The Last Alchemist td-64

by Warren Murphy

  Harrison Caldwell heard heavy breathing at the other end of the line. The man might be having a stroke. He had to gentle him down, not antagonize him.

  "I am tired of being ridiculed. Leave me alone."

  "I have something that you must believe in," said Caldwell.

  "I don't have to believe in anything. I don't have to believe the world isn't composed of the four pure elements of fire, water, earth, and air. I don't have to. And I will tell you something else, you ... you mocker of our science. I never will."

  "I have the philosopher's stone," said Harrison Caldwell.

  "If I were to believe you, I would be even more offended. That stone. Always, always the problem. They said that because we claimed as alchemists to be able to turn lead to gold, we were a pseudoscience, the court jesters of science, the embarrassment of science, like an old grandfather born bastard instead of legal. But this bastard made your chemists of today, son."

  "The stone is in four quadrants. Two of the languages I recognize. They are Latin and Arabic. The third might be a form of Greek, but I am not sure, and, Professor Cryx, I dreadfully hate talking about this on a telephone line. What sort of wine do we pour to St. Vincense D' Ors?"

  There was a pause on the telephone line. Finally Professor Cryx spoke.

  "It's a long ceremony. I have been using a cheap port, but you do have funds, you say?"

  "What sort of wine would our blessed St. Vincense like?"

  The voice from Brussels was timid, almost like a child unable to believe it was worth such a gift.

  "Laffite Rothschild ... if it isn't too expensive."

  "We will have two cases for Blessed St. Vincense. A hundred if you wish."

  "Too much, too much. But yes, of course. Wine is one of the few pleasures of the old. A hundred cases would allow me to drink every day for the rest of my life. Oh this is too good, too good to be true. You will be here tomorrow then. Services start at sunrise."

  The next day, Harrison Caldwell saw clearly why the Church never recognized good old St. Vincense. Half the prayers were pagan, and the other half were pagan-based, calling upon the elements as though they were gods themselves. The ritual was anathema to the first of the Ten Commandments, which called for reverence to one God who made everything.

  Professor Cryx was a Walloon, one of the two groups that made up Belgium, and the one that usually ran things. The other group, the Flemish, only felt it should run things. Professor Cryx wore a gray jacket stained by all the meals he'd eaten since middle age. They stood in an old square near an old fountain, while Professor Cryx chanted a language Harrison Caldwell had never heard but suspected might be on one of the four quadrants of the stone. The old man was sparing with the wine, commenting to his St. Vincense that when the other hundred cases arrived there would be more wine. The wine was poured into the fountain. Some of the prayers were in English for Caldwell's benefit. Harrison Caldwell did not bother to mention that he spoke both Dutch and French, which would have enabled him to converse with anyone in Belgium. Nor did he mention that he spoke Spanish, ancient Greek, Latin, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Danish.

  Nor did he even mention that he spoke all of these languages fluently, like someone who used them daily. Harrison Caldwell stood with the grace and tremendous reserve of someone who was sure that in a very short time he was going to realize a dream of generations.

  With casual ease, Harrison Caldwell allowed an arm to gently rest on a hip. Oddly, this small gesture attracted a crowd. The sight of a ragged old man pouring wine into a fountain and mumbling things in one language after another aroused only pity, making people turn away. But to see someone so elegant stand there with the old man, as though about to receive a crown of a kingdom, was something to make people stop and look. And when Professor Cryx bowed four times to the four corners of the world, praising the four elements for their gifts as St. Vincense D'Ors had taught, people came over to ask what the ceremony was about.

  ''We're getting followers," gasped Professor Cryx.

  "Move on," said Caldwell. And they did. Not just because the elegant man ignored all requests as though he had never heard them, but because when Harrison Caldwell did not respond to people he made them feel ashamed that they had ever spoken. He had that ability with employees, even from his earliest days when he had to work for a living. But those days would soon be over.

  The professor's apartment was small, dim, and smelled like an unopened trash barrel. But the old professor was giddy with joy; a second life had begun even as his days dwindled. He was talking of plans, something he hadn't indulged in since the 1960s when alchemy made a very brief comeback on the coattails of the astronomy craze. Harrison Caldwell endured the smell and the conversational discomfort. Then, from a very thin briefcase, he brought forth four pictures. Each showed a quadrant of the stone in harsh clarity. Harrison Caldwell cleared a table for Professor Cryx and poured a glass of wine.

  Cryx trembled the glass to his lips, letting the pure sharp wine pleasure his tongue for a delicious moment, finally swallowing almost with regret. Then a full sip, and then a swallow, and then he offered the glass for more.

  "You did say we're getting a hundred cases, didn't you?"

  "For the rest of your life. The pictures."

  "Yes, the pictures. Just a touch there, thank you," said Cryx, making sure the bottle filled the glass. "I guess I can get used to this." His glass full, he returned to the pictures. He held the glass up for another sip while he read the Arabic. The Latin was clear. The Arabic was not, and then the ancient Hebrew, the one even before the language of the Old Testament. And of course Sanskrit. Good old Sanskrit. The Babylonian variation. The glass stayed where he had placed it. He didn't even notice Mr. Caldwell, the nice Mr. Caldwell, take it out of his hands.

  "Yes. Yes. Of course. Yes. This is it. The old devil himself. Where did you find it?"

  "It was sunk."

  "Leave it there. This has caused us alchemists the trouble, all the trouble, from day one. This one stone has been the defamation of us all. Leave it. If you believe in alchemy, leave this stone."

  "The one that shows how to turn lead into gold."

  "The one that led us to be called frauds and hoaxers. If it weren't for this stone, our cures for the blains and rheumy would have been given the prominence they deserve. Our formulas and beliefs would have survived most respected. Instead our work was stolen from us, given the name of chemistry, and credited to the thieves. Leave the stone be. Alchemists are not mere goldmakers, and never were."

  "But what if the stone is true? What if the great lie were shown to be the great truth?"

  "I have asked myself many times that same question, Mr. Caldwell, and the sad answer is that the stone was our one lie. And we paid for it dearly. For you, sir, are looking at the last alchemist. And that stone is the reason."

  "But it is true."

  "No. If it were true, would we not have been rich?"

  "Not necessarily."

  "Why not? Don't tease me like this. Please, tell me. Why not?"

  "Because you don't know gold," said Harrison Caldwell. "I left what would be calculated today at perhaps twelve million American dollars at the bottom of the sea because I know gold. I know what it does. I know what it feels like. I know you think it is the noble metal. The most noble metal."

  "Yes. I do. Alchemists have always called it the noble metal."

  "I left twelve million dollars of it on the bottom of the sea, because it is like a speck, a pathetic speck compared to this stone."

  "Go back and get your gold, Mr. Caldwell," said Professor Cryx, looking for his glass again, the one with the exquisite wine. He found it and took a hard gulp of it, shaking his head. "If we could have turned lead to gold, then we would have. We would have saved our lives, I tell you. How many of us were beheaded or burned to death when a king placed a pile of lead in front of us and then ordered us at the pain of our lives to produce gold from it? Do you think we would have rather died than do
it? Leave the stone. It has been our curse throughout the ages."

  "What if I told you I am sure someone did change the lead to gold?"

  "You mean the gold you left on the bottom of the sea?" asked Professor Cryx. Who was this man who seemed so much like a stranger and yet knew so much about alchemy? One would have thought he would have known the languages.

  "As I told you," said Harrison Caldwell, "I know gold. I doubt that gold was made through the formula of the stone. Maybe no more than a few ounces were made in all history by the stone. But if you know gold, and I do know gold, Professor Cryx, you would know why."

  "You must tell me. Tell me."

  "The answer lies in this stone itself and what I know you-an alchemist-can tell me. You see, gold is really a very plentiful metal. Quite plentiful. In every little cubic mile of seawater there is at least ninety thousand dollars' worth. Did you know that?"

  "No. I didn't."

  "But it would cost four million dollars to extract it. You see it is uneconomical. There is an economy to gold."

  "So it might have taken diamonds to make gold. Something even purer in the fire of the earth," said Professor Cryx.

  "No," said Caldwell. "Nothing is purer than gold, or more serviceable, or serving. Or more tradable."

  "Then what is it?"

  "Obviously something they did not have access to easily."

  "What?"

  "That is why I am here. Who else can read the old alchemic symbols but you?"

  "Of course," said Professor Cryx, putting down the wine again. Mr. Caldwell brought him a pad and pencil, and kept pouring drinks. There was the old symbol for lead, Professor Cryx saw. It was like an old friend. And there was red sulfur. And mercury. A great element was mercury. Hard to come by, but not unavailable in history. Only in the old Sanskrit did the descriptions start to fit. Then Mr. Caldwell was writing furiously on his own piece of paper. He seemed a bit lax with the proper chants. But when the Sanskrit yielded the missing element, Harrison Caldwell said:

  "Of course. It would have been very scarce then."

  It may have been the amount Professor Cryx was happily drinking, but the wine suddenly had a giddy sting to it. Rather nice, but darkening.

  "Perhaps I have had enough," said Professor Cryx, thinking that it might be a nice time to perform a little prayer of gratitude to the gold itself, asking its power and spirit to bless their venture, thanking it for the rebirth of the one true science, soon to be resurrected in the world, like astronomy and plant worship.

  "I'll have a million cases here by your doorstep," said the wonderful Mr. Caldwell.

  A million cases? Was there that much of this fine wine in the world? It was, after all, just one vineyard. Professor Cryx thought he was telling this to the nice Mr. Caldwell, but his tongue was not moving. It was numb. So were his lips, and so was his body. But it wasn't until he felt the burning in his stomach that he recognized the old alchemist's formula for cyanide at work in its most biting and painful form. When the pain ended, the old professor was not quite there to feel it fully. His body was stiff, and only the fingers moved briefly when the photographs were yanked from under his hand.

  What luck, thought Harrison Caldwell. As his family had always said, "Spill enough bowels onto the pavement and the whole city will love you." Which, of course, was another way of saying he who dared, won. He left the apartment through the rear and walked out the alley whistling, whistling a song whose rhythms had not been heard in these city streets for centuries. Harrison Caldwell not only knew gold, he also knew he would have more of it now than any king since Croesus. And, come to think of it, even more than Croesus ever had. More than anyone, ever. Because Harrison Caldwell knew that nowadays, what the old alchemists lacked was more plentiful than at any other time in history. All one had to do was steal it.

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and he was supposed to let the little girl drown. The mother was hysterical. As bystanders lined the shores, one young man attempted to get out to her; when he went under he had to be dragged out himself.

  It was early spring in Michigan and the ponds were barely covered with cellophane-thin coats of ice. A young girl who had throughout the winter played safely on that ice had fallen through now. It was a pond for summer folk mainly, and the boats, somehow, were all carted away to winter homes. So there she was with no one able to reach her, and a local television camera whirring away. And Remo was supposed to turn and walk away because his picture would be seen on television if he swam through thin ice to save the girl. That would be big news because people could not ordinarily swim through ice.

  The television newswoman pushed the microphone into the mother's face.

  "How does it feel to watch your daughter drown? Is this your first daughter to drown?" asked the newswoman. Her makeup was camera-perfect. Her hair blew dramatically in the breeze. Remo had seen her on television a few times. They announced she had won an award for reporting. Remo never saw her do anything but read dramatically. He had seen similar situations around the country, in the places he stayed that would never be home. Pretty people would read things into the camera, and then they would collect rewards and be called reporters. Sometimes they thought of things to read all by themselves. Those instances were obvious because a look of desperation crossed their faces, as if it were a struggle to think of an entire word. A complete sentence seemed insurmountable.

  The mother's answer was a scream.

  "My baby. My baby. Save my baby girl. Save my baby. Someone."

  "We are here at the tragic drowning of young Beatrice Bendetsen, age five, at Comoyga Pond. This is Nathalie Watson, Dynamic News, Channel Fourteen."

  Nathalie smiled to the camera. The camera panned out to the pond. The little girl had come up again. The camera panned back to the mother. Then the girl. A producer behind the cameraman whispered:

  "Stay on the girl going down. The mother's screaming is going to go on far half an hour. Plenty of footage there."

  Nathalie Watson, her handsome, strong woman's face with fashionable swept hairdo, steamed over to the cameraman.

  The producer was whispering furiously into some form of headset.

  Nathalie ripped it off him.

  "I will not do a voice-over. I have been doing voiceovers all day. I want live."

  "Nathalie, precious, we love you but this is good footage," said the producer.

  ''There's always good footage. That's why I am doing voice-overs all day."

  "It's the first drowning of the year, live," said the producer.

  "Someone. Please. My girl," cried the mother, and then she looked at Remo, Remo who was turning away, Remo whose years of training served an organization that dared not be known to exist. Remo who, in the absolute best interests of his country, was a lone assassin, a man who didn't exist. And therefore could not be on a television camera, or photographed. He was a man whose fingerprints were no longer checked against files, because he was dead. Had been for well over a decade, the victim of a well-planned, carefully executed fake death. The man who didn't exist for the organization which didn't exist.

  He had been trained to discipline his feelings. Thoughts, after all, were the real power of the human body, not the crude, weak muscles. Even his dreams at times were as controllable as fingertips. So he told himself he should not be bothered by this.

  And then he saw the mother's eyes lock with his, and heard the word "please."

  And all of it went. The years of it went. The training of it went. The analysis of the situation went. And Remo was moving, the legs following the force of the body, the absolute perfection of movement. Smooth, as though the legs were like feathers, and the air, not a barrier, but a moving part of a universe. He heard the pads of his shoes tap the thin ice like the soft pop of a cellophane cake wrapper. His feet did not pound the ice but moved with the mass of water beneath it, his thin body feeling the prickly cool of the still-chill Michigan spring. Pine trees, green and fragrant, rimmed the lake, and he c
ould sense the weak rays of the sun on his body that floated as it moved, quick with the light feet. And then he was at the girl and with his left hand he scooped her up out of the water as though fielding a baseball and continued the open fifty yards to the rest of the ice on the other side of the lake.

  It was that fifty yards that caused the cameraman to check his focus, the producer to let out a shriek, and even Nathalie Watson to stop complaining about her lack of camera time.

  "Did you see that?" said the producer.

  "Did I see what I saw?" said Nathalie. "The guy ran on water."

  "To hell with the drowning. We don't have it anyway unless the kid goes back in the water, which I don't think she will."

  "I don't think she will either," said Nathalie. "That mother won't let her. I'll do a live with the man who runs on water."

  "Okay," said the producer.

  "What happened?" cried the mother, trying to brush the tears away to see her daughter better, her daughter now coming very quickly to her in the arms of that man who had gone out to save her. He was running with her along the lake shore. The mother hadn't seen what he had done. All she saw was that her daughter was going to live. The crowd behind her cheered.

  Nathalie Watson moved through the crowd toward the mother. That was where the man who ran on water would be. With any luck, provided no one shot the President or something-and that could happen with bad luck-Nathalie Watson and her strong handsome woman's face were going to be on camera this evening not only Michigan north, but network national. She was heading toward thirty seconds of national exposure.

  "What happened? What happened?" asked the mother.

  "We're going to do an interview," said Nathalie.

  "My baby," said the mother, and reached out her hands. Remo saw the hands, saw the pain and joy, and put the child back in her mother's arms.

  And then he smiled. He was feeling very good again. Good as when he was seventeen in a New Jersey city drinking beer from a bottle, feeling very much grown-up the night before he was to enter the Marines. No. Better than that. Then he felt grown-up. Now he felt like a human being.