Miss Phoebe said: “Nonsense. Nobody can harm me. Chapter Nine, Rule Seven. Bertha, I saw you shoot that gentleman. I’m very angry with you, Bertha. Very angry.”
The Duchess turned up her eyes and crumpled. I didn’t have to check; I was sure she was dead. Miss Phoebe was once again In Utter Harmony With Her Environment.
I went over and knelt beside the professor. He had a hole hi his stomach and was still breathing. There wasn’t much blood. I sat down and cried. For the professor. For the poor damned human race which at a mile per day would be gobbled up into apathy and idiocy. Goodby, Newton and Einstein, goodby steak dinners and Michelangelo and Tenzing Norkay; goodby Moses, Rodin, Kwan Yin, transistors, Boole and Steichen. . . .
A redheaded man with an adam’s apple was saying gently to Miss Phoebe: “It’s this rabbit, ma’am.” And indeed an enormous rabbit was loping up to him. “Every time I find a turnip or something he takes it away from me
and he kicks and bites when I try to reason with him—” And indeed he took a piece of turnip from his pocket and the rabbit insolently pawed it from his hand and nibbled it triumphantly with one wise-guy eye cocked up at his victim. “He does that every time, Miss Phoebe,” the man said unhappily.
The little old lady said: “I’ll think of something, Henry. But let me take care of these people first.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Henry said. He reached out cautiously for his piece of turnip and the rabbit bit him and then went back to its nibbling.
“Young man,” Miss Phoebe said to me, “what’s wrong? You’re giving in to despair. You mustn’t do that. Chapter Nine, Rule Three.”
I pulled myself together enough to say: “This is Professor Leuten. He’s dying.”
Her eyes widened. “The Professor Leuten?” I nodded. “How to Live on the Cosmic Expense Account?” I nodded.
“Oh, dear! If only there were something I could do!”
Heal the dying? Apparently not. She didn’t think she could, so she couldn’t.
“Professor,” I said. “Professor.”
He opened his eyes and said something hi German, then, hazily: “Woman shot me. Spoil her—racket, you call it? Who is this?” He grimaced with pain.
“I’m Miss Phoebe Bancroft, Professor Leuten,” she breathed, leaning over him. “I’m so dreadfully sorry; I admire your wonderful book so much.”
His weary eyes turned to me. “So, Norris,” he said. “No time to do it right. We do it your way. Help me up.”
I helped him to his feet, suffering, I think, almost as much as he did. The wound started to bleed more copiously.
“No!” Miss Phoebe exclaimed. “You should lie down.”
The professor leered. “Good idea, baby. You want to keep me company?”
“What’s that?” she snapped.
“You heard me, baby. Say, you got any liquor in your place?”
“Certainly not! Alcohol is inimical to the development pf the higher functions of the mind. Chapter Nine—”
“Pfui on Chapter Nine, baby. I chust wrote that stuff for money.”
If Miss Phoebe hadn’t been in a state resembling surgical shock after hearing that, she would have seen the pain convulsing his face. “You mean. . .. ?” she quavered, beginning to look her age for the first time.
“Sure. Lotta garbage. Sling fancy words and make money. What I go for is liquor and women. Women like you, baby.”
The goose did it.
Weeping, frightened, insulted and lost she tottered blindly up the neat path to her house. I eased the professor to the ground. He was biting almost through his lower lip.
I heard a new noise behind me. It was Henry, the redhead with the adam’s apple. He was chewing his piece of turnip and had hold of the big rabbit by the hind legs. He was flailing it against a tree. Henry looked ferocious, savage, carnivorous and very, very dangerous to meddle with. In a word, human.
“Professor,” I breathed at his waxen face, “you’ve done it. It’s broken. Over. No more Plague Area.”
He muttered, his eyes closed: “I regret not doing it properly . . . but tell the people how I died, Norris. With dignity, without fear. Because of Functional Epistemol-ogy.”