OXFORD, 2001

Gus was twelve in the December when she took home that end-of-term report card: the last report before everything changed.

A withdrawn child, the summary read, who needs to interact more with other children. It was the kind of report which Louisa had come to expect.

But there were one or two puzzled hints from other teachers, including Mr. Brownspell who taught physics: Produces occasional flashes of surprising intuition, when she succeeds in engaging with the class at all.

When the English teacher, Mrs. Holwell, set an essay assignment on Inevitability in Daniel Deronda, a novel the class had just read-by chance, the same Eliot book which Gus had borrowed, and her mother had tried to finish, several years before-Gus’s reply was a long and flowing indictment of genetic determinism: eloquent and reasoned enough for suspicions of plagiarism to spring up in every adult who read it.

Worse, the essay contained equations and conceptual diagrams-of interconnected springs-forming a mathematical model of the interdependence of genes, and their developmental motion through a phase-space of genetic possibilities. It replicated some of Kaufman’s work (which she could not have seen) from the Santa Fe Institute- which is the nearest, she said in the essay, we get to predetermined lives, and it’s not close at all -and demonstrated the existence of broad constraints on the otherwise random, unimpeded arms-race of co-evolving replicators.

“I got the idea,” she told Mrs. Holwell, “from the Faraday lectures. On the telly.”

The English teacher, who had never heard of Richard Dawkins, was unimpressed. But she was sufficiently annoyed to show Gus’s exercise book, during a break in the staff room, to Mr. Brownspell. And he was astute enough to be amazed by what he read.

“You watched Dawkins,” he said to Gus later. “When you were how old?”

“I was young.” The twelve-year-old, with a solemn expression, shook her head. “But I remembered it.”

“Mm. I don’t think-”

“He’s real, you know. I saw him in town last week.”

“Quite.” Brownspell was bemused. “He works here, doesn’t he? In the university.”

It was the first time Gus realized that Oxford could be a special place.

Perhaps the fuss would have died down, kept Gus’s life more normal, if this had not been an inspection week. But Alex Duggan was the inspector, and he was a young man who was overly sensitive to the annoyance he was causing to already overworked teachers. Across the country, politically motivated or well-intentioned curriculum changes (depending on who you talked to) meant that teachers were putting in long unpaid hours to prepare internal reports as well as lesson material; the feeling was of rampant bureaucracy gone mad.

And Duggan, who had not so long ago been an idealistic neophyte teacher himself, welcomed any excuse to get involved with an issue which did not revolve around paperwork or failed administration. A problem child, or one of exceptional promise-in this case of suspected plagiarism, it could be either-would form a welcome break from a routine he was beginning to hate.

He interviewed Gus in the art room, keeping her back “for a small chat” after the others had left for morning break.

Afterwards, with a strange delight in his eyes, he showed his-or rather Gus’s-trophies in the staff-room: geometric models formed of plasticine and bright plastic cocktail sticks.

“A hypercube.” Brownspell recognized one of the forms. “But what’s this one?”

“She’s read about tesseracts. Then extended the notion, all by herself”-Duggan blinked-“to hypertetrahedra and hyperpentahedra.”

“Well.” Brownspell slowly smiled. “What are we going to do with her?”

“Hmm? Indeed.” Duggan’s answering smile grew wide. “Did you know Dawkins is giving a public lecture tomorrow night? In the Zoology Institute.”

“Perhaps”-Brownspell glanced over at Jenny Mensch, who taught French-“a couple of us could take her there.”

“What about Gus’s parents? What do you know about them?”

“A single mother. Works two, maybe three cleaning jobs.”

“Ah.” Duggan thought about the child’s indictment of genetic determinism. “How very interesting.”

E. O. Wilson showed powerful forces, the twelve-year-old Gus had written, moving every species. But we are human beings and our lives are more interesting than ants.

“Gus’s mother is devoted to her. You can tell just by the way she looks at her.”

“That’s very good.”

“You think we ought to have a word with her?”

“Yes… Yes, I think we should.”