“I’m working on it, Sophie.”
“But Hilde’s father must be fully aware that you are working on it.”
“Decidedly so. But he doesn’t know what the actual plan is. I am
attempting to find an Archimedian point.”
“An Archimedian point?”
“Archimedes was a Greek scientist who said ‘Give me a firm point on
which to stand and I will move the earth.’ That’s the kind of point we must find
to move ourselves out of the major’s inner universe.”
“That would be quite a feat.”
“But we won’t manage to slip away before we have finished the
philosophy course. While that lasts he has much too firm a grip on us. He has
clearly decided that I am to guide you through the centuries right up to our
own time. But we only have a few days left before he boards a plane
somewhere down in the Middle East. If we haven’t succeeded in detaching
ourselves from his gluey imagination before he arrives at Bjerkely, we are
done for.”
“You’re frightening me!”
“First of all I shall give you the most important facts about the French
Enlightenment. Then we shall take the main outline of Kant’s philosophy so
that we can get to Romanticism. Hegel will also be a significant part of the
picture for us. And in talking about him we will unavoidably touch on
Kierkegaard’s indignant clash with Hegelian philosophy. We shall briefly talk
about Marx, Darwin, and Freud. And if we can manage a few closing
comments on Sartre and Existentialism, our plan can be put into operation.”
“That’s an awful lot for one week.”
“That’s why we must begin at once. Can you come over right away?”
“I have to go to school. We are having a class get-together and then we
get our grades.”
“Drop it. If we are only fictive, it’s pure imagination that candy and soda
have any taste.”
“But my grades ...”
“Sophie, either you are living in a wondrous universe on a tiny planet in
one of many hundred billion galaxies— or else you are the result of a few
electromagnetic impulses in the major’s mind. And you are talking about
grades! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“I’m sorry.”
“But you’d better go to school before we meet. It might have a bad
influence on Hilde if you cut your last school-day. She probably goes to school
even on her birthday. She is an angel, you know.”
“So I’ll come straight from school.”
“We can meet at the major’s cabin.”
“The major’s cabin?”
... Click!
Hilde let the ring binder slide into her lap. Her father had given her conscience a
dig there—she did cut her last day at school. How sneaky of him!
She sat for a while wondering what the plan was that Alberto was devising.
Should she sneak a look at the last page? No, that would be cheating. She’d better
hurry up and read it to the end.
But she was convinced Alberto was right on one important point. One thing was