Free The Stranger Came by Frederic Lindsay

Navy, and US Air Force) under Contract No. DA36-039-AMC-03200(E).” Money for science – yes, even linguistics, I say to them – came from the military, big money, in hopes of getting stuff that would be useful against "the enemy.” And Chomsky hadn't been politicised yet by Vietnam. No discredit to him. But innocence gets harder to come by all the time. And after they'd talked themselves out, I decided to finish off by reading a couple of items. You know I do that – put things in the case to use in a seminar?'
    Of course, she knew his habits. Alerted, she stared at the briefcase which he had set upright on his knee.
    'I hadn't opened it till then. The Faculty meeting with McBain was postponed. Again!'
    'Mmm .’
    'So to make an end of the seminar, I tip up the briefcase to bring out the papers. You know that trick of mine?' He drew the low table up against his knees and, suiting the action to the word, emptied the case. A book and a selection of papers slid out, and with them slithering across the polished surface perhaps a dozen contraceptive sheaths in their neat little packages.
    'That's exactly the way it happened.’ He lined them up in a tidy row. Now extra safe , she read; now extra safe . 'I couldn't think of anything to say – and I'd been talking so fluently. My bright young people, being bright, took their leave. Being young they couldn't resist letting me hear their laughter from the other side of the door.’
    'But it's disgraceful,' she said. 'How could they have dared?'
    Nothing in her vision of Maitland with his students fitted a joke like that. If, in fact, it could be described as a joke at all. It was malice, the kind of malice directed against someone who was disliked and, worse than that, despised.
    'But it's not funny, it's appalling,' she said.
    'You don't feel I was over-reacting? I mean, to a student prank. Not in very admirable taste, of course, but then you don't look to students for models of taste.’
    She was disappointed in him. It wasn't like him to look for some palatable evasion. 'I don't see how you can call it a prank!' she said.
    'I'm not disagreeing,' he said mildly. 'I just wonder why you're so sure.’
    'Those things,' her glance flicked over the neat row, 'those ridiculous things. They will make me embarrassed when we're on campus together. The idea someone might be referring to them when they see us.’
    'You think they make me ridiculous?'
    'That's not – not what I was saying –'
    'They're dirty perhaps? But not ridiculous – in their right place. A place for everything and everything in its place.’
    'I understand you must have been upset,' she said, 'but why take it out on me?'
    'I couldn't think of anyone else who would have had the chance to put them in there.’
    'You really are serious.’ She knew that she should be angrier, the innocent should be angry. 'You really believe I could do a thing like that. Something so … undignified.’ Suddenly she was in tears. 'If you don't –’ And again, 'If you –' for what she could not find words for in her distress was this horror of not being known.
     
    In the dark, his hand stroked her shoulder. 'You're not asleep?'
    'No .’
    He turned her gently and she felt his hand take the weight of her breast and then run lightly, tingling her skin, down her front until he trailed the tips of his fingers across her belly.
    'You hurt me so much,' she whispered, and felt him stir against her.
    'I'm sorry.’
    'I don't understand how you could think a thing like that.’
    'We'll call it a mystery. Let's not worry about it now.’ All the time his fingers brought her to life. They stroked the inner side of her thighs, went on her belly, on her thighs again, on her groin. She opened to him. His finger lifted the sensitive beak of her flesh, rubbed.
    'Come into me!'
    'Roll over.’ Still with his finger insistent on the sensitive place, he put her over face-down. She quivered knowing what was to come, and her buttocks sprang to the