Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

“But your wife has never seen him?”

“What difference does that make? Ruth is an invalid; you must know that.”

Saunders had found the paper he had been looking for, and disregarded the last remark. Reading it upside down from his position on the far side of the desk, David saw that it was his own class schedule. “What do you want with that?” he asked.

“Monday the subject of your class was Swann’s Way. One of your favorites, isn’t it?”

“I wrote my thesis—”

“And Tuesday you covered A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs— Within a Budding Grove; yesterday’s schedule calls for The Guermantes Way, and today—”

“Cities of the Plain. What does that have to do with it?”

“It strikes me that this figure has only appeared — thus far — when you are doing Proust. You said he followed you home. Does he also follow you into the Language Research Complex here? Is he outside in my reception room now?”

“No.” David shook his head. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but you’re right; he doesn’t come here. He rides half a block behind me when I’m coming in the morning, then I lose him in the corridors on my way here to L.R.C., and don’t see him again until I go to class.” Suddenly he understood what the other man was driving at. “You think it’s my imagination, don’t you?” It was shocking, humiliating. He felt the blood surge into his face and was afraid to allow himself to say anything more for fear that he would actually insult Saunders.

Saunders looked distressed. “We live in an age of tension, Paramore. You know the slogan: ‘Only one out of every twelve will never suffer mental illness.’ A person like yourself, hardworking, conscientious, perhaps a little introverted, is almost certain to have a little trouble sooner or later. Why do you think we have machines in the coffee shop selling the psycho-specific drugs?”

“But other people see him too. The students do, in class — they look toward him, they giggle.” It was preposterous, but it was that which made him feel so helpless; if Saunders could not see the absurdity of his accusation at first glance, how could he be made to see it?

“But they don’t speak to him?”

“I told you that. I don’t speak to him myself; I don’t want to give him an opening.”

“Undergraduates are liable to let their eyes wander during class, and they laugh at almost anything.” Saunders’ tone was soothing. “Perhaps if there were nothing there they might look at a spot toward which you yourself seemed to be staring.”

“I refuse to continue this.” He stood up.

Saunders half rose himself, thrusting out a hand in a gesture of apology. “Listen now, about this black figure; will you do what I ask you to?”

“You’re head of the department.”

“Fine. I want you to take the rest of the day, and the next four days, off from teaching. I’ll have Henderson take your classes. And don’t forget what I said about the psycho-specifics. Here—” Digging into a pocket, Saunders produced an opened packet still containing two rather linty para-reserpine capsules. “These ought to hold you until you can get some of your own; I’ll buy some more when I go to lunch.”

David wanted to object, but only managed to say, “It is real.”

“If it’s real, fine. I hope it is. And if so it will come to the classroom just as you say it has for the past three days and Henderson will report it to me. But in any case you should have a rest, Dave; you look ready to drop.”

He threw the para-reserpine into the first trash recepticle he passed in the corridor, but following Saunders’ instructions did not go to his classes that day, and when he pedaled home in the evening he was not followed. Presumably, he reflected, the student under the black cloth was following poor old Henderson. He wondered how Henderson liked it.

That evening he talked to Ruth as little as he decently could, saying nothing about his interview with Saunders. Long after she had dropped off to sleep, still propped up by pillows in her big bed, he remained awake, thinking about the black shape and speculating on the exact nature of the plot in which it must be involved. It was nearly daylight when it occurred to him that he might be able to frustrate it and that it was indeed his duty to do so.

After much searching in the attic he found an old robe which would serve his purpose, and, providentially in the same box, a square-topped hat that would lend the correct shape to his head. The next morning, after he had carried up Ruth’s breakfast, he put them into a large grocery sack and rode to the campus with it clamped under his arm. Once in the study cell assigned him, he stowed it in an empty file drawer. A few minutes before the beginning of the final lecture period he left unobtrusively with the bundle again under his arm.

In a rest room he put on the hat and flung the cloak over his head, reminded of how as a child he had believed that if his own eyes were concealed he could walk unseen by others, like Gollum with the One Ring. The old robe smelled musty and the cuts he had made in it were difficult to keep aligned with his eyes, but the hooded student, whoever he might be, would surely take him for a second member of the conspiracy sent to help him. He stepped onto the belt, and a moment later he was opening the door of the classroom that was normally his own.

The other had not come yet. Neither, it seemed, had Henderson. He took a seat in the back of the room, grateful that the students seemed disposed to ignore him.

The lights dimmed, and in the split second before the projector switched itself on, the realization that he knew what was about to come came rushing down upon him like a wind from the mountains, shrieking in his face.

In bright primary colors the screen showed the rumpled bedroom with its cork-lined walls and the bearded man in the bed. Involuntarily the words formed themselves in his mind: For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say “I’m going to sleep.”… Sometimes, too, just as Eve was created from a rib of Adam, so a woman would come into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some strain in the position of my limbs. . When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly hosts. It was the beginning of Swann’s Way again.

He knew what was happening now, and when Mme. Swann’s victoria swung through the Porte Dauphine he crept silently out of the room to watch, invisible, his own bent form arrive on the belt; then reentered to see himself start with fear.

Without lapse of time he found himself on his bicycle again, pursuing his own back under the towering white shapes of the sycamores. He pulled the gown from his face, letting it hang properly, and straightened the mortarboard on his head. Soon — the red and yellow leaves were racing past his ears — he would be back. Soon — he seemed to fly. He looked at his hands, and they were liver-spotted still, but the spots were fading. He would not teach. He would tell Ruth as they sat together in the folding tin chairs and listened to the droning speakers. He would not teach. He would wake up.

Pretty Miss Bushnan’s suite was all red acrylic and green-dyed leather. Real leather, very modern — red acrylic and green, real leather were the modern things this year. But it made her Louis XIV secretary, Sal, look terribly out of place.

Miss Bushnan had disliked the suite from the day she moved in — though she could hardly complain, when there was a chance that the entire city of Geneva and the sovereign Swiss nation might be offended. This evening she did her best to like red and green, and in the meantime turned her eyes from them to the cool relief of the fountain. It was a copy of a Cellini salt dish and lovely, no matter how silly a fountain indoors on the hundred and twenty-fifth floor might be. In a characteristic reversal of feeling she found herself wondering what sort of place she might have gotten if she had had to find one for herself, without reservations, at the height of the tourist season. Three flights up in some dingy suburban pension, no doubt.