Read Ebook: The last class by Banks Richard Adkins Dan Illustrator

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Ebook has 115 lines and 6589 words, and 3 pages

"Man started the 20th Century in complete privacy," she said, her vast hips quivering as she paced. "Then came the time--this was during the years of the gangsters--when electronics helped man put tiny ears in rooms, behind pictures on the walls, so private speech could be recorded. And telephones--did I tell you what telephones were?--could be tapped, as they called it, so other people could listen in when you had secrets to tell a friend."

And then, she told them, late in the 20th Century came the best part of the story--the discovery that man could "wiretap" other men so secretly that nobody knew.

"Think of it," she cried. "You could be telling your secrets to Papa. And then, later, Papa would be called in to a police station and his wiretap taken out and everything you said was recorded on a tiny spool inside him."

"Ah," said the children, relishing the shudder of it all. It was like a prehistoric ghost story, possible but weird because it had no connection to known life.

She looked at the clock. In two minutes the pills would wear off.

"Enough for today, children," she announced.

"But how about the gangsters?" Marymarymary asked in a petulant voice. "Please, Miss Hippiness, you said--"

"Enough for today," Miss Hippiness said sternly. "It's time to go home. We'll tell more stories tomorrow."

She said it just in time. The sun blinked out. A bell tinkled, and the school day was over. The children stood up and waited.

"All right," said Miss Hippiness with a smile. "Single file, children. To the transmitter in your right order."

The children walked, like children always have, with spurting giggles and sudden scuffles, toward the gleaming wire cage, festooned with pretty cutouts of colorful animals and buildings and trees.

Marymarymary was always the first, this year. She stood in front of the transmitter opening, let the electronic beam play on her forehead identification disc, then stepped in.

Swup. She was gone, delivered to her home, delivered to her mama and papa--and she wouldn't remember a thing of the "story hour," Miss Hippiness thought happily. But maybe when she grew up, maybe when they all grew up, things would erupt here and there from their subconscious and--

They each stood their moment for the beam to catch their discs, stepped in and were swupped off. At last only Charley Tencharles was left and he scurried around, like teacher's pets immemorial, helping Miss Hippiness do the last things a classroom needs to put it to rest for the night.

Miss Hippiness gave his shoulders a last motherly squeeze and pushed him in front of the matter transmitter.

"Tomorrow?" she said. His young grin was like wine in her blood. He stepped in and was swupped instantly.

Miss Hippiness sighed and went back to sit on her straight chair. It wasn't comfortable and it wasn't pretty. But it somehow fit whatever had been happening inside her the last year or two.

She glanced at the faint shimmer inside the transmitter where Charley had been swupped. He was such a darling. Quiet, shy, adorable. If they had allowed her to have a son, instead of decreeing that she be a childless teacher, she said. But she couldn't finish the thought.

It was when the children went that she felt the growing anger and unrest and sickness inside her. It was terrible when the children left. She wondered how long it had been now since she had seen the real surface of the earth. She swupped back and forth, morning and night, from her sleeping room to her classroom. They were a thousand miles apart, actually, but an instant apart through the transmitter.

And she had been swupping to that old library in the south of what had been France to browse in the forgotten ancient books there. But she never went outdoors. She never saw the sky anymore.

"Why, it must be spring," she said aloud, "and I've not seen a creek or a river in--how long?"

If she had been allowed to have a son, and that son had been Charley Tencharles, what fun it would have been to leave school every afternoon and be swupped to seashores, to brooks, to mountain peaks, to the moon, to the tiny parks that still remained occasionally in cities.

She sat on her hard straight chair, uncomfortable but unmoving, for a half hour, deep in the reveries that so often beset her now.

And then the beeper on the matter transmitter sounded. With a puzzled frown she got up to press the admittance button.

Little Charley materialized and came out of the wire cage.

"Charley," she cried. "Does your mama know you've come back?"

He didn't answer. He went to stand in front of the straight chair and she followed him, sitting down and putting her hands on his shoulders.

"Charley," she said in her fake stern voice, "you should always ask your mama before you--"

Charley's lips came open but it wasn't Charley's little voice which came out.

"Susan Fiftysusan," said a deep grownup voice, "this is Holmes Oneholmes. Remember? I was one of your pupils forty years or more ago."

Miss Hippiness remembered instantly. She remembered Holmes as a child, but she knew what he was now. He headed the bureau known only by an electronic symbol. Too secret to name, it was said in high circles.

Miss Hippiness dropped her hands from little Charley's shoulders and covered her face. Things twitched and twirked like little knives somewhere deep inside her. Fear? Horror?

"You were my greatest, my very best teacher," said Holmes Oneholmes on the recording coming through little Charley's open lips. "And I have treasured your memory. So you know how hateful is my task this afternoon."

Miss Hippiness peeked at Charley's face through her fingers. His little blue eyes were blank, fastened to a spot high on the classroom wall behind her. There was no tiny bit of expression on his face.

She heard Holmes Oneholmes cough and his voice went on, official this time, all pupilness erased.

"Susan Fiftysusan," he said, "the latest recording from inside Charley Tencharles, which we have just heard, convicts you beyond reprieve. Where you found the human-wiretap information we do not know. But we'll find it, and destroy it. It is the order that your future disintegration date is hereby superseded. Instead of disintegration two years and ten days from now, you will proceed to the nearest disintegrator within the hour."

Miss Hippiness lowered her face and her old eyes began sparking. Nobody ever knew their disintegration dates which the computers put on the card at birth. Nobody ever knew when they had to march into one of those horrid machines and cease living. But to learn that her own had been set a mere two years away--and she in the prime of life....

"Son of a bitch," she said, using the first 20th Century epithet that came to mind.

"You are convicted," Holmes Oneholmes was saying, "of spreading sedition and danger to our entire world in an unthinkable way, tampering with the minds of our children--"

"As if YOU don't tamper with children," she shouted.

"--and it is the order that there be no appeal from this verdict."

Miss Hippiness sat straighter. In the 20th Century, no matter what--for gangster, for statesman, for teacher--there would have been an appeal, and even another appeal, and perhaps another appeal. Life was still rich and treasured in the 20th Century.

So she held the 20th Century before her angry eyes, letting it blot out the dirty old disintegrator in its corner. How had they learned what she was doing to the sweet children?

Holmes Oneholmes' voice changed texture.

"Miss Hippiness they call you now," he said, almost fondly. "We had another name for you years ago." Almost a chuckle. "It was even better than Miss Hippiness. Don't hate little Charley, Miss Hippiness. He is an android, naturally. We had him made last year after the Freudists began picking up troublesome things in the dreams of the children you've had in class. Charley has been our wiretap, Miss Hippiness."

The old teacher's eyes clamped on Charley Tencharles. But then they softened. She shook her head. It made no difference. If they had allowed her to have a son--

"We caught an affection beyond affection," Holmes Oneholmes was saying, "in your voice when you talked to our android. So, since he has finished his service to us, we--I--decided to send him back to you, Miss Hippiness. He will march into the disintegrator with you."

A faint click told her the recording inside Charley had played itself out. Charley moved almost immediately. His eyes came down from the high wall to her face.

He grinned.

And she grinned back.

"Charley Tencharles," she said gruffly, "can't you stay away from Miss Hippiness? What a boy you are. You should be out playing, maybe in a park, maybe in a boat."

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