Читать книгу The Scheme of Things - Lester Del Rey - Страница 6

CHAPTER 1

It began when the class disappeared.

But that wasn’t the most frightening part of it. Things were further complicated by what appeared in its place. Something did appear. But Mike Strong, Assistant Professor of Logic at Kane University, wasn’t sure what it was. It was no lapse into temporary unconsciousness like a maiden with the vapors; nothing like that. All the bright eager young faces were there; then they were gone; along with all the bored uninterested young faces too, for that matter; and the seats and the desks and the classroom itself.

Gone—and in their place, a thing of contradictions and paradoxes—real and unreal; both vague and sharply outlined; frightening, but at the same time, strangely exhilarating.

The lapse was brief. At least it seemed so to Mike. The class was still present when he “returned” to his desk, although it was in the process of breaking up, his students moving toward the door.

He checked them sharply. “Who dismissed you?”

They paused to stare blankly, Lathan Mott finally speaking for them. Mott, an indifferent student but a promising fugitive from some high school athletic field, regarded Mike as though he’d just called a football signal in Congolese.

“You did,” Mott said.

The moment had embarrassing possibilities. The class continued to regard Mike curiously as he strove for a face-saving rejoinder. He almost blurted, I did? But then he caught himself. He spoke icily.

“But I didn’t suggest charging out of here like a herd of elephants.”

They pondered this, looked at each other with innocent, Who, me? expressions on their faces. Then they charged out of the classroom like a herd of elephants.

Mike was happy to see them go. He needed time to pull himself together. More frightened than excited now, he searched for comparatives and found none. But the vagueness of his lapse clarified slightly.

However, the clarification was even more frightening. Lathan Mott. He recalled seeing Lathan during the interlude he now refused to concede as a dream. Lathan had been stripped to the waist. There had been blood on his chest and a look of grim defiance on his face. As Mike stood watching, an observer now where he had been a participant before, he saw Lathan Mott pick up a submachine gun and fire a burst into what had been previously clear to Mike but was now a fog. A scream of death and agony came out of the fog and then Mike lost the whole thing and he was again sitting at his desk.

A man with a mental cancer?

The thought came to him as he got up and strode out of the classroom.

Outside, he paused on the walk and looked out across the campus. The logical conclusion—You’re cracking up—came again. He struggled with it, trying to attach himself to the quiet, well-ordered reality around him. Kane University was functioning smoothly in a mathematically precise world. All he had to do was to hang on tight and let the world spin the nonsense out of his skull.

He forced a quiet smile. The crazy image of blonde, broad-shouldered young Lathan Mott wanted to come back and reestablish itself, but Mike drove it away. Slamming his mental door against it, he planned his evening—planned it like a newly released paraplegic shaping his first steps.

He would go home to his bachelor apartment on Faculty Row. He would have a drink. He would phone Donna. Simple, safe, satisfying. Anchoring his smile tighter, he went about it. But—

—he wasn’t phoning Donna. He was calling Vera to reassure her because it was already six o’clock and she wanted to get to the theater early to have it out with Vladimir Solonoff.

Vera was dressing when he got home and he kissed the classic curve of her neck. “Did you get some rest today, dear?”

Vera was in a dramatic mood. “Rest? Are you insane? How could I relax with that Russian slob waiting to walk all over my lines tonight?”

“Darling, I think perhaps you’re not asserting yourself. After all, you’re the star of ‘Far Bugles’ He wouldn’t dare use such tactics on Davis or Crawford.”

“You dare to mention those hams—”

“I’m sorry,” Mike said hastily. “But Solonoff—-”

“He’s so damnedably clever! He’ll fall over his own feet protesting innocence. Then he’ll go onstage and blow cigarette smoke all over me!”

“But Max is a good director. All you have to do is mention it to him and Max will clobber Solonoff. Your name on the marquee is the important one.”

Vera waved her arms dramatically. “You have such simple answers for everything. You sit in your plush office all day ordering people to fetch and carry. You have no concept of how I’ve fought and struggled to get where I am.”

This seemed a little irrelevant but Mike was indulgent. He loved Vera. He loved her flashing moods and quick changes. The sunshine and storm of her awed him. She was fire and ice. Her bursts of temperament were like the flashing of neon lights and he was the luckiest of men for having married her.

One of the columnists had quoted a former husband as having said, “A week with Vera Spain is far, far more precious than a lifetime with an ordinary woman.” Mike agreed.

“Darling,” he said, “I’ve let you handle this thing yourself, but now I think it’s time I took a hand. I’ll have a word with Solonoff tonight.”

Vera leaped up from her vanity table and rushed into Mike’s arms. “Oh, my sweet! How brave of you!”

After she kissed him, Mike blinked. “Brave, I don’t quite see where valor in involved. I don’t expect to duel with the man.”

“If necessary, you must smash his beautiful face,” Vera demanded fiercely.

“I don’t think that will be necessary. I do have the major financial interest in the production. I think that puts me in quite an advantageous spot.”

Vera snuggled into his lap like an ecstatic kitten. “Oh, how delightful it will be—to see that cad cringe before my handsome knight.”

“Angel,” Mike laughed, “I’m afraid you’re getting your fantasies and realities mixed up.”

Mike confronted the Russian, Solonoff, at the theater that evening. He’d suggested to Vera that he see the man alone but when he tapped on Solonoff’s door and was invited to enter, Vera was right behind him.

Solonoff was at his dressing table. He turned to exhibit the aristocratic bearing for which he was famous. At first, he saw only Mike and his contempt was supreme, a perfect demonstration of the blood prince regarding the money-grubbing tradesman. The fact that Mike had backed the show obviously did not impress the haughty actor.

“We may as well get right to it,” Mike said, not unpleasantly. “You’ve been causing my wife a great deal of distress by your calculated—”

At this point, Solonoff saw Vera peeking around the edge of the door and he sprang to his feet. He was transformed instantly into a figure of tragedy.

“Oh, my golden dove! How could you do this to me?” Mike was swept backward by Solonoff’s dramatic lunge toward the door. As he stared, Solonoff seized Vera’s hand arid drew her into the room. Holding her hand as though it were a piece of rare Ming china, he dropped to one knee.

“Now wait a minute,” Mike objected. “Vera, if you’ll just go to your dressing room, I’ll settle this thing and-”

Vera didn’t appear to hear him. Her look of smug satisfaction was directed downward, toward Solonoff’s tragic face. “I told you to stop wet-nursing that stupid little brunette—”

“But it is all your imagination, my sweet! In the blazing light of your golden beauty—”

“You were in her dressing room for an hour after the matinee yesterday!”

“But only to coach her on that second act entrance, my dearest. If you’ll remember, she practically tripped you—”

“I can take care of myself on the stage, and I’ll thank you to remember that!”

With Solonoff still on one knee and Vera making no effort to disengage her hand, Mike came out of his shock. “Now just a minute! What is all this?”

It was as though he had been brought along to act the part of the objective observer. Neither his wife nor this Russian clown paid him the least attention. Solonoff put passionate lips to Vera’s hand and was clear up to her shoulder before Mike reacted. But when his reaction did come, there was nothing casual about it. He grabbed Solonoff by the collar and jerked him to his feet. Solonoff’s expression changed. It said, Remove your filthy hand from my collar, oaf.

Solonoff’s misfortune was in having too expressive a face. It said other things Mike refused to accept. Still holding Solonoff by his collar, Mike doubled his right fist and swung it. His knuckles skidded off the point of the Russian’s jaw and Solonoff staggered backward and went down. There was a distressing klunk as his skull connected with the wrought iron leg of a ridiculously ornate telephone stand. The impact dislodged the instrument also and it banged down on his aristocratic face.

Vera screamed and dropped down beside him. She pushed the phone away and kissed both of the closed, long-lashed eyes. Then she turned her fury on Mike.

“You brute! You utter beast! It was only a small difference between us! You didn’t have to assault him!”

As Mike stared, Vera plastered kisses all over the still face. “Oh, my darling! Speak to me!”

And it seemed to Mike that Solonoff, in a voice far more Brooklynese than Russian, muttered, “Who dropped the set on me?”

But Mike couldn’t be sure of that because all he saw was a typical small college campus on a typical late afternoon, with typical students going here and there.

Two of them, he thought, greeted him, but he wasn’t sure about that either. He was sure, however, that they both turned to stare at him. They were probably wondering about the odd look on his face. What could a man be scared of on a safe, placid college campus on a bright and sunny afternoon?

Without stopping to inform them, Mike went straight across it and into Faculty Row. He passed his own apartment and strode to the far end and rang the bell beside the white door of the last house.

While he waited, he began to count. “One—two—three—four—”

Yes, time did seem to pass. The spaces between the words definitely approximated seconds. Out on the campus, the trees stayed firmly rooted both in soil and passing moments and the symphonic murmuring of the leaves had a cadence, each whisper following the previous whisper in an orderly stream.

The door opened…