Two more girls drifted by. They stopped to pass the time of day. “What’s your major?” one asked Heller.
“It was Journalism. But I just passed it with Battle Honors. What’s yours?”
“Advanced Criticism,” said one.
“See you around,” said Heller.
After a while, Bang-Bang came back. “First charges picked up. Second series laid.” He went back to sleep.
Frankly, they were driving me nuts! What were they doing? Why didn’t I hear some explosions as buildings went up?
Heller demolished a couple more subjects and passed himself in his notebook. Bang-Bang had come back again and was once again fast asleep.
Now Heller had gotten into high-school chemistry. But this time he was really tangled. I could tell. He was yawning and yawning. Tension! In fact, it was evidently too much for him for he laid it aside and picked up a text on high-school physics. He read for a while, yawning. Then he picked up the chemistry text again and began looking from it to the physics text.
“Hey,” he told the texts. “Agree amongst you on something, will you?”
A clear-cut case of animistic fixation, his habit of talking to things. No wonder he couldn’t understand clear-cut texts.
He finished up the chemistry including the college texts on it and then got going once more on physics. He kept going back earlier and looking again.
And then, I couldn’t believe it! He started to laugh. He always was sacrilegious. Little spurts of laughter kept erupting. And then he read some more and he laughed some more. And then he got to laughing harder and harder and rolled off the backrest and beat at the ground with his fists!
“What the hell is going on?” said Bang-Bang, waking up. “You reading comic books or something?”
Heller got control of himself and it was time he did! “It’s a text on primitive superstitions,” said Heller. “Look, it’s almost noon. Pick up those last charges and we’ll have some lunch.”
Ah, they were threatening the school! Demanding ransom?
Heller had everything gathered up and they went off and bought sandwiches and pop from a mobile lunch wagon.
“Operation right on schedule,” said Heller.
“We made our beachhead,” said Bang-Bang.
They enjoyed the view of girls as they strolled around. Heller bought a couple of papers. Then, “Time!” said Heller sternly. And Bang-Bang raced off again. When he came back, Heller had the command post all set up and Bang-Bang went to sleep.
If they weren’t blowing things up, and I had heard no explosions, this was about the strangest way to go to college I had ever seen. You’re supposed to go and sit down and listen to lectures and take notes and hurry to another class…
Heller was halfway through trigonometry when Bang-Bang said, “I’ll pick up the last series and lay the next. But then I got to go report to the Army and you’ll have to take over.”
Heller finished trigonometry and told it, “You sure go the long way round.” But he entered it in his notebook as passed.
Bang-Bang returned and dropped the rucksack he had been racing about with. “Well, here goes the pig into the mire. You got the watch now.”
Heller had gotten tired of studying, apparently, for he packed his books up. His watch winked at him in Voltarian figures that it was a bit after two. He opened up one of the papers he had bought.
He looked all through it. He couldn’t find a trace of what he was looking for: he kept muttering, “Grafferty? Grafferty?”
He opened up the second paper. He got clear back to the photo section before he found it. It was a picture of an indistinct fireman climbing down a ladder carrying an unrecognizable woman. The caption said:
Police Inspector Grafferty last night rescued Jean Matinee from a burning spaghetti parlor.
Heller told the paper, “Now that I am a passed-with-honors journalist, I can truly appreciate the grave responsibility of keeping the public informed.”
I heard that with some amusement. It just showed one how superficial he was. He had the purpose of the media all wrong! Its purpose, of course, is to keep the public misinformed! Only in that way can governments, and the people who own and use them, keep the public confused and milked! They trained us in such principles very well in the Apparatus schools.
And then an irritation of worry tinged my amusement. All this data he was getting, right or wrong, could be dangerous to me. It might accidentally make him think.
There was one field he mustn’t study. And that was the subject of espionage. I didn’t think it was taught in American public schools, even though I knew it was a required subject in Russian kindergartens so the children could spy on their parents. I knew that America often copied what the Russians did. I crossed my fingers. I hoped it wasn’t one of his required subjects. I tried to read some of the text titles that were spread around.
Heller went back to his studies. At 2:45 he packed up all his gear, hefted the two rucksacks and trotted off. He paused in a hall, watching a door.
Ah, now I was going to find out what they had been up to!
Students streamed out of the room. The professor came bustling out and went up the hall.
Heller walked into the empty classroom. He went straight to the lecture platform. He reached down into the wastebasket.
He pulled out a tape recorder!
He shut it off.
He put it in the rucksack.
Heller pulled out a small instant recording camera, stepped back and shot the diagrams on the blackboard.
He put the camera away.
He left the room.
He raced over to another building.
He stepped into an empty classroom. He went to the platform, took a different recorder out of the rucksack, verified that it was loaded with 120-minute tape, put it on “record,” placed it in the bottom of the wastebasket and threw some paper over it and then walked out of the room just as a couple of students were entering.
Outside, he leaned up against a building. He took the first recorder he had recovered, checked to make sure it had worked properly and removed the cassette. He marked the tape with date and subject, fastened the blackboard picture to it with a rubber band and put the package in a compartmented cassette box marked Advanced Chemistry. He checked the recorder battery charge, reloaded it with blank 120 tape and put it back in the rucksack.
Oh, the crook! He and Bang-Bang were simply recording all the lectures! He didn’t intend to go to a single class in that college!
Oh, I knew what he would do. He would speed-rig a playback machine as he had done with languages and zip a lecture through it in a minute or so at his leisure! Maybe even save them up and do the whole three months’ course in under an hour!
What dishonesty! Didn’t he know that the FBI arrested people for doing unauthorized recording? Or was that for copying and selling copyrighted material? I couldn’t remember. But anyway, it was an awful shock to me! He had a chance of getting through college in spite of Miss Simmons!
I had a momentary glimmer of hope. There might be quizzes. There might be lab periods. But then I sank into a deeper gloom. Heller had probably figured those out, too!
(Bleep) him, he was defeating the efforts to defeat him! My hand itched for a blastick! I had better quadruple any effort I was making to put an end to him!
Chapter 2
Rucksacks and all, Heller went for a run. He went west on 120th Street, south on Broadway, east on 114th Street, north on Amsterdam, circumnavigating the whole university. He was obviously trying to kill time. I hoped he would look out of place and maybe even get arrested for something, but there were lots of other joggers or people late for something.