What Rough Beast?

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  What Rough Beast?

  By JEFFERSON HIGHE

  Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science FictionJuly 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  [Sidenote: _When you are a teacher, you expect kids to play pranks. Butwith tigers--and worse?_]

  Standing braced--or, as it seemed to him, crucified--against the lengthof the blackboard, John Ward tried to calculate his chances of headingoff the impending riot. It didn't seem likely that anything he could dowould stop it.

  "Say something," he told himself. "Continue the lecture, _talk_!" Butagainst the background of hysterical voices from the school yard,against the brass fear in his mouth, he was dumb. He looked at the bankof boys' faces in front of him. They seemed to him now as identical asmetal stampings, each one completely deadpan, each pair of jaws movingin a single rhythm, like a mechanical herd. He could feel the tension inthem, and he knew that, in a moment, they would begin to move. He feltshame and humiliation that he had failed.

  "Shakespeare," he said clearly, holding his voice steady, "for those ofyou who have never heard of him, was the greatest of all dramatists.Greater even," he went on doggedly, knowing that they might take it as aprovocation, "than the writers for the Spellcasts." He stopped talkingabruptly.

  Three tigers stepped out of the ceiling. Their eyes were glassy,absolutely rigid, as if, like the last of the hairy mammoths, they hadbeen frozen a long age in some glacial crevasse. They hung there amoment and then fell into the room like a furry waterfall. They landedsnarling.

  Something smashed viciously into the wall beside Ward's head. From theback of the room, someone's hand flashed a glitter of light. Ward leapedaway and cut across the end of the room toward the escape chute. Holdinghis ring with its identifying light beam before him, he leaped into theslot like a racing driver. Behind him, the room exploded in shouts andsnarls. The gate on the chute slammed shut after him, and he heard themscratching and banging at it. Without the identifying light, they wouldbe unable to get through. He took a long breath of relief as he shotdown the polished groove of the slide into the Mob Quad. The boys he'dleft behind knew how to protect themselves.

  They were all there--Dr. Allenby, McCarthy the psych man, Laura Ames thepretty gym teacher, Foster, Jensen--all of them. So it had been generalthen, not just his group which had rioted. He knew it was all the moreserious now, because it had not been limited to one outbreak.

  "You, too, Ward?" Dr. Allenby said sadly. He was a short, slender manwith white hair and a white mustache. He helped Ward up from where hehad fallen at the foot of the escape slide. "What was it in yourclassroom this time?"

  "Tigers," Ward said. Standing beside Allenby, he felt very tall,although he was only of average height. He smoothed down his wiry darkhair and began energetically brushing the dust from his clothing.

  "Well, it's always something," Allenby said tiredly.

  He seemed more sad than upset, Ward thought, a spent old man clinging tothe straw of a dream. He saw where the metaphor was leading and pushedit aside. If Allenby were a drowning man, then Ward himself was one. Helooked at the others.

  They were all edgy or simply frightened, but they were taking it verywell. Some of them were stationed at the gates of the Quad, but none ofthem, as far as he could see, was armed. Except for McCarthy. The psychman was wearing his Star Watcher helmet and had a B-gun strapped at hisside. Probably had a small force-field in his pocket, Ward thought,_and_ a pair of brass knuckles.

  "So--the philosophy king got it too," McCarthy said, coming over tothem. He was a big man, young but already florid with what Ward hadalways thought of as a roan complexion. "Love, understanding,sympathy--wasn't that what was supposed to work wonders? All they needis a copy of Robinson Crusoe and a chance to follow their naturalinstincts, eh?"

  "One failure doesn't prove anything," Ward said, trying not to be angry.

  "_One_ failure? How often do they have to make us hit the slides for thesafety of the Mob Quad before you adopt a sensible theory?"

  "Let's not go through all that again. Restraint, Rubber hoses andRadiological shock--I've heard all about the 3 Rs."

  "At least they work!"

  "Oh, yes, they work fine. Except that they never learn to read and theycan't sign their names with anything but an X."

  "It was progressive education that destroyed reading," McCarthy saidheatedly. "And they don't _need_ to sign their names--that's whatuniversal fingerprinting is for."

  "Please, gentlemen," Dr. Allenby interrupted gently. "This kind ofsquabbling is unbecoming to members of the faculty. Besides," he smiledwith faded irony, "considering the circumstances, it's hardly a propertime."

  He pointed to the windows over the Quad where an occasional figure couldbe seen behind the glass. Lucky it was unbreakable, Ward thought,hearing the wild hysterical yelling from inside.

  "Mob Quad," Allenby said bitterly. "I thought I was naming it as a joke.The original Mob Quad was at Merton College, Oxford. One of the olddefunct universities. _They_ had a Mob Quad to shelter students andprofessors from the town mobs. Professors _and_ students,gentlemen--they were a united front in those days. I suppose no onecould have predicted our present circumstances."

  "That's all history," McCarthy said impatiently. "Bunk. This is _now_,and I say the thing to do--"

  "We know." Allenby waved him to silence. "But your way has been triedlong enough. How long is it since Los Angeles Day, when the U.N.buildings were bombed and burned by the original 3R Party in order toget rid of Unesco? Two hundred forty-three years next June, isn't it?And your Party had had all that time to get education back on what itcalls a sane program. Now _nobody_ is educated."

  "It takes time to undo the damage of progressive education," McCarthysaid. "Besides, a lot of that junk--reading, writing--as I've often toldWard--"

  "All right," Ward broke in. "But two and a half centuries is longenough. Someone must try a new tack or the country is doomed. Thereisn't much time. The Outspace invaders--"

  "The Outspace invaders are simply Russians," McCarthy said flatly.

  "That's a convenient view if you're an ostrich. Or, if you want to keepthe Pretend War going, until the Outspacers take us over."

  McCarthy snorted contemptuously. "Ward, you damned fool--"

  "That will be all, gentlemen," Allenby said. He did not raise his voice,but McCarthy was silent and Ward marveled, as he had on other occasions,at the authority the old man carried.

  "Well," McCarthy said after a moment, "what are you going to do about_this_?" He gestured toward the windows from which shouts still rang.

  "Nothing. Let it run its course."

  "But you can't do _that_, man!"

  "I can and I will. What do you think, John?"

  "I agree," Ward said. "They won't hurt each other--they never have yet.It'll wear itself out and then, tomorrow, we'll try again." He did notfeel optimistic about how things would be the next day, but he didn'twant to voice his fears. "The thing that worries me," he said, "arethose tigers. Where'd they come from?"

  "What tigers?" McCarthy wanted to know.

  Ward told him.

  "First it was cats," McCarthy said, "then birds ... now tigers. Eitheryou're seeing things or someone's using a concealed projector."

  "I thought of the projector, but these seemed real. Stunned at first--asif they were as surprised as I was."

  "You have a teleport in your class," Allenby said.

  "Yes--maybe that's the way it was done
. I don't know quite what to makeof it," Ward said. If he voiced his real suspicion now, he knew it wouldsound silly. "I know some of them can teleport. I've seen them. Smallthings, of course...."

  "Not in _my_ classes," McCarthy said indignantly. "I absolutely forbidthat sort of thing."

  "You do wrong, then," Allenby said.

  "It's unscientific!"

  "Perhaps. But we want to encourage whatever wild talents they possess."

  "So that they can materialize tigers in--in our bedrooms, I suppose.Well,