A Creed for the Third Millennium (18 page)

Was she sent to ask it of him? Who sent
her?
God?
No, it was no part of God's policy to intervene personally,
even by proxy. Did the Devil send her? But he was not so sure the Devil existed
as he was sure God did. It seemed to him that the invention of a Devil was more
necessary to the pysche of Man than the invention of God. God was. God is. God
will be. But the Devil was a whipping boy. Evil existed, but as a pure spirit;
it had no form, no hoofs or tail or horns or human mind. Ah, but that was God!
God had no form, no arms or legs or genitalia or human mind. Yet God's pure
spirit was knowing, cognizant, organized. Where Evil was just a
force.

Was she any more than she purported to
be, a senior federal public servant of the United States of America? Benign.
Malign. Question mark. That was the real trouble. Life was one unpredictable,
incomprehensible question mark. You grabbed it at the top, and you slid down it;
you grabbed it at the bottom, and you could get no higher.

'All right then, I'll try,' he said
tensely, hands bunched into fists, trembling.

She didn't make the mistake of going into
rhapsodies, she just nodded briskly and said,
'Good!' Then she started walking faster, back in the direction of Georgetown.
'Come on, my friend, if we get moving now we'll make the New York train this
afternoon.'

'New York?' he asked stupidly, not yet
recovered from the shock of his answer.

'Of course New York! That's where Atticus
Press is.'

'Well yes, but —'

'Yes but nothing! I want to get going on
this now! I can spare the time from my work this week, but next week, who
knows?' She turned to grin at him so bewitchingly he couldn't not grin back. And
he felt better immediately, letting the reins slide entirely to her who knew so
much about everything he didn't know, like books and publishers. She was a
person who knew how to pull strings, and that was an art he had never mastered,
never would. Besides, it was enough for the moment to have made the decision.
Let her carry him until he got his breath back. However, it did not occur to him
that the last thing in the world she wanted for some time to come was for him to
get his breath back.

'We have to see Elliott MacKenzie right
away,' she said, walking even faster.

'Who's he?'

The publisher at Atticus. Luckily he
happens to be a very old and dear friend of mine. His wife and I went to
Princeton together.'

The Atticus Press owned the seventy-floor
building in which it occupied the bottom twenty floors, and had split off an
annex of the main foyer which served as entrance to the publishing house only.
When Dr Christian and Dr Carriol walked into that private vestibule the next
morning, they were greeted like visiting royalty. There was a beautifully
dressed woman executive waiting for them; she escorted them immediately to the
one elevator Atticus, being more than ten storeys and less than
twenty-one, was allowed to operate, and she put a special key into its controls
that permitted them an uninterrupted ride all the way to the seventeenth
floor.

Elliott MacKenzie was waiting outside the
elevator, a hand already warmly extended to Dr Christian; he had a kiss for Dr
Carriol's cheek. And then they were settled in his book-lined office with
coffee, the woman executive introduced as Lucy Greco. Polished-looking people,
MacKenzie and Greco, he tall and trim and elegant and sandily handsome and
supercharged, she an attractive little middle-aged bundle of quivering
energy.

'I must say when Judith broached the idea
of your book to me I was very excited,' drawled Elliott MacKenzie with the
faintly nasal tone and rigid jaws which denoted one whose pedigree and social
circle were impeccable.

When broached… very excited… Dr Christian
went numb, his belly lurching about like a child on roller skates for the first
time.

'Lucy is going to act as your editor,'
Elliott MacKenzie went on. 'She's had an enormous amount of experience working
with nonwriters who have something to say we can't afford not to read. It will
be her job to get your book on paper, and she's the best in the
business.'

Dr Christian looked immensely relieved.
'Thank God for that! A coauthor,' he said.

But MacKenzie frowned with the regal
displeasure of a man who not only sat in the publisher's chair, but also owned
the publishing house. 'Of course not!
You
are the sole author, Dr
Christian. They will be your ideas and your words. Lucy is simply going to act
as your Boswell.'

Dr Christian got stubborn. 'Boswell,' he
said, 'was a biographer. Dr Johnson did his own writing, and no one was
better.'

'An amanuensis then,' said Elliott
MacKenzie smoothly, not betraying the fact that he had disliked being
caught.

'But that's not fair,' said Dr
Christian.

Mrs Greco entered the fray. 'Of course
it's fair, Dr Christian. You must learn to think of me as a midwife. My task is
to pull the most beautiful healthy book baby out of you as quickly and
painlessly as possible. The name of the midwife isn't among the birth data
registered with the First Child Bureau! Nothing I am going to do for you
entitles me to the prominence of coauthorship, I assure you.'

'Then you don't stand a chance of
succeeding,' said Dr Christian, suddenly enormously depressed.

He felt pushed, accelerated beyond
comfortable self-speed, and in his confusion it did not occur to him that all
these people seemed to know a great deal more about the difficulty he had with
the written word than he remembered telling either Dr Carriol or Dr Chasen.
Later on he would think of this point, but she would not be there to tax about
it, and things would happen with such frightening, exhilarating rapidity that, a
minor point, it would fail again to reach the surface of a mind suddenly too
concerned with its own mortality to be concerned with anything else.

Elliott MacKenzie was sensitive to
nuances, and he was extremely good at his job. 'Dr Christian, you are not a born
writer,' he said gently and firmly. 'Now we all accept that, and believe it or
not, this same situation occurs quite a lot in any publishing house, especially
with the nonfiction list. A man or woman has something important to say, ideas
that must be promulgated, but the man or woman may not have time to write, or
may not have the talent to write. In such cases the book is merely a vehicle,
built by professionals to carry the ideas you and you alone engineer. If you
were a born writer, you wouldn't be sitting here without a finished manuscript,
since you've not published before. A finished manuscript
takes time. It takes a special talent. There's absolutely no point in debating
the relative merits of doing your own writing versus having someone else do it.
From what Dr Carriol has told me, you have a contribution to make to this world
that must be made as soon as possible. All we intend to do is ensure that your
contribution becomes a reality. And it's an exciting process for us, believe me!
At the end of it there will be a book, a
good
book! And the book is what
matters.'

'I don't know!' cried Dr Christian
wretchedly.

'Well, I do,' said Elliott MacKenzie very
firmly, and glanced quickly sideways towards his cohort.

Lucy Greco got up at once. How about
coming down to my office, Dr Christian? We'll be working on our own, so why not
get started on some kind of protocol?'

He rose without a word and followed
her.

'Are you sure you know what you're
doing?' asked Elliott MacKenzie of Dr Judith Carriol when they were
alone.

'Indeed I do!'

'Well, I must say I can't see why you're
so excited. And I don't think he wants to write a book at all. I admit he's an
impressive-looking guy, a bit Lincolnesque, but he doesn't exactly overflow
with personality.'

'He's doing a tortoise act,
brrrrp!
into his shell. He feels threatened and manipulated — with every
justification! I would have liked a lot more time to work on him, get him used
to the idea and let his natural enthusiasm surface again of its own accord, but
I have very cogent and valid reasons why this project has to be far enough along
to be in working manuscript at the end of the next six weeks.'

'It's a tall order, and an expensive one.
Not to mention the anguish of prodding your reluctant tortoise to
produce.'

'Leave him to me and Lucy Greco. As for
the book — huh! You should worry, with the Department of the Environment
underwriting you! It is not every day, my dear Elliott, that you strike a deal
you can't lose on.'

'Okay, okay!' He looked at his watch. 'I
have an appointment upstairs,' he said. 'Your protege' is likely to be with Lucy
for quite a while, given your hurry. Have you got something else to do while you
wait?'

'He is all I have to do,' she said
simply. 'Don't you worry about me, I'll just sit here and browse among your
wonderful collection of books.'

But it was a long time before Dr Carriol
got up and went across to the stuffed shelves. She stared out the gigantic
window first, a window made of three separate thicknesses of plate glass, each
layer insulated from its neighbour by three-quarters of an inch of air space.
They had tried boarding up the New York skyscrapers, but it hadn't worked. The
suicide rate just zoomed, so did the acute depression rate. In the end they
pulled out all the existing windows, bricked some up, and replaced others with
the kind in Elliott MacKenzie's office.

The groundhog had said spring was going
to be early this year, and New York had taken notice. Oh, the trees were still
bare, they would be until at least the middle of May no matter what sort of
weather prevailed, but the air was quite warm and the sun shone and the
crystalline explosion of buildings everywhere outside glittered. A cloud floated
by, but Dr Carriol couldn't actually see it; she saw its reflection high up in
the golden mirror of an adjoining skyscraper.

Be of good cheer, Joshua Christian! she
said silently to the blockish panorama; it will all come together and it will be
splendid.
I know I've rushed you where you're not even sure you want to
go, but it's all for the best and noblest reasons, reasons that wouldn't shame
you if you knew them. What I'm pushing you to do won't harm you, you'll love it once you get
used to it, I promise. You've got so much potential for good, but you'll never
get off your ass unless someone pushes you. So here I am! You'll end in thanking
me. Not that I'm looking for gratitude. I'm just doing my job, and I do my job
better than anyone. For millennia men have been saying that women can never
compete because women permit their emotions to intrude upon their work. It's not
true. I'm here to prove it. And I am going to prove it. Maybe no one will ever
notice that I did. But I will know I did, and that's what counts.

Seven weeks left. It could be done. It
must be done! Because on May first she was going to have evidence above and
beyond mere personal conviction that Dr Joshua Christian was the man they were
looking for. The book must be a reality by then. So must sheaves of reports,
backed up by video and audio tapes of the man in action. By the time she went to
see the President she had to have an open-and-closed case in favour of Dr Joshua
Christian. The President was not the man to fall for a snow job. And Harold
Magnus would be fighting to the last ditch for Senator Hillier.

She moved her chair closer to Elliott
MacKenzie's desk and picked up his private-line telephone.

The number she dialled was thirty-three
digits long, but she didn't need to consult either paper or the buttons on the
machine as she punched it quicker than most people could have punched a much
shorter number.

'Dr Carriol. Where is Mr
Wayne?'

The telephone said he wasn't
in.

'Find him,' said Judith Carriol
coldly.

She waited patiently, eyes glazed,
cataloguing all the sources of evidence she was going to need.

'John? I'm not on the scramble phone, but
this line is not through the Atticus switchboard. Would you check the computer
and make sure it's not tapped? The number is 555-6273. Government wouldn't be
interested, but I suppose there could be some
form of industrial espionage, even in an eighteenth-century business like book
publishing. Ring me back.'

She waited five minutes for the phone to
ring again.

'All clear,' said John Wayne.

'Good. Now listen. I need some video
cameras and lots of microphones installed immediately. 1047 and 1045 Oak Street,
Holloman, Connecticut. The offices and home of Dr Joshua Christian. Everywhere.
I don't want one square inch of either building unmonitored, and I want
twenty-four-hour surveillance. The equipment will have to go in today and be out
by this coming Saturday evening, because on Sundays the Christians climb all
over the place watering plants and could spot a camera. Okay? I also need a
complete list of Dr Christian's patients, no longer current as well as current.
All of them to be interviewed on audio tape without realizing they're being
interviewed, of course. You will do the same with his family and his friends.
His enemies too. The interviewing can take longer than the video monitoring of
house and clinic, but it has to be done in time to have the tapes edited and
ready to present on May first. Understood?'