Survival School [alternate history] (Turn-of-the-Century Toughs)

Chapter Five

From the Superintendent of the House of Transformation toComrade Benjamin Carruthers:

The law strictly provides that those committed to this Institution should be vagrant, vicious, incorrigible, criminal or such as may be placed here by parents, guardians or friends, not orphans or dependent and friendless children. This is not an orphanage or a refuge into which heartless and unfaithful parents may send their children. To send such children who simply need care, kindness, and training is a great wrong – a flagrant abuse of the hospitality and benevolence of the Second Landstead. The courts of our landstead should protect the Institution from this growing evil of sending little boys that merely need a home. Let them send proper subjects for transformatory work – the worst and most hopeless boys – and we will try to save them from the ways of evil, and restore them to society clothed in their right mind, with a will and power to earn honest bread.

o—o—o

When he came outside, he found the boys in a ring around Trusty and the Super. Trusty – Bat noticed for the first time – was in formal service position, with his eyes dipped and his left arm behind his back, cupping the inside of his right elbow. The other boys had considered it prudent to lower their eyes – all except Mordecai, who had that look of absolute terror he held around policemen. He'd gone straight down on his knees in the position of abject submission.

The Superintendent patted Mordecai's head absentmindedly, as he might a dog. The Super was smiling as Trusty spoke. As Bat came closer, he could see that there were laughter lines around the Super's eyes.

Trusty must have been finishing the introductions, because as Bat reached the gathering, he said, "—and this here's No. 2450, sir."

If it hadn't been for that last number in the sequence, Bat wouldn't have known his own prison name. He followed the other boys' lead and lowered his eyes, though keeping his gaze high enough that he could still see the Super's expression. Any servant-child grown above knee-high had learned how to do that.

"Welcome, welcome!" cried the Superintendent. "I'm glad to meet you boys. You know, when I started this House, I had fellow masters telling me, 'It will never work. Delinquent servant boys are forever bad.' But time and time again, this Institution has proved them wrong. Every year, we parole boys to good homes, and the majority thus paroled are giving satisfaction to their masters and show appreciation of the training they received in this Institution."

Out of the corner of his eye, Bat looked at the other boys. They had suitably neutral expressions on their faces. The Super wasn't saying anything much different from what they'd heard before, in their old lives, before their arrests.

"It is right that servant boys should have a chance to rise," said the Super, evidently warming to his theme, "and be not forever handicapped in the battle of life. It is of but little benefit to a boy to know that it is necessary for him to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, until he has been taught in a practical way that he can do that. This the House of Transformation seeks to achieve through our vocational training and schoolroom instruction, under the guidance of our Department Heads and Teachers. All the boys here are trained to be useful citizens."

Still nothing particularly dangerous in what the Superintendent was saying. Even masters had to work, though the masters that Bat had known had never trickled a single drop of sweat in their lives. Bat's old boat-master had confined his maritime skills to shouting orders.

"We – the officers and employees of this Institution – are here to help you," assured the Superintendent. "We know what a difficult task lies ahead of you: to die to your old life, to transform yourself, and to be reborn to a new and better life. That is the cycle of rebirth, which we must all undergo, but you boys face a particularly hard path. To cease to do evil and learn to do well, to improve your minds and free yourself from lives of degradation and crime to that of honesty, is a struggle worth fighting. We staff will spend every bit of energy we have in order to help you. We know that to instruct and interest requires patience, perseverance, and aptitude, with strict discipline kindly administered. Our aim is to get and hold your respect, with what little gratitude you may be able to show, coming as you do from the filth of your past environments—"