Infinite Dreams (23 page)

I sought out Beaumont and, yes, he had heard of “STECOM,” the Steering Committee for Humanity, but never to his knowledge had they ever caused anyone “profound trouble.” They served mainly to protect the interests of
Mutandi
in legislation, commerce and so on. He said that the organization’s public stance is much milder than that represented by my note, but that he knew many of the members to hold similar views privately.

He gave me the number of the local STECOM chairman, and I contacted him. He denied any connection with the note; said that whoever signed it did so without authority; asked that I keep him apprised of further developments; told me not to worry. It was just the work of an extremist. Somehow that gave me very little comfort.

I left word with Pamela’s roommate, asking that Pamela call as soon as she returned from classes. She called and we arranged to meet for dinner.

We sat at a back table in Luigi’s and she read the note; first amused, then alarmed. She didn’t think they would dare do anything to her, but they might try to harrass me.

She said she thought it would be best if we didn’t see each other for a while. I protested that that would be a cowardly action, in response to what was already the act of a coward, hiding behind anonymity. We argued. In the
course of the argument she said I was wasting my efforts anyhow, as our relationship could never be anything besides casual and platonic. We finished our meals in silence and she asked me not to walk her home.

On my way back to the dormitory, right after getting off the South Quadrant Westbound slidewalk, I had to walk by a dense stand of shrubbery which threw a deep shadow over the walk. I probably wouldn’t have seen my assailants even had I not been lost in brooding thought.

One slipped behind me and threw a fabric bag over my head and shoulders, and then pinioned my arms behind me. The other hit me once in the solar plexus and twice on the face, then reached under the bag and tore off my respirator. They fled and I half-walked, half-crawled to the nearest dormitory. The medic there gave me some oxygen and pasted up my one serious-looking wound, a nasty cut over my left eye. He gave me a voucher for the materials he had used, so I could return them from my dormitory’s supply, loaned me a respirator and sent me on my way. A classmate walked over with me to help forestall a recurrence.

As I write this, my throat still hurts from breathing the sulfurous air. Good thing the attack didn’t happen downtown, nearer the Industrial Park.

I’ll take an extra Pain-go and retire.

7 May.

I went to the campus police and they told me that since there were no witnesses, and I couldn’t identify my assailants, an investigation would be a waste of time. I recognized the chief as having been at the meeting the other night, and didn’t press him.

Another note in my box. This one simply said
RETURN TO LUNA
STECOM
. I called up the Steering
Committee chairman again and informed him of this new note and of last night’s assault. He got very flustered but offered no worthwhile advice.

Somebody had forced his way into my room and poured soya all over my books and papers. When they were completely dry, I took them down to the laundry and used the ultrasonic dry-cleaner on them. It worked after a fashion. I hope he read this diary before dousing it, and saw that Pamela is not enthusiastic about my “seeking a sexual liaison” with her. Now maybe all of this will stop.

Work goes on, of course. Tree theory and yet more non-Virgil.

I toyed with the idea of trying to trace the person or persons behind all this through the notes. They are, of course, simple computer printouts, so the person would first have had to encode a crystal. The crystal would have to be re-filed and, if it hadn’t yet been erased for another use, it would be a simple matter to find out who had last checked it out.

Simple in theory, at least. There must be five or six computing facilities on campus, each with several thousand crystals.

And for that matter, it wouldn’t be difficult to have the message printed out and then code something new over that domain of the crystal, as if it had been a glitch.

I tried to think of how I might set a trap, without using Pamela as bait. My mind just isn’t devious enough-or perhaps it doesn’t have enough information. Since Chatham has more deviousness and information at his disposal, I tried to contact him. He was out, though; had been gone since yesterday. I settled for Beaumont.

Over a bottle of wine in the lounge of his dormitory, we roughed out a plan. He knew most of the
mutandi
on campus, and knew which ones were the most extreme in
their views. He would meet some of them socially and bring the conversation around to Pamela and me; if the person showed any interest, Beaumont would pretend to sympathize with the idea that
mutandi
should mate with their own kind—as if the characteristics could be inherited!—and since
I
was the one person on campus most obviously a
mutandis
, I was setting a terribly bad example. Then see whether the other would suggest some sort of action.

He said he would start right away and contact me as soon as he had some results.

8 May.

Solved.

Beaumont called this morning with the good news that he had found the person responsible. No one I knew, he said; the person was an agitator who had been out of school for years and rarely showed up at club meetings. The three of us were going to meet at 8:00 tonight, by the sheds on the athletic field.

I told him that I didn’t like it. At least two people had attacked me before, and there might be even more. I was still too weak to be of any help if it came to violence, and the athletic field was dangerously isolated. I wanted to just call the police and have him apprehended, but Beaumont raised the good point that, without evidence, it would just be Beaumont’s word against the other’s … and the campus police were not noted for respecting the testimony of students.

He said he could get his hands on a stunner, to even out the odds, and would bring a recorder to catch the person in damaging statements, even if he couldn’t be goaded into action. Personally, I hoped he couldn’t.

Beaumont had a regular script worked out, things for me to say to the man which were at once perfectly innocuous and calculated to make him lose his temper. Beaumont, of course, would be pretending to be on
his
side, which would tend to make him reckless. I agreed, with the private reservation that I would tone down some of my side of the dialogue.

I went to my morning classes as usual but found I couldn’t concentrate for worrying. Anything could happen. This time of year, the athletic field was only airco’ed over weekends, and I wasn’t sure I could make it back to a building in time, if they overpowered us as they did me last time, taking our respirators. There was no guarantee that the man would show up alone, or with just one accomplice. The more I thought about it, the more nervous I became. Finally, around noon, I went to the police.

The chief was monumentally unimpressed. He said the whole thing sounded like a prank, an initiation into the club. He knew Beaumont and expressed the opinion that he had been manipulated, the initiators playing on his exaggerated sense of drama.

I insisted that they had tried to harm me seriously night before last, but the chief pointed out that I was never in real danger, and the blows seemed calculated to do only superficial harm. They could have more easily incapacitated me and left me to suffocate.

Besides, he doubted that he could spare a man at 8:00, at which time most of them were patrolling the taverns and dopeshops off-campus, preventing trouble. He kept looking at the clock—I shouldn’t have come at lunchtime—and finally said he’d see whether he could find a man to meet me there.

Some time later, the chilling thought occurred to me
that the chief could possibly be in on it too, and if I was the focus of some ruthless
anti-sapiens
plot, my action had only put Beaumont and me in even greater danger.

I tried to reach Beaumont all day, after that thought, to tell him the whole thing was off, but he was never home. After a good deal of internal debate, about 7:00 I got up and headed for the field. After all, I had chastized Pamela for suggesting cowardly action. I stopped in a general-merchandise store on the way, and bought the biggest clasp-knife they had. I hadn’t fought anybody since I was a little boy, and didn’t know whether, should the time come to use it, I would have nerve or wit enough to even take it out of my pocket. But its weight was some small comfort.

When it happened, everything happened very fast. I went out onto the field and saw Beaumont standing by the sheds, chatting with another man. I approached them and waited for Beaumont to start the charade. They stopped talking as I came closer and suddenly Beaumont began to laugh hysterically. The other, muscular older man only slightly shorter than me—probably the tallest Earthie I’d seen—smiled and drew a short wooden club out of his tunic.

I had the knife out and was trying to get my thumbnail into the little depression when Beaumont, still laughing, raised a stunner at me and fired.

It was very painful. A stunner confuses the neural signals to and from the part of your brain that controls motor functions. As a side effect it makes you feel as if your skin is being punctured by thousands of tiny needles. I fell to the ground, twitching spasmodically. My face was down, so I couldn’t see, but I heard Beaumont tell the big man to use the knife instead; it would be more impressive.