A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 13

  What if he did turn this opportunity down and his country did perish because its people wandered alone and unguided too long? When maybe — just maybe — he might have made the contribution that saved it and them? Or maybe he was meant to serve as a precursor for some other man, a stronger and better man than he, but for whom he was necessary to pave the way… After all, he thought, chewing his lip and staring out at dogs and birds gambolling in the sunny park, could any contribution he possibly had to make screw the world up worse than it already was? Could anything he was capable of doing possibly make so much difference? Wasn't thinking it might merely another form of exclusivity? Oh, could could could could could might might might maybe maybe maybe maybe… If!

  Was she sent to ask it of him? Who sent her? God? No, it was no part of God's policy to intervene personally, even by proxy. Did the Devil send her? But he was not so sure the Devil existed as he was sure God did. It seemed to him that the invention of a Devil was more necessary to the pysche of Man than the invention of God. God was. God is. God will be. But the Devil was a whipping boy. Evil existed, but as a pure spirit; it had no form, no hoofs or tail or horns or human mind. Ah, but that was God! God had no form, no arms or legs or genitalia or human mind. Yet God's pure spirit was knowing, cognizant, organized. Where Evil was just a force.

  Was she any more than she purported to be, a senior federal public servant of the United States of America? Benign. Malign. Question mark. That was the real trouble. Life was one unpredictable, incomprehensible question mark. You grabbed it at the top, and you slid down it; you grabbed it at the bottom, and you could get no higher.

  'All right then, I'll try,' he said tensely, hands bunched into fists, trembling.

  She didn't make the mistake of going into rhapsodies, she just nodded briskly and said, 'Good!' Then she started walking faster, back in the direction of Georgetown. 'Come on, my friend, if we get moving now we'll make the New York train this afternoon.'

  'New York?' he asked stupidly, not yet recovered from the shock of his answer.

  'Of course New York! That's where Atticus Press is.'

  'Well yes, but —'

  'Yes but nothing! I want to get going on this now! I can spare the time from my work this week, but next week, who knows?' She turned to grin at him so bewitchingly he couldn't not grin back. And he felt better immediately, letting the reins slide entirely to her who knew so much about everything he didn't know, like books and publishers. She was a person who knew how to pull strings, and that was an art he had never mastered, never would. Besides, it was enough for the moment to have made the decision. Let her carry him until he got his breath back. However, it did not occur to him that the last thing in the world she wanted for some time to come was for him to get his breath back.

  'We have to see Elliott MacKenzie right away,' she said, walking even faster.

  'Who's he?'

  The publisher at Atticus. Luckily he happens to be a very old and dear friend of mine. His wife and I went to Princeton together.'

  The Atticus Press owned the seventy-floor building in which it occupied the bottom twenty floors, and had split off an annex of the main foyer which served as entrance to the publishing house only. When Dr Christian and Dr Carriol walked into that private vestibule the next morning, they were greeted like visiting royalty. There was a beautifully dressed woman executive waiting for them; she escorted them immediately to the one elevator Atticus, being more than ten storeys and less than twenty-one, was allowed to operate, and she put a special key into its controls that permitted them an uninterrupted ride all the way to the seventeenth floor.

  Elliott MacKenzie was waiting outside the elevator, a hand already warmly extended to Dr Christian; he had a kiss for Dr Carriol's cheek. And then they were settled in his book-lined office with coffee, the woman executive introduced as Lucy Greco. Polished-looking people, MacKenzie and Greco, he tall and trim and elegant and sandily handsome and supercharged, she an attractive little middle-aged bundle of quivering energy.

  'I must say when Judith broached the idea of your book to me I was very excited,' drawled Elliott MacKenzie with the faintly nasal tone and rigid jaws which denoted one whose pedigree and social circle were impeccable.

  When broached… very excited… Dr Christian went numb, his belly lurching about like a child on roller skates for the first time.

  'Lucy is going to act as your editor,' Elliott MacKenzie went on. 'She's had an enormous amount of experience working with nonwriters who have something to say we can't afford not to read. It will be her job to get your book on paper, and she's the best in the business.'

  Dr Christian looked immensely relieved. 'Thank God for that! A coauthor,' he said.

  But MacKenzie frowned with the regal displeasure of a man who not only sat in the publisher's chair, but also owned the publishing house. 'Of course not! You are the sole author, Dr Christian. They will be your ideas and your words. Lucy is simply going to act as your Boswell.'

  Dr Christian got stubborn. 'Boswell,' he said, 'was a biographer. Dr Johnson did his own writing, and no one was better.'

  'An amanuensis then,' said Elliott MacKenzie smoothly, not betraying the fact that he had disliked being caught.

  'But that's not fair,' said Dr Christian.

  Mrs Greco entered the fray. 'Of course it's fair, Dr Christian. You must learn to think of me as a midwife. My task is to pull the most beautiful healthy book baby out of you as quickly and painlessly as possible. The name of the midwife isn't among the birth data registered with the First Child Bureau! Nothing I am going to do for you entitles me to the prominence of coauthorship, I assure you.'

  'Then you don't stand a chance of succeeding,' said Dr Christian, suddenly enormously depressed.

  He felt pushed, accelerated beyond comfortable self-speed, and in his confusion it did not occur to him that all these people seemed to know a great deal more about the difficulty he had with the written word than he remembered telling either Dr Carriol or Dr Chasen. Later on he would think of this point, but she would not be there to tax about it, and things would happen with such frightening, exhilarating rapidity that, a minor point, it would fail again to reach the surface of a mind suddenly too concerned with its own mortality to be concerned with anything else.

  Elliott MacKenzie was sensitive to nuances, and he was extremely good at his job. 'Dr Christian, you are not a born writer,' he said gently and firmly. 'Now we all accept that, and believe it or not, this same situation occurs quite a lot in any publishing house, especially with the nonfiction list. A man or woman has something important to say, ideas that must be promulgated, but the man or woman may not have time to write, or may not have the talent to write. In such cases the book is merely a vehicle, built by professionals to carry the ideas you and you alone engineer. If you were a born writer, you wouldn't be sitting here without a finished manuscript, since you've not published before. A finished manuscript takes time. It takes a special talent. There's absolutely no point in debating the relative merits of doing your own writing versus having someone else do it. From what Dr Carriol has told me, you have a contribution to make to this world that must be made as soon as possible. All we intend to do is ensure that your contribution becomes a reality. And it's an exciting process for us, believe me! At the end of it there will be a book, a good book! And the book is what matters.'

  'I don't know!' cried Dr Christian wretchedly.

  'Well, I do,' said Elliott MacKenzie very firmly, and glanced quickly sideways towards his cohort.

  Lucy Greco got up at once. How about coming down to my office, Dr Christian? We'll be working on our own, so why not get started on some kind of protocol?'

  He rose without a word and followed her.

  'Are you sure you know what you're doing?' asked Elliott MacKenzie of Dr Judith Carriol when they were alone.

  'Indeed I do!'

  'Well, I must say I can't see why you're so excited. And I don't think he wants to write a book at all. I admit he's
an impressive-looking guy, a bit Lincolnesque, but he doesn't exactly overflow with personality.'

  'He's doing a tortoise act, brrrrp! into his shell. He feels threatened and manipulated — with every justification! I would have liked a lot more time to work on him, get him used to the idea and let his natural enthusiasm surface again of its own accord, but I have very cogent and valid reasons why this project has to be far enough along to be in working manuscript at the end of the next six weeks.'

  'It's a tall order, and an expensive one. Not to mention the anguish of prodding your reluctant tortoise to produce.'

  'Leave him to me and Lucy Greco. As for the book — huh! You should worry, with the Department of the Environment underwriting you! It is not every day, my dear Elliott, that you strike a deal you can't lose on.'

  'Okay, okay!' He looked at his watch. 'I have an appointment upstairs,' he said. 'Your protege' is likely to be with Lucy for quite a while, given your hurry. Have you got something else to do while you wait?'

  'He is all I have to do,' she said simply. 'Don't you worry about me, I'll just sit here and browse among your wonderful collection of books.'

  But it was a long time before Dr Carriol got up and went across to the stuffed shelves. She stared out the gigantic window first, a window made of three separate thicknesses of plate glass, each layer insulated from its neighbour by three-quarters of an inch of air space. They had tried boarding up the New York skyscrapers, but it hadn't worked. The suicide rate just zoomed, so did the acute depression rate. In the end they pulled out all the existing windows, bricked some up, and replaced others with the kind in Elliott MacKenzie's office.

  The groundhog had said spring was going to be early this year, and New York had taken notice. Oh, the trees were still bare, they would be until at least the middle of May no matter what sort of weather prevailed, but the air was quite warm and the sun shone and the crystalline explosion of buildings everywhere outside glittered. A cloud floated by, but Dr Carriol couldn't actually see it; she saw its reflection high up in the golden mirror of an adjoining skyscraper.

  Be of good cheer, Joshua Christian! she said silently to the blockish panorama; it will all come together and it will be splendid. I know I've rushed you where you're not even sure you want to go, but it's all for the best and noblest reasons, reasons that wouldn't shame you if you knew them. What I'm pushing you to do won't harm you, you'll love it once you get used to it, I promise. You've got so much potential for good, but you'll never get off your ass unless someone pushes you. So here I am! You'll end in thanking me. Not that I'm looking for gratitude. I'm just doing my job, and I do my job better than anyone. For millennia men have been saying that women can never compete because women permit their emotions to intrude upon their work. It's not true. I'm here to prove it. And I am going to prove it. Maybe no one will ever notice that I did. But I will know I did, and that's what counts.

  Seven weeks left. It could be done. It must be done! Because on May first she was going to have evidence above and beyond mere personal conviction that Dr Joshua Christian was the man they were looking for. The book must be a reality by then. So must sheaves of reports, backed up by video and audio tapes of the man in action. By the time she went to see the President she had to have an open-and-closed case in favour of Dr Joshua Christian. The President was not the man to fall for a snow job. And Harold Magnus would be fighting to the last ditch for Senator Hillier.

  She moved her chair closer to Elliott MacKenzie's desk and picked up his private-line telephone.

  The number she dialled was thirty-three digits long, but she didn't need to consult either paper or the buttons on the machine as she punched it quicker than most people could have punched a much shorter number.

  'Dr Carriol. Where is Mr Wayne?'

  The telephone said he wasn't in.

  'Find him,' said Judith Carriol coldly.

  She waited patiently, eyes glazed, cataloguing all the sources of evidence she was going to need.

  'John? I'm not on the scramble phone, but this line is not through the Atticus switchboard. Would you check the computer and make sure it's not tapped? The number is 555-6273. Government wouldn't be interested, but I suppose there could be some form of industrial espionage, even in an eighteenth-century business like book publishing. Ring me back.'

  She waited five minutes for the phone to ring again.

  'All clear,' said John Wayne.

  'Good. Now listen. I need some video cameras and lots of microphones installed immediately. 1047 and 1045 Oak Street, Holloman, Connecticut. The offices and home of Dr Joshua Christian. Everywhere. I don't want one square inch of either building unmonitored, and I want twenty-four-hour surveillance. The equipment will have to go in today and be out by this coming Saturday evening, because on Sundays the Christians climb all over the place watering plants and could spot a camera. Okay? I also need a complete list of Dr Christian's patients, no longer current as well as current. All of them to be interviewed on audio tape without realizing they're being interviewed, of course. You will do the same with his family and his friends. His enemies too. The interviewing can take longer than the video monitoring of house and clinic, but it has to be done in time to have the tapes edited and ready to present on May first. Understood?'

  She could feel his excitement. 'Yes, Dr Carriol.' He ventured an unprofessional question which he had not found the courage to ask during the days Dr Joshua Christian had just spent in Washington. 'He's it?'

  He's it, John! But I am going to have a fight on my hands and I don't intend to lose. I can't afford to lose. Because he's it!'

  Oh yes he was. The decision she had made that night in Hartford seemed more and more right as the days went on. Of the nine candidates, he was the only one who possessed what this job was going to need. Therefore it was up to her to get him the chance to do the job only he could do. The task called for a man without any kind of political or career axe to grind, a man who didn't care about himself, had no image.

  Operation Search was her baby. She had dreamed it up and she alone fully understood what it searched for. Since meeting Dr Christian that knowledge had expanded and coalesced at one and the same time, a sure indication that he was the man. Five years earlier they could simply have earmarked Senator Hillier for the job and begun to groom him then. But she hadn't even wanted him included in the 100,000 names her investigators and their teams and their computers had sifted through. Tibor Reece had come down on Harold Magnus's side then, but she had been conserving her strength for five years, and she refused to consider the possibility that Harold Magnus could win the next time around. Five years earlier had been a preliminary skirmish she could afford to let Harold Magnus win, so she hadn't made the mistake of letting it assume the proportions of a battle royal. He may have thought that meant she didn't have a battle royal in her; if so, he was going to learn differently very soon.

  Somewhere she had always known there was a man — odd that she, so feminist in her soul, had never honestly believed there was a woman — for whom the task was meant. Fated. A natural, inevitable destiny. But gone were the days when a man could walk out of the desert or the wilderness and found a way of life. This was the third millennium, so choked with people that the very best might remain buried through no fault or lack of effort of their own, and so sophisticated in its dealings with the few who did stand out from the masses that it could if it so chose remove those few, or if it so chose raise them even higher. Maybe the third millennium was just as bumbling in its way as the two earlier ones, but it had perfected the art of keeping tabs on its faceless millions, and its brand of cynicism was securely rooted in facts, figures, trends, exponentials. It had replaced ethics with synthetics, philosophy with psychology, and gold with paper. Only she for one did not believe that the gargantuan rivers of eerie silent ice creeping down from the Arctic Circle were a visitation designed to obliterate the race of Man; poles apart though they were in nature, she, like Dr Joshua Christian, believed that Man ha
d the power within himself to overcome all obstacles in his way.

  But wasn't it extraordinary that in the long run only the stubborn personality and tangential intelligence of one man had unearthed Dr Joshua Christian? Had his name been allocated to Dr Abraham's or Dr Hemingway's caseloads, he would probably have fallen by the wayside. Instead, his name had gone to Moshe Chasen. On such tiny coincidences so much always rested, no matter how careful a method was devised, how foolproof it appeared. When all was said and done, it still came down to people. Their vagaries, their individualities, their genetic uniquenesses. Fitting. One of Joshua's 'patterns' he talked of.

  She put her chin on her hands, and sat forward, wondering how many other nameless Joshua Christians had not emerged to the top of Dr Abraham's and Dr Hemingway's caseloads. Was Joshua the best man for the job? Or was someone better still buried in the fastness of the Federal Human Data Bank? Well, that was something they would not know unless they took over 66,000 names and subjected them to Moshe Chasen's programmes. If in truth the 100,000 names originally culled were the right ones in the light of Moshe Chasen's approach. Well, too late to wonder. Joshua Christian had emerged. And, perforce, Joshua Christian was therefore the man.

  After three hours spent with Mrs Lucy Greco, Dr Christian felt a lot better about his book. The professional in him fully appreciated the way she handled him, and oddly enough that gave him more confidence in the whole project His numbness had dissipated within minutes. By the end of the first half hour in her office he was talking freely, quickly, sometimes passionately. She was such a help! If he lacked anything, it was logical progression; he was aware himself of the failing, especially since meeting Judith and Moshe, ruthless critics. Lucy Greco possessed the ability to think logically in full measure. Not only that. They clicked. He found her a perfect audience, for she sat like the open mouth of a baby bird, ready to swallow everything he threw her way, and yet her occasional questions were so well directed she actually assisted him to plump out his ideas in areas where he knew he hadn't yet eliminated woolly thinking.