Mythology 101

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “Get what?” Marcy shouted, avoiding an ancient Volvo which screeched backward into a suddenly available parking space on the curb.

  “Shot at!” Keith yelled. “Teachers love to pick on A-seekers. Besides, we’re Freleng’s favorite victims because we’re not seniors or grad students. We’re making it look like it’s too easy to take his class. He considers it a put down. I can’t blame him.”

  “I wish I’d never taken it,” Marcy said miserably.

  “It isn’t a total loss,” Keith soothed her. “It’s your only C, remember? Would you like to join forces against the evils of Sociology? We can study together. Misery loves company, you know.” He fished around in his pocket for a folded wad of tissues and wrapped her fingers around it.

  “Well, I’m in a study group already.…” Marcy dabbed at her eyes, but her voice had steadied again.

  “Oh, come on. I know about Honors study groups. They sit around and compare Daddy’s tax returns or talk about interesting atoms they have met.”

  “It’s isn’t an Honors group. This is a different kind. Hey,” she said, changing the subject, “how’d you know I’m an Honor student?”

  “It’s written all over you. Places you can’t see.” Keith waggled his eyebrows wickedly. “Besides, I’ve been watching you. Haven’t you noticed?”

  Marcy shook her head. “I’d rather study alone. I get more done that way.”

  “Well, just Soc. then.” Stairs, and then another door, opening into another echoing tiled hall full of hurrying figures. “Say, can I read your essay?” Keith asked suddenly. “It sounded really interesting to me. You can read mine, but I guess you’d probably think it was fiction, too,” he finished, suddenly sounding disgusted. “Nobody respects a scientist anymore.”

  “Sure you can,” said Marcy, thrusting the paper into his hand. “Now I’m going to be late. Thanks for the Kleenex. See you.”

  “See you.” Keith watched her dash away.

  O O O

  Level Fourteen of the Gillington Library stacks was quiet in the afternoon. Unlike the system most buildings used, the library stacks were numbered top to bottom, so the uppermost of the eight half-high floors above ground was Level One, and the lowest, in the third sub-sub basement was Fourteen. The library itself was numbered normally, its four full height floors numbered from the bottom to the top. It confused a lot of freshmen the first week of classes, but since there were separate elevators for the two sections, students got used to the concept in a hurry. They put it down to typical Administration baloney. One more thing to be ignored.

  This level was devoted mainly to historical archives, a comprehensive collection of Americana of which the University was appropriately proud. Rare books were stored down here until they were called for in the usual way by users of the reading room upstairs. On occasion, masters’ degree candidates could get a special pass to peruse the shelves themselves, but they were rarely here during the afternoon. The archive librarian took advantage of the silence and pushed the book-cart through the rows of tiered shelves, listening to the sounds of the building as it settled, replacing returned books. She was a thin, pinched-faced woman who looked right with her salt-and-pepper hair tied into a tight bun. Fallen books she straightened up in their slots with a scolding expression as if they should have known better than to tip over.

  With her narrow hands, she deftly sorted through a sheaf of old newspaper folios. The yellow-brown pages in their transparent folders were crisp and fragile. As she stacked them gently into a library box, she heard footsteps coming swiftly toward her, and turned away from her task to see who was running. Probably students who had forced the stairwell lock with a plastic I.D. card. “This level is restricted,” she said sternly. “No one is to be here without authorization. Did you hear me?”

  No reply. She heard high-pitched giggles coming from that direction, shut the storage box with a snap, and started off to dispense some discipline.

  Suddenly, the librarian heard the same giggle from behind her. She spun and ran back that way, her shoes flapping on the floor. No one was visible at that end of the aisle. She stopped. Again she heard running footsteps, the soles of the shoes grating with a sandpapery hiss on the concrete floor.

  “Stop that!” she cried. “This is a library, not a racetrack. Who are you? Show yourself. Leave this building at once.” Her voice rang in the hanging metal beams. “I will call Security if you do not leave NOW!”

  The giggles erupted echoingly into the silence. She ran toward the dancing sound, but it dissolved into silence before she found the source. “Hello?” she called softly.

  “Helloooo,” came a whisper from behind her. She jumped and let out a small scream of frustration. The falsetto laughter bubbled up again as the footsteps ran away. This was not the first time she thought she had heard students chasing themselves around in the dark. Thought it was funny to flaunt their disobedience and startle her. They wanted to use her level in place of the back seats of their decrepit cars. “Horrible brats.” In all her years, she’d never been able to catch the miscreants, or even see who was making the noise. Gremlins, that’s what it was. Old places were said to have their own resident spirits. The echoes in here were positively uncanny. It might have been her own voice distorting into that insane laughter, but she wasn’t sure. They needed better lighting in this library. That was certain.

  Looking this way and that, the librarian walked back to her cart to resume her task. The cart refused to roll forward. She kicked at the brake on the left front wheel, but to her surprise, it was off. She leaned all her weight against it. The cart would not move.

  She pulled on it from the front. It wouldn’t come forward an inch. Neither would it move to either side. It was as if the cart was cemented to the floor. She stacked all of the books from it on the floor and tried to shake it loose. Nothing. The librarian was ready to sob with frustration. There was nothing physically wrong with the cart, no reason why it should not roll normally, but it was firmly rooted where it stood. She stacked the books back onto it, somewhat less neatly than before. Her hands were shaking.

  Dealing the cart a final disgusted shove, she headed for the elevator to get the janitor. He would have to oil those wheels before she could continue. When she had turned around the head of the row, there was a loud creak and rumble. The woman scrambled back to see the cart rolling away by itself. For a moment, she thought about running after it, but a blast of mocking laughter sent her scurrying into the elevator instead, fleeing for the safety of the faculty lounge. Years ago the dark and dusty cubicle had been designated a Civil Defense fallout shelter, and that gave her twitching nerves a sense of security. No one would question her spending a few hours lying down on the couch. The old library was widely believed to be haunted. She would feel safer if she could finish up later, preferably with another librarian for company.

  But when she did come back, the books would be on their shelves and the cart empty, and she knew it. It had all happened before.

  O O O

  “Well?” asked Pat Morgan, glancing unsympathetically at his roommate as Keith staggered across their dorm room and dropped with a melodramatic thud face first onto his bed. Pat went on watering houseplants. “So, tell Uncle Pat. What’d you get on the Sociology essay?”

  “F,” groaned the voice, muffled in a pile of laundry. “F for Freleng. He hates me.”

  “Fair enough. You hate him.”

  “How can a sociologist be so closed-minded?”

  “Those who can’t, teach.” Pat was an English major, and loved one-line cappers. He was tall and hollow-chested, and had a tendency to stoop over, so he seemed to be perpetually out of breath. His long, lank black hair made him look like a repertory company Richard III out of makeup.

  “And what about those who can’t teach?” Keith said, shaking the twisted sheaf of paper at him. Keith’s looks tended to make people think he was jolly or bad-tempered, depending on one’s predispositions about red hair. He was short, straig
ht-backed, and thin. His eyes were hazel, and changed color with his mood. Right now, they were blue. He buried his head in the laundry again.

  “Oh, hell, maybe you can fix it up and ask him to re-grade it. Say you didn’t understand the assignment. It’s only the first paper. Here, give me that.” Pat dropped the plant mister in the sink and snatched the essay out of Keith’s hands. “That stuff’s clean, by the way.” He tilted his head toward the pile of clothes in which Keith was lying. “Your turn to fold. No creases this time or you’ll eat ’em.”

  Keith rolled onto his back, broadcasting socks across the floor. “I can’t tell him I didn’t understand it. I made a big deal about its social importance right in the middle of class.”

  “You’ve got a death wish,” Pat said without looking up. He detoured around their shared wooden coffee table and sat down at his desk. Unlike Keith’s, which had fantastic towers of books and papers teetering around a central cleared workspace, Pat’s was a uniform level of possessions about ten inches high on which the current books and assignments lay. “You know I read this once before. I still think there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s an interesting theoretical examination without any actual field study. He’s probably insulted because you told him through this paper that you consider all the other sociological studies, like inner city and Appalachia, boring and not worth considering.”

  “Well, they are boring. Every other social scientist has studied them to death. I can’t find anything new to say about one. Even the minor stuff I’d explore has been overdone by everybody else.”

  Pat considered for a moment. “True. But I think he gave you an F because you piss him off. Why don’t you turn this one in to Mythology, the way he suggested?”

  “Because Mrs. Beattie has heard it all before, too. Wait until he reads my next one, on leprechauns. I told you about Marcy, the girl in my class?”

  “Oh, yeah? She noticed you yet?”

  “No. Ah, unrequited love. But she’s very shy. That’s one of the things I love her for. She doesn’t throw herself at me.”

  Pat blew a raspberry at him. Keith shrugged it off.

  “Anyway, I think she’s got a boyfriend somewhere, one of those guys who’s ‘above reproach,’ and all that garbage. The way she’s been acting, I think she’s afraid of him. What she really needs is someone charming and harmless, like me. I’ve got her paper here, from the same assignment. I want her research materials. I think I can use ’em.”

  “Harmless. Oh, God,” Pat groaned, shaking his head. “And the good Lord forgive you the lie.”

  “Never mind that. I’ve got this terrific theory about why the little people only appear to drunks and other unreliables,” Keith began, spinning a towel in the air and catching it so it folded in half neatly over his extended forefingers.

  “That’s because you are one, jerk face.” Carl Mueller came in the door, warding off flying laundry with one hand. He wore his thick light brown hair in a modified crew-cut which, with his typical sour expression and healthy muscular build, made him look like an angry Marine.

  “A leprechaun?” asked Pat.

  “Sure,” added Keith. “Viewed only by drunks and other unreliables. That’s why you can see me, Carlitos.” He whirled a towel like a bullfighter’s cape. Carl and Keith had a Spanish class together, which he hated and Keith loved. Anything that Keith loved, Carl hated.

  “Don’t call me that, asshole,” Carl said, staring belligerently at Keith.

  “I never call you that asshole. Donde esta la pluma de me tia? How’s things in Track?” Keith innocently changed the subject, gauging that the last ounce of tolerance left in Carl had just evaporated. “Want a beer?”

  Carl grunted. “Okay. But cut the Carlitos shit. I’m dropping the class anyway.”

  “Too late,” observed Pat, who always knew the course schedules. “Last day without penalty was Thursday.”

  Keith opened the little refrigerator under his desk and pawed through it, emerging with three beers and a box of vanilla wafer cookies. “Here, peace offering. See you later,” he told Pat.

  Keith took his snack, Marcy’s essay, and the Field Guide out into the hallway. He hated to concede the territory to Carl; it was his room, after all, but there was no point in starting another argument. There were just some people that were automatically and irrevocably rubbed the wrong way, and Carl was one of the ones he’d so rubbed.

  It was all a matter of attitude, Keith had decided a long time ago. Carl was too serious about life. He wanted so badly to do something important that it affected everything he did. He needed a cause. The guy was born to be a Senator or Albert Schweitzer. Keith felt sorry for him. Of course, that didn’t help him where Carl was concerned, who still reacted to Keith as if he was a flea: hyperactive, bothersome, and just out of reach.

  Keith shrugged and opened Marcy’s paper.

  O O O

  In the library, Marcy waited between the tall rows of bookshelves until no one was in sight. It was late afternoon, so there were few people around, but she could never be sure she was unobserved. With infinite care, she eased open the door that led to the fire stairs. It creaked loudly. She winced, but the sound drew no one’s attention. The building was old, and everyone was used to its assorted settling noises.

  She descended flight after flight in the darkness, her whispering footsteps confident, intimately familiar with her surroundings. At the bottom of the last concrete step, she halted and drew the smooth steel door open just wide enough to permit her passage. It slid shut behind her, and Marcy felt rather than heard the boom as it closed.

  Two more flights of steps and another door, and she passed inside, crossed the floor, with hulking shadows of more shelves darker than the darkness. From her pocket she took a key which gleamed a brilliant green. With the aid of its light, Marcy found her way to the hidden keyhole, inserted the key, turned it, and pushed the door open.

  Light flooded out upon her, throwing a long shadow back between the bookcases. She threw up a hand against the glare until her eyes adjusted, and spoke apologetically to the circle of Little Folk and the tall human students seated at desks in the low-ceilinged room. They regarded her expectantly.

  “Vell?” asked the Master, laying his pointer down on the easel.

  “We got a C,” Marcy said.

  O O O

  “If you examine your stated principles as an objective observer,” the Master stated, reviewing Marcy’s essay, “you will see that you are relying upon your reader to furnish his own mental pictures of your subjects. In order for your reader to come to agree with your premises, you must provide accurate images from which he can draw his conclusions, which if you have been skillful, will agree with yours.”

  “I didn’t want to say too much,” Marcy said in a low voice, feeling ashamed. “I couldn’t draw accurate pictures.” She stared at her desktop. “I probably shouldn’t have attempted the subject. But I did want to try.”

  Her fellow college students present exchanged sympathetic glances. The Little People favored her with friendly gazes, but said nothing as usual.

  “Mees Collier, there vas nothing wrong with your attempt of the subject,” the Master said gently, setting the paper on her desk and looking up at her. “Nor with your conclusions. It is merely that your audience vas not prepared for it.”

  ***

  Chapter 3

  A dorm hallway was by no means the quietest of places to read. It smelled strongly of sweat socks and mold, and the carpet was perpetually damp. There seemed to be an unwritten rule for residence halls that the areas with the most traffic should be the worst lit, so Keith was left trying to read by the feeble brownish glow of dying fluorescent ceiling lights. Nobody ever seemed to look down toward the dimly lit floor while they were walking. He was kicked a few times by passersby who didn’t see him. One student fell over Keith’s legs, spilling a heap of fresh laundry halfway down the hall. After apologizing and helping to re-fold it, Keith fled to his Resident Advisor’s
room for sanctuary.

  O O O

  He poked his head through the doorway into the R.A.’s suite. “Hi, Rick. Can I borrow a corner?”

  Rick MacKenzie looked up from his desk. He had a black crew-cut over lightning blue eyes and a lantern jaw which twisted around a grin. “Sure, Keith. C’mon in.”

  “Thanks. There’s no room back at the inn.”

  The RA’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Rubber band on the knob?” That was the signal that female company was being entertained by the other roommate, and disturbances would be unappreciated. Rick maintained an unspoken rule that no one was to band out their room-mates on week nights on his floor.

  “Oh, no,” Keith assured him, folding up like a grasshopper on Rick’s ancient green tweed couch. “Just a friend of his who isn’t a friend of mine. Our pal Carl.”

  “Uh huh. What’ve you got there?”

  Keith handed over Marcy’s paper. “I think I’ve got research material for my next essay in Sociology.”

  Rick thumbed through the pages. “You’re going to rip off one of your friends?”

  “Heck, no! I’ll give her credit for it. Look, she analyzed the stresses brought to bear on people with a racial tendency toward dwarfism. The whole thing about being treated like children because they’re small. But by the internal evidence, these people aren’t circus midgets, or African pygmies, as you might normally assume. In fact, they seem to have come from a temperate climate, with almost Arctic winters. And their oral tradition comes from pretty far back, suggesting resistance to technology.”

  “Isolation?” asked Rick.

  “Well, yeah. It would have to be. We don’t have much of an oral tradition any more. Not since we learned to write and use movable type. What do you do when you want to remember something?”

  “I write it down.”

  “Right. Now, our ancestors just recited their notes over and over again until they’d memorized it to keep. Once in, never out. And they could pass it on from generation to generation. That’s why those family feuds lasted forever. Take the Hatfields and McCoys.”