The Exalted

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THE STORKLIKE MAN WITH THE GRAY GOATEE SHUFFLED THE TWELVE black billets about on the table top. “Try it again,” he said.

The undergraduate sighed. “O. K., Professor Methuen.” He looked apprehensively at Johnny Black, sitting across the table with one claw on the button of the stop clock. Johnny returned the look impassively through the spectacles perched on his yellowish muzzle.

“Go,” said Ira Methuen.

Johnny depressed the button. The undergraduate started the second run of his wiggly-block test. The twelve billets formed a kind of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle; when assembled they would make a cube. But the block had originally been sawn apart on wavy, irregular lines, so that the twelve billets had to be put together just so.

The undergraduate fiddled with the billets, trying this one and that one against one he held in his hand. The clock ticked round. In four minutes he had all but one in place. This one, a corner piece, simply would not fit. The undergraduate wiggled it and pushed it. He looked at it closely and tried again. But its maladjustment remained.

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