A Galaxy Of Strangers

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  She wanted to object, but there was no time. Her students were waiting for her.

  On Saturday she had lunch with Bernard Wallace, the attorney Jim Pargrin recommended. He was a small, elderly man with sharp gray eyes that stabbed at her fleetingly from behind drooping eyelids. He questioned her casually during lunch, and when they had pushed aside their dessert dishes he leaned back and twirled a key ring on one finger and grinned at her.

  “Some of the nicest people I ever knew were my teachers,” he said. “I thought they didn’t make that kind any more. I don’t suppose you realize that your breed is almost extinct.”

  “There are lots of fine teachers on Mars,” she said.

  “Sure. Colonies look at education differently. They’d be committing suicide if they just went through the motions. I kind of think maybe we’re committing suicide here on Earth. This New Education thing has some resultants you may not know about. The worst one is that the kids aren’t getting educated. Businessmen have to train their new employees from primary-grade level. It’s had an impact on government, too. An election campaign is about what you’d expect with a good part of the electorate trained to receive its information in very weak doses with a sickening amount of sugar coating. So I’m kind of glad to be able to work on this case. You’re not to worry about the expense. There won’t be any.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” she murmured. “But helping one worn-out teacher won’t improve conditions very much.”

  “I’m not promising to win this for you,” Wallace said soberly. “Wilbings has all the good cards. He can lay them right out on the table, and you have to keep yours hidden because your best defense would be to show them what a mess of arrant nonsense this New Education is, and you can’t do that. We don’t dare attack the New Education. That’s the board’s baby, and they’ve already defended it successfully in court, a lot of times. If we win, we’ll have to win on their terms.”

  “That makes it rather hopeless, doesn’t it?”

  “Frankly, it’ll be tough.” He pulled out an antique gold watch and squinted at it. “Frankly, I don’t see how I’m going to bring it off. Like I said, Wilbings has the cards, and anything I lead is likely to be trumped. But I’ll give it some thought, and maybe I can come up with a surprise or two. You just concentrate on your teaching and leave the worrying to me.”

  After he left she ordered another cup of coffee, and sipped it slowly, and worried.

  On Monday morning she received a surprise of her own in the form of three boys and four girls who presented themselves at her office and asked permission to join her class. They had seen it on TV, they told her, and it looked like fun. She was pleased but doubtful. Only one of them was officially a student of hers. She took the names of the others and sent them home. The one who was properly her student she permitted to remain.

  He was a gangling boy of fifteen, and though he seemed bright enough, there was a certain withdrawn sullenness about him that made her uneasy. His name was Randy Stump—“A dumb name, but I’m stuck with it,” he mumbled. She quoted him Shakespeare on the subject of names, and he gaped at her bewilderedly.

  Her impulse was to send him home with the others. Such a misfit might disrupt her class. What stopped her was the thought that the suave TV teacher, the brilliant exponent of the New Education, would do just that. Send him home. Have him watch the class on TV in the sanctity of his own natural environment, where he couldn’t get into trouble, and just incidentally where he never would learn to get along with people.

  She told herself, “I’m a poor excuse for a teacher if I can’t handle a little problem in discipline.”

  He shifted his feet uneasily as she studied him. He was a foot taller than she, and he looked past her and seemed to find a blank wall intensely interesting.

  He slouched along at her side as she led him down the corridor to the classroom, where he seated himself at the most remote table and instantly lapsed into a silent immobility that seemed to verge on hypnosis. The others attempted to draw him into their discussions, but he ignored them. Whenever Miss Boltz looked up, she found his eyes fixed upon her intently. Eventually she understood: He was attending class, but he was still watching it on TV.

  Her television hour went well. It was a group discussion on A Tale of Two Cities, and the youthful sagacity of her class delighted her. The red light faded at eleven-fifteen. Jim Pargrin waved his farewell, and she waved back at him and turned to her unit on history. She was searching her mind for something that would draw Randy Stump from his TV-inflicted shell.

  When she glanced up from her notes, she found her students staring at a silently opening door. A dry voice said, “What is going on here?”

  It was Roger Wilbings.

  He removed his spectacles and replaced them. “Well!” he exclaimed. His mustache twitched nervously. “Well! May I ask the meaning of this?”

  No one spoke. Miss Boltz had carefully rehearsed her explanation in the event that she should be called to account for this unauthorized teaching, but such an unexpected confrontation left her momentarily speechless.

  “Miss Boltz!” Wilbings’s mouth opened and closed several times as he groped for words. “I have seen many teachers do many idiotic things, but I have never seen anything quite as idiotic as this. I am happy to have this further confirmation of your incompetence. Not only are you a disgustingly inept teacher, but obviously you suffer from mental derangement. No rational adult would bring these— these-“

  He paused. Randy Stump had emerged from his hypnosis with a snap. He leaped forward, planted himself firmly in front of Wilbings, and snarled down at him. “You take that back!”

  Wilbings eyed him coldly. “Go home. Immediately.” His gaze swept the room. “All of you. Go home. Immediately.”

  “You can’t make us,” Randy said.

  Wilbings poised himself on the high pinnacle of his authority. “No young criminal—”

  Randy seized his shoulders and shook vigorously. Wilbings’s spectacles flew in a long arc and shattered. He wrenched himself free and struck out weakly, and Randy’s return blow landed with a shattering thud. The Deputy Superintendent reeled backward into the curtain and then slid gently to the floor as glass crashed into the corridor beyond.

  Miss Boltz bent over him. Randy hovered nearby, frightened and contrite. “I’m sorry, Miss Boltz,” he stammered.

  “I’m sure you are,” she said. “But for now—I think you had better go home.”

  Eventually Wilbings was assisted away. To Miss Boltz’s intense surprise, he said nothing more; but the look he flashed in her direction as he left the room made further conversation unnecessary.

  Jim Pargrin brought a man to replace the glass. “Too bad,” he observed. “He can’t have it in for you any more than he already had, but now he’ll try to make something of this class of yours at the hearing.”

  “Should I send them all home?” she asked anxiously.

  “Well, now. That would be quitting, wouldn’t it? You just carry on—we can fix this without disturbing you.”

  She returned to her desk and opened her notebook. “Yesterday we were talking about Alexander the Great—”

  The fifteen members of the Board of Education occupied one side of a long, narrow table. They were business and professional men, most of them elderly, all solemn, some obviously impatient.

  On the opposite side of the table, Miss Boltz sat at one end with Bernard Wallace. Roger Wilbings occupied the other end with a bored technician who was preparing to record the proceedings. A fussy little man Wallace identified as the Superintendent of Education fluttered into the room, conferred briefly with Wilbings, and fluttered out.

  “Most of ‘em are fair,” Wallace whispered. “They’re honest, and they mean well. That’s on our side. Trouble is, they don’t know anything about education, and it’s been a long time since they were kids.”

  From his position at the center of the table, the president called the meeting to order. He loo
ked narrowly at Bernard Wallace. “This is not a trial,” he announced. “This is merely a hearing to secure information essential for the board to reach a proper decision. We do not propose to argue points of law.”

  “Lawyer himself,” Wallace whispered, “and a good one.”

  “You may begin, Wilbings,” the president said.

  Wilbings got to his feet. The flesh around one eye was splendidly discolored, and he smiled with difficulty. “The reason for this meeting concerns the fact that Mildred Boltz holds a contract type 79B, issued to her in the year 2022. You will recall that this school district originally became responsible for these contracts during a shortage of teachers on Mars, when—”

  The president rapped on the table. “We understand that, Wilbings. You want Mildred Boltz dismissed because of incompetence. Present your evidence of incompetence, and we’ll see what Miss Boltz has to say about it and wind this up. We don’t want to spend the afternoon here.”

  Wilbings bowed politely. “I now supply to all those present four regular Trendex ratings of Mildred Boltz, as well as one special rating which was recently authorized by the board.”

  Papers were passed around. Miss Boltz looked only at the special Trendex, which she had not seen. Her rating was .2—two tenths of one per cent.

  “Four of these ratings are zero or so low that for all practical purposes we can call them zero,” Wilbings said. “The rating of twenty-seven constitutes a special case.”

  The president leaned forward. “Isn’t it a little unusual for a rating to deviate so sharply from the norm?”

  “I have reason to believe that this rating represents one of two things: fraud or error. I freely admit that this is a personal belief, and that I have no evidence that would be acceptable in court.”

  The board members whispered noisily among themselves. The president said slowly, “I have been assured at least a thousand times that the Trendex is infallible. Would you kindly give us the basis for this personal belief of yours?”

  “I would prefer not to.”

  “Then we shall disregard this personal belief.”

  “The matter is really irrelevant. Even if the twenty-seven is included, Miss Boltz has a nine-week average of only five and a fraction.”

  Bernard Wallace was tilted back in his chair, one hand thrust into a pocket, the other twirling his keys. “We don’t consider that twenty-seven irrelevant,” he said.

  The president frowned. “If you will kindly let Wilbings state his case—”

  “Gladly. What’s he waiting for?”

  Wilbings flushed. “It is inconceivable that a teacher of any competence whatsoever could have ratings of zero, or of fractions of a per cent. As further evidence of Miss Boltz’s incompetence, I wish to inform the board that without authorization she brought ten of her students to a studio in this building and attempted to teach them in class periods lasting an entire morning and an entire afternoon.”

  The shifting of feet, the fussing with cigarettes, the casual whispering stopped. Puzzled glances converged upon Miss Boltz. Wilbings made the most of the silence before he continued.

  “I shall not review for you the probable deadly effect of this obsolete approach to education. All of you are familiar with it. In case the known facts require any substantiation, I am prepared to offer in evidence a statement of the physical damage resulting from just one of these class periods, as well as my own person, which was assaulted by one of the young hoodlums in her charge. Fortunately I discovered this sinister plot against the youth of our district before the effects of her unauthorized teaching became irreparable. Her immediate dismissal will of course put an end to it. That, gentlemen, constitutes our case.”

  The president said, “This is hard to believe, Miss Boltz. Would you mind telling the board why—”

  Bernard Wallace interrupted. “Is it our turn?”

  The president hesitated, looked along the table for suggestions, and got none. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “A question, gentlemen. How many of you secured your own elementary and/or secondary education under the deadly circumstances Wilbings has just described? Hands, please, and let’s be honest. Eight, ten, eleven. Eleven out of fifteen. Thank you. Do you eleven gentlemen attribute your present state of degradation to that sinister style of education?” The board members smiled.

  “You, Wilbings,” Wallace went on. “You talk as if everyone is or should be familiar with the deadly effects of group teaching. Are you personally an authority on it?”

  “I certainly am familiar with all of the standard studies and research,” Wilbings said stiffly.

  “Ever experience that kind of education yourself? Or teach under those conditions?”

  “I certainly have not!”

  “Then you are not personally an authority. All you really know about these so-called deadly effects is what some other windbags have written.”

  “Mr. Wallace!”

  “Let it pass. Is my general statement correct? All you really know—”

  “I am prepared to accept the conclusions of an acknowledged authority in the field.”

  “Any of these acknowledged authorities ever have any experience of group teaching?”

  “If they are reputable authorities—”

  Wallace banged on the table. “Not the question,” he snapped. “Reputable among whom? Question is whether they really know anything about the subject. Well?”

  “I’m sure I can’t say just what bases they use for their studies.”

  “Probably not the only basis that counts: knowing their subject. If I could produce for you an authority with years of actual experience and study of the group-teaching system, would you take that authority’s word as to its effects, harmful or otherwise?”

  “I’m always happy to give proper consideration to the work of any reliable authority,” Wilbings said.

  “What about you gentlemen?”

  “We aren’t experts in education,” the president said. “We have to rely on authorities.”

  “Splendid. I now give you Miss Mildred Boltz, whose twenty-five years of group teaching on Mars make her probably the most competent authority on this subject in the Western Hemisphere. Miss Boltz, is group teaching in any way harmful to the student?”

  “Certainly not,” Miss Boltz said. “In twenty-five years I can’t recall a single case where group teaching was not beneficial to the student. On the other hand, TV teaching—”

  She broke off as Wallace’s elbow jabbed at her sharply.

  “So much for the latter part of Wilbings’s argument,” Wallace said. “Miss Boltz is an expert in the field of group teaching. No one here is qualified to question her judgment in that field. If she brought together ten of her students, she knew what she was doing. Matter of fact, I personally would think it a pretty good thing for a school district to have one expert in group teaching on its staff. Wilbings doesn’t seem to think so, but you gentlemen of the board might want to consider that. Now—about this Trendex nonsense.”

  Wilbings said coldly, “The Trendex ratings are not nonsense.”

  “Think maybe I could show you they are, but I don’t want to take the time. You claim this rating of twenty-seven is due to fraud or error. How do you know those other ratings aren’t due to fraud or error? Take this last one—this special rating. How do you know?”

  “Since you make an issue of it,” Wilbings said, “I will state that Miss Boltz is the personal friend of a person on the engineering staff who is in a position to influence any rating if he so desires. This friend knew that Miss Boltz was about to be dismissed. Suddenly, for one time only, her rating shot up to a satisfactory level. The circumstances speak for themselves.”

  “Why are you so certain that this last rating is not due to fraud or error?”

  “Because I brought in an outside engineer who could be trusted. He took this last Trendex on Miss Boltz personally.”

  “There you have it,” Wallace said scornfully. “Wilbings wants Mi
ss Boltz dismissed. He’s not very confident that the regular Trendex, taken by the district’s own engineers, will do the job. So he calls in a personal friend from the outside, one he can trust to give him the kind of rating he wants. Now if that doesn’t open the door to fraud or error—”

  The uproar rattled the distant windows. Wilbings was on his feet screaming. The president was pounding for order. The board members were arguing heatedly among themselves.

  “Gentlemen,” Wallace said, when he could make himself heard, “I’m no Trendex authority, but I can tell you that these five ratings, and the circumstances surrounding them, add up to nothing but a mess. I’ll take you to court cheerfully, and get you laughed out of court, if that’s what you want, but there may be an easier way. At this moment I don’t think any of us really know whether Mildred Boltz is competent or not. Let’s find out. Let’s have another Trendex, and let’s have it without fussing around with samples. Let’s have a Trendex on all of Miss Boltz’s students. I won’t make any promises, but if the results of such a rating were in line with this Trendex

  average, I would be disposed to recommend that Miss Boltz accept her dismissal without a court test.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” the president said. “And sensible. Get Pargrin in here, Wilbings, and we’ll see if it can be done.”

  Miss Boltz sank back in her chair and looked glumly at the polished tabletop. She felt betrayed. It was perfectly obvious that her only chance for a reprieve depended upon her refuting the validity of those Trendex ratings. The kind of test Bernard Wallace was suggesting would confirm them so decisively as to shatter any kind of a defense. Certainly Jim Pargrin would understand that.

  When he came in, he studiously avoided looking at her. “It’s possible,” he said, when the president had described what was wanted. “It’ll upset our schedule, and it might make us late with the next Trendex, but if it’s important we can do it. Will tomorrow be all right?”

  “Is tomorrow all right, Wilbings?” the president asked.