Angel Fire

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Why not send her and let her bring it back? he asked himself

  irritably.

  The dress was designed to appear to create the impression of self-effacement and discretion, without in fact doing so at all.

  Nothing Gaby might wear would make her part of the background, not with that statuesque body and alluring face.

  Why don’t I feel any desire for her? Am I afraid of aliens who claim to be angels?

  Or have they put my hormones on hold?

  They could do it if they wanted to, no doubt about that.

  The thought that he need not feel desire for this sumptuous “bearer of life” both angered him (How dare they mess with my hormonal balance!) and relieved him (Well, I don’t have to worry about that, anyway).

  Admire, but don’t touch. Remember you got burned the first time you did touch her.

  The woman in his dreams seemed less distant, but then that was always the way with women in dreams, wasn’t it?

  The dream woman was also less analog and more human. Maybe the unconscious didn’t know about analogs.

  “Well, what about the press conference?” He slopped up the last pool of maple syrup on his plate and popped the enormous chunk of soggy pancake into his mouth.

  “It will be an opportunity for you to be quoted saying something serious and important.” She sat on the edge of the bed, dismayingly close. Different scent this morning too. “I won’t promise it will exorcise the previous image, but it will help to create a new one.”

  “Is ‘exorcise’ the appropriate word, all things considered?”

  She sighed in resignation. “I can see that this will be one of those days. Now, the point is that the science editor of The New York Times—“

  “In this city they call it simply the Times.”

  “Will you be quiet for a minute___Here, give me that tray...

  you can keep the coffee cup.... The man from the Times will ask you the first question. It will be about the major problems facing evolutionary biology and you—“

  “How do you know what he will ask?”

  Sean was being difficult in part because he was embarrassed. If he had known that his guardian angel would burst into his room with breakfast and a day full of plans, he would have worn pajamas. Or at least shorts. As it was, he found it no easy task to devour breakfast and maintain a semblance of modesty.

  Not that he ate any less of the breakfast.

  “I think you can safely rely on my prediction that he will speak first and that he will ask you about the challenges of evolutionary biology.”

  “Did you eat breakfast?”

  “PLEASE.” She rose from the bed, furious at him. “Listen to me. No more interruptions. Understand?” “Yes ma’am.” The docile chimp again.

  “You will tell him your thoughts about the dynamics and the direction of the evolutionary process. That will set the tone for the rest of the conference. No matter what anyone asks, you return to your primary thoughts on the subject. Your answers, not their questions, will set the tone for the conference. Moreover, you should be your sweet, charming”—she smiled benignly—“affectionate self. No jokes, no wisecracks, no smart-mouthed jabs, understand?”

  “Can I talk to say, “Yes ma’am?”

  “You are a serious scholar who has done important work,” she said, ignoring his interruption, “work that answers some crucial questions but which leads to even more crucial questions. The most you can do is try to ask the questions right. Understand the image?”

  “Why is the image important?”

  “Because it is. Now hurry up and take your shower and shave. We don’t want to keep The New York Times waiting, do we?” “Times.”

  She made a face at him and flounced out of the room and into her own room, noisily slamming the door.

  I think I won that one, Sean Desmond told himself as the waters of the shower beat reassuringly on his skin. She is kind of fun. She understands the game and plays it well. Better than I do, damn her.

  Again he doubted the whole business. There was not a woman in the adjoining room. Certainly not a woman claiming to be a guardian angel. In fact, there was no adjoining room. It was all a slight mental aberration brought on by the shock of winning the Nobel Prize and his preoccupation with angels since he had heard the choirs on Stacey’s tape player.

  Right?

  Right.

  She was a figment of an Irishman’s fantasy, a pure creature of imagination.

  As he was shaving, clad in his shorts, the figment burst into the bathroom.

  “Sean .. .”

  “You might have asked if I were decent.”

  “If I didn’t know you were decent, I wouldn’t have come in.” She paused and appraised him critically. “I must say for a male of your species at your age”—her eyes moved from his head to his feet—“you are not an unpresentable specimen.”

  Sean felt his face flame. “Leave my clothes on,” he begged, not completely unhappy with her assessment.

  “They’re irrelevant, as I’m sure you must know.” She continued her careful inspection. “A little too thin and not enough muscle tone. We’ll have to see you eat the right kind of food and resume your exercises. Swim in London; there’s a pool at the Grosvenor. Jog in Stockholm and in Dublin on the way back.”

  “Why bother?”

  She smiled archly. “Oh, there’s no telling who you might meet on this trip.”

  “Whom. Now if you’re finished evaluating me, can I finish shaving?”

  “Go ahead.” She continued to contemplate him. “Posture leaves a little bit to be desired too ... and don’t pretend to be offended. You do it to women all the time. Turnabout is fair play.”

  “What is sauce for the gander is sauce for the guardian angel?” He flicked on his shaver.

  “Something of the sort. Incidentally, there’s a new blade for that on your dresser. Put it in today sometime.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Ass muscles will need some exercise too.” Her voice was momentarily critical. In the mirror he could see she was examining him again. He tried to pretend that he was not embarrassed. “By the way, you will enjoy the article in the Times”—giggle— “about your friend Jim McMahon of the Bears.”

  “You didn’t read the Times.”

  “Sure I did.”

  “Not in the paper. It hadn’t been touched when I opened it

  up.

  In the mirror he saw her impish grin. I’m not only a chimp I’m a straight man. “There are other ways of reading it.” “In the computer?” She waved her hand in dismissal. “Possible but too much

  work.”

  “As it is transmitted to satellite?”

  “Ah,” she said, beaming, “you Nobel Prize winners are smart.”

  “Even if our asses leave something to be desired?”

  “Well ...” She evaluated him again. “Not too much.” She started to leave. “Oh yes ...” She paused. “There was something I wanted to tell you before you distracted me with your foolish modesty.”

  She sounded worried.

  “Bad news?”

  “Not terribly bad ...” She hesitated again, not looking at him. “I’m afraid your former wife gave an interview to the National Enquirer.”

  “Oh no!”

  “You don’t want to read it. I’ll talk to the girls and settle them down. Then the best thing to do is to forget it.”

  “I suppose.” The day, enjoyable thus far, now seemed ruined. “Poor woman needs help.” Gabriella spoke without much

  conviction.

  “Same old stuff? How I traded her in on the Nobel?” “Pretty much. I would imagine that it might come up in the press conference. You simply don’t want to comment on it. Then someone will ask who has the custody of the children. You will say very quietly that you have—the Enquirer doesn’t go into such mundane matters. Then someone else will ask if custody was contested, and you will say no. That will end the discussion. If anything goes out on th
e wires or the networks about your marriage, it will be that fact. All right?”

  Her vast eyes were filled with sympathy.

  “Thanks,” he said, his voice husky. “You will talk to the girls?”

  “Right away.” She left the bathroom and then turned around

  at the door. “Oh yes, one might even say that you are a more than

  presentable male of your species.” She leaned in the door and

  touched his shoulder with her fingers. “Stand up straight, Jackie Jim. Slouching is bad for your posture.”

  Something creaked inside him and he indeed stood up straight.

  He had been evaluated the way the wife of an Irish landlord would evaluate a male wolfhound that she was thinking of adding to her kennel.

  Except that the wolfhound had more privacy.

  On the other hand, they don’t have their posture problems cured instantly and painlessly.

  He glanced at himself in the mirror. More than presentable, she had said. Angels don’t lie. I never thought of myself that way.

  What am I going to be like when this is all over? Will the infernal woman remake me completely?

  And I had better not even think the word infernal in association with her.

  Gaby decided that they would walk from Madison Avenue to the U.N., despite the subfreezing weather. “You definitely need the exercise.”

  She was wearing a tactful cashmere coat, not the mink he assumed she would. She knew when restraint was appropriate.

  She kept a careful eye on the people near them on the street. How would she dispose of any would-be killers in public? Would they turn to jelly too?

  “The girls were fine—stop shivering, you’re not that cold—as I thought they would be. They’re remarkably resilient young women.”

  “They don’t get it from me.”

  “The hell they don’t.” She chuckled. “You should excuse the expression.”

  The auditorium at the Mission of the United States of America to the United Nations was Edward Stone modern, somewhat deteriorated as was appropriate in a time of budget cutbacks—glass and aluminum functional, with acoustics that were not functional. Sean Desmond was astonished at the crowd, almost a hundred people, dozens of cameras and microphones.

  Gaby surveyed the crowd. “It looks all right,” she murmured.

  “Looks,” he said uneasily.

  “like I said,” she snapped back, “angels aren’t perfect.”

  “Damn near, you should excuse the expression.”

  “You are cute, Jackie Jim.” She smiled at him. “A nuisance but cute ... and forget that Irish setter line.” “Wolfhound.”

  She sat in the first row, cashmere coat neatly folded on the seat beside her. The man next to her was a slim, handsome Irishman, blue suit and tie. Priest, Sean decided. I can smell one a mile away. Gaby faded into the background as the conference began. Well, that was not true. A woman like Gabriella Light could never really fade into the background.

  Sure enough, the man from the Times asked the first question: “What would you say is the most important issue facing evolutionary biology today?”

  “The one which interests me the most is the directionality of evolution. My own work has refined a little our knowledge of how the process works, but it forces on us some very difficult questions as to how it works and, more interesting, why it works and for what ends it works. We do not even begin to know why or how this seemingly random process acquires directionality. We understand the engine, if you will, but we don’t know where it gets the map it is following. How does randomness produce purpose?” “Could there be an, uh, divine power at work?” “That’s theology, not biology. As a biologist, I don’t know. Note, however, that theoretical physicists are as puzzled as are we theoretical biologists about the apparent directionality of the cosmos.”

  “Some biologists object to your use of the word ‘intelligent’ to describe the transpositions of genetic codes. How do you reply to them?”

  “If they have a better word to describe a process that is purposive, I’ll be happy to use it.”

  Sean was enjoying himself. He was giving intelligent (and, yes, he thought charming) answers to intelligent questions. Cameras were whirring, pencils were scribbling, Gaby was nodding her head. I’m doing okay, finally.

  She’s a pretty good flack, among other things. “Do you think it is possible for us to discover the direction of our own evolutionary process and, uh, facilitate it? To produce superman, just as you produced superfly?”

  Sean felt his stomach turn. It was almost a blasphemous question.

  “I think it would be very dangerous to try. We would almost certainly make a mess out of such interventions. By the way I didn’t produce superfly, I merely predicted it. The ‘intelligence’ in our organism that presides over genetic transposition ought not be confused with discursive intellect and is probably unavailable to it. I think the best we can do is not get in the way of our species’ development.”

  Gaby was frowning, somehow displeased. What did I say wrong?

  “On the other hand,” he continued, hoping that he still sounded smooth, suave, and reasonably serious, “it seems to me that when they find themselves in new ecological niches, organisms make choices about evolutionary leaps. If the ‘intelligence’ decides wrongly, makes an evolutionary mistake, it simply disappears. With the spread of our species to the whole planet, scientific progress, and of course the bomb, we are in a niche different from any our species has ever occupied. I am confident that our biological intelligence is capable of making the proper choice— unless other levels of our intelligence intervene to prevent that choice.”

  Gaby’s frown was replaced by a faint smile—her pet wolfhound had performed well.

  The priest next to Gaby raised his hand.

  “What would you call this new ecological niche, Professor Desmond?”

  I might as well set up this guy, Sean decided. Gaby inclined her head slightly.

  “Noosphere is as good a word as any, Father.”

  The clergyman colored faintly. “And you wouldn’t mind calling the direction...”

  “... Le Pointe Omega? Why not? So long as I don’t have to accept Father Teilhard’s theology.”

  “You are aware”—the priest was enjoying the game—“that some physicists, Dr. Hawkings of Cambridge for example, suggest that even before creation there existed the laws of physics.”

  “And perhaps the outline of my ‘intelligent’ evolution too?”

  The priest grinned. “It sounds like logos to me.”

  ‘You’re a Jesuit, aren’t you, Father?”

  “George Hunt.” The priest grinned again. “From America”

  “Logos is a Greek word. I know because some of your con-

  freres taught me Greek. The younger ones don’t teach it to my daughters.” Gaby was grinning again. “If you spell it with a small lambda, Father, I’ll buy your logos.”

  Gaby guffawed. Proudly, he thought.

  Another woman reporter—network news, Sean thought— took over the questioning: “Professor Desmond, have you seen the article about your wife in the National Enquirer?”

  “No, I have not.”

  “She says that your lust for the Nobel Prize spoiled your marriage and ruined the life of your daughters. Would you care to comment.”

  “No.”

  “You won’t comment?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You do have custody of your daughters, don’t you, Doctor

  Desmond?”

  “Yes.”

  “That custody was not contested, was it?”

  Good old Gaby. If only she didn’t look so satisfied with herself.

  “No, it was not.”

  “How would you characterize your daughters, Doctor Desmond?”

  That question wasn’t in the script.

  “Fee and Dee—Fionna and Deirdre? Utterly delightful young

  women!”

  There was a smatte
r of applause. So much for the National

  Enquirer.

  “Let’s go back to biology, Doctor Desmond.”

  “Fine.”

  More laughter. And more head-nodding from herself.

  “How does your work increase the evidence that evolution

  has direction?”

  “Well, the ordinary process of evolution goes along at a very slow rate of progress for a long time—in the case of Homo sapiens sapiens, for millions of years; in the case of my fruit flies in a much shorter time span. Then there is a leap, indeed caused by natural selection but not explained by it. It’s the leaps that seem to point. I don’t think we know yet where they’re pointing. You can see in retrospect, but not in prospect.”

  A man two-thirds of the way toward the back was twisting and turning in his seat, like he was having a seizure.

  Epileptic fit? Or heart attack? Only those immediately around him seemed to notice.

  “You see a future for humankind.”

  “I see our species pointing in a direction. Whether we will permit ourselves to survive to continue in that direction remains to be seen.”

  The man was struggling out of his row of seats. Why didn’t someone help him?

  “Are we groping toward a greater consciousness, a planetary consciousness perhaps?”

  The man was running down the aisle toward the front. Odd.

  “Some would say so, most notably Teilhard de Chardin, whose vision I take to be more mystical than scientific. Of course, greater consciousness means different things to different people___” What was the matter with that wild-eyed nut? “I would

  resist some of the more popular interpretations, drawn from parapsychology, for example—though that is a discipline which in its best manifestations ought to be respected.”

  The sick man, tall, lean, bespectacled, with stringy blond hair, pulled a massive gun from his coat, the sort of six-shooter Wyatt Earp or Matt Dillon wore on television. No tiny .22 for this killer. Where’s Gaby? How will she handle this one? Or is it too late?

  Once again, for the second time in two days, Sean S. Desmond prepared with commendable academic objectivity for the end of his life.

  “Filthy Satan!” screamed the killer.

  He began to fire. Curiously Sean watched the flashes belch from the muzzle of the gun.