sorry."
There was a brief silence. Cadel didn"t feel energetic enough to send Gazo packing. He was suddenly overcome by a desire to sit in the sun with his eyes shut.
"We could take Abraham"s car," Gazo finally suggested, in hesitant tones. When Cadel gazed at him in surprise, he added: "It"s still here. In the car park. He got sick in the labs, and called an ambulance. A real ambulance. So his car"s still here."
Cadel thought about this.
"Terry mustn"t have been pleased," he observed. "About the ambulance."
Gazo shrugged. Cadel checked the time. Ten past eleven. It would be three hours before he could be sure that all the teachers were out of a certain Crampton College staffroom. And until then.. . ?
Until then, he had nowhere to go except Hardware Heaven.
"Do you have the keys?" he asked Gazo. "The keys to the car?"
Gazo grinned. It was the first grin that Cadel had seen behind that plastic mask for a very long time.