December 29, 2025 • 25 mins
https://www.solgoodmedia.com - Listen to hundreds of audiobooks, thousands of short stories, and ambient sounds all ad free! "Mind Webs Daily" rekindles the charm of old time radio with a daily infusion of psychological and speculative tales. Each day offers a unique journey into the enigmatic and often eerie realms of the human mind, reminiscent of classic radio storytelling but with a contemporary flair. Perfect for daily listeners who appreciate a blend of nostalgia and modern narrative depth.
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Speaker 2 (00:38):
Mind.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Welcome to a half hour of mind Web short stories
from the World Expectator Fiction. This is Michael Hansen the
(01:38):
mind Web story. This evening is Remembrance to Come, a
story by gene Wolf which appeared in Orbit six, a
collection edited by Damon Knight and copyright nineteen seventy. Leaves
in his face, he had chosen in order to prepare
himself to go surface and walk in the sycamore shaded
(02:01):
park where he and Ruth had once received their diplomas. Surface,
the air had been cool and fragment, with autumn and
rain just fast. But once underground and on the belt again,
there was only the never changing orderlessness and the eighty
three degree warmth set to make co eds and body
paint comfortable. He was always a little apprehensive when he
(02:23):
had to go in a classroom. Now already this semester
he had received two student Senate reprimands for speaking sharply
to undergraduates, and he couldn't afford a third. On the
other side of the door, he could hear the coughing
and shuffling the feet. He reminded himself that these were
only more of the sleek young people he had watched
(02:44):
streaking across the campus and their bikes a few minutes before.
He glanced furtively at his notes, then entered the room
and walked to the projector console. By a gesture, he
called on a girl in the front row, choosing her
because he knew she had a clear, sweet voice, which
would help quiet the noisier boys. She rose gracefully, the
(03:05):
courtesy he could not demand but appreciated, and parted the
long hair hanging over her face before she said, I thought,
And then she paused, embarrassed. She was wearing the broadest
possible belt, and in spite of the painted arrow stabbing
inward on her thighs, it seemed.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Probable that she had not yet rejected.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Completely the conservative influence of an old fashioned family. She
went on to say, I thought it was just lovely,
the lovely park whatever it was, and the lovely old
carriage the woman rode in. I mean, I thought it
was just shattering. She sat down abruptly. He nodded in
(03:45):
appreciation and said, no, let's see it again, shall we
touched a button on the console before him. Instantly, the
scene filled the wall in front of the class, an
ink drawing filled in with broad splashes of temperon from memory,
he quoted the idea of perfection which I had within me,
(04:06):
I had bestowed in that other time, upon the height
of a victoria, upon the raking thinness of those horses,
frenzied and light his wasps upon the wing with bloodshot eyes,
like the cruel steeds of the almud, which now smitten
by the desire to see again what I had once loved,
as ardent as the desire that had driven me many
(04:26):
years before along the same paths I wished to see
renewed before my eyes. At the moment when Mademoiselle Swan's
enormous coachman, supervised by a groom no bigger than his fist,
and his infantile with Saint George.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
In the picture, endeavored to curb the ardor.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Of the flying steel tipped pinions with which they thundered
along the ground. The legend over Mademoiselle Swan's head enclosed
in a balloon whose outlines were the puffy sort used
to indicate thoughts rather than speech, seemed hardly necessary. The
cartoonist had conveyed them well in the look she directed
toward a strolling group of high headed gentlemen but his
(05:04):
students were re reading them nonetheless, as he saw by
their moving lips. Far in the background, the slender figure
of the young Marcell expressed mute admiration. He was about
to wipe out the picture when he sensed a disturbance
far toward the back of the room, where the teared
seats rose in semicircles. Heads were turning toward the door
(05:27):
leading to the corridor belt. He heard a girl giggle nervously.
Then something black and shapeless entered and sat down for
a moment he did not know what to do, then
stabbing his fingers down at random, he replaced Mademoiselle Swan's
Victoria with another scene and announced briskly student dialogue in
(05:51):
this one, Shepherd in Weeks. Shepherd in Weeks were to
the brightest as well as the most talkative. They could
be depended upon to keep their discovers going without him
for as long as needed. The picture the projector had
produced was of Marcel stealing glances at the former Princess
de Loam as she sat with.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Her feet on the tomb of Gilbert the Bad.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
He left it on long enough for the class to
study it, then changed to a magnified view of the
room itself with Shepherd in weeks in the foreground. When
they were well under way and the class had been
at least partially distracted, he switched his personal monitor to
a camera covering the back of the room. In the
(06:34):
last row, in the seat nearest the door, set a
figure completely draped in black cloth. Instead of the sandals
worn by most students, the feet were shot in black,
very formal and rather old fashioned masculine shoes, and under
the cloth, apparently something like a box was worn over
the head. Its square outline could be seen just above
(06:56):
the triangular holes, which allowed the wearer to see twisting
a knob. He zumed the image in until he seemed
to stand alongside the shrouded figure. The student. Surely only
a student would undertake such a prank, sat motionless, utterly
quiet in his broad armed chair. It was, as he
(07:17):
realized after a moment, a particularly difficult situation. Any of
the fifty thousand students at the university could monitor any
class he chose. The right had been acquired as the
result of undergraduate demonstrations at some time in the remote past,
and in theory aided students in deciding whether or not
to register for a subject in a future semester. In practice,
(07:40):
it was most frequently used by campus agitators who wished
to disrupt the class without paying tuition for it. He
could ask the student under the cloth to establish that
he was a student, but if he was, it would
gain nothing, and he might be walking into a traps inn. Yes, if,
(08:00):
as seemed likely, the student was an agent provocateur for
some dissident group, this challenge was presumably what he was
expecting and awaiting, but for the time being, at least
he was well behaved and quiet. The wisest course was
probably to ignore, though matter, until some overt action changed
his own position from that of presumptive aggressor. Abstractedly, he
(08:25):
thought of how the boy must be sweltering under his shroud.
His own clothing, tropical weave coveralls whose design imitated the
sweatshirt and genes of more formal times, oppressed him in
the underground heat. Still watching the monitor, he plucked at
his clothes to draw a cooler air in at the neck.
More conservative and perhaps better salaried faculty members stuck to
(08:49):
the time honored slogans for their shirts, the more respected
because they were outmoded, things like get out of Vietnam
and God grows his own the legend on his own
chest head make Love not sludge not very prestigious, but
the National Sewage Authority bade him the stipend for the space.
(09:09):
The remainder of the period seemed to pass without leaving
an impression on his memory, and although he was certain
afterward that he had asked the normal questions to begin
discussions and elucidated correctly the few points referred to him,
he could recall nothing of it. When the class was
shuffling out into the hall, he remained at the console,
waiting to see if the.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Dark figure at the back of the room had.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Left with the others, and by some trick of thought,
he felt he had been watching the proceedings himself through
the eyes behind those black holes, and had found him
remote and inconsequential. The dark figure had not gone, but
was still seated, and it seemed staring at him across
(09:52):
the long rows of empty chairs. This was his last
class of the day, and he was conscious of an
overpower ring urged to finish it without a disturbance, to
go home and talk to Ruth and rest the eye
holes which were the only visible feature of that strangely shaped,
hooded head, seemed to hold no malice or even impulse
(10:13):
of activity, and for a moment he wondered if the
student behind them could be asleep. Slowly he got up
and walked toward an exit, ignoring him as well as
he could. He reached the door and wrisked a glass
over his shoulder. The black figure was standing now. He
went out, grateful for the soft shushing the door made
(10:34):
behind him. He was halfway to the elevator when he
heard the slow tread of heavily shod feet, very different
from the patter of sandals or bare souls. He walked faster,
pressed the elevator button, and was fortunate enough to have
the doors open immediately. When they closed, the black figure
was still fifteen feet or so away. His bicycle was
(10:58):
in the faculty rack at the south of the campus,
and he made his way to it as quickly as
he could, looking over his shoulder from time to time
with the illogical feeling that he was still being followed. Somehow,
the side of his own name, David P. Paramore, and
the registration tag dangling from the handlebars reassured him. He
(11:19):
mounted and peddled off toward home. As always, there was
a multiplicity of bikes and pedal carts on the streets,
plus the sprinkling of the slow and costly electric cars
and a few heavily taxed internal combustion trucks, mostly diesels.
Since the government did not care much if members of
the liberal arts faculty survived a bomb blast or not,
(11:42):
the underground on campus apartments were the prerogatives of members
of the scientific departments. Paramore had worked his way through
the traffic for nearly an hour and was approaching his
own neighborhood before he glimpsed a dark figure far behind him,
the student under that black clock. But whoever he was
had a bike too, a much newer one than his own,
(12:04):
just as his legs were, no doubt younger. In his
wind better, block by block he gained steadily until he
was not more than a few seconds behind. A push
cart man from whom David sometimes bought vegetables.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Waved from the curb, and then was gone, a blur.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Of unshaven face and glinting teeth. Twenty years ago, he
had ridden the same streets in the same way, commuting
to the campus, thinking of the great day on which
he would get his doctorate, and anticipating the meeting with
Ruth of the Student Center for lunch. And it suddenly
occurred to him to wonder why, indeed he was hurrying
(12:43):
now that all the golds he had set himself were
reached in emptiness, and it was possible to set no more.
What could the student under the black cloth do to him?
But time had not. For a moment he slacked his
pace than the repulsion he had felt earlier.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Where had left.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Him was two star buyers. He careened up onto the
lawn as recklessly as a boy left his bicycle lying
on the grass instead of pulling it up onto the porch,
and slammed and locked the door behind him. Ruth had
heard him, and she called to him from her room
at the top of the stairs. After a moment, he
began the daily ritual of his visit with her, mounting
(13:22):
the steps one at a time.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And pausing a little to catch his breath at each.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Sitting on the bed beside her, he described everything, the
shrouded figure coming into the classroom, the pursuit home, and
she said when he had finished, but it's so easy,
and she held his hand pressed between hers as he talked,
and now she gave it a little fat They did
it before, David, years ago, when you and I were
(13:49):
in school ourselves, a boy got into a big black
sack and began attending classes that way. He wouldn't tell
anyone who he was or speak above a mumble at all.
At first everyone laughed, and then when he kept coming
day after day like that, they were rude to him
and began to play cool jokes. Finally, when he wouldn't
tell them anything, they just ignored him. Then at the
(14:10):
end of the term, it came out that it was
all in experiments some graduate students had worked out with
one of the people in the psychology department. He looked
at his wife, wanting to believe. It's so obvious, David,
someone has revived that old experiment. We say we're so
much freer and more humane than people used to be,
But are we really Well, he's going to make the
(14:33):
same test again and see if the results are any different, David,
don't look so frightened. Oh why did he wait for
me after class?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Then?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Why did he follow me home? He wanted to see
how you'd react, so he had to give you time
to react in And I don't believe he followed you
at all. Don't you see? He couldn't take off the
bag on campus or someone would see who he was.
He was probably on his way home, just happened to
be down Houry Street. There are lots of those boarding
(15:04):
houses for students who can't get dorm space scattered all over.
He didn't stop here, did he, David. I didn't wait
to see I just went inside there. You see. He
hasn't run the bell or anything. Has he or tried
to climb through a window and go out. Look around
(15:24):
for him. I'll bet you can't find him anywhere. He
did not go outside or even look through the windows
that evening, but nothing happened to prove Rube incorrect. He
did his usual housework, watched television with Ruthe for an hour,
and then read himself to sleep. The next morning, the dark,
(15:45):
shapeless figure was waiting for him, and it attended every
class he gave For the next two days. Paramore made
an appointment with Saunders that of his department. Saunders was
leaning back in his wivel chair and stared being at
the ceiling when David came in and did not immediately
look at him. What is it, Paramore? Shit down here?
(16:07):
You look awful?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Are here? You're sick. As briefly as he could, he.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Described what had happened for the past three days, and
when he finished, Saunders remained silent. Look, can't you see
it's an attempt to entrap me or the department or
the school. They're waiting for us to do something or
say something that can be used against us, and then
there will be another riot, just like the old days, speeches, demonstrations,
(16:33):
and then when it's all over. We haven't had many
riots since we moved the campus underground.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
After all. They can't break our.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Windows and we haven't got any. And the belts in
the corridors just keep sweeping along anyone who sits down
on them until they get dumped off. At the end,
when did you say this started? David Monday? He had
lost Saunders was not willing to recognize what they were
trying to do. Saunders was shuffling through some papers in
(17:04):
a desk drawer and did not look at Paramore as
he spoke. You say he sleeps on your porch at night. Yes,
that's right, just like a dog. Someone won't let into
the house. He sleeps with his back against the front door.
But your wife has never seen him. What difference does
(17:25):
that make Ruth's an invalid? You must know that Saunders
had found the paper he had been looking for and
disregarded the last remark. Reading it upside down. From his
position on the far side of the desk, David saw
that it was his own class schedule.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
What do you want with that? Monday?
Speaker 1 (17:44):
The subject of your class was Swan's Way. One of
your favorites, isn't it? I wrote my thesis and Tuesday
you covered within a budding grove. Yesterday's schedule calls for
the Hermantes Way, and today citizen cities of the plane.
What does that have to do with it? Well, it
(18:05):
strikes me that this figure has only appeared thus far.
At any rate, when you are doing poost, you said
he followed you home? Does he also follow you into
the language research complex?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Here?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Is he outside in the reception room right now? No? No,
I hadn't really thought of it that way, But you're right.
He doesn't come here. He rides half a block behind
me when I'm coming in the morning, and then I
lose him in the quarters on my way here to
the Language Research Complex, and then I don't see him
(18:41):
again until I go to class. Suddenly he understood what
the other man was driving at. You think it's my imagination,
don't you. It was shocking, humiliating. He felt the blood
surge into his face and was afraid to allow himself
to say anything more, for fear he would actually insult Saunders. David,
(19:05):
we live in an age of tension. A person like yourself,
hard working, conscientious, perhaps a little introverted, is almost certain
to have a little trouble sooner or later. Why do
you think we have machines in the coffee shops selling
the psycho specific drugs. But other people see him too,
The students do in class. They look toward him, they giggle.
(19:29):
It was preposterous. But it was that which made him
feel so helpless. If Saunders could not see the absurdity
of his accusation at first glance, how could he be
made to see it? But they don't speak to him.
I told you that I don't speak to him myself.
I don't want to give him an opening. Undergraduates are
(19:52):
liable to let their eyes wander during class, and they
laugh at almost anything. Perhaps if there were nothing there.
They might look at a spot toward which you yourself
seem to be staring. Listen now, David, about this black figure.
Will you do what I ask you to You're head
of the department. Fine, I want you to take the
(20:13):
rest of the day off, in the next four days
off from teaching, David, I'll have Henderson take your classes,
and don't forget what I said about the psycho specifics here.
Digging into a pocket, Saunders produced and opened the packets,
still containing two rather lindy capsules. These ought to hold
you until you can get some of your own. I'll
(20:34):
buy some more when I go to lunch. It is real.
If it's real, fine, fine, I hope it is. And
if so, it will come to the classroom just as
you say it has for the past three days, and
Henderson will report it to me. But in any case, David,
you should have a rest. You look ready to drop
(20:57):
Paramore through the capsules into the first trash. Receeptically passed
in the corridor, but, following saunders instructions, did not go
to his classes that day, and when he pedaled home
in the evening, he was not followed. Presumably he reflected
the student under the black cloth was following poor old Henderson.
Now he wondered how Henderson liked it. That evening, he
(21:20):
talked to Ruth as little as he decently could, saying
nothing about his interview with Saunders. Long after she had
dropped off to sleep, Still propped up by pillows in
her big bed, he remained awake, thinking about the black
shape and speculating on the exact nature of the plot
in which it must be involved.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
It was nearly.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Daylight when it occurred to him that he might be
able to frustrate it, and that it was indeed his
duty to do so. After much searching in the attic,
he found an old robe which would serve his purpose,
and providentially, in the same box, a square topped hat
that would lend the correct shape to his head. The
next morning, after he had cared right up Ruth's breakfast,
(22:01):
he put them into a large grocery sack and rode
to the campus with it clamped under his arm. Once
in the study he settled assigned him, he stowed it
in an empty file drawer. A few minutes before the
beginning of the final lecture period, he left unobtrusively with
a bundle again.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Under his arm.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
In a restroom, he put on the hat and flung
the cloak over his head. Reminded of how as a
child he had believed that if his own eyes were concealed,
he could walk unseen by others like Gollum. With the
one ring, the old robes melled musty, and the cuts
he had made in it were difficult to keep aligned
with his eyes. But the hooded student, whoever he might be,
(22:42):
would surely take him for a second member of the conspiracy,
sent to help him. He stepped onto the belt, and
a moment later he adored the classroom that was normally
his own, and, in the split second before the projectors
whitched itself on, the realization that he knew what was
about to come, came rushing down upon him like a
wind from the Moudins, shrieking in his face. In bright
(23:07):
primary colors, the screen showed the rumpled bedroom with the
dark blind walls, and the bearded man in the bed. Involuntarily,
the words formed themselves in his mind. For a long time,
I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I
had put out my candle, my eyes would close so
quickly that I had not even time to say, I'm
(23:27):
going to sleep sometimes too. Just as Eve was created
from the rib of Adam, so a woman would come
into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some strain
in the position of my limbs. When a man is asleep,
he has in a circle round him the chain of
the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of
(23:48):
the heavenly hosts. It was the beginning of Swan's way again.
He knew what was happening now, And when Mademoiselle Swan's
Victorious swung through the portutch invisible, his own bent form
arrive on the belt, then re entered to see himself
start with fear. Without a lapse of time, he found
(24:11):
himself on his bicycle again, pursuing his own back. Under
the towering white shapes of the sycamores. He pulled the
gown from his face, letting it hang properly, and straightened
the mortar board on his head. So soon he seemed
to fly. You've heard Remembrance to Come by Gene Wolf,
(24:35):
a story.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Which first appeared in Orbit six, a.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Collection edited by Damon Knight, copyright nineteen seventy and published
by Berkeley Medallion. This is Michael Hanson Technical production for
this program by Rich Grodi. Mind Webbs is produced at
WYJA Radio in Madison, a service of University of Wisconsin
Extension
Mind.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Welcome to a half hour of mind Web short stories
from the World Expectator Fiction. This is Michael Hansen the
(01:38):
mind Web story. This evening is Remembrance to Come, a
story by gene Wolf which appeared in Orbit six, a
collection edited by Damon Knight and copyright nineteen seventy. Leaves
in his face, he had chosen in order to prepare
himself to go surface and walk in the sycamore shaded
(02:01):
park where he and Ruth had once received their diplomas. Surface,
the air had been cool and fragment, with autumn and
rain just fast. But once underground and on the belt again,
there was only the never changing orderlessness and the eighty
three degree warmth set to make co eds and body
paint comfortable. He was always a little apprehensive when he
(02:23):
had to go in a classroom. Now already this semester
he had received two student Senate reprimands for speaking sharply
to undergraduates, and he couldn't afford a third. On the
other side of the door, he could hear the coughing
and shuffling the feet. He reminded himself that these were
only more of the sleek young people he had watched
(02:44):
streaking across the campus and their bikes a few minutes before.
He glanced furtively at his notes, then entered the room
and walked to the projector console. By a gesture, he
called on a girl in the front row, choosing her
because he knew she had a clear, sweet voice, which
would help quiet the noisier boys. She rose gracefully, the
(03:05):
courtesy he could not demand but appreciated, and parted the
long hair hanging over her face before she said, I thought,
And then she paused, embarrassed. She was wearing the broadest
possible belt, and in spite of the painted arrow stabbing
inward on her thighs, it seemed.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Probable that she had not yet rejected.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Completely the conservative influence of an old fashioned family. She
went on to say, I thought it was just lovely,
the lovely park whatever it was, and the lovely old
carriage the woman rode in. I mean, I thought it
was just shattering. She sat down abruptly. He nodded in
(03:45):
appreciation and said, no, let's see it again, shall we
touched a button on the console before him. Instantly, the
scene filled the wall in front of the class, an
ink drawing filled in with broad splashes of temperon from memory,
he quoted the idea of perfection which I had within me,
(04:06):
I had bestowed in that other time, upon the height
of a victoria, upon the raking thinness of those horses,
frenzied and light his wasps upon the wing with bloodshot eyes,
like the cruel steeds of the almud, which now smitten
by the desire to see again what I had once loved,
as ardent as the desire that had driven me many
(04:26):
years before along the same paths I wished to see
renewed before my eyes. At the moment when Mademoiselle Swan's
enormous coachman, supervised by a groom no bigger than his fist,
and his infantile with Saint George.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
In the picture, endeavored to curb the ardor.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Of the flying steel tipped pinions with which they thundered
along the ground. The legend over Mademoiselle Swan's head enclosed
in a balloon whose outlines were the puffy sort used
to indicate thoughts rather than speech, seemed hardly necessary. The
cartoonist had conveyed them well in the look she directed
toward a strolling group of high headed gentlemen but his
(05:04):
students were re reading them nonetheless, as he saw by
their moving lips. Far in the background, the slender figure
of the young Marcell expressed mute admiration. He was about
to wipe out the picture when he sensed a disturbance
far toward the back of the room, where the teared
seats rose in semicircles. Heads were turning toward the door
(05:27):
leading to the corridor belt. He heard a girl giggle nervously.
Then something black and shapeless entered and sat down for
a moment he did not know what to do, then
stabbing his fingers down at random, he replaced Mademoiselle Swan's
Victoria with another scene and announced briskly student dialogue in
(05:51):
this one, Shepherd in Weeks. Shepherd in Weeks were to
the brightest as well as the most talkative. They could
be depended upon to keep their discovers going without him
for as long as needed. The picture the projector had
produced was of Marcel stealing glances at the former Princess
de Loam as she sat with.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Her feet on the tomb of Gilbert the Bad.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
He left it on long enough for the class to
study it, then changed to a magnified view of the
room itself with Shepherd in weeks in the foreground. When
they were well under way and the class had been
at least partially distracted, he switched his personal monitor to
a camera covering the back of the room. In the
(06:34):
last row, in the seat nearest the door, set a
figure completely draped in black cloth. Instead of the sandals
worn by most students, the feet were shot in black,
very formal and rather old fashioned masculine shoes, and under
the cloth, apparently something like a box was worn over
the head. Its square outline could be seen just above
(06:56):
the triangular holes, which allowed the wearer to see twisting
a knob. He zumed the image in until he seemed
to stand alongside the shrouded figure. The student. Surely only
a student would undertake such a prank, sat motionless, utterly
quiet in his broad armed chair. It was, as he
(07:17):
realized after a moment, a particularly difficult situation. Any of
the fifty thousand students at the university could monitor any
class he chose. The right had been acquired as the
result of undergraduate demonstrations at some time in the remote past,
and in theory aided students in deciding whether or not
to register for a subject in a future semester. In practice,
(07:40):
it was most frequently used by campus agitators who wished
to disrupt the class without paying tuition for it. He
could ask the student under the cloth to establish that
he was a student, but if he was, it would
gain nothing, and he might be walking into a traps inn. Yes, if,
(08:00):
as seemed likely, the student was an agent provocateur for
some dissident group, this challenge was presumably what he was
expecting and awaiting, but for the time being, at least
he was well behaved and quiet. The wisest course was
probably to ignore, though matter, until some overt action changed
his own position from that of presumptive aggressor. Abstractedly, he
(08:25):
thought of how the boy must be sweltering under his shroud.
His own clothing, tropical weave coveralls whose design imitated the
sweatshirt and genes of more formal times, oppressed him in
the underground heat. Still watching the monitor, he plucked at
his clothes to draw a cooler air in at the neck.
More conservative and perhaps better salaried faculty members stuck to
(08:49):
the time honored slogans for their shirts, the more respected
because they were outmoded, things like get out of Vietnam
and God grows his own the legend on his own
chest head make Love not sludge not very prestigious, but
the National Sewage Authority bade him the stipend for the space.
(09:09):
The remainder of the period seemed to pass without leaving
an impression on his memory, and although he was certain
afterward that he had asked the normal questions to begin
discussions and elucidated correctly the few points referred to him,
he could recall nothing of it. When the class was
shuffling out into the hall, he remained at the console,
waiting to see if the.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Dark figure at the back of the room had.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Left with the others, and by some trick of thought,
he felt he had been watching the proceedings himself through
the eyes behind those black holes, and had found him
remote and inconsequential. The dark figure had not gone, but
was still seated, and it seemed staring at him across
(09:52):
the long rows of empty chairs. This was his last
class of the day, and he was conscious of an
overpower ring urged to finish it without a disturbance, to
go home and talk to Ruth and rest the eye
holes which were the only visible feature of that strangely shaped,
hooded head, seemed to hold no malice or even impulse
(10:13):
of activity, and for a moment he wondered if the
student behind them could be asleep. Slowly he got up
and walked toward an exit, ignoring him as well as
he could. He reached the door and wrisked a glass
over his shoulder. The black figure was standing now. He
went out, grateful for the soft shushing the door made
(10:34):
behind him. He was halfway to the elevator when he
heard the slow tread of heavily shod feet, very different
from the patter of sandals or bare souls. He walked faster,
pressed the elevator button, and was fortunate enough to have
the doors open immediately. When they closed, the black figure
was still fifteen feet or so away. His bicycle was
(10:58):
in the faculty rack at the south of the campus,
and he made his way to it as quickly as
he could, looking over his shoulder from time to time
with the illogical feeling that he was still being followed. Somehow,
the side of his own name, David P. Paramore, and
the registration tag dangling from the handlebars reassured him. He
(11:19):
mounted and peddled off toward home. As always, there was
a multiplicity of bikes and pedal carts on the streets,
plus the sprinkling of the slow and costly electric cars
and a few heavily taxed internal combustion trucks, mostly diesels.
Since the government did not care much if members of
the liberal arts faculty survived a bomb blast or not,
(11:42):
the underground on campus apartments were the prerogatives of members
of the scientific departments. Paramore had worked his way through
the traffic for nearly an hour and was approaching his
own neighborhood before he glimpsed a dark figure far behind him,
the student under that black clock. But whoever he was
had a bike too, a much newer one than his own,
(12:04):
just as his legs were, no doubt younger. In his
wind better, block by block he gained steadily until he
was not more than a few seconds behind. A push
cart man from whom David sometimes bought vegetables.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Waved from the curb, and then was gone, a blur.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Of unshaven face and glinting teeth. Twenty years ago, he
had ridden the same streets in the same way, commuting
to the campus, thinking of the great day on which
he would get his doctorate, and anticipating the meeting with
Ruth of the Student Center for lunch. And it suddenly
occurred to him to wonder why, indeed he was hurrying
(12:43):
now that all the golds he had set himself were
reached in emptiness, and it was possible to set no more.
What could the student under the black cloth do to him?
But time had not. For a moment he slacked his
pace than the repulsion he had felt earlier.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Where had left.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Him was two star buyers. He careened up onto the
lawn as recklessly as a boy left his bicycle lying
on the grass instead of pulling it up onto the porch,
and slammed and locked the door behind him. Ruth had
heard him, and she called to him from her room
at the top of the stairs. After a moment, he
began the daily ritual of his visit with her, mounting
(13:22):
the steps one at a time.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And pausing a little to catch his breath at each.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Sitting on the bed beside her, he described everything, the
shrouded figure coming into the classroom, the pursuit home, and
she said when he had finished, but it's so easy,
and she held his hand pressed between hers as he talked,
and now she gave it a little fat They did
it before, David, years ago, when you and I were
(13:49):
in school ourselves, a boy got into a big black
sack and began attending classes that way. He wouldn't tell
anyone who he was or speak above a mumble at all.
At first everyone laughed, and then when he kept coming
day after day like that, they were rude to him
and began to play cool jokes. Finally, when he wouldn't
tell them anything, they just ignored him. Then at the
(14:10):
end of the term, it came out that it was
all in experiments some graduate students had worked out with
one of the people in the psychology department. He looked
at his wife, wanting to believe. It's so obvious, David,
someone has revived that old experiment. We say we're so
much freer and more humane than people used to be,
But are we really Well, he's going to make the
(14:33):
same test again and see if the results are any different, David,
don't look so frightened. Oh why did he wait for
me after class?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Then?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Why did he follow me home? He wanted to see
how you'd react, so he had to give you time
to react in And I don't believe he followed you
at all. Don't you see? He couldn't take off the
bag on campus or someone would see who he was.
He was probably on his way home, just happened to
be down Houry Street. There are lots of those boarding
(15:04):
houses for students who can't get dorm space scattered all over.
He didn't stop here, did he, David. I didn't wait
to see I just went inside there. You see. He
hasn't run the bell or anything. Has he or tried
to climb through a window and go out. Look around
(15:24):
for him. I'll bet you can't find him anywhere. He
did not go outside or even look through the windows
that evening, but nothing happened to prove Rube incorrect. He
did his usual housework, watched television with Ruthe for an hour,
and then read himself to sleep. The next morning, the dark,
(15:45):
shapeless figure was waiting for him, and it attended every
class he gave For the next two days. Paramore made
an appointment with Saunders that of his department. Saunders was
leaning back in his wivel chair and stared being at
the ceiling when David came in and did not immediately
look at him. What is it, Paramore? Shit down here?
(16:07):
You look awful?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Are here? You're sick. As briefly as he could, he.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Described what had happened for the past three days, and
when he finished, Saunders remained silent. Look, can't you see
it's an attempt to entrap me or the department or
the school. They're waiting for us to do something or
say something that can be used against us, and then
there will be another riot, just like the old days, speeches, demonstrations,
(16:33):
and then when it's all over. We haven't had many
riots since we moved the campus underground.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
After all. They can't break our.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Windows and we haven't got any. And the belts in
the corridors just keep sweeping along anyone who sits down
on them until they get dumped off. At the end,
when did you say this started? David Monday? He had
lost Saunders was not willing to recognize what they were
trying to do. Saunders was shuffling through some papers in
(17:04):
a desk drawer and did not look at Paramore as
he spoke. You say he sleeps on your porch at night. Yes,
that's right, just like a dog. Someone won't let into
the house. He sleeps with his back against the front door.
But your wife has never seen him. What difference does
(17:25):
that make Ruth's an invalid? You must know that Saunders
had found the paper he had been looking for and
disregarded the last remark. Reading it upside down. From his
position on the far side of the desk, David saw
that it was his own class schedule.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
What do you want with that? Monday?
Speaker 1 (17:44):
The subject of your class was Swan's Way. One of
your favorites, isn't it? I wrote my thesis and Tuesday
you covered within a budding grove. Yesterday's schedule calls for
the Hermantes Way, and today citizen cities of the plane.
What does that have to do with it? Well, it
(18:05):
strikes me that this figure has only appeared thus far.
At any rate, when you are doing poost, you said
he followed you home? Does he also follow you into
the language research complex?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Here?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Is he outside in the reception room right now? No? No,
I hadn't really thought of it that way, But you're right.
He doesn't come here. He rides half a block behind
me when I'm coming in the morning, and then I
lose him in the quarters on my way here to
the Language Research Complex, and then I don't see him
(18:41):
again until I go to class. Suddenly he understood what
the other man was driving at. You think it's my imagination,
don't you. It was shocking, humiliating. He felt the blood
surge into his face and was afraid to allow himself
to say anything more, for fear he would actually insult Saunders. David,
(19:05):
we live in an age of tension. A person like yourself,
hard working, conscientious, perhaps a little introverted, is almost certain
to have a little trouble sooner or later. Why do
you think we have machines in the coffee shops selling
the psycho specific drugs. But other people see him too,
The students do in class. They look toward him, they giggle.
(19:29):
It was preposterous. But it was that which made him
feel so helpless. If Saunders could not see the absurdity
of his accusation at first glance, how could he be
made to see it? But they don't speak to him.
I told you that I don't speak to him myself.
I don't want to give him an opening. Undergraduates are
(19:52):
liable to let their eyes wander during class, and they
laugh at almost anything. Perhaps if there were nothing there.
They might look at a spot toward which you yourself
seem to be staring. Listen now, David, about this black figure.
Will you do what I ask you to You're head
of the department. Fine, I want you to take the
(20:13):
rest of the day off, in the next four days
off from teaching, David, I'll have Henderson take your classes,
and don't forget what I said about the psycho specifics here.
Digging into a pocket, Saunders produced and opened the packets,
still containing two rather lindy capsules. These ought to hold
you until you can get some of your own. I'll
(20:34):
buy some more when I go to lunch. It is real.
If it's real, fine, fine, I hope it is. And
if so, it will come to the classroom just as
you say it has for the past three days, and
Henderson will report it to me. But in any case, David,
you should have a rest. You look ready to drop
(20:57):
Paramore through the capsules into the first trash. Receeptically passed
in the corridor, but, following saunders instructions, did not go
to his classes that day, and when he pedaled home
in the evening, he was not followed. Presumably he reflected
the student under the black cloth was following poor old Henderson.
Now he wondered how Henderson liked it. That evening, he
(21:20):
talked to Ruth as little as he decently could, saying
nothing about his interview with Saunders. Long after she had
dropped off to sleep, Still propped up by pillows in
her big bed, he remained awake, thinking about the black
shape and speculating on the exact nature of the plot
in which it must be involved.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
It was nearly.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Daylight when it occurred to him that he might be
able to frustrate it, and that it was indeed his
duty to do so. After much searching in the attic,
he found an old robe which would serve his purpose,
and providentially, in the same box, a square topped hat
that would lend the correct shape to his head. The
next morning, after he had cared right up Ruth's breakfast,
(22:01):
he put them into a large grocery sack and rode
to the campus with it clamped under his arm. Once
in the study he settled assigned him, he stowed it
in an empty file drawer. A few minutes before the
beginning of the final lecture period, he left unobtrusively with
a bundle again.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Under his arm.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
In a restroom, he put on the hat and flung
the cloak over his head. Reminded of how as a
child he had believed that if his own eyes were concealed,
he could walk unseen by others like Gollum. With the
one ring, the old robes melled musty, and the cuts
he had made in it were difficult to keep aligned
with his eyes. But the hooded student, whoever he might be,
(22:42):
would surely take him for a second member of the conspiracy,
sent to help him. He stepped onto the belt, and
a moment later he adored the classroom that was normally
his own, and, in the split second before the projectors
whitched itself on, the realization that he knew what was
about to come, came rushing down upon him like a
wind from the Moudins, shrieking in his face. In bright
(23:07):
primary colors, the screen showed the rumpled bedroom with the
dark blind walls, and the bearded man in the bed. Involuntarily,
the words formed themselves in his mind. For a long time,
I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I
had put out my candle, my eyes would close so
quickly that I had not even time to say, I'm
(23:27):
going to sleep sometimes too. Just as Eve was created
from the rib of Adam, so a woman would come
into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some strain
in the position of my limbs. When a man is asleep,
he has in a circle round him the chain of
the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of
(23:48):
the heavenly hosts. It was the beginning of Swan's way again.
He knew what was happening now, And when Mademoiselle Swan's
Victorious swung through the portutch invisible, his own bent form
arrive on the belt, then re entered to see himself
start with fear. Without a lapse of time, he found
(24:11):
himself on his bicycle again, pursuing his own back. Under
the towering white shapes of the sycamores. He pulled the
gown from his face, letting it hang properly, and straightened
the mortar board on his head. So soon he seemed
to fly. You've heard Remembrance to Come by Gene Wolf,
(24:35):
a story.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Which first appeared in Orbit six, a.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Collection edited by Damon Knight, copyright nineteen seventy and published
by Berkeley Medallion. This is Michael Hanson Technical production for
this program by Rich Grodi. Mind Webbs is produced at
WYJA Radio in Madison, a service of University of Wisconsin
Extension
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