Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

  She wondered if the “other accidents” covered budget cuts from the legislature.

  Her T.A., Chuck, came in, eating a Twinkie and waving a formal-looking square envelope. “Did you get one of these?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Sarah said, picking up hers. “I was just going to open it. What is it, an invitation to a slaughter?”

  “No, a reception for some guy. The dean’s having it this afternoon. In the Faculty Library.”

  Sarah looked at the invitation suspiciously. “I thought the dean was at an educational conference.”

  “She’s back.”

  Sarah tore open the envelope and pulled out the invitation. “The dean cordially invites you to a reception for Dr. Jerry King,” she muttered. “Dr. Jerry King?” She opened the manila envelope and scanned through the legislature report, looking for his name. “Who is he, do you know?”

  “Nope.”

  At least he wasn’t one of the budget-cut supporters. His name wasn’t on the list. “Did the rest of the department get these?”

  “I don’t know. Othniel got one. I saw it in his box,” Chuck said. “I don’t think he can reach it. His box is on the top row.”

  Dr. Robert Walker came in, waving a piece of paper. “Look at this! Another ticket for not having a parking sticker! I have a parking sticker! I have two parking stickers! One on the bumper and one on the windshield. Why can’t they see them?”

  “Did you get one of these, Robert?” Sarah asked, showing him the invitation. “The dean’s having a reception this afternoon. Is it about the funding cuts?”

  “I don’t know,” Robert said. “They’re right there in plain sight. I even drew an arrow in Magic Marker to the one on the bumper.”

  “The legislature’s cut our funding again,” Sarah said. “I’ll bet you anything the dean’s going to eliminate a position. She was over here last week looking at our enrollment figures.”

  “The whole university’s enrollment is down,” Robert said, going over to the window and looking out. “Nobody can afford to go to college anymore, especially when it costs eighty dollars a semester for a parking sticker. Not that the stickers do any good. You still get parking tickets.”

  “We’ve got to fight this,” Sarah said. “If she eliminates one of our positions, we’ll be the smallest department on campus, and the next thing you know, we 11 have been merged with Geology. We ve got to organize the department and put up a fight. Do you have any ideas, Robert?”

  “You know,” Robert said, still looking out the window, “maybe if I posted someone out by my car—”

  “Your car?”

  “Yeah. I could hire a student to sit on the back bumper, and when the Parking Authority comes by, he could point to the sticker. It would cost a lot, but—Stop that!”he shouted suddenly. He wrenched the window open and leaned out. “You can’t give me a parking ticket!” he shouted down at the parking lot. “I have two stickers! What are you, blind?” He pulled his head in and bolted out of the office and down the stairs, yelling, “They just gave me another ticket! Can you believe that?”

  “No,” Sarah said. She picked up the flight school brochure and looked longingly at the picture of the eagle.

  “Do you think they’ll have food?” Chuck said. He was looking at the deans invitation.

  “I hope not,” Sarah said.

  “Why not?”

  “Grazing,” she said. “The big predators always attacked when the hadrosaurs were grazing.”

  “If they do have food, what kind do you think they’ll have?” Chuck asked wistfully.

  “It depends,” Sarah said, turning the brochure over. “Tea and cookies, usually.”

  “Homemade?”

  “Not unless there’s bad news. Cheese and crackers means somebody’s getting the ax. Liver pâté means a budget cut. Of course, if the budget cut’s big enough, there won’t be any money for refreshments.”

  On the back of the brochure it said in italics,Become UpwardlyMobile, and underneath, in boldface:

  FAA-APPROVED

  TUITION WAIVERS AVAILABLE

  FREE PARKING

  “There have been radical changes in our knowledge of the dinosaurs over the past few years,” Dr. Albertson said, holding the micropaleontology textbook up, “so radical that what came before is obsolete.” He opened the book to the front. “Turn to the introduction.”

  His students opened their books, which had cost $64.95.

  “Have you all turned to the introduction?” Dr. Albertson asked, taking hold of the top corner of the first page. “Good. Now tear it out.” He ripped out the page. “It’s useless, completely archaic.”

  Actually, although there had been some recent revisions in theories regarding dinosaur behavior and physiology, particularly the larger predators, there hadn’t been any at all at the microscopic level. But Dr. Albertson had seen Robin Williams do this in a movie and been very impressed.

  His students, who had been hoping to sell them back to the university bookstore for $32.47, were less so. One of them asked hopefully, “Can’t we just promise not to read it?”

  “Absolutely not,” Dr. Albertson said, yanking out a handful of pages. “Come on. Tear them out.”

  He threw the pages in a metal wastebasket and held the wastebasket out to a marketing minor who was quietly tucking the torn-out pages into the back of the book with an eye to selling it as a pre-edited version. “That’s right, all of them,” Dr. Albertson said. “Every outdated, old-fashioned page.”

  Someone knocked on the door. He handed the wastebasket to the marketing minor and left the slaughter to open it. It was Sarah Wright with a squarish envelope.

  “There’s a reception for the dean this afternoon,” she said, “We need the whole department there.”

  “Do we have to tear out the title page, too?” a psychology minor asked.

  “The legislature’s just cut funding another eighteen percent, and I’m afraid they’re going to try to eliminate one of our positions.”

  “You can count on my support one hundred percent,” he said.

  “Good,” Sarah said, sighing with relief. “As long as we stick together we’ve got a chance.”

  Dr. Albertson shut the door behind her, glancing at his watch. He had planned to stand on his desk before the end of class, but now there wouldn’t be time. He had to settle for the inspirational coda.

  “Ostracods, diatoms, fusilinids, these are what we stay alive for,” he said. “Carpe diem!Seize the day!”

  The psych minor raised his hand. “Can I borrow your Scotch tape?” he asked. “I accidentally tore out Chapters One and Two.”

  There was Brie at the reception. And sherry and spinach puffs and a tray of strawberries with cellophane-flagged toothpicks stuck like daggers into them. Sarah took a strawberry and a rapid headcount of the department. Everyone else seemed to be there except Robert, who was probably parking his car, and Dr. Othniel.

  “Did you make sure Dr. Othniel saw his invitation?” she asked her T.A., who was eating spinach puffs two at a time.

  “Yeah,” Chuck said with his mouth full. “He’s here.” He gestured with his plate toward a high-backed wing chair by the fire.

  Sarah went over and checked. Dr. Othniel was asleep. She went back aver to the table and had another strawberry. She wondered which one was Dr. King. There were only three men she didn’t recognize. Two of them were obviously Physics Department—they were making a fusion reactor out of a Styrofoam cup and several of the fancy toothpicks. The third looked likely. He was tall and distinguished, and was wearing a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, but after a few minutes he disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a tray of liver paté and crackers.

  Robert came in, carrying his suit jacket and looking out of breath. “You willnot believe what happened to me,” he said.

  “You got a parking ticket,” Sarah said. “Were you able to find out anything about this Dr. King?”

  “He’s an educational consultant,�
� Robert said. “Whatis the point of spending eighty dollars a semester for a parking sticker when there are never any places to park in the permit lots? You know where I had to park? Behind the football stadium! That’s five blocks further away than my house!”

  “An educational consultant?” Sarah said. “What’s he up to?” She stared thoughtfully at her strawberry. “An educational consultant—”

  “Author ofWhat’s Wrong with Our Entire Educational System, ”Dr. Albertson said. He took a plate and put a spinach puff on it. “He’s an expert on restructionary implementation.”

  “What’s that?” Chuck said, making a sandwich out of the liver pâté and two spinach puffs.

  Dr. Albertson looked superior. “Surely they teach you graduate assistants about restructionary implementation,” he said, which meant he didn’t know either. He took a bite of spinach puff. “You should try these,” he said. “I was just talking to the dean. She told me she made them herself.”

  “We’re dead,” Sarah said.

  “There’s Dr. King now,” Dr. Albertson said, pointing to a lumbering man wearing a polo shirt and Sans-a-belt slacks.

  The dean went over to greet him, clasping his hands in hers. “Sorry I’m late,” he boomed out. “I couldn’t find a parking place. I parked out in front.”

  Dr. Othniel suddenly emerged from the wing chair, looking wildly around. Sarah beckoned to him with her toothpick and he stooped his way over to them, sat down next to the Brie and went back to sleep.

  The dean moved to the center of the room and clapped her hands for attention. Dr. Othniel jerked at the sound. “I don’t want to interrupt the fun,” the dean said, “andplease, do go on eating and drinking, but I just wanted you all to meet Dr. Jerry King. Dr. King will be working with the paleontology department on something I’m sure you’ll all find terribly exciting. Dr. King, would you like to say a few words?”

  Dr. King smiled, a large friendly grin that reminded Sarah of the practice jaw in Field Techniques. “We all know the tremendous impactization technology has had on our modern society,” he said.

  “Impactization?” Chuck said, eating a lemon tart the distinguished looking gentleman had just brought out from the kitchen. “I thoughtimpact was a verb.”

  “It is,” Sarah said. “And once, back in the Late Cretaceous, it was a noun.”

  “Shh,” Dr. Albertson said, looking disapproving.

  “As we move into the twenty-first century, our society is transformizing radically, but is education? No. We are still teaching the same old subjects in the same old ways.” He smiled at the dean. “Until today. Today marks the beginning of a wonderful innovationary experiment in education, a whole new instructional dynamic in teaching paleontology. I’ll be thinktanking with you dinosaur guys and gals next week, but until then I want you to think about one word.”

  “Extinction,” Sarah murmured.

  “That word isrelevance . Is paleontology relevant to our modern society? How can wemake it relevant? Think about it. Relevance.”

  There was a spattering of applause from the departments Dr. King would not be thinktanking with. Robert poured a large glass of sherry and drank it down. “It’s not fair,” he said. “First the Parking Authority and now this.”

  “Pilots make a lot of money,” Sarah said. “And the only word they have to think about iscrash .”

  Dr. Albertson raised his hand.

  “Yes?” the dean asked.

  “I just wanted Dr. King to know,” he said, “that he can count on my support one hundred percent.”

  “Are you supposed to eat this white crust thing on the cheese?” Chuck asked.

  Dr. King put a memo in the Paleontology Department’s boxes the next day. It read, “Group ideating session next Mon. Dr. Wright’s office. 2P.M . J. King. P.S. I will be doing observational datatizing this Tues. and Thurs.”

  “We’ll all do some observational datatizing,” Sarah said, even more alarmed by Dr. King’s preempting her office without asking her than by the Brie.

  She went to find her T.A., who was in her office eating a Snickers. “I want you to go find out about Dr. King’s background,” she told him.

  “Why?”

  “Because he used to be a junior high girls’ basketball coach. Maybe we can get some dirt on one of his seventh grade forwards and him.”

  “How do you know he used to be a junior high coach?”

  “All educational consultants used to be junior high coaches. Or social studies teachers.” She looked at the memo disgustedly. “What do you suppose observational datatizing consists of?”

  Observational datatizing consisted of wandering around the halls of the Earth Sciences building with a clipboard listening to Dr. Albertson.

  “Okay, how much you got?” Dr. Albertson was saying to his class. He was wearing a butcher’s apron and a paper fast-food hat and was cutting apples into halves, quarters, and thirds with a cleaver, which had nothing to do with depauperate fauna, but which he had seen Edward James Olmos do inStand and Deliver . He had been very impressed.

  “Yip, that’ll do it,” he was saying in an Hispanic accent when Dr. King appeared suddenly at the back of the room with his clipboard.

  “But the key question here isrelevance,” Dr. Albertson said hastily. “How do the depauperate fauna affectate on our lives today?”

  His students looked wary. One of them crossed his arms protectively over his textbook as though he thought he was going to be asked to tear out more pages.

  “Depauperate fauna arehighly relevant to our modern society,” Dr. Albertson said, but Dr. King had wandered back into the hall and into Dr. Othniel’s class.

  “The usual mode of theTyrannosaurus Rex was to approach a herd of hadrosaurs from cover,” Dr. Othniel, who did not see Dr. King because he was writing on the board, said. “He would then attack suddenly and retreat.” He wrote, “1.OBSERVE, 2.ATTACK, 3.RETREAT, ” in a column on the board, the letters of each getting smaller and squinchier as he approached the chalk tray.

  His students wrote, “1. Sneak up, 2. Bite ass, 3. Beat it,” and “Todd called last night. I told him Traci wasn’t there. We talked forever.” Dr. King wrote, “relevance?”in large block letters on his clipboard and wandered out again.

  “The jaws and teeth of theTyrannosaurus were capable of inflicting a fatal wound with a single bite. It would then follow at a distance, waiting for its victim to bleed to death,” Dr. Othniel said.

  Robert was late to the meeting on Monday. “You will not believe what happened to me!” he said. “I had to park in the daily permit lot, and while I was getting the permit out of the machine, they gave me a ticket!”

  Dr. King, who was sitting in Sarah’s desk wearing a pair of gray sweats, a whistle, and a baseball cap with “Dan Quayle Junior High” on it, said, “I know you’re all as excited about this educationing experiment we’re about to embarkate on as I am.”

  “More,” Dr. Albertson said.

  Sarah glared at him. “Will this experiment involve eliminating positions?”

  Dr. King smiled at her. His teeth reminded her of some she’d seen at the Denver Museum of Natural History. “Positions, classes, departments, all those terms are irrelevantatious. We need to reassessmentize our entire concept of education, its relevance to modern society. How many of you are using paradigmic bonding in your classes?”

  Dr. Albertson raised his hand.

  “Paradigmic bonding, experiential roleplaying, modular cognition. I assessmentized some of your classes last week. I saw no computer-learner linkages, no multimedia) instruction, no cognitive tracking. In one class”—Dr. King smiled largely at Dr. Othniel —“I saw a blackboard being used. Methodologies like that are extinct.”

  “So are dinosaurs,” Sarah muttered. “Why don’t you say something, Robert?”

  “Dr. King,” Robert said. “Do you plan to extend this reorganization to other departments?”

  Good, Sarah thought, send him over to pester English Lit.

>   “Yes,” Dr. King said, beaming. “Paleontology is only a field-test. Eventually we intend to expand it to encompassate the entire university. Why?”

  “There’s one department that drastically needs reorganization,” Robert said. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the Parking Authority is completely out of control. The sign distinctly says you’re supposed to park your car first andthen go get the daily permit out of the machine.”

  “What did you find out about Dr. King?” Sarah asked Chuck Tuesday morning.

  “He didn’t coach junior high girls’ basketball,” he said, drinking a lime Slurpee. “It was junior high wrestling.”

  “Oh,”Sarah said. “Then find out where he got his doctorate. Maybe we can get the college to rescind it for using words likeassessmentize.”

  “I don’t think I’d better,” Chuck said. “I mean, I’ve only got one semester till I graduate. And besides,” he said, sucking on the Slurpee, “some of his ideas made sense. I mean, a lot of that stuff we learn in class does seem kind of pointless. I mean, what does the Late Cretaceous have to do with us really? I thought some of those things he talked about sounded rad. Whydon’t weever roleplay in class?”

  “Fine,” Sarah said. “Roleplay this. You are aCorythosaurus . You’re smart and fast, but not fast enough because aTyrannosaurus Rex has just taken a bite out of your flank. What do you do?”

  “Gosh, that’s a tough one,” Chuck said, slurping meditatively. “What would you do?”

  “Grow a wishbone.”

  Tuesday afternoon, as soon as her one o’clock class was over, Sarah went to Robert’s office. He wasn’t there. She waited outside for half an hour, reading the announcement for a semester at sea, and then went over to the Parking Authority office.

  He was standing near the front of a line that wound down the stairs and out the door. It was composed mostly of students, though the person at the head of the line was a frail-looking old man. He was flapping a green slip at the young man behind the counter. The young man had a blond crew cut and looked like an adolescent Himmler.