Drunkard's Walk

And if he was still alive, of course.

'Oh, damn it all, anyhow,' Cornut said suddenly. He tucked the President's letter into his pocket, picked up his cape and walked irritably out into the hall.

The Math Tower dining-room served all thirty-one masters of the department, and most of them were there before him. He walked in with an impassive face, expecting a sudden hush to stop the permanent buzz of conversation in the hall, and getting it. Everyone was looking at him.

'Good morning,' he said cheerfully, nodding all around the room.

One of the few women on the staff waved to him, giggling. 'Good for you, Cornut! Come sit with us, will you? Janet has an idea to help you stop suiciding!'

Cornut smiled and nodded and turned his back on the two women. They slept in the women's wing, twelve stories below his own dorms, but already the word had spread. Naturally. He stopped at the table where Master Carl sat alone, drinking tea and looking through a sheaf of photographs. 'I'm sorry about this morning, Carl,' he said.

Master Carl looked vaguely up at him. Dealing with his equals, Carl's eyes were not the brittle star-sapphires that had pierced Egerd; they were the mild, blue eyes of a lean Santa Claus, which was much closer to his true nature. 'Oh? Oh. You mean about jumping out of the window, of course. Sit down, boy. He made a space on the table for the student waitress to put down Cornut's place-setting. The whole cloth was covered with photographic prints. He handed one to Cornut. 'Tell me,' he said apologetically, 'does that look like a picture of a star to you?'

'No.' Cornut was not very interested in his department head's hobbies. The print looked like a light-struck blob of nothing much at all.

Carl sighed and put it down. 'All right. Now, what about this thing this morning?'

Cornut accepted a cup of coffee from one of the student waitresses and waved away the others. 'I wish I could,' he said seriously.

Carl waited.

'I mean - it's hard.'

Carl waited.

Cornut took a long swallow of coffee and put down his cup. Carl was probably the only man on the faculty who hadn't been listening to the grapevine that morning. It was almost impossible to say to him the simple fact of what had happened. Master Carl was a child of the University, just as Cornut himself was; like Cornut, he had been born in the University's Medical Centre and educated in the University's schools. He had no taste for the boiling, bustling Townie world outside. In fact, he had very little taste for human problems at all. Lord knew what Carl, dry as digits, his head crammed with Vinogradoff and Frenicle de Bessy, would make of so non-mathematical a phenomenon as suicide.

'I've tried to kill myself nine times,' Cornut said, plunging in, 'don't ask me why; I don't know. That's what this morning was all about. It was my ninth try.'

Master Carl's expression was fully what Cornut had anticipated.

'Don't look so incredulous,' he snapped. 7 don't know any more about it than that. It's just as much of an annoyance to me as it is to you!'

The house-master looked helplessly at the photographic prints by his plate as though some answer might be there. It wasn't. 'All right,' he said, rubbing the lobes of bone over his eyes. 'I understand your statement. Has it occurred to you that you might get help?'

'Help? My God, I've got helpers all over the place. The thing is worst in the morning, you see; just when I'm waking up, not fully alert, that's the bad time. So I've set up a whole complicated system of alarms. I have five clocks set. I got the superintendent's office to rig up the lights on a timed switch. I got the night proctor to call me on the house phone - all of them together, you see, so that when I wake up, I wake up totally. It worked for three mornings, and, believe me, the only thing that that experience resembles is being awakened by a pot of ice-water in the face. I even got Egerd to come in early every morning to stand by while I woke, just on the chance that something would go wrong.'

'But this morning Egerd was late?'

'He was tardy,' Cornut corrected. 'A minute more and he would have been late. And so would I.'

Carl said, 'That's not exactly the sort of help I had in mind.'

'Oh. You mean the Med Centre.' Cornut reached for a cigarette. A student waitress hurried over with a light. He knew her. She was in one of his classes; a girl named Locille. She was pretty and very young. Cornut said absently, following her with his eyes, 'I've been there, Carl. They offered me analysis. In fact, they were quite insistent.'

Master Carl's face was luminous with interest. Cornut, turning back to look at him, thought that he hadn't seen Carl quite so absorbed in anything since their, last discussion about the paper Cornut was doing for him: the analysis of the discrepancies in Wolgren's basic statistical law.

Carl said, 'I'll tell you what astonishes me. You don't seem very worried about all this.'

Cornut reflected. '... I am, though.'

'You don't show it. Well, is there anything else that's worrying you?'

'Worrying me enough to kill myself? No. But I suppose there must be, mustn't there?'

Carl stared into the empty air. The eyes were bright blue again; Master Carl was operating with his brain, examining possibilities, considering their relevancy, evolving a theory. 'Only in the mornings?'

'Oh no, Carl. I'm much more versatile than that; I can try to kill myself at any hour of the day or night. But it happens when I'm drowsy. Going to sleep, waking up - once in the middle of the night. I found myself walking towards the fire stairs, God knows why. Perhaps something happened to half-wake me, I don't know. So I have Egerd keep me company at night until I'm thoroughly asleep, and again in the morning. My baby-sitter.'

Carl said testily, 'Surely you can tell me more than this!'

'Well... Yes, I suppose I can. I think I have dreams.'

'Dreams?'

'I think so, Carl. I don't remember very well, but it's as though someone were telling me to do these things, someone in a position of authority. A father? I don't remember my own father, but that's the feeling I get.'

The light went out of Carl's face. He had lost interest.

Cornut said curiously. 'What's the matter?'

The house-master leaned back, shaking his head. 'No, you mustn't think anyone is telling you, Cornut. There isn't anyone. I've checked it very thoroughly, believe me. Dreams come from the dreamer.'

'But I only said—'

Master Carl held up his hand. 'To consider any other possibility,' he lectured, in the voice that reached three million viewers every week, 'involves one of two possibilities. Let us examine them. First, there might be a physical explanation. That is, someone may actually be speaking to you as you sleep. I assume we can dismiss that. The second possibility is telepathy. And that,' he said sadly, 'does not exist.' 'But I only—'

'Look within yourself, my boy,' the old man said wisely. Then, his expression showing dawning interest again, 'And what about Wolgren? Any progress with the anomalies?'

Twenty minutes later, on the plea that he was late for an appointment, Cornut made his escape. There were twelve tables in the room, and he was invited to sit down at eight of them for a second cup of coffee ... and, oh yes, what is this story all about, Cornut?