PROCEEDINGS against Kyle, Carolton, and whomever else the prosecutor might have had mind to rope in with them were dropped. Insufficient evidence was cited as the main factor, although frustration at Linc's last-minute change of position probably had much to do with it too. The consequence was that Linc carried the full brunt of all the resentments and bad feeling in the air. His defense counsel remained as lackadaisical, bordering on openly hostile, she had been throughout—to the point that Linc protested to Breece that any hearing based on a defense like that would be a joke. Breece nodded his agreement and laughed derisively. As result, Linc ended up with a clear run of "Guilty as charged" on all counts. The sentence was detainment in a juvenile labor facility until age 18, at which time he would be transferred to the adult system. The term to be served there would be determined at that time.
Labor camp, Linc knew, was for the dregs, the no-hopes. It meant he had been written off as a lost cause. No remedial education, no rehab programs there. Just hot, aching, dawn-to-dusk grind, Marine boot-camp-style discipline, and rubber-hose educating or days in the cooler if he strayed an inch out of line. And afterward, when the review came up, they'd be pulling every trick in the book to keep him off the streets until he was being measured for a wooden suit.
But then, curiously, after pronouncing sentence, the judge informed the court he would be prepared to suspend it pending a decision on the availability of another option—and assuming Linc would be prepared to consider it. Linc was taken aback. They were giving him a choice? . . . It didn't take much thinking about, bearing in mind what he'd heard of the alternative. Sure, he told them. He'd be prepared to consider it.
Dr. Grober, Linc told himself as he was conducted into the interview office, was going to be a pushover. Two weeks had gone by since the court hearing. Linc had been moved to what was termed a transit facility, which consisted of five dormitory blocks and a communal building inside a wire fence, with desert outside and the scrub cleared back to a distance of three hundred feet. The inmates wore white shirts and gray pants, were kept busy for most of the day with things like clearing ditches and picking up trash from highways, but in between had access to a library with computers and books, and were permitted sports and workouts in the gym. So even if nothing came of the "alternative," agreeing to consider it put off starting at a labor camp by a few weeks.
On the day appointed for the interview, Linc was one of maybe half a dozen who were kept back from regular chores and assembled in a room in the main building, where they waited on uncomfortable chairs, avoided one another's eyes, and talked little. The procedure was sufficiently out of the ordinary to provoke anxious speculations, which long-formed habit caused them to keep to themselves. Eventually, Linc's turn came around, and he was called in to the room Grober was using.
Grober was perhaps in his late fifties or sixties, with white, crinkly hair and bushy eyebrows, a long, sharp nose, and mouth compressed into a downturn above a firm jaw. He wore black-framed spectacles, and his face was pink and florid, possibly due to the polka-dot bow tie he was wearing with a lightweight tan jacket. He actually rose from his chair when Linc was shown in. It was in a perfunctory kind of way that resulted from habit rather than anything given thought to, and he didn't go as far as to grace it with a smile. Nevertheless, that was when Linc decided that handling him was not going to be a problem.
Reformers came in two broad varieties, Linc had found. Mr. Strong-Clean-and-Honest offered himself as a role model. Usually opening with something like, "Well, a fine mess you've made of things so far, haven't you?" he played a stern, disapproving line—but with the suggestion you could straighten out provided you went with his rules. The fault was yours, but he could help you straighten yourself out. The right tactic in dealing with him was to accept the blame and then go for all the breaks you could get for as long as he went on believing his approach had produced a positive response.
Mr. Grieving-Understanding-and-Sympathetic, on the other hand, told you not to blame yourself because the fault was not yours but "society's," and with your help he could straighten things out. With him you played innocent and agreed you'd never had a chance—and then milked him for all the breaks for as long as he went on believing his approach had produced a positive response. All they differed on was the line they took as to whose fault it was—or went along with the appearance of taking, according to how they read the best chances of getting your cooperation.
Hence, Linc found himself unexpectedly flummoxed when Grober, after waving him into a chair, resuming his own, and allowing the guard to leave, stared at him in silence at some length with a curious frown on his face and said, finally, "You possess some interesting qualities, Mr. Marani. At least, based on what we know at this stage, we think so. It's true you don't seem to have put them to any especially useful ends, as of yet. But we're hoping that might be corrected. Would such a prospect be of interest to you, do you imagine: being useful? Needed by people?"
Linc didn't know what to make of it. He had never before encountered the suggestion he might be considered capable of being useful for anything. Being needed was an even stranger thought. He had always been told he was no good—even if in some cases, supposedly, it wasn't his fault.
"I'm . . . not sure I understand," he answered guardedly. "Where are you from? What kind of thing are we talking about?"
"Of course you don't," Grober agreed. "But it would be somewhat premature to go into that just now. The specifics can come later. For now I'm just interested in your reactions to a few points of principle."
He fell silent again, regarding Linc distantly, as if weighing up something in his mind. If this was supposed to be a sales pitch for some new rehabilitation program or to recruit subjects for testing another crazy psychological theory somebody had come up with, it was unlike any pitch Linc had met before. A few seconds more passed, and he got the feeling he was expected to say something. He jerked his head, his brow creasing in a frown, and gestured briefly. "You said something about 'qualities' . . . that maybe you might be interested in. I don't know what you mean. Just what are we talking about?"
"I'm not sure you'd understand if I tried to tell you," Grober replied. "Not right now, anyway. I said I wanted to put to you a few matters concerning principle. And you do have principles, you know, Mr. Marani. Strong principles—even if, at the present time, you are probably unaware of them as such. They are important things, you know. It's upon them that everything else is built."
None of this was making sense. Linc emitted a sigh of exasperation and shook his head, showing his empty palms. "Look, Mr . . . ."
"Grober. Dr. Grober, if you please."
"Maybe I'm being slow or something, but this isn't getting through. I can't tell you anything if I don't know what you're talking about. What, exactly, do you want?"
"Whatever you have and are willing to offer. I can't tell you exactly what. I doubt if at present you even know what it is yourself."
Linc put a hand to his brow and closed his eyes. "This is a game? Okay, let's try it another way. You don't know what you want, and I don't know what you're talking about. Then what are you offering? What am I supposed to think I stand to get out of it?"
"And there you have the game that marks our times," Grober observed. "Zero sum. What's in it for me? My gain can only be at someone else's loss. We build mistrust and antagonism into all our transactions and relationships." He made a face and waved a hand. "And the end product is the world you see around you. Everyone becomes a threat or a rival, an adversary to be squashed first before he does it to you, or the nice guy who talks you into letting down your guard because he's after your job. Violence and greed. Is history an inevitable product of human nature, do you think? Or do we unthinkingly and needlessly make ourselves prisoners of the past?"
Linc didn't follow everything Grober said, but the gist was becoming clearer. He shrugged. "It's how things are: Eat or get eaten. You go for whatever you can get, and hang on to what you've got. The corporations take you for what they can, and the government takes from everybody."
"Inevitably so, would you say?" Grober asked again. His tone was thoughtfully curious, as if the question had just occurred to him for the first time.
Linc snorted. "I don't know . . . . What is this? Do you think you're gonna change any of it?" Maybe this walking stiff did, Linc thought. Okay, he told himself, he'd hitch along for the ride Just to see where it went. It couldn't be any worse than the camps.
"I think this civilization of ours will be incapable of making further meaningful progress until it changes somehow," Grober said.
Linc eyed him dubiously, as if finally wondering about his sanity. "Is that something I'm supposed to care about?" he asked.
"Not in those terms," Grober conceded. "But the subject does have some relevance to the matter of what it is you stand to gain from the proposition I have to make. And that was your question, after all." He looked at Linc questioningly. Linc waited. "You ask what I have to offer. The answer is, nothing. Nothing, that is, for you to take. In fact, quite the converse." Linc's frown deepened. Grober went on, "What I'm offering is a rare opportunity—to learn how to give instead of take. A chance to discover service and obligation, and break free from the tyranny of expecting rights."
The words were so strangely different from the litany Linc was used to hearing every day that for a moment he had to stare hard to be sure he'd heard correctly. "The big deal is that I give up rights? That's what I'm supposed to go for in this?"
"Yes. Instead, to fulfill duty, know honor, and meet obligations. All of it priceless."
"Priceless? To be given obligations when I don't have any now? Is that what you're telling me?"
"Not to be given them. To accept them," Grober said.
Linc leaned back, shaking his head disbelievingly. "You really are crazy."
"At the time when such considerations become pertinent," Grober went on. "We would not demand unconditional agreement in advance."
And it was getting crazier. "Let's get this straight." Linc sat forward again. "You're saying I get to make choices in all this? It's not like some laid-down program I have to buy into up front?"
"Quite so," Grober replied. "I'll make no bones about it, Mr. Marani. What we're looking for is total commitment and obligation. The only truly binding loyalties are those entered into freely. This might possibly sound like a contradiction in terms to you at present, but that is likely to change with time. The only condition we would ask is that your parents or other legal guardians sign over their responsibilities for you fully to us for as long as we might deem it fit to continue."
This was unreal. Linc was finding it difficult to keep a serious face. "And right now I don't have to promise anything? I can go with it for as long as it suits me? You're happy to live with that?"
"It has been our experience that the best results are achieved that way," Grober affirmed.
Linc thought through what had been said but was unable to see where there might be a catch. Finally, he sighed, spreading his arms and turning up his hands in an attitude that said he had nothing to lose. "What else is there to say? If that's the way you want it, I'll buy. Okay, Mr . . . . Dr. Grober. I guess you've got yourself a deal."