Feedback

KATHERINE MacLEAN

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“WHY DID LEONARDO write backward?” The year was 1995. A pupil had asked the question.

William Dunner switched on the lights suddenly, showing the class of ten-and twelve-year-olds blinking in the sudden glare.

“He was in danger of his life,” he said seriously. “Here”—he tapped the pointer against the floor—“give that last slide again.”

The pupil at the back of the room worked the slide lever, and Da Vinci’s Last Supper, which still showed dimly on the screen, vanished with a click and was replaced by an enlarged sketch of a flying machine. Under the sketch was time-dimmed writing, the words oddly curled and abbreviated. It was backward, as if the slide had been put in the wrong way.

“He was writing ideas that no one had ever written before,” said William Dunner. The teacher was tall, angular, and somewhat awkward in his stance. He stared at the faded cryptic writing, selecting his words with the care of someone selecting footsteps along the edge of a precipice. “Da Vinci had seen things that should not have been there—the symmetry of sound waves—the perfect roundness of ripples spreading through each other, and, high up on a mountain he had found sea shells, as if the sea and the land had not always been where they were, but had changed places, and perhaps some day the sea would again close over the mountain top, and mountains rise from the depth of the sea. These thoughts were against the old beliefs, and he was afraid. Other men, later, saw new truths about nature. They were not so brilliant as he, but they risked their lives to teach and write them, and they gave us the new world of science we have today. Leonardo had great thoughts, but he wrote them down in silence and hid them in code, for if the people guessed what he thought, they might come and burn him, as they had burned some of his paintings. He was afraid.”

He tapped the base of the pointer on the floor and the slide vanished with a click and was replaced by the Last Supper. Again the dim figure of Christ sat at the long table with his friends.

A chubby little girl put up her hand.

“Yes, Marilyn?”

“Were they Fascists? I mean, the people that Leonardo was scared of?” It was an obvious identification. Fascists tortured people and suppressed ideas. The pupils who knew a little more history stirred and giggled to show that they knew better.

“Stand up, please,” he said gently. She stood up. It did not matter what the question or answer was, as long as they stood up. Standing up while the class sat, being alone on stage in the drama club he had started for them: learning to stand and think alone.

“No, not Fascism. It wasn’t their government which made them cruel.” Mr. Dunner made a slight sad clumsy gesture with the hand that held the pointer. “You might say it is a democratic thing, for in defending the old ways people feel that they are defending something worthy and precious.” He ran his gaze across their faces as though looking for something, and said firmly, “Logically, of course, nothing is wrong which does not injure a neighbor, but if you attack a man’s beliefs with logic, he sometimes feels as if you are attacking his body, as if you are injuring him. In Leonardo’s time they held very many illogical beliefs which were beginning to crumple, so they felt constantly insecure and attacked, and they burned many men, women and children to death for being in league with Satan, the father of doubts.”

In the painting on the screen the figure of Christ sat at the long table. The paint was blotched and cracked and his face almost hidden.

Mr. Dunner turned to it. “No, it need not be Fascism. The rulers of a corrupt government may have no beliefs or ideals left to defend. The Roman government would have pardoned Christ, the bringer of a new belief, but it was his own people who slew him, preferring to pardon a robber and murderer instead.”

He pointed with the stick. “He is eating with his disciples. He has just said “One of you will betray me.” Observe the composition of—”

There was a slight stirring and whispering of disapproval. The things he had said were puzzling and almost violent, and sounded different from things they had been taught were true. They did not want him to return to the usual kind of lecture. A question was passed among them in quick murmuring and agreement. A boy raised his hand.

“Yes, Johnny?”

“Why is it democratic?” He was almost defiant. “Burning people.”

“Because it was an expression of the majority will. The majority of people have faith that the things they already believe are true, and so they will condemn anyone who teaches different things, believing them to be lies. All basic progress must start with the discovery of a truth not yet known and believed. Unless those who have new ideas and different thoughts be permitted to speak and are protected carefully by law, they will be attacked, for in all times men have confused difference with criminality.”

The murmur began again, and the boy put up his hand. “Yes, Johnny?”

“I like inventors. I like inventions. I like things to change.” He was speaking for the class. It was a question about people disliking changes. The teacher hesitated oddly.

“Stand up please.”

The boy stood up. He had a thin oval face with large brown eyes which he narrowed to hide his nervousness. The other children in the class turned in their seats to look at him.

“You said you like things different,” the teacher reminded him. “That’s a good trait, but do you like to be different yourself? Do you like to stand up when the others are sitting down?” The boy licked his lips, glancing from the side of his eyes at the classmates seated around him, his nervousness suddenly increased.

Mr. Dunner turned to the blackboard and wrote “sameness.”

“Here is the sameness of mass production, and human equality, and shared tastes and dress and entertainment, and basic education equalized at a high level, and forgotten prejudices, and the blending of minorities, and all the other good things of democracy. The sameness of almost everybody doing the same thing at once. Some of the different ones who are left notice their difference and feel left out and alone. They try to be more like the others.” He curved a chalk arrow, and wrote “conformity.” Johnny, still standing, noticed that Mr. Dunner was nervous, too. The chalk line wavered.

The arrow curved through “conformity” and back to the first word in a swift circle. “And then those who are left feel more conspicuous and lonesome than ever. People stare and talk about them. So they try to be more like the others. And then everybody is so much like everybody else that even a very tiny necessary difference looks peculiar and wrong. The unknown and unfamiliar is feared or hated. All differences, becoming infrequent, look increasingly strange and unfamiliar, and shocking, and hateful. Those who want to be different hide themselves and pretend to be like the others.”

He moved the chalk in swift strokes. The thickening circle of arrows passed through the words: sameness, conformity, sameness, conformity, sameness…

He stepped back and printed in the middle of the circle, very neatly, “STASIS.”

He turned back to the class, smiling faintly. “They are trapped. And they don’t know what has happened to them.”

He turned back to the blackboard and drew another circle thoughtfully. This one wavered much more. “These are feedback circles. All positive feedbacks are dangerous. Not just man but other social animals have an instinct to follow, and can fall into the trap. Even the lowly tent caterpillars are in danger from it, for they crawl after each other in single file, and if the leader of a line happens to turn back and find before him the end of his own line, he will follow it, and the circle of caterpillars will keep crawling around and around, growing hungry and exhausted, following each other until they die.”

Johnny licked his lips nervously, wishing Mr. Dunner would let him sit down.

Miraculously the teacher’s eyes met his.

“I stand up,” said Mr. Dunner softly to him alone. “If everyone else went sledding, could you go skating alone, all by yourself?”

He could see that it was a real question: Mr. Dunner honestly wanted him to answer, as if he were an equal. Johnny nodded.

“It would take courage, wouldn’t it? Sit down, Johnny.”

Johnny sat down, liking the tall shy bony teacher more than ever. He was irritably aware of the stares and snickers of the others around him. As if he’d done something wrong! What did they think they were snickering at anyhow!

He leaned both elbows on the desk and looked at the tcacher as if he were concentrating on the lecture.

The bell rang.

“Class dismissed,” called Mr. Dunner unnecessarily and helplessly over the din of slamming desk tops and shouts as everybody rushed for the door.

Glancing back, Johnny saw the teacher still standing before the blackboard. Beside him the projected image of Leonardo’s painting glowed dimly, forgotten, on the screen.

At his locker, Johnny slipped his arms into his jacket and grabbed his cap angrily. Why did they have to scare Leonardo? Grownups! People acted crazy!

Outside they were shouting, “Yeaaa-ahh yeaaa-ahh! Charlie put his cap on backward! Charlie put his cap on backward!” Charlie, one of his best pals, stood miserably pretending not to notice. His cap was frontward. He must have put it right as soon as they had started to call.

Johnny hunched his shoulders and walked through the ring as if he had not seen it, and it broke up unconcernedly in his wake into the scattering and clusters of kids going home. Johnny did not wait to get into a group. Stupid, they were all stupid! He wished he could have thought of something to tell them.

At home, stuffing down a sandwich in the kitchen, he came to a conclusion. “Mother, does everyone have to be like everyone else? Why can’t they be different?”

It’s started again, she thought. I can’t let Johnny get that way.

Aloud she said, “No, dear, everyone can be as different as they like. This is a free country, a democracy.”

“Then can Charlie wear his cap backward?”

It was an insane concept. She was tempted to laugh. “No, dear. If he did, he would be locked up.”

He grew more interested. “Why? Why would they lock him up?”

“Because it would be crazy—” Her breath caught in her throat but she kept the sound of her voice level, and busied herself at the stove, her head down so that he wouldn’t notice anything wrong.

“Why? Why would it be crazy?” The clear voice seemed too clear, as if someone could hear it outside the room, outside the walls, as if the whole town could hear. “Why can’t I wear my cap backward—”

“It’s crazy!” she snapped. The pan clattered loudly on the stove under the violence of her stirring. Always answer a child’s questions with a smile. She swallowed with a dry mouth, and tried.

“I mean it would be queer. It’s odd. You don’t want to be odd, do you?” He didn’t answer, and she plunged on, trying desperately to make him see it. “Only crazy people want to be odd. Crazy people and seditioners.” She swallowed again. “Everyone likes to be like everyone else.” Breathless, she waited, turning her head covertly to see if he understood. He had to understand! He couldn’t talk like this in front of her friends, they might not understand, they might think that she—

She remembered the seditioner who had moved into town three years ago, a plane and tractor mechanic. He had seemed such a nice man on the outside, but he had turned out to be a seditioner, wanting to change something. People from the town had gone to show him what they thought of it, and someone had hit him too hard, and he had died. Johnny mustn’t—

He looked sulky and unconvinced. “Mr. Dunner said everybody could be as different as they liked,” he said. “He said it doesn’t matter what you wear.” He kicked the edge of the sink defiantly, something like desperation welling up in his voice. “He said being like other people is stupid, like caterpillars.”

She thought, Mr. Dunner now, the history teacher, another seditioner. That tall shy man. And he had been teaching the children for five years! Other people’s children too. She turned off the stove and went numbly to the telephone.

While she was telephoning the fourth house, Johnny came out of the kitchen with his cap on and his jacket zipped, ready to go out and play. She lowered her voice. While she talked on the phone he went to the hall mirror, looked into it and carefully took his cap off, rotated it and replaced it backward, with the visor to the back and the ear tabs on his forehead. His eyes met hers speculatively in the mirror.

For a moment she did not absorb what he had done. She had never seen anyone wearing a hat wrong way before. It gave a horrible impression of a whole head turned backward, us if the back of his head were a featureless brown face watching her under the visor. The pale oval of his real face in the mirror seemed changed and alien.

Somehow a steel strength came to her. She remembered that the viewing screen was off. No one had seen. She said into the phone, as if starting a sentence, “Well, I think—” and put her finger on the lever, cutting the connection, and hung up.

Johnny was watching her. Rising, she slapped his face. Seeing the white hand marks, she realized that she had slapped harder than she had intended, but she was not sorry. It was for his sake.

The phone began ringing.

“Go upstairs—” she whispered, breathing hard. “Go to your room—” He went. She picked up the phone. “Yes, Mrs. Jessups, I’m sorry… I guess we were cut off.”

Three calls, four calls, five calls.

When Bruce Wilson arrived home he heard the story. He listened, his hand clutching the bannister rail, the knuckles whitening.

When Pam finished he asked tightly, “Do you think a spanking would do any good?”

“No, he’s all right now, he’s frightened.”

“Are you sure he’s safe?”

“Yes.” But she looked tired and worried. Johnny had been exposed to sedition. It remained to be seen if it would have any effect. Seditioners were always tarred and feathered, fired, driven out of their home, beaten, hanged, burned.

The telephone rang, Pam reached for it, then paused, glancing away from him. Her voice changed. “That will be the vigilantes, Bruce.”

“I have to finish that report tonight. I’m tired, Pam.”

“You didn’t go last time. It wouldn’t look right if you—”

“I guess I’d better go. It’s my duty anyhow.”

They didn’t look at each other. He answered the phone.

They screamed and shouted, pushing, making threatening gestures at the man on the platform, lashing at him with the noise, trying to build his fear to the point where it would be visible and cowering. Someone in the crowd was waving a noose, shouting for his attention. Someone else was waving a corkscrew. He saw it.

They laughed at the comic horror of the threat, and laughed again at the man’s expression as he realized what it was.

They were in a clearing among trees which was the town picnic grounds. At the center, before the mob, was the oration platform, built around the base of the giant picnic oak.

On the rear of the platform the judges of the occasion finished arranging themselves and were ready.

“Silence.”

The mob quieted.

“William C. Dunner, you are accused of teaching sedition —malign and unworthy doctrines—to our children, violating the trust placed in you.” He did not reply.

“Have you anything to say in your defense?‘

The fluorescent lamp shone on the people grouped on the platform. Below, the light gleamed across the upturned faces of the mob as they watched the tall, stooped man who stood disheveled in the light, his hands tied behind him and a smear of blood on one cheek. He shook his head in negation. “I wouldn’t do anything against the children,” he said. They heard the faltering voice unclearly. “I’m sorry if it seems to you that—”

“Do you or do you not teach subversion?”

The reply was clearer. “Not by my definition of the term, although I have heard usages that—”

“Are you or are you not a seditioner?”

“You would have to define—”

A thick-armed young man standing by was given a nod by one of the judges and stepped forward and knocked the prisoner down. He started clumsily struggling to get up, hampered by his tied hands.

“Just like a seditioner, trying to hide behind words,” said someone behind Bruce in the crowd. Bruce nodded.

Seditioners must all be skilled with words as their weapon, for, though it had been twenty years since any hostile foreign power existed to assist and encourage treachery, there seemed to be more and more seditioners. It was impossible to open a paper without reading an item of their being tarred and leathered, beaten up or fired, of newer and stricter uniformity oaths with stricter penalties of jailing and fines for those who were found later expressing opinions different from those beliefs they had sworn to. Yet in spite of this the number of seditioners increased. Their creed must be terrifyingly seductive and persuasive.

And Johnny had been exposed to those words! The shy tall teacher who was supposed to be “so good with children,” whom he and Pam had hospitably invited to dinner several times, had repaid their hospitality with treachery.

Bruce felt the anger rising in him, and the fear. It must never happen again!

“We’ve got to find every crawling seditioner in Fairfield right now, and get rid of them! We’ve got to get the names of the others from this sneak!”

“Take it easy,” said the man on his left, whose name he remembered vaguely as Gifford. “We’re getting to that now.” The teacher had regained his feet and stood up to face the judges.

The questioning began again.

Off to one side a man had climbed to the rail and was tossing the knotted end of a rope towards a high thick branch of the oak above.

“William Dunner, were you, or were you not, directed to teach subversion and disloyalty to our children?”

“I was not.”

“Are you associated with other seditioners in any way?”

“I know other people of my own opinion. I wouldn’t call them seditioners though.”

“Are you directed by any subversive or disloyal organization?”

“I hold a great deal of love and loyalty for the people of the United States,” he answered steadily. “But right now I think you people here are being extremely childish. You—” He was struck across the mouth.

“Answer the question!”

“I am a member of no subversive or disloyal organization.”

“Will you give the names of those associated with you in subversion?”

The end of the rope was slung again, and passed over the limb this time, coming suddenly writhing down to be captured dexterously by the man holding the other end. The hangman did not seem to be listening to the questions, or care what the answers would be.

“I will not. I’m sorry but it’s impossible.”

Gifford nudged Bruce. “He’s sorry! He doesn’t know how sorry he can get. He’ll change his mind in a hurry.”

Up on the platform the judges conferred ceremonially and Dunner waited, standing abnormally still. The finished noose was released, and swung down and past his face in a slow arc. In the crowd the man with the corkscrew waved it again, grinning. There was laughter.

The teacher’s face was suddenly shiny with sweat.

The men who were the judges turned from their conferring.

“Our finding is treason. However, confess, throw yourself on the mercy of the court, give the names of your fellow traitors and we will extend clemency.”

The disheveled tall man looked from one face to another for a time of silence. “Do you have to go through with this?” The voice barely reached the crowd. The judges said nothing. His eyes searched their faces.

“I have committed no crimes. I refuse to tell any names.” His voice was clear and carrying, a teacher’s voice, but he was terrified, they could see.

“The prisoner is remanded for questioning.”

One of the judges made an imperious gesture and the teacher was seized roughly on either side by two guards, and his jacket and shirt stripped off roughly and cut free from the bound arms. As the slashed clothing was tossed to one side, the crowd chuckled at the effective brutality of the gesture, and at the reaction of the teacher.

“A good vicious touch,” Bruce grinned. “He’s impressed.”

“Scared,” Gifford laughed. “We’ll have him talking like a dictaphone. Watch what’s next.”

Something small was handed up onto the platform. Walt Wilson, who had volunteered for the questioning, held it up for all to see. It was a card of thumbtacks.

The teacher was shoved against the trunk of the oak and secured to it rapidly. The rope was looped around his elbows, and his ankles fastened together with another loop. He faced the crowd upright, helpless and unable to struggle, with the harsh bright light of the lantern shining in his face and the noose dangling where he could see it.

“Scared green,” commented somebody near Bruce. “He’ll tell us.”

Walt Wilson stood waiting to one side until all was quiet, then he extracted a tack and leaned forward with it pointed at the bare, bony chest.

“What are the names of the seditioners in Fairfield?”

The teacher closed his eyes and leaned back against the tree. The crowd waited, their breaths suspended unconsciously, waiting for the whimpers and apologies and confesssion, ready to laugh. The teacher was already afraid. Tacks are small things, but they hurt, and they held an aura of ruthlessness that spoke of tortures to come that would frighten him more. There was no sound from him yet, as Walt reached for another tack, but he jerked when it touched him. They laughed and waited, and waited with increasing impatience.

Walt’s smile was fading. People in the crowd called encouragement. “Go on Walt, more.” Walt put in more. He ran out of tacks and was handed another card of them.

“He’s being a martyr,” Bruce said, considering the shiny pale face and closed eyes with irritation. “A martyr with tacks. Trying to hold out long enough to seem noble.”

“Go on Walt!”

“He jumped that time,” said someone behind Bruce. “He’ll run out of nobility before we run out of tacks.” They laughed.

Walt retired to a corner and the young guard took his place.

“Are you, or are you not, a seditioner?”

It went on.

The harsh bright light of the lantern beat on the figures on the platform: the cluster of people at the sides where it curved around the tree; in the middle, leaning back against the trunk, the bony ungainly figure of the teacher, dressed only in shoes and green slacks. The light caught a decorative glitter of metal from Dunner’s chest.

“The names, Mr. Dunner, the names!”

One time he answered. “Nonsense,” he said in his clear teacher’s voice without opening his eyes.

There was no yielding in that answer, only an infuriating self-righteousness. They continued. The tacks were used up.

“Confess.” Already he had wasted half an hour of their time.

He opened his eyes. “I have committed no crimes.”

An angry sibilance of indrawn breath ran over the crowd. The questioner slapped his thick hand against the glittering chest, and Dunner’s arms jerked, and he leaned his head back against the tree trunk watching them with an air of suffering and patience.

The hypocrisy was intolerable.

“Noble. He’s being noble,” Gifford growled. “Give him something to be noble about, why don’t they?”

Someone handed up the corkscrew they had used to frighten the teacher with.

“Now we’ll see,” said someone on Bruce’s left.

The tall bony teacher stood upright, looking with quick jerks of his head from the faces of the crowd to the man approaching with the thing in his hand. Without any pause or relenting the glittering small kitchen object was brought nearer to him. Suddenly he spoke, looking over their heads.

“If you’ll examine the term ‘seditioner’ semantically, you will discover that it had lost its original meaning and become a negatively charged label for the term referent Innova—’ ”

A sudden blow stopped him.

“The names please, Mr. Dunner.” the names, please.”

“Mr. Dunner! Who are the seditioners?”

There are a number of them.” He had answered! A sudden hush fell.

He spoke again. “They are here.”

The questioner asked, “Which ones?” People in the crowd stirred uneasily, not speaking. The names coming would be a shock. Bruce glanced around uneasily. Which ones?

The teacher raised his head sickly and looked at them, turning his face slowly to look across the crowd, with a wild smile touching his lips. They couldn’t tell whose face his eyes touched— He spoke softly in that clear, carrying teacher’s voice.

“Oh, I know you,” he said. “I’ve talked to you and I know your minds, and how you’ve grown past the narrow boundaries of what was considered enlightened opinion and the right ways—forty years ago. I know how you hate against the unchanging limits, and fight yourselves to pretend to think like the contented ones around you, chaining and smothering half your mind. And I know the flashes of insane rage that come to you from nowhere when you are talking and living like the others live; rage against the world that smothers you; rage against the United States; rage against all crowds; rage against whoever you are with—even if it is your own family; rage like being possessed!” Bruce suddenly felt that he couldn’t breathe.

And it seemed to him that William Dunner was looking at him, at Bruce Wilson. The gentle, inhumanly clear voice flowed on mercilessly.

“And how terror comes that the hatred will show, that the rage will escape into words and betray you. You force the rage down with the frenzy of terror and hide your thoughts from yourself, as a murderer conceals his reddened hands. You are comforted and reassured, moving with a crowd, pretending that you are one of them, as contented and foolish as they.” He nodded slightly, smiling.

But Bruce felt as if the eyes were burning into his own, plunging deep with a torturing dagger of cold clear vision. He stood paralyzed, as if there were a needle in his brain—feeling it twist and go deeper with the words.

The man leaning against the tree nodded, smiling. “I’ve had dinner with all of them one time or another. And I know you, oh hidden seditioners, and the fear of being known that drives you to act your savagery and hatred against those of us who become known.” He smiled vaguely, leaning his head back against the tree, his voice lower. “I know you—”

The husky questioner jogged him, asking harshly—

“Who are they?”

Bruce Wilson waited for the names, and incredibly, impossibly, his name. It would come. He stood unmoving as if he were a long way away from himself, his eyes and ears dimmed by the cold weight of his knowledge. He waited. There was no use moving. There was no place to go, no way to escape. From all the multitude of the people of Fairfield there came no sound.

The teacher raised his head again and looked at them. He chuckled almost inaudibly in a teasing gentle chuckle that seemed to fill the world.

“All of you.”

Bruce grasped at the words and found that they were nonsense, meaningless— Swaying slightly he let out a tiny hysterical chuckle.

Like a meaningless thing he saw the questioner swing an instantaneous blow that rammed the teacher’s head against the tree and sent him toppling slowly forward to dangle from the ropes at his elbows.

Around him were strange noises. Gifford was clapping him on the back, shouting in his ear. “Isn’t that funny! Ha ha! Isn’t that crazy! The guy’s insane!” Gifford’s eyes stared frightened out of a white face. He shouted and laughed.

“Crazy!” shouted Bruce back, and laughed loudly and shouted, “What crazy nonsense! We’ll get the truth out of him yet.” It had all been a dream, a lie. He could not remember why he was shaking. He had nothing to fear, he was one of the vigilantes, laughing with them, shouting against the teacher, hating the teacher…

They revived William Dunner and he leaned back against the tree with his eyes closed, not speaking or answering, his body glittering with tacks. He must have been in pain. The crowd voices lashed at those on the platform. “Make him answer!” “Do something!” Bruce took out his pocket lighter and handed it up.

They took the pocket lighter.

The teacher leaned against the tree he was tied to, eyes closed with that infuriating attitude of unresentful patience, not seeing what was coming, probably very smug inside, laughing at how he had tricked them all, probably thinking—

Thinking—

Behind the closed eyes, vertigo, spinning fragments of the world. NAMES, MR. DUNNER. NAMES, MR. DUNNER. The yammering of insane voices shouting fear and hate and defensive rationalization. The faces which had been friendly, their mouths stretched open, shouting, their heavy fists coming— Impressions of changes of expression and mood passing over a crowded sea of upturned faces, marionettes being pulled by the nerve strings of one imbecile mind. Whirling and confusion—pain.

Somewhere far down in the whirlpool lay the quiet cool voice that would bring help.

He went down to it.

He was young, listening to the cool slow voice. The instructor standing before the class saying quietly: “It is easy. Your adult bodies have already learned subtle and precise associations of the cause and effect chains of sensations from within the body. The trick of making any activity voluntary is to bring one link of the chain to consciousness. We bring up the end link by duplicating its sensations.”

And a little later the instructor sitting on the edge of his cot with a tray of hypos, picking one up, saying softly, “This one is for you, Bill, because you’re such a stubborn fool. We call it suspenser.” The prick of the needle in his arm. The voice continuing. “One of your steroids. It can produce coma with no breathing or noticeable pulse. Remember the taste that will come on your tongue. Remember the taste. Remember the sensations. You can do this again.” The voice was hypnotic. “If you ever need to escape, if you ever need to play possum to escape, you will remember.”

The needle was withdrawn. After a time the voice of the instructor was at the next cot, speaking quietly while the blackness came closing in, his heartbeat dimming, dwindling, the strange familiar taste—

Somewhere out of time came pain, searing and incredible.

Ignore it… ignore it—Concentrate on the taste. The taste—The heartbeat dwindling Out of the dreaming distance a face swam close, twisted by some odd mixture of emotions.

“Confess. Get it over with.”

Heartbeat dwindling

He managed a whisper: “Hello, Bruce.” A ghost of laughter touched lightly. “I know… you—” A small boy taunt, mocking and then sad. The face jerked itself away and then pain came again, but it was infinitely distant now, and he was floating slowly farther and farther away down a long tunnel—

Night wind stirred across the empty picnic ground. It had been deserted a long time—the light and sound and trampling footsteps gone away, leaving a little whimper of wind. Stars glittered down coldly.

Up on the platform something moved.

When Dr. Bayard Bawling, general practitioner and police coroner, came home at five a. m., he saw the humped form of a man sitting on his doorstep in the dark. He approached and bent forward to see who it was.

“Hello, Bill.”

Dunner stirred suddenly as if he had been over the edge of sleep.

“Hello, Doc.”

Bawling was a stoutish kindly man. He sat down beside Dunner and picked up his wrist between sensitive fingertips. He spoke quietly. “It happened tonight, eh?”

“Yes, tonight.”

“How was it?” The doctor’s voice roughened slightly.

“Pretty bad.”

“I’m sorry. I would have been there if I could.” In his bag he carried a small supply of cortocananoxidase, the life suspender, “death,” and a small jet hypo, a flesh-colored rubber ball with a hollow needle which could be clenched in a fist with the needle between the fingers and injected with the appearance of a blow. Perhaps many doctors had carried such a thing as a matter of mercy since the hangings and burnings had begun.

“I know,” Dunner smiled faintly in the dark.

“I was working on a hard delivery. No one told me about the trial.”

“ ’Sall right—I managed a trance. Took me a while though—Not very good at these things. Couldn’t die fast enough.” He whispered a chuckle. “Thought they’d kill me before I could die.”

The doctor’s fingertips listened to the thin steady pulse. “You’re all right.”

Dunner made an effort to get up and mumbled apologetically, “Let’s get back to the picnic grounds and tie me up to be dead. My arms, strained hanging from those ropes.”

The doctor rose and gave him a hand up. “Make it to the ’copter?”

“Well enough.” He made an obvious effort and the doctor helped him. Once in, the doctor started the blades with a quick jerky motion.

“You aren’t in fit shape to be dead and have a lot of boobs pawing you over and taking your fingerprints for six hours,” he said irritably. “We’ll chance substituting another corpse and dub it up to look like you. I knew you’d be in trouble. Cox at State University has had one your size and shape in a spare morgue drawer for four months now. He set it aside for me from dissection class.” The ground dropped away. The doctor talked with spasmodic nervous cheerfulness. “Had any fillings lately?”

“No.”

“I have your fingerprint caps. We’ll duplicate the bruises and give it a face make-up, and they won’t know the difference. There’s not much time to get there and get it back before morning.” He talked rapidly. “I’ll have to photograph your damage. I’m going to drop you with Brown.”

Working with nervous speed, he switched on the automatic controls and took out a camera from the glove compartment. “Let’s see what they’ve done to you. Watch that altimeter. The robot’s not working well.”

The ’copter droned on through the sky and Dunner watched the dials while Dr. Rawling opened the slit jacket and shirt and slid them off.

He stopped short and did not move for a moment: “What’s that, burns?”

“Yes.”

The doctor did not speak again until he had finished snapping pictures, slipped the tattered clothing back over Dunner’s shoulders, turned off the light and returned to the controls. “Dig around in my bag and find the morphia ampoules. Give yourself a shot.”

“Thanks.” A tiny automatic light went on in the bag as it was opened and illuminated the neat array of instruments and drugs.

The doctor’s voice was angry. “You know I’d treat you, Bill, if I had time.”

“Sure.” The light went out as the bag was closed.

“I’ve got to get that corpse back to the picnic grounds.” The doctor handled the controls roughly. “People stink! Why bother trying to tell them anything?”

“It’s not them.”

“I know, it’s the conformity circle! But it’s their own circle, not yours. Let them stew in it.” He pounded the wheel. “Forty years trading in my good ’copter every year for the same condemned ’copter with different trimmings. Every year trade in my comfortable suit for some crazy fashion and my good shoes for something that doesn’t fit my feet, so I can look like everyone else.” He pounded on the wheel. “And they don’t even like it. People repeating each other like parrots, like parrots. They can’t keep it up. It’s got to crack. It’s bound to stop.” He turned plaintively. “But you can’t stop a merry-go-round by getting ground up in the gears, Bill. Why not just ride it out?”

“It will end when enough people stand up in the open and try to end it.” Dunner smiled. The ’copter landed with a slight jolt that made him suck in his breath suddenly.

“Don’t preach at me,” the doctor snarled, helping him out with gentle hands. “I’m just saying, quit it, Bill, quit it. Stifle their kids’ minds, if that’s what they want.”

They stood out on the soft grass under the stars. Through the beginning pleasant distortion of the morphine, Dunner saw that the doctor was shouting and waving his arms. “If they want to go back to the middle ages, let ’em go! Let ’em go back to the Amoeba if that’s what they want! You don’t have to help them.”

Dunner smiled.

“Go on, laugh,” the doctor muttered. He climbed back into the ’copter abruptly. “If anyone wants to contact me, my copter phone is ML 5346. Can you make it to the house?”

“Yes, of course.” Dunner guessed at the source of the doctor’s upset. “You’ve been a great help, Doc. Nobody would expect you to do more than you’ve done.”

“Of course,” the doctor snarled, slamming the ’copter into gear. “Everything is just fine. It’s a great world. People love the truth: they love teachers, and I’m a hero!”

He slammed the door, the ’copter taxied away to a little distance, then lifted into the sky with a heavy whispering rush of wind.

The teacher walked toward Brown’s house. Stars swung in pleasant blurred loops through a quiet sky, and the past of screaming crowd and blows seemed very distant. He pushed the doorbell and heard it chime somewhere far away in the house, then remembered Doc waving his arms, and laughed weakly until the friendly door opened.