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.
At 3:45, he began to drift back to the job of picking up and planting recorders. Then he went back to the original “command post” and looked expectantly around for Bang-Bang. He muttered, “The Marines should have disengaged by now. Where are you, Bang-Bang?” No Bang-Bang.
Heller went for a run on a path in Morningside Park and then came back and picked up what seemed to be the last recorder of the day.
He returned to the “command post.” No Bang-Bang. His watch winked at him in Voltarian numbers that it was 5:10.
Heller found a shady place, spread his ground sheet again, reinflated his backrest and sat down. He didn’t study. He just kept watching for Bang-Bang. The shadows grew longer and longer. He looked at his watch oftener and oftener. Finally it was 5:40.
And here came something!
It was approaching down a path. It looked more like a mound of baggage with two legs than a person.
Towering and unsteady, the mountain came near Heller. It tipped over and crashed on the lawn. It avalanched for a few seconds longer and then there was Bang-Bang, standing amongst the debris. He was out of breath from the effort. He moved over and collapsed on the ground sheet.
“Well,” said Bang-Bang, “the engagement was bloody and prolonged. I will give you my battle report, Marines versus Army.” He composed himself. “You presented yourself on time to the standard Army confusion of ROTC induction. You signed the form as ‘J. Terrance Wister.’ You then presented yourself to the first obstacle of the obstacle course.
“As you were new to this ROTC, you had a physical examination. Now, you will be horrified to know that you have incipient cirrhosis of the liver from overindulgence in alcohol. I’m glad it wasn’t my physical. I have sixteen cases of Scotch left. So you were passed, providing you stop drinking.
“You then proceeded to the next obstacle. Uniforms and equipment. Those are them,” he indicated with a disdainful hand toward a pile of clothes. “The quartermaster insisted everything would be a perfect fit. But I’ll have to get them to an alterations tailor right away, get them taken in and let out to really fit me. I refuse to have you looking so sloppy! Even if it is the Army, there is just so much a Marine can take! So, you got over that obstacle.
“The next wasn’t so easy. You know what those (bleepards) did? They tried to issue me a defective M-l rifle! Now, you know and I know that a Marine can be socked a whole month’s pay if his piece is found defective. And (bleep) it, kid, its firing pin was sawed off! Yes! Sawed right off! They tried to argue with me and I bench stripped it right there down to the last screw! They said ROTC trainees weren’t allowed to have a firing pin. They said somebody might put a live round in the chamber and when they did inspection arms it might go off. And, boy, I let them have it. The dangerous thing is to have an inoperational weapon! You get charged, you can’t shoot! And I said, ‘What if you want to shoot some colonel in the back? How about that?’ And that stopped them. They couldn’t put the weapon back together and I refused to as I said it ought to be sent to the gunnery sergeant and repaired, and finally a Regular Army captain said he’d put in a request to allow you to have a non-defective M-l. So they’ll issue the rifle later but you got by that. All right so far, kid?”