Andre Norton - The Science Fiction anthology

“I remember bread and butter, but I don’t know which one goes on top. I know pencil and pen-knife and bed, but I have entirely forgotten the word for maternal uncle. I remember plow, but what in the world will I say to all these great men about a plow? I pray that this cup may pass from me.”

Then he disintegrated in one abject mass of terror. Several minutes went by.

But when he emerged from the room he was a different man entirely. Erect, alive, intense, queerly handsome, and now in formal attire, he mounted with the sure grace of a panther to the speaker’s platform. Once only he glanced at the nineteen-point outline of his address. As there is no point in keeping it a secret, it was as follows: 1. Cepheid and Cerium—How Long Is a Yardstick? 2. Double Trouble—Is Ours a Binary Universe? 3. Cerebrum and Cortex—the Mathematics of Melancholia. 4. Microphysics and Megacyclic Polyneums. 5. Ego, No, Hemeis —the Personality of the Subconscious. 6. Linear Convexity and Lateral Intransigence. 7. Betelgeuse Betrayed—the Myth of Magnitude. 8. Mu-Meson, the Secret of Metamorphosis. 9. Theogony and Tremor—the Mathematics of Seismology. 10. Planck’s Constant and Agnesi’s Variable. 11. Dien-cephalon and Di-Gamma—Unconscionable Thoughts about Consciousness. 12. Inverse Squares and the Quintesimal Radicals. 13. The Chain of Error in the Lineal B Translation. 14. Skepticism—the Humor of the Humorless. 15. Ogive and Volute—Thoughts on Celestial Curviture. 16. Conic Sections—Small Pieces of Infinity. 17. Eschatology—Medium Thoughts about the End. 18. Hypo-polarity and Cosmic Hysteresis. 19. The Invisible Quadratic, or This is All Simpler than You Think.

You will immediately see the beauty of this skeleton, and yet to flesh it would not be the work of an ordinary man.

He glanced over it with the sure smile of complete confidence. Then he spoke softly to the master of ceremonies in a whisper with a rumble that could be heard throughout the hall.

“I am here. I will begin. There is no need for any further introduction.”

For the next three and a half hours he held that intelligent audience completely spellbound, enchanted. They followed, or seemed to follow, his lightning flashes of metaphor illumining the craggy chasms of his vasty subjects.

They thrilled to the magnetic power of his voice, urbane yet untamed, with its polyglot phrasing and its bare touch of accent so strange as to be baffling; ancient, surely, and yet from a land beyond the Pale. And they quivered with interior pleasure at the glorious unfolding in climax after climax of these before only half-glimpsed vistas.

Here was a world of mystery revealed in all its wildness, and it obeyed and stood still, and he named its name. The nebula and the conch lay down together, and the ultra-galaxies equated themselves with the zeta mesons. Like a rich householder, he brought from his store treasures old and new, and nothing like them had ever been seen or heard before.

At one point Professor Timiryaseff cried out in bafflement and incomprehension, and Doctor Ergodic Eimer buried his face in his hands, for even these most erudite men could not glimpse all the shattering profundity revealed by the fantastic speaker.

And when it was over they were limp and delighted that so much had been made known to them. They had the crown without the cross, and the odd little genius had filled them with a rich glow.

The rest was perfunctory, commendations and testimonials from all the great men. The trophy, heavy and rich but not flashy, worth the lifetime salary of a professor of mathematics, was accepted almost carelessly. And then the cup was passed quietly, which is to say the tall cool glasses went around as the men still lingered and talked with hushed pleasure.

“Gin,” said the astonishing orator. “It is the drink of bums and impoverished scholars, and I am both. Yes, anything at all with it.”

Then he spoke to Maecenas, who was at his side, the patron who was footing the bill for all this gracious extravagance.

“The check I have never cashed, having been much in movement since I have received it. And as to me it is a large amount, though perhaps not to others, and as you yourself have signed it, I wonder if you could cash it for me now.”

“At once,” said Maecenas, “at once. Ten minutes and we shall have the sum here. Ah, you have endorsed it with a formula! Who but Professor Aloys Foulcault-Oeg could be so droll? Look, he has endorsed it with a formula!”

“Look, look! Let us copy! Why, this is marvelous! It takes us even beyond his great speech of tonight. The implications of it!”

“Oh, the implications!” they said as they copied it off, and the implications rang in their heads like bells of the future.

Now it had suddenly become very late, and the elated little man with the gold and gemmed trophy under one arm and the packet of bank notes in his pocket disappeared as by magic.

Professor Aloys Foulcault-Oeg was not seen again; or, if seen, he was not known, for hardly anyone would have known his face. In fact, when he had painfully released the bonds by which he had been tied in the little room behind the cloak room, and removed the shackles from his ankles, he did not pause at all, but slipped into his greatcoat and ran out into the night. Not for many blocks did he even remove the gag from his mouth, not realizing in his confusion what it was that obstructed his speech and breathing. But when he got it out, it was a pleasant relief.

A kind gentleman took him in hand, the second to do so that night. He was bundled into a kind of taxi and driven to a mysterious quarter called Wreckville. And deep inside a secret building he was given a bath and a bowl of hot soup. And later he gathered with others at a festive board.

Here Willy McGilly was king. As he worked his way into his cups with the gold trophy in front of him, he expounded and elucidated.

“I was wonderful. I held them in the palm of my hand. Was I not wonderful, Oeg?”

“I could not hear all, for I was on the floor of the little room. But from what I could hear, yes, you were wonderful.”

“Only once in my life did I give a better speech. It was the same speech, but it was newer then. This was in Little Dogie, New Mexico, and I was selling a snake-oil derivative whose secret I still cannot reveal. But I was good tonight and some of them cried. And now what will you do, Oeg? Do you know what we are?”

“ Moshennekov. ”

“Why, so we are.”

“ Schwindlern. ”

“The very word.”

“Low-life con men. And the world you live on is not the one you were born on. I will join you if I may.”

“Oeg, you have a talent for going to the core of the apple.”

For when a man (however unlikely a man) shows real talent, then the Wreckville bunch has to recruit him. They cannot have uncontrolled talent running loose in the commonalty of mankind.

I

Halvorsen waited in the Chancery office while Monsignor Reedy disposed of three persons who had preceded him. He was a little dizzy with hunger and noticed only vaguely that the prelate’s secretary was beckoning to him. He started to his feet when the secretary pointedly opened the door to Monsignor Reedy’s inner office and stood waiting beside it.

The artist crossed the floor, forgetting that he had leaned his portfolio against his chair, remembered at the door and went back for it, flushing. The secretary looked patient.

“Thanks,” Halvorsen murmured to him as the door closed.

There was something wrong with the prelate’s manner.

“I’ve brought the designs for the Stations, Padre,” he said, opening the portfolio on the desk.

“Bad news, Roald,” said the monsignor. “I know how you’ve been looking forward to the commission—”