A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 14

  'You should have been a psychologist,' he said to her as they walked back to Elliott MacKenzie's office.

  'But I am,' she said.

  He laughed. 'I might have known.'

  'Dr Christian,' she said, so earnestly that her steps slowed, then halted, and he therefore stopped, 'this is the most important book I've ever had the good fortune to be associated with. Please believe me! I mean it. I have never meant anything more in all my life.'

  'But I don't have the answers,' he said helplessly.

  'Oh yes you do! There are some lucky people who can exist without a spiritual prop, even some who are so alone they haven't a fellow human being to use as a prop. But most people do need shoring up. I've heard enough from you in the last hours to know where we're going, and where I'm going to push you too. You've been afraid, I think.'

  'Yes. Very many times.'

  'Don't be,' she said, walking on.

  'I'm only a man,' he said, 'and it's a poor kind of man who isn't afraid. Fear can be as much an indication of sense or sensitivity as it is of inadequacy. A man without any fear in him is a machine.'

  'Or Nietzsche's superman?'

  He smiled. 'I can assure you that you are not dealing with a superman!'

  They entered Elliott Mackenzie's office.

  He was back long since, sitting with Dr Carriol, and he looked up curiously, interested to see how Lucy Greco was taking her new assignment.

  Her cheeks were pink, her eyes shone, she looked as if she had just spent time in the arms of a lover. And Dr Joshua Christian had come alive. Oh, bravo, Judith Carriol! Mentally he pushed the first print run way up. Lucy Greco was that publishing house phenomenon, a born writer with absolutely nothing of her own to say. So give her a client-subject who did have something to say, and she could sing in prose. Already she was in that state where the words were roiling inside her. There was going to be a book.

  'I'm off to Holloman today with Joshua,' she said, too excited to sit down.

  'Good!' Dr Carriol rose to her feet. She held out her hand to Elliot MacKenzie. 'Thank you, my friend.'

  Outside the Atticus building Lucy Greco left them to go home and pack a bag, arranging to meet them at Grand Central in three hours.

  Which left Dr Carriol and Dr Christian alone at last.

  'Come on. We may as well check out of our hotel and then go on down to Grand Central. We can sit in the coffee shop until Lucy arrives,' she said.

  He sighed with relief. 'Thank God! I don't know why, but I thought you wouldn't come back to Holloman with me.'

  Her brows leaped upward. 'You were right, I'm not. After I put you on the Holloman local I'm off to Penn Station and Washington. No, don't be disappointed, Joshua! I have my own work to do, and now you've got Lucy you don't need me. She's the expert.'

  A cold shiver ran all the way down his long back. 'I wish I could believe that! This is your idea. I'm not even sure I want to do this book, even with Lucy helping me.'

  She hadn't stopped walking, and she didn't stop after he said that. 'Look, Joshua, I am going to tell you something straight from the shoulder, okay? You are a man with a mission. And you are more aware of that than I am or anyone else. All this vacillation is no more than surface deep. I understand it. You've not had time to get it all straight in your mind, and I admit I've pushed you unmercifully. In the bit over a week since I've met you, it's all happened, and it's all happened because I've pushed you. Quite frankly, you need a push! If you were a man of religion you would have had years of preparation for this moment. If you were an evangelist you would already have jumped in the water, boots and all. And the future is a mystery, I know. For you especially, so thick and impenetrable you don't see tomorrow clearly, let alone next week or next year. But you'll get there! And without my holding your hand.'

  Man of religion? Evangelist? 'My God!' he cried. 'Is that how you think of it, Judith? As a religious mission?'

  'Yes. I would have to say, yes. But not in the old sense.'

  Gnawing shadows. Greyness. 'Judith, I'm only a man! I'm not equipped!'

  Why on earth did he have to bring up things like this on a New York City street, where the atmosphere and the physical act they were performing in walking made subtlety and delicacy quite impossible? And how could she find the right thing to say when for her, too, events had moved too fast? She had envisioned a progress (at least inside Joshua's mind) rather in the mood of a glacier, an even grind from A to B. Not this avalanche! Or maybe without realizing it she had assumed she would be working with a man like Senator Hillier. A straightforward pragmatist with whom one could plan, who would see where he was being pushed and gladly give himself a kick along as well. Where working with a man like Joshua Christian — and he was certainly one of a kind! — was turning out to be more like walking a tightrope above the Valley of Death.

  'Forget I said it. I don't know why I said it. Just get your book out, Joshua. That's really all that matters.'

  She was right, of course. Or so he concluded somewhere around Bridgeport on the start-stop-start-stop journey home, with the train crawling along when it did move. Lucy Greco had the good sense to sit alongside him quietly and not intrude her presence, sensing that something had happened to unsettle him in the three hours she had been absent.

  He was not a fool. He was not so turned in upon himself that he was blind to the behaviour of others, either. And a few tiny incidents like Moshe Chasen's eyes when they met, and Elliott MacKenzie's and Lucy Greco's extraordinary awareness of the extent of his writer's block, and Judith Carriol's remarks about the nature of what she wanted him to produce — these minuscule events somehow added up to bulk as large as a mountain. Only it was a massif he couldn't see, for it was somewhere in the opacity of his tomorrows. However, nothing he sensed did he feel as malign. Be honest with yourself, Joshua Christian! Nothing you sense do you feel to be at odds with what you yearn to do, which is simply to help people.

  He didn't trust Judith Carriol. He wasn't even sure he liked her. Yet from the very beginning she had been the catalyst he had desperately needed to set him afire. That awful force within him had responded to her like a beast of great power to a well-known guiding hand. And he was tugged along helplessly in its wake, as much its victim as he was Judith Carriol's.

  Do what you have to do. And let tomorrow take care of itself. You cannot see what it holds.

  The book, the book The chance. So much to say! What was most important to say? How could he possibly fit it all inside the covers of one little book? He would have to be selective, then. Simple in his expression, but not mindlessly simple. The important thing was to explain to its readers why they felt the way they did, so useless, so dreary, so old, so futile. He thought he was beginning to get a glimmer of why Judith Carriol had used the words 'religious' and 'evangelist'. Because what his book was going to offer was a little mystical. Yes, that was what she had meant! Much ado about nothing he couldn't handle.

  Once people gained spiritual strength they had a basis upon which to build something more positive out of the lives they had no choice but to live save in the prescribed manner. Not a single hint of rebellion, iconoclasm, nostalgia, terror, destructiveness. They didn't need that kind of firing, not with the future they faced — the dwindling water, the hideous cold, the shrinking land, the anti-American outside world. He had to bring them to see and believe in a future they would never live to experience. He had to give them hope. And faith. And most of all, love.

  Yes! With the intelligent and capable Lucy Greco to aid him, to shape what he wanted to say into something people would want to read, he could do it. He could! And what else mattered besides that? Did he matter? No. Did Judith Carriol matter? No. And he came to realize that what he loved in Judith Carriol was her ability to put herself aside. The twin ability to his own.

  When Dr Christian walked into her kitchen with yet another sophisticated woman in tow, Mama froze to the spot and stood with her spoon dripping sauce all over the floor, mouth agape.<
br />
  He leaned over to kiss her cheek. 'Mama, this is Mrs Lucy Greco. She'll be staying with us for a few weeks, so would you mind taking the mothballs out of the spare room and finding another hot-water bottle?'

  'Staying?'

  'That's right She's my editor. I've been commissioned to write a book for the Atticus Press and we've got a deadline, you see. It's all right, she's a psychologist herself, so she's better equipped than most outsiders to understand our crazy household. Where are the others?'

  'Not come across yet. When they heard you were coming, they decided to wait for you rather than eat at the usual time.' Mama recollected the guest, still standing smiling politely and blankly. 'Oh, Mrs Greco, I am sorry! Joshua, watch the pots. I'll take Mrs Greco up to her room. And don't worry, my dear, the bit about mothballs is just a fine example of Joshua's humour. I do not have moths, and I have never needed mothballs to keep a room fresh!'

  Joshua did as he was told and watched the pots. It had perhaps been a little unkind of him not to apprise his family of Mrs Greco's presence, especially since he had called to let them know he was coming home. But occasionally they did need a jolt, and this was a delicious one, particularly for Mama. When she rushed back into the kitchen so quickly that it was obvious she had barely stayed long enough settling Lucy Greco to observe the decencies, he grinned.

  'Mama! I'll bet you didn't even show Mrs Greco where the bathroom was.'

  'She's over the age of consent, she'll find it. Now what's going on, Joshua? All these years and you've never displayed any interest in women, now all of a sudden you bring two home inside of a week!'

  'Judith is a colleague I've just finished some work for, and Mrs Greco is exactly what I said she was, my editor.'

  'You're not taking the mickey out of me?'

  'No, Mama.'

  'Wellll...' She packed the word with meaning.

  'You might be dizzy, Mama, but do you know something else?' he asked, moving away from the stove to pick up a cloth, and smiling at her as he did so.

  'No, what?' she asked, smiling back.

  'You're a really nice person.' And he bent to wipe the sauce off the floor before Mama, a fast mover, slipped in it.

  She took advantage of this softening immediately. 'Are you sure you're not just the teeniest bit interested in Dr Carriol? She'd be so perfect for you, Joshua!'

  'Oh, Mama! Once and for all, no! Now don't you want to hear about my book?'

  'Of course I do, but save it until after dinner, then you won't have to repeat it. I've got some news the rest already know about, so I'll tell you before they come across.'

  'What news?'

  She opened the oven, peered inside, shut it, and unbent. 'We had a national emergency this afternoon about two o'clock.'

  He stared. 'A national emergency?'

  'Yes. They evacuated the whole of West Holloman, not such a feat considering it's March and most of the houses are empty — but hard enough with the streets five feet deep in frozen snow — it would have been worse if we hadn't had that thaw—'

  He interrupted her with an awful frown. 'Mama, describe the emergency, not the obvious!'

  'Ohhh!' She gritted her teeth in frustration, then couldn't resist going on with her story posthaste. 'As I was saying, they evacuated the whole of West Holloman. Just came banging on our doors and hustled us out to buses and whisked us off down to the railroad station — you know, the old part that's deserted except for bums and no one knows what to do with? They fed us soup and showed us a first-release movie and then let us go home again about five. So I wasn't put out at all that dinner's late. You rang about a minute after we got in.'

  'How odd!'

  'Apparently they thought they'd unearthed a contaminated dump of radioactive waste next door to the old gun factory? You know, where they've started the district clearance scheme? Anyway, some workman's Geiger counter went off like a siren, and the next thing we had the National Guard and the Army — full-bird colonels running round a dime a dozen! It was really fun, actually. I saw people I haven't seen in years.'

  His worry that the family had been duped for some unknown but nefarious purpose died. 'Well, we always did wonder what used to go on in that research building of theirs, why they needed walls four feet thick and a twenty-four-hour security patrol. Now I guess we know, huh?'

  'They told us they'd removed the stuff to safety somewhere else, and said it was safe to come home again.'

  'Let's hope we don't get it back in next year's fish,' he said dryly.

  'They don't do that any more, dear,' she said soothingly. They take it to the dark side of the moon.'

  That's what they tell us, you mean.'

  'Anyway, a nice Army colonel told me there was a chance we'd have to be evacuated again, because they have to sift through the whole site now to make sure it's clean, and it might take them a few days.'

  The door opened and in trooped the rest of the family, full of pleasure to see the prodigal returned.

  'Only he's not alone,' said Mama mysteriously. 'He came with his lady friend.'

  Mary and Miriam and the Mouse tried to look enthusiastic, the men looked genuinely so.

  'How long is Dr Carriol staying?' asked Mary sourly.

  'Oh, it isn't Dr Carriol,' said Mama, purring. 'This one's not a doctor, she's a missus, and her name's Lucy Greco. Isn't that pretty? She's very pretty too.'

  His siblings and his in-laws stared at him, stupefied.

  Dr Christian burst out laughing. 'If I'd only known how much fun it was to bring strange women home with me, I'd have started years ago!' he said, wiping his eyes. 'You mutts!'

  'Come on now, out of the kitchen,' said Mama, shooing. 'Since I'm going to serve dinner in exactly five minutes, it would be nice if you set the table for me.'

  'Who is she?' asked Miriam, putting down forks.

  'After dinner,' said Dr Christian, and refused to say any more. The moment Lucy Greco walked in he introduced her all round, then said to her, 'Mum's the word until later.'

  Later was the living room, over coffee and cognac. He told his family about the book. Their reactions were much as expected; identically curious and joyous and totally supportive of him.

  'I think it's a wonderful idea, Josh,' said James warmly, speaking for everyone.

  'Well, I have to thank Dr Carriol for it, really. It was her idea.'

  Discovering the identity of the true author of the project made the three young women a little wary, but after examining it from all angles, they had to admit it still sounded like a great idea.

  'I've always thought you should write a book,' said Mary, 'but I never thought you'd manage to overcome your inhibitions when you still couldn't unblock yourself after we gave you the new IBM voicewriter last Christmas.'

  'Believe me, I thought the same. I guess this is the only way possible for me — to have someone else do the actual writing,' he said, smiling.

  'So you're an editor?' asked Andrew, looking both charming and spectacularly beautiful.

  She responded to the question and the man. 'That's right. But I'm a specialist editor. I really do participate in the writing of the book, where most editors are withheld from a book's early stages. With the fiction writer, for instance, editors are chiefly useful in late draft, as critics. They can't tell the fiction writer what to do or how to do it, they just spot the weaknesses and inconsistencies in the plot and characters and so forth. Now I don't do any fiction at all. I specialize in collaborating on the writing of books with people who have something significant to say, but don't have the gift of putting on paper what they want to say.'

  'You make it sound as if fiction writers don't have anything significant to say,' said James, who adored fiction.

  Mrs Greco shrugged. 'It largely depends on your point of view, and never the twain shall meet. Ask a fiction editor and you'll be told the only books that survive the test of time are fiction. Personally I'm not a fiction fan. It's as simple as that, really.'

  'There's room f
or both,' said Dr Christian.

  The discussion went on, lively and interested; and from a dozen vantage points around the room a battery of video cameras silently went on recording every word said and every face saying it. When the plants were tended on Sunday those glaucous lenses would be gone, for the people who had installed them during a most convenient emergency evacuation exercise would institute another such crisis on Saturday evening.

  Had the room not been so full of plants a faint smell of fresh paint might have been detected, but the leaves were as efficient at absorbing smells as they were at absorbing surplus carbon dioxide. It was the new-type videotape that encoded what it saw and heard in every one-second epoch into such a minute segment of tape that, given the number of channels across its width, it would not be exhausted for a full two weeks, a much longer time than was needed in this present situation. Even the power feeding the cameras had been tapped from the mains outside the Christian residences, to make sure no trace remained of this four-day surveillance.

  After Dr Christian left Washington so abruptly, Dr Moshe Chasen found it as difficult to concentrate on relocation as he had before Dr Christian had appeared in Washington. When he came into his office on Monday he was aware his new colleague must soon go, but he had fully expected to see that long thin body draped around a table, had looked forward to letting his eyes rest on that dark fallen-in face. But no Dr Christian. In the end he had telephoned John Wayne looking for Dr Carriol, and then was told of the unexpected departure.