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Ebook has 183 lines and 9260 words, and 4 pages

Illustrator: Dick Francis

What Rough Beast?

Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

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.

"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.

"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.

"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!"

"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.

"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."

McCarthy snorted contemptuously. "Ward, you damned fool--"

"That will be all, gentlemen," Allenby said. He did not raise his voice, but McCarthy was silent and Ward marveled, as he had on other occasions, at the authority the old man carried.

"Nothing. Let it run its course."

"I can and I will. What do you think, John?"

"I agree," Ward said. "They won't hurt each other--they never have yet. It'll wear itself out and then, tomorrow, we'll try again." He did not feel optimistic about how things would be the next day, but he didn't want to voice his fears. "The thing that worries me," he said, "are those tigers. Where'd they come from?"

"What tigers?" McCarthy wanted to know.

Ward told him.

"First it was cats," McCarthy said, "then birds ... now tigers. Either you're seeing things or someone's using a concealed projector."

"I thought of the projector, but these seemed real. Stunned at first--as if they were as surprised as I was."

"You have a teleport in your class," Allenby said.

"Yes--maybe that's the way it was done. I don't know quite what to make of it," Ward said. If he voiced his real suspicion now, he knew it would sound silly. "I know some of them can teleport. I've seen them. Small things, of course...."

"You do wrong, then," Allenby said.

"It's unscientific!"

"Perhaps. But we want to encourage whatever wild talents they possess."

"So that they can materialize tigers in--in our bedrooms, I suppose. Well, I've had enough. Stay here and stew if you like, but I'm going back to my class. I turned the hypno-gas on them before I took my dive. They should be nice and gentle for me by this time." He turned away defiantly.

"I know how you feel," Allenby said when McCarthy was gone. "He's a holy terror, John. Shouldn't be around here. But I have to keep him, since he was recommended by the 3Rs and the Educational League. He gives the school a bit of protective coloration. Perhaps he's why they haven't closed us down yet."

"I know--I'm not blaming you. Do you suppose we can go back to our jobs? It sounds as if it's wearing itself out." He gestured up at the windows.

"Can't do anything more today."

"No, you're probably right."

For a moment Allenby was silent as they went toward the gate of the Quad. Then he said, "John, you're a good man. I don't want you to despair. What we're attempting--to bring education back into our culture--is a good and noble cause. And you can't really blame the kids." He nodded up at the walls. "They've just had too many Spellcasts, too many scares in the Pretend War--they can't believe in any future and they don't know anything about their past. Don't blame them."

"No, sir--I don't."

"Just do our best," Allenby said. "Try to teach them the forgotten things. Then, in their turn, in the next generation...."

"Yes, we have to believe that. But, Dr. Allenby, we could go a lot faster if we were to screen them. If they were all like young Tomkins, we'd be doing very well. But as long as we have people like young Cress or Hodge or Rottke--well, it's hard to do anything with them. They go straight from school into their fathers' firms--after all, if you're guaranteed a business success in life, you don't struggle to learn. And, anyway, you don't need much education to be a dope salesman or a numbers consultant."

"I'd like to have the place run only for the deserving and the interested," Allenby said. "But we haven't much choice. We must have some of these boys who are from the best families. More protective coloration--like McCarthy. If we were only to run the place for the brilliant ones, you know we'd be closed down in a week."

"I suppose so," Ward agreed. He wondered whether he should tell his suspicions to Allenby. Better not, he decided. Allenby had enough to think about.

The last of the shouting had died. As Ward went out the gate of the Quad, he felt his heart lift a little the way it always did when he started for home. Out here, miles from the city, the air was clean and the Sun was bright on the hills, quilted now with the colors of autumn. There was a tang of wood smoke in the air and, in the leaves beside the path, he saw an apple. It was very cold and damp and there was a wild taste to it as he bit into the fruit. He was a tired teacher, glad to be going home after a hard day in the school. He hoped that no one had been hurt by the tigers.

John Ward pushed the papers across his desk, reached for his pipe and sighed. "Well, that does it, Bobby," he said.

He looked at the red-headed six-year-old boy sitting in the too-big chair across from him. Bobby was a small boy with a freckled face and skinned knees. He sat in the big chair with his feet sticking straight out in front of him and played with a slide rule.

"I've taught you all the math I know," Ward said. "Differential, integral, topology, Maddow's Theory of Transfinite Domains--that's as far as I go. What's next?"

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