[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
July 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _When you are a teacher, you expect kids to play pranks. But
with tigers--and worse?_]
Standing braced--or, as it seemed to him, crucified--against the length
of the blackboard, John Ward tried to calculate his chances of heading
off the impending riot. It didn't seem likely that anything he could do
would stop it.
"Say something," he told himself. "Continue the lecture, _talk_!" But
against the background of hysterical voices from the school yard,
against the brass fear in his mouth, he was dumb. He looked at the bank
of boys' faces in front of him. They seemed to him now as identical as
metal stampings, each one completely deadpan, each pair of jaws moving
in a single rhythm, like a mechanical herd. He could feel the tension in
them, and he knew that, in a moment, they would begin to move. He felt
shame and humiliation that he had failed.
"Shakespeare," he said clearly, holding his voice steady, "for those of
you who have never heard of him, was the greatest of all dramatists.
Greater even," he went on doggedly, knowing that they might take it as a
provocation, "than the writers for the Spellcasts." He stopped talking
abruptly.
Three tigers stepped out of the ceiling. Their eyes were glassy,
absolutely rigid, as if, like the last of the hairy mammoths, they had
been frozen a long age in some glacial crevasse. They hung there a
moment and then fell into the room like a furry waterfall. They landed
snarling.
Something smashed viciously into the wall beside Ward's head. From the
back of the room, someone's hand flashed a glitter of light. Ward leaped
away and cut across the end of the room toward the escape chute. Holding
his ring with its identifying light beam before him, he leaped into the
slot like a racing driver. Behind him, the room exploded in shouts and
snarls. The gate on the chute slammed shut after him, and he heard them
scratching and banging at it. Without the identifying light, they would
be unable to get through. He took a long breath of relief as he shot
down the polished groove of the slide into the Mob Quad. The boys he'd
left behind knew how to protect themselves.
They were all there--Dr. Allenby, McCarthy the psych man, Laura Ames the
pretty gym teacher, Foster, Jensen--all of them. So it had been general
then, not just his group which had rioted. He knew it was all the more
serious now, because it had not been limited to one outbreak.
"You, too, Ward?" Dr. Allenby said sadly. He was a short, slender man
with white hair and a white mustache. He helped Ward up from where he
had fallen at the foot of the escape slide. "What was it in your
classroom this time?"
"Tigers," Ward said. Standing beside Allenby, he felt very tall,
although he was only of average height. He smoothed down his wiry dark
hair and began energetically brushing the dust from his clothing.
"Well, it's always something," Allenby said tiredly.
He seemed more sad than upset, Ward thought, a spent old man clinging to
the straw of a dream. He saw where the metaphor was leading and pushed
it aside. If Allenby were a drowning man, then Ward himself was one. He
looked at the others.
They were all edgy or simply frightened, but they were taking it very
well. Some of them were stationed at the gates of the Quad, but none of
them, as far as he could see, was armed. Except for McCarthy. The psych
man was wearing his Star Watcher helmet and had a B-gun strapped at his
side. Probably had a small force-field in his pocket, Ward thought,
_and_ a pair of brass knuckles.
"So--the philosophy king got it too," McCarthy said, coming over to
them. He was a big man, young but already florid with what Ward had
always thought of as a roan complexion. "Love, understanding,
sympathy--wasn't that what was supposed to work wonders? All they need
is a copy of Robinson Crusoe and a chance to follow their natural
instincts, eh?"
"One failure doesn't prove anything," Ward said, trying not to be angry.
"_One_ failure? How often do they have to make us hit the slides for the
safety of the Mob Quad before you adopt a sensible theory?"
"Let's not go through all that again. Restraint, Rubber hoses and
Radiological shock--I've heard all about the 3 Rs."
"At least they work!"
"Oh, yes, they work fine. Except that they never learn to read and they
can't sign their names with anything but an X."
"It was progressive education that destroyed reading," McCarthy said
heatedly. "And they don't _need_ to sign their names--that's what
universal fingerprinting is for."
"Please, gentlemen," Dr. Allenby interrupted gently. "This kind of
squabbling is unbecoming to members of the faculty. Besides," he smiled
with faded irony, "considering the circumstances, it's hardly a proper
time."
He pointed to the windows over the Quad where an occasional figure could
be seen behind the glass. Lucky it was unbreakable, Ward thought,
hearing the wild hysterical yelling from inside.
"Mob Quad," Allenby said bitterly. "I thought I was naming it as a joke.
The original Mob Quad was at Merton College, Oxford. One of the old
defunct universities. _They_ had a Mob Quad to shelter students and
professors from the town mobs. Professors _and_ students,
gentlemen--they were a united front in those days. I suppose no one
could have predicted our present circumstances."
"That's all history," McCarthy said impatiently. "Bunk. This is _now_,
and I say the thing to do--"
"We know." Allenby waved him to silence. "But your way has been tried
long enough. How long is it since Los Angeles Day, when the U.N.
buildings were bombed and burned by the original 3R Party in order to
get rid of Unesco? Two hundred forty-three years next June, isn't it?
And your Party had had all that time to get education back on what it
calls a sane program. Now _nobody_ is educated."
"It takes time to undo the damage of progressive education," McCarthy
said. "Besides, a lot of that junk--reading, writing--as I've often told
Ward--"
"All right," Ward broke in. "But two and a half centuries is long
enough. Someone must try a new tack or the country is doomed. There
isn't much time. The Outspace invaders--"
"The Outspace invaders are simply Russians," McCarthy said flatly.
"That's a convenient view if you're an ostrich. Or, if you want to keep
the Pretend War going, until the Outspacers take us over."