"You know," she said to Dominique as if the thought were suddenly occurring to her, "we really ought to take these kids down to the ethnology museum in Phoenix, not only for this but as research for the mural. It's possible to do field trips, isn't it? Just for the day?"
Ana knew it was possible; after all, the students had all been on a field trip when she first arrived. Dominique objected that they had just gotten back from a trip, and Ana retorted that soon it would be too late in the year, that they needed to get the future muralists started in the right direction, and furthermore, she pointed out, they would soon all be so concerned with the end-of-the-year testing that the opportunity would be lost. She kept on, stubbornly finding more reasons that it was a good idea, convincing two or three of the other teachers to join in, until suddenly all opposition collapsed and the trip was set, in ten days' time.
She had forced open the door to an opportunity to make contact with Glen; the delay made her impatient, anxious to get to the heart of this community, get the information Glen needed, and get out again. On the other hand, she did not have a lot of time to fret over the delay, since in addition to planning the mural and her other duties of teaching and taking turns in the manual labor of the community (chicken shed, kitchen, and clean-up crews—gardening and building duties were still on winter status) she had also to prepare herself and her students for the field trip, which involved numerous telephone calls to the museum docents and the school district.
Dozens of times during those days she would look at the telephone sitting on the desk in front of her and think how simple it would be just to phone Glen. She could punch in the familiar numbers and in thirty seconds tell him what she needed and when she would be accessible, but in the end she did not, because she was fairly certain that she would be found out, and that the repercussions would be heavy.
She was fully aware that she was being watched. It was only to be expected. All of the newcomers were under careful scrutiny. She suspected that she was more closely watched than the others simply because she was involved in teaching the children, and Change authorities needed to be certain that she could be trusted not to introduce subversive outside ideas. Her classes were monitored, the papers the students wrote for her gone over by Dominique or one of the others, her reading list vetted, her computer time observed. She took care to stick to the syllabus, and allowed only those diversions and creative ideas that fit with the community beliefs. She kept a tight lid on her personal thoughts, was careful not to voice too much criticism of the outside authorities, and left religion in the realm of sociology. She did not think her rooms had hidden microphones, but she took no chances. She wrote in her diary, she meditated with the others and by herself, she walked out into the desert each morning to watch the sun rise, and she took no chances.
Her main goal was the gathering of information and worming her way into Steven's confidence, and in both of these the school became her focal point. At first it seemed an ordinary enough teaching institution, despite its setting, with very little Change doctrine working its way into the curriculum. Gradually, this picture deepened.
Ana had been given Teresa's class—or, as she discovered, the class Teresa had been forced to assume when Change had lost two teachers, one to apostasy, the other to Boston. It seemed to Ana that her colleague stepped back into her former role as the school's administrator with a trace more relief than a seeker after psychological hair shirts ought to display.
Teresa's removal from the classroom after five months inevitably created a great deal of reorganization and makeup work, and many after-school meetings with the other teachers. It seemed to Ana that the number of these requiring the presence of one particular instructor, Dov Levinski, was quite high, although as he was responsible for the math and science side of the curriculum, it made sense. Still, Ana was intrigued. When Steven began to come down for those meetings as well, although she recalled that Steven too had been trained in the hard sciences, she thought she might take a closer look.
So it was that one afternoon two days before the museum trip was planned, she walked into Teresa's office with an administrative problem she had been saving up and found the three of them sitting at the round conference table. Teresa looked irritated at the disturbance and Dov surprised, but Steven merely wore his customary look of mild interest and wise inner amusement.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Ana said, coming farther into the room. "I needed to give you something, but I didn't realize you were busy. I'll just stick this on your desk."
Teresa nodded coldly and closed the file she had on the table in front of her, which may have hidden the specific information inside but at the same time revealed the cover to be PROPERTY OF THE ARIZONA STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION. Seven such files lay on the table, four of them stacked in a pile to one side, the others distributed between the occupants of the conference table.
"Anything I can do to help?" she asked brightly on her way past the table.
"No thank you, Ana," Teresa said repressively. Dov had closed his folder, too, and was patently waiting for her to leave the room, but Steven sat back in his chair and pushed his own file a couple of inches in her direction.
"Yes," he said. Teresa's mouth dropped open and Dov looked equally startled. "Let's see what Ana makes of this decision."
Ana stood and looked the situation over with care. She wanted to see what the files were, but she did not wish to alienate the two teachers, and although Dov was merely surprised at Steven's words, Teresa's dark cheeks had flushed. However, she couldn't very well withdraw the offer once it had been accepted, so she walked over and sat down in the chair next to Steven's, pulling the folder over in front of her.
It consisted of the brief biography and not-so-brief criminal record of a fifteen-year-old boy named Edgardo Rufina, who three years earlier had gone to live with an alcoholic aunt in Kingman with two charges of prostitution in her past. He had been in and out of trouble ever since. In school he was getting one B, one D, and the rest Cs, and had spent at least a week in custody every term. His violent acts were escalating, with his last offense the serious one of assaulting a police officer.
She read to the end and looked up. Steven reached across the table to retrieve the two folders from in front of Teresa and Dov and pushed them over to her. As she opened the first, Teresa stood.
"Does anyone else want something to drink?" she asked in a taut voice. Dov did, Steven did not, and Ana thanked her and said no. Teresa took her time in the lounge, and returned with two glasses of iced tea as Ana was nearing the end of the third and last file. They waited until Ana closed that one, which like the second had concerned a young boy with few offenses but those serious and escalating, who had a family but one that was broken and itself marked by legal wrongdoings. Gabe Martinez, the boy of the second folder, had dropped out of school in Tucson, and the third boy, Mark Gill, was in the process of flunking out in the border town of Nogales.
"Which of the three?" Steven asked.
Ana had been a teacher long enough to know a test when she heard one.
"Well, it sort of depends on what you want," she replied immediately, although keeping her voice casual, even diffident. "If your goal is to get a bad kid off the streets for a while, then by all means take Gabe or Mark and do society a favor. On the other hand, if you're looking for a bright boy who's acting out an impossible home situation and might respond to a positive environment, whose troublemaking has been spontaneous and emotional rather than premeditated and self-serving, then I'd say grab Edgardo. He's even bright enough to keep up in school despite his brushes with the law."