Untitled fr12, p.12
Untitled.FR12, page 12
“All right.” Hedgewick reached for the microphone on Kussman’s credenza. “Who is the first ranking chemist in Ashkettles Chemical Company in 2006?”
Kussman’s voice replied instantly from the computer speaker. “Dr. Frederick Kussman.”
Hedgewick looked at Paul expectantly.
“The second question is, ‘Before you received instructions to name Dr. Kussman, who was the first ranking chemist?’ ”
The room was suddenly silent. Hedgewick looked at Paul in amazement, then at Kussman. Kussman’s face became first very pink, then white. Paul watched the man’s lips move. He thought he could make out … God … damn … you . ..
“Fred … ?” said Hedgewick quietly.
“Well, I may have helped clarify the computer’s thinking to some extent. All in the company’s interests, I assure you.” He looked at Paul somberly.
Now he was in it. And they hadn’t heard anything yet. Paul’s calmness amazed him. He continued.
“While we here at the company might regard the award as a great honor, the award per se, carrying a cash value of only fifty dollars, might not seem much to a man no longer connected with the company. I am afraid that we must think in terms of a more substantial cash outlay. Something of the order of his out-of-pocket losses when he had to move to Pittsburgh.”
“No! No! No!” cried Kussman. “We can make him testify. We can get a court order.”
Hedgewick cut him off impatiently. “Of course we can get a court order. Of course we can make him testify, or be in contempt of court. But there is a world of difference in what Serane is going to say on that witness stand if he is brought there by a court order, compared to what he will say if he comes to the stand voluntarily. A court order cannot force anybody to remember. I gather that it’s within the realm of possibility that John would be, shall we say, if not actually hostile, at least no more than neutral… ?”
Paul shrugged his shoulders.
“So let’s consider Blandford’s point,” continued Hedgewick. “How much money did Serane lose when he moved? Out-of-pocket, I mean. Such as loss on forced sale of his house, commissions, moving expenses, time off to look for a house in Pittsburgh, and so on?”
Paul took a deep breath. “I would have to take a wild guess.”
“Go ahead.”
But he reconsidered the sum of money he had in mind, and his vocal chords tightened, and he suddenly found he could not speak. He wondered in brief horror: After this fine performance, am I about to chicken out?
For he understood now the extent of his fear. And when he grasped that, he knew the amount of fear was just about right, and that because of it, he would go ahead as planned.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” he said.
“My God.” whispered Kussman.
And now even Marggold was looking at Paul in a strange way. It was a marvelous blend of alarm and respect.
“The Most Valuable Chemist Award was set up weeks ago,” spluttered Kussman. “The speeches have been composed, edited, re-edited, cleared by Public Relations. They’re ready for release to the press.”
“No problem,” said Paul. “Everything stands. Just change the name. From Kussman to Serane. And the amount of the award.”
“It’s expensive insurance,” said Hedgewick thoughtfully, “but the coverage may be worth it.”
“That’s not all,” said Paul. He was beginning to feel light-headed.
“You mean there’s more?” said Kussman.
“Yes. I understand that Humbert is now considering getting a new name plate for the lab, the bronze plaque out by the entrance. I have a suggestion as to how the new plaque might read. May I put it on the blackboard?”
“By all means,” said Hedgewick.
Blackboards. Everybody had a blackboard. But the size, material, and accessories showed exactly how important the owner was. Nobody had one like Kussman’s. It wasn’t even black. It was a translucent tri-di panel, which recorded according to preselected alphabet styles. It rolled up and down. It had extensible side panels. It could be lighted at both sides and at the top.
Paul picked up the board mike. This beautiful sexy panel was about to be raped. “Bold font, incised, and flashing,” he said. (I can’t put a marker on Billy’s grave; but I can do this.) “First line: ‘Johnstone Sinclair Serane.’ Second line: ‘Laboratory.’ Third line: ‘Ashkettles Chemical Company.’ ”
And there it was:
Johnstone Sinclair Serane
Laboratory
Ashkettles Chemical Company
As though cut in stone, and flashing alternately black and white. How strange. A headstone for the living, and none for the dead. But could he say that? If this was not for the dead, yet of a certainty it was because of the dead.
He couldn’t tell whether Hedgewick was annoyed or impressed. Marggold smiled nervously. Kussman’s eyes bored silently into him. Beyond resentment. Beyond hate.
“Humbert is a genius at this kind of thing,” said Paul. “We could have quite a ceremony. Reporters. Cameramen. The city council. Mayor Chatton could unveil the plaque and make the award to Serane in person. A speech acknowledging the greatest individual contribution to the company since the days of the founders. The gentlemen from the Wall Street Journal would be there. The company stock would jump a point or two.”
“How,” asked Hedgewick, “would Humbert explain that we let Serane go, even though we thought so highly of him?”
“He’ll think of something,” said Paul.
“Yes, I guess he would. Fred, how does this strike you?”
“I guess it does me no good to say that this is absolutely insane. Depend on the Patent Section to come up with something like this.”
Hedgewick was generally impassive, and yet, on occasion, his face tended to show sadness, regret. He felt this now for Kussman. He looked at the lab director almost tenderly. “Set it up. Get Humbert on it. m give you the check when the time comes.”
“Yes,” said Kussman. They had to strain to hear him.
It was over. Marggold and Paul stood up.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Hedgewick.
Paul carefully did not look at Kussman.
Marggold closed the door behind them and they passed into the hall.
It is blackmail, thought Paul, and they all know it. I can pull down the flag of company patriotism over it, and / can shellac it with a veneer of clever strategy in winning back a necessary witness to us, but it won’t really fool anybody. No matter how you slice it, it is still treason.
As they walked down the hall, Marggold asked Paul, “Who is counsel for Deutsche?”
“Ed Kern, of House, Brackett. We were in law school together.”
Marggold sighed. “I used to know them all. But now, all these your fellows are coming in. It’s a new generation.”
Paul called Pittsburgh that night.
At first Serane was startled, then uneasy when Paul told him about the award and the money.
“What are those queasy bastards up to?” he growled.
Paul laughed at him. “It was my idea. You told me you lost fifteen thousand dollars on your move. I was trying to get it back. With a little interest.”
“You did it? Well, for gosh sakes! How did you get them to go along with an expensive idea like that?” “They think it will help your memory when testimony time comes.”
Serane chuckled. “That’s a hot one. I would honor my contract. I would testify to the best of my recollection. All they would have to pay me is the air fare.” “I know that, John, and you know that. Even Alec Marggold knows it. But Hedgewick does not know it.” “Well, I will be damned. Fifty thou. Just wait until I tell Al!”
The ceremonies for renaming the lab went off beautifully. Serane played his part well. Mr. Crowe, the company president, couldn’t come, but Hedgewick was there, and Mayor Chatton, and Humbert, and Kussman. Humbert was emcee. He made a long speech about Serane, his leadership, his contributions to the chemistry of that mysterious chemical known as trialine, and the fact that he was responsible for the fourteen-million-pound plant. Not since the days of the founders had any one man made such a contribution. He gave Serane a one-gram souvenir sample of Paul’s now famous run. Handshakes. Unveiling the plaque. Speech by the mayor. Radio-cameras, broadcasting directly into the newsrooms of the major metropolitan newspapers. The man from the Wall Street Journal asking funny questions, like how come Serane isn’t with the company anymore?
As Paul, and indeed Hedgewick and others had predicted, the company stock advanced a full point. Hedgewick’s broker sold later, as instructed, for a profit of fifty-two thousand dollars.
Paul and Serane had supper at Halfway House, after which Paul drove him to the Darien station. They went down to the tube together, and Paul waved good-bye as Serane got on the train. Serane held up the little ampule of trialine and waved back.
That evening, after supper, Kussman retired to his study and plugged himself into his newly purchased pansensory perle, a Japanese recording of Donnator’s Song. This extraordinary and very expensive semicrystal provided a range of fidelities beyond the range of even the original instruments and voices. It fed its record into a dozen assorted speakers spaced about the room. And this was merely for the audio fraction. The same perle simultaneously generated outputs of vision, touch, taste, odor, and even personal identities selected from the opera dramatis personae. These variations were achieved by a cranial cap resonators plugged into the laser analyzer, and which tuned into the listener’s alpha, beta, and gamma cerebral waves.
During the course of the opera Kussman switched the identity buttons back and forth. At the start he was the Chief Elder, who announces that the Village must fall upon evil days unless the Decennial Sacrifice is renewed. As Elder, he holds the Ten Sacred Annals forth to the assembly. And then Kussman was one candidate after another, as one by one they were considered by the Elders. Finally one was selected to be the Prophet, and the dagger was promptly thrust into his heart, and so he was slain. But his spirit was immortal, and crossed the Bridge that spans life and death.
And then comes the Priestess to the Bridge, and makes ready to present her Petition to the Prophet for the things that will save the village. She sings:
What shall I ask for?
The sick, the old, the poor
Hold out their hearts to me.
Yet this I know, if I ask for all
I shall be given nothing.
What shall I ask for?
At this point the flutist plays a solo melody, a brief, haunting, fragile thing. It is there simply to cue the Priestess’s Petition, which the composer evidently intended to follow immediately. This melody, alas, was the last authentic Donnator. At this point he died, and left a generation of music lovers in raw suspense. What had he intended the Priestess to ask for? No one ever found out.
It was listener’s choice.
And so the convention arose that in operatic presentations (and recordings) the Priestess turns to the audience and cries out, “What shall I ask for? What are your needs?”
And in recordings for the parlor, the listener is supposed to present his own petition at this point.
Kussman was ready. He said firmly: “I want a Nobel prize. A vice-presidency. The genuine affection of Mr. Hedgewick. More money. More people reporting to me. And especially, I want that creature Serane to slip on a banana peel and break his neck.”
Here the audio in his cranial cap suddenly went awry and began to scream at him. Even as he was tearing the cap away, the perle exploded into a million minuscule shards, barely missing his astonished face, which was fortunately screened just then by the cap.
What had gone wrong? He had petitioned sincerely and honestly. And certainly he deserved these things. Well, he had heard of such mishaps, indeed just at this very point in the recording, but all that was mere superstition. There must have been a mechanical flaw somewhere.
But he wondered. This sort of thing was always happening to him. And it was because people failed to appreciate him. He sat there for a couple of minutes, gloomy, certain that nobody loved him—not the company, not Hedgewick, not Oldham, not Pinkster, not Humbert, not anyone in the lab, not even his wife or children. But then he paused and reflected: I still like me. Which is a considerable recommendation, believe me. It’s certainly not a feeling I have for just anybody. In fact, besides me, I can’t think of anyone I really like. So, then, to hell with them! And so thinking, he got up, went over to the bar, and measured out a double Scotch.
20
The Hybrid
“I just tested your trialine in the molecular profiler.” said Serane. “It’s just as I predicted: All three amino groups are on the same side of the ring.”
“Same side of the ring—?” Paul knew he probably looked stupid in Serane’s screen in Pittsburgh.
“Don’t you get it? The trialine you are making with the new catalyst is the pure cis isomer, not the race-mate that you got in the old high-pressure system.
That’s why it’s optically active. Which means it also ought to have biological activity.”
And now he remembered. He must have had a mental block on it. For Serane had recommended biologically active trialine for the very virus that had destroyed Billy. Paul had even mentioned the possibility to the holo-figure, that night. And the figure had turned down the heater to 325—for this very reason? He stared into the visi. Finally he said, “Novarella. Of course. How do we make the test?”
“Set it up with Mukerjee in the Animal Bay.”
“With monkeys?”
“Yeah. First off, see if you can get a two-week monkey fetus.”
“I don’t know …”
“Ask Mukerjee.”
“Sure, John.”
Mukerjee was now nearly the last of Serane’s old staff. One by one Serane’s people had awakened to the fact that Kussman had laid a curse on them, and one by one they had left the company. The personnel manager had in fact done a thing to Mukerjee calculated to force him to leave. But Mukerjee had not left. Humbert had discovered what he thought to be the ultimate degradation: to put a biology Ph.D. in charge of feeding the experimental animals. But Mukerjee not only failed to feel properly degraded. He thrived. His new job fit him like a glove.
In some respects he viewed himself as a sort of sannyasin—a holy man, without need of possessions other than his begging bowl. Mukerjee’s bowl was his job. His personal life was basically unaffected by what he did at the lab. He prayed to Vishnu, and therefore did not eat meat. His food did not cost much. His ancestors had bathed in a ghat on the river before prayers. His ghat was a shower. At sixty he was still a bachelor, and likely to die celibate. This sometimes bothered him, because he would leave no children to pray for his swift reincarnation. But perhaps heaven would find a way.
Like most Hindus, he had an exquisite sense of animism. He felt ahimsa, a sacred kinship with all living things. He knew that every living creature had its own kaa, or soul, and that human beings were not unique in this respect.
Today, as he played chess with Paul, the thing that preyed on his mind was an albino gibbon. She weighed twenty pounds and she was his spoiled darling. In summer she was permitted outside in a pen with a genuine tree. In the warm months she loved to sit in the top branches and watch the sun rise over the waters of Long Island Sound. At night she slept in the lower branches without building a nest. During her waking hours, weather permitting, she flitted about in the tree like some furry fairy. By the hour, Dr. Mukerjee watched her in rapture. And watching he well understood the man-ape affinity of the cultures of bygone millennia. He understood how the Egyptians had reverently mummified the Hamadryad baboon, who had been companion and oracle to the great god Thoth. He understood the monkey-headed gods on the facades of the temples of Ankor Wat.
He named her Lilith, in honor of the monkey-god companion to Vishnu.
In cold weather (of which, alas, there was enough) she was not permitted outside, and had to be satisfied with a dendritic variable force-field tree. The green luminous “branches” swayed slowly in accord with a preprogrammed wind pattern, and she accepted the indoor substitute without complaint. In an attempt to dull the edge of winter he bought her special foods: figs, mangoes, grapes, and plums.
He was fond of her; yet he was a realist. He knew that she existed solely for the purpose of testing the toxicity of the new experimental drugs. He gave her the shots or pills, as the case may be, himself.
In the beginning, it had not been too difficult. She had been just another lab animal. But this had quickly changed. She developed a personality all her own. She became as affectionate as hell. She was obviously delighted when he came in to feed her, and cried like a baby when he left. Dr. Mukerjee knew that none of the drugs tried out on her were supposed to hurt her. They all had been tried out on rats and dogs before they got to Lilith. And he could see that if there were going to be any unpleasant surprises about a new drug, the unhappy discovery should be made on Lilith rather than on a human being. Nevertheless, it made him uneasy.
So he was concerned and, in a way, relieved, when he discovered that Lilith’s current menstrual period did not stop. It went on, day after day. It meant that the mish-mash of drugs she had been receiving had deranged her reproductive system. He would have to yank one, maybe both, ovaries. And then Lilith would be retired from the drug-testing business. He would see to it that she received safe haven in a New York zoo. There, at least, her life, although necessarily childless (regrettable, but science had its demands) would be predictably longer.
And now, as he pondered his next move on the chessboard, this lawyer (of all people) was asking him about some sort of project. A project that might involve one of Lilith’s ovaries. It was beyond coincidence. Vishnu was watching over them. Vishnu was speaking. He would listen.
