Just a Couple of Days (5 page)

Captain Down shrugged. “I don't commute, and I could care less about the scribblings of vandals.”

“Right,” I hastily agreed, feeling like I was lying. “I don't know anything about this crisis, but there must be something that can be done for Dr. Korterly. What about his wife or his lawyer? Could they intercede on his behalf?”

“There can be
no
exceptions, Dr. Fountain.”

“I can't believe this. Declaring a city crisis and suspending civil liberties over some graffiti?” Exasperated, I got up to leave. The purple envelope Tynee had given me caught on the arm of the chair and fell from my jacket's side pocket. I snatched it off the floor angrily. “You can bet you'll be hearing from Dr. Korterly's attorney,” I threatened, pointing the purple envelope at him.

Captain Down's smile dropped once again, though not so severely this time. “That's an interesting envelope, Dr. Fountain. Might I ask where you acquired it?”

I looked at the purple envelope and, remembering Tynee's warning, tucked it into my inside breast pocket. “I'm not sure why you're curious, but, without going into much detail, it's from President Tynee.”

Captain Down grinned with all of his teeth and pulled open the top left drawer of his desk, out of which he pulled an identical envelope. “Well, well, Dr. Fountain.” He waved his own purple envelope enticingly from side to side. “Perhaps we can do something about your friend after all.”

THE BOOK O' BILLETS-DOUX

9
Sophia had arrived during my meeting with Captain Down, and I found her entangled in the same brainless argument with Officer Wilt that I had been in earlier. She looked weary, but her smile was nonetheless genuine when she spotted me. This set a swagger to my gait as I guiltlessly imagined that she was my wife. (I've had the silliest crush on her since the first time we met some ten years ago. It is a harmless infatuation, and not at all a covetous lust.) I informed her that Captain Down was straightening things out.

“We're terribly sorry about the trouble we've put you through, Mrs. Korterly.” Captain Down shook her hand gently, wearing a face of strained compassion that would rival the best politician touring a disaster area.

“My name is Dr. Carthorse,” she politely corrected him.

“Of course,” he replied. “Officer Wilt,” his tone turned commanding, “prepare the paperwork for Dr. Korterly's release immediately. And have him escorted up here straightaway!” He turned to me, smiling and cool once again, a swashbuckling sugarshit. “I'm certain we'll be in touch, Dr. Fountain.” He winked and gave a conspiratorial salute with his purple envelope before returning to his office.

“How did you get him released?” Sophia asked me, relieved. “I've been arguing with this guy for ten minutes.” Wilt pretended not to hear us, engrossed once again in his paperwork.

“I'm not really sure.” I led Sophia to the wire chairs, which looked to be recycled from old prison fencing. “I think it was this envelope. He had one just like it. This one contains a special assignment Tynee gave me about an hour ago. I didn't know what was going on, but I just played along.”

“That's strange.” She looked at me quizzically. “What's the assignment?”

“Haven't had time to look it over yet.” I put it back in my breast pocket. “Besides, I'm not supposed to talk about it to anyone.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, I sympathize with you. He gave me my first ‘special assignment' last month. Good luck.”

“Right, Tynee mentioned that. He said you're writing a paper exploring the ethics of genetic research. You never told me about that.”

Sophia laughed in my face. “You already know how I feel. We shouldn't be tinkering with the process of life until we understand the purpose, and that's a long way off in this society. Nothing personal, but without a spiritual conception of nature, biotechnology is just one more iteration of foolishness. My mind was made up as soon as you told me about the genetically modified corn whose insecticidal traits were spreading to milkweed and killing monarch butterflies.”

“I told you that was a fluke,” I interrupted her. “It hasn't been replicated.”

“It doesn't matter. I don't trust anything that
might
hurt a butterfly. Simple as that. Philosophy and ethics don't enter into it. And as far as that paper is concerned, it's perfect garbage, my worst work ever, filled with assumptions and fallacies. I only began writing it because it's what he wanted, and I didn't want to lose my job, too.”

“What did you write?”

“In defense of sacrificing values for self-interest,” she spoke cryptically, shaking her head and scolding herself, “while doing
the same. Any rationalization implies that the action doesn't flow from your values. It's like kicking your faith in the teeth and still expecting it to comfort you.” She sighed. “It doesn't matter anyway. I burned it and deleted it. I'm not about to cry over spilled ideals.”

Thinking that I might change the subject from something that was obviously distressing, I tried to ask how other things were. Sophia shrugged. “We're fine, but Blip thinks creditors are plotting to lay siege to our castle.”

“Oh. Are you two okay financially?”

“We're really fine. We barely have any debt, but that doesn't seem to matter to Blip. He can't use a condom without whining about what it costs.” She spoke with characteristic frankness and fell silent.

The image took me by surprise, and I cleared my throat, feeling suddenly guilty. “Umm, I think I read in
The Torch
that they distribute free condoms at the student union . . .” My voice trailed off into awkwardness. Sophia did not appear to be listening anyway.

“I am worried,” she abruptly confided, despair tightening her voice like a broken wing oppressing a bird's song. “Normally, we keep up with each other. But he's been getting pretty far out lately.” She locked eyes with me for an instant, and in that moment revealed to me the depths of her despair. Her lower lip trembled, and my heart nearly broke.

“He'll be fine.” I tried to comfort her, but I found that I could not meet her gaze. Our conversation was interrupted by a commotion in the corridor anyway.

Blip entered the room momentarily, handcuffed, with a
guard on each side of him. Upon seeing us he yelled, “Why the hell am I being released? No one's supposed to be released! I need to stay here! I need to stay in prison!”

 

10
My sincerest apologies, but I must interrupt the forward flow of events at this point. Fear not, I will come back around to the purple envelopes and reveal their tale of secret weapons and corrupt conspiracies in due time. But for now, please forgive me. It is only right that I digress and provide a short history of these people who quite possibly have forever changed the world. It is their daughter, after all, who answered the question
Why aren't apples called reds?
Hence, what follows is a tangent. It will not be the only one, I am certain. My current confinement makes it difficult for me not to dream of happier times.

I have known Blip and Sophia for all of a decade, ever since Blip strode into my office one gray December morning and introduced himself. Grinning like he had just gotten off a roller coaster, he said he had a few questions related to genetics that needed immediate answers, and which, although they were elementary, I could not immediately answer. But I liked him at once. He had a sagacity and a wit to match, a rarity in the straight and narrow hallways of academia. And besides, I had about as many friends as used Scotch tape, and so I clung to anyone who showed me the least bit of attention. Blip and Sophia found me and my work fascinating, and thus very quickly became my closest friends. And though they were the ones always asking questions, I have lately come to recognize that they were also my greatest teachers.

When Blip blew into my office ten years ago, he was interested
in the idea that genetic traits recede and disappear if they are maladaptive. If a trait threatens survival, it recedes and is succeeded by more adaptive traits in the long run. For example, a polar bear with black fur is less likely to hunt successfully. The uncamouflaged polar bear thus will not survive to pass on his maladaptive trait. I suggested to Blip that he might be better served by a biological anthropologist, as I studied molecular, and not population, genetics. If he heard me, he made no indication, but only continued more furiously, tapping his foot all the while.

“But is a parallel between society and genetics appropriate? Because if it is, then all this shit,” Blip stood, gesturing broadly, “is just a flush in the toilet, a temporary turd in the whirlpool of the double helix. We will evolve, because greed is not adaptive. Am I right?”

At the time, I only nodded stupidly. Like most academicians, I was pusillanimous and proud, and timid of looking for big-picture connections. I had my head stuck either in the ground or up my ass, or more often, kissing someone else's.

The very next day Blip called on me again, this time to discuss the concept of
genetic drift
. Genetic drift describes how random genetic traits, such as eye color, meander through a population almost purely by chance, eventually differentiating that population from others. He likened this to mannerisms and slang, explaining that he was beginning to see more and more people in town tap their feet when they argue. “But the thing is, I never see it when I travel. And,” he pointed to his tapping foot, “
I've
been tapping my feet when I'm making a point for years, and I picked it up from Sophia.”

“Who's Sophia?” I asked.

Blip ceased his tapping, and, smiling with simple-hearted sexuality, he answered without hesitation. “She's my lover.”

 

11
Sophia embodies everything wonderful about wildflowers and hillsides and waterfalls and sunshine. Slender and curvy is her form, and her hair, harvest brown with a few strands of silver she refuses to pluck, tumbles with abandon around the spurs of her emphatic cheekbones, flows freely down her neck, and sunders at her shoulders to scatter into locks, chasing one another down past the small of her back, past the parabola of her waist, tickling the backs of her knees like goose down in the springtime. Her limbs are lithe and strong, and her breasts are eclipsed only by her emerald eyes in their generosity and freedom.

She knows her body like a bird knows its wings. Space moves swiftly and smoothly around her aerodynamic form, and her clothing is more colorful than a lepidopterist's field guide. It's no wonder Blip sometimes walks like he has shoe boxes on his feet. The poor chap has gotten his wish, and can do nothing but fall all over himself in her presence.

Sophia has her flaws, certainly. For instance, her frequent laughter is brightly colored by a tendency to snort if she laughs too hard. But she does so unabashedly and repeatedly, for how could such a silly thing as embarrassment muzzle her glee? Besides, it only makes others laugh all the harder. Also, she confesses to an unhealthy love of sugar, and never hesitates to reach for a plate of cookies.

If I gush, forgive me once again. As I have already admitted, I developed a powerful crush at once, though I have never communicated
it to anyone until now. Such secret longings are now no longer noteworthy. Perhaps they are even impossible. In any case, Blip and Sophia are the proverbially perfect couple, and as such, they are both thrilling and incomprehensible to me. There is no envy on my part, only vicarious delight. If they have any failings as a pair, I simply choose not to notice. I idealize them like any workaholic romanticizing his childhood. Childhood isn't perfect, nor are Sophia and Blip. Nevertheless, they represent an easiness and a playfulness far too absent from my own life. You may think me sappy, but as far as I am concerned, Blip and Sophia are meant to go together like strawberries and bananas, and I consider myself lucky to be permitted to enjoy the delicious treat of their company.