“You’re falling behind schedule,” said Heller. He handed Bang-Bang one of the rucksacks. Bang-Bang sprinted away, lugging the filled bag and trying to keep the cap off his eyes.
Heller took out a ground sheet. Voltarian, by the Gods—one of those inch-square ones that open up to ten square feet! The kind that change color to match the ground!
It blended with the grass color. Leave it to him to keep himself neat! Bah, these Fleet guys!
He took out a gas inflatable backrest. Voltarian! It puffed up. He upended the rucksack over the ground cloth. Books spilled all over the place!
Heller sat down comfortably against the backrest, pawed the books over and found one. Aha! If Babe only could see this! He was not going to class! He was playing hooky!
The book he had was English Literature for Advanced High-School Students as Passed by the American Medical Association. Book One. The Complete, Rewritten and Abridged Works of Charles Dickens. It was a quarter of an inch thick and had large type. Heller, in his customary show-off way, demolished it, turning the pages faster than I could see what the page numbers were. It took him about one minute. He turned the book over, seemingly puzzled that there was no more book there. Then he took out an erasable Voltarian pen—he’s always so NEAT, it really gets on your nerves!—and marked the date and the Voltarian mathematical symbol that means “equation completed pending next stage.”
He put the book aside and got another one, book two of the same series, The World’s One Hundred Greatest Novels Complete, Rewritten and Abridged. It was also a quarter of an inch thick with large type. It took him another whole minute. He marked the date and the Voltarian symbol.
There was no book three so he opened a notebook and wrote High-School English Literature. And then the Voltarian mathematical symbol for “operation complete.”
This must have made him feel good for he looked around. Most of the students were in classes, apparently, for there were only a couple of girls loafing along, maybe graduate students. They waved, he waved.
He found another book. It was English Literature I for First Year College as Passed by the American Medical Association. The Complete Significances You Should Get Out of Literature and What You Should Think About It. He demolished that.
I was getting so dizzy watching the screen blur with turning pages that it was with some horror that I realized the worst. He was writing in his notebook, First Three Years College English Literature and the same Voltarian math symbol: “equation completed pending next stage.”
I verified it twice on my watch. Only ten minutes had gone by!
Oh, I know disaster when I see it. (Bleep) him. When he went to get tutored on English literature he would just make a vulgar gesture with his thumb and say, “Yah, yah, yah!”
Bang-Bang came back. “I planted them.”
“What took you so long?”
“I had to stop by the college store and get another hat. I couldn’t work in your cap.” And he had on a tasseled, black mortarboard. He gave Heller back his baseball cap, lay down on the Voltarian ground sheet and promptly went to sleep.
Heller had started on journalism, an unlikely subject that had been on his grade sheet. The book was College Journalism First Year. Essential Basic Fairy Tales of Many Lands. I was glad to see that it was taking him longer. He wasn’t reading so fast. He seemed to be enjoying something, so I split the screen and still-framed the other one so I could read it. My Gods, it was the story of the lost continent of Atlantis!
He dawdled along and it took him a half-hour to finish College Journalism. Then he saw that he was supposed to have written a sort of end-of-course paper. He got out his bigger notebook, the one he doodled in. He wrote,
CONTINENT SINKS
MILLIONS LOST
Circulation today was boosted by the timely event of a continent vanishing. Publishers ecstatic.
The event was further heightened by a conflict of opinion by leading experts.
However, an unknown expert leaked to this paper—sources cannot be disclosed despite Supreme Court rulings—that all was not known about this event.
The unidentified expert, who shall be nameless, declared that this colony had been founded by an incursion from outer space under the command of that sterling revolutionary and nobleman of purpose and broad vision, none other than Prince Caucalsia from the province of Atalanta, planet of Manco.
Some of the survivors, who emigrated immediately to the Caucasus, which is behind the Iron Curtain and human beings can’t usually go there, were incarcerated by the KGB. Deportation soon followed and they arrived maybe in New York.
The public will be kept informed.
Heller punched Bang-Bang. “Read this.”
“Why me?” said Bang-Bang, groggy in what must have been a warm morning.
“Well, somebody has got to read it and pass it. It’s the end-of-course paper in Journalism. If nobody reads it and passes it, I can’t have the credit for it.”
Bang-Bang sat up. He read it with lip movement. “What’s this word incarcerated?”
“Put in the slammer,” said Heller.
“Oh, yeah. Hey, that’s a good word. ‘Incarcerpated.’”
“Well, do I pass?”
“Oh, hell, yes. Anybody that knows that many big words is a genius. Hey, I got to get going. Time for another line of charges!” Bang-Bang raced off, tassel of his mortarboard streaming in the wind.
Heller wrote, College Journalism. Passed with In-the-Field Citation.
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.
r /> 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!
PART NINETEEN
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-1 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 nondefective M-1. So they’ll issue the rifle later but you got by that. All right so far, kid?”
“Perfectly reasonable,” said Heller. “Bad enough to have a chemical weapon already without its being defective. Must be an awful Army.”
“Oh, it is, it is,” said Bang-Bang. “Dogfaces. Anyway, then you came to the swamp and no ropes to get over it so I had to make up your mind for you and I hope I did right.
“Some Regular Army lieutenant with glasses noticed it was your senior year and noticed in your prior military training at Saint Lee’s that you’d never indicated preference for branch of service. Well, I hedged. But he said the classroom work in your senior year depended on it and you had to choose. And so he handed me a long list.
“Well, kid, I knew you didn’t want to dig latrines, so the infantry is out. And I didn’t want some dumb Army jerk pulling a lanyard on a 155 when your head was in the barrel, so the artillery is out. And these days, all tanks is good for is to get burned up in, so that’s out. I knew that you, like me, hated MPs, so that’s out. When I finished the list, it left only one thing. I hope you will like it. G-2.”
“What’s that?”
“Intelligence. Spies! It seemed to sort of fit my job right now—a Marine infiltrating the Army. So I knew it would make you feel good, too.”
I didn’t feel good. I reeled!
Bang-Bang got to the books and pamphlets in the mountain. They were marked Restricted and Confidential and Secret.
“Look at this one,” said Bang-Bang. “Codes, Ciphers and Cryptography. How to Talk Secret. Look at these things. How to Train Spies. How to Sneak Somebody Back of the Enemy Lines to Poison the Water. How to Seduce the Wife of the Enemy General and Get Her to Give You Tomorrow’s Battle Plans. Good, solid stuff! And look at the number of these manuals. Dozens! How to Tail a Russian Agent. How to Select Sensitive Targets to Destroy Industrial Capacity. Good, solid stuff, kid!”