by Mary Bowers
As the audience began to settle and somebody brought chairs for the two combatants and set them on the raised platform, I heard a voice saying, “Excuse me, would you mind very much? Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, indeed, I do appreciate this.”
Orwell Quest had come into the room and was asking the person in the aisle seat next to me to give up her seat to him, which she did in a kind of worshipful daze.
He greeted me, but stared at Bastet as if he’d never seen a cat before. “She’s lovely,” he said, finally lifting his eyes to mine. “Yes, there is something special about this cat. Perhaps she will reveal her true self to me someday.”
My reaction surprised me, though I don’t think I betrayed myself to Orwell: I was jealous. As far as I knew, I was the only one Bastet had come to in the form of a woman, and then only in dreams. Whether that was her “true form,” or just plain old ordinary dreams, I had never been able to decide. But having somebody else show up and mention the privilege of seeing her as a goddess hit me the wrong way. I was still not willing to admit that she was a goddess, but my jealousy made me wonder for a moment if I knew just how I really did feel about her. As always, I backed away from the thought. The whole goddess thing unnerves me.
Even seated in the audience, Orwell seemed to be in charge of things.
“Gavin,” he said without raising his voice, “would you do us the honor of moderating?”
The two men seated onstage didn’t look happy about the request, but nobody was going to challenge the great Orwell Quest. After a few seconds, there was a smattering of applause for Gavin. It was obviously grudging, and I began to realize that Gavin hadn’t made himself popular at the conference.
Throughout the debate, Bastet sat curled up in my lap in a way she didn’t usually do at home, and contrived to look exactly like a real pet. She even let me caress her ears. Gradually, people lost interest in her and focused on the two outsized personalities in chairs on the elevated platform, throwing dark looks at one another.
Gavin arched over Paracelsus and Phineas and there was a murmured conversation. I realized that Gavin didn’t even know what this was all about: he and Orwell – and Pixie, wherever she was – had missed the whole scene in front of the Sparky and the Gang booth. I marveled again at his resemblance to Basil Rathbone. With his tall frame arching over the seated men, with his face in a perfect profile, he was a dead ringer for the actor, and his clothing roughly approximated what Sherlock Holmes would’ve worn. He and Phineas were probably the only men in the room wearing vests. I realized that without the expression he usually had on his face, Gavin was a very attractive man. Even puzzlement looked better on him than the usual sneer. Physically, he was well put together, and his lean figure looked good in formal clothes. After a few minutes’ discussion, Gavin stood up and faced the audience over the heads of the two debaters.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome,” he said. “We have an unexpected pleasure for you today, one of those unplanned highlights that mark a successful conference and are remembered long after the workshops are forgotten.”
I thought he was treading on dangerous ground. The first thing people were going to remember about this year’s ParaCon was Vanessa’s murder, but maybe Gavin was just expressing a wish.
“It is a curious feature of human nature that the more identical two sets of belief are, the more hotly contested the details become. Many have died over such small details.
“Paracelsus and Nostradamus were doctors, philosophers and scientists. Their lives overlapped; Paracelsus was born first, Nostradamus outlived him. They lived in an era where the scientific method was inextricably entwined with myth and magic, the physical world was imperfectly understood, and both men strove to be healers, using all the methods available to them and some new methods invented by them.”
“Paracelsus invented new methods,” the stage Paracelsus interrupted loudly. “Nostradamus pandered to the superstitions of the time, and capitalized on them.”
“Where was Paracelsus when victims of the plague were dying?” Phineas shot back. “You’re ignoring Nostradamus’s invention of the only known palliative for the plague: the rose pills, whose formulation has been tragically lost.”
“It hasn’t been lost. They just don’t work. Paracelsus excelled at chemistry – real chemistry – and produced far more cures than Nostradamus ever did.”
“Now, Bobby,” Gavin said to Paracelsus. “Let’s proceed in an orderly fashion, shall we? No cheap shots. Now, Phineas, if you don’t mind, since you champion a much better-known historical figure, I think we’ll begin by letting Bobby give a brief summary of the life of Paracelsus, with his important discoveries and contributions. Then you can say a few words about Nostradamus, and we can have an orderly discussion from there. Ladies and gentlemen, Bobby Beck, our Paracelsus.”
Bobby Beck. I had to bite my lower lip and look down at Bastet for a moment to keep myself from giggling. As I looked back at the platform, Gavin was seating himself off to the side of the debaters. He crossed his long legs and prepared himself, apparently, to be informed, along with the rest of us.
Giving his elaborate costume a few twitches, Paracelsus began to sing his own praises in much the same way the real one had done during his lifetime, only with less bombast.
“I am the father of modern chemistry,” he proclaimed. “I invented the germ theory of disease, and I understood that physicians who tinkered with their patients too much did more harm than good. ‘Leave the body to heal itself,’ I said, and time has proved me absolutely correct. I anticipated modern psychology, and invented more medicinal cures than can be mentioned here.”
“Including powdering human excrement and puffing it into the patient’s eyes to alleviate soreness?” Phineas interjected.
The audience recoiled, and Gavin stepped in and called Phineas to order. “You’ll get your turn,” he said.
Phineas subsided, but couldn’t resist telling the audience, “It’s true. He really did,” before finally withdrawing into a scowling heap.
It turned out to be a pretty interesting discussion, but the most interesting thing to me happened about halfway through Phineas’s recital.
He’d begun by saying that it wasn’t really necessary to mention the highlights of Nostradamus’s life, since every school child knew them, then he proceeded to mention them anyway. He was rolling right along, explaining that the great seer had made his Quatrains mystically obscure in order to save his own life from the Inquisition, especially after his Centuries landed on the Pope’s list of forbidden books.
To everyone’s surprise, Gavin, from his seat off to the side, interrupted.
“The Centuries were never on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum,” Phineas said. “You should know that. In fact, none of his works even appeared on the Congregation of the Index until long after Nostradamus’s death. And Nostradamus was never in danger from the Inquisition. While the worst of it was going on in Spain, he was living in France, where he had powerful friends.”
“Of course he had powerful friends,” Phineas said, flustered. “He was protected by Catherine de Medici, Queen of France. But only that one woman’s fragile life stood between him and torture.”
“No, Phineas,” Gavin said with equanimity. “By the time Catherine died, Nostradamus was far too popular to have become a target of the Inquisition.”
Paracelsus took advantage of the situation by saying, “Nostradamus’s predictions were vague because he knew they had a good chance of being wrong.”
“Now, Bobby,” Gavin said. “Let Phineas continue.”
I lifted my eyebrows and looked around to see if anybody else thought Gavin was out of line, but apparently, only Phineas agreed with me. He wailed, “How many people am I debating here?”
“I just couldn’t let inaccurate information stand,” Gavin said. “I’ve heard that argument too many times, and it has always irked me. Go ahead, Phineas. Please continue.”
After that, Phineas was visibly sh
aken. His narrative dribbled away into a boring series of dates – of predictions that came true, of Nostradamus’s death (which he, of course, predicted), of the publication of his son’s biography – while he threw an occasional glower at Gavin. Then it was time for the general discussion, and he managed to get back on his game.
I couldn’t believe it when Gavin did it again. He quibbled over the number of Nostradamus’s children when Phineas failed to include the first two, who had died of the plague. After that, it was a debacle.
Phineas was supposed to be the expert. But then I remembered that when Vanessa had interviewed Orwell, it had been for a documentary on Nostradamus. Had Gavin helped her with her research? Apparently, Gavin had been the one to get Vanessa her interview with Orwell in the first place. How close had they actually been?
When the debate concluded, Gavin came to center stage again and said, “Ladies and gentlemen – Phineas Van Cleef and Bobby Beck.” He gave a quick pantomime of applause, and there was a standing ovation.
I stood along with everyone else, but with a cat in my arms I couldn’t applaud. The whole thing made me kind of sad. There were three grown men, all wearing costumes, all passionately playing their parts – three actors who’d chosen to live their roles. And it seemed they all wanted different roles from the ones they’d actually been born with.
* * * * *
“Bravo, Paracelsus,” Orwell said when the debate was over. Bobby Beck had chosen to exit stage right; Phineas had stomped off stage left.
Bobby made a solemn bow and murmured, “Praise from such a master is treasured indeed.”
Orwell turned to me, but his eyes strayed to Bastet. “A feast of reason. To be followed by a feast in fact? Gavin has procured a box of delicious-looking crumpets from the grocery store down the road. May I invite the three of you back to my dressing room for refreshment?”
I didn’t even wonder who the third invitee was; he was still looking at Bastet.
“Thank you, Orwell,” I said. “No crumpets for Bastet, though.”
“Perhaps just a nibble,” Orwell said devilishly, and with Paracelsus in tow, we made our way up to the right of the platform and back to his dressing room.
“Pixie,” Orwell said a little sharply as we came into the little room behind the stage, “we’d like coffee. I believe you can get it in the lounge at the back of the hall.”
Pixie had apparently been mooching around in the former priest’s dressing room by herself, not interested in the philosophers’ debate any more than she had been in Orwell’s talk on fish rain. She gave Orwell a pretty smile and walked out of the room, pausing to stare at Bastet. I wondered how she really felt about being treated like a servant. Orwell’s attitude toward her was so different I had to wonder if she’d done something to offend him since the last time I’d seen them.
Orwell brought out a plastic bag and produced a clear box of crumpets and a plastic can of something. When I realized he had a can of ready-made frosting in his hands, I nearly gagged.
As we stared, he pulled a package of small party plates out of the bag and opened it, setting out three plates. He broke the seal around the box of crumpets and peeled the inner seal off the can of frosting, sticking a small spreading knife into the center of it. I couldn’t stifle a little moan. He looked up.
“Ah, yes” he said. “I know. But canned frosting is better than no frosting at all. It’s a poor substitute for what Vanessa used to mix up for me, I’ll grant you that. She used to use lots of real butter.” His eyes glazed over, just thinking about it. The frosting, not Vanessa. “Still, we must make do. Life has no guarantees. We find our own way to accomplish our work, and if we do it well, we earn our bread. And if we do it exceptionally well, we earn cake. And if we are exceptionally lucky, there will be lots and lots of frosting. Frosting is the extravagance, and while we live, we may as well be extravagant.”
“No frosting for me,” I murmured. I decided Orwell was wrong about himself: the essence of life, to him, was not about extravagance – it was about ignoring unpleasantness.
“For myself,” Paracelsus declared, “I shall join you. As you can see, my wardrobe is calculated to hide the extra avoirdupois, and you are quite right: I deserve not just bread but cake after that little discussion – I won’t call it a debate, since I was opposed by a mere twit – and I choose to layer on extravagance. While we live!” he said as a sort of toast, lifting a crumpet instead of a glass.
“To extravagance,” Orwell chimed in.
“Mud in your eye,” I muttered softly. I bit into the little crumpet, which was more like a bakery cookie than a true crumpet, with a nice coating of rock sugar on top.
Pixie brought the coffee, and Orwell thanked her in a way that was definitely a dismissal. She left, but before she could close the door, Orwell looked up and said, “Hello Gavin. We won’t be needing you.” After a hot second, the door closed behind me.
I glanced at Paracelsus to see what he made of that, but apparently he didn’t make anything of it. He was buttering more frosting onto the next crumpet and looking very pleased with himself.
“I can see now why you didn’t want to be on Sparky’s show,” I said to Bobby. I turned to Orwell. “He was supposed to be on Sparky and the Gang, but things didn’t work out. You know – the reality show?”
“Ah, yes, I remember it,” Orwell said. “An amusing show. I appeared on it once, actually. I thought Sparky was very clever, cobbling together his little gadgets, though I never understood why he needed Phineas. Ricky, of course, is very photogenic.”
Paracelsus sniffed loudly. “Ricky is nothing but a prima donna. He’s offended at the slightest remark – even if it’s true – and even though he has a degree, it’s in something trifling. Butterfly catching or basket-weaving. Who can remember?”
“Edson Darby-Deaver said it was in mathematics,” I said.
“You see? You prove my point, Ms. Verone,” Paracelsus said. “All theory, no substance. As for Phineas, he was to be my assistant on the show. When I withdrew, there was no purpose for Phineas. He could never have carried the segment in the laboratory, but they kept him anyway. Naturally he couldn’t take my place, so they dropped that portion of the show. I’m one of the few successful alchemists in history, as you well know.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Orwell said, but was ignored.
“I thought alchemists were looking for the secret of eternal life,” I said.
“Among other things. Your point?”
“Paracelsus did die, so he wasn’t a successful alchemist.”
He gave me a condescending smile. “I’m sitting right here, am I not?”
I muttered, “Oh, brother,” but he ignored me and swept on, going back to his grand manner.
“I was to have my own informational segment, unimpeded by silly ideas from Sparky or anybody else. ‘Sparky!’ A dog’s name! I would have insisted the show be given another name, of course. It was a rare opportunity for them to have someone of importance on their show, and I initially consented to appear. Purely for the education of the masses, you understand. The scholastic system in this country is unspeakable. I was to be given a paltry few minutes a week to try to correct that, and I had important experiments in mind, but when I realized what kind of silliness was actually being planned – you have no idea what passes for television entertainment these days, Mr. Quest – naturally I decided to have nothing to do with it.”
“Oh, I love to watch TV,” Orwell said. “Especially the reality shows. I do love people, not only in all their majesty but also in all their buffoonery. What is more amusing than seeing what men and women will do, just because there is a camera pointed at them? I never tire of it.”
Bastet was looking from Paracelsus to Orwell, exactly as if she were following the conversation. At this point, she suddenly jumped down from my lap and went to Orwell, arching her back and preening herself like a greedy kitten, meowing for a nibble of crumpet. I eyed her cynically. Her behavior was just
so out of character that I suspected she was up to something. Orwell slipped a corner of his crumpet down to her and gave me a sheepish look.
“So on the show,” I said, plowing down my own road in spite of these distractions, “Phineas was to be your assistant?”
“How could it be otherwise?” Paracelsus said, taking the last two crumpets. He scooped out a big dollop of frosting and put the two crumpets together in a sandwich. After admiring it for a moment, he took a big bite and chewed contentedly.
Orwell took the empty box and set it on the floor for Bastet to eat the crumbs. I expected her to glare at him in disgust, but she actually began to sniff around the inside of the box and lick up the crumbs.
“So your friend Phineas is not much of a scientist?”
“My friend.” Paracelsus sighed. “I suppose you could call him that. He is certainly not a colleague. I’ve tried to elevate his thinking, but it’s hopeless. I have studied the texts of Paracelsus that survive, and I have dedicated my life to ensuring that his knowledge does not die with me, but even now, the world of science is a petty place, and woe to the genius who stands above the rest. They will do their best to destroy him.”
I ground my teeth a little. It wasn’t easy to get Paracelsus off the subject of himself, but I gave it one more shot.
“I noticed that Gavin Lovelace seemed to know more about Nostradamus than Phineas did.”
“You see!” he said, flourishing his hand at me for Orwell’s benefit. “Even a child can penetrate that thin layer of erudition with which our friend Van Cleef paints himself in an effort to rise to our level.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Orwell said gently. “Phineas is a nice enough fellow. He makes me sad sometimes. He tries so hard. Like Gavin. I think that’s really why Gavin started The Questian Society in the first place: so he could create a space in the world where he could be what he wanted to be. Our meetings are really rather pleasant. And the tradition that Gavin is trying to create is rather good fun.”