A Creed for the Third Millennium (15 page)

How very beautiful his houses were! The
bottom floor of 1047 especially was like walking into a Rousseau painting of the
jungle; it had the same unreal symmetry and magnified perfection of leaf, no
spot of brown or curled edge or bare dead limb. If lions and tigers had
appeared, and the place suggested they well might, they were sure to have a
round-eyed Rousseau moonishness about them, not devoid of fang and claw, yet
innocents in Eden. How could one remain sick of soul in this so beautiful
environment? The future unrolled before her eyes in one staggering revelation
after another, all named Joshua Christian. A way of living, an ideal of living,
a place of living…

And Mama. Astonishing! The very last kind
of mother she had expected was a silly one. Yet Mama was a silly woman. Oh,
strong as an ox. Powerful. Not unintelligent in everything. Not weakwilled. But
it was as if a part of her had never grown up satisfactorily — which would fit
with her history of an extremely early marriage, of course, though not with her
almost equally early widowhood. Dr Carriol began to grasp the nature of Joshua
Christian's upbringing, and understood better now why he was such a tremendous
patriarch in spite of his relative youth. So much of what Mama had done was
instinctual; not for one moment did Dr Carriol believe Mama capable of
cold-bloodedly fashioning her son in his present mould. She achieved what she wanted simply by wanting it
single-mindedly, blindly, primitively. A rare accomplishment. And only possible
because the unformed human clay she had produced out of her body happened by
chance and genetics to be perfect for her purpose. That little boy of four had
actually owned shoulders broad enough to take on the burden of fatherhood and
chieftainship. No wonder his younger siblings reverenced him, and his mother
shamelessly adored him. No wonder too that he had buried his sexual urges so
deeply they would probably never plague him between cradle and grave. For the
first time in her life Dr Carriol experienced a surge of simple and very painful
pity; poor little boy of four!

And finally, a fresh bag packed for Dr
Christian, they got themselves away on the night train for Washington. Dr
Carriol's brandishing of her certificate of priority had got them a private
compartment, a luxury that rather opened Dr Christian's eyes as to his
travelling companion's real importance in the Department of the Environment. It
was one thing to hear a job description from the mouth of the job's owner, quite
another to experience these side effects. The porter brought them coffee and
sandwiches without being asked, and for the first time in his life Dr Christian
found himself actually enjoying the sensations of travel.

But mostly he was conscious of a huge
tired sadness that hung over his shoulders and draped itself down him like a
clinging grey veil. Why should he feel that his coming to Washington with this
woman was going to change his life out of all recognition? It was just a trip to
see some data man, instil in the data man a bit of appreciation for the fact
that the statistics he played around with on his computers were not abstractions
but actual living people, souls and bodies, feelings, individual identities. By
this time next week he would be back in Holloman going about his usual
business. Yet he couldn't bring himself to believe
that. There was something in the woman who sat alongside him (why had she chosen
to sit alongside him instead of opposite him, sure a more normal choice for any
woman on friendly but not intimate terms with her companion?) that she was not
going to admit to, but that he felt. An excitement. A terrible drive. All to do
with him. Yet they were not emotions generated out of sexual attraction or even
sexual difference. Oh, Judith Carriol and Joshua Christian were extremely aware
of each other as woman and man, but neither was the kind to fracture a delicate
mental balance by yielding to grosser sensations. Neither of them lived for
fleshly gratification, which was not to say they were indifferent to it or
unattracted by it. She had long recognized the toll it took, weighed up how much
she had of expendable energy, and brought the scales crashing down on the side
of intellect, of work. He could not have borne the spiritual weight.

The train slowed to an amble and
voluntarily engulfed itself in the stygian warren of tunnels below Manhattan;
only then did Dr Christian find voice.

'I remember reading a short story once,
about a train in these New York City tunnels that slipped through a little hole
in the space-time continuum and was doomed for all eternity to travel in the
darkness, rushing down one tunnel and up another, on and on and on… I can
believe that story, sitting here.'

'Yes, so can I.' Her voice sounded bled
of vitality.

'Take us. If we were doomed never to
emerge into the light again, what would we do, you and I, sentenced to sit here
together for all eternity? What would we find to talk about? Would you finally
have to be utterly honest with me? Or would there still be virtue in
concealment?'

She stirred, sighed. 'I don't know.' Her
head came round to let her eyes look at him, but he was so gaunt and pallid in
the single wavering dim overhead light that she turned her head away again.
Then, comfortably looking at the vacant seat opposite once more, she smiled. 'It
might be rather nice. Certainly I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend
eternity with, and I don't mean that in a vulgar way.'

'Vulgar!' He inspected the word closely,
struck by it. 'Now why did you choose that adjective?'

She ignored the question. 'Well, if we
wished hard enough, we might be able to force the train through that little hole
in space-time. I've always suspected that the true seat of infinity is right
inside the human cranium. No boundaries, if only we knew where we built our own,
and could knock them down.' Thank God she didn't have to look at him! Not only
because she would have found his gaze unsettling, but because she wasn't sure
how much he would read in her own. She lifted her chin, but continued to stare
straight ahead. 'You could do it, Joshua. You could help people find the walls
they build inside their heads and show them how to knock the walls
down.'

'I do that already,' he said.

'Poh! With a handful! What about the
whole world?'

He went stiff. 'I know nothing of the
world outside Holloman. Nor do I want to know.' And he withdrew.

So they sat silently and watched the
darkness go by in unending sameness. An eternity of darkness. Was eternity dark,
or was darkness eternal? His sadness insisted upon lingering like a musky
perfume, and when at last the train drew into the gloomy dirty corridors of Penn
Station he blinked in the miserable paucity of light as if it were a million
candlepower all concentrated just on him, and he the cynosure of a million
prying prurient eyes.

From Penn Station through the countless
stops and starts and clickety-clacks they both slept uneasily, heads back
against opposite corners of the long seat, feet propped up on the seat opposite,
and only woke when the train drew groaning into
Washington with the porter adding tympani by banging on the door.

This was Dr Carriol's home territory, so
she led the way out of the marble mausoleum of Union Station to the correct bus
stop, with Dr Christian stumbling dazedly behind.

'The Department of the Environment isn't
far from here,' she said, waving her hand in a direction he didn't know was
roughly north, 'but we'd better go home first and freshen up.'

Miracle of miracles, the Georgetown bus
had actually timed itself to connect with the train, on account of the fact that
the train was an hour late.

The time was mid-morning and the month
was barely March, but the day was relatively warm as well as sunny; they were
predicting an early spring for the country this year. No sign of pregnant cherry
trees yet, alas; everything bloomed later and later. O skies, breathe life into
the trees! Dr Carriol begged silently, sick to death of winter. Only let me live
to see another froth of blossom! Am I too a victim of this millennial neurosis
he talks about? Or am I simply his victim?

Her house looked and smelled fresh, for
she had left one window at the front open a crack, and one window at the back
too, and yet another down the sheltered side passage.

'The house isn't finished inside yet,'
she apologized, leading the way into the front hall and gesturing to him to keep
his bag in his hand. 'I ran out of money. But I fear you'll deem my decorating
very dull after your houses.'

'No, it's lovely,' he said sincerely,
approving in this warmer climate of the lightly graceful Queen Anne furniture,
the brocaded chairs and sofas, the carpet that looked like shadow-dappled
sunlight.

Up the honey-coloured wooden staircase,
down a honey-coloured wood-panelled hall to a honey-coloured wooden door. On its
other side lay a bedroom, unfurnished save for a wide bed
protruding from its far wall.

'Can you be comfortable here?' she asked
doubtfully. 'I don't have many guests, so the guest bedroom is about last on my
priority list. Maybe it would be better to put you in a hotel — at Environment's
expense, of course.'

'I'll be fine here,' he said, putting
down his bag.

She indicated a door. 'There's a bathroom
attached.'

'Thank you.'

'You look beat. Would you like a
nap?'

'No, just a shower and a change of
clothes.'

'Oh, good! I figured we'd go over to
Environment and have lunch there, then I'll introduce you to Moshe Chasen. You
can spend the afternoon with him, then we'll go straight on somewhere for
dinner.' She smiled ruefully. 'I'm no cook, I'm afraid.'

And she shut the door and left him to
himself.

Dr Christian's mother and brothers were
vigorously in favour of his relationship with Dr Judith Carriol, his
sisters-in-law and his sister just as vigorously against it.

Ever since Dr Christian had gone without
warning to Washington the feud had waxed and waned, and it reached new heights
of passion on the following Sunday, when the family congregated early in the
morning on the ground floor of 1047 to begin the day's attendance on the
plants.

Armed with leaf feeder, baskets and small
secateurs, the women were deputed to spray-feed, pick and prune, while the men
uncoiled the various lengths of polyethylene tubing which led to water, and
carried various sizes of steps. Every plant was watered by feel, which meant a
hand had to be pressed against its soil to ascertain how damp it was before any
water might be delivered. Long familiarity had bred a concentrated efficiency
into the whole routine, for almost every plant was known with the intimacy of a
close relative; how much water it drank, what pests it was likely to develop,
which way its fronds or branches were likely to grow. Normally the only squabble
was about leaf gloss, of which Dr Christian disapproved strongly but his mother
always hankered after.

'Perfection can be improved!' she would
announce, and he would answer imperturbably, 'No, Mama. It plugs up the
stomates.'

This day, when his absence might have won
her a chance to apply leaf gloss and show him by how much perfection could be improved upon, she
was too busy defending her most beloved child to think of leaf gloss.

'I tell you, it's the beginning of the
end,' said Mary in the voice of doom. 'He won't think of us, he never
does.'

'Nonsense!' said Mama, carefully tugging
at a half-dead leaf on a philodendron to see if it would come away without being
forcibly yanked off.

'He will never be here because he and
that Carriol viper are going to establish a grand practice in Washington. We
will be relegated to the status of a branch office,' Mary insisted.
Pfffft
pfffft
went the feeder spray over the leaves of a Kentia palm.

'I don't believe you, Mary,' said James,
climbing a tall ladder to deal with a Boston fern in a basket. 'What has Joshua
ever done to make you think so poorly of him? When has he ever not thought of
us?'

'All the time,' muttered Mary
defiantly.

'That's as unfair as it's unkind. All
he's done is go off to Washington for a few days to see some Environment data
analyst,' said James from the top of his ladder.

'Analyst schmanalyst!' snorted Miriam,
who could produce plenty of Americanisms when she so chose. 'That was just an
excuse the Carriol woman used to get Josh away from us so she could work on him.
Honestly, sometimes Joshua is so
dense!
And so are you,
Jimmy!'

Andrew had gone outside to fetch
white-coated cup hooks and a battery-powered drill, but he returned in time to
hear this exchange. 'Jimmy, give me a hand with this Black Prince, will you? It
needs another hook and tie,' he said, setting up a ladder. 'If you ask me, you
women are just plain jealous of poor Josh's lady friend. All these years he's
plodded on and never looked at anybody. Now he's found himself a girl. Well, I
for one think that's great!'

'You won't when
she
takes over,'
said the Mouse gloomily, on hands and knees after erring plantlets of  Sweet Alice that had seeded among a
shallow tub of cacti.