Shock

Shock Page 6

When he woke up that morning, he could talk French.

There was no warning. At six-fifteen, the alarm went off as usual and he and his wife stirred. Fred reached out a sleep-deadened hand and shut off the bell. The room was still for a moment.

Then Eva pushed back the covers on her side and he pushed back the covers on his side. His vein gnarled legs dropped over the side of the bed. He said, 'Bon matin, Eva.'

There was a slight pause.

'Wha'?' she asked.

'Je dis bon matin,' he said.

There was a rustle of nightgown as she twisted around to squint at him. 'What'd you say?'

'All I said was good -'

Fred Elderman stared back at his wife.

'What did I say?' he asked in a whisper... 'You said 'bone mattin or -'

'Jes dis bon matin. C'est un bon matin, n'est ce pas?'

The sound of his hand being clapped across his mouth was like that of a fast ball thumping in a catcher's mitt. Above the knuckle-ridged gag, his eyes were shocked.

'Fred, what IS it?'

Slowly, the hand drew down from his lips.

'I dunno, Eva,' he said, awed. Unconsciously, the hand reached up, one finger of it rubbing at his hair-ringed bald spot. 'It sounds like some �C some kind of foreign talk.'

'But you don't know no foreign talk, Fred,' she told him.

That's just it.'

They sat there looking at each other blankly. Fred glanced over at the clock.

'We better get dressed,' he said.

While he was in the bathroom, she heard him singing, 'Elle fit un fromage, du lait de ses moutons, ron, ron, du lait de ses moutons,' but she didn't dare call it to his attention while he was shaving.

Over breakfast coffee, he muttered something.

'What?' she asked before she could stop herself.

'Je'dis que veut dire ceci?

He heard the coffee go down her gulping throat.

'I mean,' he said, looking dazed, 'what does this mean?'

'Yes, what does it? You never talked no foreign language before.'

'I know it,' he said, toast suspended half-way to his open mouth. 'What �C what kind of language is it?'

'S-sounds t'me like French.'

French? I don't know no French?'

She swallowed more coffee. 'You do now,' she said weakly.

He stared at the table cloth.

'Le diable s'en mele,' he muttered.

Her voice rose. 'Fred, what?'

His eyes were confused. 'I said the devil has something to do with it.'

'Fred, you're -'

She straightened up in the chair and took a deep breath. 'Now,' she said, let's not profane, Fred. There has to be a good reason for this/ No reply. 'Well, doesn't there, Fred?'

'Sure, Eva. Sure. But -'

'No buts about it,' she declared, plunging ahead as if she were afraid to stop. 'Now is there any reason in this world why you should know how to talk French' �C she snapped her thin fingers �C 'just like that?'

He shook his head vaguely.

'Well,' she went on, wondering what to say next, 'let's see then.' They looked at each other in silence. 'Say something,' she decided. 'Let's �C ' She groped for words. 'Let's see what we... have here.' Her voice died off.

'Say somethin'?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Go on.'

'Un gemissement se fit entrendre. Les dogues se mettent d aboyer. Ces gants me vont bien. ll va sur les quinze ans -'

'Fred?'

'II fit fabriquer une exacte representation du monstre.'

'Fred, hold on!' she cried, looking scared.

His voice broke off and he looked at her, blinking.

'What... what did you say this time, Fred?' she asked.

'I said �C a moan was heard. His mastiffs began to bark. These gloves fit me. He will soon be fifteen years old and -'

'What?'

'And he has an exact copy of the monster made. Sans meme I'entamer.'

'Fred?'

He looked ill. 'Without even scratchin,' he said.

At that hour of the morning, the campus was quiet. The only classes that early were the two seven-thirty Economics lectures and they were held on the White Campus. Here on the Red there was no sound. In an hour the walks would be filled with chatting, laughing, loafer-clicking student hordes, but for now there was peace.

In far less than peace, Fred Elderman shuffled along the east side of the campus, headed for the administration building. Having left a confused Eva at home, he'd been trying to figure it out as he went to work.

What was it? When had it begun? C'est une heure, said his mind.

He shook his head angrily. This was terrible. He tried desperately to think of what could have happened, but he couldn't. It just didn't make sense. He was fifty-nine, a janitor at the university with no education to speak of, living a quiet, ordinary life. Then he woke up one morning speaking articulate French.

French.

He stopped a moment and stood in the frosty October wind, staring at the cupola of Jeramy Hall. He's cleaned out the French office the night before. Could that have anything to do with �C

'No, that was ridiculous. He started off again, muttering under his breath �C unconsciously. 'Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, nous sommes, vous etes -'

At eight-ten, he entered the History Department office to repair a sink in the washroom. He worked on it for an hour and seven minutes, then put the tools back in the bag and walked out into the office.

'Mornin,' he said to the professor sitting at a desk.

'Good morning, Fred,' said the professor.

Fred Elderman walked out into the hall thinking how remarkable it was that the income of Louis XVI, from the same type of taxes, exceeded that of Louis XV by 130 million livres and that the exports which had been 106 million in 1720 were 192 million in 1746 and �C

He stopped in the hall, a stunned look on his lean face.

That morning, he had occasion to be in the offices of the Physics, the Chemistry, the English and the Art Departments.

The Windmill was a little tavern near Main Street. Fred went there on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings to nurse a couple of draught beers and chat with his two friends -Harry Bullard, manager of Hogan's Bowling Alleys, and Lou Peacock, postal worker and amateur gardener.

Stepping into the doorway of the dim lit saloon that evening, Fred was heard �C by an exiting patron �C to murmur, 'Je connais tous ces braves gens,' then look around with a guilty twitch of cheek. 'I mean...' he muttered, but didn't finish.

Harry Bullard saw him first in the mirror. Twisting his head around on its fat column of neck, he said. 'Cmon in, Fred, the whisky's fine,' then, to the bartender, 'Draw one for the elder man,' and chuckled.

Fred walked to the bar with the first smile he'd managed to summon that day. Peacock and Bullard greeted him and the bartender sent down a brimming stein.

'What's new, Fred?' Harry asked.

Fred pressed his moustache between two foam-removing fingers.

'Not much,' he said, still too uncertain to discuss it. Dinner with Eva had been a painful meal during which he'd eaten not only food but an endless and detailed running commentary on the Thirty Years War, the Magna Charta and boudoir information about Catherine the Great. He had been glad to retire from the house at seven-thirty, murmuring an unmanageable, 'Bon nuit, ma chere.'

'What's new with you?' he asked Harry Bullard now.

'Well,' Harry answered, 'we been paintin' down at the alleys. You know, redecoratin.'

That right?' Fred said. 'When painting with coloured beeswax was inconvenient, Greek and Roman easel painters used tempera �C that is, colours fixed upon a wood or stucco base by means of such a medium as -'

He stopped. There was a bulging silence.

'Hanh?' Harry Bullard asked.

Fred swallowed nervously. 'Nothing,' he said hastily. 'I was just �C ' He stared down into the tan depths of his beer. 'Nothing,' he repeated.

Bullard glanced at Peacock, who shrugged back.

'How are your hothouse flowers coming, Lou?' Fred inquired, to change the subject.

The small man nodded. 'Fine. They're just fine.'

'Good,' said Fred, nodding, too. 'Vi sono pui di cinquante bastimenti in porto,' He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.

'What's that?' Lou asked, cupping one ear.

Fred coughed on his hastily swallowed beer. 'Nothing,' he said.

'No, what did ya say?' Harry persisted, the half-smile on his broad face indicating that he was ready to hear a good joke.

'I �C I said there are more than fifty ships in the harbour,' explained Fred morosely.

The smile faded. Harry looked blank.

'What harbour?' he asked.

Fred tried to sound casual. 'I �C it's just a joke I heard today. But I forgot the last line.'

'Oh,' Harry stared at Fred, then returned to his drink. 'Yeah.'

They were quiet for a moment. Then Lou asked Fred, 'Through for the day?'

'No. I have to clean up the Math office later.'

Lou nodded. That's too bad.'

Fred squeezed more foam from his moustache. Tell me something,' he said, taking the plunge impulsively. 'What would you think if you woke up one morning talking French?'

Who did that?' asked Harry, squinting.

'Nobody,' Fred said hurriedly. 'Just... supposing, I mean. Supposing a man was too �C well, to know things he never learned. You know what I mean? Just know them. As if they were always in his mind and he was seeing them for the first time.'

'What kind o' things, Fred?' asked Lou.

'Oh... history. Different... languages. Things about... books and paintings and... atoms and �C chemicals.' His shrug was jerky and obvious. Things like that.'

'Don't get ya, buddy,' Harry said, having given up any hopes that a joke was forthcoming.

'You mean he knows things he never learned?' Lou asked. That it?'

There was something in both their voices �C a doubting incredulity, a holding back, as if they feared to commit themselves, a suspicious reticence.

Fred sloughed it off. 'I was just supposing. Forget it. It's not worth talking about.'

He had only one beer that night, leaving early with the excuse that he had to clean the Mathematics office. And, all through the silent minutes that he swept and mopped and dusted, he kept trying to figure out what was happening to him.

He walked home in the chill of night to find Eva waiting for him in the kitchen.

'Coffee, Fred?' she offered.

'I'd like that,' he said, nodding. She started to get up. 'No, s'accomadi, la prego,' he blurted.

She looked at him, grim-faced.

'I mean,' he translated, 'sit down, Eva. I can get it.'

They sat there drinking coffee while he told her about his experiences.

'It's more than I can figure, Eva,' he said. 'It's... scary, in a way. I know so many things I never knew. I have no idea where they come from. Not the least idea.' His lips pressed together. 'But I know them,' he said, 'I certainly know them.'

'More than just... French now?' she asked.

He shook his head worriedly. 'Lots more,' he said. 'Like -' He looked up from his cup. 'Listen to this. Main progress in producing fast particles has been made by using relatively small voltages and repeated acceleration. In most of the instruments used, charged particles are driven around in circular or spiral orbits with the help of a �C You listenin', Eva?'

He saw her Adam's apple move. 'I'm listenin',' she said.

' �C help of a magnetic field. The acceleration can be applied in different ways. In the so-called betatron of Kerst and Serber -'

'What does it mean, Fred?' she interrupted.

'I don't know,' he said helplessly. 'It's... just words in my head. I know what it means when I say something in a foreign tongue, but... this?'

She shivered, clasping at her forearms abruptly.

'It's not right,' she said.

He frowned at her in silence for a long moment.

'What do you mean, Eva?' he asked then.

'I don't know, Fred,' she said quietly and shook her head once, slowly. 'I just don't know.'

She woke up about midnight and heard him mumbling in his sleep.

The natural logarithms of whole numbers from ten to two hundred. Number one �C zero �C two point three oh two six. One - two point three nine seven nine. Two - two point -'

'Fred, go t'sleep,' she said, frowning nervously.

' �C four eight four nine.'

She prodded him with an elbow. 'Go t'sleep, Fred.'

'Three - two point -'

'Fred!'

'Huh?' He moaned and swallowed dryly, turned on his side.

In the darkness, she heard him shape the pillow with sleep-heavy hands.

'Fred?' she called softly.

He coughed. 'What?'

'I think you better go t'Doctor Boone t'morra mornin!'

She heard him draw in a long breath, then let it filter out evenly until it was all gone.

'I think so, too,' he said in a blurry voice.

On Friday morning, when he opened the door to the waiting room of Doctor William Boone, a draft of wind scattered papers from the nurse's desk.

'Oh,' he said apologetically. 'Le chieggo scuse. Non ne val la pena.'

Miss Agnes McCarthy had been Doctor Boone's receptionist-nurse for seven years and in that time she'd never heard Fred Elderman speak a single foreign word.

Thus she goggled at him, amazed. 'What's that you said?' she asked.

Fred's smile was a nervous twitch of the lips.

'Nothing,' he said, 'miss.'

Her returned smile was formal. 'Oh.' She cleared her throat. 'I'm sorry Doctor couldn't see you yesterday.'

'That's all right,' he told her.

'He'll be ready in about ten minutes.'

Twenty minutes later, Fred sat down beside Boone's desk and the heavy-set doctor leaned back in his chair with an, 'Ailing, Fred?'

Fred explained the situation.

The doctor's cordial smile became, in order, amused, fixed, strained and finally nonexistent.

'This is really so?' he demanded.

Fred nodded with grim deliberation. 'Je me laisse con-seiller.'

Doctor Boone's heavy eyebrows lifted a noticeable jot. 'French,' he said. 'What'd you say?'

Fred swallowed. 'I said I'm willing to be advised.'

'Son of a gun,' intoned Doctor Boone, plucking at his lower lip. 'Son of a gun.' He got up and ran exploring hands over Fred's skull. 'You haven't received a head blow lately, have you?'

'No,' said Fred. 'Nothing.'

'Hmmm.' Doctor Boone drew away his hands and let them drop to his sides. 'Well, no apparent bumps or cracks,' He buzzed for Miss McCarthy. Then he said, 'Well, let's take a try at the X-rays.'

The X-rays revealed no breaks or blots.

The two men sat in the office, discussing it.

'Hard to believe,' said the doctor, shaking his head. Fred 'sighed despondently. 'Well, don't take on so,' Boone said. 'It's nothing to be disturbed about. So you're a quiz kid, so what?'

Fred ran nervous fingers over his moustache. 'But there's no sense to it. Why is it happening? What is it? The fact is, I'm a little scared.'

'Nonsense, Fred. Nonsense. You're in good physical condition. That I guarantee.'

'But what about my �C ' Fred hesitated �C 'my brain?'

Doctor Boone stuck out his lower lip in consoling derision, shaking his head. I wouldn't worry about that, either.' He slapped one palm on the desk top. 'Let me think about it, Fred. Consult a few associates. You know �C analyse it. Then I'll let you know. Fair enough?'

He walked Fred to the door.

'In the meantime,' he prescribed, 'no worrying about it. There isn't a thing to worry about.'

His face as he dialled the phone a few minutes later was not unworried, however.

'Fetlock?' he said, getting his party. 'Got a poser for you.'

Habit more than thirst brought Fred to the Windmill that evening. Eva had wanted him to stay home and rest, assuming that his state was due to overwork; but Fred had insisted that it wasn't his health and left the house, just managing to muffle his 'Au revoir.'

He joined Harry Bui lard and Lou Peacock at the bar and finished his first beer in a glum silence while Harry revealed why they shouldn't vote for Legislator Milford Carpenter.

Tell ya the man's got a private line t'Moscow,' he said. 'A few men like that in office and we're in for it, take my word.' He looked over at Fred staring into his beer. 'What's with it, elder man?' he asked, clapping Fred on the shoulder.

Fred told them �C as if he were telling about a disease he'd caught.

Lou Peacock looked incredulous. 'So that's what you were talking about the other night!'

Fred nodded.

'You're not kiddin' us now?' Harry asked. 'Y'know every-thing'

'Just about,' Fred admitted sadly.

A shrewd look overcame Harry's face.

'What if I ask ya somethin' ya don't know?'

'I'd be happy,' Fred said in a despairing voice.

Harry beamed. 'Okay. I won't ask you about atoms nor chemicals nor anythin' like that. I'll just ask ya t'tell me about the country between my home town Au Sable and Tarva.' He hit the bar with a contented slap.

Fred looked hopeful briefly, but then his face blanked and he said in an unhappy voice. 'Between Au Sable and Tarva, the route is through typical cut-over land that once was covered with virgin pine (danger: deer on the highway) and now has only second-growth oak, pine and poplar. For years after the decline of the lumber industry, picking huckleberries was one of the chief local occupations.'

Harry gaped.

'Because the berries were known to grow in the wake of fires,' Fred concluded, 'residents deliberately set many fires that roared through the country.'

'That's a damn dirty lie!' Harry said, chin trembling belligerently.

Fred looked at him in surprise.

'You shouldn't ought to'go around tellin' lies like that,' Harry said. 'You call that knowin' the countryside �C telling lies about it?'

'Take it easy, Harry,' Lou cautioned.

'Well,' Harry said angrily, 'he shouldn't ought to tell lies like that.'

'I didn't say it,' Fred answered hopelessly. 'It's more as though I -I read it off.'

'Yeah? Well...' Harry fingered his glass restlessly.

'You really know everything?' Lou asked, partly to ease the tension, partly because he was awed.

'I'm afraid so,' Fred replied.

'You ain't just... playin' a trick?'

Fred shook his head. 'No trick.'

Lou Peacock looked small and intense. 'What can you tell me,' he asked in a back-alley voice, 'about orange roses?'

The blank look crossed Fred's face again. Then he recited.

'Orange is not a fundamental colour but a blend of red and pink of varied intensity and yellow. There was very few orange roses prior to the Pernatia strain. All orange, apricot, chamois and coral roses finish with pink more or less accentuated. Some attain that lovely shade �C Cuisse de Nymphe emue.'

Lou Peacock was open-mouthed. 'Ain't that something?' Harry Bullard blew out heavy breath. 'What d'ya know about Carpenter?' he asked pugnaciously.

'Carpenter, Milford, born 1898 in Chicago, Illi -'

'Never mind,' Harry cut in. 'I ain't interested. He's a Commie; that's all I gotta know about him.'

'The elements that go into a political campaign,' quoth Fred helplessly, 'are many �C the personality of the candidates, the issues �C if any �C the attitude of the press, economic groups, traditions, the opinion polls, the -'

'I tell ya he's a Commie!' Harry declared, voice rising.

'You voted for him last election,' Lou said. 'As I re -'

'I did not!' snarled Harry, getting redder in the face.

The blank look appeared on Fred Elderman's face. 'Remembering things that are not so is a kind of memory distortion that goes by several names as pathological lying or mythomania.'

'You callin' me a liar, Fred?'

'It differs from ordinary lying in that the speaker comes to believe his own lies and -'

'Where did you get that black eye?' a shocked Eva asked Fred when he came into the kitchen later. 'Have you been fighting at your age?'

Then she saw the look on his face and ran for the refrigerator. She sat him on a chair and held a piece of beefsteak against his swelling eye while he related what had happened.

'He's a bully,' she said. 'A bully!'

'No, I don't blame him,' Fred disagreed. 'I insulted him. I don't even know what I'm saying any more. I'm �C I'm all mixed up.'

She looked down at his slumped form, an alarmed expression on her face. 'When is Doctor Boone going to do something for you?'

'I don't know.'

A half hour later, against Eva's wishes, he went to clean up the library with a fellow janitor; but the moment he entered the huge room, he gasped, put his hands to his temples and fell down on one knee, gasping, 'My head! My head!'

It took a long while of sitting quietly in the downstairs hallway before the pain in his skull stopped. He sat there staring fixedly at the glossy tile floor, his head feeling as if it had just gone twenty-nine rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world.

Fetlock came in the morning. Arthur B., forty-two, short and stocky, head of the Department of Psychological Sciences, he came bustling along the path in porkpie hat and chequered overcoat, jumped up on the porch, stepped across its worn boards and stabbed at the bell button. While he waited, he clapped leather-gloved hands together energetically and blew out breath clouds.

'Yes?' Eva asked when she opened the door.

Professor Fetlock explained his mission, not noticing how her face tightened with fright when he announced his field. Reassured that Doctor Boone had sent him, she led Fetlock up the carpeted steps, explaining, 'He's still in bed. He had an attack last night.

'Oh?' said Arthur Fetlock.

When introductions had been made and he was alone with the janitor, Professor Fetlock fired a rapid series of questions, Fred Elderman, propped up with pillows, answered them as well as he could.

This attack,' said Fetlock, 'what happened?'

'Don't know, Professor, Walked in the library and �C well, it was as if a ton of cement hit me on the head. No �C in my head.'

'Amazing. And this knowledge you say you've acquired -are you conscious of an increase in it since your ill-fated visit to the library?'

Fred nodded. '1 know more than ever.'

The professor bounced the fingertips of both hands against each other. 'A book on language by Pei. Section 9-B in the library, book number 429.2, if memory serves. Can you quote from it?'

Fred looked blank, but words followed almost immediately. 'Leibnitz first advanced the theory that all language came not from a historically recorded source but from proto-speech. In some respects he was a precursor of -'

'Good, good,' said Arthur Fetlock. 'Apparently a case of spontaneous telepathic manifestations coupled with clairvoyance.'

'Meaning?'

'Telepathy, Elderman. Telepathy! Seems every book or educated mind you come across, you pick clean of content. You worked in the French office, you spoke French. You worked in the Mathematics office, you quoted numbers, tables, axioms. Similarly with all other offices, subjects and individuals.' He scowled, purse-lipped. 'Ah, but why?'

'Causa qua re,' muttered Fred.

A brief wry sound in Professor Fetlock's throat. 'Yes, I wish I knew, too. However...' He leaned forward. 'What's that?'

'How come I can learn so much?' Fred asked worriedly, 'I mean -'

'No difficulty there,' stated the stocky psychologist. 'You see, no man ever utilized the full learning capacity of the brain. It still has an immense potential. Perhaps that's what's happening to you �C you're realising this potential.'

'But how?'

'Spontaneously realised telepathy and clairvoyance plus infinite retention and unlimited potential.' He whistled softly. 'Amazing. Positively amazing. Well, I must be going:'

'But what'll I do?' Fred begged.

'Why, enjoy it,' said the professor expansively. 'It's a perfectly fantastic gift. Now look �C if I were to gather together a group of faculty members, would you be willing to speak to them? Informally, of course.'

'But -'

'They should be entranced, positively entranced. I must do a paper for the Journal.'

'But what does it mean, Professor?' Fred Elderman asked, his voice shaking.

'Oh, we'll look into it, never fear. Really, this is revolutionary. An unparalleled phenomenon.' He made a sound of delighted disbelief. 'In-credible.'

When Professor Fetlock had gone, Fred sat defeatedly in his bed. So there was nothing to be done �C nothing but spout endless, inexplicable words and wonder into the nights what terrible thing was happening to him. Maybe the professor was excited; maybe it was exciting intellectual fare for outsiders. For him, it was only grim and increasingly frightening business.

'Why? Why? It was the question he could neither answer nor escape.

He was thinking that when Eva came in. He lifted his gaze as she crossed the room and sat down on the bed.

'What did he say?' she asked anxiously.

When he told her, her reaction was the same as his.

That's all? Enjoy it?' She pressed her lips together in anger. 'What's the matter with him? Why did Doctor Boone send him?'

He shook his head, without an answer.

There was such a look of confused fear on his face that she 'reached out her hand suddenly and touched his cheek. 'Does your head hurt, dear?'

'It hurts inside,' he said. 'In my... ' There was a clicking in his throat. 'If one considers the brain as a tissue which is only moderately compressible, surrounded by two variable factors �C the blood it contains and the spinal fluid which surrounds it and fills the ventricles inside the brain we have -'

He broke off spasmodically and sat there, quivering.

'God help us,' she whispered.

'As Sextus Empiricus says in his Arguments Against Belief in a God, those who affirm, positively, that God exists cannot avoid falling into an impiety. For -'

'Fred stop it!'

He sat looking at her dazedly.

'Fred, you don't... know what you're saying. Do you?'

'No. I never do. I just �C Eva, what's going on!'

She held his hand tightly and stroked it. 'It's all right, Fred. Please don't worry so.'

But he did worry. For behind the complex knowledge that filled his mind, he was still the same man, simple, uncomprehending �C and afraid.

Why was it happening?

It was as if, in some hideous way, he were a sponge filling more and more with knowledge and there would come a time when there was no room left and the sponge would explode.

Professor Fetlock stopped him in the hallway Monday morning. 'Elderman, I've spoken to the members of the faculty and they're all as excited as I. Would this afternoon be too soon? I can get you excused from any work you may be required to do.'

Fred looked bleakly at the professor's enthusiastic face. 'It's all right.'

'Splendid! Shall we say four-thirty then? My offices?'

'All right.'

'And may I make a suggestion?' asked the professor. 'I'd like you to tour the university �C all of it.'

When they separated, Fred went back down to the basement to put away his tools.

At four twenty-five, he pushed open the heavy door to the Department of Psychological Sciences. He stood there, waiting patiently, one hand on the knob, until someone in the large group of faculty members saw him. Professor Fetlock disengaged himself from the group and hurried over.

'Elderman,' he said,' come in, come in.'

'Professor, has Doctor Boone said anything more?' Fred insisted. 'I mean about -'

'No, nothing. Never fear, we'll get to it. But come along. I want you to �C Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please!'

Fred was introduced to them, standing in their midst, trying to look at ease when his heart and nerves were pulsing with a nervous dread.

'And did you follow my suggestion,' Fetlock asked loudly, 'and tour all the departments in the university?'

'Yes... sir.'

'Good, good.' Professor Fetlock nodded emphatically. 'That should complete the picture then. Imagine it, ladies and gentlemen �C the sum total of knowledge in our entire university �C all in the head of this one man!'

There were sounds of doubt from the faculty.

'No, no, I'm serious!' claimed Fetlock. The proof of the pudding is quite ample. Ask away.'

Fred Elderman stood there in the momentary silence, thinking of what Professor Fetlock had said. The knowledge of an entire university in his head. That meant there was no more to be gotten here then.

What now?

Then the questions came �C and the answers, dead-voiced and monotonous.

'What will happen to the sun in fifteen million years?'

'If the sun goes on radiating at its present rate for fifteen million years, its whole weight will be transformed into radiation.'

'What is a root tone?'

'In harmonic units, the constituent tones seem to have unequal harmonic values. Some seem to be more important and dominate the sounding unity. These roots are -'

All the knowledge of an entire university in his head.

'The five orders of Roman architecture.'

Tuscan, Doric, Corinthian, Ionic, Composite. Tuscan being a simplified Doric, Doric retaining the triglyphs, Corinthian characterised by -'

No more knowledge there he didn't possess. His brain crammed with it. Why?

'Buffer capacity?'

The buffer capacity of a solution may be defined as dx/dpH where dx is the small amount of strong acid or -'

Why?

'A moment ago. French.'

'II n'y a qu'un instant.'

Endless questions, increasingly excited until they were almost being shouted.

'What is literature involved with?'

'Literature is, of its nature, involved with ideas because it deals with Man in society, which is to say that it deals with formulations, valuations and -'

Why?

'Rules for masthead lights on steam vessels?' A laugh.

'A steam vessel when under way shall carry (a) on or in front of the foremast or, if a vessel without a foremast, then in the forepart of the vessel, a bright, white light so constructed as to -'

No laughter. Questions.

'How would a three-stage rocket take off?'

'The three-stage rocket would take off vertically and be given a slight tilt in an easterly direction, Brennschluss taking place about -'

'Who was Count Bernadotte?'

'What are the by-products of oil?'

'Which city is -'

'How can -'

'What is-'

'When did-'

And when it was over and he had answered every question they asked, there was a great, heavy silence. He stood trembling and yet numb, beginning to get a final knowledge.

The phone rang then and made everyone start.

Professor Fetlock answered it. 'For you Elderman.'

Fred walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver.

'Fred?' he heard Eva say.

'Oui'

'What?'

He twitched. 'I'm sorry, Eva. I mean yes, it's 1.'

He heard her swallowing on the other end of the line. 'Fred,' I... just wondered why you didn't come home, so I called your office and Charlie said -'

He told her about the meeting.

'Oh,' she said. 'Well, will you be �C home for supper?'

The last knowledge was seeping, rising slowly.

'I'll try, Eva. I think so, yes.'

'I been worried, Fred.'

He smiled sadly. 'Nothing to worry about, Eva.'

Then the message sliced abruptly across his mind and he said, 'Good-bye Eva,' and dropped the receiver. I have to go,' he told Fetlock and the others.

He didn't exactly hear what they said in return. The words, the transition from room to hall were blurred over by his sudden, concentrated need to get out on the campus.

The questioning faces were gone and he was hurrying down the hall on driven feet, his action as his speech had been �C unmotivated, beyond understanding. Something drew him on. He had spoken without knowing why; now he rushed down the long hallway without knowing why.

He rushed across the lobby, gasping for breath. The message he said. Come. It's time.

These things, these many things �C who would want to know them? These endless facts about all earthly knowledge.

Earthly knowledge...

As he came half tripping, half running down the building steps into the early darkness, he saw the flickering bluish white light in the sky. It was aiming over the trees, the buildings, straight at him.

He stood petrified, staring at it, and knew exactly why he had acquired all the knowledge he had.

The blue-white light bore directly at him with a piercing, whining hum. Across the dark campus, a young girl screamed.

Life on the other planets, the last words crossed his mind, is not only possibility but high probability.

Then the light hit him and bounced straight back up to its source, like lightning streaking in reverse from lightning rod to storm cloud, leaving him in awful blackness.

They found the old man wandering across the campus grass like a somnambulant mute. They spoke to him, but his tongue was still. Finally, they were obliged to look in his wallet, where they found his name and address and took him home.

A year later, after learning to talk all over again, he said his first stumbling words. He said them one night to his wife when she found him in the bathroom holding a sponge in his hand.

'Fred, what are you doing?'

'I been squeezed,' he said.