Acid Song Read Online Free PDF Page B

students on their way from cafeteria to library who paused to watch, and puzzle over the more obscure placards (‘IQ for who?’ ‘You can’t measure shade’) made it hard to get an accurate fix on numbers. Fifty or so made up the hard core, Amanda estimated. They had been out here all morning, and were promising to do the same every day until the object of their rage, William Harding, Professor of Psychology, did the decent thing and resigned. His public pronouncements to date suggested that it would be a cold day in hell before such a thing happened, and right now the southerly was doing its best to oblige. Amanda was filming in the hope that she might later trap Richard into commenting. He had remained resolutely silent on the issue, which seemed to Amanda to be oddly out of character, and therefore a puzzle worth probing.
    ‘How much footage do you want?’ Greg asked her.
    ‘Can you pull back and up and get a focus on his office window?’
    ‘Which one’s his office?’
    ‘Just a window that looks as if it might be his will do.’
    ‘Hold on a sec.’
    Greg planted his feet wider and practised the move a couple of times before he was happy.
    ‘Okay, think I got it. Any faces you particularly want to …’
    He was interrupted by the sudden movement of the crowd. It was like watching a flock of birds in flight: impossible to say exactly where the lead came from. Suddenly, the mass was moving as one, swarming towards a door.
    ‘It’s him!’ The air was filled with boos and hisses. For a comicalmoment the protesters were deprived of the confrontation they longed for by the fact that they were now blocking the doorway through which the professor sought to emerge. It took a complicated series of Chinese whispers and clumsy backing up before the drama could resume.
    Amanda and Greg followed their instincts and skirted around the side, anticipating this would be the hounded academic’s escape route. Within a moment he was stopped in front of them, caught between the impassive lens and the baying crowd. For a representative of Lucifer, Professor Harding was disappointing. He wore a sensible, unsurprising brown jacket over a blue-buttoned shirt. What was left of his sandy hair was unkempt and easily tempted into dance by the wind. He was the sort of man it was easy to imagine standing in a park somewhere, smiling as he watched his children playing on the swings. He hesitated, as if too polite to simply push past the camera, and after running his hand through his kinetic hair, sighed and turned to face his accusers. Perhaps he was hoping they would give him an opportunity to speak.
    ‘Racist!’ cried one.
    ‘Bastard!’ another, before chants of SHAME, SHAME, SHAME drowned out the individual contributions.
    ‘Just let him through,’ Amanda shouted in Greg’s ear. Greg took a step back, but a short wide woman alert to the opportunity was too fast for them. She bounded up the single step marking the beginning of the quad’s amphitheatre and stood in the space vacated by the cameraman, effectively putting the shrinking professor on the stand.
    Sensing a new twist in their interactive drama, the protesters quietened, compressing from the back like a crowd at a rock concert. There was fear now, in Professor Harding’s eyes. Amanda felt something similar rising in her throat. She scanned about for sign of a security guard, a policeman, or even a grown-up. Someone whocould stop this ending badly. There was only her and Greg.
    The spokesperson raised her hand and the last of the murmuring flattened out. Even still she had to shout to be heard above the wind.
    ‘Professor Harding, are you prepared to publicly apologise for and retract your statements made in the
Journal of Psychology?’
    Amanda watched the faces in the crowd, their necks craning as they peered at this vision of evil.
    ‘Ah, well, I was just on the way to the library actually, I haven’t come prepared for a, ah, for this…’
    His voice was small