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Virtual though they might be, the stack of file folders on Dagen's desktop was still imposing. Each folder represented one of Master Nolan's students, and contained every scrap of information the Kenzine Order had collected about that child's past accomplishments, present abilities, and future potential. In addition to data regarding their school grades it included the child's physical and psychological test results, as well as those of immediate family and close friends. One at a time Dagen immersed himself in the data, bit by bit building a holistic image of each child.

The sun was just up, and the light streaming through the windows on the far side of his office was tinged with the pinks and blues of a refreshingly cool morning. His comm beeped softly. Picking it up, he saw that the contact number was from a local exchange. A moment later, the logo of the orphanage appeared on the screen. Sitting up straighter in his chair, he pushed a button to accept the call. "Hello?"

"Teacher Dagen?" The targeted array of speakers built into the ceiling of his office made the voice sound like the caller was sitting across from his desk. He relaxed fractionally when he recognized the voice "At your service, Sister Caroline!" he said, feeling unaccountably pleased that it was she. "What can I do for you?"

"It's about Victus," the sister said, getting right to the point. "I was walking through the boys' dorm this morning after they'd all gone to school, and found all of his belongings piled up in the trash can. At first I thought one of the other boys must be hazing him again, but I thought I'd better talk to you before I made any accusations. Teacher Dagen?" she inquired, after a pause, "Are you there?"

"Yes, sister," he said, removing his palms from his face. "That is my fault, I'm afraid."

"How so?" To Dagen's surprise, she sounded more curious than annoyed.

"The last time Victus was here, he asked about my lack of possessions. We discussed the vows of a Kenzine priest," he started.

"Including the vow of poverty, I assume," she interjected, sounding amused.

Although she could not see him, Dagen nodded his head. "Including the vow of poverty. He apparently took it to heart. I know a good deal about varius behavior, but far less about children in general." His sigh was filled with amused exasperation. "Do they all assimilate new behavior with such vigor, or is it only our little Victus?"

"He seems quite taken with you," she observed, her voice lilting with her own smile, "I think you'd best be careful what you say around him. Even lessons we'd prefer not to communicate become powerful when a child sees the people he respects acting them out."

"Quite right," Dagen agreed, wondering how he'd managed to miss something so basic. He sighed, disappointed by his own lack of perspicacity. "Shall I talk to him after school about this, or would you prefer to do it?"

"I think..." She paused for a moment to consider the best course of action. "I think it would be best if it came from you," she said, finally. "That way it doesn't appear that you and I are at odds with each other."

He nodded his head. "That makes sense." As he spoke, he pulled up his calendar. "They get out at half-past fifteen today?" he asked, adding a reminder to himself after she confirmed. "If you wouldn't mind, gather up his things and put them somewhere safe until I have a chance to talk to him. And...sister?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you, for including me in his care like this." Dagen felt gratitude well up inside him. "I truly do appreciate it."

She was quiet for a moment. "Teacher Dagen, this city is rife with negative influences, and under normal circumstances we do everything we can to isolate the boys and make them safe from the predators skulking around looking for easy prey. But in this case," she said, "I think it was a good thing he ran off that day. He found one of the good guys."

Dagen chuckled. "Even though I inadvertently encouraged him to throw all his things away?"

"Oh, please," she dismissed, sounding more casual than he'd ever heard her before, "he's eight. I see more bizarre behavior in this place than I would if I tended the monkey-house at the zoo." She sighed, but sounded happy. "This is just another day at the office."

***

Even for a child of seven, Digger was small. His mother had lost custody of him after her fourth arrest, and until the damnedpolice could find his_deadbeatfather_, he was stuck in this place where the food was strange, the clothing was tight, and the other boys were all unfamiliar.

All he wanted was to have things back like they were, before the _damnedpolice_busted down their front door and hauled his mother off. Back then he hadn't had to wear shoes, or to bathe, or even to talk to other people if he didn't want to. And his mom hadn't even hit him very hard, most of the time. Even if she hadn't paid very much attention to him, she had usually been drugged up and happy. And he had been happy.

But...now she was gone. Now, he had to live with this unruly army of other boys instead of being left alone. Now, he had to deal with the constant, unpredictable noise of other people instead of long periods of comforting silence which were interrupted only by his mother's moans when her man-friends came to visit. Now, he had to sit still and listen to a teacher talking for endless hours every day. "School" had looked like fun when he saw other children doing it on the vid, but it had all been a big, fat lie. School was boring as hell and he wanted to go home, even if that meant going away with his_deadbeatfather_, whoever that turned out to be.

Strangest of all was the dog-boy who shared the class with them. He didn't know much about dog-boys, but this one looked pretty dumb. The teachers wouldn't even call on him, even though he put his paw up to answer almost every question. Although he looked friendly, Digger still didn't trust him. The other kids wrinkled their noses at him like he smelled; and he might bite.

Earlier that day, he'd heard other kids talking about how the dog-boy had attacked someone he didn't like. From their whispers, Digger thought that the other boy might have even gone to the hospital; or died. It upset him to think that this dog-boy could kill someone and still be sitting in his classroom, when his mother didn't do anything and got dragged off by the damnedpolice.

Worse than dog-boy were the bullies. Nobody liked him here, but Bront was the worst. Bront hated him, and Digger didn't know why. He tried to stay out of the bigger boy's way, but no matter where in the room he sat or stood, he always picked the wrong spot and Bront came after him. Even now, after class, he couldn't seem to get away.

The bully loomed behind him now, using his chest as a battering ram to bump him out of the way. One push made him stumble, a second knocked him off the concrete path and onto the patchy grass, where he tripped over the uneven ground, his books tumbling from his hands. "Watch where you're going, asshole," Bront muttered, as he strode past. Digger had ripped his too-tight pants when he fell, and now the other boys were laughing at him.

Digger fought the urge to escape from this horrible place, to just start running and never come back. But...where would he go? How would he eat, without his mom's man-friends to bring him food? Realizing for the first time how alone and trapped he truly was, he fought the urge to cry. Crying got you slapped.

"Hey," a gentle voice said, over his ear. Digger didn't want to turn around, lest anyone see his tears. "Let me help." He heard someone picking up his books and gathering his papers, then felt a warm hand on his back. "Just stay there for a minute."

"You ripped your pants." The voice was young, but it wasn't laughing at him like the other boys were. Digger heard the rustling sounds of clothing being removed. "Here," his helper said, "I'll cover you with my shirt when you stand up, and then you can tie it around your waist. Nobody will see. It'll be better that way."

Digger was still embarrassed that he'd been pushed down, but at least this way nobody else would see his underwear. He looked around, and was startled to be face-to-face with the school pet. His heart skipped a beat when he thought of what the other boys had said, but up close it didn't seem dangerous. "Thanks," he said, uncertain how much the dog-boy could understand. "I didn't know you could talk so good," he said, feebly.

Victus raised an eyebrow at the new kid's ignorance, but decided to let it go. "Come on," he said, "Stand up." He held his shirt out with both hands, stretching it across Digger's lower half. The varius was larger than the new kid, and the sleeves of his shirt had no problem wrapping around him and tying in the front. "There!" he said, sounding pleased. "Now, nobody can tell!"

Victus picked up Digger's books and handed half of them to the smaller boy, keeping the other half to carry himself. "Come on," he said, "Let's find Sister Caroline. She can get you some new pants out of the clothes closet." The other boys had stampeded ahead, giving the two boys a few quiet moments. "Did Ruth Ann pick out your clothes?" he asked.

Digger shrugged. "I don't know."

"Was it a big, soft, old lady?"

Digger shrugged again. "Yeah, I guess."

Victus smiled knowingly. "Yeah, that was Ruth Ann. She's nice, but she'll hand you the first thing she sees out of the closet." He chuckled. "You're lucky there wasn't a dress in there."

The remnants of Digger's humiliation stole his laugh, but he was still able to smile. "That's funny," he agreed, feeling more at ease now that he was with someone who knew where they were going. "Who are we going to find?"

"Sister Caroline," Victus repeated. "She's nice. If you ever need help, she's the one to ask. She's a nun," he said, knowingly.

"What's a nun?" Digger asked, his guard falling in the face of unexpected kindness.

"She says nuns are married to god," Victus answered. "That sounds weird, but she's really nice." The rowdy boys had herded into the cafeteria for their afternoon snack, and the two could hear them laughing and shouting at each other as they shoved crackers and watered-down juice into their faces. "They're all at snack, so we've got a few minutes. Let's drop off your books. Which room are you in?"

Digger looked lost. "I... I don't know. Larry was supposed to be helping me, but he's gone."

"That's okay," Victus reassured him. "Sister Caroline can tell us that, too."

Carrying the books from room to room, they searched high and low for the sister. Eventually, it was she who found them. "Victus!" she called, spying them from the end of a hallway, "I've been looking all over for you. You have a visitor."

Heedless of the fact that it bumped into everything within two feet of him, Victus' tail wagged madly. "Who is it?" he asked. He knew who it must be, and the thought made his rump wiggle slightly back and forth in time with his tail.

"It's Teacher Dagen," the sister said, intentionally drawing out the name with torturous slowness to watch the eager anticipation build in the youngster's face, "and he's waiting for you in the parlor."

Victus ached to run and see his friend, but didn't shirk his important duty. "This is Digger," he told the sister. Only after completing the first half of the introduction did he remember the proper form that he'd learned. "Digger," he said, struggling to rein in his impatience, "I'd like you to meet Sister Caroline."

Sister Caroline held out her hand to the small boy, who looked at it with uncertainty before extending his own out in return. The sister took his small, soft hand in her own with the care one might use in handling a rare egg, and shook it gently. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Digger. Welcome!"

Victus turned to the sister and confided, "He ripped his pants."

"Oh," she said, taking a step back and examining the boy. "It looks like Ruth Ann's been busy." She turned her eye to Victus. "I suppose this explains your state of undress as well."

"I didn't want people to laugh at him," the varius said, crossing his arms over his chest and examining his handiwork with a critical eye. "It's better this way."

"I think you're right," the sister agreed, then reached down to take Digger by the hand. "Let's get you some new pants," she said, in the bright manner that suggested marvelous adventures. "And you," she told Victus, "need to go see your friend."

Victus smiled with open-mouthed joy and bounded toward the front parlor. "Your shirt!" Sister Caroline cried out to his swiftly-retreating back. She caught his wave of acknowledgement just as he rounded the corner and dashed from sight. "That boy," she said, slowly shaking her head in amusement.

Dagen was leafing through a decades-old copy of Boy's Life - Mars Edition for the third time when Victus popped around the corner. He barely had time to stand up before the air was squeezed out of him by a happy, young varius. "Well, hello to you, too!" he said, barely having time to put his hands around the boy's naked shoulders before Victus disengaged and pushed away, using Dagen's mass to propel himself in the opposite direction. It felt, Dagen thought, like getting hit in the gut with a furry medicine ball.

"I'll be right back!" the boy said, running out of the room. A second later, his head poked around the corner. "Don't go away!" Then he was gone again.

Dagen chuckled to himself at the boy's energy, and re-visited the pages of the magazine until his young friend had done whatever he needed to do. "I'm back!" Victus cried, unnecessarily, when he returned. "I had to get a shirt," he explained. He looked at Dagen expectantly. "Are we going somewhere?"

Dagen looked out the front window at the pleasant day outside. "I have a job that I was hoping you could help me with," he said. Victus didn't look disappointed, so he continued. "I noticed some weeds growing on the monastery's lawn, and I'd hoped you would be willing to help me remove them."

"Oh," Victus said, his tail losing a fraction of its wag. But helping with a chore still meant spending time with his friend, and that was good. When he thought about what Dagen had said and realized he might get the chance to roll around on real grass again, his tail wag came back at full steam. "Sure!"

Ten minutes later they were seated on the green expanse of the monastery lawn, and Dagen was instructing Victus in the proper technique for weed pulling. "This is what we're trying to pull out." He pointed to several young invasive plants emerging from the loosely-cropped grass. "Now, get down here with me," he said, sitting down on the grass with his legs crossed.

Victus complied but seemed distracted, and Dagen noticed the expression of longing on his young friend's face. "Go ahead," he sighed, tolerantly. "I know you want to. You might as well get it out of your system. But take off your shirt first, or you'll ruin it!"

Victus stripped off his shirt, whooped, and made a rolling dive onto the verdant carpet of grass. Giggling madly, he wriggled and writhed in pleasure as he relished the feelings coursing through him. He didn't know why, but grass was fun!

Thirty seconds later he'd had his fill, and he trotted back to join Dagen where the man had been patiently waiting. "All better?" Dagen asked.

"Yup."

"Okay, then pull on your shirt. The world doesn't need to see you running around half-naked." He took a second to reach over and scratch behind the boy's ears. "Here's what I wanted you to see." He pointed to one of the weeds they were targeting. "Pull that weed, boy!" He'd tried to make his voice sound like an old farmer, but he didn't think he'd been particularly successful.

Victus accommodatingly grasped the plant, gave it a sturdy yank, and held the result out for inspection. Dagen took the weed, thanked Victus, and explained, "Weeds have the ability to come back over and over again if you don't pull them out by the roots." He held up the weed Victus had just pulled out. "See this?" he said, showing the broken stalk, "It broke in the middle, so in a week or two this weed is going to come back."

"If you'd done the entire lawn this way," he said, spreading his arms to indicate their surroundings. "You'd put in a lot of work, but you'd have to do it all over again next week, and the next, and the next, and before you knew it, you'd have wasted a bunch of your life doing nothing but pulling the same weeds, over and over again."

He parted the thick grass with his fingers, and Victus could see how the weed's tendril of a stalk disappeared into the dark earth. "Watch this," he said, putting his fingers around the base of the weed very near the ground. With the smallest of tugs, he gently pinched the root from the soil. A few centimeters of white root came out with it, and Dagen smiled triumphantly. "More weeds will pop up in other places, but I am confident that this one will not come back."

"It's the same way with evil in the world," he said, putting the weed aside. "We tend to remove the ugly parts we can easily see, but we don't pull out the root so our problems keep coming back. But," he said, catching himself, "that's not really what we're here for. You don't have to even see the root to remove it," he said, grasping another weed with his left hand while tracing its root with his right. "Using your sense of touch," he said, while looking at Victus, "you can feel your way past the grass to where this one plant has taken root..." Victus heard a quiet popping noise, and Dagen held out a weed that still had most of its root attached.

Victus selected a weed of his own and tried doing what Dagen recommended. "Concentrate on what you fingers are feeling as you trace along the body of the weed," the teacher advised. "Make a picture in your mind of what you're feeling with your fingers. Do you think you can do that?"

Victus nodded and paid particular attention to the rough texture of the weed's stem, noticing how it contrasted with the smooth, even thinner stalks of the grass. "I think so..." When his fingers touched the soil, he knew that he'd reached his goal. He gave a careful pinch with his fingers, and pulled out...a weed with a broken stem. "It didn't work."

"Did you successfully trace the weed back to the soil?" Dagen asked.

"Yes."

Dagen smiled approvingly. "Then the lesson was learned," he said. "That you have not yet perfected your weed-pulling technique doesn't matter so much." He looked around the lawn at the dozens of weeds poking up from its surface. "We have plenty left to hone our skill."

Determined to understand where he'd gone wrong, Victus tried again. And again. And again. Pulling weeds had never seemed as arduous as it did today, but eventually his mind began reshaping itself around the task. Tracing the invisible thread of the root past the tangle of competing sensory challenges by feel alone was becoming second nature to him by the time half of the lawn was clear, and as he grasped the base of the next weed where it plunged into the earth, he pictured in his mind all of the different ways he might tease the plant out.

As he tried different techniques on each plant, some methods succeeded and others failed, and with each attempt his focus grew and his brain made stronger connections. When the tickle in the back of his mind felt like THIS, he succeeded. When it felt like THAT, he failed. Discarding the methods that didn't work, he focused on improving those which succeeded, and soon he was working with satisfying speed.

They worked diligently, and were almost finished by the time Dagen brought up the subject he'd truly wanted to discuss. "I talked to Sister Caroline today," he said, offhandedly, "and she tells me that you've given up your worldly possessions."

"Yeah!" Victus said, sitting up for a moment before flopping back on the grass. "I threw almost everything away."

"Really?" Dagen said, "Why did you do that?" He noticed that Victus was beginning to wriggle. "Don't roll around in your shirt or you'll stain it."

Victus wuffed quietly in frustration, but stopped moving around so much. "I wanted to be like you," he admitted. "You said it was good to live that way."

Dagen put a hand on the boy's arm. "I'm glad you think highly enough of me to do that," he said, "But now I feel guilty. This is your childhood, and you're supposed to have some things that are important to you." Victus didn't seem inclined to speak, so Dagen asked, "Did you throw anything away that was special to you?"

In his mind, Victus reviewed the things he'd stuffed into the trash can. "I don't know. Not really, I guess." One by one, he remembered the things he used to own. "Most of it was old papers from school, and some drawings I did when I was little. And there was a shell I found when we took a field trip to the beach."

Dagen smiled, encouragingly. "You must have really liked that, to bring it all the way back with you."

"I did," Victus said, his ears perking at the memory of how excited he'd been to find the perfect shell at the tide line, halfway buried in the sand." They quickly fell back to their usual position. "Someone broke the spines off it, but it was still sort of pretty. And for my birthday last year I got a picture book with a whole bunch of animals in it." His mouth turned down in distaste. "Bront stole it and drew mustaches on all the animals."

Dagen's spirits sank. "Don't you have anything the other boys haven't broken?"

Victus held very still, wondering if Dagen was disappointed that he hadn't done more to protect his things and keep them safe. "My motorcycle," he said, looking hopeful. "I keep that under my mattress so nobody can find it."

Dagen was disturbed, but still he forced a smile. "That's good! I still have some things of my own," he said. "You need some, too." He felt that he'd successfully delivered his message, but something about the set of the boy's ears still didn't seem quite right. "Is there something you'd like to ask?"

Victus found another weed and tugged it free. When he did speak, their conversation took an unexpected turn. "Can you hypnotize people?"

Dagen sat up straight, wondering how he would answer the child. Lying was out of the question, and none of the dozen ways of not-answering that sprang to mind seemed honest. But perhaps an answer would not be necessary... "Why do you ask?" he said, deferring the question.

Victus didn't appear to notice his hesitation. "Bront said you hypnotized Sister Caroline and made her trust you. He said that all Kenzine can do that." He scrutinized his friend. "Did you do that?"

"No," Dagen said, relieved that he could answer the boy with total honesty, without betraying either his oaths or his principles. "No, I did not. She distrusted me at first because she did not know me. After we talked for a while, she felt more comfortable with us leaving together. When people feel you're being open and honest with them, they tend to trust you."

Victus looked relieved but not satisfied, and Dagen suspected that his curiosity was at full boil. Nothing he knew was as persistent as a curious varius, and he thought it would be best to cut the boy off at the pass. "Bront is sharing a rumor that was started by those who do not understand Kenzine abilities. There are many things that a trained Kenzine can do that can appear quite magical to someone on the outside, but they are all trainable techniques."

"Like what?" Victus asked.

Dagen hummed for a moment. "Let's see... I can go longer than most men between trips to the bathroom."

Victus giggled. "That's silly!"

"It's perfectly true," Dagen assured him. "It comes in handy when you're guarding someone. Let's see, what else..." Deep in thought, he stroked his chin. The abbot may have shared secret information about varius' mental abilities with him, but that didn't allow Dagen to reveal any of the Kenzine's own unique abilities with the boy - not yet. Still, there were a couple of things he could share to sate Victus' curiosity. "I can help others heal more quickly than they could on their own," he said, "and if I have enough time to study someone, I can predict what they're going to do."

Victus put his fingertips to his temples. "Can you kill someone with your mind?" he asked, excitedly.

"Now that's silly!" Dagen said, laughing along with his young friend. "Nobody can kill you with their mind!" He checked his chron for the time. "But I might die of hunger if we don't get inside and have some of Master Franchesca's famous crispy bean patties!"

***

"It was the sweetest thing," Dagen said, while stirring a teaspoon of honey into his tea. "He saw one of the younger boys get pushed down by the same bully that plagues him. The poor child tore his clothing," he remembered, "and Victus took off his shirt and wrapped it around the boy to protect his modesty."

"Gave him the shirt off his back, huh?" Wesley said, sipping from his own cup. "Do you think he was trying to impress you?"

"Pshaw." Dagen dismissed the thought with a wave. "He didn't even know I was there. I was at the top of the hill and saw the whole thing from a bird's-eye view."

Wesley looked dubious. "So why were you there, anyway? You told me you were planning to cut your visits back to just on weekends."

Dagen scratched his ear uncomfortably. "Yes, I know. Sister Caroline called me, this time. Victus decided to adopt a life of austerity, and threw away most of his worldly possessions."

"How long did that last?" Wesley asked, grinning at the boy's youthful impulse. "An hour? Two?"

"I think he was fully prepared to go through with it," Dagen said, looking confounded. "But then again, he really didn't have very much to give up in the first place. After dinner, he and I rescued his stuff from where Sister Caroline had stored it, and we went through it all. It was mostly just scraps of paper and broken toys."

"Did you talk about it?" the abbot asked.

"Of course," Dagen snorted. "What kind of teacher would I be if I allowed a teachable moment to pass by unremarked?"

"A miserable one," Wesley acknowledged. "What nugget of wisdom did you impart today?"

"It was a pleasant evening, so we spent it on the front lawn, pulling weeds."

The abbot looked nonplussed. "You didn't."

"Why not?" Dagen fired back. "How often did you have us out on the monastery lawn yanking tiny little weeds out of the grass until our young fingers bled?"

"You weren't that young," Wesley corrected. "You were well into your second year as an adept before that knowledge was made available to you. This boy is...what, eight?"

"Don't worry, Charles," Dagen soothed, "We didn't even come close to discussing...that. But I have to tell you, he showed remarkable native proficiency.

"How remarkable?" Wesley asked, his displeasure converted to wary curiosity.

"He was starting to piece together the basic elements all by himself," Dagen said, unable to mask his pride. " By the time we were finished, he was starting to detect the life force of the weed amidst the tangle of grass."

"And you didn't coach him?"

"I showed him how to pull weeds," Dagen said, spreading his hands. "He put the rest of it together by himself. "Varii don't think physical contact is out of the ordinary, so I was able to monitor his progress without him realizing what I was doing."

"Be careful with that," Wesley warned. "More than anyone, you know how important trust is to them. If he ever finds out what you were doing and feels you weren't being honest..." he cast a somber gaze at his friend. "You remember what happened to Rob."

"Very well I remember what happened," Dagen snapped. "Not a day goes by that I don't think about what happened to him, and the role I played in that debacle."

The abbot's voice softened. "It wasn't your fault," he said, calmingly. "Nobody blames you for what happened."

"I do," Dagen said, balefully. "I knew what was going on, and did nothing to stop it."

"You were a child," Wesley said, exasperation tingeing his voice. "But now you are an adult, and you have to let this go.

Dagen thought for a moment. "Maybe this child is my way of doing just that," he said. "Maybe Victus will help me atone for my sins."

The abbot rolled his eyes. "Feeling dramatic tonight?" He sighed. "If that's what it takes, so be it. Feel free to get him onto the admission track. He apparently has an affinity for the work, so let's see if he gets along in the environment."

"My thinking exactly," Dagen said. "I want to put him into a few introductory classes and see what he thinks."

"Fine," Wesley said, with a wave of his hand. "You have my blessing. But," he said, "don't push him. He must be allowed to proceed at his own pace."