As far as John could tell, nobody paid him any notice at all, which was what he'd expected. Years of eccentric behavior in graduate school had never attracted any attention to him, and at length he'd realized that all students, faculty, and staff are unflappable. Nobody notices eccentricities on campus. At his own school he'd once seen a shapely young woman walk along the Quad in old-lady clothes and a grotesque papier-mache mask and draw no obvious attention at all, certainly none from him. Just more of the same here.
The maple trees were in bloom, branches bare apart from swollen buds and the tiny red blossoms of hard maple. A few shrubs were already putting out diminutive chartreuse leaves, and the sky was that flawless anticyclone blue that always made John's spirits sink. As John walked along, his thoughts went back to the interviews, the talk he'd given for the Department. He'd been especially nervous, stammered a lot, and indulged in his usual self- deprecation -- never a good idea in any kind of courtship. Well before the end he'd become certain that he'd failed, that yet another school would not further consider hiring him. It's a tough year, he thought. They can pick and choose, get just the guy they want, the expert in the field they're interested in. Never me.
He was almost back at the Student Union, where he had a room, when he decided to go shopping in a little area, south of the school, that he'd noticed on the ride from the airport. It was a kind of business district with jammed-together storefronts perhaps fifty years old, as on the downtown streets of the town where he grew up. Wonder if they call theirs Campustown as well, he thought, like at my old school? Instead of crossing the street to the Union, he turned and walked south down the wide sidewalk. Sirens started up, came nearer, demonstrated the Doppler effect as two police cars marked "University Police" sped past, eventually cut off.
John stopped and looked back over his right shoulder. As far as he could tell from about four blocks, the cars had stopped next to Applied Sciences. "Ha, ha, too late, missed me again, coppers!" he cried out in what might have been the voice of a villain on some bad kiddie TV show, but of course nobody walking near him took any notice. He shrugged and went on.
Presently he reached the main intersection adjacent to what he'd decided to call Campustown. He crossed the street against the light and went into the textbook store on the corner. It turned out that the textbooks were actually in the basement: the main floor was souvenirs and supplies, with some other books in the back. Yellow and forest green, the school colors, shouted at him from clothing racks, shelves of coffee mugs and shot glasses, piles of regulation-sized footballs and basketballs. He tried to think of unflattering interpretations of the colors: the school for people who, like dogs, urinate on trees? Not good enough. Anyhow, it was all sour grapes. He walked to the rear of the store and looked at the books. None of his favorite modern poets, a poor selection of some of his favorite authors, no new technical books he wanted, huge numbers of recent bestsellers and books written by and for the ignorant about popular software. He looked for something to read on the plane next morning, and found nothing he liked.
Out into the street again. A store down the block had a few tables of merchandise in front of it, and John walked towards them. A woman almost his six-foot height stood in front of a folding chair between two of the tables, shivering in her green-lettered yellow sweatshirt, her carefully- painted face downcast to show off the black roots of her golden hair to best effect. "Good afternoon," John said as he approached. "Bit early in the year for a sidewalk sale," and she shrugged, gave a perfunctory little smile, and sat down.
John looked at the sale items. The T-shirts were a bit expensive -- most were still near ten dollars -- but some outsized ceramic mugs in the shape and colors of the school's football helmets were half that. He picked one up and noticed a crack in it, rim to base, perhaps enough to make it leak. "Excuse me," he said to the tall woman, "this one's cracked. Could I have it for less?"
She gave him a weary look, and mumbled, "Ask 'em inside."
"Okay, thanks," said John, and carried the mug inside, where an old woman with huge sagging breasts and short steel-wool hair let him have it for two dollars. He left the store and walked a few paces towards the nearest trash basket, a yard-high cylindrical can with thick walls that were mostly rounded rectangular holes, and from several yards he hurled the mug in. It struck the inside wall, the crack extended itself, and the mug split neatly in half with a minimum of noise. John had intended to extend his curse to the entire school as the mug shattered, but in the event he rolled his eyes upwards and walked on; of course the tall woman took no notice of what he'd done.
Presently John found a second-hand bookstore. A small sign directed him up a steep staircase, and there, above a Chinese fast-food place, was the first bright spot in this entire miserable day. No endless rows of Sidney Sheldons and Stephen Kings here, nor little pencilled glyphs like "1st. ed." on flyleaves, followed by exorbitant prices: the place redeemed the entire town. Several hours of browsing took all the anger out of John, and when he left he regretted not the strain on his credit card, but only that his luggage would not have held much more than what he'd bought.
It was nearly five o'clock when John stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor of the Union and headed for his room. A young woman who had been standing in the hallway, apparently outside his door, walked towards him. She was almost his height, statuesque, a blonde with matching eyebrows and lashes, intense femininity and a look of formidable intelligence making her slightly coarse features striking rather than homely. She wore a white blouse and a long blue skirt, a trifle dowdy and somehow dated. "Dr. Weiss?" she asked in a contralto like bittersweet chocolate.
"Yes?" John wondered who she was.
"I'm from the Department of CIS," she said, and under her calm and brisk tones she appeared almost ready to cry. "Would you please come with me? It's very important."
"Oh, very well," he said. "Let me just drop these books off in my room and I'll come." He went to his door, unlocked it, went in and let the woman follow him, put the books on the desk, and was about to leave when he reached for the overcoat he'd left behind. "You'll need a coat, won't you?" he asked. "Or did you come in a car?"
"Thank you," she said, letting him help her into it; the sleeves were slightly long but the fit was reasonably close. "I could do with a coat. We'll have to walk."
He led her out of the room and they went back to the elevators. "Now what do you people want with me?" he asked. "I did pretty badly this afternoon, and I know I'm not quite what you want anyhow, so why this?"
"It's...hard to explain," she said. "We'll-- I'll have to show you something first, and then you might understand the situation."
"What situation?" The elevator arrived and they went in.
"I'm sorry," she said, again sounding choked up, "but you'll have to see for yourself."
John pressed the woman for details as they walked towards Applied Sciences, but it was useless. After a block or so he decided that he was being rude, and neither of them said anything more until John noticed that the police cars were still there, had in fact been joined by others. "Does all that commotion with the police," he asked, "does all that have to do with the situation you mentioned earlier?"
"Yes," she said. "You sound almost like Eliza, or the GNU Emacs `doctor' program, you know?"
"Are you a grad student in the Department?" he asked her.
She giggled, with perhaps a touch of hysteria. "Among other things," she said.
As they came closer, John saw that a crowd had gathered. The police had put up yellow plastic tapes marked with the repeated words, "CRIME SCENE: KEEP OUT," cordoning off the entire wing where CIS was located, along with a goodly portion of the grounds of Applied Sciences. The woman took John by the hand and led him to a policeman who stood just outside a stretch of tape. "Please, Officer," she said, her face seeming to become beautiful as she turned on a considerable power of charm, "could you tell us what's going on?"
The policeman gave way at once. "Well, ma'am," he began, "this sounds crazy, but it looks like an entire department in Applied Sciences there, furniture, equipment, even people, has just vanished."
"What?" said John.
"The whole computer department, what they call CIS. Nothing left of it at all, all gone, down to the bare walls, and nobody saw anybody leave or take anything away. Some of the professors were off teaching in other buildings, and nobody can find them, either."
"That's impossible!" said John.
"Yep," said the policeman. "Sounds like something outa the _National Enquirer_, space aliens took 'em away, but it really seems to've happened."
The woman thanked the policeman and led John away from the crowd. "Now you're going to tell me I had something to do with this," he said.
"You did," said the woman. "Somehow you made it happen. I don't think that even you know how you managed it, but you did it. Remember what you said after you stormed out of the building?"
"Yeah," said John. "Stupid of me, but I was angry for having failed to get hired. I was just indulging myself a little. But I'm amazed anybody noticed."
"Look," said the woman, "this will sound like insanity or a crazy practical joke to you, but that little phrase seems to have acted like a sort of magic spell."
"You're right," said John, "it does sound crazy. So how is this magic spell supposed to have caused the Department to vanish?"
"By changing it into, well, a single human being on whom you could actually perform the, uh, action indicated," she said.
"What?"
"Dr. Weiss," said the woman straightfacedly, "somehow you changed the entire Department of Computer and Information Science into me."
John broke out laughing. He was about to recover when a look at the woman's grave expression set him off again. "This is the damnedest prank that's ever been played on me," he said presently. "You're not only beautiful but a superb actress. Look, can we call this all off? I've had a long, hard day already, and I like having an early dinner. If you drop the act I'll take you out to the best dinner in town that an unemployed Ph. D. can afford."
"You don't believe us, do you?" she asked, and silent tears trickled from her fine blue eyes.
"`Us'? The royal `we'?" asked John, and promptly answered his own question. "Oh, you mean that you're made up of all the people in the whole Department."
"The equipment, the people-- everything!" she said, almost sobbing. "Look, there are eighteen professors, thirty-five or rather thirty-six staff members, a hundred twenty-seven, sorry, hundred twenty-five graduate students trapped in here!" She wrapped her arms around her body for a moment. "Please help us."
"Great," said John. "Just wonderful. Okay, whoever's planned this idiotic and pointless prank, I'll go along with it. Here's a woman apparently in distress, and true to my stupid chivalrous nature, I'm going to try to help her, no matter how ridiculous this gets."
"Thank you," said the woman.
"Not at all," said John, hamming things up a little to keep himself from cracking. "God or Whoever appears to have created me as a butt of jokes, and it's refreshing to have a joke out in the open like this, rather than woven into the very fabric of my life. So, pretending that you actually are the Department of Computer and Information Science transformed into a beautiful young woman, what can I do for you, Miss?"
"Considering what you said to bring about the transformation," said the putative Department, "I think it might be reversed it you were to, uh, do exactly what the phrase suggests."
John couldn't help but laugh again. "A nymphomaniacal Department of CIS! Great!" he said, and then calmed down a bit. "CIS: I think I'll call you Cissy."
"If you like," said Cissy. "But look, can't we just go back to your room in the Union, and, you know..." She started to walk towards the Union, and John found himself going with her.
"Yes, I can just imagine you changing back into all those people and all that equipment in the privacy and cramped quarters of my Union guest room," said John.
"I don't think that that would happen," said Cissy. "Some of my profs and grad students were nowhere near Applied Sciences when I became a woman, yet they were pulled into this form, so why should location matter?"
John sighed. "Cissy, I have no idea why you want to have sex with me. You are a beautiful young woman, at least by my reckoning, but I don't feel any particular physical attraction to you. Besides, I'm a good Catholic boy. I know we're supposed to be extinct, and maybe I'm the last of the breed, but I don't think I should be having sex before marriage. Yes, I am a virgin, and at age twenty-eight. You may laugh now."
She didn't laugh. "It's not a matter of attraction or worrying about sex before marriage. People with loved ones, families, lives to lead, have been combined together and transformed into one woman, and we think you've got to have sex with her or we'll stay trapped."
"So if I leave tomorrow morning without having had sex with you, the entire Department will just go on being you, indefinitely," said John.
"Yes," said Cissy. "Unless you take pity on us eventually."
"All that knowledge and intellect in one woman's head," said John, still not taking her seriously but humoring her as far as he could. "You'll be a formidable researcher, Cissy. Maybe you should just stay as you are."
"It's a temptation," said Cissy, somewhat to his surprise. "With practice, some of us think, we could get our minds to work together on really difficult projects. But on the whole we'd rather be individuals again."
"Some of the women in you must find it wonderful to be young and beautiful again," said John.
"You don't understand," she said, "Being a tiny part of a young and beautiful woman is hardly wonderful."
"You're very convincing," said John, "you know that? Whoever coached you is a genius, and so are you. You make it seem so plausible, it's so consistent, you present it as if it's the absolute truth."
They were almost at the Union. John missed the look of desperation that appeared on Cissy's face; by the time she spoke she had replaced it with a friendly smile. "Okay," she said, "I've been having you on. Obviously I'm not a Department that's been changed into a woman. Somebody's been having a joke on you."
"I thought as much," said John, perhaps a touch too smugly. "So somebody in the Department heard me say that, and decided to do all this?"
"What else could have happened?"
"Seems a pretty elaborate joke on someone who doesn't really matter to anyone here," he said. "Getting you to do this, getting the policeman to tell me that cock-and-bull story."
She shrugged. "Not my idea. Yes, it's pretty ridiculous."
"My offer of dinner is still open," said John, and they kept walking past the Union and towards Campustown.
"Okay," she said, "if you're willing to take me out. I'm afraid I haven't any money on me."
"My treat," he said. "And I suppose that being broke is part of your act as well?"
"Well, if I were telling the truth," she said, "you wouldn't expect me to be carrying a purse with the Departmental funds in it, would you?"
"True. What's your real name, by the way?" asked John.
"I'd rather not say," she said. "I'd rather stay in character; do you mind?"
"Not really," he said. "It's kind of fun. I'll just keep calling you Cissy, then."
"Fine."
"Are we heading roughly in the direction of a good restaurant?" John wanted to know.
"A lot of my grad students go to Gilbert's," she said. "We just keep walking down this street for a few blocks and then go left."
"What do they have there?"
"Oh, sandwiches, burgers, calzone, that sort of thing. Cheap but not too bad."
"Sounds okay."
They talked all the way to Gilbert's. It was one of those places where one orders and pays at a counter, and then waits for his name to be called when the order is ready. They ordered, John paid, and they got their drinks immediately: a strong imported ale for John but only a glass of water for Cissy. Then they went to a table for two near the back of the place. Cissy took off John's overcoat and put it over her chair, which nearly fell over from its weight.
"You know," said John, as they sat down, "you do look rather like a Department of CIS might look if personified as a woman. A bit young, perhaps, but the right face, the right shape, the right clothes."
"I was founded in 1970," said Cissy. "I think I look about my age."
"Okay, that makes sense." John took a generous swallow of ale. "Of course, as the Department you'd know everything its professors know."
"Of course," Cissy said, smiling. "Try me."
"Professor Dobbins sure came up with a nice heuristic for that variant of Traveling Salesman," said John. "What do you know about it?"
Cissy sighed. "Don't you think that that's a bit too difficult for who you think I am: an actress in character?"
"You tell me," said John.
"Well, actually it's a set of heuristics," said Cissy. "Dobbins presented only the twelve best in his paper. You apply them all each time you need a heuristic value, and choose the best value you get from them. Want details?"
"Sure," said John, already impressed. Cissy gave them. John had read the paper a few weeks before, and had been unsure about how some of the heuristics worked, but Cissy seemed to understand them all, and by the time their dinners were ready she had done away with his confusion. They went to the counter, got their food and silverware, and went back to their table.
John cut off a chunk of his calzone and ate it. "Say, this is good. I used to have it when I was in grad school, but I haven't found anywhere else that has good calzone till now. How come you're just having a hamburger?"
Cissy finished chewing a mouthful of burger and swallowed it. "It's hard to please so many people. The burger seems to be the only thing we can agree on."
"Another incentive for not staying the way you are?" asked John, going along with her act, and impressed with the pains she took to ensure verisimilitude. Her mouth full of more burger, she nodded. "You know, I'm trying to figure out just who and what you must really be. You've got to be in the Department, a very bright undergrad or maybe a grad, but at the same time a superb amateur actress. Or maybe a madwoman."
"Or maybe I was telling the truth," she said.
John paused for a few moments as he swallowed hurriedly. "You're frighteningly convincing. I could almost believe that you have got Dobbins inside you, the way you explained those heuristics. It was as if you'd developed them yourself."
"Maybe a part of me did," she said, smiling at him. "Of course, we know that that's impossible."
"I wish I were familiar with more work done at this school," said John. "Then I could ask you all sorts of obscure questions and you could answer them all, and brilliantly."
"We don't have to talk shop," she said, "if you don't like."
"Actually, Cissy," said John, "I just want to see if I can stump you, break the illusion you've presented."
"What if you can't?" she asked. "You're not going to let some clever woman who can act a little make you look foolish, are you?"
"Why not? What does it matter?" John sighed, and went on, "Are you doing anything after dinner?"
"My time is, quite literally," said Cissy, "yours. We can do whatever you like."
"Aren't you in a hurry to change back into the Department?" said John.
"If you aren't going to help change me back," she said, apparent sincerity marred by a wink, "I might as well have a pleasant evening. So what do you want to do? Bar crawling, movies, a concert?"
John didn't think that a woman like Cissy would consider him a possible element of a pleasant evening, but wisely he said only, "What sort of concert?"
"Late Beethoven quartets," she said. "Professor Radetsky loves them. You'll make him very happy if we go: it's one of a series of free concerts given by the School of Music, and he hasn't missed one yet. If he's got to be trapped inside me, at least he should have the treat of hearing a concert with a pair of young ears."
"Okay, provided of course that the School of Music hasn't changed into a handsome young man..." said John, and instantly regretted it.
"I don't see why you have to be so cruel," said Cissy, apparently trying to mask tears with indignation.
"Sorry," said John, resorting to the favorite word of the ineffectual. For a few moments he was almost convinced that Cissy was the transformed Department. "So when's the concert?"
"Seven-thirty," she said. "It's early yet."
They finished eating and slowly made their way to the Music Building. Cissy gave him a witty and interesting tour of the parts of campus they went through, much as he had been in the habit of doing for female visitors to his school, way back when. By the time they went in, John realized that he was becoming attracted to Cissy. Not at all his kind of beauty, not really a pretty face, but she was charming, well-read, and remarkably intelligent. If only he could become a professor here...maybe he could court her properly. Maybe they could even be married...
They sat near the front of the recital hall. The programs were simply sheets of office paper folded in half, a logo and the words: "The Complete Beethoven String Quartets" printed on what was now the front, a School of Music blurb on the back, and a program inside. Cissy gave him a delightful lecture on the first quartet of the concert, better than any liner notes he'd read, and he found that he enjoyed the music more than he'd expected thanks to her. He was more ignorant of Beethoven than he cared to admit, being an enthusiast for the Baroque. She repeated the performance, and he was enthralled.
"Did you enjoy the concert?" asked Cissy.
They were in a dark, quiet bar not too far from the Music Building. John had rejoiced to find good stout on tap, and had ordered a pint, which turned out to be an Imperial pint, about a fifth larger than what he'd expected. Cissy had gotten a cola. John took another generous gulp and said, "It was wonderful. Mostly because of you. How do you know so much about music?"
"All those people, you know," she said. "Some of us are bound to be fond of it. You could probably give me lectures on Bach cantatas."
"Maybe," he said. "You are a fascinating, superb, and quite incredible woman."
"Thank you," she said. "I'm trying my best to be one."
"I don't think the Department will hire me," said John, after downing half of what remained in the glass. "Just now, that seems especially unfortunate."
"Why?"
"I wish I had more time to get to know you better," he said.
"Well," she said, "if I really am the Department, how could I both be in a position to give you a job, and still be the woman you want to know better?"
"I was forgetting," he said, and drained his glass. "Of course, it's really just an act, but either way I lose. If you were really the Department, you'd vanish; even though you aren't, I can't stay here."
"Have some more beer to cry in," she suggested, and he had his pint glass refilled with stout. Over more conversation he finished it, and by then John was about as drunk as he usually became: more than one might think, for he was unusually sensitive to alcohol.
"I think I'm thoroughly drunk," he said, in an overly-controlled voice.
"I'll see you home," said Cissy.
Cissy shepherded John back to the Union. There was a touch of stagger in his walk, and once he might have walked in front of a fast-moving bus had she not been there, but she got him to the Union, onto the elevator, and to his room.
"Mind if I come in?" she asked.
"Not at all," he said, and after he unlocked the door he let her enter first.
"Nicer since they renovated these," she said, and took off and hung up John's overcoat.
"You know, it's very tempting," said John, still working to keep his voice controlled and readily comprehensible, "what with a magnificent woman like you in my room..."
"Well, it is the least serious of the capital sins," said Cissy.
"You know," began John again, not realizing the repetition, "I've never before met a woman who would have the sense to say something like that under circumstances like these. That's why I'm still a virgin."
Cissy took his face in her hands -- he noticed especially how long and delicate they were -- and kissed him full on the mouth. He seized her by the waist and crushed her body against his.
Less than ten minutes later, John was no longer a virgin. But just as the act was completed, he found air under his body and he fell to his bed, causing momentary pain as he fell on the part of his body that had been inside her: Cissy had suddenly disappeared from under him. He lay there in the dark on his stomach, through his lingering drunkenness realizing that she must have been telling the truth. Presently the phone on the nightstand rang, and he turned on a light and picked up the receiver. "Yeah?" he said.
"Dr. Weiss," said a pleasant maternal voice, "I'm Dr. Michaelson's secretary."
John cringed; he wasn't sure why. Michaelson was merely the head of CIS. "Is everything back to normal?"
"Yes," said the woman. "Dr. Michaelson thought that under the circumstances you'd rather talk to a woman. He'd like to thank you -- we'd all like to thank you -- for cooperating."
"I hardly cooperated," said John. "You had to entice me, get me drunk, and seduce me. Get me infatuated with a woman who can't exist any longer."
"Who would have believed the truth?" said the woman. "We're sorry about Cissy -- she really was somebody special, I know; I wish I were Cissy all on my own without having to share her -- but it was her or us."
"I understand," said John.
"Are you still interested in the Department?" asked the secretary.
"God, no," he said. "I'm sure that none of you would want me around, either."
"Dr. Michaelson is not without influence," she said. "Perhaps at another school?"
"Fair enough," said John. "Tell him to do that, please. Good night."
"Good night, Dr. Weiss," said the woman, and they rang off. John went to the bathroom, went back to bed, turned the light off, and lay in the dark until morning, wide awake.