Barbara Michaels - The Dark on the Other Side

Seldon’s comments on Gordon were about as useful as the newspaper accounts had been. Reflex reactions. The remark about Gordon’s tragic unhappiness had some normal human spite behind it, though Professor Seldon would have been genuinely indignant if you pointed that out. He was a third-rate scholar and a second-rate human being; envy of a better man could not be openly expressed, so it masked itself under the guise of benevolent pity. Translated, his remark simply meant: This man has everything I would like to have. Nobody ought to be that happy-except me. So he must be miserable, down deep underneath, where it doesn’t show.

And, ironically, the old man was right. Randolph was an unhappy man. There was a serpent in his Eden, though that was a cliché worthy of Seldon himself. But Seldon had no knowledge of Gordon’s private life. His assessment of Gordon might have come straight out of the high school Class Prophecy: “Bright, intelligent, friendly; bound to succeed.”

Michael caught the waiter’s eyes and nodded. The mellowing effect of the whiskey wasn’t quite complete, he could stand another one. Frustration of this sort was normal, he knew that. Most people weren’t perceptive about other people. Wrapped up in their own miseries, they had no energy to spare for the problems of others; anyhow, they tended to pigeonhole people as they did ideas, and reacted to deviations from a wholly imaginary picture with astonishment and annoyance. “Good old Sam wouldn’t do a thing like that.” “Mary, of all the people in the world; she must have changed a lot since I knew her.” Whereas, of course, Mary hadn’t changed at all. Mary, like everyone else, was not one Mary but a dozen. Her astonished friend had just not happened to see the Mary who finally broke out.

Then why, Michael wondered, was he so irritated by his failure to get an instant, comprehensible picture of a man as complex as Gordon Randolph? Was it because he wasn’t getting any picture at all, not even a misleading one? Hadn’t Randolph had any friends, only associates and disciples?

No. He had not. That was the only useful point Michael had obtained from Seldon.

“Oh, no, Randolph didn’t associate with…us,” he said. Mentally supplying the three missing words, Michael suppressed a smile. “I presume he passed his leisure hours with friends in the city. Except-yes. I recall being surprised, at the time…He spent a good deal of time with the students.”

The emotion that colored his voice-one of the few times that genuine feeling was allowed to show-was simple astonishment. Remembering Buchsbaum’s conversation, and some of the student complaints he had seen published in recent months, Michael understood. His internal amusement, this time, was rather sour. By God, things had changed. He remembered the big, echoing old house where he had grown up; the front door always open and the carpet in the hall worn threadbare with the tread of students’ feet, in and out, at all hours of the day and night. His father had had a funny notion of a teacher’s role… Professor Seldon would probably never know why Michael left so abruptly.

But it was that very lead that had led to his present frustration. The student-teacher relationship, if it was a good one, could be one of the most important in life. He had expected some interesting material from Randolph ’s students. Having gone, posthaste, to look up the enrollment for Randolph ’s class, he was delighted to find that one of the top students was still around. Tommy Scarinski.

Maybe his reasoning had been fallacious. But he didn’t think so, he was inclined to cross Tommy off as an isolated aberration. The best students in the class, the ones who got the highest grades-they still gave letter grades in those bad old days-might not necessarily be the people who had most attracted Gordon, but it was far more likely that his favorites would be found among that group than among the kids whose work had been too poor to rate Gordon’s approval. Besides, the class file included Randolph ’s comments-terse, sympathetic, and intelligent. The four “A” students had received the most favorable comments-with one exception. Miss Alison Dupuis had been dismissed with a curt: “Idiot savant; but how can you flunk a calculating machine?” With the other three, Randolph had obviously enjoyed a personal friendship.

One of the three had been Linda.

The second, Joseph Something or Other, had dropped out of sight. The vinegary spinster at the Registrar’s office could tell him only that Joseph was no longer registered. Well, that was something he could do tomorrow; he had been too pleased at the availability of Tommy Scarinski to check the other records, to see whether Joseph X had matriculated, or transferred to another institution. Graduate school somewhere was a likely possibility, in view of his scholastic record and his teacher’s praise. What had Gordon said? “Genuine creativity and drive-a rare combination.” Yes, Joseph was worth tracking down. The evaluation of a brain like that, sharpened by several years of maturity and by absence from his former mentor, would be valuable. That was why Tommy had been so disappointing: The years hadn’t sharpened his brain, it was still mushy… Poor devil.

The waiter brought his steak, and Michael finished his drink and his deliberations. As he ate he glanced around the room in search of distraction from thoughts that were becoming stale and futile. It was a pleasant, undistinguished little place, like a thousand other restaurants in a hundred other towns. The only thing that made it different was the fact that it was in a college town. There were a lot of students present, mostly couples, and they definitely brightened the scene. The voices were shrill, but they were alive; they got loud with excitement, they vibrated with laughter. Collegiate styles were undoubtedly picturesque. Floppy pants, beads and pendants, clothes that dangled, and jingled, and blazed with color. Michael approved of beards; at least you could tell the boys from the girls that way, and the Renaissance look appealed to him. A couple at a table next to the booth he occupied might have posed as models for the New Look-the boy had long brown hair, and hair over most of the rest of his face; a red kerchief was knotted around his throat. Michael’s eyes lingered longer on his date. The long, straight blond hair obscured her face most of the time, but her legs were in full view. They were booted up to the knee, and what she wore above them, if anything, was hidden by the tablecloth.

Michael signaled the waiter for his coffee. The man lingered, swabbing unnecessarily at the table, and Michael resigned himself.

“Stranger in town?”

“Yes. I’m just here overnight.”

“You busy tonight?”

“No,” Michael admitted, wondering what form the conventional offer would take this time.

“You like music?”

“Well-some kinds,” Michael said, surprised and curious.

“Stick around then, have another cup of coffee. Kwame is due in a few minutes. He’s not bad, if you like that kind of music.”

“Kwame?”

The waiter, a tired-looking man with receding hair, grinned.

“That’s what he calls himself. Real name’s Joe Schwartz.”

“What does he play? The sitar? The viola d’amore?”

“Just the guitar. But, like I said, he’s not bad. If you like that kind of music.”

He moved on to the next table, leaving Michael feeling ashamed of his cynicism. Maybe he ought to get out of the big city more often. It was a hell of a note when you were surprised by ordinary human amiability. The conversation was a lesson for him in another way; it emphasized his point about personality stereotypes. The weary middle-aged waiter was not the sort of person you’d expect to enjoy the music produced by somebody named Kwame, even if he didn’t play the sitar.