Entering the room was like being plunged under the surface of the sea. The lights were blue-green, concealed and reflecting from blue-green walls. A spidery mural of blue and green lines covered one wall like a wave pattern; from boxes along the floor grating rose curving branches of pale plants from the hybridization farms, resembling the kelp of the mermaid forests.
The pelagic motif was not a matter of design, it was only that these shapes and these colours were those that most pleased and comforted President St Cyr. This was his room. Not his study, with its oak panels and ancient armour; not even the 'private' drawing-room where he sometimes entertained members of the faculty. This was the room he reserved for a very, very few.
Four of these few were present now. A fat man, gross arms quivering, turned himself around and said, 'When?' He said, 'Do you want us all?' He said, "That's Jillson's job.' St Cyr grinned and, after a moment, his bodyguard said, 'No, I don't. Really. You enjoy it more than I do.' A woman in a preposterously young frock opened her thin-lipped mouth and cackled hilariously, as there was a knock on the door.
Jillson, the bodyguard, opened it, and revealed St Cyr's thin, silent housekeeper with Master Cornut.
St Cyr, on a turquoise wing chair, raised a hand. Jillson took Master Cornut by the arm and led him in, the door behind him closing on the housekeeper. 'Master Cor-nut,' said St Cyr in his odd, uninflected voice. 'I have been waiting for you.' The old woman in the young dress laughed shrilly for no visible reason; the bodyguard smiled; the fat man chuckled.
Cornut could not help, even then, looking around this room where he had never been. It was cool - the air was kept a full dozen degrees under the usual room temperature Cornut liked. There was a muted muttering of music in the background, too low to distinguish the tune. And these people -were odd.
He ignored Jillson, the assassin of Master Carl, whom he remembered from the inquest. The fat man blinked at him. 'Sen-a-tor Dane,' said St Cyr. 'And Miss May Kerbs.'
Miss May Kerbs was the one who had laughed. She swayed over to Cornut, looking like a teen-age girl in her first party formal. 'We were talking about you,' she said shrilly and Cornut with a physical shock, recognized that this was no teen-ager. She suddenly resembled the woman from South America whom he had met on the Field Expedition; the features were not much alike, but their state of repair was identical. The face was a skull's face under the make-up. She was fifty if she was a day - no, seventy-five - no; she was older than that; she was older than he liked to think, for a woman who dressed like a brash virgin.
Cornut found himself grotesquely acknowledging the introductions. He could not take his eyes off the woman. Talking about him? What had they been saying?
'We knew you'd be here, pal,' said the assassin, Jillson, kindly. 'You think we murdered the kid.'
'The kid?'
'Master Carl,' explained Jillson. He had a reason, said a thought in Cornut's mind. Queerly, it came in the half-stammering accent of Jillson.
'But sit down, Mis-ter Cor-nut.' St Cyr gestured. Politely the woman plumped cushions of aqua and turquoise on a divan.
'I don't want to sit down!'
'No. But please do.' St Cyr's blue-tinged face was only polite.
The fat man wheezed. 'Too bad, youngster. We didn't want to goose him along. I mean, why bother? But he was a nuisance. Every year,' he explained sunnily, 'we get maybe half a dozen who really make nuisances of themselves, mostly like you, some like him. His trouble was going after the classified material in the stacks. Well,' he said severely, waving a fat finger, 'that material is classified for a reason.'
Cornut sat down at last because he couldn't help himself. It was not going at all as he had expected; they were not denying a thing. But to admit that they killed Carl to protect some unimportant statistic in the census figures? It made no sense!
The blonde floozie laughed shrilly.
'Forgive Miss Kerbs,' said the fat man. 'She thinks you are funny for presuming to judge whether or not our actions are sensible. Believe me, young man, they are.'
Cornut found that he was grinding his teeth. These onesided conversation, the answers coming before the questions were spoken, these queer half-understood remarks...
It was as though they were reading his mind.
It was as though they knew every thought he had.
It was as though they were - but that's impossible! He thought, no, it can't be! Carl proved it!
The damn old fool.
Cornut jumped. The thought was in the tones of the fat man's wheeze, and he remembered where he had seen words like that before.
The fat man nodded, his chins pulsing like a floating jellyfish. 'We exposed his plate for him,' he chuckled. 'Oh, yes. It was only a joke, but we knew he would not live to make trouble over it. Once he had the Wolgren analysis, he would have to be helped along.' He said politely, 'Too bad, because we wanted him to publish his proof that telepathy was impossible. It is; quite true. For him. But not for us. And unfortunately, my young friend, not for you.'
Locille woke shivering, reaching out at once to Cornut's side of the bed; but he was not in it.
She turned on the room lights and scanned the nearest of the battery of clocks; one o'clock in the morning.
She got up, looked out of the window, listened at the hall door, turned on the broadcast radio, shook the speaker-mike of the University annunciator to make sure it was working, checked the telephone to see that it was not unhooked, sat down on the side of the bed and, finally, began silently to weep. She was frightened.
Whatever compulsion drove Cornut to try suicide had never before stricken him when he was wide-awake and in possession of his thoughts. Was that no longer true? But if it was still true, why had he gone off like that?
The radio was whispering persuasively its stream of news-bulletins: Strikes in Gary, Indiana, a wreck of a cargo rocket, three hundred cases of Virus Gamma in one twelve-hour period, a catastrophic accident between a nuclear trawler and a texas (she listened briefly, then relaxed) off the coast of Haiti. As it did not mention Cornut's name, she heard very little. Where could he be?
When the telephone sounded she answered it at once.
It was not Cornut; it was the rough, quick voice of a busy man.'—asked me to call. She is with your brother. Can you come?'
'My mother asked you to call?'
Impatiently: 'That's what I said. Your brother is seriously ill.' The voice did not hesitate. 'It is likely that he will die within the next few hours. Goodbye.'
Love said, No, stay, wait for Cornut; but it was her mother who had sent for her. Locille dressed quickly.
She left urgent instructions with the night proctor on what to do when - not if, when - Cornut returned. Watch him asleep; keep the door open; check him every half hour; be with him when he wakes. 'Yes, ma'am,' said the student, and then, with gentleness, 'He'll be all right.'
But would he? Locille hurried across the campus, closing her mind to that question. It was too late for a ferry from the island. She would have to go to the Bridge, ride to the city, hope for a helipopper ferry to the texas from there. The Med Centre was bright with lights from many rooms; curious, she thought, and hurried by. In their wired enclosure, the aborigines were murmuring, not asleep. Curious again.
But suppose the proctor forgot?
Locille reassured herself that he would not forget; he was one of Cornut's own students. In any case, she had to take the chance. She was almost grateful that something had happened to take her away, for the waiting had been unbearable.
She walked by the President's residence without a glance; it did not occur to her that the fact that it, too, was lighted, was of any relevance to her own problems. In this she was wrong.