Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

His bicycle was in the faculty rack at the south end of the campus and he made his way to it as quickly as he could, looking over his shoulder from time to time with the illogical feeling that he was still being followed. Somehow the sight of his own name, David P. Paramore, on the registration tag dangling from the handlebars, reassured him. He mounted and pedaled off toward home.

As always there was a multiplicity of bikes and pedal carts on the streets, plus a sprinkling of the slow and costly electric cars and a few heavily taxed internal combustion trucks, mostly diesels. Since the government did not care much if the members of the liberal arts faculty survived a bomb blast or not, the underground on-campus apartments were the prerogatives of members of the scientific departments. He had worked his way through the traffic for nearly an hour and was approaching his own neighborhood before he glimpsed the dark figure far behind him. The student under that black cloth, whoever he was, had a bike too; a much newer one than his own, just as his legs were no doubt younger and his wind better. Block by block he gained steadily until he was not more than a few seconds behind.

A pushcart man from whom David sometimes bought vegetables waved from the curb: “Hiya, Professor, what’s y’hurry?” and then was gone, a blur of unshaven face and glinting teeth. Twenty years ago he had ridden these same streets in this same way, commuting to the campus, thinking of the great day on which he would get his doctorate and anticipating a meeting with Ruth at the Student Center for lunch; and it suddenly occurred to him to wonder why indeed he was hurrying, now that all the goals he had set himself were reached in emptiness and it was possible to set no more. What could the student under the black cloth do to him that time had not? For a moment he slacked his pace, then the repulsion he had felt earlier for that enigmatic figure returned and he bent over the handlebars again, the breath whistling in his chest.

The house his mother had left him was two-storied, the ground floor of brick veneer, the second of the overhanging wooden construction the contractors of her period had found so cheap to build and so attractive to buyers. He careened up onto the lawn as recklessly as a boy, left his bicycle lying on the grass instead of pulling it up onto the porch, and slammed and locked the door behind him.

Ruth had heard him, and she called to him from her room at the top of the stairs. After a moment he began the daily ritual of his visit with her, mounting the steps one at a time and pausing a little to catch his breath at each.

She had fluffed and arranged her hair for him today, and applied the cosmetics she kept on the stand beside her bed. Seeing her smile, the little attempts she had made to please him, he knew he could not tell her what had happened today; then he saw the smile fade and remembered that Ruth had always known when anything went wrong for him. It would be kinder to tell her than to leave her in suspense.

Sitting on the bed beside her he described everything: the shrouded figure coming into his classroom, the pursuit home.

“But it’s so easy!” she said when he had finished. She had held his hand pressed between hers as he talked, and now she gave it a little pat. “They did it before, years ago— when you and I were in school ourselves. A boy got into a big black sack and began attending classes that way; he wouldn’t tell anyone who he was, or speak above a mumble at all. At first everyone laughed, and then when he kept coming day after day like that they were rude to him and began to play cruel jokes. Finally when he still wouldn’t tell them anything they just ignored him. Then at the end of the term it came out that it was an experiment some graduate students had worked out with one of the men in the psychology department.”

He looked at her, wanting to believe.

“It’s so obvious, David. Someone has revived that old experiment. We say we’re so much freer and more humane than people used to be, but are we really? Well, he’s going to make the same test again and see if the results are any different. David, don’t look so frightened.”

“Why did he wait for me after class, then? Why did he follow me home?”

She squeezed his hand, as though trying to show physically her sincerity. “He wanted to see how you’d react, so he had to give you time to react in. And I don’t believe he followed you at all. Don’t you see, he couldn’t take off the bag on campus, or someone would see who he was; he was probably on his way home, and it just happens to be down our street. There are lots of those boarding houses for students who can’t get dorm space scattered all over.”

He said nothing, but she could see he was still unconvinced.

“He didn’t actually stop here, did he, David?”

“I didn’t wait to see.” He was already ashamed of having run. “I just went inside.”

“There, you see! He hasn’t rung the bell or anything, has he? Or tried to climb through a window? Go out and look around for him. I’ll bet you can’t find him anywhere.”

He did not go outside, or even look through the windows that evening, but nothing happened to prove Ruth incorrect. He did his usual housework, watched television with her for an hour, and read himself to sleep.

The next morning the dark, shapeless figure was waiting for him, and it attended every class he gave for the next two days.

He made an appointment with Saunders, the head of his department. Saunders’ secretary, it seemed to him, looked at him oddly as he came in, but he managed to smile at her while she spoke into the intercom.

Saunders fancied himself a sportsman and had had his office decorated that way, absurd as it was for a room a hundred and fifty feet below ground. Stuffed fish and color photographs of glacial lakes adorned the walls; there was even a copy of Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, bound in scuffed leather and left lying conspicuously on top of a microfilm cabinet. David had always felt ill at ease in this room, psychically shaken by its falsity.

Saunders was leaning back in his swivel chair and staring at the ceiling as he came in, and did not immediately look at him. “What is it, Paramore? The girl said you wanted to see me. Sit down.”

The chairs were covered with vinyl made to look like cowhide and rather too strongly impregnated with the real substance’s odor. David settled himself gingerly in one as Saunders shifted his weight to tilt his seat forward until he could see him. “Well, what is it? Paramore, you look awful. Are you sick?”

As briefly as he could he described what had been happening for the past three days. When he had finished Saunders remained silent.

“Can’t you see?” David leaned forward, trying to make the man understand. “It’s an attempt to entrap me, or the department, or the school. They’re waiting for us to do something, or to say something that can be used against us. Then there’ll be another riot, just like the old days. Speeches — demonstrations — and when it’s all over—”

“We haven’t had many riots since we moved the campus underground,” Saunders said mildly. “After all, they can’t break our windows when we haven’t got any, and the belts in the corridors just keep sweeping along anybody who sits down on them until they get dumped off at the end. When did you say this started?”

“Monday.” He had lost. Saunders was not willing to recognize what they were trying to do.

“You say he sleeps on your porch at night?” Saunders was shuffling through the papers in a desk drawer and did not look at him as he spoke.

“Yes.” It was an effort to prevent his voice from cracking. “Yes, just like a dog someone won’t let into the house at night, with his back against the front door.”