The Complete Stories_ Volume 1 - Isaac Asimov [306]
Damn, thought Polen fretfully, why do people attend college reunions?
Casey's hot blue eyes were still filled with the aimless anger of the college sophomore who has discovered intellect, frustration, and the tag-ends of cynical philosophy all at once.
Casey! Bitter man of the campus!
He hadn't outgrown that. Twenty years later and it was Casey, bitter ex-man of the campus! Polen could see that in the way his finger tips moved aimlessly and in the manner of his spare body.
As for Winthrop? Well, twenty years older, softer, rounder. Skin pinker, eyes milder. Yet no nearer the quiet certainty he would never find. It was all there in the quick smile he never entirely abandoned, as though he feared there would be nothing to take its place, that its absence would turn his face into a smooth and featureless flesh. Polen was tired of reading the aimless flickering of a muscle's end; tired of usurping the place of his machines; tired of the too much they told him.
Could they read him as he read them? Could the small restlessness of his own eyes broadcast the fact that he was damp with the disgust that had bred mustily within him?
Damn, thought Polen, why didn't I stay away?
They stood there, all three, waiting for one another to say something, to flick something from across the gap and bring it, quivering, into the present.
Polen tried it. He said, "Are you still working in chemistry, Casey?"
"In my own way, yes," said Casey, gruffly. "I'm not the scientist you're considered to be. I do research on insecticides for E. J. Link at Chatham."
Winthrop said, "Are you really? You said you would work on insecticides. Remember, Polen? And with all that, the flies dare still be after you, Casey?"
Casey said, "Can't get rid of them. I'm the best proving ground in the labs. No compound we've made keeps them away when I'm around. Someone once said it was my odor. I attract them."
Polen remembered the someone who had said that.
Winthrop said, "Or else—"
Polen felt it coming. He tensed.
"Or else," said Winthrop, "it's the curse, you know." His smile intensified to show that he was joking, that he forgave past grudges.
Damn, thought Polen, they haven't even changed the words. And the past came back.
"Flies," said Casey, swinging his arm, and slapping. "Ever see such a thing? Why don't they light on you two?" Johnny Polen laughed at him. He laughed often then. "It's something in your body odor, Casey. You could be a boon to science. Find out the nature of the odorous chemical, concentrate it, mix it with DDT, and you've got the best fly-killer in the world."
"A fine situation. What do I smell like? A lady fly in heat? It's a shame they have to pick on me when the whole damned world's a dung heap."
Winthrop frowned and said with a faint flavor of rhetoric, "Beauty is not the only thing, Casey, in the eye of the beholder."
Casey did not deign a direct response. He said to Polen, "You know what Winthrop told me yesterday? He said those damned flies were the curse of Beelzebub."
"I was joking," said Winthrop.
"Why Beelzebub?" asked Polen.
"It amounts to a pun," said Winthrop. "The ancient Hebrews used it as one of their many terms of derision for alien gods. It comes from Ba'al, meaning lord and zevuv, meaning fly. The lord of flies."
Casey said, "Come on, Winthrop, don't say you don't believe in Beelzebub." •:,t "I believe in the existence of evil," said Winthrop, stiffly.
"I mean Beelzebub. Alive. Horns. Hooves. A sort of competition deity."
"Not at all." Winthrop grew stiffer. "Evil is a short-term affair. In the end it must lose—"
Polen changed the subject with a jar. He said, "I'll be doing graduate work for Venner, by the way. I talked with him day before yesterday, and he'll take me on."
"No! That's wonderful." Winthrop glowed and leaped to the subject-change instantly. He held out a hand with which to pump Polen's. He was always conscientiously eager to rejoice in another's good fortune. Casey often pointed that out. Casey said, "Cybernetics Venner? Well, if you can stand him, I suppose he can stand you." Winthrop