Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (3 page)

           
Well. I have to be more careful, I
see, in choosing who to become when I walk upon the Earth. What a sad sack of
guts I was in that cafe! My feet truly did hurt; in fact, I was aches and
itches all over. It was only knowing I’d be out of that carcass soon that made
it possible to go on. Their lives may be brief, humans, but they can certainly
seem
long.

           
I selected that option because I
wanted to appear as the person Susan Carrigan would think of as least
threatening; so no man was possible, of course. The traditional golden-haired
white-gowned barefoot youth would lack conviction, somehow, in that
neighborhood. A child would not have threatened, but equally would not have
been persuasive about the contest in the magazine. A young and attractive
woman—without all those twinges and pangs—would have been held at a wary
distance, as in some way a competitor. So I chose my category from among the
types available in Susan Carrigan’s environment, with pains and stings intact.

           
We angels make the form we want, you
know, from the atoms of our own free-flowing selves; we do not, except under
the most dire circumstances, commandeer the body of a living creature. Thus,
from my own protoplasm, I have been a shepherd keeping watch over my flock by
night; I have been a centurion bidding one to go and another to stay; I have
been a leaping hart glimpsed briefly through the pines and followed to
salvation. Once I was a butterfly, and became so lost in its infinitesimally
tiny brain that I nearly forgot my own true self, and almost remained in there,
a butterfly for the rest of its short life. (Now,
there’s
brevity!) Would I have died, then, when the butterfly did?
I have no idea, and the question is of some moment to me, now that everything
has changed.

           
Because, you know, He does not come
after us. Like spies in novels of intrigue, once we are on the mission we are
on our own. And the greatest danger we face—it’s the greatest danger humans
face, too, but they don’t realize it—is our own free will.

           
Here is a paradox that surpassed!
all understanding. God is omnipotent, among His qualities. And yet, angels and
men have free will, can choose their own destinies, can opt to disobey even His
desires. (As Lucifer did, notoriously.) Thus it is that God has always
nudged
men, has engaged in confidence
tricks and little scams, has played at times with a stacked deck, has thrown up
illusions and toyed with mirrors, all to get humankind to
want
to do what God has in mind. And now that what he has in mind
to do is end this world, the same methods come into play. I have been sent,
therefore, to arrange things, to set the stage, to coach the unwitting actors
in their parts.

           
To
end
this world. For men to do it themselves, to release that final
fire, envelop the globe in such a volume of ravening searching flame as to
leave nothing with life in it anywhere on the cinder that remains; not a weed,
not a bug, not a drop of water in which impurities could form and flow and
start it all again. Nothing left but a lifeless ball, tumbling around and
around the sun. And man to do it himself, of his own free will. And a little
help from me.

           
The explosion was a small one,
confined to one room in the laboratory wing, with very little damage, all in
all: two metal tables bent out of shape, a couple of hopelessly charred wooden
chairs, some minor flasks and cruets destroyed, three windows to replace, walls
and ceiling to repaint, that’s about all. Minor, really, very minor.

           
But that wasn’t the point, dammit.
Carson
damn well knew what the point was, because
he damn well knew what Philpott was up to in there, and the
point
was, Philpott might have blown up
the whole damn university. Including its president, himself, Hodding Cabell
Carson IV, who would
not
appreciate
being snuffed out of existence at the peak of his career by some tenured maniac
who, not content to be famously an explorer at the very outermost frontiers of
scientific knowledge, actually has to go on and on doing experiments! And
blowing things up along the way.

           
Carson
let off steam over lunch in his private
dining room with his provost, Wilcox Breckenridge Harrison:
^cc
The
man could have blown us
all
up! So
far, he’s merely done for some two-hundred-year-old foliage, but is that a
portent or not?”

           
And he waved his chilled salad fork
at the large windows beside them, through which the older and more stately
parts of
Grayling
University
could be seen, heavily overgrown with ivy.
A prestigious private university, Grayling, tucked away here in the rolling
hills of upstate
New York
, with a prestigious president and the most prestigious of modern
physicists on the faculty, Dr. Marlon Philpott, who was a menace to everything
civilization holds dear.

           
Harrison
said,
^cc
What is it that blew up,
anyway?”

           
“God knows.”
Carson
chomped on a lot of iceberg lettuce covered
with botded diet Italian creamy salad dressing. “The worst of it is, if you
ask
Philpott what in Christ’s holy name
he’s doing over there, he’ll
tell
you, at length, and not one word in ten makes the slightest bit of sense. I
take it, though, it was not his famous strange matter that blew, but something
more mundane.”

           
“Strange matter?”
Harrison
grinned, tentatively. “You’re putting me
on.”

           
“No, by God, I’m not.”
Carson
wiped his lips on linen, dropped the napkin
back on his lap, sipped a bit of the San Gimignano, and said, “It all makes
sense, in its way, if only he weren’t so intent on
proceeding
with it. The fact is, he’s right, we do need new energy
sources. The oil’s running out, we have thirty or forty years of it left. The
public, given increasing familiarity with nuclear power, has grown
less
accepting of it, rather than more.
Solar power is a joke. So is wind, so is water, so is coal. What’s needed is
something brand-new, and our friend and nemesis, Dr. Marlon Philpott, is hot on
the trail of one of the possibilities.”

           
“Strange matter,” suggested
Harrison
.

           
“Don’t ask me what it is. I asked
him
once, and all he did was say
quark-quark-quark. You know these scientists.”

           
“I’m afraid I do.”

           
“In any event,”
Carson
said, “that, believe it or not, is the
scientific term for this theoretical substance our Dr. White Rabbit is in
pursuit of. Strange matter. If he can isolate it, it could apparently provide
us with energy beyond our wildest dreams.”

           
“So the occasional explosion—”

           
“Don’t
say that,”
Carson
warned. “That’s what
he
says. I talk to him about this destructive tendency of his, and
the man is
blithe.
God, I hate him!
Blithe!”

           
Harrison
dared to laugh. “He isn’t that bad, Chip.
And he does bring a certain renown to the university.”

           
“The university,”
Carson
said coldly, “had a certain renown before
Dr. Marlon Philpott first set fire to his kindergarten desk.”

           
“Well,”
Harrison
said, “maybe he’ll be more careful from now
on.”

           
“Not a chance.”
Carson
seemed to have finished his glass of San
Gimignano. He touched its rim with a fingertip and the waiter came forward to
do the refill as
Carson
said,
“And,
this afternoon, I
have yet another appointment with yet another insurance agent, resulting from
this little peccadillo of our Dr. Philpotfs. A person named Steinberg.”
Carson
raised a we’re- in-this-together eyebrow,
then raised his glass. “You can imagine how I’m looking forward to
that?

*
 
*
 
*

           
Michael Steinberg was everything
Carson
had expected—Semitic as a rug
merchant—except that he was unexpectedly sympathetic and understanding. “These
kinds of industrial accidents,” he said, clucking like a hen over his forms as
he sat hunched in the usually comfortable armchair facing
Carson
’s large empty desk, “you don’t expect in a
nice quiet atmosphere of learning like what you got here.
Grayling
University
, to have explosions.” Exactly. An
understanding response at last; but from what a quarter. Though warmed by the
man’s comprehension,
Carson
knew not to wash the university’s dirty linen in public: “Dr. Philpott
is a distinguished member of the faculty. His researches may be a little...” he
permitted himself a dry chuckle here “... hair-raising at times, it’s true, but
they are necessary.”

           
“But are they necessary
here)”
asked the insurance man, tapping
his pen in irritating fashion against his packet of forms.

           
That faint feeling of fellowship
sputtered in
Carson
’s breast, and died.
^cc
What do you mean? Of course they’re
necessary here. Here is where Dr. Philpott is a tenured full professor.”

           
“Forgive me, Dr. Carson,” the man
said, ducking his head, blinking behind his black-rimmed spectacles. “This is
not the company speaking, you understand, this is only a thought I myself had,
at this moment, that could perhaps be of use.”

           
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

           
“Dr. Philpott is a tenured professor
at
Grayling
University
,” Steinberg said, and shrugged. “But does
his laboratory have to be physically present at the university? Aren’t there
places better suited to such things?”

           
Carson
had no idea what the man was talking about.
“Like what?”

           
“Oh, I don’t know, an army camp,
something like that.” He gestured with his pen toward the window. “There must
be some sort of government facility not far from here. You must have friends in
Washington
.”

           
“Several,” Carson agreed stiffly.
One did not mention one’s influence aloud, and certainly not to Semitic
strangers from insurance companies.

           
“When Dr. Philpott is being a
professor,” Steinberg went on, “he is here, on campus, this beautiful campus.
When he is being a researcher, he is somewhere else. Twenty miles? Thirty miles
away? Some government installation where they know how to deal with
explosions.”

           
All at once, what the man was saying
made sense.
Carson
actually smiled upon him. “Mr. Steinberg,”
he said, “you just may have something there.”

           
Steinberg shrugged. He ducked his
head. He smiled his crooked little smile. He said, “And along the way, it could
be, I save the company a few dollars.”

           
Of course, the basis for
anti-Semitism is the fear that Jews are clever without restraint. That is,
since they are separate from “us”—
^cc
we” already consider them
separate, so they are—they need have no compunctions in their dealings with
“us,” and they are clever. Their cleverness makes them useful—as lawyers,
doctors, accountants, and so on—but their lack of compunction makes them
dangerous. What they
might
do
transmogrifies at once into what they surely
are doing,
too cleverly for “us” to catch them at it. They are
clever, and they have no reason to show “us” mercy; how hateful.

           
Hodding Cabell Carson has no peers.
He accepts orders from above, he delivers orders below. Who could slip the
suggestion into his mind, the suggestion I needed placed there? No one in his
normal circumference.

           
It had to be an outsider. It also
had to be someone he would see as clever. And it would be best if the person
were seen to be making the suggestion altruistically on the surface, but
actually for his own advantage.

           
Humans are quite simple, really. And
on to
Moscow
.