Mickey Groff said weakly, "That's very nice, Mrs.—Polly, I mean."
She said seriously, "You mustn't think that the Great Science is one of these crackpot cultist affairs. I know gematry has a bad name, but you'd be astonished at the great minds that have worked on it. Fermat, Bachet—back as far as Diophantos, in fact. Why, if you'd just—oh, please, Mickey." She touched his arm as he started to move. "I'll stop. This isn't the time to talk about important things."
"Important."
"This," she said, "is a time for shallow, surfacy affairs, a time when distractions come crowding in and cannot be ignored. One such distraction is that Mr. Starkman is dying and needs oxygen."
"I have an idea," he said. "Come on."
There was a boy of fourteen standing by with a handkerchief tied around his left arm, an improvised brassard. "Son," Groff said, "do you go to the junior high?"
"Yes."
"The burgess, Mr. Starkman, needs oxygen and they can't get at the firehouse tanks. It occurred to me that there might be some in the school—those little tanks they call lecture bottles that they use for demonstrations in chemistry classes."
"I haven't taken chem yet, mister, I don't know," the boy said unhappily.
"Are there any teachers here?"