There was a picture of himself, in hat and overcoat, perfectly motionless, as though a brief moving glimpse were being prolonged. A glance at the background told him when and where it had been taken—a year and a half ago, at a convention at Harvard. These telecast people must save up every inch of old news-film they ever took. There were views of Blanley campus, and interviews with some of the Modern History IV boys, including Dacre and Kendrick. That was one of the things they’d been doing with that jeep-mounted sound-camera, this afternoon, then. The boys, some brashly, some embarrassedly, were substantiating the fact that he had, a month ago, described yesterday’s event in detail. There was an interview with Leonard Fitch; the psychology professor was trying to explain the phenomenon of precognition in layman’s terms, and making heavy going of it. And there was the mobbing of Whitburn in front of Administration Center. The college president was shouting denials of every question asked him, and as he turned and fled, the guffaws of the reporters were plainly audible.
An argument broke out along the counter.
“I don’t believe it! How could anybody know all that about something before it happened?”
“Well, you heard that-there professor, what was his name. An’ you heard all them boys. …”
“Ah, college-boys; they’ll do anything for a joke!”
“After refusing to be interviewed for telecast, the president of Blanley College finally consented to hold a press conference in his office, from which telecast cameras were barred. He denied the whole story categorically and stated that the boys in Professor Chalmers’ class had concocted the whole thing as a hoax. …”
“There! See what I told you!”
“… stating that Professor Chalmers is mentally unsound, and that he has been trying for years to oust him from his position on the Blanley faculty but has been unable to do so because of the provisions of the Faculty Tenure Act of 1963. Most of his remarks were in the nature of a polemic against this law, generally regarded as the college professors’ bill of rights. It is to be stated here that other members of the Blanley faculty have unconditionally confirmed the fact that Doctor Chalmers did make the statements attributed to him a month ago, long before the death of Khalid ib’n Hussein. …”
“Yah! How about that, now? How’ya gonna get around that?”
Beckoning the waitress, he paid his check and hurried out. Before he reached the door, he heard a voice, almost stuttering with excitement:
“Hey! Look! That’s him!”
He began to run. He was two blocks from the café before he slowed to a walk again.
That night, he needed three shots of whiskey before he could get to sleep.
A delegation from the American Institute of Psionics and Parapsychology reached Blanley that morning, having taken a strato-plane from the East Coast. They had academic titles and degrees that even Lloyd Whitburn couldn’t ignore. They talked with Leonard Fitch, and with the students from Modern History IV, and took statements. It wasn’t until after General European History II that they caught up with Chalmers—an elderly man, with white hair and a ruddy face; a young man who looked like a heavyweight boxer; a middle-aged man in tweeds who smoked a pipe and looked as though he ought to be more interested in grouse-shooting and flower-gardening than in clairvoyance and telepathy. The names of the first two meant nothing to Chalmers. They were important names in their own field, but it was not his field. The name of the third, who listened silently, he did not catch.
“You understand, gentlemen, that I’m having some difficulties with the college administration about this,” he told them. “President Whitburn has even gone so far as to challenge my fitness to hold a position here.”
“We’ve talked to him,” the elderly man said. “It was not a very satisfactory discussion.”
“President Whitburn’s fitness to hold his own position could very easily be challenged,” the young man added pugnaciously.
“Well, then, you see what my position is. I’ve consulted my attorney, Mr. Weill and he has advised me to make absolutely no statements of any sort about the matter.”
“I understand,” the eldest of the trio said. “But we’re not the press, or anything like that. We can assure you that anything you tell us will be absolutely confidential.” He looked inquiringly at the middle-aged man in tweeds, who nodded silently. “We can understand that the students in your modern history class are telling what is substantially the truth?”
“If you’re thinking about that hoax statement of Whitburn’s, that’s a lot of idiotic drivel!” he said angrily. “I heard some of those boys on the telecast, last night; except for a few details in which they were confused, they all stated exactly what they heard me say in class a month ago.”
“And we assume,”—again he glanced at the man in tweeds—“that you had no opportunity of knowing anything, at the time, about any actual plot against Khalid’s life?”
The man in tweeds broke silence for the first time. “You can assume that. I don’t even think this fellow Noureed knew anything about it, then.”
“Well, we’d like to know, as nearly as you’re able to tell us, just how you became the percipient of this knowledge of the future event of the death of Khalid ib’n Hussein,” the young man began. “Was it through a dream, or a waking experience; did you visualize, or have an auditory impression, or did it simply come into your mind. …”
“I’m sorry, gentlemen.” He looked at his watch. “I have to be going somewhere, at once. In any case, I simply can’t discuss the matter with you. I appreciate your position; I know how I’d feel if data of historical importance were being withheld from me. However, I trust that you
