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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...."
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"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.
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