Free Emprise by Michael P. Kube-McDowell Page B

into kindling and trash.
    The doors of Cambridge were open, but the minds of those they sought to enlist were not. The refusals and rebuffs were polite for the most part, but as the trio moved from the offices of the Queen’s College to Corpus Christi to St. John’s, Aikens began to suspect that the politeness was grudging, a mere remnant of goodwill. When he spotted the university’s vice-chancellor bearing down on them as they stood in the court of Trinity College, he knew that that goodwill had been exhausted.
    “Aikens! Hold right there.” The vice-chancellor joined them, wheezing from the pursuit. “You and your friends have been making general pests of yourselves, interfering with the work of my faculty and filling the air with foolishness to boot. I insist you leave them alone.”
    “Certainly. I’d rather have been talking with you or the chancellor anyway,” Aikens said calmly. “Shall we go to your office?”
    “What makes you think I would be any more interested in your foolishness than the others?” the vice-chancellor demanded.
    “This is important work that needs doing. I can hardly believe that the Cambridge which gave the world Rutherford and Cavendish would choose to look the other way,” Aikens said reasonably.
    “What you and your kind believe is of no interest to me,” the vice-chancellor said coldly. “Especially your current brand of fiction, concocted by parasitical frauds who have tired of real labor. If you insist on trying to finance your fantasies, I suggest you open up a shop on Sheep’s Green with the rest of the astrologers. And if you do not wish to be arrested as peddlers and trespassers, you’ll leave the campus before the constables I’ve sent for find you!” That said, he turned and strode away.
    For a moment Aikens stared in disbelief at the retreating figure. “That simple-minded popinjay!” he sputtered at last. “How dare he talk to me that way? What a bloody fool!”
    Anofi took his arm and turned him toward the river Cam. “More fools we,” she said as they walked. “Little did we realize that we’re not only the only ones who know, we’re the only ones who care.”
    Aikens ranted on, livid. “Blackguard! Spawn of a chippy! If I didn’t know his parents, I’d think he was French.”
    Anofi looked away to hide her amusement.
    “Come now, Marc.” Schmidt reproached him. “Are you really so surprised? Is it that easy for you to pretend that it’s still 1985 and nothing has changed?”
    “He didn’t even hear us out,” Aikens said gruffly.
    “Doubtless one of the deans told him enough to satisfy his limited curiosity.” Aikens frowned, then nodded reluctant agreement. “It’s London for us, then.”
    “We can expect more of the same there.”
    “We must try,” Anofi insisted, her normal ebullience returning. “We’ve missed today’s train, but that will give us time to make appointments—if the lines to London are working.”
    “I doubt we’ll be able to get any appointments,” Aikens said soberly.
    “That’s fine,” she said, clapping her hands once. “Then we’ll crash offices. There’s nothing I like better than a good reason to be rude.”
    The group left Cambridge the next morning on a crowded, noisy, superannuated British Rail electric. Eddington was with them—though Schmidt had tried to dissuade her, Anofi had coaxed Eddington back into the fold.
    En route, they planned their campaign as best they could. But the message they carried did not fit comfortably into the purview of any government office they could name, and they found that they knew embarrassingly little about the bureaucracy itself and still less about the people who made it up.
    Anofi’s joking suggestion that the Foreign Office would be most interested put an end to the effort, and they followed Schmidt’s example by sight-seeing the rest of the way. They peered through grime-streaked windows as Essex and Hertfordshire flashed by, the dry stone walls, the