FIRST REEL
1
My own timepiece, when I fetched it out, said something earlier, but I'd been so careless in the winding and setting way that I'd scarcely have dared trust its accuracy even had the River George not got to it. On the other hand, my first Assignment-task confirmed that not all was well with Tower Clock. I stepped to consult the dark-suit oldster, as more likely than The Living Sakhyan to own a watch. Lo, as I did, half a dozen young ragged fellows gathered to him from the shadows, uncordially. They jostled and threatened.
"Let's have it, old man."
"If you want it," I heard him reply, "pay for it." But his molesters were plainly ready to have by force what they were after. I cried stop to them and gimped to the man's assistance.
"Look what's coming," said one of their number.
They were too many; as I passed The Living Sakhyan's elm I rapped His shoulder, less than reverently it may be, and bade Him help me help. T. L. Sakhyan's palms were pressed together under His breast, fingers upward, and His eyes gently shut; yet I knew Him to be awake by that tranquil smile He'd borne across the torrent at our last encounter, and with which He'd favored Anastasia's ravishment. It put me in a sweat of ire.
"At least call a patrolman!" I shouted in His ear, then dashed the more rashly, for my exasperation, to aid the old man, whose two chief botherers now turned to me. The others had only stood by — shaggy lads mostly, out at elbows — and seemed inclined to withdraw when I challenged. I heard one say, "It's that goat-boy," in a tone that, oddly, did not mock. Others grinned; a few looked sheepish, and I took heart.
"Shoo!" I commanded, wishing that their old victim would fly to safety while he might. But he held his ground; worse, he called them scamps and beggars deserving of the horsewhip, a judgment he might have rendered at a better hour.
"Shameless!" one of them cried, more outraged than wrathful. Indeed, when the old man charged them further to go steal a watch if they wanted the time, as they'd not get free from him what others paid for, even the more aggressive pair seemed disarmed by the force of their own indignation, and called on the Founder to witness to what flunkèd depths of meanness the student mind could sink. I too was startled out of countenance.
"You only wanted the time of day?"
That, it developed, was their sole craving. Indigent scholarship-students all, they had not a watch among them, yet needed to measure the exact duration of the current eclipse in connection with some astronomy assignment. Understanding Tower Clock to be out of order, they had approached the "Old Man of the Mall," who I now learned was a kind of institution in New Tammany College, famous for his store of information and his ability to tell the time of day, to the second, by the length of people's shadows on the path. "Not for free, though," the old man said. "I don't sit here for my health." Now I could see it, his face was horny-beaked and sere-eyed like a turtle's, and his neck as corded, loose in the carapace of his collar. I was amazed. A tattered, glaring chap turned to me.
"He's the stingiest man on campus! Let's shake it out of him!"
And indeed they might have laid hands on him, but I was inspired to point out that until after the eclipse there would be no clear shadows for the Old Man of the Mall to reckon from.
"I wouldn't've told 'em anyhow," he said.
"You are stingy!" I scolded him. The young men granted my point, but were incensed enough by the fellow's meanness — as almost was I — to offer him a roughing in any case. I forestalled it by giving them the reading of my own timepiece, the best I could manage, for which they thanked me and withdrew, not without grumbled threats to return with the sun.
"Don't come empty-handed," the old man called after them. "I'm not Reg Hector."
"You're mad!" I cried. "Why didn't you tell them yourself you didn't know the right time?"
He rubbed his thumb against the tips of two fingers. "What's it worth to you to find that out?"
I wished him loudly to the Dean o' Flunks and promised next time to look on smiling, like The Living Sakhyan, while he got what his miserliness deserved; then I declared that it was to check my own watch I'd approached him, and that, he being in my debt already, I meant to have the time of day from him as soon as the eclipse ended (it was passing already) or call back the shabby young men to finish what I'd interrupted.
"I owe you nothing," he said. "Did I hire you to help me?" However, he added, since I'd given him something he hadn't asked for, he'd repay me with something I didn't need: a blank ID-card and enough indelible ink to sign it with my name. Forged cards, he pointed out, were much in demand among undergraduates too young to purchase liquor legally; in fact, it was not for interfering in his private affairs that he was rewarding me with so salable a piece of goods, but for teaching him a new way to drive off the beggar-students who forever importuned him. Thitherto he'd been obliged to give the more threatening ones what they wanted, in order to insure his own safety, and he had been thoughtless enough to give them correct information. But thanks to my example (now there was sun enough to cast shadows, he could tell by the length of mine that my watch was slow) thenceforth he would buy his safety with false coin, seeing to it that any answers extorted from him were not quite accurate. He could hardly contain his satisfaction at learning this business-trick, the more pleasing to him since he had it from me gratis; nor much better could I at being rewarded, unbeknownst to him, with something I very much needed after all. If I was able to take the ID-card and ink with a show of indifference, it was only because my delight was pinched by bad conscience at having in a manner sharped him — and, himlike, savoring the cheat.
"You don't get the whole bottle," he grumbled. "Just enough to sign your name."
I had no pen, but struck a bargain for the loan of his in return for what ink I saved him by having one name instead of three. Then, as I wrote George on the proper line, I saw that the card was after all not a new one; nor was the ink, it seemed, absolutely indelible: dimly could be made out there, after mine, the previous owner's name: Ira Hector.
"You stole this card!"
He closed his eyes, thrust out his underlip, shook his head.
"Look here: it says Ira Hector! It's a used card!"
"You don't want it, give it back. But no refunds."
I saw his eye glint so at that prospect that shrewdly I promised to have him taken up for theft if he didn't give me at once the accurate time of day, which I needed to proceed with my Assignment.
"Call a cop," he dared me. "He'll arrest you as an accessory. In fact, I'll say you stole it: your name's on it! And I'll charge you with extortion besides."
Improvising swiftly and in anger, I declared myself willing to match a prospective Grand Tutor's word against a nameless vagrant's, or used-card dealer's, especially since Mr. Ira Hector, when I should return his card to him, would doubtless apply his famous wealth and influence in my just behalf. "Don't count on it," the old man chuckled. "I'm Ira Hector."
I denied it.
"Of course I am, you great ninny. Everybody knows the Old Man of the Mall."
Alas, he did quite fit the impression of her uncle I'd got from Anastasia's narrative, and I was the more appalled at such petty avarice in the wealthiest man on campus. But I challenged him to prove his identity without a card.
He blinked like an old testudinate Peter Greene. "You should be a business major, Goat-Boy!" However, it was his notoriety in the College, he told me, that rendered his ID-card superfluous and induced him to sell it. Everybody recognized him, he was sorry to say, and pestered him for handouts which they no more deserved than did those young beggars the free tuition provided them by Chancellor Rexford's new grant-in-aid program. Creeping Student-Unionism was what it was, to Mr, Hector's mind: the tyranny of the have-nots, of the ignorant over the schooled. The only thing to be said for the Administration's reckless giveaways was that, the untutored being always (and justly) more numerous than the learned, Rexford was buying political power with other people's wealth. But it was bad business in the long term, Ira Hector was sure, and must lead the College's economy to bankruptcy.