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sorry, but that's the way I
feel."
    Spunky too. Walter decided he was
going to do his damnedest to get this young lady into The
Ingraham.
    But he could do only so much. A
lot—everything, one might say—depended on the test tomorrow. She'd
have to correctly answer those special questions. He couldn't help
her with those. Nobody could.
     
     
    MONITORING
     
    Louis Verran sat at the main console
in the monitoring room in the basement of the Science Center and
struck a match. Elliot and Kurt weren't due in for another thirty
minutes, so he had the place to himself. He held the flame to the
tip of his panatella and puffed. This was his domain, the only
place on the whole goddamn campus where he made the rules, and he
did not have one against smoking here. Never would. He savored the
coolness of the early puffs, even inhaled a little.
    Nothing in the world like
an after-dinner cigar. All he needed was a snifter of VSOP to feel
one hundred percent mellow. But that would have to wait. No booze
while he was on the job. His rule.
    He scanned the readouts, checking to
make sure the pick-ups were tracking their target data.
    The dorm was hopping. The hopefuls had
all been fed—nicely stuffed on chicken francaise and all the
trimmings—and escorted to their rooms. Now time for them to settle
in, settle down, and go beddie-bye by lights out at
11:00.
    Everything was operative. One hundred
and four sets of readouts, one for every room in the V-shaped
dorm's two wings. Half of them were occupied by hopefuls tonight. A
pair in each of those rooms. One hundred nervous, twitchy bodies in
all.
    He decided to run some random checks.
He activated the audio in 241. A couple of girls in that
one...
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    "...think this could be some sort of
test too?"
    It was the third time Trish had asked
that since dinner—which Quinn was still marveling at. She glanced
over at where her roommate for the night sat with an MCAT review
course manual open on her lap. Trish was pudgy, with long frizzy
hair and mild acne. The seams of her jeans, made for someone two
sizes smaller, were stretched almost to the breaking point over her
thighs.
    "I don't know what you
mean."
    Trish rolled her eyes and sighed as if
it were all so obvious.
    "This." She gestured around her. "This
room. Spending the night in the med students' rooms. They could be
testing us to see how well we respect their rules. What do you
think?"
    A handsome room—a two-room suite,
actually. Cedar paneled walls, a thick rug on the floor, and their
own cheerfully tiled bathroom. The outer room had the beds and a
view of the woods; the elaborate headboards looked like mahogany
and were built into the walls, with drawers and bookshelves and
compartments of various sizes; two huge closets also built in. The
inner half was a sitting room with two built-in desks that also
seemed like mahogany, plus a neetly upholstered, Laura
Ashley-looking couch, a round table, and two comfy chairs. A far
cry from the cinderblock box she called home at U. Conn.
    "Isn't this the most incredible dorm
room you've ever seen?" Quinn said.
    "Got to be. Do you think it's true
about the daily maid service?"
    "That's what I've heard."
    "But do you think they're testing us
by putting us in here?"
    "Could be. They certainly have enough
rules around here."
    The Ingraham, she'd heard,
had a reputation of exerting an unusual amount of control over its
students, and that seemed to stretch to its applicants as well. All
applicants—and they reminded you endlessly that you'd been invited to be an
applicant—had to attend the full orientation and spend the night
prior to the test in The Ingraham's dorm.
    As soon as she'd arrived, Quinn had
been handed an orientation booklet which had laid down the rules in
no uncertain terms. And in bold type had been the requirement of
spending the night here. As if to say, if you don't stay the night,
don't bother showing up for the test. Why, Quinn wondered, were
they so adamant