“Mind if I sit over here for a bit? I won’t be able to get a word in edgewise with those two for at least half an hour, and in any case neither of them really knows what they’re talking about. Cigarette?*

  Howson was on the point of refusing—no one at the hospital habitually smoked, since even with carcinogen-free tobacco it might turn out to be a costly luxury—when it occurred to him that this young man had no means of knowing that he waa anything other than what his vacant face suggested, yet had accepted him without strain and with perfect aplomb, as a fellow man. He took the cigarette with a word of thanks.

  "What’s it all about, anyway?” he ventured as he bent to take a light.

  "Charms,” said the other round his cigarette, contriving to draw in tha flame and speak simultaneously, “is of course perfectly right in insisting that Jay is doing thoroughly incompetent work. She is totally wrong in maintaining that he is merely repeating something which has been done hundreds of times. He isn’t—he's got an idea in his head which is fairly original, but he simply isn't good enough to cope with it. He thinks he is. That's about all there is to it.”

  "Does this happen a lot?"

  “It goes on ail the flaming time.” said the young man in a ponderous and aggrieved tone.

  “And what sort of work?”

  “Uh—oh, bit hard to define. I suppose you might call it liquid mobiles. Char mas got it into her bead that it’s derived in equal parts from Hero's syphons, the fountains at Versailles and a fireworks display, and consequently isn't original, while Jay kids himself he never borrowed an idea from anyone or anywhere. Main trouble is he ought to be a chemist and hydrodynamicist as well as a guy with an eye for a lighting effect, and he isn’t, so he can't make the most of the technique's very genuine possibilities."

  About twenty-two or twenty-three, Howson judged as he looked at his new acquaintance. He was of medium height, plump, good-looking, with untidy black hair and heavy glasses. He wore an elderly shirt open at the neck, dark trousers with light stains on the knees, and open sandals. An enormous watch caught the light on his wrist A sheaf of pens and pencils was clipped in his shirt pocket

  "You’re students?" suggested Howson. The other shook his head.

  “No more no more. We got a wee bit dissatisfied with academic standards a few months ago, and since the academic standard-bearers were likewise less than pleased with us ws agreed to sign a truce and get the hell out ’Nother drink?”

  “No, let me,” said Howson, and signalled a waiter. He paid with the topmost of a bundle of notes which made his companion whistle with awe.

  “It always gives me pleasure to accept a drink from the rich," he said solemnly. "It means I am doing my humble bit towards the redistribution of capital.”

  “Better set 'em up for those two as well," Howson told the waiter, indicating Jay and Charma. "Uh—what's your own particular line?”

  "I compose. Badly. What's yours?"

  "I’m a doctor” said Howson after a second's hesitation, and his companion nodded with interest.

  "I'd never have guessed. Have to tell Brian about that—he's, an embryo sociologist we know, who's doing a survey to correlate professions and trades with physical types. Mark you. it’s not all that important that you should be a doctor -someone like you is calculated to throw a spanner in the works no matter what you do for a living—a sort of wild variable, in fact."

  Howson was astonished to find himself uttering his reply with hardly any self-consciousness. "Unless I'd been a circus dwarf or something like that,” he said.

  "True,” said tha other reflectively. "Ob, what the hell—he could find an excuse to fit you into the theory anyway. I keep trying to wipe that complacent grin off his faae best one I came up with yet was a woman of fifty-odd, fat as a hippopotamus, weighed about three hundred pounds, who'd been teaching dancing for thirty years. He even fitted her in, blast him. Oh well—My, you've managed to quiet them down!**

  Howson glanced round. Charms was lifting her newly-filled glass to him. “Your d o i n g?" she Hid. "Thanks 1” And drank thirstily.

  “Rudi!" Jay Mid with a glance at the clock on the wall. “Things ought to be waking up at Clara's by now. Think we could drop by?"

  "Good idea. Hey, this guy here's a doctor—I think we might tell Brian that and sec how his face drops, no?"

  “Why not?" Hid Charma, but Jay pulled a wry face.

  "He'd never believe it. He didn't believe in the dancing teacher till we took him round to her studio."

  "AH right, we'll prove it to him. Is he going to be at Clara's tonight?"

  "When did you know that man to miss a party?” said Jay bitterly.

  "I didn't,” agreed Rudi. "Okay— that is, if you’re not doing anything

  —uh—"

  "Gerry," supplied Howson. “Well. I'm afraid—" And he suddenly heard himself Hying something to Pandit Singh about having at least some chance of standing up to the world now. Besides, if he could face people of any kind, it would be people like these—iconoclastic, angry about prejudice, ready to accept him if only because he was unusual and unique. He chopped off the sentence he had begun, and grinned instead.

  "On course," said Rudi with apparent irrelevance; Howson assumed him to mean "that's fine" or something similar, and wondering at his own self-possession did the drinks have something to do with it, he accompanied them down the aisle to the door.

  “Taking a cab?" he suggested as they reached the street, and Jay gave a hoot of laughter.

  “Jay, you are the most unobservant bastard.” said Rudi severely. “Just be* cause you're long-legged and bursting with vitamin C you think everyone shares your passion for wearing out shoe-leather. Now I, since Fm observant even if you’re not, happen to have observed that Gerry here has a wad of money on him big enough to buy us a cab for the trip. Yes, certainly we'll take a cab," he finished, turning to Howson with an elaborate bow.

  By this time, of course, Howson knew that if he went no further on his journey he had achieved at least partial success.

  He’d missed this kind of people— somehow. To be expected, really. One of the most significant effects of the impact of an improved standard of living, as he had superficially and intellectually been aware, is to postpone the age at which opinions congeal in the individual. Someone forced by poverty to avoid wasting time on enlarging his horizons which he needed for simply staying alive adopted the attitudes, ready-made, of his environment. This was one of the reasons why students formed the backbone of a good many early and mid-twentieth century revolutionary movements.

  And there was a simple and encapsulated reason why, when their cab drew up at tbe address Jay had given the driver. Rudi picked up Howson’s bog for him and gave him a hand out of the vehicle. And why Howson didn't raise an objection.

  Improved standards of living hadn't made very much impact at all on his early life.

  As he scrambled up the narrow stairway of the apartment building they had come to. he was asking himself whether they might be expected to have adopted attitudes and prejudices towards telepathists, if they hadn’t done so towards dwarfs and cripples. He didn't feel tempted to find out the direct way—the whole question was too delicate.

  Hie detachment returned to temper his sudden wave of enthusiasm, however, after he had actually been at the party for an hour or eo. The premises were small—a bed-sitting room, with minuscule kitchen adjacent—and there were a lot of people in them— not Including Brian, the man he was supposed to have come to meet, but including a good many other students. For the first few minutes he rather enjoyed being shown off as a spanner to be put into Brian's works; then, though, after a rapid and superficial scries of introductions, tbe three who had brought him became embroiled in conversation with older friends, and left him to his own devices.

  He was at two disadvantages then; his stature made it hard for the other people to keep him in on the argument unless they were sitting down and he was standing, and there was little opportunity to sit down except on the floor. On top of that, his voice was rather quiet at the best of times, and his words lard to catch if there was any competing noise. Here there was a lot of competing noise—voices raised in heated disagreement, cups and glasses and bottles clattering, even before someone arrived with a concertina and began to play regardless of who cared to listen,

  He was beginning to feel a little lost and out of place when be noticed that someone had incautiously vacated a few square inches of the edge of the bed. next to the wall. He sat down and leaned back: someone came past and poured him a fresh drink, and after that no one paid him any attention for several minutes.

  He occupied himself in eavesdropping on a number of the conversations —it was impolite, but it was too interesting to be forgone. Tbe only other student company he had ever found himself in was while they were training him for his work as a curative telepathist, and since he had had to instruct himself most of the time, he had missed the air of freedom he found here. More: there were so few telepathists that the entire company of his fellow-students during his training period numbered fewer than there were people In this one room.

  Group A (he categorised them in the course of a brief survey): two girls, apparently sisters, in yellow, and a man of twenty-five or so ^subject under examination—religion as a necessity of human social evolution. Group B: Jay, whom he knew, a longhaired boy who might still be in his teens, another with a slight stammer which kept getting in the way of his arguments, and an ugly woman with glasses and a fringe; subject—a revue for which Jay was doing the decor. Group C: a good-looking, girl of twenty and a man in a red sweater; subject—each other. Howson felt a stir of envy and firmly diverted his attention.

  Group D: four men with very loud voices standing close to the concertina-player; subject (sparked off, it seemed, by the instrument)—influence of new musical devices on the subsequent work of composers. One of the group kept trying to talk about his own work; the others kept forcibly steering him away from it. Group E: two girls, one slightly drunk, the other perfectly sober, and two men; subject—the drunken girl’s views on modem poetry. Group F: three men, two in open-necked shirts and one in a sweater: subject—the impossibility of living up to one's own ideals in later life.

  Howson was flirting dangerously with the idea of joining in one of these conversations (any of them bar Group C) by telepathic means, when he realised the suggestion probably came from the drink before last and stopped himself with a sigh. Looking about him with his physical eyesight.

  he became aware of a girl who had sat down neat to him while he was paying attention somewhere else, and was now looking at him with an amused expression. She was young, and fairly attractive, wearing a shapeless cardigan in a blue which., clashed horribly with her green eyes.

  “Good evening," she said with slight formality and more than a hint of mockery. “Meet me. I’m your hostess."

  Howson sat up. "I'm sorry," he began. "Rudi and Jay insisted on my coming—”

  "Oh, you’re welcome." she said, dismissing the point with a wave of her hand. “If anyone ought to make apologies, I think I should, for neglecting a guest for so long. I just haven’t had a spare moment. However: are you enjoying yourself r

  Howson nodded. "Yes, very much, thank you."

  “I thought you might be, even if you didn't seem to be. What were you doing—drinking In atmosphere?"

  "I suppose you might mil it that" Howson tried to keep his voice at it* loudest “I was actually thinking that I'd never been in a room with quite so many interesting young people in It."

  "Bloody, isn't it? I know. What really makes me wild is that at parties like this at least s dozen world-changing schemes get dreamed up, and never get put into practice. Oh well—it’s been happening for centuries, to be conservative, and it's likely to go on happening. Might be a good idea to note down all the schemes and make something out of them—book, or pamphlet—in the hope that that way they’d get to someone who could make use of them.'* She unfocused her eyes, as if looking at s future possibility. "Might have a crack at it. at that. But that’s probably just another of those same world-changing schemes."

  "You're a writer?"

  "Potential Who told you?” Howson shrugged; he didn’t do it very well, for reasons connected with the withered muscles of his lower back. "I wasn't told. But you seem to have so many people here who write or do something of the kind.”

  The girl (her name would be Clara, if she was the hostess) offered him a cigarette; he refused, but borrowed someone else’s burning one to light hers for her. (Where the hell had he got that from? Certainly he had never done such a thing in his life. Movie scene, perhaps, left over from— from... It came as a considerable shock to realise that he was actually in that same city where he had seen the film.)

  “Uh-huh," Clara was saying. "No, but me, I suffer from a congenital dissatisfaction with words. I mean-hell, if you just took the people at this party, or even a group of them, and attempted to explore just the few hours they spend here fully, you'd wind up with something twice the size of Proust. And you stilt couldn't be sure you were communicating with your audience. What one needs , is a technique which would enable a pre-Columbian Amerind to understand a story about a twentieth-century Chinese. Then—brother! You'd be a writer!”

  “I see what you mean,” said How-son.

  "How about you? What's your line?”

  "I'm a doctor,” said Howson. “Rudi wanted to bring me here to meet someone who's trying to correlate physical types with trades and professions. Brian was the name. I think.” "

  Oh, yes. Rudi's forever trying to prove he's wrong. I imagine you made him think pretty hard to fit you in. What did he say?”

  ”I don't know. I haven't been introduced to him yet!"

  "Well, if that isn't Rudi all over... Damn it, Brian's been here for the better part of an hour. —Oh, maybe he'll remember sooner or later that be brought you here. Do you mind? Or do you want to get it over with and go?”

  Howson shook his head and smiled. Someone tapped his arm and held a bottle over his now empty gloss; ha shook his head and put the glass down on the bedside table.

  "Who or what is Rudi exactly ?” be asked. He was rather more interested in Rudi than in the other two whom he had met in the bar that evening; he could, of course, have found out everything be wanted to know with one quick telepathic sweep, but he shrank from the notion as he would have done from the idea of intruding on—say—Pandit Singh's mind without invitation. Rudi struck him as having a somewhat more mature personality than most of the people here assembled.

  "Rudi?” Clara blew smoke through her nostrils. ‘‘Rudi Allef is his full name. Half-Israeli. I gather. He came here under a grant * couple of years* ago, and he was doing—well, I think be was doing—some rather good work. Only it wasn’t the work he was supposed to be doing to qualify for the grant. So they discontinued it. So Jay and Charms Horne—”

  "Jay and Charms Horne? Brother and sister?"

  Clan stared at him. "No, whatever gave you that extraordinary idea? They're married."

  “Married! Good lord!”

  "Well—but why shouldn't they be?"

  "It was just the way they were rowing with each other when I first saw them—doesn't matter. Sorry, go on.”

  “Ah-h-h—yes. So Jay and Charma, anyway, being slightly crazy, as you might expect in view of their having got married under the circumstances, quit in sympathy. Sorry, you were asking about Rudi. Radi is—well, a problem.”

  “Odd you should say that.” Howson remarked, puzzled. “He—well, obviously you know him better than I do. But I would have Mid he was rather a well-balanced and unproblematical person.”

  ”He seems that way.” Clara looked across the room to where the subject of their discussion sat on the floor next the concertina-player. Her eyes unfocused again. “Maybe one of these days, if he keeps up the act long enough, he'll convince himself that that's the way be really is. And a good thing, too. Otherwise—he will suffer a serious breakdown, and probably not be very much good to himself or anybody for a long, long time."

  “Does the probability show?”

  She came beck to the present and Shook herself very slightly. "If you know where to look for it. Sorry, I think I ought to go into circulation and attend to the other guests. See you later ”

  She had just got to her feet when •the turned back. “I don't mean to be rude,” she Mid. "But you seem to be a bit of a problem too. Are you?” Howson looked her as hard in the eyes as he could. "You seem to be good at spotting problems,” he answered. •Make your own mind up.”

  ”I deserved that,” she Mid, and turned away.

  And after all that, Howson realised, ha still hadn’t found out very much about Rudi A lief.

  But at that moment Rudi himself remembered about Brian's sociological theories, dragged Brian away from his argument, and presented Howson to him. More than ever, as he looked at Rudi's eager grin, Howson found himself tempted to take one quick glance—just one!—inside that wellshaped head.

  And if he did, and proceeded to dis. play—even inadvertently—a knowledge of Rudi he couldn't possibly have obtained ordinarily in the course of a abort acquaintance... ? Howson suddenly realised that he felt what it must have been like for a mulatto "passing” in tho southern U.S.A. a few years before. In that moment the room seemed to grow cold.

  He just hadn't known this sort of feeling before. He was s dwarf and a cripple: all right, that much passed for granted. But there were some people, and might be some even here, who considered him alien. Maybe, when the time came to tell them (he didn’t question that he would get to know them well enough to consider telling them) they would shrug and continue to regard him as a nice guy. Or maybe not.

  Perhaps, in sheer self-defence, he ought to find out their opinions before committing himself—? He could do it in a moment!

  Then he realised he had failed to catch something that was said to him. and reflexively picked the words out of Rudi's mind. He was halfway through his answer before he realised what he had done, and the room grew even colder. He was so used to being among people who knew him for what he was that be had acquired (inevitably) habits such as that one. The shock made him stumble in his answer, but be recovered and went on.

 

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