“Hey! Look! That’s him!”
He began to run. He was two blocks from the cafe before he slowed to a walk again.
That night, he needed three shots of whiskey before he could get to sleep.
* * * *
A delegation from the American Institute of Psionics and Parapsychology reached Blanley that morning, having taken a strato-plane from the East Coast. They had academic titles and degrees that even Lloyd Whitburn couldn’t ignore. They talked with Leonard Fitch, and with the students from Modern History IV, and took statements. It wasn’t until after General European History II that they caught up with Chalmers—an elderly man, with white hair and a ruddy face; a young man who looked like a heavy-weight boxer; a middle-aged man in tweeds who smoked a pipe and looked as though he ought to be more interested in grouse-shooting and flower-gardening than in clairvoyance and telepathy. The names of the first two meant nothing to Chalmers. They were important names in their own field, but it was not his field. The name of the third, who listened silently, he did not catch.
“You understand, gentlemen, that I’m having some difficulties with the college administration about this,” he told them. “President Whitburn has even gone so far as to challenge my fitness to hold a position here.”
“We’ve talked to him,” the elderly man said. “It was not a very satisfactory discussion.”
“President Whitburn’s fitness to hold his own position could very easily be challenged,” the young man added pugnaciously.
“Well, then, you see what my position is. I’ve consulted my attorney, Mr. Weill and he has advised me to make absolutely no statements of any sort about the matter.”
“I understand,” the eldest of the trio said. “But we’re not the press, or anything like that. We can assure you that anything you tell us will be absolutely confidential.” He looked inquiringly at the middle-aged man in tweeds, who nodded silently. “We can understand that the students in your modern history class are telling what is substantially the truth?”
“If you’re thinking about that hoax statement of Whitburn’s, that’s a lot of idiotic drivel!” he said angrily. “I heard some of those boys on the telecast, last night; except for a few details in which they were confused, they all stated exactly what they heard me say in class a month ago.”
“And we assume,”—again he glanced at the man in tweeds—“that you had no opportunity of knowing anything, at the time, about any actual plot against Khalid’s life?”
The man in tweeds broke silence for the first time. “You can assume that. I don’t even think this fellow Noureed knew anything about it, then.”
“Well, we’d like to know, as nearly as you’re able to tell us, just how you became the percipient of this knowledge of the future event of the death of Khalid ib’n Hussein,” the young man began. “Was it through a dream, or a waking experience; did you visualize, or have an auditory impression, or did it simply come into your mind.…”
“I’m sorry, gentlemen.” He looked at his watch. “I have to be going somewhere, at once. In any case, I simply can’t discuss the matter with you. I appreciate your position; I know how I’d feel if data of historical importance were being withheld from me. However, I trust that you will appreciate my position and spare me any further questioning.”
That was all he allowed them to get out of him. They spent another few minutes being polite to one another; he invited them to lunch at the Faculty Club, and learned that they were lunching there as Fitch’s guests. They went away trying to hide their disappointment.
* * * *
The Psionics and Parapsychology people weren’t the only delegation to reach Blanley that day. Enough of the trustees of the college lived in the San Francisco area to muster a quorum for a meeting the evening before; a committee, including James Dacre, the father of the boy in Modern History IV, was appointed to get the facts at first hand; they arrived about noon. They talked to some of the students, spent some time closeted with Whitburn, and were seen crossing the campus with the Parapsychology people. They didn’t talk to Chalmers or Fitch. In the afternoon, Marjorie Fenner told Chalmers that his presence at a meeting, to be held that evening in Whitburn’s office, was requested. The request, she said, had come from the trustees’ committee, not from Whitburn; she also told him that Fitch would be there. Chalmers promptly phoned Stanly Weill.
“I’ll be there along with you,” the lawyer said. “If this trustees’ committee is running it, they’ll realize that this is a matter in which you’re entitled to legal advice. I’ll stop by your place and pick you up.… You haven’t been doing any talking, have you?”
He described the interview with the Psionics and Parapsychology people.
“That was all right.… Was there a man with a mustache, in a brown tweed suit, with them?”
“Yes. I didn’t catch his name.…”
“It’s Cutler. He’s an Army major; Central Intelligence. His crowd’s interested in whether you had any real advance information on this. He was in to see me, just a while ago. I have the impression he’d like to see this whole thing played down, so he’ll be on our side, more or less and for the time being. I’ll be around to your place about eight; in the meantime, don’t do any more talking than you have to. I hope we can get this straightened out, this evening. I’ll have to go to Reno in a day or so to see a client there.…”
* * * *
The meeting in Whitburn’s office had been set for eight-thirty; Weill saw to it that they arrived exactly on time. As they got out of his car at Administration Center and crossed to the steps, Chalmers had the feeling of going to a duel, accompanied by his second. The briefcase Weill was carrying may have given him the idea; it was flat and square-cornered, the size and shape of an old case of dueling pistols. He commented on it.
“Sound recorder,” Weill said. “Loaded with a four-hour spool. No matter how long this thing lasts, I’ll have a record of it, if I want to produce one in court.”
Another party was arriving at the same time—the two Psionics and Parapsychology people and the Intelligence major, who seemed to have formed a working partnership. They all entered together, after a brief and guardedly polite exchange of greetings. There were voices raised in argument inside when they came to Whitburn’s office. The college president was trying to keep Handley, Tom Smith, and Max Pottgeiter from entering his private room in the rear.
“It certainly is!” Handley was saying. “As faculty members, any controversy involving establishment of standards of fitness to teach under a tenure-contract concerns all of us, because any action taken in this case may establish a precedent which could affect the validity of our own contracts.”
A big man with iron-gray hair appeared in the doorway of the private office behind Whitburn; James Dacre.
“These gentlemen have a substantial interest in this, Doctor Whitburn,” he said. “If they’re here as representatives of the college faculty, they have every right to be present.”
Whitburn stood aside. Handley, Smith and Pottgeiter went through the door; the others followed. The other three members of the trustees’ committee were already in the room. A few minutes later, Leonard Fitch arrived, also carrying a briefcase.
“Well, everybody seems to be here,” Whitburn said, starting toward his chair behind the desk. “We might as well get this started.”
“Yes. If you’ll excuse me, Doctor.” Dacre stepped in front of him and sat down at the desk. “I’ve been selected as chairman of this committee; I believe I’m presiding here. Start the recorder, somebody.”
One of the other trustees went to the sound recorder beside the desk—a larger but probably not more efficient instrument than the one Weill had concealed in his briefcase—and flipped a switch. Then he and his companions dragged up chairs to flank Dacre’s, and the rest seated themselves around the room. Old Pottgeiter took a seat next to Chalmers. Weill opened the case on his lap, reached inside, and closed it again.
“What are they tryi
ng to do, Ed?” Pottgeiter asked, in a loud whisper. “Throw you off the faculty? They can’t do that, can they?”
“I don’t know, Max. We’ll see.…”
“This isn’t any formal hearing, and nobody’s on trial here,” Dacre was saying. “Any action will have to be taken by the board of trustees as a whole, at a regularly scheduled meeting. All we’re trying to do is find out just what’s happened here, and who, if anybody, is responsible.…”
“Well, there’s the man who’s responsible!” Whitburn cried, pointing at Chalmers. “This whole thing grew out of his behavior in class a month ago, and I’ll remind you that at the time I demanded his resignation!”
“I thought it was Doctor Fitch, here, who gave the story to the newspapers,” one of the trustees, a man with red hair and a thin, eyeglassed face, objected.
“Doctor Fitch acted as any scientist should, in making public what he believed to be an important scientific discovery,” the elder of the two Parapsychology men said. “He believed, and so do we, that he had discovered a significant instance of precognition—a case of real prior knowledge of a future event. He made a careful and systematic record of Professor Chalmers’ statements, at least two weeks before the occurrence of the event to which they referred. It is entirely due to him that we know exactly what Professor Chalmers said and when he said it.”
“Yes,” his younger colleague added, “and in all my experience I’ve never heard anything more preposterous than this man Whitburn’s attempt, yesterday, to deny the fact.”
“Well, we’re convinced that Doctor Chalmers did in fact say what he’s alleged to have said, last month,” Dacre began.
“Jim, I think we ought to get that established, for the record,” another of the trustees put in. “Doctor Chalmers, is it true that you spoke, in the past tense, about the death of Khalid ib’n Hussein in one of your classes on the sixteenth of last month?”
Chalmers rose. “Yes, it is. And the next day, I was called into this room by Doctor Whitburn, who demanded my resignation from the faculty of this college because of it. Now, what I’d like to know is, why did Doctor Whitburn, in this same room, deny, yesterday, that I’d said anything of the sort, and accuse my students of concocting the story after the event as a hoax.”
“One of them being my son,” Dacre added. “I’d like to hear an answer to that, myself.”
“So would I,” Stanly Weill chimed in. “You know, my client has a good case against Doctor Whitburn for libel.”
Chalmers looked around the room. Of the thirteen men around him, only Whitburn was an enemy. Some of the others were on his side, for one reason or another, but none of them were friends. Weill was his lawyer, obeying an obligation to a client which, at bottom, was an obligation to his own conscience. Handley was afraid of the possibility that a precedent might be established which would impair his own tenure-contract. Fitch, and the two men from the Institute of Psionics and Parapsychology were interested in him as a source of study-material. Dacre resented a slur upon his son; he and the others were interested in Blanley College as an institution, almost an abstraction. And the major in mufti was probably worrying about the consequences to military security of having a prophet at large. Then a hand gripped his shoulder, and a voice whispered in his ear:
“That’s good, Ed; don’t let them scare you!”
Old Max Pottgeiter, at least, was a friend.
“Doctor Whitburn, I’m asking you, and I expect an answer, why did you make such statements to the press, when you knew perfectly well that they were false?” Dacre demanded sharply.
“I knew nothing of the kind!” Whitburn blustered, showing, under the bluster, fear. “Yes, I demanded this man’s resignation on the morning of October Seventeenth, the day after this incident occurred. It had come to my attention on several occasions that he was making wild and unreasonable assertions in class, and subjecting himself, and with himself the whole faculty of this college, to student ridicule. Why, there was actually an editorial about it written by the student editor of the campus paper, the Black and Green. I managed to prevent its publication.…” He went on at some length about that. “If I might be permitted access to the drawers of my own desk,” he added with elephantine sarcasm, “I could show you the editorial in question.”
“You needn’t bother; I have a carbon copy,” Dacre told him. “We’ve all read it. If you did, at the time you suppressed it, you should have known what Doctor Chalmers said in class.”
“I knew he’d talked a lot of poppycock about a man who was still living having been shot to death,” Whitburn retorted. “And if something of the sort actually happened, what of it? Somebody’s always taking a shot at one or another of these foreign dictators, and they can’t miss all the time.”
“You claim this was pure coincidence?” Fitch demanded. “A ten-point coincidence: Event of assassination, year of the event, place, circumstances, name of assassin, nationality of assassin, manner of killing, exact type of weapon used, guards killed and wounded along with Khalid, and fate of the assassin. If that’s a simple and plausible coincidence, so’s dealing ten royal flushes in succession in a poker game. Tom, you figured that out; what did you say the odds against it were?”
“Was all that actually stated by Doctor Chalmers a month ago?” one of the trustees asked, incredulously.
“It absolutely was. Look here, Mr. Dacre, gentlemen.” Fitch came forward, unzipping his briefcase and pulling out papers. “Here are the signed statements of each of Doctor Chalmers’ twenty-three Modern History Four students, all made and dated before the assassination. You can refer to them as you please; they’re in alphabetical order. And here.” He unfolded a sheet of graph paper a yard long and almost as wide. “Here’s a tabulated summary of the boys’ statements. All agreed on the first point, the fact of the assassination. All agreed that the time was sometime this year. Twenty out of twenty-three agreed on Basra as the place. Why, seven of them even remembered the name of the assassin. That in itself is remarkable; Doctor Chalmers has an extremely intelligent and attentive class.”
“They’re attentive because they know he’s always likely to do something crazy and make a circus out of himself,” Whitburn interjected.
“And this isn’t the only instance of Doctor Chalmers’ precognitive ability,” Fitch continued. “There have been a number of other cases.…”
Chalmers jumped to his feet; Stanly Weill rose beside him, shoved the cased sound-recorder into his hands, and pushed him back into his seat.
“Gentlemen,” the lawyer began, quietly but firmly and clearly. “This is all getting pretty badly out of hand. After all, this isn’t an investigation of the actuality of precognition as a psychic phenomenon. What I’d like to hear, and what I haven’t heard yet, is Doctor Whitburn’s explanation of his contradictory statements that he knew about my client’s alleged remarks on the evening after they were supposed to have been made and that, at the same time, the whole thing was a hoax concocted by his students.”
“Are you implying that I’m a liar?” Whitburn bristled.
“I’m pointing out that you made a pair of contradictory statements, and I’m asking how you could do that knowingly and honestly,” Weill retorted.
“What I meant,” Whitburn began, with exaggerated slowness, as though speaking to an idiot, “was that yesterday, when those infernal reporters were badgering me, I really thought that some of Professor Chalmers’ students had gotten together and given the Valley Times an exaggerated story about his insane maunderings a month ago. I hadn’t imagined that a member of the faculty had been so lacking in loyalty to the college.…”
“You couldn’t imagine anybody with any more intellectual integrity than you have!” Fitch fairly yelled at him.
“You’re as crazy as Chalmers!” Whitburn yelled back. He turned to the trustees. “You see the position I’m in, here, with this infernal Higher Education Faculty Tenure Act? I have a madman on my faculty, and can I get rid of him? No! I demand h
is resignation, and he laughs at me and goes running for his lawyer! And he is a madman! Nobody but a madman would talk the way he does. You think this Khalid ib’n Hussein business is the only time he’s done anything like this? Why, I have a list of a dozen occasions when he’s done something just as bad, only he didn’t have a lucky coincidence to back him up. Trying to get books that don’t exist out of the library, and then insisting that they’re standard textbooks. Talking about the revolt of the colonies on Mars and Venus. Talking about something he calls the Terran Federation, some kind of a world empire. Or something he calls Operation Triple Cross, that saved the country during some fantastic war he imagined.…”
“What did you say?”
The question cracked out like a string of pistol shots. Everybody turned. The quiet man in the brown tweed suit had spoken; now he looked as though he were very much regretting it.
“Is there such a thing as Operation Triple Cross?” Fitch was asking.
“No, no. I never heard anything about that; that wasn’t what I meant. It was this Terran Federation thing,” the major said, a trifle too quickly and too smoothly. He turned to Chalmers. “You never did any work for PSPB; did you ever talk to anybody who did?” he asked.
“I don’t even know what the letters mean,” Chalmers replied.
“Politico-Strategic Planning Board. It’s all pretty hush-hush, but this term Terran Federation is a tentative name for a proposed organization to take the place of the U. N. if that organization breaks up. It’s nothing particularly important, and it only exists on paper.”
It won’t exist only on paper very long, Chalmers thought. He was wondering what Operation Triple Cross was; he had some notes on it, but he had forgotten what they were.
“Maybe he did pick that up from somebody who’d talked indiscreetly,” Whitburn conceded. “But the rest of this tommyrot! Why, he was talking about how the city of Reno had been destroyed by an explosion and fire, literally wiped off the map. There’s an example for you!”
He’d forgotten about that, too. It had been a relatively minor incident in the secret struggle of the Subwar; now he remembered having made a note about it. He was sure that it followed closely after the assassination of Khalid ib’n Hussein. He turned quickly to Weill.
The H. Beam Piper Megapack Page 86
