He was enigmatic for another reason, too, for although we traced his career at Bowdoin backward and forward for all its forty years, although we watched him teach the scores and scores of disciples who afterward went out into the scholastic world to take up the fight for him—we could never trace FitzJohn back into his youth. It was impossible to pick him up at any point earlier than his first appearance on the physics staff of the college. It seemed as though he were deliberately concealing his identity.
Yarr raged with impotent fury. He said: "It's absolutely aggravating. Here we follow the chain back to less than a half century from today and we're blocked—" He picked up a small desk phone and called upstairs to the data floors. "Hullo, Cullen? Get me all available data on the name FitzJohn. FitzJOHN. What's the matter, you deaf? F-I-T-Z ... That's right. Be quick about it."
I said: "Seems as if FitzJohn didn't want people to know where he came from."
"Well," Yarr said pettishly, "that's impossible. I'll trace him backward second by second, if I have to!"
I said: "That would take a little time, wouldn't it?"
"Yes."
"Maybe a couple of years?"
"What of it? You said we had a thousand."
"I didn't mean you to take me seriously, Dr. Yarr."
The small pneumatic at Yarr's desk whirred and clicked. Out popped a cartridge. Yarr opened it and withdrew a list of figures, and they were appalling. Something like two hundred thousand FitzJohns on the Earth alone. It would take a decade to check the entire series through the Integrator. Yarr threw the figures to the floor in disgust and swiveled around to face us.