Very jovial fellow. I asked him, "Where is the lab, Holden?"
He sprang to his feet again. "What an ass I am!" He was actually embarrassed, beet-red. "Of course you haven't seen the lab yet. Dear me. I'm getting old, Ashton. Senile, I do believe." He had me by the arm. "We'll just take care of—"
"No no, that's okay," I protested. "Actually I'd like to just sit down and talk with you for awhile. The lab, later."
He released me, with a delighted grin, and sat himself down abruptly like an anxious child just given his fondest wish. "Of course, Ashton, of course. Sit. Let's talk."
I told him, "I love your home."
He beamed. "Me, too. Years in the planning. Delighted with it, absolutely delighted. Too large, though, for one old man to rattle around in. I like it filled, like now, filled and overflowing with delightful people and delightful ideas and unknown worlds to conquer. Listen to me, Ashton, nothing else in this old world makes a damn bit of sense. You can take all of your trashy television and your trashy books and shoot 'em off to the moon, for all I care. Too damn much valuable human time spent frittering—yes, frittering. The damnation of mankind is the seduction of pleasure and—seduction of pleasure? Should that be pleasure of seduction? Never mind, same thing, it's all the same thing. Too damn much playing around and not nearly enough—I say, not nearly enough dedication to the work."
Well shit, I'd turned him on—the least I could do was sit still and listen.
"Now you take these people, these people here with me, now—and I include you in that, Ashton, you are part of it, now—you people have got spunk. You're building a world, you're bringing forth the dream from the crucible. By God I wish I could go back, too, roll back those years and..."
Wait a minute! What the hell was he saying?
"... roll up the mental shirtsleeves and by God make a difference. That's what I wish, and I envy you, Ashton, I really do."
I had moved to the edge of my chair, one ear turned to that rumbling voice, wondering if I had heard...
I said, "Holden..."
He held up both hands, turned his head away. "Yes, Ashton, I know, I know. Told you I'm getting senile. You wanted to talk. I gave you an oration. It's just that I get so damned lonely. Even with the house filled with delightful people...I get very lonely."
I said, quietly, "That's the human condition, isn't it."
He beamed at me. "You're right. Ever since the expulsion from Eden. Charming allegory. Man coming finally into the awareness of himself. In that awareness, automatically shut off from the rest of nature, from God's protection, cast out. Into the crucible. That's where we are, you know, Ashton. In the goddamned crucible."
I said, "And it gets lonely out there."
"Damn right it does. There are times when I think I will go mad if I do not encounter a truly intelligent, a truly delightful person right now—but it passes, it passes, as all things do, it passes."
I quietly suggested, "There's Laura, now, Holden."
He dropped his chin and peered at me from beneath those shaggy eyebrows. "Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Ashton." He laughed. "Well, for the past half-hour or so, that is."
I said, "You're a lucky man. She is a beautiful and intelligent woman."
He laughed uproariously. 'Too goddamned intelligent, let me tell you! Yes, I am a lucky man." The eyebrow treatment again. "Of course I would be a much luckier man if I was fifty years younger." Still laughing. "Don't know why the hell I couldn't qualify. I've always been a generous man, always worked hard—"
There it was again.
"—never walked on any man's back, but well...forgive me, Ashton, self-pity is a cardinal sin, much worse than vanity, isn't it. Forgive me. What were we saying?"
I smiled and said, "Well, you've got your house on the mountain. And Laura. And good friends."
"We were talking about Laura." All sobriety, now. "Ashton...? How do I say this? So that it doesn't sound... Ashton, our marriage is a social convenience."
I said, "Aren't they all?"
"No no, I mean that it is purely a social convenience. For the both of us. She has her work and I have...well, I have mine, and it gets lonely up here. I don't want you to misconstrue..." He cleared his throat. "This is very delicate. What I'm trying to say is...we don't sleep together. For me, that's okay. For her, terribly unnatural. Get my meaning?"
I nodded assent. "Got you, Holden."
"Fine."
I said, "Well, no, wait a minute. I got you to that point. But I'm not sure..."
"Damn it, man, she finds you highly attractive."
I said, "Great. I find her the same way."
"It's a clear field."
I said, "Okay, now I've got you."
He beamed. "Thank you for the nice talk, Ashton. By God I enjoyed it."
I said, "So did I. Are we finished?"
He sprang to his feet, said, "Now, the lab."
As we walked away, arm in arm I said to him, "Why wouldn't they qualify you, Holden?"
"Some sort of damned mismatch," he growled. "Nonsense. It's nonsense. I can take it if the rest of them can. Don't I look hale and hearty to you?"
He looked, yes, entirely hale and hearty to me.
But hale and hearty enough to qualify for what?
The makeshift "lab" had been set up in the basement of the big house and it was now a beehive of activity—scintillating activity, naturally. I had never seen a happier and more cooperative group undertaking. The enthusiasm and obvious commitment was a living atmosphere in there—all, however, with that same sense of excited restraint noted earlier with this group. All wore white lab smocks over blue jeans, some carried clipboards, in small clumps here and there at various instruments and machines—taking readings, comparing notes, the clumps breaking and reforming spontaneously at other instruments with different combinations of players.
It was, yes, a rather breathless atmosphere—heady.
Everyone seemed to notice Holden and me as we wandered through that, acknowledging our presence with a smile and a nod or a wink of the eye, but the activity went right on unchecked as though we were not there, at all. We would pause at a particular "station" and Holden would make a brief comment for my benefit: "Mass spectrometer here, Ashton, they're doing constituency studies"—"Impulse generator, you see, simple Marx circuit, question of mass defect here, I think"—"These fellows are trying a Schrodinger equation on those wave studies"—"Ho, here's the brain of it all, a hundred megabytes computing power in this dandy, Ashton."
They had it all, yeah. And, obviously, the brains to make the most of it.
"How long has this been going on?" I asked my host.
"Oh, quite awhile, yes indeed—one thing, you know, naturally leads to another so we just bring another gadget in. Though I must confess to you, Ashton, I have only the barest surface understanding of what these fellows are up to. They go around with their heads in a cloud much of the time, Lord knows I can't bring them down, wouldn't want to, good Lord no, keep at it, keep at it."
I said, "Keep at what? What are they going for, Holden?"
He gave me an odd look. "Don't you know?"
I told him, "Well not in so many words, no."
"But I thought you'd come to work with them."
I said, "Well, yeah, but... I haven't been fully briefed, yet."
He replied, "Well don't look to me for that, Ashton. I'm just the facilities man, here. Ho! Rank amateur! Lord no, don't look to me for that. What's your field, by the way?"
"Psychic phenomena," I told him.
"Ho! There's one for you! Psychic phenomena! Bully! That is bully!”
"Not to be confused with bullshit," I muttered.
"How's that?"
"Bully, yes," I said, more clearly.
"How does one go about quantifying psychic phenomena?"
I shrugged and tried a shot in the dark. "It's all one world, Holden."
"Yes?"
"Sure. Question o
f field. Right?"
"Bully!" he fairly shouted. "That is bully."
It sure was.
And I felt trapped in his damned crucible.
Chapter Sixteen: Equation
Notably absent from that beehive of activity in the lab were Jennifer, Laura, and Esau. I asked Holden about that and he rather absently replied that they were probably in the study, his study, which apparently had been temporarily converted into a sort of operations center.
I went looking for that and found it on the main level, occupying nearly half the wing on the north side of the bubble. Very impressive, with heavy furniture and draperies. Two walls were richly paneled; another was solid books from floor to ceiling, featured a ladder on tracks for access to the higher shelves; the other wall was evenly divided between corkboard and blackboard, both very busy. A couple of long library tables and a massive desk were piled with open books and computer printouts. Several smaller tables were arranged in a sort of turret near the blackboard. The blackboard itself was crammed with mathematical hieroglyphics, the tables arranged for studious viewing of such and neatly adorned with ruled tablets and boxes of pencils.
Jennifer Harrel sat at one of those tables, attention riveted to the blackboard, a pencil in her hand toying with a series of equations.
I quietly sat down beside her and inquired, "Have it figured out?"
Without otherwise acknowledging my presence, she replied, barely moving the lips, "A moment, please."
I sat there for about five "moments" before she regretfully put the pencil down and turned to me with a sigh. "Hello, Ashton. Glad to see you're up and about. Feeling okay?"
I had just lit a cigarette. I blew smoke toward the ceiling and told her, "Feeling fine, yeah. Hope I didn't catch you at a critical moment."
She gave me about a one-fourth smile as she replied, "They're all critical now, I'm afraid. Give me one of those, please."
I gave her mine and lit another for myself. She said, "I renounce these damn things fully fifty-two times each year, but every time someone lights one in my presence..."
"Addictions are like that," I observed.
She said, thoughtfully, "Yes. What else are you addicted to?"
I shrugged. "Oxygen. Food. Water. Sex. Not necessarily in that order of dependency."
She beautifully arched the eyebrows and said, "Now there is an addiction. That last in the order, I mean. But then you qualified that order, didn't you. Let's see... where would we rank it?"
I soberly replied, "Sort of floats, I guess. Finds its own order."
She said, "Yes. Well. Other than that, what can I do for you, Ashton?"
That was very definitely a put-down. Or else a kiss-off. I told her, "I was hoping to find Isaac here."
She gave me a rather blank look and inquired, "Why?"
I replied, "Well... it's a natural desire, isn't it."
"I don't know. Is it? I find it nowhere in your order of addictions."
"There's more to life than addictions. Is he here?"
"I am not going to reply to that, Ashton."
"Why not? What are you afraid of? I'm on the team, now. Or haven't they told you that. At least, I've been asked to join. I'd like to meet the boss before I decide."
"Who said Isaac is the boss?"
That one gave me a bit of pause. "I naturally assumed..."
"Simply because a fuss was raised where you could hear it? I should think—"
"Where the White House could hear it," I corrected her.
"Well now you see, Ashton," she said, with heavy sarcasm, "the White House is not necessarily the very center of the universe. As a matter of fact, my dear, the universe has no center."
"Is that what those equations are telling you?"
"Unfortunately, we have not yet found a coherent solution to the equations."
"Where is Isaac, Jennifer?"
"I am not going to respond to that question, Ashton. Leave Isaac alone."
"Why were you in Los Angeles last Saturday morning? Instead of here, with the team?"
"I am really terribly busy."
"I know that. So why the useless trip to Los Angeles? And why give the entire day over to a...? Jennifer, why did you seduce me?"
She laughed, the nice laugh. "I suppose I did, didn't I."
"Damned right you did. And it has occurred to me that I was set up, coming in. Wasn't I? Did you go to L.A., Jennifer, just to suck me down here?"
She did not reply to that.
"Or, anyway, to establish contact? Did 'the team' retain Greg Souza? And did they do that in the expectation that he would then retain me? Or was it set up like that all the way? Did you people suggest to Souza that—?"
"Why certainly," she said, sarcasm dripping, "and, of course, we had already arranged the murder of Mary Ann Cunningham in time for her corpse to ripen so that you could find it easily, and we hired those men to come to my home after I'd seduced you and sent you on your way so that they could murder me and make you feel obligated at my funeral, and of course we—"
"Huh uh, shame on you, Dr. Harrel, you may not mix the terms of the equation. Two apples and two oranges do not equal four grapefruit. The only solution I am after, in this particular set, is why you happened to be in Los Angeles on Saturday morning."
She rounded up an ashtray, took her time disposing of her cigarette, then told me, in a quietened voice, "Very well, Ashton, I will tell you this much but no more. Please go and play your game of twenty questions with someone who has the time to spare. We knew that Souza had brought in a psychic. We knew—"
"When did you know that?"
"We knew it on Friday evening. He had left a message on my telephone recorder in Glendale requesting a meeting at Griffith, for the purpose of introducing this psychic consultant to the case."
I said, "But he made first contact with me at seven o'clock on Saturday morning."
"That is about the time we confirmed the meeting. You'll need to make your own conclusions from that. I had already returned to Glendale, on another matter. It was felt that one of us should be present at Griffith...just in case. So I confirmed the meeting with Souza. That is all. We set nothing up. The sequence of events from that point was purely spontaneous. That it brought you here, and that it led to a finding concerning your extrasensory perception of the energy field was simply fortuitous."
I was not so sure about the "fortuitous" bit, but the rest I could buy, for the moment. It was very like Greg Souza to contact me only after setting it up, first, with everyone else—which could explain the hitman at my driveway within minutes after I knew I was on the case.
Jennifer was saying, "I can understand you being upset with us for knocking you out. But, whether you choose to believe it or not, it was our concern for your safety that led us to that. You see, Laura had already foreseen a possible interaction. When you mentioned a distressing result, she became highly concerned."
"So what did she find?" I asked quietly.
Jennifer's gaze swept the blackboard.
I said, "All that?"
She replied, "Laura's findings have led us to all that."
"What does it mean?" I wondered.
"It could mean..."
After a moment, I prodded her with: "Yes?"
"Yes."
"Yes what?"
"You don't get the significance?"
I said, "I don't even get the drift. My math is not that hot, Doc."
“It could have been,” she scolded me. "Why in the world didn't you pursue your potential, Ashton?"
I replied, a bit defensively, "Thought I did that. There's more here than math and Bunsens, you know."
She said, "Yes, but... are you aware that you have an impressively high IQ?—I mean, phenomenally high."
I said, "I've always wondered what is really being measured, though. I suspect it does not mean a hell of—"
"Don't be ridiculous! Of course it does! And an obligation goes with such gifts. Some of us are simply born to lead. If we fail
to do so, then the lead passes by default to those less qualified. Or less endowed. It is an endowment, Ashton. And you have tried to abandon yours."
I protested, wryly, "Why do I get the idea that your lecture is serving only to evade a question? What is the significance implied by the equations?"
She stared at me for a thoughtful moment, then: "They are field equations."
I said, "Yes, I gathered that."
"They seek a correspondence between certain aspects of your brain waves and certain aspects of the radiant energy we are encountering here."
I said, "Okay. Any deductions?"
"Several, yes. But without coherence. Laura is now analyzing those in relation to the tissue analysis, hoping to find—"
"Which tissue is that?"
"Nerve tissue."
"Miner'
"Yes. And—"
"Hold it, hold it. Explain that, please."
"Electron microscope studies. She—"
"Wait right there. Are you talking brain tissue? Mine?"
"Yes. She hopes to—"
"Hold it. How'd she get it?"
"She did not get it, Ashton," Jennifer explained patiently. "There is no need for alarm, no damage was done, everything was—"
I had been carefully probing my skull with all ten fingers. I told her, a bit testily, "Course not, no damage whatever, just pinch off a little specimen here, a little specimen there..."
"There was no specimen work. Esau has developed a technique which allows environmental microscopy at the cellular level without disturbing the host system."
"Then he needs to quickly patent that son of a bitch," I growled. "It would revolutionize medicine. Come on, Jennifer, talk sensibly to me, I know better than this."
I thought that she had been doubletalking me. But maybe not. Her only response to that was a curt, "Perhaps you do not know all that you think you know."
I did not respond to that, because she did not give me the opportunity.
She stood up, showed me her back, and walked out.
Leaving old Ashton with a taste of ashes in the mouth.
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