Oleg Skorbatov’s unblinking blue eyes fixed on Dr. Wilfred for a moment. He nodded briefly.
“Oh, hi there!” said Mrs. Toppler to a young woman with unnaturally long legs who was standing in the doorway in her turn, topped by a piled brass hairdo that brought her up to almost the height of the architrave. “Svetlana! Great to see you again, Svetlana!”
“Tatiana, this one,” said Mr. Papadopoulou.
“Tatiana,” said Mrs. Toppler, as she kissed her. “Oh, Tatiana, that hair of yours is so brave!”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Oleg Skorbatov. “She doesn’t speak English.”
“OK,” said Mr. Papadopoulou, steering Oleg Skorbatov back into the house. “See you later, Dr. Wilfred. I have to show Oleg how we do with the new pool.”
“Men!” said Mrs. Toppler to Dr. Wilfred. “He shows Oleg the pool! He won’t let me see it! No one! Not even our wonderful Nikki knows what’s going on behind those screens! Wait there, Tatiana, honey, while I see Dr. Wilfred out.”
“May I ask you something?” said Dr. Wilfred to her as they left the loggia. “I’ve been thinking a lot recently about names. What were you before you were Bahama LeStarr?”
“Before I was Bahama LeStarr I was Apricot del Rio. You come back and give me another session, now. I want your advice about something.”
25
Georgie and Dr. Wilfred were having lunch in the shade of an ancient olive tree. She had unfrozen the contents of the freezer—half a sliced loaf and a packet of peas. He had found a jar of peanut butter. There didn’t seem to be anything else to eat in the house.
“That’s this great lecture you’re supposed to be giving, is it?” she said, nodding at the travel-worn binder on the table beside his plate. “You could read it to me instead.”
He looked at it distractedly. He had been thinking about the two moles on her left shoulder blade, which had now vanished, like so much else, inside a T-shirt. He put out his hand to touch the binder, to reassure himself that his lecture at least was still here.
“No, no!” she said. “Joke! Save it up for people who’ll understand it! And they paid your fare to come here, did they, Wilfred? What—economy or business?”
“Business.”
“So you’re someone important?”
He said nothing. Each time she called him Wilfred he felt less like someone important and more as if he were back in school again, stuck in timeless alphabetical order between Walters and Wilkins.
“I’m trying to get a conversation going,” she said. “To keep you entertained, so you don’t brood about your lecture.”
He sighed. “Am I important?” he said. “Yes. As a matter of fact. In my field. Among people who are interested in the scientific management of science.”
She rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, gazing at him, apparently fascinated. He didn’t really suppose that she was, but it was difficult not to respond when someone was staring open-eyed straight into your face at a range of about two feet.
“My area of expertise is the funding of research,” he said. “I write books and articles about it. I advise governments and the UN. Since you ask.”
He looked at the view for some time, but he realized she was still gazing at him as expectantly as ever.
“Research is very expensive,” he said. “Someone has to recommend what research should be supported. You probably think scientists just have sudden brainwaves, or they do experiments with two tin cans and a piece of string in their garage, or they find things they hadn’t been looking for.”
She didn’t deny it.
“But scientists aren’t just a lot of mad professors,” he said. “They’re rational human beings, just like you and me, engaged in a rational human activity which is subject to rational human constraints. The results of scientific research are scientifically measurable. We have developed a discipline for this. It’s called scientometrics. And on the basis of scientometrics science can be scientifically managed.”
“This is your lecture, is it?” she said. “I see why you don’t want people to miss it.”
Those two hidden moles had resurfaced in his brain, so to push them back underground again he went on.
“This is not actually my lecture,” he said. “I’m giving you a little private tuition. I just want to make clear to you for your own benefit that the view some people have of scientists and scientific research is completely wrong. Scientists do of course sometimes have eureka moments, and they do of course sometimes find important results they weren’t looking for. But it’s all still perfectly rational. You can always find a clear causal chain when you look for it. If the answer to a problem suddenly clicks into place in someone’s brain it’s because they’ve already done all the thinking. They know there’s a problem that needs a solution, just like you know there’s a space in the jigsaw that needs a piece to fit it. Scientists aren’t poets! But then poets aren’t irrational, either. Not that I know much about poets, but I’m pretty certain that they’re subject to the same causal laws as all the rest of us. They come up with words that fill a gap in the market, or they go out of business, just like everyone else.”
“Fascinating,” she said. “So you just thought all this up, did you, Wilfred?”
He was about to agree when he saw the trap he was being led into.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t just think it up. It emerged from my reading and observation, as processed by my brain. And my brain is structured the way it is not through any efforts of mine but through my genetic inheritance. You could trace that inheritance back through the generations and see how it was gradually shaped by the various selective pressures on my ancestors. And you could keep going back, through the structure of the cells of which those ancestors were composed, to the organic chemistry that had shaped the fabric of the cells. Then the inorganic chemistry from which the organic had arisen. Back again to the elementary particles whose physics determines the chemistry. Back to the radiation energy that the particles condensed out of. Back, back, back to the tiny object which according to some cosmologists was only a few millimeters in diameter, and from which everything in the universe originated 13.7 billion years ago.
“All I have done is to allow events to take their course. I have simply accepted my inheritance. I’ve worked hard, certainly. I could have played around, and frittered my life away. In fact I chose to work. But that choice was of course determined, like everything else.”
The gaze she still had fixed upon him had become somewhat absent, he realized. He seemed to have exhausted her interest in the subject.
“The only trouble is, Wilfred,” she said finally, “that you cannot stand up in front of people and give a lecture looking like that. Take your shirt off. I’ll wash it out for you.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You’re not fine, Wilfred. You’re a total wreck. Take it off.”
He took it off. “Thank you,” he said.
“Trousers.”
He put on one of the bathrobes and turned discreetly away. Wilfred, yes. She was right. He had for all practical purposes reverted to being mere Wilfred, an awkward schoolboy who always said the wrong thing to girls. He had almost forgotten that he had ever been Dr. Wilfred. Dr. Wilfred had faded to an insubstantial fiction, a creature who had never really quite managed to exist.
“Pants. Socks.”
She took the sweaty clothes into the house, holding them at arm’s length, and he sank slowly back onto his chair. There were two last cold peas on his plate. As he contemplated them they seemed to dissolve into the two moles on Georgie’s left shoulder blade. He speared them on his fork, one after the other, and ate them.
* * *
It took Dr. Wilfred a long time to get from Mrs. Fred Toppler’s apartment in Democritus to lunch in the taverna, because people kept coming up to him on the way for a private word.
“I know this is a terrible intrusion,” said Kate Katz. “And I know how many people must be
begging you to support one good cause or another. But could I just have one moment of your time to tell you about a desperately important campaign of which I happen to be a patron?”
But somebody else was already taking him by the other elbow.
“I have been so impressed by your approach,” said Morton Rinkleman. “Now, I am on the board of trustees of a small but vibrant liberal arts college in Tennessee.”
Already, though, other people had spotted him, and even before Kate Katz and Morton Rinkleman had finished with him more requests, proposals, and invitations were pressing in upon him.
“… expanding our European operation, and looking for a non-executive director…” “… to have you visit with us in Sausalito…” “… your advice on the Hong Kong copra futures market…” “… nothing less than the ending of national and racial conflict throughout the whole of sub-Saharan Africa…” “… our house in Montauk at your disposal…” “… the otherwise certain extinction of the Arkansas horned owl…” “… remuneration in the 300 K range, though this would of course be supplemented by benefits and stock options…” “… some literature here on the habits of the horned owl…”
By the time he reached the taverna Dr. Wilfred had agreed to be a patron of five campaigns and charities, and president of two institutes of higher education. He had invitations to stay in six states and address seven lunch clubs and ladies’ circles, was committed to charitable contributions of some fifty thousand dollars, but on the other hand had prospects of directorships and other appointments which would bring him an income of several million.
He had only just managed to sit down at the table before word of his most recent achievements in life had somehow overtaken him. “I hear you can do miracles with back problems, Dr. Wilfred! Now, I have a displacement of the fourth lumbar vertebra…” “… a red-hot skewer through the nape of my neck…” “… a pain just here…” “… just exactly there…” “… a strange buzzing in my left ear…”
As he helped himself to salad he discovered that he had also become a counselor on childcare and spiritual values.
“… I of course understand the problems parents have with growing boys, but quite frankly Wade is now thirty-seven…” “… a sense that there must be something more to life than Puccini and clam linguine…”
He picked up his fork.
“I still don’t see…” said Professor Ditmuss.
Dr. Wilfred plunged the fork into the salad, but the salad suddenly disappeared from the table and the fork was snatched out of his hand. He looked round. Nikki was holding them both aloft.
“Onions!” she said. “You’re violently allergic to them!”
26
The two moles on Georgie’s left shoulder blade kept disappearing and reappearing, like two bright stars among shifting clouds. She was slowly pursuing Dr. Wilfred’s phone around the bottom of the pool with the net for fishing leaves and insects out. She had only one hand free, though, because she had taken her T-shirt off again to sunbathe, and was using her other hand to hold the towel round her. Every time she tried to get the net under the phone either the phone slipped away from the net or the towel slipped away from her shoulders and she had to hoick it up again.
Dr. Wilfred closed his eyes, then looked at the view, then closed his eyes again.
“I shouldn’t bother,” he said. “The phone’s not going to work.”
“No, it’s just going to leak poisonous chemicals into the water. We’re both going to end up radioactive.”
His eyes seemed to be open again, and the two elusive dancing dots were just reemerging.
“So, this friend of yours,” he said. “Oliver. Oliver? Where is he?”
“No hurry. Your things aren’t dry yet.”
“Yes, but why isn’t he here, if he’s supposed to be?”
“I don’t know!” She flung the net down and turned on him, suddenly furious. “Why aren’t you wherever you’re supposed to be? Why don’t you have a sun hat of your own? Why’s your phone at the bottom of the pool? I don’t know! But you do, do you? There’s some rational explanation for it all, is there? It all goes back to that thing that was half an inch wide twenty million years ago? It was all in there, all in that little thing, was it? Your head, your phone, you, me—you ending up in some place you’re not supposed to be—me getting stuck with you?”
He said nothing. There was never any point in replying to this kind of nonsense. Except to make one small simple point. “Thirteen point seven billion years ago,” he said.
He suddenly went blind. Something soft but stinging had hit him in the face. Her towel, he saw, as it fell off and the world returned.
“And that?” she said. “You saw that coming, did you? Thirteen point seven billion years ago?”
He tried not to look at her as he threw the towel back to her. Or not for longer than was strictly necessary.
“And yes,” she said, “why are you here? If you know so much, why didn’t you know where you were going? And even if you didn’t know where you were going, why didn’t you park yourself on somebody else? Why here?”
Yes, indeed, now she had raised the point, why, out of all the places on the island that were not where he was supposed to be, had he ended up in this particular one? There was an answer to this, of course. It was because the taxi driver had brought him here. So why had the taxi driver brought him here? Because … And in a sudden flash of illumination it came to him. Everything fell into place at last. A eureka moment—though of course just as rationally prepared for as every other eureka moment.
“Phoksoliva,” he said. “Fox? Yes? Oliver? Oliver Fox?”
“Oh,” she said, in a rather different tone, “you know him, do you?”
For everything there was always a rational explanation, a perfect causal ancestry, if only you could find it.
“Know him?” he said. “I am him.”
* * *
More tables had been dragged across to join up with Dr. Wilfred’s in the shade of the great plane tree. The faces around them craned forward over the coffee and green tea so as to catch every word he was saying.
And gradually, as he spoke, he felt the adrenaline beginning to drain out of his veins. It was all getting too easy. The insubstantial fingerholds and crumbling toeholds on which he had been balancing his way up the cliff so far were broadening out from one moment to the next. It was becoming more and more like walking up a staircase. He saw another route opening up to one side with intriguing new dangers.
“Why are you sitting here listening to all this? I’ll tell you. It’s because you believe I’m Dr. Norman Wilfred. But why do you believe I’m Dr. Norman Wilfred?”
There was a silence. They gazed at him, waiting to be told. Sitting waiting on her chair behind him, Nikki gazed at the back of his head, also waiting.
“Because it’s in the brochure,” said Chuck Friendly eventually. “‘The Fred Toppler Lecture will be given this year by Dr. Norman Wilfred, the distinguished etc., etc.’”
“But perhaps Dr. Norman Wilfred, the distinguished etc., etc., is someone else. Perhaps I’m not Dr. Norman Wilfred.”
Various people laughed.
“Nikki goes to the airport to meet Dr. Norman Wilfred,” said Dr. Norman Wilfred. “She holds up her sign—‘Dr. Norman Wilfred.’ And I see it. I’ve just got off the plane. I’m looking for my taxi. I’m not Dr. Norman Wilfred at all. I’m someone called … I don’t know … Fox, let’s say. Oliver Fox.”
“I’m confused,” said Morton Rinkleman. “Who’s Oliver Fox?”
“Oliver Fox is me,” said Dr. Norman Wilfred. “Only as I stand there, looking round for someone holding up the name ‘Oliver Fox,’ I see this sign saying ‘Dr. Norman Wilfred.’ And the name catches my fancy. So I take a look at the person who’s holding the sign…”
He looked round and saw Nikki.
“Oh, and here she is.”
She smiled at him.
“She seems to be smiling at me,” said Dr. No
rman Wilfred. “So I smile back at her. ‘Dr Norman Wilfred?’ she says.
“And suddenly I think it might be fun to be Dr. Norman Wilfred for a bit. The idea just comes into my head. Out of nowhere.
“And next thing I know, I’m here talking a lot of nonsense, and everyone’s listening respectfully and taking it all seriously. Why? Just because they think I’m Dr. Norman Wilfred.
“So here we are—we’re making it all up as we go along. It’s like a random mutation in a gene. If I tell you the truth, that I’m Oliver Fox, then consequences follow from that. No one sits here listening to me. No one even lets me through the gate. So the world goes on its way without my being here saying all this.
“And if I say I’m Dr. Norman Wilfred, then the world goes another way. Oliver Fox—Dr. Norman Wilfred—what does it matter? Heads/tails. Strawberry/vanilla. But who knows what the consequences will be? It’s like the famous butterfly in Brazil. It just happens to flap its wings, and that sets off an escalating chain of consequences that ends up with a tornado in Nebraska. I say this—you say that—someone says something else—and there are consequences. The consequences will have consequences, and in three weeks’ time the Dow Jones will suddenly plunge forty-seven points.”
People laughed, and stirred uneasily in their seats.
“Or else the NASDAQ will gain fifty-three points.”
They laughed again, and looked happier.
“And it’s not just me doing this,” said Dr. Norman Wilfred. “We’re all in this together. I said I was Dr. Norman Wilfred. But you believed me. So between us we have determined the whole future course of the universe.”
He sat back, and took a sip of coffee. Everyone around the table did likewise.
“That’s so true,” said Mrs. Comax. “People take everything on trust.”
“Someone’s only got to say, ‘Hey, guys, I’m an expert,’” said Mr. Chuck Friendly, “and next thing he’s operating on the president’s brain; he’s running the space program.”
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