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reached my heart as well. For the same reason. It lay in my files for years until I happened to come
across it while looking for something else, and realized that it fit in well with a story notion that had
been germinating in my mind, and "The Meeting" came out. It was awarded a Hugo at the 1973 World
Science Fiction Convention in Toronto. It was my first writing Hugo (I've had some as an editor) and I
was very glad to get it; but even more glad to be able to send the duplicate trophy to Cyril's widow, as a
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long-overdue tribute to one of the most talented writers who ever graced our field.
HARRY VLADEK was too large for a man for his Volkswagen, but he was too poor a man to trade it hi,
and as things were going he was going to stay that way a long time. He applied the brakes carefully
("Master cylinder's leaking like a sieve, Mr. Vladek; what's the use of just fixing up the linings?"-but the
estimate was a hundred and twenty-eight dollars, and where was it going to come from?) and parked in
the neat-
ly graveled lot. He squeezed out of the door, the upsetting telephone call from Dr. Nicholson on his
mind, locked the car up and went into the school building.
The Parent-Teachers Association of the Bing-ham County School for Exceptional Children was holding
its first meeting of the term. Of the twenty people already there, Vladek knew only Mrs. Adler, the
principal, or headmistress, or owner of the school. She was the one he needed to talk to most, he
thought. Would there be any chance to see her privately? Right now she sat across the room at her
scuffed golden oak desk in a posture chair, talking in low, rapid tones with a gray-haired woman in a tan
suit. A teacher? She seemed too old to be a parent, although his wife had told him some of the kids
seemed to be twenty or more.
It was 8:30 and the parents were still driving up to the school, a converted building that had once been a
big country house-almost a mansion. The living room was full of elegant reminders of that. Two
chandeliers. Intricate vine-leaf molding on the plaster above the dropped ceiling. The pink-veined white
marble fireplace, unfortunately prominent because of the unsuitable andirons, too cheap and too small,
that now stood in it. Golden oak sliding double doors to the hall. And visible through them a grim,
fireproof staircase of concrete and steel. They must, Vladek thought, have had to rip out a beautiful
wooden thing to install the fireproof stairs for compliance with the state school laws.
People kept coming in, single men, single women, and occasionally a couple. He wondered how the
couples managed their baby-sitting problem. The subtitle on the school's letterhead was "an institution
for emotionally disturbed and cerebrally damaged children capable of education." Harry's nine-year-old
Thomas was one of the emotionally disturbed ones. With a taste of envy he wondered if cerebrally
damaged children could be baby-sat by any reasonably competent
grownup. Thomas could not. The Vladeks had not had an evening out together since he was two, so that
tonight Margaret was holding the fort at home, no doubt worrying herself sick about the call from Dr.
Nicholson, while Harry was representing the family at the PTA.
As the room filled up, chairs were getting scarce. A young couple was standing at the end of the row
near him, looking around for a pair of empty seats. "Here," he said to them. 'Til move over." The woman
smiled politely and the man said thanks. Emboldened by an ashtray on the empty seat in front of him,
Harry pulled out his pack of cigarettes and offered it to them, but it turned out they were nonsmokers.
Harry lit up anyway, listening to what was going on around him.
Everybody was talking. One woman asked another, "How's the gall bladder? Are they going to take it
out after all?" A heavy, balding man said to a short man with bushy sideburns, "Well, my accountant
says the tuition's medically deductible if the school is for psychosomatic, not just for psycho. That we've
got to clear up." The short man told him positively, "Right, but all you need is a doctor's letter; he
recommends the school, refers the child to the school." And a very young woman said intensely, "Dr.
Shields was very optimistic, Mrs. Clerman. He says without a doubt the thyroid will make Georgie
accessible. And then-" A light-coffee-colored black man in an aloha shirt told a plump woman, "He
really pulled a whig-ding over the weekend, two stitches in his face, busted my fishing pole in three
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places." And the woman said, "They get so bored. My little girl has this thing about crayons, so that
rules out coloring books altogether. You wonder what you can do."
Harry finally said to the young man next to him, "My name's Vladek. I'm Tommy's father; he's in the
beginners group."
"That's where ours is," said the young man. "He's Vern. Six years old. Blond like me. Maybe you've
seen him."
Harry did not try very hard to remember. The two or three times he had picked Tommy up after class he
had not been able to tell one child from another in the great bustle of departure. Coats, handkerchiefs,
hats, one little girl who always hid in the supply closet and a little boy who never wanted to go home
and hung onto the teacher. "Oh, yes," he said politely.
The young man introduced himself and his wife; they were named Murray and Celia Logan. Harry
leaned over the man to shake the wife's hand, and she said, "Aren't you new here?"
"Yes. Tommy's been in the school a month. We moved in from Elmira to be near it." He hesitated, then
added, "Tommy's nine, but the reason he's in the beginners group is that Mrs. Adler thought it would
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