Drunkard's Walk

CHAPTER IV

Cornut was literally a marked man now. He had a neat white sterile bandage on his throat, and the medics had cheerfully assured him that when the bandage was gone there would be a handsome scar. They demanded that he stay around for a complete psycho-medical checkup. He said, no. They said, Would you rather be dead? He said he wasn't going to die. They said, How can you be sure? But, as it turned out, the clinic was not going to be free for that sort of thing for a couple of hours, and he fought his way free. He was extremely angry at the medics for annoying him, at himself for being such a fool, at Egerd for staunching the flow of his blood, at Locille for seeing it... his patience was exhausted with the world.

Cornut strode like a blinkered cart-horse to the Math Tower gym, looking neither to left nor right, though he knew what he would see. Eyes. The eyes of everyone on the campus, looking at him and whispering. He found an undergraduate who was reasonably willing to mind his own business (the boy only looked slightly doubtful when Cornut chose his epee, but one glimpse of Cornut's face made his own turn into opaque stone), and they two fenced for a furious half-hour. The medics had told Cornut to be sure to rest. Winded and muscles aching, he returned to his room to do so.

He spent a long, thoughtful afternoon lying on his bed and looking at the ceiling, but nothing came of it The whole thing was simply too irritating to be borne.

Medics or not, at a quarter to five he put on a clean shirt to keep his appointment at the faculty tea.

The tea was a sort of official send-off to the University's Field Expedition. Attendance was compulsory, especially for those who, like Cornut, were supposed to make the trip; but that was not why he was there. He considered it to be his last good chance to get off the list.

There were three hundred persons in the huge, vaulted room. The University conspicuously consumed space; it was a tradition, like the marginal pencillings in all the books in the library. Every one of the three hundred glanced once quickly at Cornut as he came in, then away - some with a muffled laugh, gome with sympathy, the worst with an unnatural lack of any expression at all. So much for the grapevine. Damn them, Cornut thought bitterly, you'd think no professor ever tried to commit suicide before. He couldn't help overhearing some of the whispers.

'And that's the seventh time. It's because he's desperate to be department head and old Carl won't step down.'

'Esmeralda! You know you're making that up!'

His face flaming, Cornut walked briskly past the little knot. It was like a fakir's bed of coals; every step seemed to crisp him. But there were other things to gossip about at the tea, and some of the captured fragments of talk did not concern him at all.

'—want us to get along with a fourteen-year-old trevatron. You know what the China's have? Six brand-new ones. And coin silver for the windings!'

'Yes, but there's two billion of them. Per capita we stack up pretty—'

Cornut halted in the middle of the drinking, eating, talking, surging mass and looked about for Master Carl. He caught sight of him. The department head was paying his respects to a queer-looking, ancient figure - St Cyr, the President of the University. Cornut was startled. St Cyr was an old man and by his appearance a sick one; it was rare to see him at a faculty tea. Still, this one was special - and anyway, that could make it a lot easier to get off the list.

Cornut pushed his way towards them, past a stocky drunk from humanities who was whispering ribaldly to a patient student waitress, and threaded his way through a group of anatomists from the med school.

'Notice what decent cadavers we've been getting lately? It hasn't been this good since the last shooting war. Of course, they're not much good except for geriatrics, but that's selective euthanasia for you.'

'Will you watch what you're doing with that Martini?'

Cornut made his way slowly towards Master Carl and President St Cyr. The closer he got, the easier it was to move. There were fewer people at St Cyr's end of the room; he was the central figure of the gathering, but the guests did not cluster around him; that's the kind of a man he was.

The kind of a man St Cyr was was this: He was the ugliest man in the room.

There were others who were in no way handsome - old, or fat, or sick. St Cyr was something special. His face was an artifact of ugliness. Deep old scars made a net across his face like the flimsy cloth that holds a cheese. Surgery? No one knew. He had always had them. And his skin was a cyanotic blue.

Master Greenlease (physical chem) and Master Wahl (anthropology) were there, Wahl because he was too drunk to care who he spoke to, no doubt; Greenlease because Carl had him by the elbow and would not let him go. St Cyr nodded four times at Cornut, like a pendulum. 'Nice wea-ther,' he said, tolling it like a clock.

'Yes, it is, sir. Excuse me. Carl—'

St Cyr lifted the hand that hung by his side and laid it limply in Cornut's hand - it was his version of a handshake. He opened his seamed mouth and gave the series of unvoiced glottal stops that were his version of a chuckle. 'It will be heav-y weath-er for Mas-ter Wahl,' he said, spacing out the syllables like an articulate metronome. It was his version of a joke.

Cornut gave him a waxen smile and a small waxen laugh. The reference was to the fact that Wahl, too, was scheduled to go on the Field Expedition. Cornut didn't think that was funny - not as far as he himself was concerned, anyway -not when he had so many other things on his mind.

'Carl,' he said, 'excuse me.' But Master Carl had other things on his mind; he was badgering Greenlease for information about molecular structure, heaven knew why. And also St Cyr had not released his hand.

Cornut grumbled internally and waited. Wahl was giggling over some involved faculty joke to which St Cyr was listening like a judge. Cornut spared himself the annoyance of listening to it and thought about St Cyr. Queer old duck, of course. That was where you started. You could account for some of the queerness by, say, a bad heart. That would be the reason for the blueness. But what would be the reason for not having it operated on?

And then, what about the other things? The deadpan expression. The lifeless voice, with its firmly pronounced terminal 'ings' and words without a stress syllable anywhere? St Cyr talked like a clockwork man. Or a deaf one?

But again, what would be the reason for a man allowing himself to be deaf?

Especially a man who owned a University, including an 800-bed teaching hospital.

Wahl at last noticed that Cornut was present and punched his shoulder - cordially, Cornut decided, after thought. 'Committed any good suicides lately, boy?' He hiccoughed. 'Don't blame you. Your fault, President, you know, dragging him off to Tahiti with us. He doesn't like Tahiti.'

Cornut said, with control, 'The Field Expedition isn't going to Tahiti.'

Wahl shrugged. 'The way us anthropologists look at it, one gook island is like another gook island.' He even made a joke of his specialty! Cornut was appalled.

On the other hand, St Cyr seemed neither to notice nor to mind. He flopped his hand free of Cornut's and rested it casually on Wahl's weaving shoulder. The other hand held the full highball glass which, Cornut had observed, always remained full. St Cyr did not drink or smoke (not even tobacco), nor had Cornut ever seen him give a second look to a pretty girl. 'Lis-ten,' he said in his slow-march voice, turning Wahl to face Carl and the chemist. 'This is in-ter-est-ing.'

Carl was oblivious of the President, of Cornut, of everything except the fact that the chemist by his side knew something that Carl himself wanted to know. The information was there; he went after it. 'I don't seem to make myself clear. What I want to know, Greenlease, is how I can visualize the exact structure of a molecule. Do you follow me? For example, what colour is it?'

The chemist looked uncomfortably at St Cyr, but St Cyr was apparently absorbed. 'Well,' he said. 'Uh. The concept of colour doesn't apply. Light waves are too long.'

'Ah! I see.' Carl was fascinated. 'Well, what about the shape? I've seen those tinker-toy constructions. The atoms are little balls and they're held together with plastic rods - I suppose they represent connecting force. Are they anything like the real thing?'

'Not much. The connecting force is real enough, but you can't see it - or maybe you could, at that' (Greenlease, like most of the faculty members present, had had a bit more than enough; he was not of a temper to try to interpret molecular forces in tinker-toy terms for professors who, whatever their status in Number Theory, were physical-chemical idiots) 'if, that is, you could see the atoms in the first place. One is no more impossible than the other. But the connecting force would not look like a rod, any more than the gravitation that holds the moon to the earth would look like a rod ... Let's see ... Do you know what I mean by the word "valence"? No. Well, do you know enough atomic theory to know what part is played by the number of electrons in - Or, look at it a different way.' He paused. By his expression, he was getting seriously annoyed, in a way he considered unjust - like an ivory hunter who, carrying a .400 Express in his crooked arm, cannot quite see how to cope with the attack of a hungry mosquito. He seemed on the point of reviewing atomic structure back through Bohr and well on the way to Democritus. 'I'll tell you what,' he said at last, 'stop around tomorrow if you can. I have some plates made under the electron microscope.'

'Oh, thank you!' cried Carl with enthusiasm. 'Tomorrow - but tomorrow I'll be off on this con—' he smiled at St Cyr - 'tomorrow I'll be with the Field Expedition. Well, as soon as I get back, Greenlease. Don't forget.' He warmly shook hands as the chemist took his leave.

Cornut hissed angrily, 'That's what I want to talk to you about.'

Carl looked startled but pleased. 'I didn't know you were interested in my little experiments, Cornut. That was quite fascinating. I've always thought of a molecule of silver nitrate, for example, as being black or silvery. Perhaps that's where my work has gone wrong. Greenlease says—'

'No. I'm not talking about that. I mean the Field Expedition. I can't go.'

An observer a yard away would have thought that all of St. Cyr's attention was on Wahl; he had lost interest in the dialogue between Carl and Greenlease minutes before. But the old head turned like a parabolic mirror. The faded blue eyes radared in on Cornut. The slow metronome ticked, 'You must go, Cor-nut.'

'Must go? Of course you must go. Good heavens, Cornut - Don't mind him, President. Certainly he'll go.' 'But I have all the Wolgren to get through—'

'And then a su-i-cide to com-mit.' The muscles at the corner of the mouth tried to twitch the blue lips upwards, to show that it was a pleasantry.

But Cornut was nettled. 'Sir, I don't intend to—'

'You did not in-tend to this morn-ing.'

Carl interrupted. 'Cornut, be quiet. President, that was distressing, of course. I've had a full report on it, and I believe we can pass it off as an accident. Perhaps it was an accident. I don't know. It would have been quite easy to pick up the paper-knife in error.'

Cornut said, 'But—'

'In an-y case, he must go.'

'Naturally, President. You understand that, don't you, Cornut?' 'But—'

'You will take the ad-vance plane, please. I want you to be there when I ar-rive.' 'Very well. It's settled, then.'

'But—' said Cornut, but he was destined never to get a word deeper into that thought; through the mill of faculty came a man and a woman with the tense, nervous bearing of Townies. The woman carried a photo-taper; the man was a reporter from one of the nets.

'President St Cyr? Yes, of course. Thanks for inviting us. Naturally, we'll have a whole crew here when your expedition gets back, but I wonder if we can't get a few photographs now. As I understand it, you've located seven aboriginals. Seven? I see. It's a whole tribe, then, but seven are being brought back here. And who is the head of the expedition? Oh, naturally. Millie, will you be sure to get President St Cyr?'

The reporter's thumb was on the trigger of his voice-taper, getting down the fact that nine faculty members were going to bring back the seven aborigines, that the expedition would leave, in two planes, at nine o'clock that night, so as to arrive at their destination in early morning, local time; and that the benefits to anthropological research would surely be beyond calculation.

Cornut drew Master Carl aside. 'I don't want to go! What the hell does this have to do with mathematics, anyhow?'

'Now, please, Cornut. You heard the President. It has nothing to do with mathematics, no, but it is purely a ceremonial function and a good deal of an honour. At the present time, you should not refuse it. You can see that some rumours of your, uh, accidents have reached him. Don't cause friction.'

'What about the Wolgren? What about my, uh, accidents? Even here I nearly kill myself, and I'm all set up. What will I do without Egerd?'

'I'll be with you.'

'No, Carl!'

Carl said, speaking very clearly, 'You are going.' The eyes were star-sapphires.

Cornut studied the eyes for a moment, and then gave up. When Carl got that expression and that tone of voice, it meant that argument served no further useful purpose. Since Cornut loved the old man, he always stopped arguing at that point.

'I'm going,' he said. But the expression on his face would have soured wine.

Cornut packed - it took five minutes - and went back to the clinic to see if diagnostic space was free. It was not. He was cutting his time very close - take-off for the first plane was in less than an hour - but mulishly he took a seat in the reception room. Stolidly he did not look at the clock.

When the examination room was available things went briskly. His vital statistics were machine-measured and machine-studied, his blood spectrum was machine-chromatographed, automatically the examining table was tipped so that he could step off, and as he dressed a photoelectric eye behind his hanging garments glanced at him, opened the door to the outside corridor and said, 'Thank you. Wait in the outer office, please,' from a machine-operated tape.

Master Carl, in a fluster, found him waiting.

'Good God, boy! Do you know the plane's about to take off? And the President specially said we were to go in the first plane. Come on! I've a scooter waiting...'

'Sorry.'

'Sorry? What the devil do you mean, sorry? Come!'

Cornut said flatly, 'I agreed to go. I will go. But, as there is some feeling, shared by yourself, that the medics can help keep me from killing myself, I do not intend to leave this building until they tell me what I must do. I am waiting for the results of my examination now.'

Master Carl said, 'Oh.' He glanced at the clock on the wall. 'I see,' he said. He sat down beside Cornut thoughtfully.

Suddenly he grinned. 'All right, boy. The President can't argue with that.'

Cornut relaxed. He said, 'Well, you go ahead, Carl. No reason for both of us to get in trouble—'

'Trouble!' Master Carl seemed quite gay. Cornut realized that it had finally occurred to the house-master that this trip was a sort of vacation; he was practising for a holiday mood. 'Why should there be any trouble? You have a good reason for being tardy. I, too, have a good reason for waiting for you. After all, the President urged me to bring the Wolgren analysis along. He's quite interested, you know. And as I did not see it in your room, I suppose it is in your bags; therefore I will wait for your bags.'

Cornut protested, 'But it isn't anywhere near finished!'

Carl actually winked. 'Now, do you suppose he'll know the difference? Be flattered that he is interested enough to pretend to look at it!'

Cornut said grudgingly, 'Well, all right. How the devil did he hear about it in the first place?'

'I told him, of course. I - I've had occasion to discuss you with him a good deal, these past few days.' Carl's expression lost some of its glow. 'Cornut,' he said severely, 'we can't let this go on, can we? You must regularize your life. Take a woman.'

Cornut exploded, 'Master Carl! You have no right to interfere in my personal affairs!'

'Trust me, boy,' the old man wheedled. 'This thing with Egerd is only a makeshift. A thirty-day marriage would surely see you through the worst of it, wouldn't it?'

Three weeks, thought Cornut, diverted.

'And, truly, you need a wife. It is bad for a man to go through life alone,' he explained.

Cornut snapped, 'How about you?'

'I'm older. You're young. How long is it since you've had a wife.'

Cornut was obstinately silent.

'You see? There are many lovely young girls in the University. They would be proud. Any of them.'

Cornut did not want his mind to roam the corridors that had just been opened for it, but it did.

'Besides, you will have her with you at all the dangerous times. You won't need Egerd.'

Cornut's mind ran back quickly and began to trace a more familiar, less attractive maze. 'I'll think about it,' he said at last, just as the medic came in with his report, a couple of boxes of pills and a sheaf of papers. The report was negative, all down the line. The pills? They were just in case, said the medic; they couldn't hurt, they might help.

And the sheaf of papers ... The top one said: Confidential. Tentative. Studies of Suicidal Tendencies in Faculty Members.

Cornut covered it with his hand, interrupted the medic as he was about to explain the delay in getting the dossiers for him and cried, 'Let's get a move on, Carl! We can still make that plane.'

But, as it turned out, they couldn't.

As fast as the scooter would go, they got to the aircraft park just in time to see the first section of the Field Expedition lift itself off the ground with a great whistling roar on its VTO jets.

Much to Cornut's surprise, Master Carl was not upset. 'Oh, well,' he said, 'we had our reasons. It isn't as though we were arbitrarily late. And anyway—' he allowed himself another wink, the second in a quarter of an hour - 'this gives us a chance to ride in the President's private plane, eh? Real living for us of the underprivileged class!' He even opened his mouth to chuckle, but he didn't do it, or if he did the sound was not heard. Overhead there was a gruff giant's cough and a bright spray of flame. They looked up. Flame, flame all over the heavens, falling in great white droplets to the earth.

'My God,' said Cornut softly, 'and that was our plane.'