“Hemmett is too busy to be all things to all men. Goodbye for now, Dr. Cunningham.” Sergio winked. Turning, he strolled into the Atlantis Restaurant as if he had never stopped to pass the time of day.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Linda accused as they walked across the parking lot. “Who is that man?”
“The same stranger who came and sat beside me in the plane.”
Linda frowned. “Why did his name surprise you?”
“You’re observant. You know, computers seldom make mistakes. It’s polluted data that causes problems. ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ ”
“You might let me help.”
“Yes.” Blaise didn’t elaborate. To mention that she had been less than pure candor herself would only turn the silence into a shouting match that he didn’t need.
“Take me to the airport.” Linda got in and slammed the door. In answer to his unspoken question, she said, “I want to rent a car. Would you miss me if I went home?”
“Yes.”
“I guess that’s all a girl can ask.”
Development of brilliance in the human species represents a danger to the standards of humanity which now exist. A queen bee, a soldier ant, a wolf pack leader are examples of brilliant animals. If such qualities were instilled into men, the issue of free choice would be resolved, with the individual bom with the knowledge and capability of being only a mother, a policeman, a hunter.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 15
For an instant Blaise considered driving past the house to avoid the priest. He slammed the car door as a declaration.
“How pleased I am to see you again, Dr. Cunningham.” The priest’s smile was serene. “You have birds in your orange tree.”
“Butcher birds.” Blaise stepped past the priest. The house was a refuge where he didn’t have to put up with other people’s demands.
“Mockingbirds, Doctor.”
“I know the difference.” Blaise squinted into the shadowed interior of the tree. Brown-and-gray birds were present near the trunk. “They nest here because the automatic sprinklers save them hunting for water. Take your text from St. Francis, Father. Stay where the hunting’s good.”
The priest clucked his tongue and walked alongside Blaise. “What do you want this time?”
“That’s what I’m here to talk about.”
Fumbling with his key, Blaise willed his headache to the same place he wished the priest. Both, however, followed him inside the house. “Make it brief, will you, Padre?”
The priest walked to the window and stared down the hill toward the ocean. “I realize you’re not interested in the issues that infatuate the rest of us, Doctor. But you are involved.”
As Blaise slouched in the armchair all the concentration he had devoted to driving slipped away. The priest wavered like smoke somewhere on the edge of reality, slipping in and out of vision. “I’m developing a sympathy for Henry the Second.”
“Rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
Blaise nodded.
“One does not eradicate evil by the studied cultivation of innocence,” the Jesuit said. “It is your misfortune, Doctor, to be caught up in events which will not go away.”
“Such as yourself?”
“Among others.”
“If I talk, will you disappear?”
The priest’s gestures were small, revealing the unstated understanding that he kept himself hidden, with only the tail of his motive exposed. Blaise would get no more information than the priest planned on giving.
“Perhaps,” Father Argyle said, “when you understand more your attitude will change.”
“I’d rather trade quid pro quo.”
“Answer my questions and I leave you alone?”
“That’s the essence.”
“I’m not sure it is practical, Doctor. However, I can tell you things of interest in exchange for the answers I want.”
“You are,” Blaise said acidly, “a Jesuit and thus thoroughly conversant with mental reservations. Organizations from the CIA to the Venerable Order of Assassins have modeled themselves on your discipline.
“Were you Protestant, Jew, or Moslem, I could invoke the Ten Commandments. But you recognize only the five commandments of the Holy Mother Church, subject to instant and ex post facto revision by the College of Cardinals. Correct?”
The priest smiled. “But I, on the other hand, will know that whatever you decide to tell me will be the truth. We could agree on the traditional Christian basis of faith: the Four Last Things—death, judgment, heaven, and hell. We’re not that far apart, Doctor.
“You are burdened with a New England conscience, of which I will take shameless advantage. Faced with lying or implying, I believe you are more inclined to the sin of omission.”
“Perhaps. But will you risk it?”
Father Argyle’s gaunt face had an impish glow of pleasure. “What can I lose?”
“Your sainthood.”
“I fear that is already lost.” The priest seemed a black shadow blending into the fabric of the couch. Blending into the furniture made his presence more tenuous and Blaise realized that part of the Jesuit’s effectiveness was an ability to dissolve his substance and become memory, or dream of future.
“Do you know that Dr. Hill is using his GENRECT research to treat people for intellectual deficiencies?”
“No crime in that,” Blaise said.
“Not only a crime, but very possible a sin. Genetic research in treatment of humans is regulated under pure food and drug statues. New aspirin compounds take years of paperwork before they can be marketed.” The priest looked out the picture window. “You have a remarkable view.”
“I’d forgotten.”
“That was a gambit, to give you a chance to talk.”
“You’re doing so well, Father . . .”
Father Argyle seemed unfazed by Blaise’s response. “At present the Chorch has no position on the right or wrong of Dr. Hill’s activities. At least on a civil level. However, other threats exist.”
“What threats?” Blaise was interested despite himself. “According to Human Enhancements, clients are subjected to six weeks of hypnotic conditioning while receiving what the company calls a brain stimulus in the form of a vitamin. The result is increased efficiency of the subject’s mental prowess.”
“So what’s new? You can quote Sixth Dynasty Egyptians on underutilization of the brain.”
“But Dr. Hill’s solution, in the light of his research, seems fortuitous. Would you not concur, Dr. Cunningham?”
“A fork is miraculous to those who know only chopsticks.”
“If it’s harmless then why is Dr. Hill hiding?”
The telephone shrilled its electronic bell. Blaise lifted the receiver from the charger cradle.
“Blaise?”
Blaise watched the priest who, now that he wasn’t talking, had submerged his personality within his black suit and professionally diffident facade. “Yes?”
“Well.” Helen’s voice was cold. “You don’t have to worry any more about Dobie. Dr. Hemmett called. GENRECT’s sending somebody to reclaim company property.”
“He can’t, Helen.” Blaise stared at the priest, composing his emotions. It was his own fault. Sergio Paoli had warned him and he hadn’t paid attention.
“Did you know Linda Peters is married? Did you, Blaise?” Fury churned Helen’s breathing to rags.
Blaise hesitated, staring at the Jesuit who looked back with bright, penetrating eyes.
“This is personal,” Blaise said. .
“Excuse me. Perhaps I could visit your bathroom?” Blaise pointed and the priest left the room.
“You’re goddamn right it’s personal.” Helen’s voice rose, rich with fury and the hint of hysterical tears.
“Not you, Helen. I have a priest here.”
Her voice sliced off as if with a knife. “You’re lying.”
“I
don’t lie to you.”
“How do I know that?” Helen’s voice softened. She wanted to believe him.
“Helen, you’ll believe what you want to believe. Regardless of the truth.” He was about to add Why should I lie? when he realized that could be the unkindest cut.
Silence was like a thin-paned window holding out the wind. It vibrated and fluttered to the rhythmic violence on the other side, but without sound, there was no way to gauge the fury of the storm.
“You don’t leave me much, do you?” Her voice had shrunk. “Not even the refuge of a lie.”
“Helen, I’m not lying.” Blaise stared at the hallway. It was too much to hope a Jesuit would turn on the tap and drown out the accidentally loud word.
“Her name was Burkhalter. She married a mathematician named Jonathan Peters and hyphenated her name.”
“I met him in San Francisco.”
“You know?”
“I’m coming to your place. We’ll talk then.”
“Blaise?”
“Yes?”
“Technological Intelligence Laboratories in Berkeley is controlled by something called the Burkhalter Family Trust Fund. This morning the Fund traded part of its stock for a strong interest in GENRECT.”
After a long minute Blaise said, “I’m not surprised. How did you find out?”
“I’ve had Alfie watching.”
Blaise listened to the hum of the phone line while Helen made up her mind to tell him the rest. “When Linda took you away, I started checking. Alfie helped.” She said nothing for a minute. “I did it for you, Blaise. Not for me.”
“I know.”
“She made me mad, Blaise.”
“I’m sorry, Helen. It’s my fault.”
She didn’t answer.
“Don’t let anybody take Dobie.”
“I won’t,” Helen said, then added, “I’m not sure I’d do as much if Dr. Hemmett was after you.” She opened the circuit, leaving Blaise to reflect on how many people found him less valuable than a Doberman pinscher.
Before he put the phone down it rang again. Mrs. Hill seemed composed. Blaise told her that Gordon would talk to her again in the near future. He thought he sounded sincere.
The priest contemplated him. “You lead a complicated life, Dr. Cunningham.” Holding up his hands, the priest added, “Another minute and I’d have scrubbed the skin off.”
“Thank you.” Blaise stood. “I really have to go.”
“Of course. But we must continue this conversation. Unless you can tell me now exactly what Dr. Hill is doing to the people who go to Human Enhancements.”
“Would you like a ride down the hill, Father?”
“That would be generous of you.”
Blaise locked the door. Birds wheeled in circles against the blue sky, the white patches on the undersides of their wings conspicuous as they hunted things that crawled or flew. The racketing VW engine chased them away.
Blaise started downhill, after which the car pretty well took care of itself. “Does Human Enhancements deliver?”
“Yes, Doctor. No short change.”
The whir of the VW’s tires made the loudest noise as long as the engine idled behind them, the noise carried away in the wind and the exhaust. “I’ll have to drop you here.”
“Thank you for the ride.”
“Tell me, Padre. How did you know they were mockingbirds?”
“I looked at them with no preconceptions.”
“Do you look at other things without preconceptions?”
Smiling, the Jesuit said, “That’s for you to find out.”
Blaise dropped the priest off in the center of La Jolla where white-haired and blue-rinsed ladies and younger women tugging children gave him a wide berth. La Jolla’s concern was not with the hereafter, but with avoiding it.
It eased Blaise’s mind that he did not know what danger Gordon faced. The truth might have been harder than a lie. What Gordon implied would have been as impossible for Mrs. Hill to accept as it was for Blaise. The Gordon he’d talked to was the same sane man he had talked to every day for more than a year.
Gordon was not given to impetuosity or exaggeration. He tested a theory with the exactitude and patience of a computer. Anxiety started to engulf Blaise. No man could test himself with the same dispassionate thoroughness he saved for a stranger.
The black limousine in front of Helen’s house was as conspicuous as blood on a bridal sheet. Blaise remembered it in his mirror on the run back from Heaven’s Gate. He crossed the centerline and skidded to a stop with the VW head-on against the limo’s bumper. He was out and running while the bug still quivered. The house door hung ajar.
A man sat on the hall floor, knees tight against his chest, hands clenched to his throat, crimson fingers still wet with blood. Open eyes stared dully at eternity. The pistol between his belly and thighs had not saved his life.
Dobie lay in the living room, blood matting brown and black hair in a huge red stain. Leaning against the wall a second man in three-piece suit and flowered tie followed Blaise with his eyes. His right arm hung at his side, dragged down by the weight of the gun. He tried to lift it but the revolver with too heavy.
The man’s jacket hung askew. He exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath, the slow hiss of a deflating balloon as he slid, leaving a crimson trail on white-on-white wallpaper. He pitched forward, his forehead plowing into white carpet.
Blaise ran down the hallway to the bedrooms. Helen sprawled on the floor beside the computer, the side of her face a mass of blood. He knelt.
“Blaise?” Her voice was a whimper. “I tried to stop them.” One puffy eyelid opened a slit. “I tried.” Her eye closed.
Over the near-silent whisper of Alfie’s disk drives he heard the erratic stop-and-start of her breathing.
He called for a police ambulance while he loosened the collar of her blouse and unbuttoned her skirt waistband. His fingers quivered. Helen seemed to breathe easier. The ragged wheeze mesmerized him. He fought the urge to sit and hold Helen until help came.
His own heavy breathing kept him company, his chest squeezed by a familiar pressure. Acute anxiety reciton. Nice to have names for everything. But the doctor who’d bestowed AAR on Blaise had not explained how not to wake in the middle of the night with his heart stopped and fear coiled on his chest like a waiting snake.
The man in the front room had fallen on his right side, leaving a crimson smear on the white wallpaper as if a drunken painter had swirled a broom dipped in red.
Blaise put his fingers over the man’s carotid artery and felt only a whisper of motion. The damage, invisible at first, was apparent now. White bone gleamed through torn flesh. The biceps muscle dangled and from the amount of blood Blaise was sure that both the axillary and brachial arteries were severed. Wrong arm, Dobie, he thought bleakly. Possibly the blood flow could be slowed by finding the pressure point for the clavicle artery.
On his way back to the computer room he saw the Doberman’s chest rise and fall with painful slowness. He touched the dog’s head and Dobie’s stump of tail wiggled against the white carpet. Blood trickled from the bullet hole in a slow seep.
Returning, he knelt beside Helen, holding her hand. Her breathing didn’t change but her fingers tightened. With his free hand Blaise typed a command into Alfie to open a line to the telephone directory service. His request for a veterinarian produced an assortment. Blaise took the closest.
“La Jolla Veterinary Service!” The answering voice rivaled a pediatrician’s receptionist for warmth and efficiency.
“I need a veterinarian immediately,” Blaise said.
“I’m sorry, sir. Doctor does not make house calls. If you just bring your pet in we’ll take care of the problem immediately.” Her voice conveyed the proper disdain for a man who ordered “doctor” like a plate of poached salmon.
“Miss, the police are coming and I don’t think I’ll be able to leave. Two dead men are here.”
No sound came f
rom the phone.
“Miss.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Do you want to now how the men died?”
“No, sir.” A quaver rattled the girl’s voice. Her class as a veterinary assistant had trained her to be professional, to pretend a horse doctor was second only to the President of the United States. But a lie could be stretched only so far.
“Would you like me and the reporters to come over with a dead dog after the police have hauled the other bodies away?”
“You’re kidding me, sir.”
Blaise held the phone up to catch the sirens and klaxons. “Do you hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This dog is worth more than the two men the cops will be hauling away. If the vet doesn’t come, it will be dereliction of professional duty. Do you understand murder?”
“Yes, sir!”
Blaise gave her the address. “Immediately,” he reminded. “You’re only four blocks away. The dog has a bullet hole in the upper part of his rib cage on the left side. The bullet did not exit and is from what appears to be a thirty-two-caliber pistol. His breathing is Cheyne-Stokes.”
“Sir, are you a doctor?” the girl asked timidly.
“Yes.” She had not asked what kind of doctor. Abruptly the mournful wail of the ambulance cut off, leaving sudden silence. The police were outside. “Miss, I’d take it unkindly if the dog died for lack of attention.”
“Sir. What happened to the . . . two men?”
“They annoyed me. Did you want to know anything else?”
“No, sir.”
Blaise hung up the telephone as the first policeman sidled into the room. He had a gun in his hand.
“Where’s the ambulance attendant?”
“You’d better get back against the wall, mister.”
“She needs help.” Blaise stood.
“She’ll get it.” The cop waved Blaise back and felt Helen’s pulse with his left hand. “Sam,” he yelled. “Get in here!”
A white-suited ambulance attendant came through the door. He looked down at Helen. “How about a little room?” The blue uniform waved his gun as if shooing flies, forcing Blaise back into the living room.
The other attendant was bent over the man in the front room. Apparently he’d found the clavicle artery. Blood no longer spurted. The wounded man was dead white, like paper. “Get the stretcher into the other room,” Blaise said.
The Cunningham Equations Page 16