The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card Page B

grew more confident as it became clear the test was below his abilities. Until the last question. It was completely unrelated to the rest of the test. He was not prepared for it. They had not studied it in class. And yet as he looked at the problem, he thought he understood how the answer might be found. He began calculating. There was one figure that baffled him. He thought he knew what it meant, but did not know how to prove it, to be sure, to be exact. A year ago he would have called it a good guess and entered his answer. But this year had changed everything. He had a way of finding out what he needed to know.
    He looked at the teacher, Hartman Torrock, who was gazing around the room. Then he shifted something in his mind, the way things shifted when his eyes suddenly focused on something far, when they had been seeing something near. It was as though he could suddenly see behind Hartman Torrock's eyes. Now Jase could hear his present thoughts as if he were thinking them himself —his mind was on the woman who had quarreled with him this morning, and whose body he wanted to cause pleasure to and cause pain to this night. It was an ugly sort of desire, to rule her and make her be like his own tongue, to speak only his thoughts, to disappear inside him when she was not in use. Jase never liked Hartman Torrock, but loathed him now. Torrock's thoughts were not pleasant scenery.
    Jase quickly plunged deeper than Torrock's present thoughts, moved among, his unthought-of memories as easily as if they were his own, finding Torrock's knowledge of stars and motions, seeking the meaning of the unfamiliar figure. And the exact figure was there, perfect to the fourteenth decimal place. Then he slipped gratefully from Torrock's mind and entered the result into the keypad. No more problems appeared above his table. The test was over. He waited.
    His score was perfect, when it came. And yet a red glow appeared, and hung in the air above Jase's table. The red glow meant a failing score. Or a computer malfunction, or cheating. Torrock, looking worried, got up and came to him. “What's wrong?” asked the teacher.
    “I don't know,” said Jase.
    “What's your score?” He looked, and it was perfect. “Then what's wrong?”
    “I don't know,” said Jase again.
    Torrock went back to his own table and began talking quietly with the air. Jase, as always, listened to Torrock's mind. The mistake had been Torrock's.. The last question should not have been on his test. It dealt with secrets that children should not learn until years later. Torrock had written it last night, meaning to append it to an examination he would give to his advanced students tomorrow. Instead he had added it to his beginning class today. Jase should not have been given the question at all; above all, he should not have been able to get it right. It was a sign of cheating.
    But how could he cheat? thought Hartman Torrock. Who in the room knew the answer, except me? And I never told him.
    Somehow this boy stole secrets from me, thought Torrock. They will think that I told him, that I broke my trust, that I am not fit to know secrets. They will punish me. They will take away my somec privileges. What has this boy done to me? How did he do it?
    Then Torrock remembered the darkest truth about Jase Worthing: his father. What do you expect from the son of a Swipe? thought Torrock. He knew my secret because he is his father's son.
    Jase recoiled from the thought, for it was his darkest fear. He had grown up with the horror of who his father was. Homer Worthing, the monster, leader of the Swipe Revolt, the foulest murderer in all history. He had died in space years before Jase's mother had decided to conceive a child. The Swipe war was over then. But the universal loathing for the Swipes remained, tinged with the memory of the eight billion people Jase's father had burned to death.
    It had been nearly bloodless until then. In the seemingly endless war between the Empire and