A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 18

  Lucy Greco found time somewhere to keep in touch, and she was imbued with a kind of enthusiasm he had never seen in her before. In fact, she was behaving like a young nun in the grip of divine possession; she obviously felt herself a privileged vessel filled with Joshua Christian's essence, and found genuine ecstasy in spilling it upon the sheet after sheet of paper her voicewriter spat out.

  Elliott MacKenzie thrust a cautious toe into the sea of her opinion and asked her if Dr Christian was capable of articulating his thoughts in front of cameras and microphones, since his writer's block extended to voice-triggered machines.

  'He'll knock 'em in the aisles,' was Lucy's reply. 'So long as there's a human face and a pair of human eyes he can look into, he'll be fantastic'

  So if Environment decided to quash the Christian book, what would Atticus do?

  Two weeks after he had couriered the manuscript to her office in Washington, Dr Carriol rang him.

  'It's go, Elliott,' she said. 'All stops out. The sooner the better. When can Lucy have a final draft ready?'

  'Another month, she thinks. The trouble is he keeps producing more stuff she can't bear to leave out, and yet there's a definite reader's cutoff point for any book of this kind, so we have to keep it trimmed down to a maximum 256 pages in print. Oh, we can produce a follow-up volume next year, but that means additional time in editing while we look at the whole final draft and pick out what must go in the first book and what can wait until the second.'

  'How much extra time?'

  'At the very outside, we could have it in the bookstores by the end of September.'

  'We would rather it was the end of October, provided it takes off immediately.'

  'With this one, no sweat,' he said, and meant it.

  'A million copies in hardback and at least five million in paperback?'

  That was too much to grasp, even for Elliott MacKenzie. 'Hey hey hey, wait a minute! With a book this hot, paperback not until a year after hardcover publication, Judith. There is no way I'd see it go soft a day sooner.'

  'Hard and soft editions out together,' she said.

  'No. Sorry, but no.'

  'Sorry, but yes, Elliott. You won't lose.'

  'My dear girl, it would take an executive order from the President of the United States to make me change my mind, and even then I'd fight!'

  'You'll have the executive order by tomorrow at the latest, if that's your attitude. Only don't bother, Elliott, please. You can't win.'

  He pressed both hands against his eyes, unwilling to believe her. And yet — he had to believe her, because she was not the kind of person who bluffed. Just what in hell was this Joshua Christian thing?

  'Come on, Elliott, you're talking the biggest book in the history of publishing, right? So how can you lose? Why get greedy, huh? I put the book in your way, and I can take it out of your way just as easily. You don't hold Joshua Christian to contract, Environment does.' She sounded as if she was enjoying herself, but she also sounded as if she meant every word she said.

  He gave in. 'All right.' Pause. 'Damn you!'

  'Good boy! You can start leaking scuttlebutt about the book as of yesterday, but until I give you the word, I want no copies disseminated to anyone. If you need extra security staff, I'll provide them for you gratis. Because I mean it, Elliott. No leaking the book itself. No black market in advance copies, bound galleys or manuscript. I don't care if you have to threaten to shoot your people, so long as the book stays under wraps until I say it can be displayed.'

  'Okay.'

  'Fine. Now I want the paperback rights sold at auction, and I want the press tipped off about the auction beforehand.'

  Where had she learned so much? He drew a breath. 'I will do a deal with you, Judith. I will guarantee you advance publicity that will measure up to your wildest dreams. But no auction. Goddam it, I'm a publisher! And my instincts tell me this book is going to be a perennial best-seller. So I want to keep the paperback rights within the group. No auction! It goes to Scroll, our own paperback house.'

  'I insist on an auction,' she said.

  'Look, Judith, I thought you wanted no intimation of any kind that Environment is involved in this? Well, let me tell you something. If I do as you ask, the whole publishing industry is going to smell a rat, and so will the New York newspapers. Because I'm well known for my sharpness, and to do as you ask is dumb.'

  The phone was silent. Then, 'All right, you win. You can keep the paperback rights within the Atticus group provided publication coincides with the hardcover edition.'

  'You've got a deal.'

  'Okay. Now I want a protocol from your publicity department as soon as possible. Not what they plan to do to launch Dr Christian's book. What I want from them is their dream of heaven when it comes to publicity for a book like Dr Christian's. The TV talk shows they'd give their eyeteeth to get him on, the radio shows, the magazines, the Sunday supplements, all that stuff. By the way, what do you think of his title? Is it good, or would your marketing people rather it was changed?'

  'No. It's a good title. I like the deity angle and I like the hint of divine wrath. Intriguing in this world that still hankers after God but can't admit it.'

  'Mr Reece would like to know where the title comes from. Did Lucy dream it up, or did he? Is it original?'

  'No, it's not original. He and Lucy found it when they were doing the usual title hunting through Bartlett's. The lines were written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. "Get leave to work… for God, in cursing, gives us better gifts than men in benediction." It says it all, I think.' He paused. 'You did say Mr Reece? Tibor Reece, spelled as in President?'

  'That's right. Mr Reece is taking a very personal interest in Dr Christian and his book — but that, I hope I don't need to add, is a piece of news for your ears only.'

  The shocks were too thick and fast. Has he read it?'

  'Yes. He's most impressed.'

  'Judith, just what is going on?'

  'A little altruism for a change, Elliott. Believe it or not, the government of this country cares about the people of this country. And we feel, Mr Reece and Mr Magnus and I, that Dr Joshua Christian, the man and his ideas and his book can have a more positive effect on the national morale than anything in the last fifty years at least' Her voice changed. 'You've read it. Don't you agree?'

  'Wholeheartedly.'

  When he went home he told his wife all about it, so secure in her discretion that it never occurred to him for one moment not to tell her. Sally didn't gossip, didn't even like to hear gossip. For more years than he cared to remember she had shared his interests and his world without being involved in it other than through the bonds of matrimony. Their only child was safely in college at Dartmouth and as bookish as his parents, but with his father's strong business streak in him also to ensure that Atticus would go on being a family concern. There had been a MacKenzie at the helm of Atticus since Elliott's great-great-grandfather founded the house, and the house had gone from strength to strength, put a large amount of high-quality reading matter on the bookshelves of America, and enabled the MacKenzies to live in a very much better way than they had back in the Highlands of Scotland. But now the one-child family threatened all that. Oh, for the freedom to sire more than one child! If anything happened to Alastair — No! He refused even to think of that; instead he thought of what would happen should his son sire an unsatisfactory child. Still, he comforted himself — for he was a sensible man — he knew of other dynastic families who had sired a dozen children without managing to produce a satisfactory heir. It was all in the luck of the genes.

  So he went home and told his wife all about it.

  'I'm champing at the bit! Where is it? I've got to read it at once!' Sally cried.

  'I don't have a copy,' he confessed.

  'Good God! It's very strange, Elliott. Do you fully understand what's going on? I mean, here's the President of the United States taking an interest.'

  'The only thing I understand fully,' he said, 'is
the business end of it. And I can assure you that Atticus has got itself the biggest book in the history of publishing.'

  'Including the Bible?' she asked dryly.

  He considered that, laughed, shrugged, and gave her a brave reply. 'Who knows?'

  Things were really going terrifically well, Dr Judith Carriol congratulated herself as she stepped from the little subsonic helicopter that had brought her from Washington to Holloman in less than an hour, scuttle-huffing its way across the empty sky as if pursued by the Furies. Ah, this was the life! Holloman's one and only governmental car was waiting for her on the tarmac of the disused airport, amid tall weeds and windswept heaps of anonymous detritus, with a uniformed man complete to cap standing to assist her into its back seat. Not that she had any illusions about her importance. The moment Operation Messiah was over, it would be back to buses and hoofing it. Still, she could relish this opportunity to bask in the kind of importance normally reserved only for elected officials of the highest calibre, and she kept telling herself in every quiet moment during her stuffed days that she must never become so accustomed to luxury that the return to normality would prove unendurable. A leaf out of Joshua Christian's book. Enjoy, but when it's finished, don't look back. Onward and upward into tomorrow.

  Strange. She hadn't seen him for two months, but at the last moment, standing on the sidewalk exactly between 1047 and 1045 Oak Street, she could not bring herself to go through the back door into 1045, where at this hour she knew he would be busy in his clinic. Instead, she buzzed to be admitted to 1047.

  Mama's embrace was natural and warm; she might have been welcoming a daughter. 'Oh, Judith! It's been too long.' Mama held her away to gaze at her with what seemed genuine love in the soft depths of her eyes. 'A car! I saw you pull up. I was out in the yard with the wash — isn't it lovely to be able to hang out the wash in the sun again instead of in the basement?'

  Pain. Oh no, I don't want to feel pain! I mustn't feel pain! For what you are about to receive I cannot be held responsible. Mama, Mama, how will you cope with the realization of all your dreams and ambitions for him? How big is the soul inside your gorgeous shell? Why do you welcome me as if I am his prospective wife, and the wife of your choosing? Where I am going to send him there will be no time or energy for a wife, and where I am sending myself there can be no husband.

  'I wasn't sure if I'd be disturbing him if I went into 1045, so I thought it would be better to come here.' She followed Mama through the innermost back door and into the kitchen. How is he?' she asked, and sat down as Mama began to prepare coffee.

  'He's well, Judith. Very well. But glad to see the end of Lucy, I think. Doing that book took so much out of him! He wouldn't stop pulling his weight in the clinic while he was writing it, that was the trouble. She was very good, mind you. Lucy Greco, I mean. Very nice. Very good. But he needed you very much. I kept hoping you'd come! It's time he wasn't alone.'

  'Mama, this is ridiculous! You've only met me once, you know nothing about me! So to treat me as if I am the centre of Joshua's emotional life is — is incongruous! I'm not Joshua's fiancee! He is not in love with me, and I am not in love with him. And don't, please don't set your heart on a marriage between us, because it's not going to happen.'

  'Silly girl,' said Mama fondly. She put cups down on the table, her best Lenox service, and leaned to check how the coffee was coming on. 'Get your breath back. And don't be so negative! Have your coffee with me and then you can go into the living room to wait for him. I'll buzz him to come over as soon as he's free.'

  Interesting as well as exasperating. The Mamas of this world were disappearing, she was among the youngest of them at forty-eight, or was it still forty-seven? A dying breed, women who could afford to exude maternalism because they had a houseful of children. They had used up the staggering amounts of excess energy Nature had given them for just that purpose. It was all right for the ones like herself who could pluck a satisfactory substitute out of their own internal resources, but so many women couldn't. Or wouldn't. Well, Joshua Christian, you will certainly be able to help all the couldn'ts, but the wouldn'ts? I do not think anyone can help a wouldn't.

  Windows had magically appeared among the greenery, neat unframed rectangular glass panes that let the sun stream in to dance with a billion golden motes down solid shafts of light. The plants were absolutely rejoicing, burst into a dazzle of flower, waxy spike and velvety tumble and silky mass. Pink and cream and yellow and blue and lilac and peach. Very little white. How clever of the Christians to avoid white blossoms in a white room. This was a wonderland that must surely have thrilled them every time they remembered to look to really look. Only how often was that?

  They are beautiful people. It takes beautiful people to make beauty in their surroundings when it is so much easier to put up with dreariness.

  When his mother buzzed and gave him the news that Dr Judith Carriol was waiting in the living room to see him, Dr Christian found himself mildly surprised. So much had happened since he last saw her that he had largely lost sight of the fact she had been the prime mover. Oh — yes — Judith Carriol. Judith Carriol? A vague memory of violet and scarlet, of someone exhilarating to talk to, of a timeless friend and an eternal enemy…

  Between then and now he had planted and tended and harvested and winnowed a vast field of thought, and at the moment he was gazing across the stubble wondering and wondering what must be planted next. He tingled with possibilities divorced from any fellow man or woman, he groped after the odd sensations which had plagued him so all through the winter, daring to dream that maybe after all he did have a destiny wider and bigger than this clinic in Holloman.

  Why should I be so sad? he asked himself, turning at the end of the passageway that joined his two houses not towards the back stairs and Mama's kitchen, but towards the front stairs to the living room. There was nothing between us. Nothing at all beyond an intellectual stimulation and compatibility. I just knew she had significance for me, and I was afraid of her, that is true. But there was nothing else. There could be nothing else, given who and what we are. To dally unfruitfully in the arms of a lover, no matter how beloved, is a solipsistic alternative both of us discarded many years ago. She is not now intruding into my present trailing bits of the past around her like a bridal veil. Why therefore am I so afraid to see her face? Why do I not want to remember her?

  But it wasn't hard after all to meet her eyes and assimilate the face which encapsulated them. Her smile was very warm and glad to see him, yes, yet it laid no claim to his spirit and it embraced him only as a dear friend.

  'I can only stay an hour or so,' she said, settling back into her chair. 'I wanted to see how you were, how you feel about the book — I've read it, incidentally, and I think it's magnificent. I want to know too what you plan to do when it's published, if you've thought about that.' He looked bewildered. 'Do? Published?' 'First things first. The book. Are you happy with it?' 'Oh, yes. Yes, of course I am. And I'm so grateful to you for steering me to Atticus, Judith. The woman they gave me was — was—' He moved his shoulders helplessly. 'I don't honestly know how to explain it. But she worked with me like the bit of me that's always been missing. And together we wrote exactly the book I've always wanted to write.' He laughed a little ruefully. 'That is, if I had ever seriously entertained the idea. I didn't. Did I? It's hard to remember that far back. So much has happened.' He frowned uneasily and moved in his chair. 'It's one thing to work to achieve an end, Judith, but somehow this book is more like a gift from outside. As if my subconscious had expressed a wish, and genie Judith appeared from nowhere to grant it in full.'

  What a mixture the man was! Dangerously perceptive at times, at other times simple and innocent to the point of naivety. Astonishing, that with the light switched off he was the epitome of an absent-minded and particularly woolly professor, the sort you pinned a note to bearing his name and address and telephone number in case he G. K. Chestertoned off into the blue and didn't come back. But when the lig
ht was switched on, a demigod appeared, vibrant and steely-minded and electrifying. My dearest Joshua, she thought, you do not know it and I pray you never find out, but I am going to work the arc lights of your very soul!

  'Have they told you yet what they expect from you when the book is actually published?' she asked.

  Again he looked puzzled. 'When it's published? I do seem to remember Lucy's saying something, but what would they expect of me? I've done my share already.'

  'Oh, I think they're going to want considerably more from you than just the act of producing the book,' she said crisply. 'It is a very important book, therefore you will become a very important person. And you'll be asked to do a publicity tour, make personal appearances — television, radio, luncheons and lectures, stuff like that. I'm afraid you'll also be asked to grant interviews to a lot of papers and magazines too.'

  He looked eager. 'But that's marvellous! Even though the book is me — and you've no idea how glad I am to be able to say that! — still I would much rather talk about my ideas.'

  'That's just great, Joshua. Because I happen to agree with you, the best transmitter is definitely you in the flesh. So I want you to regard the publicity tour they'll ask you to make as the ideal opportunity to reach many more people than ever you could hope to see in your clinic' She paused, a delicate and peculiarly pregnant break in speech; in a patient he would have recognized it as the preface to a thought the patient wished to implant in him so that the tissue of lies which inevitably followed would sound utterly sincere. But what she said didn't live up to that pause, for she merely said, 'I have always regarded the book as a secondary objective, a reason to offer the media you in the flesh.'

  'Have you? I thought you wanted the book above all.'