'It worked before,' he replied.

'And it won't work again. No more bomb scares, Cadel.

They're clumsy. Unimaginative.' Thaddeus surveyed the child in front of him. Cadel looked sulky; his bottom lip was sticking out in a way that made Thaddeus laugh. 'Now, now,' he said. 'Don't be upset. The bomb scare might have been ill-advised, but the burst water main was good. The burst water main was very good.' Thaddeus c.o.c.ked his head. 'How on earth did you manage it? Did you amend some kind of online sewage system record? Tap into a radio communication frequency? Were you waiting for something like that to happen? How did you know it had happened a you were stuck at school, weren't you?'

Cadel, who had been pouting at the floor, glanced up. His scowl faded. His appearance couldn't have been more disarming.

'I don't know what you mean,' he said.

But there was a naughty twinkle in his eye.

FIVE.

A few weeks later, Cadel was examining the cistern in a school toilet stall when he heard some boys talking.

The boys were huddled near the hand dryers. They were older than Cadel, who knew only one of them a Jarrod a by name. They were talking about the railway detonators that Jarrod had found in his uncle's shed.

'I exploded 'em,' Jarrod declared proudly.

'How?' asked his friend.

'I hit 'em with a pipe.'

'Cool.'

'Are there any left?' another boy inquired.

'Nah.'

'You should have kept one.'

'Why?'

'Because I've never heard a detonator. Are they loud?'

'Course they're loud, you moron! They're supposed to be loud!'

Silence fell as one by one the four boys became aware of Cadel's presence. Having finished with the plumbing, he had drifted out of his toilet stall.

Jarrod scowled at him. 'What are you staring at?' he said rudely. 'p.i.s.s off.'

'p.i.s.s off, you girl,' his friend added.

Cadel looked from face to face. The contempt he saw on each of them made him reckless. He said: 'You don't need railway detonators to make a big bang.'

'Huh?' said Jarrod.

'You don't need railway detonators to make a big bang,' Cadel repeated.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'It means that you can make explosives out of anything.' Cadel reeled off a list of bomb ingredients available in almost every storeroom, garage, laundry or supply cupboard. Then, seeing how riveted his audience was, he explained how a mercury-switch detonation device could be constructed out of an ordinary thermometer. 'Bags of potato crisps can be highly flammable,' he added, 'especially in a small s.p.a.ce. And you can build yourself a ten-minute fuse with a cigarette and a book of matches.'

At that point the school bell summoned them back to cla.s.s, and Cadel was forced to finish his lecture. He was already beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake.

The next day, he knew he had: word went round that Jarrod had blown off his left thumb trying to plant a bomb in a sports equipment cupboard.

Jarrod wouldn't talk much about the incident. He admitted that he hated doing gymnastics, and never wanted to do it again. He did not, however, mention Cadel.

Nevertheless, Thaddeus wasn't fooled.

'So you've been blowing up your cla.s.smates?' he said to Cadel, during their next session together.

'No. Of course not,' Cadel replied.

'Oh, I understand that it was an accident.' The psychologist's tone was sarcastic. 'But really, Cadel a bombs again? What have I told you about bombs?'

From the transmitter screen, Dr Darkkon added, 'And as for that Jarrod character, what are you doing, putting your faith in some sixth-cla.s.s thug? Cadel, you can't trust people like that.' By this time Dr Darkkon's arthritis-bangle transmitter had been confiscated and he was using a pair of spectacles instead. Cadel's image was projected onto the lenses of these spectacles, and a transmitter embedded in their metal frame captured Dr Darkkon's image for Cadel. Usually, Dr Darkkon was able to remove his eyewear entirely, and place it on a surface some distance away, so that Cadel could have a better view of his father's face. When he was being closely monitored, however, Dr Darkkon was forced to leave the gla.s.ses on, and Cadel caught a glimpse only of his father's right eye, greatly enlarged. 'How could you have been so careless, Cadel?' Dr Darkkon continued. 'People of that sort can't be entrusted with anything. They're bound to screw up.'

'You were right not to plant the device yourself,'Thaddeus remarked from his crimson couch. 'There's no need, when you can always delegate. The skill lies in choosing the correct tool.'

'But I didn't choose anyone!' Cadel protested. 'I didn't ask that boy to plant a bomb, he did it himself!'

'Naturally, we wouldn't expect you to admit it a' Dr Darkkon began.

'But I didn't! Honestly!' Cadel was quite upset. 'I'm telling the truth!'

There was a short silence. Then Thaddeus said, in his silkiest tones: 'You'd like us to believe that you really did blurt out all your hard-won information about pipe bombs just to impress a few blockheads in year six?'

Cadel flushed. He didn't know how to respond. Should he admit that he had enjoyed basking in the awe-struck attention of Jamboree's toughest kids? It would make him look almost simple-minded aon the same level as stupid Jarrod and his dumb friends. At the same time, Cadel was alarmed that neither Thaddeus nor his father had believed him. And he was very confused. Should he have known that Jarrod would go off and make his own bomb? Was there something about Jarrod that should have warned him?

He was disappointed in himself for failing to antic.i.p.ate the possibility. He felt that he had let his father down ahis father and Thaddeus.

'Cadel,' said Thaddeus, leaning forward and fixing him with an intent look, 'if this whole episode was unplanned, as you say, then you have a lot to learn. Your father has told you, again and again, to keep a low profile. You won't do that by trying to impress people. You'll find it all too easy to impress most people, and then where will you be? Constantly watched. Admired. Pursued.'

'It's bad enough that you're skipping years,' Dr Darkkon added. 'I'd be happier if you were following a more normal educational pattern. You've already been identified as highly gifted. Now you'll be the subject of constant scrutiny.'

'You have one advantage,' Thaddeus went on, 'and that's your face. People with pretty faces aren't expected to have brains.'

'They stand out, though,' Dr Darkkon said gloomily. 'They're noticed. They're watched.'

'Perhaps,' Thaddeus conceded. 'So Cadel will have to learn to fade into the background. It really isn't hard. The right clothes, the right stance, the right att.i.tude . . .'

'Like not boasting to morons,' Dr Darkkon interrupted.

'Like that, yes. We admire you, Cadel. You don't need the admiration of idiots like Jarrod.'

Cadel stared at his lap, legs swinging. Occasionally a very occasionally a he still felt like a freak. It happened sometimes when he made a remark and a teacher stared at him as if he'd just sprouted another arm. Or when the other kids started giggling behind his back because he'd been staring at a handball game for fifteen minutes, trying to calculate velocities and outcomes. Or when Mrs Piggott came home in a bad mood and blamed him for the fact that the thermostat in the hot water system wasn't working. In these situations, Cadel always felt a powerful urge to tell everyone about his infamous traffic jam, or his brief penetration of the Pentagon security protocols.

Such a feeling, he knew, could be dangerous. He had to resist it with all his might.

'Should I have known that Jarrod was going to make his own bomb?' he asked, in a small voice. 'Should I have expected that?'

Thaddeus blinked. Dr Darkkon said: 'It was on the cards, Cadel.'

'There are certain personality types,' Thaddeus remarked.

'Self-destructive. Antisocial. I can tell you about them if you want. Though they can be useful, they're not reliable tools.' 'But should I have known what Jarrod was going to do?' Cadel pressed. 'Is there some way I could have known?' After a long pause, Dr Darkkon grimaced, and Thaddeus studied Cadel carefully. 'You had no idea?' Thaddeus said at last. 'It never crossed your mind that you might be planting a seed in Jarrod's?' Cadel shook his head. Thaddeus glanced at the transmitter screen, where Cadel's father was echoing his son's movement.

'Well in that case, dear boy, you should focus your attention on human behaviour,' Thaddeus advised. 'You'll never reach your true potential if you discount the importance of people, and the way they think.'

'Except that they don't think,' Dr Darkkon growled. 'Most of 'em don't, anyway.'

'Perhaps, but that doesn't mean they don't act.' Thaddeus turned back to Cadel. 'Being a bit of a behaviouralist myself, I know there's a certain pattern to the chaos, if you look hard enough,' he said. 'So far, though, I haven't seen a one hundred per cent success rate when it comes to predicting people's actions.'

'There isn't a formula? Or a program?' Cadel wanted to know.

'Not that I'm aware of,' Thaddeus replied. 'Nothing generic.'

'There are programs that plot population expansion,' Dr Darkkon interjected. 'Certain predictive formulas a.s.sociated with actuarial work, and so forth. Sociological measurements.'

'People are people,' Thaddeus finished. 'They tend to have fairly fixed personality patterns and routines a and there are usually danger signals that you can spot if someone's been traumatised, say a but on the whole, Cadel, even I can't forecast individual behaviour. Not in a way that's scientifically admissible. I'm relying on instinct as much as anything else. Instinct and a very thorough knowledge of the person involved.'

Cadel nodded, thinking hard. It occurred to him, suddenly, that there could be no system more complex than the system of human interaction. All the petty disagreements, the sudden friendships, the jealousies, the emotional outbursts that swirled around him at school a could they all somehow be codified? Could he find the key to the network of hopes, loyalties and basic needs that underpinned every community in the world?

He believed that he probably could, but not without a lot of work.

SIX.

Cadel was ten years old when he was sent to high school.

The Jamboree teaching staff had had enough. They felt that Cadel was now beyond them: he was clearly bored with everything they threw at him. They decided that his interest in applied chemistry, his repeated attempts to sneak onto the school computers, even his slightly patronising manner, would best be handled in a secondary-school environment.

So Stuart and Lanna were left with the problem of where to send him. Stuart, who believed that Cadel needed more discipline, favoured a private boys college with its own cadet training. Lanna preferred a coeducational school. She was convinced that all-male environments were brutish and cruel, and that Cadel, with his girlish face and short stature, would be tormented in such a place.

Finally they compromised by enrolling Cadel in a nearby private school called Crampton College.

Cadel had to pa.s.s an entrance exam before he was accepted into year seven. He had to wear a straw hat whenever he donned his school uniform. During his first day at Crampton, he was a.s.signed a counsellor, who spent two hours with Cadel and the Piggotts filling in forms that covered Cadel's goals, strengths and faults, as well as his state of health and family history. Together, they also worked out his course program and timetable of lessons.

'We have some other escalated learning students,' the counselor informed Cadel. 'They're not much older than you, and they're in year eight, now. I'm sure you'll have a lot in common.'

Cadel smiled and nodded. He had decided that, if he was going to understand the way social systems worked, he would have to do more than study sociological and anthropological texts. He would have to make friends, and listen, and watch, and feign interest in the boring obsessions of normal teenagers. By doing so, he would also improve his chances of 'fading into the background'. A boy fascinated by DSL access multiplexers was bound to stand out. A boy who collected sports cards wouldn't.

So Cadel began to smile a lot. He studied the slang of his cla.s.smates, and copied it. He laughed at their jokes and admired their possessions. Mostly, however, he listened. He listened to complaints, gossip and detailed descriptions of everything from holiday trips to new bikes. He listened to girls as well as boys. His placid smile and unlimited access to sweets meant that he was tolerated, if not hugely popular; some of the boys still thought him a little weird a especially the more sensitive, intelligent boys. They didn't like the way he would sit in corners, his blank, blue gaze fixed on particular people for minutes at a time. Some of the girls thought he was cute, but kept this belief to themselves. Being at least two years younger than most of the kids in his year, Cadel was widely regarded as a baby. To have openly admired his long, dark eyelashes, or his dewy complexion, would have invited general scorn.

Cadel was treated like a baby by the teaching staff as well. He was still carefully watched whenever he went anywhere near a computer, with the result that he didn't often sit down in front of a computer screen. Instead, he concentrated on social networks. He noted down arrivals and departures. He observed the procedures for fire drills, canteen deliveries and bus lines. Most importantly, he paid very close attention to his cla.s.smates. He learned that Paul hated Isaiah, that Chloe loved Brandon, that Sarah was jealous of Odette, that Jocelyn and Fabbio were inseparable. He watched a almost wistfully a as Erin and Rachael shared a chocolate biscuit, or as Jason kindly showed Fergal how to bowl a cricket ball properly. No one ever shared chocolate biscuits with Cadel. He was an outsider in year seven, mostly because of his age. And few of the kids had parents as rich as Cadel's, so they expected him to be a source of chocolate biscuits.

There was one crew of rough boys who didn't like Cadel at all. They would jostle him in corridors and knock his peanut-b.u.t.ter sandwiches out of his hand. Cadel studied them with particular intensity. He picked out the lead bully, the jokesmith, the thinker and the offsider.

One of these boys was soon expelled; rumour had it that he'd been caught smoking marijuana. Another was laid up for two months with a broken leg, which had befallen him in the boys toilets a no one quite knew how. The third was made to repeat year seven, and the fourth became a laughing-stock for appearing at a cricket match in a t-shirt with the words 'Girl Power' emblazoned on it. By the time he realised that he wasn't wearing his usual t-shirt, which was identical in size and colour, the damage had been done.

Cadel watched this boy scurry back to the change room, while all around him people fell about laughing. It was a gratifying moment that filled Cadel with a dizzy sense of achievement, and it soon led to more ambitious attempts.

Three months before Cadel's eleventh birthday, his French teacher left the cla.s.sroom, briefly, to answer an urgent phone call. When she returned, she found the entire cla.s.s in an uproar, with everyone fighting and shouting a except Cadel.

He sat in the midst of this chaos, quietly finishing the exercise she had set for all of them.

'It was weird,' she said later, in the staffroom. 'It was just . . . I mean, I've never seen anything like it. They were all red in the face. Even Talitha Edwards was fighting. And Cadel was just sitting there, like b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in his mouth.'

'Cadel's always on the sidelines,' a colleague pointed out.

'Yes, but he looked so smug.'

'He always does.'

'Yes, but . . .' The French teacher sighed, suddenly. 'Oh well, you're probably right. It was strange, though. It was . . .' She searched for the word. 'It was spooky,' she concluded.

It was also Cadel's first conscious attempt to manipulate a whole social system. His next effort was more complicated. It involved his encyclopedic knowledge of cla.s.s timetables and cleaning schedules, his familiarity with every portion of the school fire drill, his awareness that a particular girl had to go to the toilet at a particular time every day, and his close monitoring of one teacher, who always felt compelled to move his car whenever a more convenient parking spot became available behind the canteen. By using these pieces of information, and tampering with a deadlock, he engineered the disappearance of a year eight boy. Then, when the alarm was finally raised, he mentioned having seen a strange man in the playground that morning.

It was only after the police had been alerted that the missing boy was found, locked in the 'art cottage' toilet. No one thought to blame Cadel for this incident. No one knew of his part in it except Thaddeus and Dr Darkkon, who applauded his ingenuity.

'A harmless piece of mischief,' said Thaddeus, 'but very well executed. You've begun to grasp some psychological truths, Cadel. Well done. I'm impressed.'

'So am I,' Dr Darkkon added, beaming. His teeth, magnified by the transmitter, looked like the rotting stumps of an old wharf; they were ragged and brownish, full of hairline cracks and black pits, and studded with greenish fragments that vaguely resembled lichen.

Cadel glanced from his father to Thaddeus, and back again.

'Do I get a reward?' he asked.

Thaddeus removed his gla.s.ses and polished them carefully. From the screen on Thaddeus's desk, Dr Darkkon growled: 'A reward?'

'It's my birthday soon,' Cadel pointed out. 'My eleventh birthday.'