Free First Meetings by Orson Scott Card Page B

the database. I know whenever my stuff gets accessed, and by whom.”
    “That’s absurd,” she said. “They sweep for viruses on the school system twice a day.”
    “They sweep for known viruses and detectable anomalies,” he said.
    “But you tell your secret to me? ”
    “Only because you lied to me,” said the Wiggin boy. “Habitual liars don’t rat each other out.”
    “All right,” she said. Meaning, all right, what’s the lie? But then she tasted her spring roll and said, “All right,” again, this time meaning, Good food, just right.
    “Glad you liked them. I have them cut down on the ginger, which allows the taste of the vegetables to come through. Though of course I dip them in this incredibly robust soy-and-chili-and-mustard sauce, so I have no idea what they actually taste like.”
    “Let me try the sauce,” she said. He was right, it was so good she contemplated pouring some on her salad as dressing. Or just drinking it from the little plastic cup.
    “And in case you wanted to know what part of my records is a lie, I can give you the whole list: Everything. The only true statement in my records is ‘the.’”
    “That’s absurd. Who would do that? What’s the point? Are you some protected witness to a hideous crime?”
    “I wasn’t born in Wisconsin, I was born in Poland. I lived there till I was six. I was only in Racine for two weeks prior to coming here, so if I met anybody from there, I could talk about landmarks and convince them I’d really lived there.”
    “Poland,” she said. And, because of her father’s crusadeagainst the population laws, she couldn’t help but register the fact that it was a noncompliant country.
    “Yep, we’re illegal emigrants from Poland. Slipped past the web of Hegemony guards. Or maybe we should say, sub-legal.”
    To people like that, Hinckley Brown was a hero. “Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I see. This picnic isn’t about me, it’s about my father.”
    “Why, who’s your father?” asked John Paul.
    “Oh, come on, Wiggin, you heard the girl in class this morning. My father is Hinckley Brown.”
    John Paul shrugged as if he’d never heard of him.
    “Come on,” she said. “It was all over the vids last year. My father resigns from the I.F. because of the populations laws, and your family is from Poland. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”
    He laughed. “You really are suspicious.”
    “I can’t believe you didn’t get Hunan wontons.”
    “Didn’t know if you’d like them. They’re an acquired taste. I wanted to play it safe.”
    “By spreading a picnic on the floor in front of my office door, and throwing away whatever food got cold before I came out? How safe can you get?”
    “Let’s see,” said Wiggin. “Other lies. Oh, my name isn’t Wiggin, it’s Wieczorek. And I have way more than one sib.”
    “Valedictorian?” she said.
    “I would have been, except I persuaded the administration to skip over me.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Don’t want any pictures. Don’t want any resentment from other students.”
    “Ah, a recluse. Well, that explains everything.”
    “It doesn’t explain why you were crying in your office,” said the Wiggin boy.
    She reached into her mouth and took out the last bite of spring roll, which she had only just put in. “Sorry I can’t return any of the other used food,” she said. “But you can’t buy my personal life for the price of a few takeout items.” She set the morsel of saliva-covered spring roll on her napkin.
    “You think I didn’t notice what they did to your project?” asked the Wiggin boy. “Firing you from it when it’s your own idea. I’d’ve cried, too.”
    “I’m not fired,” she said.
    “Scuzi, bella dona, but the records don’t lie.”
    “That’s the most ridiculous…” Then she realized that he was grinning.
    “Ha ha,” she said.
    “I don’t want to buy your personal life,” said the Wiggin boy. “I want to learn everything you know about