Monday
From the portico of Paterson Hall, Kerri scanned the Quad for Danger and recited the usual defense in her mind:
Veil.
Hide from Them! Hide!
Be invisible. Be quiet and small. Blend in.
Leave no footprint They might see. Make no noise They might hear.
Hide from Them.
Veil....
She unfolded the note and looked at it again. How stupid do They think I am, she asked herself angrily. Do They suppose I have not learned to be careful?
It paid to be careful, always. It paid to remember. Kerri was proficient at both taking care and remembering. She could, for instance, recollect every word of her conversation with Professor Greystone's secretary moments ago.
“May I help you? Oh, good afternoon, Miss Dale-Townsend. Have you come to see the Professor?”
“Good afternoon. No, I have no appointment today. I received a message that my regular recitation time has been changed.”
“Yes?”
“I should like to confirm the time, please. It is for Thursday.”
“I see. One moment. Yes, Miss Dale-Townsend. The Professor has found it necessary to reschedule his Thursday afternoon appointments for this week. He put you down for eleven o'clock, and he'll only be able to meet with you the half hour. Here it is in the book. Will that be all right?”
“Perfectly, thank you. I only wanted confirmation of the message.”
“Of course. That is always wise.”
Not only wise: necessary. Kerri refolded the note and put it back into her pocket, smiling a small, bitter smile, remembering, as she scanned the Quad for Danger again.
She stood at the top of a sweep of stone steps in the shadow of a fat white column, looking out over her place, her birthright, the ancient University of Yendys. Before her the Great Quadrangle drowsed in smoky afternoon sunshine. Long autumn shadows striped the shaven grass and swept walks, and leaves dropped gently from venerable oaks and eucalyptus over crumbling monuments—the statues and benches, the obelisks, markers, and fountains dedicated in verdigrised bronze to long forgotten graduating classes and unremembered events. It might have been the Age of Dreams, so still and eternal was the afternoon.
The term had barely reached midpoint. Finals were still comfortably far off. Anxiety had not yet begun to hold sway over the temptations of the River, the playing fields, and the Pavilion—plenty of time to doze and dream. Half a dozen students, solitary or in pairs, sprawled on the lawns, bent over books. A pack of soccer players jogged by on their way to the fields, while two Senior Fellows in black gowns strolled sedately down the central walk, long sleeves billowing behind them. An elderly man in overalls and heavy gloves hummed an Escher fugue as he raked fallen leaves into a pile. The black-gowned Senior Fellows passed him without a second glance.
But Kerri, lurking on the porch of Paterson Hall, knew him. Six years out of seven he was a distinguished Professor of Natural History at another university. In this, the seventh year, he was content to let his mind lie fallow to all but music, growing things and the more interesting secrets of a long, productive career. She, newly returned from exile, still dispossessed, could only imagine what those secrets might be.
Briefly the scene erupted into life as men and women spilled out of the venerable stone buildings. The professor leaned pensively upon the handle of his rake, watching them with the air of a farmer surveying a well-grown field. They looked a good lot, the current crop of undergraduates, Kerri reflected, and well they ought to. A good third of them came from fine Academic families. Any number of their parents could be former pupils of the man with the rake. The more uncertain majority would be hopeful Peasants and Cits on their way forward in the world, while the few with brighter plumage and following retinue would be the odd Stockholder son or daughter up for a little polishing before taking on a hereditary round of duties and pleasures.
Suddenly the professor smiled and raised his cap to a young woman approaching him down the center promenade. She was dressed as a student, but her long jacket was daringly cut to suggest the lines of a Fellow's robe, and she moved with the easy assurance that could only belong to an elite Sponsored graduate. Her lips were painted the same red as the scarf that fluttered at her throat. Smooth bobbed hair swung along her jawline like a fringe of black silk.
She raised her eyebrows and smiled at the old man, sketching a bow that startled a pair of passing sophomores. She knew him. One day she would be his equal. This was implicit in the smiles, the bow, the crimson silk scarf.
The enemy. Kerri shrank back into the shadow of the column and hoped Zarah had not noticed her. Surely she was safe. Not only had she taken the usual Precautions, but she was dressed for blending in today, as most days. Her cardigan possessed the requisite Academic redness, her pleated skirt the shortness, her long, honey-colored hair the smooth order of a female student with every promise of the University yet before her. And yet, there was no air of the embryonic Faculty Member about her, nor could there properly be, by right. She could have passed for an undergraduate—and did when it suited her, as it did now.
Holding a notebook against her chest like a shield, she stood motionless a moment longer as the hurrying tide of scholars surged around her on the brick-paved porch. Her anxious brown eyes scanned the grassy space restlessly, returning more than once to the man with the rake and his black-haired companion. He had recognized and greeted Zarah. Might he not remember the scandal? Remember it and recognize Kerri?
As the two separated, she took a deep breath, clutched her notebook a little more firmly, and clumped gracelessly down the wide steps, trailing a painted canvas book bag some seven years out of fashion. Taking cover in the herd of undergraduates, she pulled in close every tendril of her individuality and cloaked it once more with the Veil. The departing graduate, black satin hair swinging behind her, did not turn around or slow her confident march toward the Memorial Library.
Even the distinguished professor, fooled, glanced only briefly at the young woman in the red cardigan. Freshman, he must think, noting the unfinished look, the lolloping gait. Or so Kerri hoped, aware of his eyes on her. The Veil left her unable to detect any beam of recognition, but she had in mind his reputation: He had no eye for the effervescent whims of fashion in, for example, book bags, but he could still pick out a comely pair of legs. These she could not help providing for his appreciation, but she intended to do so for no longer than necessary. She drifted unobtrusively deeper into the nearest knot of noisy pedestrians and then turned off at the path toward the River Gate. When she risked a look back, the old man had returned to his fugue and his raking. There were, after all, many pairs of well-made legs passing daily through his ken. He would forget her before she left the Quad.
At the gate the Kerri paused for a moment in the shade of the arch and crammed the notebook into the canvas bag. Again she scanned the quadrangle, her eyes once more coming to rest on the man with the rake. He had resumed his work, his back to her, and no one else took any notice of her. No eyes followed her now from the open or from any of the hundreds of windows that looked down on walks and lawns.
The Veil had kept her safe. It was fading now just enough to let her feel for Power, for Danger, but the useful, hidden sense was quiescent, cool. She felt no attention focused on her from window, lawn, or doorway, from Them. Their terrifying special awareness was directed elsewhere just now. And Zarah was gone, all unaware.
For several minutes more, color, noise and movement whirled through the quadrangle and then ebbed away, leaving the same landscape of light and shadow and a new arrangement of motionless figures on the grass. Up and down the ancient shaded walks footsteps began to beat in quick time.
In the Old Quad, half a kilometer away, the tower clock announced the hour. It was a safe two minutes fast and had been so for at least three generations. Every quarter hour, Old Paul spoke first to give warning, sending scholars and Fellows alike scurrying toward their destinations. You have two minutes, said the voice of Old Paul's great bell. Hurry!
As the oaken doors of Tempest Hall closed behind the last black-gowned figure, the bells of the University began to pronounce. High and low, from one end of the campus to the other, they gave Old Paul his affirmation. Four o'clock it was and is and ever shall be, amen. Forever Monday. Eternally April.
Nothing changes here, Kerri reflected. We come, we depart, we return. The University is the same as it was the day our parents left it, the day our grandparents arrived as freshmen. Intact from the Age of Dreams, it is the heart of our world. Nothing ever alters its steady beat.
This was an interesting conceit. Hardly original, but interesting. She played with it a few minutes more as she lingered within the arch of the gate, calling up appropriate quotations out of her well-stocked memory.
Assignment in freshman composition: Write an essay comparing the University to a part of the human body. Support your thesis with examples from the classic literature. Four to five pages. To be handed in at noon on Friday.
Kerri smiled. She would tell Nicholas. He would be amused, and the jest would soften her telling of the other thing. Or maybe she would not mention that. Her fingers touched the note from Professor Greystone's secretary, making sure it was safe in her pocket. The Veil melted softly into nothing. She was Real again.
No menace existed, of course, nothing more than some trifling mistake, or someone in the Department playing a juvenile trick, someone who could not tell a worthy target from a straw image. Nothing more, perhaps, than the nervous imaginings of a precariously balanced mind. Kerri shook her head and grimaced to herself. There was nothing like the sight of Zarah to make her feel like a child again, playing stupid prep school games. Spying and disguises! The enemy! Absurd to think of Zarah, even Zarah, in such a way. Enemies and warfare were, like so many other miseries of the Age of Dreams, long extinct, and good riddance!
She turned and passed under the arch toward the River, cutting obliquely across the grass between the slender trunks of towering gum trees. Her rough-edged gawkiness disappeared; there was now no trace of freshman awkwardness in her body. She moved with the balanced grace of a Graduate of the University, which indeed she had been for over four years.
She reassured herself that the professor had not recognized her. It would be embarrassing to attract his notice, even as merely her father's daughter. She would rather not bring to his attention the humiliating fact that she had finally given in and returned to her studies—as a Commoner. She remembered that he had sent a note of condolences to her mother at the time of their bereavement, but he had shown no further interest in the widow or daughter of his deceased colleague. Nor was there any reason why he should.
Kerri's only other contact with him had been a formal correspondence seeking Sponsorship for graduate study. In reply to her carefully composed and painstakingly calligraphed letter of application she had received a brief, typewritten notice of refusal from the professor's secretary. It had, with meticulous politeness, conveyed the impression that she was wasting her time (not to mention the far more valuable time of any Faculty member she approached in the matter) seeking a Sponsor.
She had almost given up then. If it had not been for Grandmother she would have given up, but Grandmother wouldn't hear of it. “It is no different,” she had said to Kerri, “from the reply he gives to all the scholars he turns down. Some of the Faculty are like that. It has nothing to do with that old fuss over that dreadful girl. To be sure, he never paid it any mind if he even heard of it. You keep asking! There is no shame in taking every year the rules allow you to find a Sponsor. This family has been Faculty too long to let go without fighting to the last minute.”
Kerri had gone on trying. The sole descendant of six elite generations would persevere to the last. In five bitter years there was scarcely any Fellow at any University she had not asked at least once. This year would be the end, one way or another, whether she went on and finished her degree or not. She would have done her duty to the last minute, and she would have let the family down anyway, if it were not for Nicholas. Their child, if they ever had one, would not be shut out of the Faculty, but it would be from his side they would inherit, not hers.
At least she knew her father's old rival was here in Yendys disguised as a gardener, and naturally he knew Zarah, who had inexplicably changed her name to Arzelle and somehow become the darling of the whole University of Yendys. He was one of Them, by association at least, and now she could be on the lookout to avoid him. The Veil was reliable, but it was safer not to put it too much to the test. That would attract Their attention, sooner or later.
This is frightful! Kerri said to herself. When will I grow up? I've not been this bad in years. It must be coming back here to be a student again—so strange after so long. And those dementings last month. Everyone's nervous; it isn't just me. But I am a Graduate Student now. I have no time for the old nonsense. The Game is over. From now on I must try to be Real all the time.
She arrived at the River Path and turned to the right, downstream. She liked the River Path. One could walk it all the way to the lower streetcar stop and catch the trolley after it passed the University Asylum. Indeed, it was the only way to get home without seeing the Asylum at all. And there was a place a little farther along, a flat rock among trees, where she could put in a good half hour of reading before she went to catch her train.
As she rounded the last bend, she saw that her spot was already occupied. A woman of her own age sat upon the rock surrounded by small piles of papers, each weighed down with a stone. She was in the act of sorting several more dusty pages. If these had not been covered with mathematical symbols, Kerri would have taken her for a Cit in her yellow overalls and sandals.
The woman looked up and grinned as Kerri approached. “All over the bloomin' bank!” she exclaimed in the broadest Cit accent. “Any more breeze and they would've 'alf gone in the River. Me notes,” she added, to the baffled look on Kerri's face. “I dropped 'em.”
“Oh,” Kerri replied unencouragingly. The woman was obviously a Cit. The notes, however, looked like graduate mathematics. What the two were doing together on University property was none of Kerri's business. She smiled coolly and prepared to pass on by. She could do her reading at the Station.
“Hold on a minute. I say! I mean, I beg your pardon.” The other rose to her feet and pushed a handful of brown curls out of her eyes. “You recite to Professor Greystone, do you not?”
Kerri looked back, startled. The question was bold, almost rude, coming from a Cit, but the woman's accent had vanished. She spoke now in the purest Academic, and her amber eyes looked straight into Kerri's without the shy wariness one so often saw in women of other castes who sought to improve their fortunes in the fastnesses of Academy or University. “I beg your pardon?” Kerri said coldly.
“Forgive me, but I thought I remembered you from the reception at the beginning of term. For Professor Greystone's students? Do you not recite to him?”
“Yes. Yes, I do,” Kerri replied cautiously, trying to remember that day, trying to decide if she had ever seen this woman before.
“So do I. That is, he is my Auditor for Classics, this year. I also recite Mathematics to Madame Professor Abbot-Remarque. We met at the reception, but you probably do not remember me.”
“I was there. Forgive me, I do not.”
“Weberly is my name. Loren Barr Weberly.” She dusted off a rather grimy hand and held it out.
Kerri accepted it and shook hands solemnly. “Kerrith Nash Dale-Townsend,” she announced herself formally. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Weberly.”
She had been mistaken. With a name like that, the woman was no Cit; she was Academic, whatever she looked like, and she was a Graduate Student. Professor Greystone did not take undergraduates for coaching and auditing, and he rarely took Cits or Peasants of any degree, although any person who had Graduate status was legally an Academic, whatever caste had given them birth. Furthermore, any graduate student capable of taking on a double program of recitations possessed an intellect to be reckoned with and, probably, a Sponsor. Kerri hoped she had not given offense.
“I am happy to see you again, Miss Dale-Townsend,” said Miss Weberly with sincere pleasure. She grinned again. “I do not know many people here yet.”
“You did not earn your B.A. here then?”
“No. I graduated from Dalton.”
“I see. Well, you will find your way around in no time.”
She managed to extricate herself politely with a few more words and continued on along the path. My reading time, she thought with annoyance. Now it's half gone, and the station will be too noisy and distracting. Bother chatty people who scatter their miserable papers all over my rock! What an odd person, though. Anyone would think she wanted to be taken for a Cit, with that impossible yellow garment and her hair all over the place. And sandals in April! But her accent—she wasn't faking the Academic—and the name was all right. It must have been some kind of joke. Maybe they look upon these things differently in Dalton.
The streetcar to the Grand Central Station was full of homebound students chattering like currawongs, and the Station itself was noisy, with every bench crowded. There was not a seat to be had anywhere, which was no surprise. Kerri gave up her plan of doing some reading before her train came. She occupied herself with reviewing the lines of the previous week's recitation, giving careful attention to the diction, stress and mood. It was difficult, though, even for a scholar of her experience, when there was so much distraction. After no more than thirty lines she found her mind's voice trailing off, her eyes choosing people to watch.
The cavernous depot was packed with Citizens in bright, untidy clothing, scarfed Peasant women on their way home from the day's market in the city, and little gangs of shrill, uniformed schoolchildren. Most of the University students cleared out immediately, their lodgings being nearby or reached by one of the local cars. Now would be a good time to chat with someone, if studying proved impossible, but Kerri saw nobody she knew.
Suddenly a murmur approached through the babble of the crowd, a sibilant word echoed back and forth with awe. Stockholder! Kerri craned her neck to see the cause of their sensation and caught a glimpse of a tall, elegant figure striding through a path that cleared automatically. There was a flash of jewels, a faint wave of exotic scent. Behind a delicate eye-veil sprinkled with tiny diamonds, grey eyes stared without interest over the heads of the fascinated crowd.
The Stockholder was a woman. Kerri had seen her before and read of her in the newspapers. Her name was Margarethe Girrawang Fairchild, and she had been very much a favorite of the society columns three or four years before, when her eccentricities had still possessed the attraction of novelty. The Cits—and the papers—had grown bored with her, but she was still renowned for the excellence of her taste in all aesthetic matters. Her name never failed to appear among the winners of those esoteric competitions so beloved of the Stockholder caste.
The crowd drew in behind Margarethe Girrawang Fairchild and her retinue, and Kerri lost sight of them. She turned and pushed her way through the people behind her. It was time to board the train for home.
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