His appointment, although he hadn't said so to Master Carl, was with his analyst. Cornut was anxious to keep it.
He wasn't very confident of analysis as a solution to his problem; despite three centuries, the technique of mental health had never evolved a rigorous proof system, and Cornut was innately sceptical of whatever was not susceptible of mathematical analysis. But there was something else he had neglected to tell Master Carl.
Cornut was not the only one of his kind.
The man at the Med Centre had been quite excited. He named five names that Cornut recognized, faculty members who had killed themselves or died in ambiguous circumstances within the past few years. One had made fifteen attempts before he finally succeeded in blowing himself up after an all-night polymerization experiment in the Chem Hall. A couple had succeeded on the first or second try.
What made Cornut exceptional was that he had got through seven weeks of this without even seriously maiming himself. The all-time record was ten weeks. That was the chemist.
The analyst had promised to have all the information about the other suiciders to show him this morning. Cornut could not deny that he was interested. Indeed, it was a matter of considerable concern.
Unless all precedent was wrong, he would succeed as all the others had ultimately succeeded; he would kill himself one way or another, and he probably would never know why he had done it.
And unless precedent was wrong again, it would happen within the next three weeks.
CHAPTER III
The University was beginning its day. In the Regents Office a clerk filled a hopper and flipped a switch, and Sticky Dick - sometimes written as S.'I.-I. (C.E.), Di. C. - began to grind out grades on the previous day's examinations in English, Sanskrit and the nuclear reactions of the Bethe Phoenix cycle. Student orderlies in Med School wheeled their sectioned cadavers out of the refrigerated filing-drawers, playing the time-honoured ribald jokes with the detached parts. In the central tape room, the TV technicians went about their endless arcane ritual of testing circuits and balancing voltages; every lecture was put on tape as a matter of course, even those which were not either broadcast or syndicated.
Thirty thousand undergraduates ran hastily over the probable mood of their various instructors, and came to the conclusion that they would be lucky to live through to evening. But it was better than trying to get along in the outside world, all the same.
And in the kitchen attached to the faculty dining-room of Math Tower the student waitress, Locille, helped her C. E. mop the last drops of damp off the stainless steel cooking utensils. She hung up her apron, checked her make-up in the mirror by the door, descended in the service elevator and went out to the hot, loud walks of the Quad.
Locille didn't think them either hot or loud. She had known much worse.
Locille was a scholarship girl; her parents were Town, not Gown. She had only been at the University for two years. She still spent some of her weekends at home. She knew very clearly what it was like to live in the city across the bay - or worse, to live on one of the texases off the coast - with your whole life a rattling, banging clamour day and night and everyone piled up against everyone else. The noise in the Quadrangle was only human voices. The ground did not shake.
Locille had a happy small face, short hair, a forthright way of walking out. She did not look worried but she was. He had looked so tired this morning! Also he wasn't eating, and that was not like him. If it wasn't scrambled eggs and bacon it was a hot cereal with fruit on top, always. Instinctively she approved of a man who ate well. Perhaps, she planned, smiling at a boy who greeted her without really seeing his face at all, tomorrow she would just bring the scrambled eggs and put them in front of him. Probably he'd eat them.
Of course, that wasn't getting at the real problem.
Locille shivered. She felt quite helpless. It was distressing to care so much what happened to someone, and be so far outside the situation itself...
Running footsteps came up behind her and slowed.
'Hi,' panted her most regular date, Egerd, falling into step. 'Why didn't you wait at the door? What about Saturday night?'
'Oh, hello. I don't know yet. They might need me at the faculty dance.'
Egerd said brusquely. 'Tell them you can't make it. You have to go out to the texas. Your brother has, uh, some disease or other, and your mother needs you to help take care of him.'
Locille laughed.
'Aw look. I've got Carnegan's boat for the evening! We can go clear down to the Hook.'
Locille cheerfully let him take her hand. She liked Egerd. He was a good-looking boy, and he was kind. He reminded her of her brother... well, not of her real, living brother; but of the brother she should have had. She liked Egerd. But she didn't like him. The distinction was quite clear in her mind. Egerd, for example, obviously liked her.
Egerd said, 'Well, you don't have to make up your mind now. I'll ask you again tomorrow.' That was a salesman's instinct operating; it was always better to leave the prospect with a 'maybe' than a 'no'. He guided her between two tall buildings towards the back gardens of the campus, where Agronomy had made a little Japanese retreat in the middle of fifteen intensively farmed acres of experimental peas and wheat. 'I think I got some demerits from old Carl this morning,' he said gloomily, remembering.
'Too bad,' Locille said, although that was not an unusual phenomenon. But then he caught her attention.
'I was just trying to do Cornut a favour. Trying? Hell, I saved his life.' She was all attention now. He went on, 'He was practically out of the window. Loopy! You know, I think half of these professors are off their rockers - Anyway, if I hadn't got there when I did he would've been dead. Splop. All over the Quad.
'At that,' he said cheerfully, 'I was kind of late.'
'Egerd!'
He stopped and looked at her. 'What's the matter?'
She raged. 'You shouldn't have been late! Didn't you know Master Cornut was relying on you? Really, you ought to be more careful.'
She was actually angry. Egerd studied her thoughtfully, and stopped talking; but some of the pleasure had gone out of the morning for him. Abruptly he caught her arm.
'Locille,' he said in a completely serious tone, 'please marry me for a while. I know I'm here on a scholarship and my grades are marginal. But I won't go back. Listen, I'm not going to stay with math. I was talking to some of the fellows at Med School. There's a lot of jobs in epidemiology, and that way my math credits will do me some good. I'm not asking for ten years of your life. We can make it month to month, even, and if you don't opt for a renewal I swear I won't hold it against you. But let me try to make you want to stay with me, Locille. Please. Marry me.'
He stood looking down at her, his broad, tanned face entirely open, waiting. She didn't meet his eye.
After a moment he nodded composedly.
'All right. I can't compete with Master Cornut, can I?'
She suddenly frowned. 'Egerd, I hope you don't feel - I mean, just because you've got the idea I'm interested in Master Cornut, I hope—'
'No,' he said, grinning, 'I won't let him fall out of a window. But you know something? Pretty as you are, Locille, I don't think Cornut knows you're alive.'
The analyst followed Cornut to the door. He was furious because he hadn't got his way - not with Cornut, particularly, but furious in general. Cornut said stiffly, 'Sorry, but I won't put everything else aside.'