Tales from the Nightside (28 page)

"What?" Barb said. "Their smiling?"

"Oh, hell," Randy said in quiet desperation. "How dense can you get? Why would she get so excited about a lousy supply room? Why did I get in trouble for trying to get up there? Why was Johnston expelled? Have you ever seen the parking lot? It's practically empty all the time, every day, even when there're classes going on. Why? Why the hell is that proctor, Owens, so concerned about our room checks? I mean, where would we go?" He stopped, stared, seeking answers in their sympathetic expressions and finding only more sympathy. He scrambled to his feet and headed for the door. "If I'm not back by eleven-thirty, cover with Owens for me, will you, Kartre?"

"Hey, wait a minute! You're not going to try this by yourself!"

"Why not? It's the story of my life." And he slammed the door before they could respond, before he started crying. He hesitated on the landing, then took the stairs two at a time, the hand gliding on the bannister for balance burning by the time he skidded to the bottom. The lobby, green and gold, was empty; the proctor, he thought, was probably out hunting a cup of coffee. He leaned back to look up the stairwell, but he heard no pursuit, no calling him back. He trembled, then clenched his fists and ran across the polished floor and out into the wind.

The campus was still. The walks, dotted with light from dark- Hooded globes, were deserted and gleaming wetly. The spotlights that flooded the front of Hamilton Hall blinded him until he sidestepped, hunching against the wall away from a rising wind. He wiped a sleeve under his nose, shoved a hand through his hair in a vain attempt to keep it from his eyes. A moment, then, as he watched juniper and holly twist away from him in the path of the wind. Indecision. A radio's blare.

...caught in a fog web while expert fingers, wristless, molded womb-warm plastic to his face, whispering equations in his ear, laughing...

A girl's laugh, a boy's reply.

...while his featureless father shrugged and shredded his picture his dead mother, formless, took when he was two...

Slowly he pushed himself away from the building and walked with eyes down until he found himself beyond the triangle on the edge of the soccer field. The clouds, regrouping, blackened the stars, and the vast treeless field ahead seemed less in shadow than drowned in black water.

"There be demons," he whispered, and turned away, keeping the triangle on his left as he headed toward Burr Memorial. A night watchman, preceded by a wavering pool of grey light, suddenly rounded a corner of the Student Union, and Randy ducked behind a tree, pressing his back to its winter roughness, the spring dampness. The watchman hurried by, muttering to himself, and Randy could not help but grin. Wiping a splatter of rain from his cheek, he waited until the man's footsteps were taken by the wind before he resumed his walking.

He moved slower now, reluctantly allowing his friends' timidity to clutter his thinking. They were as bad as the instructors, promising warmth and withholding it when it was needed. He had had enough of so-called experimental education, of seminars with a TV screen and discussions with soulless men who brooked no humanity outside the norm. He had thought his father had rescued him from cousins and aunts in the city, but realized now that the man could care less. In Philadelphia, at least, he had come to treasure a sense of being alive among living people. At DelMer he had begun to feel like a graveyard caretaker.

The key to English, Miss Chandler had said, is precision of language to facilitate communication. *

"Damn, Miss Chandler," he said to the tips of his shoes. "Why don't you practice what you preach?"

And when he looked up, he had reached the rear of the Memorial, as dark as the front was lighted. Cautiously he stepped along the side of the walk, using the grass there to muffle his footsteps. There was a door on the side that the watchmen used to exit for their rounds. On four previous nights, he'd noticed they'd kept it from locking so they could return without trouble. He smiled at their innocent sense of security. DelMer students apparently did not have the nerve to explore. He broadened his smile. Having only been there since September, he had not been conditioned to think that way; and he waited a long and windy minute before dashing to the door, pulling it open, and sliding inside.

He immediately flattened against the wall, panting as if he'd just run a wind sprint. The rear stairwell was dimly lighted, and he moved upward without hesitation, on his toes, avoiding the stairs' metal edges. His right hand slid along the outside wall as he climbed in a half crouch, his ears trying to encompass the silence of the building and isolate potential danger. A noise; he froze: the sighing of the wind. On each of the first five landings he hurried past the glowing red fire-exit signs; on the sixth floor, no light, no sign. Only a door without a window.

Cupping one hand into a fist, Randy blew into it to dry his palm. His legs, strained from the awkward ascent, trembled slightly, but not enough to worry him should he have to run. It was like old times, then, creeping around school after basketball games, looking for open lockers or doors and the mischief they promised. Gingerly, he took the door's bar handle in his hand. The sudden thought that it might be wired jerked the hand away, but there was nothing but his counterpoint breathing to the keening wind. He regrasped the handle and pulled slowly until the door slid toward him. Closing his eyes momentarily, he expelled a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding and quickly eased through the opening.

The darkness was unrelieved, and he felt a surge of panic when the door shut silently behind him. Hastily he tested it to be positive he could leave, then shuffled down the hall. He knew the English Department storeroom was just around the far corner, and, in spite of himself, he hurried, gliding his hands along the tiled wall until a doorknob cracked against a knuckle. He took a lighter from his pocket and checked the tiny hand-printed card tacked to the frame.

"Bingo," he whispered to himself and pulled out the key, still cold, and heavier than he'd remembered. He snapped the lighter shut, and the renewed darkness immobilized him until his eyes adjusted to the more-than-faint glow that drifted from the front of the building. Using both hands, he felt for the lock and slid in the key, turning it as slowly as he could until it caught and the tumblers clattered over. He pushed with his shoulder and slipped in, shutting the door behind him. He leaned back against the wall and blew in relief when he felt the*light switch pressing against his coat. Without turning around, he fumbled until the lights came on, and, in spite of his suspicions, it was all he could do to keep from screaming.

At Chandler, Murray, Simpson, Becketton, rigid and blankeyed, in a neat ordered row against the far wall. At clothing racks, shoe racks, tie racks filled.

He knew that his mouth was open, and he felt silly. Then he shook off a billowing giddiness and inched forward to examine the androids more closely, unable to convince himself that they could not see him. He stumbled once and reached out a hand to steady himself. It came down in something soft, and when he looked down, it was a piece of cherry pie, quite fresh, Proctor Owens's favorite. As if it were blood, he wiped it hastily on his coat and extended a finger to trace Murray's stubbled chin, brush Chandler's gently molded cheek. On impulse, he tousled her hair, pinched her breasts and leered.

He was about to tug at Becketton's beard when suddenly he felt drained, felt nothing. He stared a moment longer, then slumped, backing away until he was somehow in the hall, on the stairs, on the wet grass in the wind, walking until the sun rose and created more shadows. There was the sound of a car speeding noisily away. Still walking. And the harsh sound of a faraway siren as he crossed the still-empty parking lot.

"Hey, Randy! Hey, Baptiste!" Kartre's voice did more than his words to convey his worry, but Randy continued to walk. "Hey, Randy!" and Kartre grabbed his arm and turned him around. "Damnit, man, where've you been? Didn't you hear that ambulance? Evan's mother came to pick him up, and when they hit the turn down by the bridge, they smacked into a tree and went into the river. Barb was out riding and said a cop told her they were both dead. Hey, Randy, can't you hear me or something?"

The rush of words dammed for a moment, but Randy only nodded and said, "I have to see the old man."

Kartre's eyes widened. "How'd you know that? I was just coming to get you. Old lady Tander just called the dorm. I covered for you like you said, but you'd better get over there. She sounds like she's ticked."

"I'm going," Randy said.

"Hey, wait a minute! Did you get into the room? What did you see? Was there anything there?"

"Nothing," Randy said flatly, pulling away from Kartre's grasp. "Nothing at all."

"Well, damnit, wait a minute, Randy. What kept you? Where were you all night?"

Randy walked away, and a moment later Kartre stopped talking. Watching his roommate walk. Across the grass, through the glass door that marked the front office, ignoring the glare Miss Tander gave him, into Ainstrom's office without knocking.

"You sent for me?" he said.

Ainstrom looked up from a file folder he was holding and nodded. "Sit," he said.

"You even sound like a robot. Does it take you all morning to warm up or something?"

Ainstrom, unimpressively vested and grey-haired, smiled. "If it'll make you any happier, Randolph, I'm real."

"Our proctor, Owens?"

"Sharp lad, indeed. Yes, he's real. You sound a bit bitter, Randolph."

"I thought I was getting an education, not getting experimented on."

"Poor attitude, Randolph."

"Randy."

Ainstrom nodded at the correction and gestured for Randy to sit. "I'm sorry you had to be so curious, Randy," he said when Randy only stiffened.

"So now what? Are you going to expel me like the others?"

The headmaster finally replaced the folder on his empty desk and leaned back. "Expel, Mr. Baptiste? You underestimate me. Surely you can imagine the reaction of parents if they knew their darling children were being taught by androids. They, unenlightened, would react with... horror? Perhaps only disgust, like yourself. It sounds unfortunately melodramatic, but there would undoubtedly be something like a witch hunt, and I'm afraid my, uh, supervisors couldn't allow for that risk until the first class—your class, sir—has graduated and proven itself."

Randy finally stopped screaming where nightmares are born and began to cast for a way out. But his options were narrow and thorned with fear. "You're going to kill me?" And he knew his voice was getting younger all the time.

"No—not quite."

The siren. He blinked. Kartre. "What about Evan? You probably rigged that one."

Ainstrom began to frown. "He was too close to his family, and his family was too large. You, on the other hand, are very much different." Randy backed away as Ainstrom stood, as tall as the rumors had made him, "Remember what Miss Chandler has taught you, young man. Precision of language is the thing: the key to English is communication. Expel is the wrong word."

Unbidden, Randy remembered his dream. "All right, then, what the hell is the right word?"

"Replaced, Mr. Baptiste. Replaced."

There was nothing Randy could say.

A few minutes later, Ainstrom poked his head out of his office and beckoned to Miss Tander. "You'd better get that Baptiste guy on the next plane back. His son is being expelled."

Miss Tander said nothing. There was, in fact, little she was programmed to do except glare and be threatening. And at that she was an expert.

Snow: suspended white water humping over hidden rocks, slashed by a slick black road that edged around the stumped mountains and swept deserted between a pair of low, peaked houses that served as unassuming sentinels at the mouth of the valley; drifting, not diving to sheathe needled green arms that bent and held in multiples of thousands, spotting indifferently the tarmac walk that tongued from the half-moon porch of the house on the right. A snowman with stunted arms and holes for eyes squatted awkwardly beside a solitary spruce, watching nothing and making uneasy the brown-bundled man who stood by the mailbox. He leaned heavily against a broad-mouthed shovel, staring at the home opposite, turning his red-capped head to look beyond it to the forest that wavered through the sailing crystals up the slope to blend before the summit into the gray-white air.

No wind. Breathing only as he listened to the sunset, strained to hear the summons of the wolf.

"Mars?"

The shovel skittered from his stiff hand, banged against the walk, and angered him with its rifle-volley clatter.

"You think you have the power to move that house with just your eyes?"

Turning, he bent to retrieve the shovel, waving his free hand to indicate he had heard and did not approve. Not so many decades before, he had begun calling his wife Venus because of her shortening of his own name to laughingly deify him; hers was Samantha, but his Venus she was. On the porch now, with crimson cheeks and her back reed-fragile, she folded her arms against the cold, waiting as he took a frustrated poke at the soiled snow the village plow had left to harass his cleaning. The mount was almost ice, and he glared at his gloves as if to blame them before hurrying to the house.

"Get inside, you dope, before you catch your death."

"I haven't seen the wolf, Venus. I'll probably live forever."

"Quit your smiling, Mars. That isn't funny at all. Get inside."

"You go on ahead. I'm almost done."

"I'm stubborn, Mars Tanner. I like to watch you killing yourself while that shiny new snowblower I gave you for Christmas lies rotting in the garage."

He pinched at her nose, tugged a lock of hair. "I may not be as young as I used to be, kid, but I can still handle anything that comes out of the sky."

She made a face and thumped him on the back as he went through the door, then rushed down the darkened hallway into the sweet-smelling kitchen before the warm stinging yanked at his parchment face and dried his lips.