year since the founding of Rome, if we adopt the Roman calendar. It is the year 1375 in the Mohammedan calendar, and the hundred eightieth year of the independence of the United States.
'Humbly I ask then if it does not seem to you that a year referred to as 1957 alone and without qualification has no meaning.'
The Chief's still small voice said, 'I have always known this, my son; it was you who had to learn.'
'Then,' said Etheriel, quivering luminously with joy, 'let the very letter of your will be fulfilled and let the Day of Resurrection fall in 1957, but only when all the inhabitants of Earth unanimously agree that a certain year shall be numbered 1957 and none other.'
'So let it be,' said the Chief, and this Word re-created Earth and all it contained, together with the sun and moon and all the hosts of Heaven.
It was 7 A.M. on January 1, 1957, when R. E. Mann awoke with a start. The very beginnings of a melodious note that ought to have filled all the universe had sounded and yet had not sounded.
For a moment, he cocked his head as though to allow understanding to flow in, and then a trifle of rage crossed his face to vanish again. It was but another battle.
He sat down at his desk to compose the next plan of action. People already spoke of calendar reform and it would have to be stimulated. A new era must begin with December 2, 1944, and someday a new year 1957 would come; 1957 of the Atomic Era, acknowledged as such by all the world.
A strange light shone on his head as thoughts passed through his more-than-human mind and the shadow of Ahriman on the wall seemed to have small horns at either temple.
The Fun They Had
Margie even wrote about it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2157, she wrote, 'Today Tommy found a real book!'
It was a very old book. Margie's grandfather once said that when he was a little boy his grandfather told him that there was a time when all stories were printed on paper.
They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving the way they were supposed to- on a screen, you know. And then, when they turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it that it had had when they read it the first time.
'Gee,' said Tommy, 'what a waste. When you're through with the book, you just throw it away, I guess. Our television screen must have had a million books on it and it's good for plenty more. 1 wouldn't throw it away.'
'Same with mine,' said Margie. She was eleven and hadn't seen as many telebooks as Tommy had. He was thirteen.
She said, 'Where did you find it?'
'In my house.' He pointed without looking, because he was busy reading. 'In the attic.'
'What's it about?'
'School.'
Margie was scornful. 'School? What's there to write about school? I hate school.'
Margie always hated school, but now she hated it more than ever. The
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mechanical teacher had been giving her test after test in geography and she had been doing worse and worse until her mother had shaken her head sorrowfully and sent for the County Inspector.
He was a round little man with a red face and a whole box of tools with dials and wires. He smiled at Margie and gave her an apple, then took the teacher apart. Margie had hoped he wouldn't know how to put it together again, but he knew how all right, and, after an hour or so, there it was again, large and black and ugly, with a big screen on which all the lessons were shown and the questions were asked. That wasn't so bad. The part Margie hated most was the slot where she had to put homework and test papers. She always had to write them out in a punch code they made her leam when she was six years old, and the mechanical teacher calculated the mark in no time.
The Inspector had smiled after he was finished and patted Margie's head. He said to her mother, 'It's not the little girl's fault, Mrs. Jones. I think the geography sector was geared a little too quick. Those things happen sometimes. I've slowed it up to an average ten-year level. Actually, the over-all pattern of her progress is quite satisfactory.' And he patted Margie's head again.
Margie was disappointed. She had been hoping they would take the teacher away altogether. They had once taken Tommy's teacher away for nearly a month because the history sector had blanked out completely.
So she said to Tommy, 'Why would anyone write about school?'
Tommy looked at her with very superior eyes. 'Because it's not our kind of school, stupid. This is the old kind of school that they had hundreds and hundreds of years ago.' He added loftily, pronouncing the word carefully, 'Centuries ago.'
Margie was hurt. 'Well, I don't know what kind of school they had all that time ago.' She read the book over his shoulder for a while, then said, 'Anyway, they had a teacher.'
'Sure they had a teacher, but it wasn't a regular teacher. It was a man.'
'A man? How could a man be a teacher?'
'Well, he just told the boys and girls things and gave them homework and asked them questions.'
'A man isn't smart enough.'
'Sure he is. My father knows as much as my teacher.'
'He can't. A man can't know as much as a teacher.'
'He knows almost as much, I betcha.'
Margie wasn't prepared to dispute that. She said, 'I wouldn't want a strange man in my house to teach me.'
Tommy screamed with laughter. 'You don't know much, Margie. The teachers didn't live in the house. They had a special building and all the kids went there.'
'And all the kids learned the same thing?'
'Sure, if they were the same age.'
'But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught differently.'
'Just the same they didn't do it that way then. If you don't like it, you don't have to read the book.'
'I didn't say I didn't like it,' Margie said quickly. She wanted to read about those funny schools.
They weren't even half-finished when Margie's mother called, 'Margie! School!'
Margie looked up. 'Not yet, Mamma.'
'Now!' said Mrs. Jones. 'And it's probably time for Tommy, too.'
Margie said to Tommy, 'Can I read the book some more with you after school?'
'Maybe,' he said nonchalantly. He walked away whistling, the dusty old book tucked beneath his arm.
Margie went into the schoolroom. It was right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on and waiting for her. It was always on at the same time every day except Saturday and Sunday, because her mother said little girls learned better if they learned at regular hours.
The screen was lit up, and it said: 'Today's arithmetic lesson is on the addition of proper fractions. Please insert yesterday's homework in the proper slot.'
Margie did so with a sigh. She was thinking about the old schools they had when her grandfather's grandfather was a little boy. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. They learned the same things, so they could help one another on the homework and talk about it.
And the teachers were people. . . .
The mechanical teacher was flashing on the screen: 'When we add the fractions 1/2 and l/'-'
Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days. She was thinking about the fun they had.
Jokester
Noel Meyerhof consulted the list he had prepared and chose which item was to be first. As usual, he relied mainly on intuition.
He was dwarfed by the machine he faced, though only the smallest portion of the latter was in view. That didn't matter. He spoke with the offhand confidence of one who thoroughly knew he was master.
'Johnson,' he said, 'came home unexpectedly from a business trip to find his wife in the arms of his best friend. He staggered back and said, 'Max! I'm married to the lady so I have to. But why you?' ' 1 Meyerhof thought: Okay, let that trickle down into its guts and gurgle about a bit.
And a voice behind him said, 'Hey.'
Meyerhof erased the sound of that monosyllable and put the circuit he was using into neutral. He whirled and said, 'I'm working. Don't you knock?'
He did not smile as he customarily did in greeting Timothy Whistler, a senior analyst with whom he dealt as often as with any. He frowned as he would have for an interruption by a stranger, wrinkling his thin face into a distortion that seemed to extend to his hair, rumpling it more than ever.
Whistler shrugged. He wore his white lab coat with his fists pressing down within its pockets and creasing it into tense vertical lines. 'I knocked. You didn't answer. The operations signal wasn't on.'
Meyerhof grunted. It wasn't at that. He'd been thinking about this new project too intensively and he was forgetting little details.
Copyright (c) 1956 by Royal Publications, Inc.
And yet he could scarcely blame himself for that. This thing was important.
He didn't know why it was, of course. Grand Masters rarely did. That's what made them Grand Masters; the fact that they were beyond reason. How else could
