"All I want," she said, "is to pee. I don't want to do it on insane students camped at my door, so if you'd move to one side..."

He moved.

When she had washed up she thought of not going back to her office. The office door had locked behind her. She had her purse. She owed nothing to this boy.

But curiosity got the better of her. She wasn't going to eat any of the food, but she had to find out the answer to one question.

"How did you know when I was coming out?" she demanded, as she stood over the picnic he had prepared.

"I didn't," he said. "The pizza and the burritos hit the garbage half an hour ago and fifteen minutes ago, respectively."

"You mean you've been ordering food at intervals so that—"

"So that whenever you came out, there'd be something hot and/or fresh."

"And/or?"

He shrugged. "If you don't like it, that's fine. Of course, I'm on a budget because what I live on is whatever they pay me for custodial work in the physical sciences building, so this is half my week's wages down the toilet if you don't like it."

"You really are a liar," she said. "I know what they pay part-time custodians and it would take you two weeks to pay for all this."

"So I guess pity won't get you to sit down and eat with me."

"Yes it will," she said. "But not pity for you."

"For whom, then?" he asked.

"For myself, of course," she said, sitting down. "I wouldn't touch the mushrooms—I'm allergic to shiitake and Oeuf seems to think they're the only true mushroom. And the satay is bound to be cold because they never serve it hot even in the restaurant."

He wafted a paper napkin over her crossed legs and handed her a knife and fork. "So do you want to know which part of my records are a lie?" he asked.

"I don't care," she said, "and I didn't look up your records."

He pointed to his own desk. "I long since installed my own monitoring software in 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 crusade against 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 Human Community."

"Then come to class. And next time bring the treats there, to share."

"The treats," said the Wiggin boy, "aren't for sharing. They're for you."

"Why? What do you want from me?"

"I want to be the one who, when I telephone you, I never make you cry."

"At the moment," she said, "you're only making me want to scream."

"That will pass," said the Wiggin boy. "Oh, and another lie is my age. I'm really two years older than the records say. They started me in American schools late, because I had to learn English and... there were certain complications about a contract that they asserted I had no intention of fulfilling. But after they gave up, they changed my age so nobody would see how chronologically misplaced I was.

"They?"

"The Hegemony," said the Wiggin boy.

Only he wasn't a mere boy, she supposed. A man. John Paul Wiggin. It was wrenching to start thinking of him with a name. Unprofessional. Perilous. "You actually got the Hegemony to give up?"

"I don't know that they gave up completely. I think they merely changed goals."

"All right, now I'm actually curious."

"Instead of being irritated and hungry?"

"In addition to those."

"Curious about what?"

"What was your quarrel with the Hegemony?"

"The I.F., actually. They thought I ought to go to Battle School."

"They can't force you to do that."

"I know. But as a condition of going to Battle School I got them to move my whole family out of Poland first and set things up so that the sanctions against oversized families didn't apply to us."

"Those sanctions are enforced in America, too."

"Yes, if you make a big deal about it," said John Paul. "Like your father. Like your whole church."

"Not my church."

"Right, of course, you're the only person in history who is completely immune to her religious upbringing."

She wanted to argue with him, but she knew the science his assertion was based on that showed the impossibility of escaping from the core worldview instilled in children by their parents. Even though she had long since repudiated it, it was still inside her, so that there was a constant argument, her parents' voices sniping at her, her own inner voice arguing with them. "Even people who just quietly have lots of children get zapped by the law," she said.