Moo (45 page)

Both men lifted their heads and looked right at her.

I
T WAS
amazing, thought Dr. Lionel Gift, how they had orchestrated the whole thing during his winter recess. He would not have given them credit for the foresight or the connections if he hadn’t seen it himself. Nevertheless, it happened just the way they probably had planned it—at the very moment when he took the flyer from an unknown student, thinking it must be about a bargain airfare package for spring vacation or something, just then that little nobody from the horticulture department stepped up to him, and handed him another copy, and his grimy finger pointed to Gift’s own name in the first line, and Gift saw that the flyer was about himself and his report for Arlen Martin. As if the humiliation of having his name bandied about the campus like that weren’t enough, when he had at last escaped to his office, set his cup of coffee on his desk, and opened the paper, there he was again, on the front page of
The New York Times
. Admittedly, he was below the fold, and his name was mentioned only once on that page, in connection with “New Pressures on Central American Countries to Exploit Resources in Protected Regions.” But the fact that his name appeared at all would tip Martin off about the source of the leak. Gift set his coffee cup down with trembling hand. And then the phone rang. It was HER voice. She was saying, “Professor Gee-eft? Mr. Martin on the line for you, honey.”

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Ly-nle?” brayed the little Texas billionaire. “Let me read you something.”

“I’ve read it,” whispered Dr. Gift.

“ ‘According to a recent report for Horizontal Technologies and Seven Stones Mining, prepared by economist Dr. Lionel Gift of Moo University, gold mining in the Tierra del Madre cloud forest would be not only feasible but desirable. Dr. Gift’s report indicated that negotiations between Horizontal and the Costa Rican government were proceeding, and that “certain highly placed members of the government have a distinctly favorable view of the operation. Discreet
and precisely targeted payments to these and other officials could well have the desired effect.” The report also indicated that the allegations of environmental groups, that a single American corporation had been buying up land around the forest for cattle ranches, were well founded. Under various names, Horizontal Technologies and the TransNationalAmerica Corporation appear to have been buying and deforesting the land, then running cattle over the resulting pasturage. While the information in Dr. Gift’s report has not been confirmed or denied by the Costa Rican government, sources in San José did say that Dr. Gift, a well-known figure in Costa Rica, and others from Horizontal had visited the country recently, “as far as I know, just to vacation,” said the unnamed official.’

“I hadn’t gotten that far,” whispered Dr. Gift.

“What DO you have to say about this, Professor?” said Martin.

“I was meaning to call you before Christmas—” whispered Gift.

“Goddamnit, I can’t hear you,” shouted Martin.

Dr. Lionel Gift set the receiver down in its cradle and left his office, removing his beeper from his belt and setting it on his desk as he did so.

D
R
. C
ATES
, who read the
Wall Street Journal
, did not see the piece.

D
R
. J
ELLINEK
, who flipped the “Auto Return” button on his television remote between “Good Morning America” and the “Today” show, hadn’t seen a daily
Times
in two years or more.

D
R
. L
EVY
, who read the
State Journal
, clipped out and posted on her refrigerator a long article entitled “Easy Cleaning Solutions Substitute for Potential Hazards.”

D
R
. B
ELL
, who got her mail first thing in the morning, was reading a review of
Writing a Woman’s Life
by Carolyn Heilbrun in
The Hungry Mind Review
.

P
ROVOST
I
VAR
H
ARSTAD WAS
halfway through a 7:30 a.m. root canal appointment with his oral surgeon.

• • •

Ms. E
LAINE
D
OBBS-
J
ELLINEK HAD ASKED
her new secretary, Bill Bartle, to find her a copy of the
Times
, which she tried to read at least twice a week (though preferably on Tuesdays for the Science section and on Wednesdays for the Living section), but he seemed inexplicably unwilling to do so.

D
R
. B
O
J
ONES HAD DECIDED
years before that nothing was so repetitive as news. When his wife, who was sitting across from him at the breakfast table, said, “Hey, Moo U. made it into the
Times,”
and then read an excerpt of the article, he tuned her out, as he did every morning, in favor of an article in
Successful Farming
called “Hog Personality: Will Tailoring Your Operation to Known Breed Characteristics Prove Economical in the Long Run?”

D
R
. C
ECELIA
S
ANCHEZ WAS ASLEEP
.

P
ROFESSOR
T
IMOTHY
M
ONAHAN WAS STANDING
in front of the honors freshman English class he had been coerced into teaching by his chairman in accordance with new university guidelines on putting higher-ranking faculty into the undergraduate classroom. He was telling the students that they would be required to purchase a subscription to the daily
New York Times
at campus rates (twelve dollars per semester), and that they would discuss articles in the newspaper at least once a week. A tall student seated toward the back of the room raised his hand.

“Yes?” said Tim. “Let’s see, you’re Frank Carson, right?”

“Yes. Sir.”

Tim pricked up his ears at the measured, serious tone of voice. Always a sign of trouble. Tim nodded for the kid to go on.

“Mr. Monahan, some of us consider
The New York Times
to be purveyors of militantly anti-Christian bias, and would prefer not to support it with our patronage.”

Tim smiled congenially. “Look at it as just another required text, okay? We can talk about those issues as they come up.”

“I’m not saying this because it is run by Jews, sir. I am not an anti-Semite.
The problem is that most reporters and editors are well-known atheists and agnostics. Believing Jews are just a step away from Christians, really, like believing Moslems on the other side. But these atheists and agnostics are in another category, and some of us can’t support them. It’s repugnant to us.”

“How many?” said Tim, whose original plan had been to discuss the Gift article as an example of “objective” rhetoric, only slipping in incidentally his own role in its conception. Four students raised their hands—Carson, another boy, and two girls, one of them the prettiest in the class, who looked around as she did so in an agony of embarrassment. Tim picked on her. “Let’s see, your name is Joellen, right?”

She nodded.

“Joellen, why don’t you want to subscribe to an entirely mainstream and universally respected newspaper like
The New York Times?”

She turned red. When she opened her mouth to speak, nothing came out.

“Go ahead. Take your time.”

She stared at her desk. Finally, she mumbled, “It’s the mouthpiece of Satan.”

“Pardon me?” said Tim.

She spoke up, just a degree. She said, “When people read
The New York Times
, they are led to doubt the goodness of the Lord and are drawn away from their faith.”

Tim said, “This is an honors class, right?”

Frank Carson smoothly interjected, “How about this idea, sir? We can subscribe to a Christian paper, too. Then, every time we talk about an article from the
Times
, we can also talk about an article from that paper.”

Most of the other students smiled, relieved that a compromise they considered fair had been tentatively reached. Tim made a point of unclenching his fists under his desk, not without reflecting that one of them could have made satisfying contact with Frank Carson’s jaw. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes gone to the most ridiculous discussion Tim had ever been a party to. Another hand went up. Tim nodded, looked briefly at the attendance sheet. “You’re Samir?” he said.

The young man nodded. Then he said, “I will be reading no Christian newspapers. Only if we read Islamic newspapers as well. In your country, people are sadly misinformed about the true nature of Islam.
It is the responsibility of your institutions of higher learning to correct this flaw.”

In the back of the room, Tim could see two or three of the more sophisticated-looking students begin to grin. He knew that they were grinning at his expense.

The New York Times
was not sold in the town near Loren Stroop’s farm, so even if he had been able to drive his truck, he would not have had easy access to an article that he certainly would have read, as it mentioned his university and one of his faculty members, whom, had he read the article, he would have felt free to call on the phone, had he been able to talk, in order to discuss the economic ramifications of his invention, which, when all was said and done, was still safe in the barn, untouched and unsabotaged by the FBI, the CIA, and the big ag companies.

D
R
. G
ARCIA PREFERRED
to read the Chicago
Tribune
, because it carried more human interest articles of the sort that he liked, for example the one about the Polish Catholic firefighter, father of five, who had undergone a successful sex-change operation, but who still lived at home with his wife. The two women and their grown children were shown in numerous color photographs. It looked to Garcia like the two wore just about the same dress size. Dr. Garcia also enjoyed the frequent
Tribune
articles about nuns and priests, which was not a regular feature of the
Times
, either.

D
EAN
N
ILS
H
ARSTAD THOUGHT
it was interesting the way your eyes picked out the two words (Moo University) in a sea of print that had something to do with you. Then he stored this observation for communication to Marly later on, as he did many observations that, he thought, combined a notable fact with a subtle expansion of her horizons. On the whole, he felt, it was all for the best that she had put off the wedding again. It gave him more time to educate and mold her. Wives often took amiss as criticism what fiancées appreciated as attention.

He skimmed the article once to see if it presented any potential trouble to him personally, but it did not. Then he read it carefully.
He did not, on balance, disagree with the concept of developing the Tierra del Madre cloud forest or the land around it. Had he not devoted the best years of his life to Third World development, and if the effort had gone wrong here and there, did they not have themselves to blame? The fact was, though of course you didn’t say this to their faces, those peoples didn’t have the capacity for real development because they didn’t possess a higher moral nature, which, Nils thought, was instilled somehow through the effects of cold weather. While on the face of it, this appeared to be a racist concept, which was why Nils never mentioned it to anyone, in fact he had the greatest respect for the moral nature of both the Lapps and the Eskimo peoples, and was willing to admit that even the Scandinavians, even the Norwegians, fell a degree or so below both of these peoples in the rigor of their moral lives.

Gift and his friends could do a lot worse than to come to Dean Nils Harstad for a little advice.

The article, of course, would present a problem for Dr. Gift. While Nils and Dr. Gift were on perfectly friendly terms, Nils was not really very sorry to see Dr. Gift, who made, as a distinguished professor, five thousand dollars a year more than Nils did as a dean (very unorthodox), have to cope with a few problems. Nor, upon reflection, was Nils all that sorry to realize that his brother, Ivar, would have some coping to do. It would remind him that in spite of all appearances, the world was a stony and unforgiving desert, and it was better to fix his attention on the eternal future. Lately, perhaps because things with Marly were getting a bit tricky, Nils had been brooding more and more on Ivar’s future. It was all very well for Ivar and Helen to stroll through this earthly paradise of food and sex and friendship that they made for themselves, oblivious to him and to everything else, but a year is as a blink of the eye in the context of eternity, and there would be regrets, there would certainly be regrets.

Dean Harstad folded up the paper and threw it with some vehemence at the recycling bin.

D
R
. S
ANCHEZ WOKE UP
with a start and the terrifying conviction that she had fallen and was still falling. Usually when she woke up, she turned her mind first to memories and anticipations of the Chairman touching and caressing her, but this morning that seemed like a box
that she dared not unwrap, so instead of lingering in bed, she ran to the bathroom and threw water on her face.

M
RS
. L
ORAINE
W
ALKER WASN’T
a bit surprised by the article. How could she be, when the reporter had called her Friday and thanked her for being such a terrific help in linking Gift, Horizontal, Seven Stones, and Arlen Martin? She wasn’t going to be surprised the following Monday, either, when another article appeared delving into Seven Stones’ environmental record (shocking) and recycling that story about the timely bankruptcy of Appalachic Coal just before it was ordered to relocate or compensate the victims of that underground mine fire (appalling). Just then, as she was folding her paper and putting it in her bag to take home to Martha, the door opened and there was Gift himself. He walked right past the receptionist. Mrs. Walker put her hands on the keys of her computer and started typing. Only after he had spoken to her twice did she look up.