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The Instant Of Now
by
Dr. Kramer pulled a manila envelope from his pocket and laid it on the table, pushing back his chair. “I must go, Edward; these are the notes on my lecture. As I told you before, I really came here for something else. I wanted to talk to you, to get to understand you better. I think I’ve learned a great deal.”
The little professor was no longer smiling and the gentle touch of banter was gone from his voice. Dirrul felt a creeping fear rise within him. How much had he unconsciously revealed? How many of his own beliefs had Dr. Kramer been able to read between the lines?
Knowing them, would he guess Dirrul’s connection with the Movement? The professor’s bland naivete could be the mask of a police informer. Dirrul shivered, remembering the sudden punishment that had overtaken Glenna and Hurd.
At the door Dr. Kramer paused and said, “I’m entertaining two or three of the university faculty this evening, Edward. They’ve read some of the papers you have written for my class. I’d like to have you meet them. My apartment–eight-thirty.”
It was a command rather than an invitation. Dirrul accepted.
III
As soon as the professor had gone his fear vanished. What he had said to Dr. Kramer gave away no secrets and, in any case, he was crediting the professor with a perception he did not have. Ever since first joining the Movement, when he was still in school, Dirrul had taken such pains to conceal his motives that it would have required a good deal more than Dr. Kramer’s clumsy prying to reveal them.
He had deliberately patterned his attitudes and habits upon a composite average, even to a mild and starry-eyed criticism of the system which was more or less expected from the ambitious young men of the Air-command.
Dr. Kramer’s ecstatic praise of the system was the typical emotional reaction of the older generation. The professor may actually have been convinced of the truth of his own fuzzy propaganda. It was that sort of blind faith which still held the Planetary Union together.
Before returning to the Air-Command base at noon, Dirrul sought out Paul Sorgel and reported that Glenna and Hurd were safely on their way to Vinin. Apologetically, he mentioned Dr. Kramer’s invitation, expecting to elicit Sorgel’s scorn. Instead the Vininese agent was enthusiastic.
“Wonderful, Eddie!” he said. “Engineer it so they’ll ask you back. We’ve never got one of our people in with the older science crowd before. Feel them out–we might pick up some converts. I won’t need you at the next few meetings of the Movement–they’ll be largely reorganizational, you know. I’ve been reading over Glenna’s notes on the Plan. With one or two modifications we should be able to carry it out.”
At eight-thirty that evening Dirrul was admitted to Dr. Kramer’s apartment. He was neither overwhelmed by the professor’s excessive courtesy nor impressed by the other guests. They were from the faculty of the Advanced Air University, elderly, respected and distinguished, names known for a generation everywhere in the Planetary Union.
To them, Edward Dirrul was merely a curiosity, a live specimen mounted for analysis. He had criticised their system. They intended to wring out the strands of his motivation, classify them, speculate and theorize upon them–and perhaps, ultimately, do the whole thing up as a monograph.
Dirrul knew why Kramer had selected him for study rather than any of the current crop of university students who held similar views. A product of the educational philosophy of the Planetary Union, Dirrul was thoroughly adjusted and decidedly aware of both his own abilities and shortcomings.
He was, first of all, gifted in the use of abstractions and generalities. In rare combination with this flair he had superior mechanical intelligence and a talent for expressive verbalization. He dealt easily in the subtle skills of logic. If he set his mind to it, he could erect absolute proofs of diametrically opposed truths and few minds could detect the delicately concealed flaws in the reasoning.