A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 11

  And Mama. Astonishing! The very last kind of mother she had expected was a silly one. Yet Mama was a silly woman. Oh, strong as an ox. Powerful. Not unintelligent in everything. Not weakwilled. But it was as if a part of her had never grown up satisfactorily — which would fit with her history of an extremely early marriage, of course, though not with her almost equally early widowhood. Dr Carriol began to grasp the nature of Joshua Christian's upbringing, and understood better now why he was such a tremendous patriarch in spite of his relative youth. So much of what Mama had done was instinctual; not for one moment did Dr Carriol believe Mama capable of cold-bloodedly fashioning her son in his present mould. She achieved what she wanted simply by wanting it single-mindedly, blindly, primitively. A rare accomplishment. And only possible because the unformed human clay she had produced out of her body happened by chance and genetics to be perfect for her purpose. That little boy of four had actually owned shoulders broad enough to take on the burden of fatherhood and chieftainship. No wonder his younger siblings reverenced him, and his mother shamelessly adored him. No wonder too that he had buried his sexual urges so deeply they would probably never plague him between cradle and grave. For the first time in her life Dr Carriol experienced a surge of simple and very painful pity; poor little boy of four!

  And finally, a fresh bag packed for Dr Christian, they got themselves away on the night train for Washington. Dr Carriol's brandishing of her certificate of priority had got them a private compartment, a luxury that rather opened Dr Christian's eyes as to his travelling companion's real importance in the Department of the Environment. It was one thing to hear a job description from the mouth of the job's owner, quite another to experience these side effects. The porter brought them coffee and sandwiches without being asked, and for the first time in his life Dr Christian found himself actually enjoying the sensations of travel.

  But mostly he was conscious of a huge tired sadness that hung over his shoulders and draped itself down him like a clinging grey veil. Why should he feel that his coming to Washington with this woman was going to change his life out of all recognition? It was just a trip to see some data man, instil in the data man a bit of appreciation for the fact that the statistics he played around with on his computers were not abstractions but actual living people, souls and bodies, feelings, individual identities. By this time next week he would be back in Holloman going about his usual business. Yet he couldn't bring himself to believe that. There was something in the woman who sat alongside him (why had she chosen to sit alongside him instead of opposite him, sure a more normal choice for any woman on friendly but not intimate terms with her companion?) that she was not going to admit to, but that he felt. An excitement. A terrible drive. All to do with him. Yet they were not emotions generated out of sexual attraction or even sexual difference. Oh, Judith Carriol and Joshua Christian were extremely aware of each other as woman and man, but neither was the kind to fracture a delicate mental balance by yielding to grosser sensations. Neither of them lived for fleshly gratification, which was not to say they were indifferent to it or unattracted by it. She had long recognized the toll it took, weighed up how much she had of expendable energy, and brought the scales crashing down on the side of intellect, of work. He could not have borne the spiritual weight.

  The train slowed to an amble and voluntarily engulfed itself in the stygian warren of tunnels below Manhattan; only then did Dr Christian find voice.

  'I remember reading a short story once, about a train in these New York City tunnels that slipped through a little hole in the space-time continuum and was doomed for all eternity to travel in the darkness, rushing down one tunnel and up another, on and on and on… I can believe that story, sitting here.'

  'Yes, so can I.' Her voice sounded bled of vitality.

  'Take us. If we were doomed never to emerge into the light again, what would we do, you and I, sentenced to sit here together for all eternity? What would we find to talk about? Would you finally have to be utterly honest with me? Or would there still be virtue in concealment?'

  She stirred, sighed. 'I don't know.' Her head came round to let her eyes look at him, but he was so gaunt and pallid in the single wavering dim overhead light that she turned her head away again. Then, comfortably looking at the vacant seat opposite once more, she smiled. 'It might be rather nice. Certainly I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend eternity with, and I don't mean that in a vulgar way.'

  'Vulgar!' He inspected the word closely, struck by it. 'Now why did you choose that adjective?'

  She ignored the question. 'Well, if we wished hard enough, we might be able to force the train through that little hole in space-time. I've always suspected that the true seat of infinity is right inside the human cranium. No boundaries, if only we knew where we built our own, and could knock them down.' Thank God she didn't have to look at him! Not only because she would have found his gaze unsettling, but because she wasn't sure how much he would read in her own. She lifted her chin, but continued to stare straight ahead. 'You could do it, Joshua. You could help people find the walls they build inside their heads and show them how to knock the walls down.'

  'I do that already,' he said.

  'Poh! With a handful! What about the whole world?'

  He went stiff. 'I know nothing of the world outside Holloman. Nor do I want to know.' And he withdrew.

  So they sat silently and watched the darkness go by in unending sameness. An eternity of darkness. Was eternity dark, or was darkness eternal? His sadness insisted upon lingering like a musky perfume, and when at last the train drew into the gloomy dirty corridors of Penn Station he blinked in the miserable paucity of light as if it were a million candlepower all concentrated just on him, and he the cynosure of a million prying prurient eyes.

  From Penn Station through the countless stops and starts and clickety-clacks they both slept uneasily, heads back against opposite corners of the long seat, feet propped up on the seat opposite, and only woke when the train drew groaning into Washington with the porter adding tympani by banging on the door.

  This was Dr Carriol's home territory, so she led the way out of the marble mausoleum of Union Station to the correct bus stop, with Dr Christian stumbling dazedly behind.

  'The Department of the Environment isn't far from here,' she said, waving her hand in a direction he didn't know was roughly north, 'but we'd better go home first and freshen up.'

  Miracle of miracles, the Georgetown bus had actually timed itself to connect with the train, on account of the fact that the train was an hour late.

  The time was mid-morning and the month was barely March, but the day was relatively warm as well as sunny; they were predicting an early spring for the country this year. No sign of pregnant cherry trees yet, alas; everything bloomed later and later. O skies, breathe life into the trees! Dr Carriol begged silently, sick to death of winter. Only let me live to see another froth of blossom! Am I too a victim of this millennial neurosis he talks about? Or am I simply his victim?

  Her house looked and smelled fresh, for she had left one window at the front open a crack, and one window at the back too, and yet another down the sheltered side passage.

  'The house isn't finished inside yet,' she apologized, leading the way into the front hall and gesturing to him to keep his bag in his hand. 'I ran out of money. But I fear you'll deem my decorating very dull after your houses.'

  'No, it's lovely,' he said sincerely, approving in this warmer climate of the lightly graceful Queen Anne furniture, the brocaded chairs and sofas, the carpet that looked like shadow-dappled sunlight.

  Up the honey-coloured wooden staircase, down a honey-coloured wood-panelled hall to a honey-coloured wooden door. On its other side lay a bedroom, unfurnished save for a wide bed protruding from its far wall.

  'Can you be comfortable here?' she asked doubtfully. 'I don't have many guests, so the guest bedroom is about last on my priority list. Maybe it would be better to put you in a hotel — at Environment's expense, o
f course.'

  'I'll be fine here,' he said, putting down his bag.

  She indicated a door. 'There's a bathroom attached.'

  'Thank you.'

  'You look beat. Would you like a nap?'

  'No, just a shower and a change of clothes.'

  'Oh, good! I figured we'd go over to Environment and have lunch there, then I'll introduce you to Moshe Chasen. You can spend the afternoon with him, then we'll go straight on somewhere for dinner.' She smiled ruefully. 'I'm no cook, I'm afraid.'

  And she shut the door and left him to himself.

  4

  Dr Christian's mother and brothers were vigorously in favour of his relationship with Dr Judith Carriol, his sisters-in-law and his sister just as vigorously against it.

  Ever since Dr Christian had gone without warning to Washington the feud had waxed and waned, and it reached new heights of passion on the following Sunday, when the family congregated early in the morning on the ground floor of 1047 to begin the day's attendance on the plants.

  Armed with leaf feeder, baskets and small secateurs, the women were deputed to spray-feed, pick and prune, while the men uncoiled the various lengths of polyethylene tubing which led to water, and carried various sizes of steps. Every plant was watered by feel, which meant a hand had to be pressed against its soil to ascertain how damp it was before any water might be delivered. Long familiarity had bred a concentrated efficiency into the whole routine, for almost every plant was known with the intimacy of a close relative; how much water it drank, what pests it was likely to develop, which way its fronds or branches were likely to grow. Normally the only squabble was about leaf gloss, of which Dr Christian disapproved strongly but his mother always hankered after.

  'Perfection can be improved!' she would announce, and he would answer imperturbably, 'No, Mama. It plugs up the stomates.'

  This day, when his absence might have won her a chance to apply leaf gloss and show him by how much perfection could be improved upon, she was too busy defending her most beloved child to think of leaf gloss.

  'I tell you, it's the beginning of the end,' said Mary in the voice of doom. 'He won't think of us, he never does.'

  'Nonsense!' said Mama, carefully tugging at a half-dead leaf on a philodendron to see if it would come away without being forcibly yanked off.

  'He will never be here because he and that Carriol viper are going to establish a grand practice in Washington. We will be relegated to the status of a branch office,' Mary insisted. Pfffft pfffft went the feeder spray over the leaves of a Kentia palm.

  'I don't believe you, Mary,' said James, climbing a tall ladder to deal with a Boston fern in a basket. 'What has Joshua ever done to make you think so poorly of him? When has he ever not thought of us?'

  'All the time,' muttered Mary defiantly.

  'That's as unfair as it's unkind. All he's done is go off to Washington for a few days to see some Environment data analyst,' said James from the top of his ladder.

  'Analyst schmanalyst!' snorted Miriam, who could produce plenty of Americanisms when she so chose. 'That was just an excuse the Carriol woman used to get Josh away from us so she could work on him. Honestly, sometimes Joshua is so dense! And so are you, Jimmy!'

  Andrew had gone outside to fetch white-coated cup hooks and a battery-powered drill, but he returned in time to hear this exchange. 'Jimmy, give me a hand with this Black Prince, will you? It needs another hook and tie,' he said, setting up a ladder. 'If you ask me, you women are just plain jealous of poor Josh's lady friend. All these years he's plodded on and never looked at anybody. Now he's found himself a girl. Well, I for one think that's great!'

  'You won't when she takes over,' said the Mouse gloomily, on hands and knees after erring plantlets of Sweet Alice that had seeded among a shallow tub of cacti.

  'Takes over?' gasped Mama, too outraged to continue nipping seed pods off a huge chain-of-hearts before they burst and dewed the floor with fluff. 'Garbage!'

  'Bright red clothes at her age,' sneered Miriam, whose hands were trembling so much she spilled as much soil as she managed to press around a needy begonia.

  'She's a man-eater,' said Mary. 'And she'll ruin him, you just wait and see.'

  Mama climbed off her low set of steps and moved it to a pot of maidenhair all of two feet in diameter. 'Joshua needs a wife, and the only kind of wife for him is one who can take a positive part in his work. Judith Carriol is perfect in every way.'

  'But she's old enough to be his mother!' squeaked the Mouse, indignation overpowering diffidence.

  'For God's sake, you women, lay off!' cried Andrew, goaded. 'Josh is plenty old enough to make his own plans, his own decisions, and his own mistakes if necessary!'

  'Come on now, what harm can Dr Carriol really do?' James asked, trying to make peace. 'It's high time Josh let his hair down, you know. He never has, and that's a fact ought to be worrying all you possessive females a lot more than his going off with Dr Carriol.'

  'Why has Joshua never had an affair?' asked the Mouse, burying her head deep into a clump of cymbidiums, appalled at her own daring in asking what she had long burned to know, but aware that today's unusual familial friction made today the only chance she might ever get to ask her burning question without throwing the family spotlight on herself for asking.

  'Well, Mouse, it isn't that he's not human,' said James slowly. 'He's not a prude either, as I'm sure you know. But he's a tremendously private person, and on this subject he's never been forthcoming. So — your guess is probably as good as mine.'

  I love him, said the Mouse, but not out loud. I do love him, I do, I do, so much… I married his brother, and then I found out it was him I loved.

  'I am determined he'll marry Judith Carriol!' said Mama.

  'Over my dead body he will!' snarled Miriam.

  'Oh, Mama, I'm surprised at you,' said Mary derisively. 'I know you don't think things out before you make up your mind, but — do you really want to dig your own grave? If Joshua marries a woman like Judith Carriol, you'll be made totally redundant'

  'I don't care,' said Mama bravely. 'Joshua's happiness is all that matters.'

  'You are so right!' said Mary.

  'Shut up!' yelled Andrew suddenly. 'Not another word about Josh and his own private business!'

  The rest of Sunday's plant duty was done in silence.

  Dr Christian and Dr Chasen had indeed taken to each other, much as Dr Carriol had predicted.

  Their first meeting had given rise to curious doubts in Dr Christian, or maybe for doubts read qualms. Or inchoate fears. He didn't know how to catalogue what he felt. Dr Carriol had brought him into the part of the Department of the Environment known as Section Four, and down yet more corridors to Dr Moshe Chasen's big, paper-littered office.

  'Moshe, Moshe!' she had called out, bursting in on him unannounced. 'Moshe, I've brought someone to see you! I met him in Hartford and I heard more sense from him in a few minutes about relocation than I've heard from the whole Environment in years. So I persuaded him to come to Washington and talk to us. This is Dr Joshua Christian. Joshua, I'd like you to meet Moshe Chasen, who is just starting out on the gargantuan task of revamping Environment's relocation programme.'

  But Dr Christian could have sworn that somehow Dr Chasen no sooner set eyes on him than a peculiar kind of recognition took place, not the vague seen-you-somewhere-before reaction Dr Carriol had produced for him in the Hartford motel dining room, but something more profound by far. The only way Dr Christian could satisfactorily type it in his own mind was by classifying it as similar to the kind of reaction a man would have when accidentally introduced to the person he knows to be his wife's lover. Yet the reaction in Dr Chasen passed so quickly that Dr Christian could not even be sure it had actually existed. By the time Dr Carriol had reached the end of her short speech, Dr Chasen was on his feet, was smiling with polite but sincere warmth, and was extending his hand in impersonal welcome.

  Indeed Dr Chasen had recovered from his st
upefaction very quickly, because his job — nay, his whole career! — was on the line. A typical Carriol action, to waltz in gaily trailing a man's fate behind her, with never an allowance for human weakness. Or the decent thing. He wished he didn't respect her so much, and that for him, respect predisposed liking. He supposed too that if he looked at her action in another way, her unheralded advent was actually a compliment to his own ability to dissemble.

  Ever since she had pulled him off Operation Search he had been smarting, not fooled by her sweet words and promises. Oh, Moshe darling, you're too good to waste on phase two, I need you to streamline and update and reorganize the whole relocation programme! As if something that big and omnipresent couldn't have waited a few more weeks. No scientist worth his oats likes being pulled off a project he has worked on before its conclusion, no matter how enticing the new project dangled as bait or consolation prize. And though by nature she was a born paper person and did that best, she was still surely enough of a scientist to appreciate what an amputation job she had done on him. For five weeks he had scarcely summoned the necessary enthusiasm, freshness and detachment something as huge and meaty as relocation deserved. He just sat trying to force himself into the right mood while images of what was happening on phase two of Operation Search knocked frantically at every entrance to his brain. And while he fought himself, he fought equally hard to understand the enigma of Judith Carriol.

  Then he nearly blew it. He nearly let his face show what it meant to him to have Dr Joshua Christian walk through his door — not a file, not one of over 33,000 units, but the flesh and blood man. His face he knew he had managed, yes, but he wasn't as sure of his eyes, and sometimes he would catch Dr Christian looking at him in a way which said that this very sensitive and acute fellow had noticed something, but luckily didn't understand what, because he didn't own so much self-importance.