morning--early afternoon, local time. This is the scene of the crime;
the body of the murderer has been removed, but you can still see the
stones with which he was pelted to death by the mob...."
A close-up of the square, still littered with torn-up paving-stones. A
Caliphate army officer, displaying the weapon--it was an old M3, all
right; Chalmers had used one of those things, himself, thirty years
before, and he and his contemporaries had called it a "grease-gun."
There were some recent pictures of Khalid, including one taken as he
left the plane on his return from Ankara. He watched, absorbed; it
was all exactly as he had "remembered" a month ago. It gratified him
to see that his future "memories" were reliable in detail as well as
generality.
"But the most amazing part of the story comes, not from Basra, but
from Blanley College, in California," the commentator was saying,
"where, it is revealed, the murder of Khalid was foretold, with
uncanny accuracy, a month ago, by a history professor, Doctor Edward
Chalmers...."
There was a picture of himself, in hat and overcoat, perfectly
motionless, as though a brief moving glimpse were being prolonged. A
glance at the background told him when and where it had been taken--a
year and a half ago, at a convention at Harvard. These telecast people
must save up every inch of old news-film they ever took. There were
views of Blanley campus, and interviews with some of the Modern
History IV boys, including Dacre and Kendrick. That was one of the
things they'd been doing with that jeep-mounted sound-camera, this
afternoon, then. The boys, some brashly, some embarrassedly, were
substantiating the fact that he had, a month ago, described
yesterday's event in detail. There was an interview with Leonard
Fitch; the psychology professor was trying to explain the phenomenon
of precognition in layman's terms, and making heavy going of it. And
there was the mobbing of Whitburn in front of Administration Center.
The college president was shouting denials of every question asked
him, and as he turned and fled, the guffaws of the reporters were
plainly audible.
An argument broke out along the counter.
"I don't believe it! How could anybody know all that about something
before it happened?"
"Well, you heard that-there professor, what was his name. An' you
heard all them boys...."
"Ah, college-boys; they'll do anything for a joke!"
"After refusing to be interviewed for telecast, the president of
Blanley College finally consented to hold a press conference in his
office, from which telecast cameras were barred. He denied the whole
story categorically and stated that the boys in Professor Chalmers'
class had concocted the whole thing as a hoax...."
"There! See what I told you!"
"... stating that Professor Chalmers is mentally unsound, and that
he has been trying for years to oust him from his position on the
Blanley faculty but has been unable to do so because of the provisions
of the Faculty Tenure Act of 1963. Most of his remarks were in the
nature of a polemic against this law, generally regarded as the
college professors' bill of rights. It is to be stated here that other
members of the Blanley faculty have unconditionally confirmed the fact
that Doctor Chalmers did make the statements attributed to him a month
ago, long before the death of Khalid ib'n Hussein...."
"Yah! How about _that_, now? How'ya gonna get around _that_?"
Beckoning the waitress, he paid his check and hurried out. Before he
reached the door, he heard a voice, almost stuttering with excitement:
"Hey! Look! That's _him_!"
He began to run. He was two blocks from the cafe before he slowed to a
walk again.
That night, he needed three shots of whiskey before he could get to
sleep.
* * * * *
A delegation from the American Institute of Psionics and
Parapsychology reached Blanley that morning, having taken a
strato-plane from the East Coast. They had academic titles and degrees
that even Lloyd Whitburn couldn't ignore. They talked with Leonard
Fitch, and with the students from Modern History IV, and took
statements. It wasn't until after General European History II that
they caught up with Chalmers--an elderly man, with white hair and a
ruddy face; a young man who looked like a heavy-weight boxer; a
middle-aged man in tweeds who smoked a pipe and looked as though he
ought to be more interested in grouse-shooting and flower-gardening
than in clairvoyance and telepathy. The names of the first two meant
nothing to Chalmers. They were important names in their own field, but
it was not his field. The name of the third, who listened silently, he
did not catch.
"You understand, gentlemen, that I'm having some difficulties with the
college administration about this," he told them. "President Whitburn
has even gone so far as to challenge my fitness to hold a position
here."
"We've talked to him," the elderly man said. "It was not a very
satisfactory discussion."
"President Whitburn's fitness to hold his own position could very
easily be challenged," the young man added pugnaciously.
"Well, then, you see what my position is. I've consulted my attorney,
Mr. Weill and he has advised me to make absolutely no statements of
any sort about the matter."
"I understand," the eldest of the trio said. "But we're not the press,
or anything like that. We can assure you that anything you tell us
will be absolutely confidential." He looked inquiringly at the
middle-aged man in tweeds, who nodded silently. "We can understand
that the students in your modern history class are telling what is
substantially the truth?"
"If you're thinking about that hoax statement of Whitburn's, that's a
lot of idiotic drivel!" he said angrily. "I heard some of those boys
on the telecast, last night; except for a few details in which they
were confused, they all stated exactly what they heard me say in class
a month ago."
"And we assume,"--again he glanced at the man in tweeds--"that you had
no opportunity of knowing anything, at the time, about any actual
plot against Khalid's life?"
The man in tweeds broke silence for the first time. "You can assume
that. I don't even think this fellow Noureed knew anything about it,
then."
"Well, we'd like to know, as nearly as you're able to tell us, just
how you became the percipient of this knowledge of the future event of
the death of Khalid ib'n Hussein," the young man began. "Was it
through a dream, or a waking experience; did you visualize, or have an
auditory impression, or did it simply come into your mind...."
"I'm sorry, gentlemen." He looked at his watch. "I have to be going
somewhere, at once. In any case, I simply can't discuss the matter
with you. I appreciate your position; I know how I'd feel if data of
historical importance were being withheld from me. However, I trust
that you will appreciate my position and spare me any further
questioning."
That was all he allowed them to get out of him. They spent another few
minutes being polite to one another; he invited them to lunch at the
Faculty Club, and learned that they were lunching there as Fitch's
guests. They went away trying to hide their disappointment.
* * * * *
The Psionics and Parapsychology people weren't the only delegation to
reach Blanley that day. Enough of the trustees of the college lived in
the San Francisco area to muster a quorum for a meeting the evening
before; a committee, including James Dacre, the father of the boy in
Modern History IV, was appointed to get the facts at first hand; they
arrived about noon. They talked to some of the students, spent some
time closeted with Whitburn, and were seen crossing the campus with
the Parapsychology people. They didn't talk to Chalmers or Fitch. In
the afternoon, Marjorie Fenner told Chalmers that his presence at a
meeting, to be held that evening in Whitburn's office, was requested.
The request, she said, had come from the trustees' committee, not from
Whitburn; she also told him that Fitch would be there. Chalmers
promptly phoned Stanly Weill.
"I'll be there along with you," the lawyer said. "If this trustees'
committee is running it, they'll realize that this is a matter in
which you're entitled to legal advice. I'll stop by your place and
pick you up.... You haven't been doing any talking, have you?"
He described the interview with the Psionics and Parapsychology
people.
"That was all right.... Was there a man with a mustache, in a brown
tweed suit, with them?"
"Yes. I didn't catch his name...."
"It's Cutler. He's an Army major; Central Intelligence. His crowd's
interested in whether you had any real advance information on this. He
was in to see me, just a while ago. I have the impression he'd like to
see this whole thing played down, so he'll be on our side, more or
less and for the time being. I'll be around to your place about eight;
in the meantime, don't do any more talking than you have to. I hope we
can get this straightened out, this evening. I'll have to go to Reno
in a day or so to see a client there...."
* * * * *
The meeting in Whitburn's office had been set for eight-thirty; Weill
saw to it that they arrived exactly on time. As they got out of his
car at Administration Center and crossed to the steps, Chalmers had
the feeling of going to a duel, accompanied by his second. The
briefcase Weill was carrying may have given him the idea; it was flat
and square-cornered, the size and shape of an old case of dueling
pistols. He commented on it.
"Sound recorder," Weill said. "Loaded with a four-hour spool. No
matter how long this thing lasts, I'll have a record of it, if I want
to produce one in court."
Another party was arriving at the same time--the two Psionics and
Parapsychology people and the Intelligence major, who seemed to have
formed a working partnership. They all entered together, after a brief
and guardedly polite exchange of greetings. There were voices raised
in argument inside when they came to Whitburn's office. The college
president was trying to keep Handley, Tom Smith, and Max Pottgeiter
from entering his private room in the rear.
"It certainly is!" Handley was saying. "As faculty members, any
controversy involving establishment of standards of fitness to teach
under a tenure-contract concerns all of us, because any action taken
in this case may establish a precedent which could affect the validity
of our own contracts."
A big man with iron-gray hair appeared in the doorway of the private
office behind Whitburn; James Dacre.
"These gentlemen have a substantial interest in this, Doctor
Whitburn," he said. "If they're here as representatives of the college
faculty, they have every right to be present."
Whitburn stood aside. Handley, Smith and Pottgeiter went through the
door; the others followed. The other three members of the trustees'
committee were already in the room. A few minutes later, Leonard Fitch
arrived, also carrying a briefcase.
"Well, everybody seems to be here," Whitburn said, starting toward his
chair behind the desk. "We might as well get this started."
"Yes. If you'll excuse me, Doctor." Dacre stepped in front of him and
sat down at the desk. "I've been selected as chairman of this
committee; I believe I'm presiding here. Start the recorder,
somebody."
One of the other trustees went to the sound recorder beside the
desk--a larger but probably not more efficient instrument than the one
Weill had concealed in his briefcase--and flipped a switch. Then he
and his companions dragged up chairs to flank Dacre's, and the rest
seated themselves around the room. Old Pottgeiter took a seat next to
Chalmers. Weill opened the case on his lap, reached inside, and closed
it again.
"What are they trying to do, Ed?" Pottgeiter asked, in a loud whisper.
"Throw you off the faculty? They can't do that, can they?"
"I don't know, Max. We'll see...."
"This isn't any formal hearing, and nobody's on trial here," Dacre was
saying. "Any action will have to be taken by the board of trustees as
a whole, at a regularly scheduled meeting. All we're trying to do is
find out just what's happened here, and who, if anybody, is
responsible...."
"Well, there's the man who's responsible!" Whitburn cried, pointing at
Chalmers. "This whole thing grew out of his behavior in class a month
ago, and I'll remind you that at the time I demanded his resignation!"
"I thought it was Doctor Fitch, here, who gave the story to the
newspapers," one of the trustees, a man with red hair and a thin,
eyeglassed face, objected.
"Doctor Fitch acted as any scientist should, in making public what he
believed to be an important scientific discovery," the elder of the
two Parapsychology men said. "He believed, and so do we, that he had
discovered a significant instance of precognition--a case of real
prior knowledge of a future event. He made a careful and systematic
record of Professor Chalmers' statements, at least two weeks before
the occurrence of the event to which they referred. It is entirely due
to him that we know exactly what Professor Chalmers said and when he
said it."
"Yes," his younger colleague added, "and in all my experience I've
never heard anything more preposterous than this man Whitburn's
attempt, yesterday, to deny the fact."
"Well, we're convinced that Doctor Chalmers did in fact say what he's
alleged to have said, last month," Dacre began.
"Jim, I think we ought to get that established, for the record,"
another of the trustees put in. "Doctor Chalmers, is it true that you
spoke, in the past tense, about the death of Khalid ib'n Hussein in
one of your classes on the sixteenth of last month?"
Chalmers rose. "Yes, it is. And the next day, I was called into this
room by Doctor Whitburn, who demanded my resignation from the faculty
of this college because of it. Now, what I'd like to know is, why did
Doctor Whitburn, in this same room, deny, yesterday, that I'd said
anything of the sort, and accuse my students of concocting the story
after the event as a hoax."
"One of them being my son," Dacre added. "I'd like to hear an answer
to that, myself."
"So would I," Stanly Weill chimed in. "You know, my client has a good
case against Doctor Whitburn for libel."
Chalmers looked around the room. Of the thirteen men around him, only
Whitburn was an enemy. Some of the others were on his side, for one
reason or another, but none of them were friends. Weill was his
lawyer, obeying an obligation to a client which, at bottom, was an
obligation to his own conscience. Handley was afraid of the
possibility that a precedent might be established which would impair
his own tenure-contract. Fitch, and the two men from the Institute of
Psionics and Parapsychology were interested in him as a source of
study-material. Dacre resented a slur upon his son; he and the others
were interested in Blanley College as an institution, almost an
abstraction. And the major in mufti was probably worrying about the
consequences to military security of having a prophet at large. Then a
hand gripped his shoulder, and a voice whispered in his ear:
"That's good, Ed; don't let them scare you!"
Old Max Pottgeiter, at least, was a friend.
"Doctor Whitburn, I'm asking you, and I expect an answer, why did you
make such statements to the press, when you knew perfectly well that
they were false?" Dacre demanded sharply.
"I knew nothing of the kind!" Whitburn blustered, showing, under the
bluster, fear. "Yes, I demanded this man's resignation on the morning
of October Seventeenth, the day after this incident occurred. It had
come to my attention on several occasions that he was making wild and
unreasonable assertions in class, and subjecting himself, and with
himself the whole faculty of this college, to student ridicule. Why,
there was actually an editorial about it written by the student editor
of the campus paper, the _Black and Green_. I managed to prevent its
publication...." He went on at some length about that. "If I might be
permitted access to the drawers of my own desk," he added with
elephantine sarcasm, "I could show you the editorial in question."
"You needn't bother; I have a carbon copy," Dacre told him. "We've all
read it. If you did, at the time you suppressed it, you should have
known what Doctor Chalmers said in class."
"I knew he'd talked a lot of poppycock about a man who was still
living having been shot to death," Whitburn retorted. "And if
something of the sort actually happened, what of it? Somebody's always
taking a shot at one or another of these foreign dictators, and they
can't miss all the time."
"You claim this was pure coincidence?" Fitch demanded. "A ten-point
coincidence: Event of assassination, year of the event, place,
circumstances, name of assassin, nationality of assassin, manner of
killing, exact type of weapon used, guards killed and wounded along
with Khalid, and fate of the assassin. If that's a simple and
plausible coincidence, so's dealing ten royal flushes in succession in
a poker game. Tom, you figured that out; what did you say the odds
against it were?"
"Was all that actually stated by Doctor Chalmers a month ago?" one of
the trustees asked, incredulously.
"It absolutely was. Look here, Mr. Dacre, gentlemen." Fitch came
forward, unzipping his briefcase and pulling out papers. "Here are the
signed statements of each of Doctor Chalmers' twenty-three Modern
History Four students, all made and dated before the assassination.
You can refer to them as you please; they're in alphabetical order.
And here." He unfolded a sheet of graph paper a yard long and almost
as wide. "Here's a tabulated summary of the boys' statements. All
agreed on the first point, the fact of the assassination. All agreed
that the time was sometime this year. Twenty out of twenty-three
agreed on Basra as the place. Why, seven of them even remembered the
name of the assassin. That in itself is remarkable; Doctor Chalmers
has an extremely intelligent and attentive class."
"They're attentive because they know he's always likely to do
something crazy and make a circus out of himself," Whitburn
interjected.
"And this isn't the only instance of Doctor Chalmers' precognitive
ability," Fitch continued. "There have been a number of other cases...."
Chalmers jumped to his feet; Stanly Weill rose beside him, shoved the
cased sound-recorder into his hands, and pushed him back into his
seat.
"Gentlemen," the lawyer began, quietly but firmly and clearly. "This
is all getting pretty badly out of hand. After all, this isn't an
investigation of the actuality of precognition as a psychic
phenomenon. What I'd like to hear, and what I haven't heard yet, is
Doctor Whitburn's explanation of his contradictory statements that he
knew about my client's alleged remarks on the evening after they were
supposed to have been made and that, at the same time, the whole thing
was a hoax concocted by his students."
"Are you implying that I'm a liar?" Whitburn bristled.
"I'm pointing out that you made a pair of contradictory statements,
and I'm asking how you could do that knowingly and honestly," Weill
retorted.
"What I meant," Whitburn began, with exaggerated slowness, as though
speaking to an idiot, "was that yesterday, when those infernal
reporters were badgering me, I really thought that some of Professor
Chalmers' students had gotten together and given the _Valley Times_ an
exaggerated story about his insane maunderings a month ago. I hadn't
imagined that a member of the faculty had been so lacking in loyalty
to the college...."
"You couldn't imagine anybody with any more intellectual integrity
than you have!" Fitch fairly yelled at him.
"You're as crazy as Chalmers!" Whitburn yelled back. He turned to the
trustees. "You see the position I'm in, here, with this infernal
Higher Education Faculty Tenure Act? I have a madman on my faculty,
and can I get rid of him? No! I demand his resignation, and he laughs
at me and goes running for his lawyer! And he is a madman! Nobody but
a madman would talk the way he does. You think this Khalid ib'n
Hussein business is the only time he's done anything like this? Why, I
have a list of a dozen occasions when he's done something just as bad,
only he didn't have a lucky coincidence to back him up. Trying to get
books that don't exist out of the library, and then insisting that
they're standard textbooks. Talking about the revolt of the colonies
on Mars and Venus. Talking about something he calls the Terran
Federation, some kind of a world empire. Or something he calls
Operation Triple Cross, that saved the country during some fantastic
war he imagined...."
"_What did you say?_"
The question cracked out like a string of pistol shots. Everybody
turned. The quiet man in the brown tweed suit had spoken; now he
looked as though he were very much regretting it.
"Is there such a thing as Operation Triple Cross?" Fitch was asking.
"No, no. I never heard anything about that; that wasn't what I meant.
It was this Terran Federation thing," the major said, a trifle too
quickly and too smoothly. He turned to Chalmers. "You never did any
work for PSPB; did you ever talk to anybody who did?" he asked.
"I don't even know what the letters mean," Chalmers replied.
"Politico-Strategic Planning Board. It's all pretty hush-hush, but
this term Terran Federation is a tentative name for a proposed
organization to take the place of the U. N. if that organization
breaks up. It's nothing particularly important, and it only exists on
paper."
It won't exist only on paper very long, Chalmers thought. He was
wondering what Operation Triple Cross was; he had some notes on it,
but he had forgotten what they were.
"Maybe he did pick that up from somebody who'd talked indiscreetly,"
Whitburn conceded. "But the rest of this tommyrot! Why, he was talking
about how the city of Reno had been destroyed by an explosion and
fire, literally wiped off the map. There's an example for you!"
He'd forgotten about that, too. It had been a relatively minor
incident in the secret struggle of the Subwar; now he remembered
having made a note about it. He was sure that it followed closely
after the assassination of Khalid ib'n Hussein. He turned quickly to
Weill.
"Didn't you say you had to go to Reno in a day or so?" he asked.
Weill hushed him urgently, pointing with his free hand to the
recorder. The exchange prevented him from noticing that Max Pottgeiter
had risen, until the old man was speaking.
"Are you trying to tell these people that Professor Chalmers is
crazy?" he was demanding. "Why, he has one of the best minds on the
campus. I was talking to him only yesterday, in the back room at the
Library. You know," he went on apologetically, "my subject is Medieval
History; I don't pay much attention to what's going on in the
contemporary world, and I didn't understand, really, what all this
excitement was about. But he explained the whole thing to me, and did
it in terms that I could grasp, drawing some excellent parallels with
the Byzantine Empire and the Crusades. All about the revolt at
Damascus, and the sack of Beirut, and the war between Jordan and Saudi
Arabia, and how the Turkish army intervened, and the invasion of
Pakistan...."
"When did all this happen?" one of the trustees demanded.
Pottgeiter started to explain; Chalmers realized, sickly, how much of
his future history he had poured into the trusting ear of the old
medievalist, the day before.
"Good Lord, man; don't you read the papers at all?" another of the
trustees asked.
"No! And I don't read inside-dope magazines, or science fiction. I
read carefully substantiated facts. And I know when I'm talking to a
sane and reasonable man. It isn't a common experience, around here."
Dacre passed a hand over his face. "Doctor Whitburn," he said, "I must
admit that I came to this meeting strongly prejudiced against you, and
I'll further admit that your own behavior here has done very little to
dispel that prejudice. But I'm beginning to get some idea of what you
have to contend with, here at Blanley, and I find that I must make a
lot of allowances. I had no idea.... Simply no idea at all."