I shrugged. “I like to climb things,” I said. “I like to be up in high places. I never said it was funny, and Doctor Marko is not a screwball.”
He emitted a labial consonant and began flipping through pages in the folder. I was beginning to feel a dislike for the man. Close-cut, sandy hair, a neat, matching beard and mustache that almost hid his mean little mouth. Somewhere in his mid-twenties, I guessed. Here he was getting nasty and authoritarian and not even offering me a seat, and I was probably several years his senior and had taken pains to get there on time. I had met him only once before, briefly, at a party. He had been stoned at the time and considerably more congenial. Hadn’t seen my file yet, of course. Still, that should make no difference. He should deal with me de novo, not on the basis of a lot of hearsay. But advisers come and go-general, departmental, special. I’ve dealt with the best and I’ve dealt with the worst. Offhand, I can’t say who was my favorite. Maybe Merimee. Maybe Crawford. Merimee helped me head off a suspension action. A very decent fellow. Crawford almost tricked me into graduating, which would probably have gotten him the Adviser of the Year award. A good guy, nevertheless. Just a little too creative. Where are they now?
I drew up a chair and made myself comfortable, lighting a cigarette and using the wastebasket for an ashtray. He did not seem to notice but went on paging through the materials.
Several minutes passed in this fashion, then: “All right,” he said, “I’m ready for you.”
He looked up at me then and he smiled.
“This semester. Mister Cassidy, we are going to graduate you,” he said.
I smiled back at him.
“That, Mister Wexroth, will be a cold day in hell,” I said.
“I believe that I have been a little more thorough than my predecessors,” he replied. “I take it you are up on all the university’s regulations?”
“I go over them fairly regularly.”
“I also assume you are aware of all the courses being offered this coming semester?”
“That’s a safe assumption.”
He withdrew a pipe and pouch from within his jacket, and he began loading the thing slowly, with great attention to each fleck and strand, seeming to relish the moment. I had had him pegged as a pipe smoker all along.
He bit it, lit it, puffed it, withdrew it and stared at me through the smoke.
“Then we’ve got you on a mandatory graduation,” he said, “under the departmental major rule.”
“But you haven’t even seen my preregistration card.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve had every choice you could make, every possible combination of courses you might select to retain your full-time status worked out by one of the computer people. I had all of these matched up with your rather extensive record, and in each instance I’ve come up with a way of getting rid of you. No matter what you select, you are going to complete a departmental major in something.”
“Sounds as if you’ve been pretty thorough.”
“I have.”
“Mind if I ask why you are so eager to get rid of me?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “The fact of the matter is, you are a drone.”
“A drone?”
“A drone. You don’t do anything but hang around.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You are a liability, a drain on the intellectual and emotional resources of the academic community.”
“Crap,” I observed. “I’ve published some pretty good papers.”
“Precisely. You should be off teaching or doing research-with a couple degrees after your name-not filling a space some poor undergrad could be occupying.”
I dismissed a mental picture of the poor would-be undergrad-lean, hollow-eyed, nose and fingertips pressed against the glass, his breath fogging it, slavering after the education I was denying him-and I said, “Crap again. Why do you really want to get rid of me?”
He stared at his pipe, almost thoughtfully, for a moment, then said, “When you get right down to basics, I just plain don’t like you.”
“But why? You hardly know me.”
“I know about you-which is more than sufficient.” He tapped my file. “It’s all in there,” he said. “You represent an attitude for which I have no respect.”