Untitled fr12, p.8
Untitled.FR12, page 8
“Well, say diatomite, kieselguhr…”
Paul listened to his heartbeat as it began to accelerate. He said: “How about a porous fossil ammonite?” “You mean,” said Serane, “where the silica was formed by mineralization of the dead body of the shellfish?”
“Yes.” I don’t have to do this, he said to himself. But I see that I am doing it.
“But that would not be porous, would it?”
“The one I’m talking about is porous. Apparently it was thrown up on the shore, back in the Cretaceous, when it was halfway mineralized. As it dried out, it became porous.”
“I would have high hopes for it,” said Serane. “You mean you really have such a thing?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. That should be a good start. It would be light, amorphous. So much for the silica. That can be our catalyst base. Now we will have to promote it. And we remember we are dealing with a biological. Since life came from the sea, I would suggest that we try first a mixture of oxides approximating the mineral analysis of seawater.”
“But the analysis of seawater has changed over the ages,” objected Dr. Hahnbuch. “If Paul finds us a Cretaceous ammonite, salts from today’s seawater might not be compatible with it.”
“Then we need something with the same analysis as the seawater of the Cretaceous Period,” said Dr. Mukerjee.
“The chordate body is supposed to have all the elements of those early seas,” said Serane. “The chemical analysis of flesh and blood has changed little or none since the Cretaceous. It’s still mostly salts of sodium, magnesium, calcium, and potassium, in that order—same as fossil seawater. You could even make up a synthetic mix of metal carbonates if you wanted to take the time to look up the exact ratio. But the simplest thing is to use animal ashes. Slurry them up in water, coat the crushed catalyst base with them, and dry them at a hundred and five. Try them in the catalyst chamber. The whole thing should not take more than an hour or two. You ought to get a good yield of a biologically active trialine.”
“Effective against viruses?” asked Paul huskily.
“Possibly.”
“Even novarella?”
Serane looked at him curiously. “Worth a try.”
Art Shirmer broke in plaintively. “Now where would anybody get animal ashes?”
Paul looked at Shirmer, then at Serane. The color was collapsing from his face. He felt dizzy. Why? How was he involved? It was all crazy. He said faintly: “I can supply the ashes.”
“Paul runs a general store. Keeps one of everything in his desk,” grinned Schirmer.
“Well, fellows, that’s about it,” said Serane genially. “We opened on general catalysis, and we concluded by inventing the new trialine catalyst. Hope you get to try it out someday. Meanwhile, I’ll see you tonight.”
In the moment of silence just before the meeting broke up, Paul heard an occasional sniffling. Several of Serane’s old staff were blinking their eyes with unusual rapidity.
Drs. Slav and Teidemann were polishing their glasses with rhythmic determination, like matched windshield wipers. Then they turned away and disappeared together down the hall.
As Paul returned to his office, he was thinking.
He could see his treasures. The three things that made up his spirit, his mind, his life. All rested placidly behind the triptych of portrait photos. Two of them were totally his: the ammonite and the stack of Billy’s diaries. Billy’s ashes were more Mommee’s than his, but she was dead. So the thing would be done. Whether for Billy, for Johnnie Serane, for himself, or for twisted destiny, he did not really know. He had no right to do it. But it would be done. He would start by giving the catalyst components to Bob Moulin.
He left word with Marggold’s secretary that he had to go on a brief personal errand. Then he headed for the parking lot and thence for Rhoda Street.
The next question was—could he make Moulin understand? Bob would have to do a number of things. The ammonite had to be broken up, screened, the quarter-inch particles mixed with an aqueous slurry of Billy’s ashes, the mix laid out in the oven, dried at 105 degrees centigrade for an hour, then finally loaded into the trialine catalyst chamber to await his return from Serane’s supper that night.
As he entered the mill room, several extraordinary things happened.
Robert Moulin turned around, looked at him, and very nearly smiled. It was a Mona Lisa facial gesture, barely detectable. It showed sympathy rather than amusement. It was the first time Paul had ever known the man to look fully at him or at any one else. His eyes now seemed brilliant, alive. Next, Moulin walked to each rolling mill in turn and switched it off, throwing the room into a stifling silence. Paul wanted to put his hands over his ears to shut out the sudden stillness. It was the first time he had ever known all the mills to be shut down at once.
And then Robert Moulin spoke. “Now we can talk.”
“But you are talking,” stammered Paul. “You’re not supposed …”
“I thought it all out. When you walked in—with what you have—I decided I finally understood about Robin. He died under the electric, you know. He was crawling. The backup radar couldn’t detect him. And your brother …”
My God. What is going on? What could he say? “I’m Paul Blandford.”
“I know. You’re Johnnie’s friend. Just standing here all day, I sort of learned how to read people.”
“Read… people?”
“After today, I think I’ll stay home awhile. Just sleep. I think I can sleep about a week. Or maybe a month.” He held out his hands for the ammonite, then took the little bag. He whispered to Paul. “Billy?”
“Yes.” It did not immediately hit him. But when it did, it flattened him. He couldn’t get air into his lungs for a moment. When finally he could breathe again, he felt released. It didn’t have to make sense anymore. He said, “Do you see all this? Then you know that my brother died. These are his ashes. And that is an ammonite. It has to be crushed, say to four-mesh, and the ashes are to be slurried and mixed with the screenings. Dry the mixture in the oven. The vaporizer and the collection equipment are already set up. I’ll make the complete run when I come back here from the supper tonight.”
So Robert Moulin had finally emerged from his prolonged protective fugue.
The miller hesitated a moment. “Is Johnnie your brother, too?”
The flesh crawled on his cheek. “I don’t know, Bob.” And now it was his turn. “The catalyst will work, won’t it?”
“Of course. You will see.”
“Does Billy still live?”
“Life is in the eye of the beholder.”
(And what did he mean by that? Paul decided not to ask.) He turned and walked slowly from the room. Behind him, the mills came on again, one by one.
He rather doubted he would ever see Moulin again. The miller was cured. This evening his wife would come for him for the last time. With Serane gone, he wouldn’t want to stay.
15
Serane’s Banquet
He arrived early at Halfway House; even so, there were already a couple of dozen at the bar set up for the occasion in a comer of the main dining room. And they all seemed to be in a boisterous mood. Paul well understood them. The only way they knew to deal with tragedy was to laught at it. Razmic Mukerjee had got Serane safely there, and they were both spilling their martinis, laughing at something Art Schirmer had just told them. Paul smiled grimly. Humbert was there, probably on Kussman’s orders, and would report back on any subversive speeches or other anticompany statements. It didn’t matter. He himself would make one speech, Mary Derringer would make a very short one as she presented the gift, and then Serane could say a few words—or stand silent, as the mood might strike him. About ten people, including Serane, the speechmakers, and the key men in the old Nitrogen Group would sit at the front table, facing the other tables.
The entree was special: steaks from a woolly mammoth discovered in a glacier in northern Siberia. It was expensive, but at least it had a zero carcinogenic index and was no threat to an endangered species.
During dinner the noise was deafening. He had to shout at Serane to make himself heard. Mary Derringer sat on the other side of Serane. At one point she had tried to tell Serane what it was like to commute on the subway in New York, then shrugged her shoulders and gave up. Paul dreaded the moment when he would have to make the noise cease.
He skipped dessert. How about coffee? He studied the liquid dispense island near his plate. “Licorice-kafe. Choco-kafe. Cinnamon-kafe. Brazilian or Colombian coffee, by special arrangement with management.” He sighed and took a sip of water. And now the time had come. He gave them all one last moment, then stood up. From the corner of his eye he noted that Humbert had pencil and paper out by his plate.
Paul began tapping on his water glass with a spoon. The tumult died away—at first only gradually, then all of a sudden, very quickly yielding to an abrupt and startling silence.
He began. “As you all know, a bronze plate adorns our laboratory door, and the letters rather loosely screwed to this plate spell out the words Ashkettles Laboratory.”
He paused for a moment. “Sometimes I see a vision. Management will eventually have a new plate made. And I now recommend that the plate carry the name: The Johnstone Sinclair Serane Laboratory.”
He looked over at Humbert. Humbert’s pencil was poised uncertainly. “That’s S-I-N-C-L-A-I-R,” spelled Paul.
There was a burst of laughter. The personnel manager reddened, looked around savagely, then put his pencil away.
“Now,” said Paul, “who is this man after whom we would name our laboratory? Johnstone Sinclair Serane came to Ashkettles in ’ninety-six as a research associate. His creativity at the bench was quickly recognized, and he was promoted to senior chemist in ’ninety-eight. Dr. Bush was approaching retirement, and John was asked to take over the Nitrogen Group. In the minds of many of us, a better choice could not have been made. Why? Three reasons come to mind.
“First: He made us think. Now, nobody likes to think. We would all rather be told what the situation is. But John has made that impossible, because he has led us out into areas where nobody knows what the situation is. We have to think to survive.
“And once we start thinking, it hurts less and less, and finally, we begin to develop a modest skill at it. One day, we wake up, and we find we can think even without feeling John’s red-hot needle in our behinds.
“Second: He has taught us how to invent. Oh, what a pleasure it is to watch him sit down with his research people! Just watch those inventions flow! One invention leads to another. He says, ‘If this works, then such and such ought to work.’ And they’re off. It’s like a Fourth of July roman candle. You see bursts, then rebursts. Two and three generations of ideas coming out in the space of an hour. Creative? Johnnie was the greatest single friend of the Patent Section. We never quite kept up with him. In the ten years that he has been inventing in the laboratory, the Patent Section filed over two hundred patent applications naming him as an inventor. Over twenty a year. And yet most of these, if you look them up in Chem Abstracts, don’t even list him. Why? Because he is modest They’re listed under names like Slav et al., or Mukerjee et al., or Hahnbuch et al. Who’s this ‘al.’? Why, Johnnie, of course. He refused to let us put his name first. Once in a while, of course, he’s the sole inventor, and then the law requires that his name be on the case, all alone. And by the way, I might mention that he gave us one such invention this morning, the new catalyst for trialine. I mention this sole inventor instance because of its rarity.
“That’s enough about invention and thinking. There’s a third thing he has given us: teamwork.
“John has taught us how to work together. It is not easy to grasp how he has been able to do this. How does he persuade fourteen individuals to work together? I can tell you right away, it is not Serane that does the persuading or driving. We drive ourselves. Why? It is something that he does to us. And what is this something? Ah! Here the mystery deepens. Perhaps the essence of Serane is hidden here: His technique for making us play above our capacities, to think far beyond our IQs, to become part of some sort of group brain, to merge into a network of intense communication.
“I’ve oversimplified, of course. But I’ll simplify even further. My own one-word summary of him is: catalyst. He makes human reactions go that would not otherwise go. To paraphrase Ostwald, he accelerates cerebral processes. And yet, like Ostwald’s catalyst, he is recoverable at the end, ready to be reused, with other minds, other programs. The end result is always something rich and strange. An enigma. A mystery of great beauty. We dare not look at it too closely, for fear that it will vanish. Thank you.”
And now he looked over at Mary Derringer. It was her turn. She was supposed to say a few words and then give Serane the gift. But Mary was unable to move. She looked up at Paul in brief anguish. She was trying to control her face, and to get up, and to speak. Her face was rippling with blue-white contortions under the cheap too bright fluorescents and her eyes had completely filmed over. Mary would break up if she spoke. She handed Paul the package. “It’s okay, Mary,” he whispered. “I’ll do it.
“John, your friends have a little memento for you. And without further ado, I do hereby hand it over.”
Serane unfolded the wrappings from the box. He stared at the contents in real surprise. “What—?” He looked over at the expectant faces. “I know what it is. It’s just that I never expected to own one. It’s a computer chess console.” He carefully lifted out the folding chessboard. “The bases of the chess pieces are coded with magnetic iron oxide. Whenever a piece moves or captures, the move is automatically scored on a printout sheet, plus the elapsed time, so you don’t need clocks. And if I don’t like solid pieces, I can switch to holos. I can play against any computer chess loop in the country—maybe in the world. If I’m getting beat on one loop, all I have to do is switch to another.” He looked at Paul. “Is that a fair description?”
“Pretty good. Except the instrument shop added a couple of little things. A bell rings when you’re put in check. Also, it comes with a porto-remote so you can play at home, or even in travel.”
Serane shook his head and put the board back carefully. “Marvelous. Absolutely marvelous. Well, what can I say? How can I thank you? I don’t know how to do this properly. But I am glad for one last chance to see you all together again. I am grateful to every one of you for coming to see me off. The chess machine is just beautiful. I will have many pleasant hours with it.” He looked around at the uplifted faces. “And now, if you really want to remember me, you can do for me one last service, one little favor. Fix it in your minds: What has been done, is done. Hold no grudges against anyone. As a minimum, give your best. Don’t be afraid to put out. A little extra effort won’t hurt you. It will all come back to you. God bless you all.”
The line was already forming to shake his hand, to say a final face-to-face good-bye.
Paul found the headwaiter, verified that all accounts had been settled, then got back to Serane. The chemist looked at him from the thinning ranks of last-minute well-wishers.
“That, old buddy,” said Serane, “was quite a show. Talk about inventiveness!”
“You deserved better.”
“Hope it doesn’t put you on the Kisser’s shit list.” Serane had drunk too much.
Paul shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn’t care less. John, you remember our arrangement. Razmic here is going to take you home. I’m going back to the lab.” “Lab? What for, for God’s sake? Have they told you to clean out your desk so soon?”
“A little job. I have to finish tonight, if I can.”
“Then of course, go on. I guess this is . . He held out his hand.
“No, it isn’t good-bye. Just a short farewell, my friend. Give my love to Alessa.” They shook hands. Serane’s palm was firm and dry.
In the parking lot Mary Derringer was waiting for Paul by his electric. As he approached, wondering, she walked up to him, took his face between her hands and kissed him hard on the lips. Her cheeks were wet. Then she hurried away without a backward glance. His eyes followed her until she disappeared is the melee of departing guests. Thoughtfully, he put his hand to his mouth.
As he drove back to the lab, he touched his mouth again. What could Mary see in him, after having been exposed to Serane all these years? He sighed. But then, nothing necessarily made sense for the female mind. Their values, the things that attracted them, were other-world. Anyhow, by the time this was over, she would probably be long gone.
16
Witch Night
The atmospheric pressure trialine unit, previously dismantled by order of Kussman, had been reassembled by prearrangement with Dr. Mukerjee. Paul had charged the thousand grams of crystal urea to the urea pyrolyzer from Uriah Hight’s thousand-gram jar. Uriah, thought Paul, we’re going to upgrade your urea in a way you never dreamed.
The receiving flask had been tared and vented to the hood. Between the flask and the pyrolyzer lay the empty catalyst chamber. All he had to do was fill the catalyst chamber and turn on the pyrolyzer. It seemed incredibly simple. Almost anticlimactic. He took the chamber into the milling room, found the asbestos gloves, and lifted the tray of hot catalyst from Moulin’s drying oven. As an afterthought, he weighed it. A little over three thousand grams. It should just about fill the chamber. He funneled it in carefully, losing nothing.
Billy was now inseparably bonded to stone. A kind of mystic melding. There could be no turning back.
The hemlock has been drunk.
The veil of the temple is rent. On this dread night breaks the Norn rune rope.
Spirits will dance and ghosts come forth. It is Walpurgisnacht.
He carried the loaded chamber back to the Nitrogen Bay, where he punched the computer mike. “Confidential company loop. Paul Blandford here. Nine thirty P.M. May nineteenth, 2006. I am personally making a trialine run using a porous silica catalyst activated by mixed oxides. Urea, one thousand grams. Temperature, three hundred fifty degrees centigrade. I intend to reduce to practice a proposal made by Johnstone Sinclair Serane this morning. Acknowledge, please.”
