“I guess everyone’s in class,” said Sticky. He gave Kate a quizzical look. “Why are you getting out your kaleidoscope?”
“It’s a spyglass in disguise,” Reynie said as Kate removed the kaleidoscope lens.
Kate trained her spyglass on the stone tower.
“Look, there’s a window just above the Institute flag. I’ll bet something important’s up there. It’s the highest window on the island. There’s always something important behind the highest window.” She handed Constance the spyglass.
“It’s probably just so they can reach the flag,” said Sticky. “There has to be a way to bring it in and clean it, you know.”
“Maybe,” said Kate. “It would be simple enough to sneak in and find out. The window’s not as high as it seems — not if you were on that hill. First you’d need to get over that rock wall” — she pointed near the top of the hill — “then hop the brook and climb the rest of the way up. The tower’s built right into the hillside, see? With a decent stretch of rope you could lasso the flagpole, then climb up and stand on the pole while you got the window open.”
“You call that simple?” Reynie said.
Kate shrugged. “Simple enough.”
“Anyway,” Reynie said, “it’s in plain sight and you’d surely be spotted. I don’t think that’s what Mr. Benedict had in mind when he told us not to take unnecessary risks.”
Kate sighed. “I suppose that’s true.”
Constance, in the meantime, was looking disgusted. “This is a terrible spyglass, Kate. It makes everything look far away.”
Kate turned the spyglass around and handed it back to her.
The children lingered on the hilltop for some time. It was pleasant up there, with the grand view and the breeze, and though none of them said it, they were reluctant to go back down and meet the Executives again. Kate was more reluctant than any of them, not because she feared being caught as a spy (though, like the others, she was nervous about that), but because she hated to stop exploring. Exploring was what she did best, and Kate liked always to be doing what she did best. Not that she was a bad sport; in fact, she was a very good one, and she rarely complained. But Kate had spent all her life — ever since her father abandoned her, which affected her more than she cared to admit — trying to prove she didn’t need anyone’s help, and this was easiest to believe when she was doing what she was good at.
So when Sticky anxiously suggested they head back, Kate couldn’t help heaving another sigh. Everyone else felt like sighing, too, however, so no one asked Kate what hers was for.
Reynie helped Constance climb onto Kate’s back, and the children began making their way down to the dormitory. Kate kept a hopeful eye out for anything unusual, but unfortunately there was nothing to see except boulders and sand and swaths of green vegetation.
Halfway down the hill, Sticky stopped. “That’s odd.”
Kate’s eyes lit up. She glanced all around. “Something’s odd? What’s odd?”
Sticky pointed several yards off the path toward a lush green bed of ivy — or something like ivy — covering the ground near a cluster of boulders. “See that ground vine with the tiny leaves? It’s a rare plant called drapeweed that flourishes in thin soil.”
“Oh boy,” said Constance. “A rare plant.”
Kate’s face fell.
“What I was going to say,” Sticky persisted, “is that some of it was planted more recently than the rest. Mature drapeweed develops a woody brown stem, but young drapeweed has tender green shoots. Otherwise they look the same.”
The others peered at the drapeweed, trying to make out the shoots and stems beneath the dark green leaves. It was true: A large patch in the middle was different from the rest, although the difference was so subtle only a botanist — or Sticky — would have noticed it.
“What do you think?” said Constance. “Maybe something’s been buried there?”
“Or somebody,” suggested Kate. She looked at Reynie. “Shouldn’t we check it out?”
Reynie was pleasantly surprised. He still wasn’t used to other children wanting his opinion. “I think so,” he said after a moment. “But let’s be careful.”
“Careful about what?” Kate said. “It’s a plant.”
“I don’t know. It makes me uneasy somehow.”
“It’s probably nothing,” said Sticky, who began to think he shouldn’t have said anything. He followed the others off the path. “Maybe some of the vine developed fungus and died, and a gardener just filled in the bare spot. Drapeweed is prone to fungus. . . .”
The others stopped at the edge of the drapeweed bed. It was about twice the size of a living room rug and — to Kate, at least — about half as interesting. “Looks like a patch of ivy,” she said, hitching Constance higher on her back. “Does it give you a rash?”
“No, it’s perfectly harmless,” Sticky said, walking toward the middle of the bed. Kate and Constance moved to follow him. “I’ll pluck a younger shoot and show you the —”
In the next moment, the drapeweed seemed to swallow him.
Traps and Nonsense
Kate and Constance were two steps behind Sticky when he fell through the drapeweed. If he’d been the least bit farther away, there would have been no saving him. Nor would Sticky have stood a chance had it been any other child lunging to grab him. As it was, with a desperate dive onto her belly, Kate barely managed to snatch Sticky’s hand before it disappeared.
Their troubles were far from over. Kate’s dive to the ground had sent Constance tumbling over her shoulders. In a flash she caught the girl’s ankle before she, too, disappeared — but then the weight of her two catches began to drag Kate forward into the hole.
“Um, Reynie?” Kate called through gritted teeth. “A little help?”
Reynie rushed over and grabbed Kate’s legs.
Hauling Sticky and Constance to safety was an arduous, tricky business (and an unpleasant one, too, as Constance complained the whole time of Sticky’s elbow in her ribs). But eventually Reynie and Kate had dragged them back up onto solid ground, where all four now lay on their backs, looking up at the sky and panting from the exertion.
“Apparently drapeweed isn’t ‘perfectly harmless’ after all,” Constance said.
Sticky looked at her. He wanted to be irritated, but found that he was so relieved to be alive he could only smile.
“In fact it appears to be carnivorous,” Kate said.
Before long they were all chuckling. The danger was past, and somehow the excitement had helped them shed a little of their anxiety. Glancing at one another with satisfied smiles (as if to say, “We did it, didn’t we? Together we did it!”) they rose and dusted themselves off. They gathered near the hole in the drapeweed — though not too near — and tried to peer in. All they could see was darkness and trailing tendrils, and even these were slowly being covered up. The flexible stems and shoots thrust aside by Sticky’s fall were stiffening and spreading back into place. Like a footprint in springy grass, the hole would soon disappear entirely.
Kate crawled to the edge of the hole, pushed aside some tendrils and shone her flashlight down into the darkness. “It’s a pit. Twenty feet deep.” She glanced back at Sticky. “Deep enough to break your legs.”
Sticky wiped his forehead. “Thanks for the grab, Kate. I do like my legs.”
“I would thank you, too,” said Constance, “except I wouldn’t have fallen into the hole if you hadn’t dived, so my thank you and your apology cancel out.”
Kate laughed. “Whatever, Constance. As long as I don’t have to apologize, I suppose.”
The children stood by the drapeweed for some time, pondering their discovery. No one could think of any good reason for it to be there. Why had someone gone to the trouble of covering that dangerous hole?
“There’s only one answer I can think of,” Reynie said at last.
“A trap?” Kate said.
Reynie nodded.
“Oh, goody,” Constance sai
d. “Now there’re traps, too.”
“But why is it here?” Sticky wondered. “What is it for?”
Kate snorted. “Really, Sticky, you amaze me! A trap is for catching things — or people.”
Sticky didn’t answer. He was tip-toeing back to the path, careful of every step.
The children made it to their rooms almost exactly when the Executives were supposed to come for them. It was probably a bad idea to keep Executives waiting, Sticky had said. But it was they, not the Executives, who waited. When half an hour had passed with no sign of Jillson, Constance suddenly sang out:
“Now we have waited for thirty consecutive
Minutes to see some old dirty Executive.
Thirty long minutes I could have been sleeping.
But she doesn’t find her appointments worth keeping.”
Kate was startled. “What are you, a cuckoo-clock poet? Cut it out, she might be right outside the door!”
Jillson was, in fact, right outside the door, but to Kate’s relief she entered with no more than her previous bossiness — no hint of indignation. The walls and doors must be very solid, Kate reflected; it would be difficult to eavesdrop through them. This would be to the children’s advantage when they had secret discussions, but it would also make spying on others more difficult — a fact that irritated Kate, though not nearly as much as when Jillson said, “Hurry up now, squirts. I can’t wait on you all day.”
Kate bit her tongue. “We’re ready.”
“You’d better be,” said Jillson. Then her face clouded. “Hey, why isn’t your television on? Is it broken?”
“We, uh, we just turned it off, just now,” Kate lied.
“Why would you do that?”
Kate blinked. “Because we were leaving the room?”
“Oh,” Jillson said again, considering. Finally she grunted. “Well. Whatever floats your boat.”
They joined Jackson and the boys in the corridor. The Executives had a sheet of paper with them now that listed the children’s names, and after checking to be sure each child was accounted for (they still didn’t bother with handshakes), they began the Institute tour. After a quick pass through the dormitory — nothing but student quarters and bathrooms — they walked outside, where Jillson told them they were free to roam anywhere they wished, so long as they kept to the paths. “Too dangerous off the paths,” she said. “The island’s covered with abandoned mine shafts.”
The children exchanged glances.
“They’re from the early days, when Mr. Curtain built the Institute,” Jillson explained. “Before Mr. Curtain bought the island, people said there was nothing here but rocks. What they didn’t know was what kind of rocks. Turns out the whole island was rich in precious minerals. Mr. Curtain knew this. He built the bridge, brought in mining equipment and workers — a whole colony of workers. Their dormitory was the first building constructed. It’s now the student dormitory.” Like a proper tour guide, Jillson pointed to the student dormitory right in front of them, even though they knew what it was.
Dutifully the children looked and nodded.
“Mr. Curtain became one of the richest men in the world,” Jillson went on with a proud smile. “And can you guess how he used his wealth?”
“Doubtful,” Jackson murmured.
“He built the Institute?” Reynie offered.
Jackson looked surprised.
“Exactly,” said Jillson. “A free school, as you know. Doesn’t cost a dime to come here. All thanks to Mr. Curtain’s generosity. He asks nothing in return, mind you — not even attention. Mr. Curtain is every bit as reclusive as he is generous. Never leaves the Institute, never takes a vacation. Too much important work to do, he says, broadening the minds of the next generation.”
The Executives led them across the rock garden onto the large central plaza, which lay fronted and flanked by the Institute’s massive stone buildings. As they walked, Jackson identified the buildings in turn: “Starting from the right you see your dorm, of course — you remember your dorm, don’t you? — and just to the left of it, that one with the tower is the Institute Control Building. It houses Mr. Curtain’s office, the guard and Recruiter quarters, and the Executive suites. You’ll never have reason to go there unless Mr. Curtain calls you to his office. Or unless you become Executives yourselves someday.” Jackson looked the children over and shook his head, as if he rather doubted that possibility.
“Anyway,” he went on, “next to the Institute Control Building you see the cafeteria — right in front of us here — and then the classroom building. That building set off to the side there is the Best of Health Center, which is what we call the infirmary, and the building way on up that path is the gym. The gym is always open, except when it’s closed. And there you have it. Those are all the Institute buildings.”
“What about that one?” Reynie asked, pointing to a rooftop just visible over the classroom building.
Jackson scowled. “I was getting to that, Reynard. That’s the Helpers’ barracks. You know what barracks are, right? It’s where the Helpers live.”
“Helpers?”
“Do you not have eyes?” Jackson scoffed. “Haven’t you seen the grown-ups in white uniforms scuttling about, sweeping walkways and picking up trash and whatnot?”
Reynie nodded. He couldn’t have known they were called Helpers, of course, but he chose not to point this out.
“The Helpers do the maintenance,” Jillson explained, “and the cleaning, the laundry, the cooking — all the unimportant tasks, you know. Now come along, squirts, and don’t drag your feet. There’s still a lot to see inside.”
The Executives bustled them into the classroom building, which had seemed large enough from the outside but was perfectly enormous within. Brightly lit corridors branched out from the entrance in all directions. With Constance struggling to keep up (and looking very unhappy about it), the children were led down corridor after corridor. At last they stopped in one that was lined on both sides with classroom doors.
“Now, there are an awful lot of corridors in this building —,” said Jillson.
“And not just this building,” Jackson put in. “Some connect to the Helpers’ barracks and the cafeteria, which have their own corridors, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Jillson said. “So the next thing you shrubs need to know is how to find your way around. Now don’t fret. It seems confusing, but it isn’t confusing. Which happens to be an important principle you’ll learn here at the Institute.”
“It isn’t confusing?” said Constance, who was turning round and round, clearly confused.
“Look beneath your feet,” Jackson said. “See that stripe of yellow tiles? Just keep to the corridors with yellow tiles on the floor and you can’t get lost.”
Obediently the children looked at the floor. Reynie had noticed the yellow tiles but hadn’t thought anything of them — he’d assumed they were decorative. He must remember not to assume anything about this place.
Jillson put a finger to her lips and drew the children over to peek through the window of one of the doors. A gangly Executive stood in front of about thirty attentive young students, leading them in a memorization exercise:
“THE FREE MARKET MUST ALWAYS BE COMPLETELY FREE.
THE FREE MARKET MUST BE CONTROLLED IN CERTAIN CASES.
THE FREE MARKET MUST BE FREE ENOUGH TO CONTROL ITS FREEDOM IN CERTAIN CASES.
THE FREE MARKET MUST HAVE ENOUGH CONTROL TO FREE ITSELF IN CERTAIN CASES.
THE FREE MARKET . . .”
“What on earth are they talking about?” Sticky asked.
“Oh, that’s just the Free Market Drill,” said Jackson. “Very basic stuff. You’ll pick it up in no time.”
“Sounds like nonsense to me,” said Constance.
“On a certain level everything sounds like nonsense, doesn’t it?” Jillson said as they continued their tour. “Precisely the kind of lesson you’ll learn at the Institute. Take the word ‘food,’ for example. Ask you
rself, ‘Why do we call it that?’ It’s an odd-sounding word, isn’t it? ‘Food.’ It could easily be considered nonsense. But in fact it’s extremely important. It’s the essential stuff of life!”
“It still sounds like nonsense,” Constance muttered, “and now I’m hungry.”
It wasn’t just this talk of food that made Constance’s mouth water — and the other children’s, too, for that matter — but the smell of food as well. They were being led into the cafeteria now, a huge bright room crowded with tables, much like any other cafeteria except for the smells. Drifting in the air were what seemed to be a thousand delectable scents: grilled hot dogs, hamburgers, and vegetables; melted cheese; tomato sauce; garlic; sausage; fried fish; baked pies; cinnamon and sugar; apple tarts; and on and on. Beyond the empty tables, on the other side of a counter, they saw Helpers scurrying about in the kitchen, half-hidden behind clouds of steam and grill smoke.
Kate had her nose in the air like a bloodhound. “It smells like a bakery, a pizzeria, and a cookout all at once.”
“That’s another great thing about the Institute,” said Jackson. “The Helpers prepare wonderful meals. You can eat anything you want, and as much as you want, too. Just go up and tell them what you’d like. Don’t be offended if they don’t say anything. Helpers aren’t supposed to talk to you unless you ask them a question. Pretty soon you don’t even notice them. I remember when I was a student, I liked to play tricks on them — nothing they could do about it, you see, because no rule said I couldn’t. But now I hardly pay attention to them, except to keep them in line.”
“It sounds like there are no rules here at all,” Sticky said.
“That’s true, George,” said Jillson. “Virtually none, in fact. You can wear whatever you want, just so long as you have on trousers, shoes, and a shirt. You can bathe as often as you like or not at all, provided you’re clean every day in class. You can eat whatever and whenever you want, so long as it’s during meal hours in the cafeteria. You’re allowed to keep the lights on in your rooms as late as you wish until ten o’clock each night. And you can go wherever you want around the Institute, so long as you keep to the paths and the yellow-tiled corridors.”