The Select

  "Good evening, gentlemen," said a voice behind Verran. "It's lights-out time for the students, I believe."

  Verran suppressed a growl of annoyance as he turned to face Dr. Alston. The ghoul was always meddling. Seemed to think being Director gave him the right to stick his nose into everyone's business. Didn't know the first thing about running security but he always had two cents' worth of nothing to contribute.

  "Dr. Alston," Verran said, forcing a smile. "Back again for another evening of fun and games, I see."

  "Hardly, Louis," Alston said grimly as he sniffed the air. His gaze came to rest on Verran's smoldering cigar.

  "Louis...is that another cigar?"

  Louis held it up before him, appearing to scrutinize it. "Good lord, Doc, I believe you're right!"

  Elliot leaned on his console and coughed to hide a laugh.

  "Really, Louis, how many times must I remind you of the rules against smoking on this campus?"

  "And how many times must I remind you, Doc, that this is the one place on campus where that rule doesn't apply?"

  And how many times, you tightass, are we going to butt heads on this? Verran thought.

  "We'll settle this some other time," Dr. Alston said. "Right now, how are we doing?"

  Verran clamped the cigar between his teeth and leaned left so he could see Kurt behind Alston.

  "What's the status on the Z Patrol?"

  "Getting there," Kurt said. "Twenty percent down already."

  Verran glanced at the timer. The slow-wave inducers had been running just shy of fifteen minutes.

  "Right on schedule."

  Dr. Alston pulled up a chair and sat down on the far side of the control room, fanning the air with a manila folder every time some of Verran's cigar smoke drifted his way.

  Half an hour later Kurt slapped his palm on the top of his console.

  "There goes the last of them. They're all down."

  Verran nodded his approval. Amazing how well those inducers worked. No one could hold out against them for long—unless they were on anticonvulsant medication. And The Ingraham's pre-invitation screening process culled out any such kids long before the first invitation was sent.

  "Excellent!" Dr. Alston said, rising and moving to the center of the control room. "Let the music begin!"

  "Gimme a break," Verran muttered as he nodded to Elliot.

  Elliot began to work the switches on his own console, and soon "the music," as Dr. Alston called it, began to filter through the occupied dorm rooms.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "How can you guys eat?" Quinn said.

  Tim looked up from his blueberry pancakes. They were, quite literally, melting in his mouth.

  "Are you kidding? These things are fabulous. I'm going back for seconds."

  Matt was already back on line, rejoining the bustle around the buffet area. The morning sun shone brightly through the tall windows, but Tim's shades filtered the glare. All around them The Ingraham hopefuls clustered at scattered tables, creating pockets of nervous chatter or pools of silence. Tim watched Quinn grimace as she picked at her shredded wheat.

  He said, "Why don't you try something a little more substantial? The scrambled eggs look good."

  She pressed a hand over her stomach. "Please. They're not even real eggs."

  "Sure they are. They're egg whites—real eggs with the yolks removed. Looks like anybody who goes here will be on low cholesterol, like it or not."

  "I'm all for that," Quinn said.

  Tim swallowed another bite. "No smoking, low cholesterol food...looks like they wasnt us to live forever."

  "Makes sense, doesn't it? They're investing a lot in their students."

  Tim studied Quinn out of the corner of his eye. She looked good this morning, dressed in a Navy blue sweater that deepened the tint of her eyes, and white slacks that hugged the curves of her buttocks. Tim decided he liked those buttocks. Her short, strawberry-blond hair looked just right; she wore a hint of eye make up, just enough to draw attention to them. She looked well put together, but then watching her fidgety hands he could see the stress she was putting on herself. This test was too important to her. Tim had an urge to put his arm around her shoulder, hug her close, and tell her don't worry. But he didn't know her well enough for that. Yet.

  "Didn't you sleep well?" he said.

  "Like the dead. Which is weird, because I'm usually up and down all night before a big test. But last night I hit the pillow and that was it till morning. Maybe they put something in the food."

  "Maybe," Tim said. He'd slept like the proverbial log himself, but he'd expected to. He'd had next to no sleep the night before.

  "So we're all well rested," he said. "And if you're well fed you'll do better on the test."

  She shook her head. "My stomach's in a square knot. I—" She broke off and stared toward the far end of the caf. "Say...isn't he somebody?"

  "Most people are," Tim said, looking around for who she meant.

  "No, I mean somebody famous."

  He spotted him. Tall, lean, striding toward the curved stairway with Dr. Alston. Tim lifted his dark glasses for a better look. Strong features, dark hair graying at the temples, distinguished looking in a tailored gray suit.

  Matt returned then, carrying a plate heaped with scrambled eggs and hash browns. He cocked his head toward the newcomer.

  "Isn't he—?"

  At that instant the name clicked. "Senator Jefferson Stephen Whitney," Tim said. "Or I guess I should say, former U.S. Senator Whitney."

  "And I'll bet he was in that private helicopter that just landed," Quinn said.

  Tim nodded. They'd all stood at the windows watching it whir down at the heliport behind the medical center.

  The image of an article from The Wall Street Journal flashed before Tim's eyes with a photo. He'd come across it while researching an economics paper on the inflationary recession of the 1970's. He saw the header now:

  Sen. Whitney cancels campaign.

  Accepts new foundation post.

  "He was a hot-shot, young-turk senator in the seventies," Tim said. "Made lots of waves in trying to revamp the FDA. Wasn't popular nationally but people in Wisconsin loved him. Looked like he was going to be right up there for a long time, but when it came time for re-election, he opted out and took a position with the Kleederman Foundation. He's been on its Board ever since."

  "That explains why he's here," Quinn said.

  "Right. The Kleederman Foundation is paying for this breakfast we're eating—"

  "That two of us are eating," Matt said pointedly as he eyed Quinn's barely-touched shredded wheat.

  "—and all the rest of The Ingraham's bills."

  Dr. Alston and the former senator had mounted the stairway to the landing at the halfway mark and stopped to face the cafeteria. Tim noticed that a microphone and stand had been rigged on the landing.

  "Good morning, everyone," Dr. Alston said. "I trust you all slept well and are enjoying the breakfast that The Ingraham's staff has prepared for you."

  Polite scattered applause.

  "We are privileged this morning to have a surprise visit from former United States Senator Jefferson Whitney, a director of the Kleederman Foundation, the magnanimous organization responsible for the founding and funding of The Ingraham College of Medicine. Senator?"

  Tim noted that this round of applause was less scattered and more vigorous. Even he joined in. After all, this guy represented the deep pockets that supported this place.

  "Good morning," Whitney said, flashing an easy-going smile that gleamed even through Tim's shades. "I know you're all on tenter hooks and anxious to get to the test, and I know I won't have your rapt and undivided attention, so I'll be brief." Whitney paused, then: "You see today as an all-important day for your future."

  Tim glanced at Quinn and saw her blond head nod once, almost imperceptibly.

  "But you should not lose sight of the fact that this is an important day for The Ingraham as well. You are the cr
eam of the crop. Your college careers are testimonies to your desire to strive for and your ability to achieve excellence. You are the people we want as Ingraham students, as Ingraham graduates. This is not a situation of you, the individual, against us, the institution. We're not trying to keep any of you out. We want you here. We'd love to take you all. We wish we could afford to take you all. Unfortunately, the Kleederman Foundation's funds are finite.

  "But for those of you who are accepted, what a world will be opened to you! Not only will you receive the gift of the finest medical education in the world, but you will have a chance to go out and shape the future of American medicine, to make it the model and envy of every country on Earth.

  "So I wish you all well in today's examination. And please remember that no matter what happens in the coming months, each and every one of you is already a winner. I know I speak for The Ingraham College of Medicine and the Kleederman Foundation when I say that we are proud of all of you."

  More applause. Tim clapped mechanically.

  "Amazing," he said. "Platitudes trip off his tongue as if they'd sprung into his mind de novo."

  Quinn looked at him sharply. "I think it was very nice of him to take the time and come speak to us. I mean we're just applicants. None of us has even been accepted yet. Give him a break, will you?"

  Tim winced. He was not scoring points with Quinn.

  Why was he attracted to this twitchy, type-A ingenue anyway? She was sweet-looking, bright, and she had a nice butt. So what? The same could be said of plenty of other girls he knew. Obviously she disapproved of him and his style. So what else was new? Plenty of people disapproved of him. He liked it when uptight people disapproved of him. He reveled in it. So why did her little put down bother him?

  And why the hell was he racking his brain now for a way to mollify her?

  Matt, ever the peacemaker, said, "Tim doesn't trust politicians."

  "Senator Whitney isn't a politician. He heads a foundation."

  "The fact that everybody still calls him Senator Whitney says something," Tim said. "I hear he spends most of his time lobbying his old cronies at the Senate. Once a politician, always a politician." Tim raised his orange juice glass in Whitney's direction. "But if he's going to foot the bill for med school for me, he's a prince."

  Another cool look from Quinn. This was going nowhere. He took his empty plate and stood up.

  "Seconds anyone?"

  *

  Tim chewed the eraser on the back end of his #2 pencil as he considered question number 200.

  The test was a bitch.

  A lot like the MCAT only worse. The biology questions were off the wall. The chemistry questions were even tougher. This baby was out to separate the men from the boys, not to mention the women from the girls.

  Tim glanced around. About twenty-five of the hopefuls had been seated in this classroom, the rest were scattered through the class building. Nothing special here. Green chalk board across the front of the room, gray tile floor, overhead fluorescents, a pair of TV monitors suspended from the ceiling, and one-piece desks. Only the life-size skeleton hanging in the rear corner offered any clue that the room was on a medical school campus. In the seat to his left, Quinn's brow was furrowed in concentration as her foot beat a soft, nervous tattoo on the floor. To his right, Matt was hunched over his exam booklet, scribbling figures on his scratch sheets. All around Tim, nervous people trying to score for their future.

  He could almost hear them sweat.

  Not that Tim was taking this lightly himself. His folks could manage to send him to med school, but it wouldn't be pocket change like for Matt's family—not even close. They'd have to make some sacrifices, maybe get a home equity loan, but they'd find a way to come up with it. And gladly. Still, it would make things a hell of a lot easier for them if Tim got accepted here.

  But taking pressure off his family was only part of why he was sweating this exam. A small part. The big part was being free. Making it into The Ingraham would be a sort of declaration of independence. No more checks for dad to write for tuition, room, and board. For the first time Tim would be one hundred percent self-sufficient. He'd feel like a man. That would be great.

  But question 200 was strange.

  It asked for the first corollary of the Kleederman equation. No problem there. Tim knew the answer. Trouble was, he couldn't figure out how he knew it.

  Usually he could simply picture the book, page, and paragraph where he'd read about any given subject. It just came to him, as naturally and easily as breathing. He remembered how as a kid he used to wow the grown-ups at family gatherings. Someone would hand him a driver license, he'd glance at it, hand it back, then reel off every letter and number on it. Next he'd do a page from a magazine, and then go to his grand finale: a page from the phone book. They thought he was a genius, but Tim came to understand that his ability had nothing to do with intelligence—it was simply the way his brain worked.

  But what about now? Johann Kleederman—Tim could see before him a page from U.S. News & World Report, an article on Kleederman and his foundation. Born in Switzerland in 1935, where he and his wealthy parents weathered World War Two. Johann took over the reins of the family pharmaceutical company after his father's death in 1960, and immediately began a rapid extension into the U.S. market. He set up his Foundation in 1968, and became a pioneer of managed health care during the seventies. He'd spent the latter half of the eighties and early nineties buying up nursing homes and turning financially-troubled hospitals into medical centers, a move considered by many to be eccentric and financially risky. Still, the medical centers and nursing homes controlled by Kleederman Medical Industies, a multinational conglomerate that included the innovative and extraordinarily profitable Kleederman Pharmaceuticals, were considered the best managed, most cost-effective healthcare facilities in the world. Tim even could see an old photo of the reclusive, balding, mutton-chop-sideburned Kleederman in the upper left corner of the page.

  But the Kleederman equation? Nothing in the article about that. No picture came. Just the answer.

  Tim gave a mental shrug and blackened the "B" box next to 200 on his answer sheet. Who cared? When the sheet went through the grading computer, the machine wasn't going to ask how anyone got the answer. It was only going to note if the response was correct or incorrect.

  And correct was definitely better.

  The next two questions also referred to the Kleederman equation. These answers too popped unbidden into his mind. So be it. He marked them down and went on.

  The questions changed after that. Science segued into general knowledge. Tim had seen some of this on the MCAT, but there was much more of it here—from who won last year's World Series to the name of the Impressionist who painted "Starry Night" to the first name of the 18th-century British cabinet maker for whom the Chippendale style was named.

  Tim smiled to himself. He knew what The Ingraham was up to: trying to weed out the science nerds, the oddballs who spent their entire lives hunching over microscopes or squinting at computer monitors without ever looking out the window to see what was going on in the world. They might be brilliant, they might be able to breeze through the toughest p-chem questions, but they fit the definition of culturally deprived. They'd make great researchers, but a medical degree would be wasted on them. They could be doctors but never physicians. And the Ingraham wanted to graduate physicians.

  After the general knowledge section the questions got weird.

  They baffled Tim. Strange questions involving values and decision-making: about being a general in a battle and deciding who was expendable, about being a surgeon in a M.A.S.H. unit surrounded by wounded soldiers—instead of goofy jokers like the TV show—and having to decide who would be treated now and who would have to wait until later.

  Triage.

  There didn't seem to be any one correct answer to these.

  Tim felt paralyzed. He'd spent years matching the right answer to the right question. But now there was n
o right answer.

  Maybe that was the point. Maybe The Ingraham wasn't looking so much for answers to the questions as it was looking for answers about the person taking the test.

  The realization galvanized Tim. This was great. All he had to go was dive into these and cut loose. But not too loose. He had to consider the kind of answer these folks were looking for.

  *

  Finished.

  Tim glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to spare. Everything done. All his four hundred multiple choices had an A, B, C, D, or E box blackened to the right of it. No sense in going back and rechecking. Too many. And besides, he was drained. He couldn't bear to read and answer one more goddamn question about anything.

  He glanced over at Quinn. She was still working down at the bottom of the last row. She'd finish in time. He was turning away to check on Matt when he noticed two unanswered questions at the top of one of her columns. He checked his exam booklet. Those were two of the Kleederman questions.

  It hit him that maybe Quinn wasn't familiar with the equations. Maybe she'd drawn a blank on Johann Kleederman. Why else would she leave them unanswered?

  And Christ, the Kleederman Foundation was the pocketbook for The Ingraham. They might dump on anyone missing those.

  Tim looked around for the proctor. She was standing by her desk now, arranging her papers, preparing to collect the test pamphlets. Tim slipped his answer sheet inside his exam book, replaced his shades over his eyes, and waited. When her back was turned he rose and, in one continuous movement, leaned over Quinn's shoulder, blackened the B and C boxes next to questions 201 and 202, then straightened and strode down the aisle.

  My good deed for the day.

  *

  Quinn stared down at the two marks Tim had made on her answer sheet. He'd blackened in choices on two of the three questions that had completely stymied her. What on God's earth was the Kleederman equation? She'd never heard of it.