His words were an excitant; the more he expounded, the more indignant he got. The eyes bulged, the lips quivered, a little vein on the side of his forehead throbbed like an inexact metronome. He was a disturbing ambassador for all the eccentric teachers I had ever known.

Now he reset his face into an empty half-smile of superiority. “You do follow me, young man?”

“I do.”

“What do you think? Your input is breathlessly awaited.”

“I think you should take it easy.”

He snorted. My input, rather than mollifying him, had increased his agitation.

“Let me tell you something.” He twitched and churned within his bathrobe. “Practically everything of value to the human race that has been said or done since the beginning of time had its genesis in indignation.” He settled back in his chair, breathing heavily. “Where were we?”

“You were talking about presidents…”

“As for the ordinary citizen, he is engulfed, reduced to the compliance and corruptibility of a listless victim, as devoid of honor as his gauleiters. He has stumbled and bumbled about the thin crust of our fragile old planet, enduring the wrath and the indignities of fools and megalomaniacs for ten thousand years, but a new scourge has caught up with him. The fools are about to turn his home into a crematorium. They would reduce the world to a pellet of muck where not even a hair will grow, and he is asked to admire the excellence of the plans and policies by which he is deceived.”

He stared at me while I tried to maintain the impassivity of a mandarin, which wasn’t enough for Chatterton. He wanted a visceral reaction.

“Doesn’t it strike you as preposterous that a few men of questionable sanity have the power to destroy what nature has preserved for a hundred million years?”

“I guess so,” I said tentatively.

“You guess so,” he boomed mockingly. “That’s your considered opinion? That’s all you can say?” Scornfully he shook his shaggy head. “Well, young snot, we’re coming to the crunch. The world is marching off a cliff and,” he said, “you ‘guess so.’”

“What are you doing about it?”

“Ah-hah!” he said. “Then you do agree that it calls for something other than resignation?”

“Sure. But…”

“Wouldn’t you further agree that steps must be taken to unseat the barbarians?”

“How?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” he said with glacial indulgence. “We have gathered here, my brave little company and I, to wage war on the warriors—to end war forever.” He rose theatrically from the chair and paced up and down. “We, perhaps more than most, are prepared to challenge cant and the cult of conventional values, for we have never in our academic lives been inclined to accept the dictatorship of science. And now we are on the verge of a revolutionary breakthrough.” He paused in the middle of the carpet.