Mindkiller

by Spider Robinson

  “Lady,” I said to her empty stew bowl, “if you can con me that well, maybe—just maybe—you’ve got a snowball’s chance.”

  5

  1994 Norman halted just outside the front door of his apartment building, let it close behind him, and sighed. Fall had always seemed to him a silly time to begin the new school year. Like hibernating bears, scholars sealed themselves away from the world just when it was at its most beautiful. A farmer would have been his most involved with the outdoors now, trying to outguess the frosts and prepare his home for winter. Norman could not even yield to the temptation to kick apart heaps of rainbow leaves in his path, for an assistant professor in public can no more take off his dignity than his trousers.

  It was only a block to the campus, but Norman was running late. He sneered at his briefcase, turned right, and began the walk to work. As he passed the underground garage ramp it blatted at him and emitted a Toyota. Norman watched the car as he got out of its way, wondering for the thousandth time why anyone living in this city would want to own a car. Walking was much cheaper, much less trouble—and healthier too.

  If you’re such a health nut, he asked himself, why have you let yourself get so badly out of shape? In the six years since he had left the army, Norman’s only sustained regular exercise had been this daily two blocks’ walk to and from the university. He had long since given up even pretending that he was trying to control his tobacco habit, and he knew he weighed more than he should. He could remember what it had felt like in the army, to be in shape, and wondered why he had let such a good feeling go out of his life upon his discharge, without a backward glance. He had known an echo of that easy confidence, that readiness for anything, the night when Maddy arrived and he had thought her a prowler. But the absurd failure of his charge that night proved that it was only an echo, an adrenaline memory, that he no longer deserved that confidence. Norman resolved to begin a rigorous program of calisthenics that very night, and to sign up for swimming privileges at the university pool that very afternoon, whereupon he lit a cigarette.

  This whole thought-train had occupied only the space of time necessary to glance at the puffing Toyota and then down into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. His cupped hands came away from his face, and the one holding the match began to shake it out, and instead held the match upside down long enough to burn him. Lois stood before him on the pavement—tall, slim and beautiful—frosting at the mouth and shivering. She wore no coat. Her hair and makeup were impeccable, and her expression was somewhere between afraid and exhilarated.

  “I’m late,” he said at once, and then, “Ouch.” He disposed of the match, making his hundredth mental note to switch to the new self-lighting cigarettes.

  “I know. I nearly froze my face off waiting in my lobby for you to come by.” She could not meet his eyes, though not for lack of trying.

  “Lois, for God’s sake, it’s the first day. I’ve got—”

  “I planned it this way. First I thought I’d have you over for coffee and spend about three hours leading you around to it, and then I decided that would be dishonest and you’d resent being manipulated, so I thought I’d just say it bang and let you have time to think about it before you say anything. That way you sort of don’t just say something, like, spontaneously, and then feel like you have to live up to it or something.”

  This was a more or less familiar ritual with them. When she had, say, lent five hundred (Old) dollars they couldn’t spare to a friend who couldn’t possibly be imagined repaying them, she would begin the news like this. And he would think, What is the most horrible thing she could possibly say next? and then he would be relieved when it wasn’t that. So he thought now of the most horrible thing she could possibly say next, and she said it.

  “I want to come back to you.”

  He stared at her, waited for a punchline, for the alarm clock to go off, for a freak meteorite to come and drill him through the heart.

  “I’m off today at three, I’ll be home all night, call me when you’re ready.”

  She was gone.

  Since his path was no longer blocked, he resumed walking. At this particular time her proposition—no, damn it, her proposal—was simply and literally unthinkable. He placed it firmly out of his mind and walked on, thinking of pushups versus situps and wondering if the bookstore had gotten his texts in yet. When he had gone about twenty steps he paused, spun on his heel, and roared at absolute maximum volume, “What about the plumber, then?”

  Across the street a second-floor landing window slid open on Lois’s building. “He moved out a week ago,” she called back, and closed the window.

  A handful of students on either side of the street were motionless, staring at Norman with some apprehension. He glared back, and all but one resumed their own migrations. That one continued to stare, quite expressionlessly, past glasses that doubled the apparent size of his eyes.

  “Moved out of his own apartment, by God,” Norman muttered to himself. He puffed furiously on his cigarette. There had to be some way to make that insolent bookstore manager show a little respect. Norman couldn’t complain to MacLeod…but perhaps he could mention it to someone who would tell MacLeod. Yes, that idea had promise…

  He walked on.

  His first sight of the campus delighted his sense of irony. The original layout designer had placed concrete walkways where he thought they would look nice. Generations of students had taken more convenient paths, destroying grass and creating muddy ruts. Generations of administrators had taken this as a personal affront, and had struck back with strict, unenforceable prohibitions. The current administration had faced reality: all the previous summer they had torn up and reseeded the walkways, poured new ones where the students’ ruts were. Now Norman saw at once that the majority of the upper-class students were ignoring the new walkways and following the old paths they had always scorned, through the new grass. In one place a small circular flower plot stood precisely on a no-longer-extant path; Norman watched a student walk directly to it, circle its perimeter carefully, and continue on the imaginary walkway.

  Having just made himself a public spectacle before students who might well be his own, Norman walked where he was meant to walk. But he resented having to do so.

  He picked up memos and schedule revisions at the department office, stored his hat and coat in his office, and went to deal with the bookstore. By a stroke of luck the assistant departmental chairman was present when Norman said in a slightly raised voice, “Another month? But these were ordered in March. Of last year.” The assistant chairman glanced up, and Norman had the satisfaction of hearing the store manager hastily give an excuse that was not only patently false, but checkably false: a memo from the Chancellor would reach the manager within twenty-four hours, and Norman’s students would have their textbooks before the close of the add-drop period. He reached his first class, Introduction to Joyce, in a cocky, go-to-hell state of mind, and when he looked about the room and saw at least a dozen versions of the same mask—eager interest mixed with respectful politeness—something clicked in his head and he made an impulsive decision. Norman had always been rather conservative for an English teacher, had never needed to be given MacLeod’s Number Three Lecture on The Irresponsibility of the Maverick, had always respected even the forms and traditions which he personally found silly. Ever since the army he had been willing to pay lip service to any ritual-system that promised stability—or even only familiarity. But all at once he heard himself say to his students the very same words that had nearly ended his father’s career twenty-five years before.

  “Is there anyone here who does not want an A?”

  Total silence.

  “I say, is there anyone here who objects to being given an A in this course, for the semester, here and now?”

  One hand rose near the back, a skeptical woman sensing some kind of trap. (Norman’s father had drawn three of them.)

  Norman nodded. “Okay. Come see me in my office sometime, we’l
l discuss it. The rest of you, you’ve all got an A in this course. You can go home now.”

  Pandemonium. Hands shot up all over, and no one moved from their seats. (Twenty-five years before, several students had whooped with glee and left the room by this point.) When the general outcry reached its first lull, Norman spoke up and overrode it.

  “I am perfectly serious. Those of you who signed up for this course because you needed another three credits in English may now leave, satisfied. You have what you paid for, and are spared six months of diligent hypocrisy.”

  “And then when we take you up on it and leave, you fail us, right?” said the woman who had first raised her hand.

  Norman frowned. “You have nearly managed to insult me, Ms…”

  “Porter.”

  “Ms. Porter. Let me assure you: I say what I mean, and vice versa. Those who choose to leave have my blessing, and my thanks. I will not even make a list of your names, since everyone except Ms. Porter is getting the same grade. I will not so much as look with private disapproval on those of you who choose to go. I fully understand that the existing system pressures you to matriculate at the expense of learning about anything you’re interested in, and acquiring a necessary job credential seems to me as valid a reason as any for attending a university. God help us. If that is your purpose, accept it and be proud of it and do it efficiently. And don’t clutter up my classroom. Because you see, I happen to be enormously interested in—and greatly confused by—the writing of James Joyce. Some of the things he wrote stir up my brains and haunt my off-hours, and other things he wrote mystify or bore me to tears. And I propose to spend a couple of hours a week for the next several months in the exclusive company of people who are also enormously interested in the writing of James Joyce. I believe this will increase my own knowledge and appreciation of Joyce, and I’m confident that it will increase yours.”

  A young man who wore the only necktie in the room besides Norman’s spoke up in a nasal voice. “Will there be any tests?”

  “Well, I should hope there will be at least one or two in every classroom period, but not the way you mean, no.”

  “Papers?” asked a short rat-faced woman.

  “Anytime you feel you have the makings of a paper, cogent or otherwise, write it up and leave it in my office. The very best I will help you to have published, if you’re interested. Those and the second best will be photocopied, distributed, and discussed. The bad ones will be discussed privately. They’ll all get A’s.”

  The necktied young man supplied Norman with the straight line he’d been hoping for. “But Dr. Kent, if we’ve all got A’s…what’s supposed to motivate us to work?”

  Happily, Norman again quoted his late father. “Why, bless you, the intrinsic interest of the material itself.”

  Blank faces stared at him. He waited, and after a few moments a third of the class left the room. Ms. Porter was among them. Most of the remaining two-thirds looked mightily interested.

  Be damned, Norman thought, history does repeat itself.

  He repeated the procedure at Victorian Poetry, his only other class that day, with similar results.

  At nine o’clock that night he stubbed out an expensive marijuana cigarette, set his phone for record, shook his head at it, and said, “Not a chance.” He played it back, nodded, and punched Lois’s number. When his board told him that she had answered, he fed the recording on a loop. His own screen stayed dark, and after a while she hung up. He put Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross on the stereo, lit another of the cigarettes, and after some while cried himself to sleep.

  The next morning history continued to repeat itself. The summons was waiting on his desk, and the reaming was thorough. It did not help at all that MacLeod knew the story about Norman’s father. MacLeod had made all the allowances he was going to make for Norman’s personal misfortunes; for the rest of the semester, and perhaps the year, Norman was on sudden-death overtime. The next mistake would be his last. He was obliged to contact all the students who had left and advise them that he had been overruled. No part of that was fun.

  Thoroughly sobered at last, lusting again for any kind of security, Norman became over the next three or four months a model teacher—that is, a tireless and blindingly efficient robot. He shouldered a tremendous course load including two freshman World Lit courses and a two-night-a-week seminar, and performed brilliantly in all of them. He completed and published an exemplary paper on Dwyer’s 1978 “Ariana Olisvos” hoax, which was anthologized nearly at once. He took over the campus literary magazine when old Coxwell died, restructured the staff to tremendous effect, and figured out a way to get the printing done at half cost. He kept his promise to himself: he spent every hour not used for work or sleep in hard exercise at either the gym or the pool. He gave up tobacco and cannabis and cut down on alcohol. Good physical condition came back hard at his age, after nearly seven years of neglect, but he pursued it hard. His students either loved or hated him; none was indifferent. MacLeod allowed himself to become friendly again.

  To those around him Norman came to seem almost unnaturally alert and rational. In fact, he was in a kind of trance, the peace of the dervish.

  At Christmastime came Minnie and the Bear.

  Both sets of parents had guessed wrong. A man christened Chesley Withbert should not be very tall, very broad, immensely strong, and covered all over with curly black hair; it is unfair to those tempted to laugh. His inevitable nickname was first given to him at age eight. Similarly, a woman born Minnie Rodenta should not be five feet high and mouse-faced, but no nickname had been found for her yet that was not worse. To Norman they were beloved friends, not seen in three years and frequently missed. He was greatly cheered by their arrival in that loneliest of all seasons, which of course was why they had come.

  Norman and the Bear had served together in Africa; each had saved the other’s life once. Norman had been wounded and discharged first, but by the time he was out of the hospital the Bear too was out of the army, and had moved to Nova Scotia. While Norman was sitting in New York, pondering what the hell to do with his life, he got a letter from the Bear, inviting him up to Halifax for a couple of weeks. Halifax is one of the few remaining North American cities from which one can reach raw nature in ten minutes’ drive; by the middle of the second week Norman knew that he could never go back to New York. There was a regional shortage of trained English teachers, the only job for which his prewar degree had prepared him; he overcame his lack of experience with a brilliant interview and was hired. Presently the Bear and his new lover, Minnie, introduced him to a girl Minnie worked with at Victoria General Hospital. Named Lois. Both couples spent a great deal of time together, swapped twice experimentally, and gave it up when it seemed to interfere with their friendship. They were married within three months of each other.

  Then three years ago Minnie’s work had taken her to Toronto. Bear had by then established himself as a copy-hack, and was earning a fair living knocking out tecs, sits and scifis for several software networks; he had no strong objection to moving. Since that time the two couples had communicated largely by birthday phone call, and in the last year even that had been interrupted by the collapse of Norman’s and Lois’s marriage. The reunion now was explosively enthusiastic on both sides.

  “Jesus,” the Bear rumbled as he released Norman from one of his classic hugs. “You’re in great shape, man.”

  Norman’s grin nickered momentarily. “Some ways, brother, some ways,” he said, and then Minnie was taking her hug. Her first words were, “Sorry it took us so long, Norm. It’s been crazy out.”

  “Nonsense. I’d’ve been too busy to be a proper host if you’d come sooner. God, it’s good to see you two. I’ve been on eleventerhooks ever since you called.” He took their suitcases, showed them where to put their coats and boots and where to find the liquor cabinet. As soon as they were all seated in the living room he raised his glass high. “To great friendship,” he said, drained the glass, and flung it a
cross the room. It smashed on the baseboard heater.

  Minnie and the Bear broke up. They faced each other, said in unison, “We’ve missed him,” and followed his example.

  “Missed me again,” he said exultantly, and then, “Oh, God, I’ve been hanging out with ordinary people for so long. Thank you two.”

  “There are crazies in Hogtown,” Minnie said, “but few with your elegance.” Norman rose from his chair, bowed, and produced more glasses, threading his way carefully through the scatter of glass on the carpet.

  “This is fantastic,” he said wonderingly. “You two have been here less than a minute, and it’s as though you’d never left. All the time between has just disappeared.” He giggled. “How thoughtful of it.” Suddenly he looked away.

  The Bear lay in magnificent repose in one of Norman’s huge beanbag chairs, looking rather like a beached whale covered with colorful tarpaulins and black seaweed. He made a joint appear, tapped it alight, and sucked hugely. “So? Which side brings the other up to date first?” He passed the joint.

  Norman hesitated, decided training was shot to hell anyway, and took a toke. “Is yours cheerful?” he croaked, passing the joint to Minnie. With her nose wrinkled up she looked even more mouselike.

  The Bear looked thoughtful. “Yeah, on the whole. A couple of real bright spots, and one genuine tall tale.”

  “Then we’ll save it for catharsis, okay?”

  The two nodded at once, “Lois?” Minnie asked economically.

  “Yes and no,” Norman said. “Not really; I think I’ve got that under control now. It’s more Madeleine. And, I suppose, mostly it’s me. It’s been a hard-luck voyage, mates. I—you didn’t get here any too soon.”

  “Damn straight,” the Bear agreed. “I still see double yellow lines and headlights coming at me. So talk.”