No. He had not. That was the only useful point Michael had obtained from Seldon.

“Oh, no, Randolph didn’t associate with…us,” he said. Mentally supplying the three missing words, Michael suppressed a smile. “I presume he passed his leisure hours with friends in the city. Except-yes. I recall being surprised, at the time…He spent a good deal of time with the students.”

The emotion that colored his voice-one of the few times that genuine feeling was allowed to show-was simple astonishment. Remembering Buchsbaum’s conversation, and some of the student complaints he had seen published in recent months, Michael understood. His internal amusement, this time, was rather sour. By God, things had changed. He remembered the big, echoing old house where he had grown up; the front door always open and the carpet in the hall worn threadbare with the tread of students’ feet, in and out, at all hours of the day and night. His father had had a funny notion of a teacher’s role… Professor Seldon would probably never know why Michael left so abruptly.

But it was that very lead that had led to his present frustration. The student-teacher relationship, if it was a good one, could be one of the most important in life. He had expected some interesting material from Randolph ’s students. Having gone, posthaste, to look up the enrollment for Randolph ’s class, he was delighted to find that one of the top students was still around. Tommy Scarinski.

Maybe his reasoning had been fallacious. But he didn’t think so, he was inclined to cross Tommy off as an isolated aberration. The best students in the class, the ones who got the highest grades-they still gave letter grades in those bad old days-might not necessarily be the people who had most attracted Gordon, but it was far more likely that his favorites would be found among that group than among the kids whose work had been too poor to rate Gordon’s approval. Besides, the class file included Randolph ’s comments-terse, sympathetic, and intelligent. The four “A” students had received the most favorable comments-with one exception. Miss Alison Dupuis had been dismissed with a curt: “Idiot savant; but how can you flunk a calculating machine?” With the other three, Randolph had obviously enjoyed a personal friendship.

One of the three had been Linda.

The second, Joseph Something or Other, had dropped out of sight. The vinegary spinster at the Registrar’s office could tell him only that Joseph was no longer registered. Well, that was something he could do tomorrow; he had been too pleased at the availability of Tommy Scarinski to check the other records, to see whether Joseph X had matriculated, or transferred to another institution. Graduate school somewhere was a likely possibility, in view of his scholastic record and his teacher’s praise. What had Gordon said? “Genuine creativity and drive-a rare combination.” Yes, Joseph was worth tracking down. The evaluation of a brain like that, sharpened by several years of maturity and by absence from his former mentor, would be valuable. That was why Tommy had been so disappointing: The years hadn’t sharpened his brain, it was still mushy… Poor devil.

The waiter brought his steak, and Michael finished his drink and his deliberations. As he ate he glanced around the room in search of distraction from thoughts that were becoming stale and futile. It was a pleasant, undistinguished little place, like a thousand other restaurants in a hundred other towns. The only thing that made it different was the fact that it was in a college town. There were a lot of students present, mostly couples, and they definitely brightened the scene. The voices were shrill, but they were alive; they got loud with excitement, they vibrated with laughter. Collegiate styles were undoubtedly picturesque. Floppy pants, beads and pendants, clothes that dangled, and jingled, and blazed with color. Michael approved of beards; at least you could tell the boys from the girls that way, and the Renaissance look appealed to him. A couple at a table next to the booth he occupied might have posed as models for the New Look-the boy had long brown hair, and hair over most of the rest of his face; a red kerchief was knotted around his throat. Michael’s eyes lingered longer on his date. The long, straight blond hair obscured her face most of the time, but her legs were in full view. They were booted up to the knee, and what she wore above them, if anything, was hidden by the tablecloth.

Michael signaled the waiter for his coffee. The man lingered, swabbing unnecessarily at the table, and Michael resigned himself.

“Stranger in town?”

“Yes. I’m just here overnight.”

“You busy tonight?”

“No,” Michael admitted, wondering what form the conventional offer would take this time.

“You like music?”

“Well-some kinds,” Michael said, surprised and curious.

“Stick around then, have another cup of coffee. Kwame is due in a few minutes. He’s not bad, if you like that kind of music.”

“Kwame?”

The waiter, a tired-looking man with receding hair, grinned.

“That’s what he calls himself. Real name’s Joe Schwartz.”

“What does he play? The sitar? The viola d’amore?”

“Just the guitar. But, like I said, he’s not bad. If you like that kind of music.”

He moved on to the next table, leaving Michael feeling ashamed of his cynicism. Maybe he ought to get out of the big city more often. It was a hell of a note when you were surprised by ordinary human amiability. The conversation was a lesson for him in another way; it emphasized his point about personality stereotypes. The weary middle-aged waiter was not the sort of person you’d expect to enjoy the music produced by somebody named Kwame, even if he didn’t play the sitar.

His newfound friend was on the alert, and signaled him with a jerk of the head when the performer appeared, but Michael didn’t need the signal. Even in this crowd he would have spotted Kwame.

Such is the power of suggestion that Michael had unconsciously expected the performer to be black-with a name like Joe Schwartz, yet, he told himself. But the sparse expanses of skin visible were of the sickly tan that people choose, for some obscure reason, to call white. The hair was extensive; it made the efforts of the other boys look epicene. Now that, Michael thought admiringly, is a beard!

It swept down in undulating, shining ripples to the boy’s diaphragm, where it mingled with the waves of long brown hair. Although the night was chill and damp, Kwame wore only jeans and a sleeveless embroidered vest, which flopped open with each step, displaying a cadaverous chest. He was barefoot. But his guitar had been carefully swathed against the damp. It was a twelve-string guitar, with a shining surface that might have been produced by Stradivarius or Amati. Expensive, loved, used, and tended like a baby.

There was a tiny podium or stage, about the size of a dining-room table, at the far end of the room, and at another gesture from the waiter, Michael took his cup and moved down to an unoccupied booth near the stage. The other habitués were doing the same thing. Kwame, who had seated himself cross-legged on the floor, placed the guitar across his lap and sat waiting. His eyes moved incuriously around the room, and as they met Michael’s, the latter was conscious of an odd shock. Drugs. The eyes were unmistakable… And why, he wondered cynically, was he shocked? He read the newspapers.

There was no announcement, no introduction. When everyone had seated himself, and silence had become profound, Kwame began to play.

Michael’s first reaction was negative. Kwame’s harsh voice had little appeal for a post-adolescent square who concealed a secret weakness for old Perry Como records, and Kwame’s playing, though competent, was not remarkable. The songs were a mixture of legitimate folk music and modern rock imitations of folk music; a few of them sounded vaguely familiar, but Michael was not sufficiently knowledgeable about the popular repertoire to identify them. All had one theme in common: peace, love, innocence, and the annihilation of all these by man’s cruelty. The mushroom cloud billowing up around the kids playing in the daisy field, the blast of an explosion annihilating the kids in the Sunday School…Kevin Barry lost his young life again, and the lambs were all a-crying. But it was effective. The images were sure fire, they couldn’t miss.