5
It was a bright morning. Through the high windows of the classroom came soft sunlight filtered through the delicate fiberglass grillwork that faced the entire west side of the building. I looked down at the peaceful campus, the slowly moving streams of students, the expanse of cool green grass, the solid impressiveness of nearby buildings. In the distance I could see a section of the practice football field and I thought of Mike Boyle, driving his huge shoulder into a tackling dummy, sweating and grunting, thick thighs driving powerfully. A monstrous youth, all right. But an unearthly monster? Hardly.
I heard the restless movement in the room behind me and I wrenched my thoughts back to the lecture.
"Why isBeowulfcalled an epic?" I asked rhetorically, turning. "Because of its scope. Because of the greatness of its hero. Because it expresses the whole struggle and aspiration and point of view of its people. Its action is on a grand scale. Its emotions are deep and powerful. This is not the twentieth century story of a housewife who has a petty little affair with a mediocre man she meets in the super market. This is big. This is important. It has to do with the vital issues of life. It has greatness. Victory is a triumph over a formidable enemy of the people. Defeat is death, and even in the manner of dying there is majesty and heroism." I paused, letting my eyes rove over the room, using the teacher's trick of focusing on the last row and thus seeming to be looking at all of the students in between. Their faces were all turned toward me in a semblance of respectful attention. A boy in the third row was sleeping with his eyes half open. "And the manner of the writing is in keeping with the heroic action," I went on, letting my gaze move forward to the front row, to the shock of flaming red hair and a pair of carelessly crossed legs sleekly clad in spun plastisheen. "It is powerful, strongly rhythmic, eloquent."
I smiled. Laurie Hendricks seemed to sigh, and the slight movement brought my attention to her breasts, softly outlined under a lemon-colored sweater.
"Of course it loses much in translation," I added. There was a respectful titter of amusement from the class. The old prof, I thought, with his academic jokes. Even at twenty-seven, in my fourth year of teaching, I had fallen into the habit of repeating the same jokes each semester. Laurie Hendricks smiled warmly at me and I found myself reacting to the moist red curve of her lips, liking the fact that she had been amused.
During the long, relatively sleepless night, my faith in the validity of my mind's impressions had wavered badly. I had ranged from an angry conviction that everything I had heard was real and true, through all the stages of argument and doubt, down to a dismal hopelessness, an acknowledgment that alien minds and macabre plots were grotesque splinters off my peculiar branch of insanity.
Looking now at Laurie Hendricks, I found myself reluctant to believe that she was anything but an unusually beautiful girl who was giving every indication of being more than ordinarily interested in me. The accidental circumstance of the previous night's meeting had created a new relationship between us without a word being spoken this morning. She was no longer just another anonymous student. And I strongly suspected that I was no longer to her just another stuffy instructor.
I turned abruptly toward the sleeping boy in the third row. "Mr. Carbo," I said sharply. "Mr. Carbo!"
His head came up with a snap. His eyes were still dull with sleep. "Huh?"
"Mr. Carbo, are you with us?"
The class laughed, warming to a situation in which someone else is made to look a little ridiculous.
"Mr. Carbo, what do you think of Beowulf's technique in handling the dragon?"
"I don't think I understand, sir," the boy said lamely.
"You have read the assignment I suppose."
"Yes, sir."
"Did anything strike you about the fight?"
"Well, I thought it was kind of bloodthirsty, sir."
"The Anglo-Saxons were a bloodthirsty people," I said. "They didn't have television or movies or synthetic-participation sports to let them drain off some of their violence. Even their literature was more like a battle cry than a civilized catharsis of emotions."
"Yes, sir."
"I'm glad you agree, Mr. Carbo." I felt that I was being rather hard on him, but you were expected to make a goat out of the guilty student who slept or talked or failed to study. It was standard teaching procedure and not without its value in keeping the class on its toes.
I let him off the hook, turning to address the class as a whole. "You know how boxers will waste the first round feeling each other out, testing the other's reactions? Did you notice anything similar in Beowulf's approach to battle?"
"Yeah," a student called from the back of the room. "He lets the dragon gobble up a couple of the other guys."
"Right!" I said with exaggerated enthusiasm. "Miss Hendricks, would you read that passage for us?"
She looked startled. As she hunted for the place there was a general thud and rustle of textbooks being hastily opened. Laurie Hendricks coughed and began to read. Her voice was low, hesitant, pleasantly husky. The passage she read told in gory detail how the ancient hero had watched as the dragon entered the mead hall, had waited, feigning sleep, studying the enemy's movements, even though this involved a rather grim death for some of Beowulf's companions in arms. As I listened, I thought of the younger alien the night before, standing among the students on the campus and watching while the other flung me into the street in front of the racing car. I heard the words of the centuries-old epic and a detached portion of my mind told me that, unlike the mighty Anglo-Saxon warrior, I couldn't wait out the enemy. I already knew how he worked. If I waited there would be another accident. I had to find the enemy before he or she had a chance to attack.
Laurie Hendricks finished reading and glanced up questioningly from the text. I nodded to indicate that that was enough. My gaze held hers.
"The point I'm making," I said, "is that the attitude toward life was so different from ours. Unless you understand and accept that difference you can't respond to the literature of the people at that time. Their view of the universe was alien to anything we know. Human life was cheap. To stay alive was a constant struggle. Life didn't last very long—"
The bell rang to signal the end of the lecture. I held up my hand, stilling the immediate mass movement out of the seats.
"I have to talk to you individually about your term papers," I said quickly, ignoring the general groan. "I'll set up individual appointments. If the students in the—first row—will stay a few minutes I'll start with them."
I nodded and the class burst into a confusion of noise and movement. The students in the first row lingered. I sat behind the desk in the front of the room and waved the initial student forward. Carefully I drew up a time schedule of office appointments. As I had hoped, Laurie Hendricks waited until the last. We were alone in the classroom when she uncurled from her seat and swayed toward the desk. The soft curve of her mouth was provocative.
"You don't look any the worse for wear, Professor."
I smiled faintly. "I'm only an instructor, Miss Hendricks, not a professor. And I feel fine, thanks to you and your friends."
"We just picked you up and dusted you off."
There was a brief, awkward silence. Our eyes met appraisingly. She leaned a firmly rounded hip against the edge of the desk.
"I'd like to thank your friends personally," I said at last. "Would you give me their names?"
"Sure—but you don't have to thank them."
"I'd like to. I know Mike Boyle, of course—but who was the girl with him?"
"That's Helen Darrow. She's a physics major. She and Mike are going steady now."
I looked surprised. The girl hadn't seemed like the kind who would be majoring in physics. And that fact didn't go along with a co-ed's worshipful admiration of a brawny football star.
"They're a funny couple," Laurie Hendricks said, patting her red hair with graceful fingers. "But sometimes a man and a woman can clink together when you'd least expect it."
I smiled. "And who was your boy friend?"
"My boy fr—oh, you mean Bob. That's Bob Jenkins. But we're just friends, Professor."
I wished that she would ease off a little on the steam she was generating. Her invitation was too open, too sudden. I felt a tickling wariness inside as I looked into the green eyes.
"Did you have something in mind for me, Professor?" she asked, her voice almost purring. "I mean, about the term paper."
"Yes. Suppose we set up a time...." I stared at the schedule I had started to draw up. A half-formed plan jumped into focus in my mind and I knew that subconsciously I had known all along what I hoped to arrange. I spoke impulsively. "How about tonight, Miss Hendricks?"
"Tonight?" Her face showed surprise, but I saw the flicker of something else momentarily in her eyes. Satisfaction.
"My time is pretty well taken up for the next two days during the day—with classes and these other appointments. But I do have some free time tonight."
"In your office?"
I hesitated. "You could come up to my trailer. I'm at the top of the hills near Beverly Glen. The Valley View Trailer Court. It's quite easy to reach."
"I know the place. Off Mulholland, isn't it?"
"Yes. I'm in number 14-P."
She was smiling broadly now. "That sounds fine to me—Mr. Cameron."
"About eight?"
"I'll be there."
She eased away from the desk and started across the room. I found myself watching the rhythmic motion of her hips. At the door she turned to give me a parting invitation over her shoulder.
I didn't move. Through the door I saw the young blond boy, Jenkins, join her in the corridor. He grinned and took her hand in a casually intimate way. I felt a tug of—
My God! I thought. Jealousy. Envy.
And I wondered what was my real motive for asking her to come to my trailer that evening. Feeling out the enemy? Narrowing down my list of suspects? But if there were any possibility that she could be possessed by a powerful alien being it would be incredibly dangerous to be alone with her.
I wouldn't have a chance.
The point was that I didn't want to believe that she was the enemy—and I did want to be alone with her.