“Oh, I almost forgot. Just in case you find time heavy on your hands — loafing about with this schedule — I have added another course to make up for a missing optional. It is Nature Appreciation 101 and 104. One goes out every Sunday, all day, and admires the birds and trees and learns, perhaps, what a nasty thing it is to make those world-destroying bombs! I teach this class myself, so I can keep an eye on your vicious proclivities. Now you can thank me, Wister.”
“Really, Miss S—”
“And as they are so interested in money, all this adds another fifteen hundred and thirty-three dollars to your bill. I hope you don’t have it. Pay the cashier. Good day, Wister. NEXT!”
Heller took the papers she had already made out. He took the invoice.
He went over and paid the cashier.
Aha! My heart had gone out to Miss Simmons more and more. What a sterling character! I toyed with the idea of sending her some candy “From an Unknown Admirer.” No, on the other hand, a pair of brass knuckles would be more in her line. With maybe a Knife Section knife to keep on her desk. But really, did she need it?
Chapter 6
Just before noon, Heller came to the High Library. It was a very imposing building with a Roman look — ten huge columns stretched across the front, an enormous rotunda, a very noble facade. It was fronted with a vast expanse of steps almost as wide as the building itself.
He passed a fountain and then a statue with the words Alma Mater on it. He went halfway up the upper steps and slumped down on the stone.
And well he might slump. I had been kept laughing for the last two hours following his zigzag course around the enormous campus. He trotted here and he trotted there. He was locating every single one of the large number of classrooms, halls, armories and drill fields he would have to attend. He had constantly checked a copy of a computer printout and he had found that he had a schedule which went two classes at the same time, followed by no class for the next hour and then, in one case, three classes at the same time! I was kept in stitches. Not even the great Heller could cope with that schedule. And it went seven days a week!
As he sat there in the hot noonday sun, he must be realizing that there was no way on Earth he could get a diploma and carry out the silly plans he had undoubtedly made to carry his mission through just to spite me. And get me killed.
Students were drifting up and down the steps, no vast throng. Young men and women, not too well dressed. Heller must look younger than some of them, despite being, in fact, several years older in time and, in all honesty, decades older in experience. How silly he must feel, a Royal officer of the Fleet, sitting there amongst these naive creatures. Another joke on him and on them, too. I idly speculated what they would think if they knew a Voltar combat engineer was sitting right there, in plain view, a Mancoian from Atalanta more than a score of light-years away, a holder of the fifty-volunteer star, that could blow their planet to bits as easy as he could spit or could prevent an invasion that would slaughter every one of them. What a joke on them. How stupid they were!
A couple of girls and a young man drifted by. One of the girls said, “Ooo! Are you on the baseball team?”
“I didn’t know they were still turned out,” said the boy. “Why, you’re wearing spikes!”
Heller looked at one of the girls. “You can’t get to first base if you don’t.”
They all of them burst into screams of laughter. I tried and tried to figure out what they were laughing about. (Bleep) that Heller, anyway. Always so obscure. And he had no right to start currying popularity. He was an extraterrestrial, an interloper! Besides, they were pretty girls.
“Name’s Muggins,” said the boy. “This is Christine and Coral — they’re from Barnyard College: that’s part of Empire but all women, oh boy!”
“My name’s Jet,” said Heller.
“C’m up’n see us s’m’time,” said Christine.
They all laughed again, waved and walked on down the broad steps.
And here came Epstein!
He was dragging an enormously long roll of something behind him. It was about a foot in diameter and certainly over twelve feet long! He passed the fountain and then the statue. He stopped a couple steps below Heller. He was dressed in a shabby gray suit and a shabby gray hat and, in addition to the roll, he was carrying a very scuffed up, cheap attache case. He sank down on a step, puffing.
“And how is Mr. Epstein?” said Heller cheerfully.
“Oh, don’t call me that,” said Epstein. “It makes me uncomfortable. Please call me Izzy. That’s what everybody does.”
“Good. If you’ll call me Jet.”
“No. You are really my superior as you have the capital. I should call you Mr. Wister.”
“You have forgotten,” said Heller, “that you are responsible for me now. And that includes my morale.” Then he said very firmly, “Call me Jet.”
Izzy Epstein looked unhappy. Then he said, “All right, Mr. Jet.”
Heller must have given it up. “I see you found some clothes. I was worried that they’d all been destroyed.”
“Oh, yes. I took a bath in the gym and I got two suits, this hat and this briefcase from the Salvation Army Good Will. They wouldn’t do for you, of course, but if I dressed too well, I would attract attention and invite bad luck. One must never appear to be doing too well-the lightning will strike.”
This Izzy Epstein was turning my stomach. It was quite obvious that he was a neurotic depressive with persecution complexes and had overtones of religio-mania, evident in his fixations on fate. A fine mess he would make for Heller. Neurotics are never competent. But on the other hand, it was really a break for me that Heller had run into him. The fellow couldn’t even manage his own affairs, much less Heller’s.
“Well, you look better, anyway,” said Heller.
“Oh, I’m exhausted! I have been working flat out all night to prepare a proposal for you. The only building I could find open was the Art College, so I had to use their materials.”
“Is that what that is?”
“This roll? Yes. All they had left out was studio paper — the kind they use behind models, twelve feet wide, a hundred feet long. And they didn’t leave out any scissors. So I used that.”
He tried to unroll it. But he didn’t have enough arm reach. Heller started to help him but Izzy said, “No, no. You’re the investor. You there!” he called out suddenly.
A couple of new students had come out of the library. Izzy stopped them at the top of the huge, wide stairway. “You hold this end,” he said to one. “And you this end,” he said to the other. “Now, hold it tight.” The two stood there, twelve feet apart, holding the top of the roll.
Heller had followed Izzy up. Izzy took the roll and backed down two steps, unreeling it. At the top, in wild, garish ink, all along it, it said: Confidential Draft.
“You will probably find it too colorful,” said Izzy, understating it like mad, for it was blazing in the sunlight, “but they had only left around old dried-up pots of poster paint and I had to mix it with water. And there were only some discarded brushes. But, it will give you the idea.”
He backed down two more steps. Revealed to view were some odd lines and symbols. It looked like three wooden hay forks raking apples — and all of different colors, all bright.
“Now, that first row is what we call the mask corporations. We incorporate those separately in New York, New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware. They all have different, noninterlocking boards of directors.”
He backed down another step unrolling the roll further. But there was a bit of wind. Two more students, eating sandwiches, were paused nearby. Izzy sent one to the far side and one to the right side and told them to hold it steady and they did.