Visions of the Future (24 page)

Can it be that we are all alone?

The ringing of the telephone half penetrated through the mists of mesmerization. He picked up the handset, half expecting it would be the universe calling, perhaps with a clipped British accent, “Hello there, Man. Hello. Hello. I say, we seem to have a bad connection, what? Just wanted you to know that we’re here. Are you there? Are you listening? Message on the way. May not get there for a couple of centuries. Do be around to answer, will you? That’s a good being. Righto.…”

Only it wasn’t. It was the familiar American voice of Charley Saunders saying, “Mac, there’s been an accident. Olsen is on his way to relieve you, but I think you’d better leave now. It’s Maria.”

Leave it. Leave it all. What does it matter? But leave the controls on automatic; the computer can take care of it all. Maria! Get in the car. Start it. Don’t fumble! That’s it. Go. Go. Car passing. Must be Olsen. No matter.

What kind of accident? Why didn’t I ask? What does it matter what kind of accident? Maria. Nothing could have happened. Nothing serious. Not with all those people around.
Nil desperandum.
And yet—why did Charley call if it was not serious? Must be serious. I must be prepared for something bad, something that will shake the world, that will tear my insides.

I must not break up in front of them. Why not? Why must I appear infallible? Why must I always be cheerful, imperturbable, my faith unshaken? Why me? If there is something bad, if something impossibly bad has happened to Maria, what will matter? Ever? Why didn’t I ask Charley what it was? Why? The bad can wait; it will get no worse for being unknown.

What does the universe care for my agony? I am nothing. My feelings are nothing to anyone but me. My only possible meaning to the universe is the Project. Only this slim potential links me with eternity. My love and my agony are me, but the significance of my life or death are the Project.

hic.sitvs.est.phaethon.cvrrvs.avriga.paterni qvem.si.non.tenvit.magnis.tamen.excidit.avsis

By the time he reached the hacienda, MacDonald was breathing evenly. His emotions were under control. Dawn had grayed the eastern sky. It was a customary hour for Project personnel to be returning home.

Saunders met him at the door. “Dr. Lessenden is here. He’s with Maria.”

The odor of stale smoke and the memory of babble still lingered in the air, but someone had been busy. The party remains had been cleaned up. No doubt they all had pitched in. They were good people.

“Betty found her in the bathroom off your bedroom. She wouldn’t have been there except the others were occupied. I blame myself. I shouldn’t have let you relieve me. Maybe if you had been here— But I knew you wanted it that way.”

“No one’s to blame. She was alone a great deal,” MacDonald said. “What happened?”

“Didn’t I tell you? Her wrists. Slashed with a razor. Both of them. Betty found her in the bathtub. Like pink lemonade, she said.”

Percé jusques au fond du coeur.

D’une atteinte imprévue aussi bien que mortelle.

A fist tightened inside MacDonald’s gut and then slowly relaxed. Yes, it had been that. He had known it, hadn’t he? He had known it would happen ever since the sleeping pills, even though he had kept telling himself, as she had told him, that the overdose had been an accident.

Or had he known? He knew only that Saunders’ news had been no surprise.

Then they were at the bedroom door, and Maria was lying under a blanket on the bed, scarcely making it mound over her body, and her arms were on top of the blankets, palms up, bandages like white paint across the olive perfection of her arms, now, MacDonald reminded himself, no longer perfection but marred with ugly red lips that spoke to him of hidden misery and untold sorrow and a life that was a lie.…

Dr. Lessenden looked up, sweat trickling down from his hairline. “The bleeding is stopped, but she’s lost a good deal of blood. I’ve got to take her to the hospital for a transfusion. The ambulance should be here any minute.” MacDonald looked at Maria’s face. It was paler than he had ever seen it. It looked almost waxen, as if it were already arranged for all time on a satin pillow. “Her chances are fifty-fifty,” Lessenden said in answer to his unspoken question.

And then the attendants brushed their way past him with their litter.

“Betty found this on her dressing table,” Saunders said. He handed MacDonald a slip of paper folded once.

MacDonald unfolded it:
Je m’en vay chercher un grand Peut-être.

Everyone was surprised to see MacDonald at the office. They did not say anything, and he did not volunteer the information that he could not bear to sit at home, among the remembrances, and wait for word to come. But they asked him about Maria, and he said, “Dr. Lessenden is hopeful. She’s still unconscious. Apparently will be for some time. The doctor said I might as well wait here as at the hospital. I think I made them nervous. They’re hopeful. Maria’s still unconscious.…”

O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike…

Finally MacDonald was alone. He pulled out paper and pencil and worked for a long time on the statement, and then he balled it up and threw it into the wastebasket, scribbled a single sentence on another sheet of paper, and called Lily.

“Send this!”

She glanced at it. “No, Mac.”

“Send it!”

“But—”

“It’s not an impulse. I’ve thought it over carefully. Send it.”

Slowly she left, holding the piece of paper gingerly in her fingertips. MacDonald pushed the papers around on his desk, waiting for the telephone to ring. But without knocking, unannounced, Saunders came through the door first.

“You can’t do this, Mac,” Saunders said.

MacDonald sighed. “Lily told you. I would fire that girl if she weren’t so loyal.”

“Of course she told me. This isn’t just you. It affects the whole Project.”

“That’s what I’m thinking about.”

“I think I know what you’re going through, Mac—” Saunders stopped. “No, of course I don’t know what you’re going through. It must be hell. But don’t desert us. Think of the Project!”

“That’s what I’m thinking about. I’m a failure, Charley. Everything I touch—ashes.”

“You’re the best of us.”

“A poor linguist? An indifferent engineer? I have no qualifications for this job, Charley. You need someone with ideas to head the Project, someone dynamic, someone who can lead, someone with—charisma.”

A few minutes later he went over it all again with Olsen. When he came to the qualifications part, all Olsen could say was, “You give a good party, Mac.”

It was Adams, the skeptic, who affected him most. “Mac, you’re what I believe in instead of God.”

Sonnenborn said, “You are the Project. If you go, it all falls apart. It’s over.”

“It seems like it, always, but it never happens to those things that have life in them. The Project was here before I came. It will be here after I leave. It must be longer lived than any of us, because we are for the years and it is for the centuries.”

After Sonnenborn, MacDonald told Lily wearily, “No more, Lily.”

None of them had had the courage to mention Maria, but MacDonald considered that failure, too. She had tried to communicate with him a month ago when she took the pills, and he had been unable to understand. How could he riddle the stars when he couldn’t even understand those closest to him? Now he had to pay.

Meine Ruh’ ist hin,

Meine Herz ist schwer.

What would Maria want? He knew what she wanted, but if she lived, he could not let her pay that price. Too long she had been there when he wanted her, waiting like a doll put away on a shelf for him to return and take her down, so that he could have the strength to continue.

And somehow the agony had built up inside her, the dreadful progress of the years, most dread of all to a beautiful woman growing old, alone, too much alone. He had been selfish. He had kept her to himself. He had not wanted children to mar the perfection of their being together.

Perfection for him; less than that for her.

Perhaps it was not too late for them if she lived. And if she died—he would not have the heart to go on with work to which, he knew now, he could contribute nothing.

Que acredito su ventura,

Morir querdo y vivir loco.

And finally the call came. “She’s going to be all right, Mac,” Lessenden said. And after a moment, “Mac, I said—”

“I heard.”

“She wants to see you.”

“I’ll be there.”

“She said to give you a message. ‘Tell Robby I’ve been a little crazy in the head. I’ll be better now. That “great perhaps” looks too certain from here. And tell him not to be crazy in the head too.’”

MacDonald put down the telephone and walked through the doorway and through the outer office, a feeling in his chest as if it were going to burst. “She’s going to be all right,” he threw over his shoulder at Lily.

“Oh, Mac—”

In the hall, Joe the janitor stopped him. “Mr. MacDonald—”

MacDonald stopped. “Been to the dentist yet, Joe?”

“No, sir, not yet, but it’s not—”

“Don’t go. I’d like to put a tape recorder beside your bed for a while, Joe. Who knows?”

“Thank you, sir. But it’s—They say you’re leaving, Mr. MacDonald.”

“Somebody else will do it.”

“You don’t understand. Don’t go, Mr. MacDonald!”

“Why not, Joe?”

“You’re the one who cares.”

MacDonald had been about to move on, but that stopped him.

Ful wys is he that can himselven knowe!

He turned and went back to the office. “Have you got that sheet of paper, Lily?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you sent it?”

“No, sir.”

“Bad girl. Give it to me.”

He read the sentence on the paper once more:
I have great confidence in the goals and ultimate success of the Project, but for personal reasons I must submit my resignation.

He studied it for a moment.

Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vidant.

And he tore it up.

Translations

1. Pues no es posible…

The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.

Cervantes,
Don Quixote

2.
Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,…

Now I have studied philosophy,

Medicine and the law,

And, unfortunately, theology,

Wearily sweating, yet I stand now,

Poor fool, no wiser than I was before;

I am called Master, even Doctor,

And for these last ten years have drawn

My students, by the nose, up, down,

Crosswise and crooked. Now I see

That we can know nothing finally.

Goethe,
Faust
, opening lines

3.
Men che drama…

Less than a drop

Of blood remains in me that does not tremble;

I recognize the signals of the ancient flame.

Dante,
The Divine Comedy,

Purgatorio

4.
C’est de quoy j’ay le plus de peur que la peur.

The thing of which I have most fear is fear.

Montaigne,
Essays

5.
A la trés-bonne, à la très-belle, qui fait ma joie et ma santé.

To the best, to the most beautiful, who is my joy and my well-being.

Baudelaire,
Les Epaves

6.
Rast ich, so rost ich.

When I rest, I rust.

German
proverb

7. Nunc est bibendum!

Now’s the time for drinking!

Horace,
Odes
, Book I

8.
Wer immer strebens sich bemüht,…

Who strives always to the utmost,

Him can we save.

Goethe,
Faust
, Part I

9.
Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint.

I am the spirit that always denies.

Goethe,
Faust
, Part I

10.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita…

In the middle of the journey of our life

I came to myself in a dark wood,

Where the straight way was lost.

Dante,
The Divine Comedy,

Inferno
, opening lines

11.
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

And thence we issued out, again to see the stars.

Dante,
The Divine Comedy,

Inferno

12.
Nil desperandum.

There’s no cause for despair.

Horace,
Odes
, Book I

13.
HIC * SITVS * EST * PHAETHON * CVRRVS * AVRIGA * PATERNI…

Here Phaethon lies: in Phoebus’ car he fared,

And though he greatly failed, more greatly dared.