“Then all that remains is for me to thank you for answering my questions so graciously, Dr. Cunningham.”
Blaise said nothing as he let the priest out the door, but his lungs strained for oxygen. Dobie pressed his nose against the screen and whined after the departing priest.
Under the sofa cushions Blaise found the cordless telephone, his usual place for it when he was drinking. He rapped the numbers into the buttons.
“Mrs. Hill?”
The woman’s voice on the other end of the line sounded faint and scratchy, which Blaise suspected, came from not recharcing the telephone.
“This is Dr. Cunningham.”
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Hill, have you heard from Gordon?”
The silence lasted. After a while she asked, “What is going on, Dr. Cunningham?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Hill. I’m trying to find out. May I come over and talk for a few minutes?”
“Yes,” she said. “I wish you would.”
Blaise revved the VW’s forty horsepower downhill, catching up with the priest striding toward the beach and, Blaise guessed, buses and taxis. The priest waved and Blaise couldn’t help feeling like a heel. He should have offered a ride or at least his telephone to call a cab. Dobie followed the black-garbed man with his eyes until he was out of sight. All the way to Gordon’s Bird Rock home Blaise kept telling himself that the priest was odd—even for a priest. His mother would have told him this was no excuse for manners.
Mrs. Hill greeted him as if she had been waiting at the door since Blaise called. Stella Hill was brunette, with a tendency to pudginess. Her normally full face was gaunt. Her eyes were shadowed. Even her dark-brown dress lent a somber air.
“It was kind of you to come, Doctor.” She looked at Dobie without comment before leading Blaise into a living room with a warm, lived-in feel. Gordon’s presence was there in a rack of pipes on an end table next to a chair, as if he had just gone into another room. Blaise thought of the children and knew they must be in school. If he felt Gordon’s presence so strongly, his absence must be unbearable for Stella Hill.
“Have you seen him?” she demanded. Dobie panted and leaned toward her.
“I’m sorry. That’s what I came to ask you.”
Mrs. Hill’s brown dress hung loose, accenting her gauntness. Blaise suspected that normally Stella Hill fit into her clothes and surroundings with efficient grace. “Almost two weeks,” she said. “I thought you were bringing news. You have Dobie.”
Blaise shook his head.
Abruptly Mrs. Hill was crying. “Gordon liked you,” she sobbed. “He said you had problems but you were a good man.” She spoke of her husband in past tense. “Why do you have his dog?”
“Is he a pet, Mrs. Hill?”
Stella Hill sat on the edge of a sofa chair, hunched forward as if her stomach hurt. “Only to Gordon. He wouldn’t let me or the children get attached to him. We know what happens to experiments, Dr. Cunningham.”
Dobie drew his lips back and wiggled his stump of tail. He seemed to sense Mrs. Hill was talking about him.
“Gordon just asked me to keep Dobie for a while, and I haven’t heard from him since.” Blaise looked at Dobie, straining toward Mrs. Hill, though maintaining his obedience to Blaise. “Would you like to keep him?”
Mrs. Hill shook her head. “We don’t know how much time he has left. Do you, Dr. Cunningham?”
Without thinking, Blaise put his hand on the animal’s shoulder. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Mrs. Hill took a handkerchief from a pocket. “What if he should die? Suddenly? For me and the children it would be like Gordon had died. You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes. I do.” Blaise stroked Dobie’s furry back, knowing suddenly he would miss the dog if something happened. “I’ll keep him then. As Gordon wanted. May I sit down?”
Stella Hill seemed distressed that she had left Blaise standing. She nodded violently before putting her face in her hands.
“Can you answer some questions?”
Mrs. Hill lifted her head and looked at Blaise, her eyes scrubbed dry. “Yes. Don’t mind my outburst, Dr. Cunningham. I want to help.”
“Did Gordon say he was going? Leave a note?”
“One evening he just didn’t come home.”
“Didn’t he call or write?”
“Once. He said he was going someplace where they didn’t have a phone.” Her eyelids were shiny with moisture. Small, red veins fanned out from the comers of her eyes. “His pay is deposited regularly.” Stella looked up and her face came apart again. “I don’t want the money, I want my husband!”
“So do I, Mrs. Hill. When Gordon disappeared half of my total stock of friends was gone.”
“Please, Dr. Cunningham. You work for GENRECT. You must know something.”
“Have you called Dr. Hemmett?”
“He said he’d ask Gordon to call me. Nothing came of it.”
Stella Hill’s features were strong. Prominent cheekbones, a sharply defined nose, thick silky eyelashes, and a heavy coil of wavy black hair that bounced on her shoulders. She moved her head slightly while Blaise talked, as if looking at him from different perspectives while listening.
She had reservations when he explained what he wanted her to say. But she never voiced them. She picked up the phone and called Hemmett at GENRECT. Blaise knew from Stella Hill’s face that Hemmett was being suave and gracious, and it was going down like lumpy peanut butter.
If she had been going to balk, the director’s oily manner settled it. “Dr. Hemmett,” she said after listening a long while, “if I do not hear from Gordon today, I’m going to tell the police my husband disappeared while under your supervision. Meanwhile, my attorney will initiate civil and criminal proceedings.”
She listened to Hemmett’s strangled reply for a moment before saying “Thank you.” Hemmett was still yammering when her click shut him off.
“Well?” she asked.
“Extremely well,” Blaise said. “Now we wait.” He leaned back in the easy chair and tried not to dream of bottles. Mrs. Hill went into the kitchen and rattled things. Over the sound Blaise heard muffled sobs. He drifted off into uneasy sleep.
The telephone’s strident ringjolted him awake. His mouth was dry and a breathless feeling filled his throat. Mrs. Hill skittered into the living room and then stopped, frozen.
“Pick it up,” Blaise said.
She did, slowly.
“Hello. Dr. Hemmett? Yes.” She looked at Blaise and he nodded. She was doing fine.
“What do you mean, Gordon won’t talk to me?” She stared at Blaise with wide brown eyes as if not seeing him or believing what she was being told. “Will he talk to somebody else?”
She waited a moment, listening, then said, “No, Dr. Hemmett, I do not mean will he talk to you. Will he speak to somebody else? Somebody like Dr. Cunningham?”
She listened, then said, “Thank you,” and hung up.
“That was good,” Blaise said soothingly.
“He said he’d ask.”
Blaise nodded.
“Dr. Hemmett says you are an irresponsible drunk.”
“He always gives the good news first.”
She tried to smile. “Gordon says you’re too responsible. He’s usually right.”
Blaise licked suddenly dry lips. “You should know, Mrs. Hill. I am a drunk.”
“Gordon told me that, too. He said, drunk or sober, you’re too responsible for your own good.”
“Who can argue with Gordon?” Blaise suddenly suspected Hemmett was right. He was involving Mrs. Hill in more than just looking for her husband. “If Hemmett calls back, tell him Gordon is to call me at home. You can reach me there if you need me.”
“I hoped Gordon could call here . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Mrs. Hill, if Gordon calls me it’s not because he can’t call you. He can’t trust himself to keep you at a distance.”
“You think so?”
&
nbsp; “Gordon loves you. There’s no other woman in his life.” She started crying. “You go home, then, Dr. Cunningham, and I’ll tell him to call you there.”
“We’ll try first, Mrs. Hill.”
“It might work.”
“Sure. Besides, all it will take is a little time.” Blaise sat back in the chair and pretended to sleep, embarrassed that Mrs. Hill was sobbing and he was powerless to do anything. Dobie stirred uneasily. Blaise patted him and Dobie laid down, head on paws. Blaise had lied. There could be other repercussions if Stella Hill pressed too hard.
Hemmett rang again and settled for the call to Blaise’s home. At the door Mrs. Hill entreated him with desperate eyes.
“It wouldn’t work, Mrs. Hill.”
“I know. I’m just being foolish.”
“I’ll make a tape if I can.”
She hugged his hand. “Thank you, Dr. Cunningham.”
“Blaise,” he said. “Like a fire.” He didn’t tell her that he was not St. George, that at the first sign of a dragon he would crawl into a bottle.
He hoped the priest had not come back. Everything he did these days put him on somebody’s bad side. How was he going to face it if God joined his persecutors?
The measurably different rates of speed at which electrical impulses are transmitted in different species, and even individuals within a species, would indicate that lack of intelligence may be a simple physical malfunction.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 8
Esther Tazy squatted astraddle him, full, firm breasts jouncing in time with the pounding of her fists on his chest. “Can you do nothing right?” she stormed. “Do you, Doke-tore, >need your parents to show you how to do this, too?” Blaise awoke sweating, expecting to find Esther still atop him. Instead he found Dobie lying across his chest shivering violently. All he really remembered of that night with Esther was futile fumblings that ended with him going to sleep. He shook Dobie gently. “Do you have nightmares, too?”
Dobie stared into Blaise’s eyes, straining to tell him.
The ringing in Blaise’s ears identified itself as the telephone. “Off the bed, Dobie.” Blaise stumbled into the living room and picked up the cordless receiver. Outside the big window the moon was a mercury-slicked dime slipping into the black Pacific, its bottom clipped by invisible shears. “Hello.”
“The notorious Dr. Cunningham, I presume?” The flat, dry voice with its hint of west Texas was Gordon Hill’s. “Christ, Gordon. What time is it?”
“How do I know? I can’t see in the dark. You should have known I’d call now. Unless Stella is camped in your bed, which is unlikely, or cleaning your rat’s nest in the dark, which is impossible, this is the best time to talk without interruption.”
“I didn’t let your wife come back here with me. You should have a little faith, Gordon.”
“I did. This is the police department’s favorite hour for parking ticket arrests. People are home. Dragged off half dressed and shoved into a tank full of muggers, drunks, pushers, and gays caught in public toilets, they don’t argue. They pay. If it’s good enough for the cops.
Blaise stood staring out the picture window and tried to blow the fog from his mind.
“At least you’re sober.”
“Almost.”
“In psychiatry,” Hill said, “the goal is to change the subject from within. A cure for alcoholism starts when the subject admits a problem. Naturally, he rationalizes. The shrink acts as a conscience, maintaining the problem’s reality.”
“Gibberish.”
“Behaviorists think if the subject is forced to change his behavior long enough, it become habit, which is easier than analytic thought. At some point the subject finds the new behavior easier to live with than the old and you have, if not a cure, a solution.”
“Why not a cure?”
“Freudianism. A cause exists, hence so do the symptoms.”
“There’s more?”
“There is always more in magic, theology, or science. If true alcoholism is physical, then psychiatry cannot eliminate the cause, but a behaviorist may be able to abort the symptoms. Like pneumonia. Everyone has the germ; only a few have the disease.”
“The point, Gordon.”
“You have finally lifted your problems to levels where drinking makes them unbearable instead of unmemorable.”
“Gordon, I’m standing in a cold living room in the middle of the night, naked, and my head hurts—mainly because of your wife and kids.”
Gordon’s voice changed. Blaise read the distress in it and knew he’d drifted over the line again. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes. So am I.” Gordon’s voice was hollow with a pained weariness. “I want you to talk to Stella for me.”
“Why can’t you talk to her?”
“Tell her I’m doing something very difficult, from which I must insulate her and the children. She is not to try to contact me again. The experiment is of indefinite duration.”
“What is it? Are you safe?” Blaise was about to ask what illness could be transmitted over a telephone line. Then he knew. Teenagers everywhere spent hours infecting one another.
“If I were safe, wouldn’t I talk to my own wife?”
“It helps if you say it, Gordon.”
“I suppose.”
Blaise sensed that they had come to an end. “Where are you, Gordon? I know you haven’t been at the lab.”
“If I tell you, I defeat myself.” Gordon stopped talking and the line was curiously hollow. “Face your own problem, Blaise. They’re doing wonderful work at Mount Sinai in New York. Check out Dr. Maris Gibson. Her endocrinology studies could become standard treatment for alcoholism.”
“What you need is a cure for pigheadedness.”
“As Dr. Hemmett says, you are gifted with a ready insult. In passing, Blaise, I do believe you have irritated the good doctor vastly. Good night.”
“Wait!” Blaise was too late.
He turned on the light and switched the portable computer to ready. The telephone split was already plugged into the modem and the phone barely burped before Alfie opened the line. The monitor spelled out random green letters and numbers, then: "GOOD MORNING, PROFESSOR"
Blaise made sure Gordon’s recording was backed up before returning to bed.
Something soft brushed his lips. Much too gently for energetic Esther. Blaise awoke and Linda drew away laughing. She looked bright and sparkly in the morning sun and her hair showed deep glints of red. “More,” he croaked.
“More what?”
“Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I’m drowning.” He looked into eyes the color of a mountain stream burbling over some quiet place carpeted with algae.
“Work now, play later.”
Blaise gave up hope of sleep. He considered brisk calisthenics. Then habit took over and he settled for a shower. When he came out in a terry-cloth robe Linda was helplessly surveying the kitchen.
“You need a cleaning lady,” she observed. “If I am reduced to bartering my splendid body, the least I can accept is breakfast on a regular basis.”
“We’ll go down to the village in a minute.” Blaise cranked up the Zorba and punched in some data, plus a request for information that the machine forwarded via modem to Alfie. By the time he had dressed, Alfie was busy. A quick look at the monitor and he knew the processing would take hours. But Alfie had received the message okay. Blaise erased the Zorba’s floppy. Then, after an instant’s hesitation, he reformatted it.
Erasing only wiped out the directory and any high school kid could still recover the data unless someone went to the trouble of rewriting the whole disk full of E5s, the hex number a computer reads as empty, available space.
“What are you doing?” Linda watched from the door. “Frustrating snoops. Where’s Dobie?”
“Outside.”
“Don’t you like dogs?”
“Some kinds.” Linda stared at Blaise without blinking. “Did yo
u find Dr. Hill?”
“Perhaps.”
Linda shrugged. “You’re the expert.”
“I like to think so.” Numbers and references began tumbling across the monitor. The printer made its cloth-ripping sound for a second and was silent. He tore off the half sheet of paper and stuffed it in his pocket. They ate at a cafe where the waitress didn’t give him a funny look when he ordered beer with his one-egg breakfast.
The VW was being buffeted by the shock wave of a passing truck before Linda realized they were not on their way home. She studied the beach with its row of wet-suiters astraddle surfboards just beyond the breaker line. “We could have taken my car,” she said. “At least it can go faster than the trucks.”
Air leaks around windows made the VW as noisy as a helicopter. She raised her voice. “Where are we going?”
“See Gordon. It’s a surprise.”
“For me?”
“Gordon, too.”
“Didn’t he invite you?”
“Thinks I don’t know where he is.” Yelling was giving Blaise a headache.
They swung off the northbound freeway, threading cloverleafs lined with pickle weed and African daisies. Automatic sprinklers came on and the wind put a dusting of mist on the VW’s windshield. The noise dropped and conversation became possible.
“Doesn’t anyone ever invite you to see them?”
“You don’t want to know how I did it?”
“And give you a chance to brag?”
“I got him to call me.”
“And?”
“Alfie traced the call.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Our secret. Alfie’s and mine.”
“I mean, get Dr. Hill to call?”
Blaise thought of Stella Hill crying and sitting by the telephone and doing everything he asked even though it was tearing her up. “I’d rather not say,” he mumbled.
“You aren’t very good at bragging.”
“I guess I don’t have much to brag about.” Which set a pall over the car’s interior until they rolled into the Heaven’s Gate parking lot.
“What is this?” Tennis courts, cabanas, and golf courses sprouted like an emerald in the otherwise gray terrain.
The Cunningham Equations Page 9