The Technologists (36 page)

“What did I tell you?” Lilly made no effort to lower her voice as she led her visibly shaking cousin away. “I told you he was unworthy, from the very first moment I laid eyes on him.…”

*   *   *

“N
OW
I
KNOW WHAT YOU MEANT,
”
Frank Brewer was saying fifteen minutes later as a rattled Marcus met him on the front steps of the Institute. “At the machine shop, I mean. About all eyes being only on you. Good
morning, old friend. How I have waited for this, Marcus! I owe it all to you.”

It was Inspection Day for sub-freshmen at the Institute. This was an opportunity for prospective candidates for admission to Tech to receive a tour of the Institute and learn about the admissions examinations and the courses. Marcus had sent a card to Frank’s boardinghouse reminding him to attend, though after the events of the past month, staining the reputation of both science and technology, only a fraction of the expected sub-freshmen were present. Thirty or possibly forty had been anticipated; instead only twelve young men arrived.

Now that the day had come for Frank’s visit, Marcus was consumed with worry from all sides. Waiting for Bob and Ellen’s return from their expedition to the laboratory district, he worried that he had snarled them into his own mad obsession with saving the Institute and put them in danger. He worried that the self-declared “avenging angel” who had shown up at the Institute would return, exposing them to the public. As for Agnes … he was stricken to the core by how he spoiled their encounter. If her father asked enough questions of people—especially Lilly Maguire—Mr. Turner could be led back to Marcus and then complain to the Institute. Worse still, she now detested him, and with cause, after his shameful display in the face of her tears.

“When was it you knew it?” Frank asked Marcus, pulling him out of the crater of his thoughts.

“Frank?”

“When did you know this was the right place for you to be?” Frank’s steps had started to slow down the farther along through the Institute they proceeded.

“There are some here who still would say it is
not
, Frank.”

“That is how you know it is.” Frank nodded vigorously at his own adage. “Right, that’s some dreadful good common sense, Marcus. I can prove to them eventually I’m not too big for my breeches. I’m up to snuff, ain’t I?”

Marcus put his arm around Frank’s shoulders. “A pinch above it, my friend.”

As Marcus led Frank through the different laboratories, he noticed out of the corner of his eye yet another cause for concern—Hammie,
exiting Professor Runkle’s study. Now, with Runkle serving as acting president in Rogers’s absence, any student seen visiting his rooms was the object of immediate speculation. Hammie seemed unruffled, whatever the nature of the interview had been, and sailed along in the opposite direction, without noticing Marcus and Frank.

“There go three words that would make me stay well away from this place,” Frank said, rolling his eyes in an exaggerated motion in Hammie’s direction. “Chauncy Hammond, Jr.”

“He will be graduated soon, anyway,” Marcus reminded him.

“But there will always be Someone Someone, Jr., with the same airs about him. The airs that shout: ‘I belong—you do not!’ ”

As Frank spoke, his posture straightened and his narrow chin rose. Marcus could not help recognizing the telltale signs: trying to mend threadbare duds into something like the newest fashion, a studied nonchalance meant to seem polished and enlightened, a change in physical bearing. Resenting “collegey” airs even while trying them on. Marcus had been through all of it himself as a freshman, and Frank’s presence was an uncomfortable reminder and a challenge to where he found himself now. Had Marcus done what he had set out to do? Had he become a true collegey, even after four years, and if so, was he better or worse for it?

“I’ve found there is more to Hammie than I had expected.”

“Don’t be fooled, Marcus. He is cut from another cloth, and not one to envy.”

The more he thought about Hammie in Runkle’s study, the more it chilled Marcus’s blood. Had Hammie observed more than they realized about the Technologists’ true purpose? What could Hammie have been saying to Runkle behind that closed door? Perhaps Runkle was merely informing Hammie that he had earned the position of First Scholar over Edwin. Whatever the conversation had been, Marcus would have no choice but to question Hammie about it later. It would be a true test of Hammie, whether he would attempt to deny having met with the professor.

Entering the college’s study room, Marcus and Frank were preemptively hushed by a table of students in the corner before they even said anything.

“Who are those scrubs?” Frank whispered.

“Tech’s architecture students. They’re the tyrants up here—the earth must stop revolving on its axis while they examine their drawings. You will learn, Frank, that the architecture students and engineering students do not live in harmony. At most colleges, the rivalry is freshes against sophs. But here at Tech it is the future architect who is on occasion delivered to his course in a potato sack by a budding engineer.”

Marcus was keeping a close eye on every clock they passed throughout their tour, expecting Bob and Ellen to have returned. What could be delaying them? Had they found something? He hoped someone had not found them.

At that moment, Hammie brushed past them into the study room, half-singing, half-humming the stave of an opera, which he was conducting with great delicacy using a pencil. He joined a table of sophomores and juniors, mostly mining engineers and a few chemists.

“You gents have started without me?” Hammie asked, squeezing himself in. “Well, I see it’s my turn.”

“You always win, Hammie,” complained a player from one of the younger classes.

“Hallo. Is this one of our sub-freshmen?” Albert Hall approached the pair in a dutiful whisper. “Albert Hall. Pleased to meet you.”

“Hall, this is my friend Frank Brewer,” Marcus said.

“Pleasure!” replied Frank.

“Mr. Brewer, it’s one of my obligations as a charity scholar, nor is it an entirely unpleasant one, either, to welcome all prospective students to the Institute,” Albert droned as he shook his hand with a formal stiffness, staring too intently at his face. “Pay no mind to any architects. You look familiar. I know—from our visit to the locomotive works.”

“Frank and I were employed together before I came,” said Marcus.

Albert stopped midshake and reclaimed his hand. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Pardon, Mr. Hall?” Frank asked, his brow knotted.

“What I mean,” Albert started again, licking his lips, “is that some in the faculty had been urging our dear Professor Runkle to decline any charity scholars in the future. Perhaps Mansfield already told you. They desire college fees more than they desire eager young men like Mansfield and myself.”

“Rogers won’t allow that,” Marcus was quick to say.

“When you’re ill of health, when you’re under siege …” Albert closed his eyes as though in prayer, and his sentence melted away unfinished. “Well, when his health is restored, we shall see. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen. Please enjoy the day, Mr. Brewer, and do search me out if I can be of any further help. Try not to be late for the tour.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Frank said to Marcus.

“Frank, it is only one faction. Really.”

Marcus and Frank remained where they were, standing silently in front of Hammie’s table. Hammie and his companions were playing a modified game of hazards. Since being seen with dice would risk their being admonished, instead they each mentally calculated the probability of how a hypothetical dice throw would turn up.

Hammie celebrated some invisible advancement of his score before noticing Marcus. “There you are, Mansfield,” he called, ignoring the architecture students’ renewed hisses, then looked Frank over. “Why, I’ve seen this fellow.”

“I’m Frank Brewer, one of the machinists for your father’s works.” Neither offered the other his hand, and while all three preferred to ignore it, there was a palpable awkwardness to the encounter.

“I knew I had. Seen you.” Hammie stared off across the room.

“You’ve seen him with me,” Marcus said, keeping the exchange alive.

“Oh, yes, yes, I might have, indeed,” Hammie said, a little friendlier. “Did you know I’ve just a while ago spoken privately with Uncle Johnny?”

That was Hammie’s nickname for Professor Runkle. “Oh?” Marcus replied, trying to sound as casual as possible about it. So much for trapping him in a denial.

“Not by choice, believe me. What a bore Uncle Johnny is—if only President Rogers would return. He has the only real character and spark in this place.”

“What was it he wanted to speak to you about?” Marcus pressed.

“It seems he heard something through his window of our conversation with that lunatic—you know, the scar-faced wild man, the one who looked like some kind of wicked prophet.”

Marcus was thankful that, because they were in the study room,
Hammie was whispering and the other players at his table were too absorbed with their calculations to pay attention. “Hammie, what exactly did Runkle say?”

“He’d heard that lunatic accuse us of secretly examining the catastrophes around the city. You know the time I mean? Out in the fields? Brace yourself, Mansfield. Uncle Johnny wanted to know if there was some truth to the matter.”

Marcus waited.

“Say, what do you think those blasted architecture boys would do if the legs of that table were to collapse as soon as they sat down next time?” Hammie speculated when the architects-to-be hushed them again. “I think my brain is going soft with so many ignoramuses around here.”

Marcus and Frank each appeared shaken and worried as they stood in the shadows—the dark shadows thrown by Albert’s assertion about Frank’s diminished chances of attending Tech, and now Hammie’s oblivious revelation about Runkle—both of them lost in thought and fear.

“Hammie,” Marcus finally asked, “what did you say to Ru— Uncle Johnny?”

“I was honest. Told him it was all stuff and nonsense!” Hammie continued, laughing out of his nose with a honking noise. “Just like everything around here. More … blabber.”

M
ARCUS FORCED HIMSELF
to remain impassive in the face of the ominous news. At least Frank would be occupied for the next hour or so without him. To Marcus’s surprise, Frank asked him if he could stay behind and join Hammie’s group for another of their strange silent games, this time whist, in which plays were communicated by tapping under the table using the “dashes” and “dots” scheme of the telegraph operators. After that, he would be joining the half dozen other sub-freshmen on a tour of the building organized by Mrs. Stinson, the chemical laboratory assistant.

Marcus excused himself from the study room and repaired to the basement to rinse his face and regain his bearings. On his way, a freshman stopped him and told him what he expected and dreaded: Runkle wanted to see him at his earliest convenience. It was rich, really. Here he was, promoting a friend’s candidacy to the Institute, when on the very same day the acting president was likely about to throw him out on his ear!

He took temporary refuge in an empty lecture hall, where he reflected on everything he had accomplished and enjoyed over the last four years, trying to decide how to defend himself. Even forty minutes later, as he stood in front of the door to Runkle’s study, he still hesitated before knocking.

“Mr. Mansfield. Please. I’ve been expecting you.” Runkle pointed to a hard wooden chair on the other side of his desk.

John Runkle had a Quaker calmness about him. He passed Marcus a sheet of paper. “Now, I shall have to ask you a question and I hope you shall not take offense. Did you draw this, Mr. Mansfield?”

On the paper was a caricature of Runkle fishing, using his lecture pointer as a rod and a basket of calculus problems as bait. Underwater, clutched around the basket, were true-to-life renditions of the students in the Class of ’68.

“I didn’t, sir,” Marcus said, struck by the incongruity of studying a cartoon before the desk of the somber, brilliant mathematician.

“Shame,” Runkle said, then sighed, accepting the paper back. “I just found it downstairs on the floor of the mathematics lecture room. Decent work, don’t you think? I didn’t know such a fine artist graced our halls. I’d like to compliment him one of these days. We could have another Thomas Nast in our midst.”

“The likenesses are pretty well done,” Marcus agreed.

“I’m afraid I’ve brought you here to discuss some other serious things today. You had a conversation in the yard—I could make out only fragments from my window, but it was, shall one say, suggestive talk indeed. This man seemed to believe you and some other students at Tech were engaged in an inquiry into the recent incidents that have besieged Boston.” No emotion at all—disappointment or shock or regret or fury—could be read behind Runkle’s regal beard and imposing eyeglasses.

To Marcus’s surprise, Runkle paused there, steepling his fingers under his chin. Would this be a “civilized” version of Smith Prison, where Marcus would be expected to make a full, drawn-out confession in order to identify and punish all involved in a transgression? Or would the philosophy of Hammond Locomotive Works apply, where punishment for disobedience was meted out without delay to set an immediate example to all?