A Creed for the Third Millennium (16 page)

'Takes over?' gasped Mama, too outraged
to continue nipping seed pods off a huge chain-of-hearts before they burst and
dewed the floor with fluff. 'Garbage!'

'Bright red clothes at her age,' sneered
Miriam, whose hands were trembling so much she spilled as much soil as she
managed to press around a needy begonia.

'She's a man-eater,' said Mary. 'And
she'll ruin him, you just wait and see.'

Mama climbed off her low set of steps and
moved it to a pot of maidenhair all of two feet in diameter. 'Joshua needs a
wife, and the only kind of wife for him is one who can take a positive part in
his work. Judith Carriol is perfect in every way.'

'But she's old enough to be his
mother!'
squeaked the Mouse, indignation overpowering
diffidence.

'For God's sake, you women, lay off!'
cried Andrew, goaded. 'Josh is plenty old enough to make his own plans, his own
decisions, and his own mistakes if necessary!'

'Come on now, what harm can Dr Carriol
really do?' James asked, trying to make peace. 'It's high time Josh let his hair
down, you know. He never has, and that's a fact ought to be worrying all you
possessive females a lot more than his going off with Dr Carriol.'

'Why
has Joshua never had an
affair?' asked the Mouse, burying her head deep into a clump of cymbidiums,
appalled at her own daring in asking what she had long burned to know, but aware
that today's unusual familial friction made today the only chance she might ever
get to ask her burning question without throwing the family spotlight on herself
for asking.

'Well, Mouse, it isn't that he's not
human,' said James slowly. 'He's not a prude either, as I'm sure you know. But
he's a tremendously private person, and on this subject he's never been forthcoming.
So — your guess is probably as good as mine.'

I love him, said the Mouse, but not out
loud. I do love him, I do, I do, so much… I married his brother, and then I
found out it was him I loved.

'I am determined he'll marry Judith
Carriol!' said Mama.

'Over my dead body he will!' snarled
Miriam.

'Oh, Mama, I'm surprised at you,' said
Mary derisively. 'I know you don't think things out before you make up your
mind, but — do you really want to dig your own grave? If Joshua marries a woman
like Judith Carriol, you'll be made totally redundant'

'I don't care,' said Mama bravely.
'Joshua's happiness is all that matters.'

'You are so right!' said Mary.

'Shut
up!'
yelled Andrew suddenly.
'Not another word about Josh and his own private business!'

The rest of Sunday's plant duty was done
in silence.

Dr Christian and Dr Chasen had indeed
taken to each other, much as Dr Carriol had predicted.

Their first meeting had given rise to
curious doubts in Dr Christian, or maybe for doubts read qualms. Or inchoate
fears. He didn't know how to catalogue what he felt. Dr Carriol had brought him
into the part of the Department of the Environment known as Section Four, and
down yet more corridors to Dr Moshe Chasen's big, paper-littered
office.

'Moshe, Moshe!' she had called out,
bursting in on him unannounced. 'Moshe, I've brought someone to see you! I met
him in Hartford and I heard more sense from him in a few minutes about
relocation than I've heard from the whole Environment in years. So I persuaded
him to come to Washington and talk to us. This is Dr Joshua Christian. Joshua,
I'd like you to meet Moshe Chasen, who is just starting out on the
gargantuan task of revamping Environment's
relocation programme.'

But Dr Christian could have sworn that
somehow Dr Chasen no sooner set eyes on him than a peculiar kind of recognition
took place, not the vague seen-you-somewhere-before reaction Dr Carriol had
produced for him in the Hartford motel dining room, but something more profound
by far. The only way Dr Christian could satisfactorily type it in his own mind
was by classifying it as similar to the kind of reaction a man would have when
accidentally introduced to the person he knows to be his wife's lover. Yet the
reaction in Dr Chasen passed so quickly that Dr Christian could not even be sure
it had actually existed. By the time Dr Carriol had reached the end of her short
speech, Dr Chasen was on his feet, was smiling with polite but sincere warmth,
and was extending his hand in impersonal welcome.

Indeed Dr Chasen had recovered from his
stupefaction very quickly, because his job — nay, his whole career! — was on the
line. A typical Carriol action, to waltz in gaily trailing a man's fate behind
her, with never an allowance for human weakness. Or the decent thing. He wished
he didn't respect her so much, and that for him, respect predisposed liking. He
supposed too that if he looked at her action in another way, her unheralded
advent was actually a compliment to his own ability to dissemble.

Ever since she had pulled him off
Operation Search he had been smarting, not fooled by her sweet words and
promises. Oh, Moshe darling, you're too good to waste on phase two, I need you
to streamline and update and reorganize the whole relocation programme! As if
something that big and omnipresent couldn't have waited a few more weeks. No
scientist worth his oats likes being pulled off a project he has worked on
before its conclusion, no matter how enticing the new project dangled as bait or
consolation prize. And though by nature she was a
born paper person and did that best, she was still surely enough of a scientist
to appreciate what an amputation job she had done on him. For five weeks he had
scarcely summoned the necessary enthusiasm, freshness and detachment something
as huge and meaty as relocation deserved. He just sat trying to force himself
into the right mood while images of what was happening on phase two of Operation
Search knocked frantically at every entrance to his brain. And while he fought
himself, he fought equally hard to understand the enigma of Judith
Carriol.

Then he nearly blew it. He nearly let his
face show what it meant to him to have Dr Joshua Christian walk through his door
— not a file, not one of over 33,000 units, but the flesh and blood
man.
His face he knew he had managed, yes, but he wasn't as sure of his eyes, and
sometimes he would catch Dr Christian looking at him in a way which said that
this very sensitive and acute fellow had noticed something, but luckily didn't
understand what, because he didn't own so much self-importance.

That had been Thursday. In transports of
gratitude he had realized how great and how subtle indeed was his reward for his
work on phase one of Operation Search. He was to witness the unfolding of phase
two, yes, but more than that; he was being told by his chief that he had pulled
the rabbit out of the hat, that Operation Search was not after all a mere drill,
that it was possessed of a phase three, and that he was to be permitted to stand
by in full knowledge of —
of what,
in God's name?

Thus between Thursday and Sunday of that
week, Dr Chasen accomplished more fruitful work on the conundrum of relocation
than he had since commencing five weeks earlier. For one thing, he understood
now that he had his chief's wholehearted approbation; and for another, by his
side, talking, worrying, dissecting, criticizing, was Dr Joshua
Christian. The winner and new champion. But champion of
what?

The two men had really taken to each
other. So the time and the days between Thursday and Sunday passed in an
interested, happy collaboration that brought sufficient novelty and freshness to
each man to make the other's presence a joy. However, while Dr Joshua Christian
merely went on liking Dr Moshe Chasen, Dr Moshe Chasen passed from being
intrigued to being fascinated to loving to loving deeply.

'I don't know why,' he told Dr Judith
Carriol during one of their infrequent chances to speak together without the
third member of the trio.

'Nonsense!' she said crisply. 'Simple
hedging, Moshe. Of course you know. Kindly elucidate.'

He leaned forward across her desk.
'Judith, have you ever loved anyone?' he asked.

Her face didn't change. 'Of course I
have!'

'You wouldn't just say that, would you?
Because I don't think you're telling me the truth.'

'I only lie when it's necessary, Moshe,'
she said without discomfort at admitting it, 'and it is not necessary for me to
lie to you in this present situation. I do not need to protect myself from you,
because you can do me no harm. I do not need to conceal my motives from you,
because you can't affect the outcome of my motives even if you guess them. And
you're hedging, my friend, but you're not going to deflect me. Kindly
elucidate.'

He sighed, an exasperated sound rather
than a defeated one. 'I'm trying, already, I'm trying! Look, you wanted a
particular man. The man. A man who could draw people to him without even trying,
but a man who would not be a threat to our nation or our way of life. Charisma,
right? Like I told you five weeks ago, he's got it! So how do I know why I love
him? He
makes
you love him! Don't
you
love him?'

Her face and eyes remained calm.
'No.'

'Oh, come on, Judith! That's a
lie!'

'No, it is not.
I
love — the
possibility of him. Not him in himself.'

'God Jesus, you are a hard
woman.'

'Still more hedging, Moshe. Why do you
love him?'

'There are any number of reasons. He's
given me the biggest boost of my career, how's that for a start? You don't fool
me, I know you've picked him. I don't know what for, but you've picked him. How
could I not love the man who has brought me that satisfaction, given that he was
picked in the first place because he can make people love him? How could I not
love a man who sees so clearly? How could I not love a man who loves so much
himself? How could I not love a man who is so
good?
I don't mean good at
his work, I don't mean good at being a man. I mean just
good!
I never met
anyone good before! I always thought if I did, I'd be bored out of my mind, or
I'd hate his guts. But how can you hate a truly good man?'

'You could if you were an evil
one.'

'Well, he makes me feel evil often
enough,' said Dr Chasen with reminiscent emotion. 'I start talking about the
trend I see in this or that group of statistics, and he just sits there, and he
smiles, and he shakes his head, and he says, "Oh, Moshe, Moshe, they're people
you're talking about!" And I feel — well, maybe evil's the wrong word. I feel —
ashamed. Yes, that's it. Ashamed.'

She frowned, suddenly out of patience
with him, she did not care to ask herself why. 'Mmmmm!' she said. And got rid of
Dr Chasen as quickly as she could. Then she sat at her desk and
thought.

On Monday morning Dr Carriol suggested
they not go straight from Georgetown to her place of work on the bus; instead,
she suggested a walk through the Potomac parks and gardens on their way
Environmentward. Her excuse was that it was a beautiful day, which indeed it was, warm, cloudless of
sky, sweet and still of air.

'I hope you don't think I've wasted your
time in bringing you to see Moshe,' she said, as they wandered through West
Potomac Park.

He answered without hesitation. 'No. I
quite see why you wanted us to meet, and I appreciate — no, I applaud — your
reasons for talking me into coming. Moshe is a truly remarkable scientist. He's
brilliant and original. But like all his kind, he's more in love with bits than
bodies. As a man he's not nearly so brilliant or original.'

'Were you able to change his way of
thinking?'

'A little. But the moment I go back to
Holloman his memory of me will begin to fade, and he'll end up reverting
completely to type.'

'I didn't expect you to be a
defeatist.'

'There's a big difference between realism
and defeatism. The answer, Judith, is not to change the Moshe Chasens. The
answer is to change the people who comprise his information.'

'How would you do that,
Joshua?'

'How would I do that?' He stopped on a
grassy slope that slid away above him and below him, steep in its tilt; she
noticed that he did not stand awkwardly, though most would have needed to be
awkward in order to retain balance. Maybe that was because he was awkward in
repose, all arms and legs, but give the arms and legs something difficult to do
and they were gracefully at home doing it.

'Yes, how would you do that?' she
repeated.

One moment he was standing easily, the
next moment he had collapsed amid a tangle of long bones, and had to sort them
out until he was sitting comfortably on the slope with his arms about his
knees.

'I would — I would tell them that the
worst of the shock is over. That the time for self-abnegation is past. I would
tell them to pull their pride out of the mud and their feelings out of the freezer. I'd
tell them to accept their lot and get moving to live with it. So we're cold in
winter and we're going to get a lot colder. So along with every other country in
the northern hemisphere at least we're having to deal with mass migration away
from the pole. So we're saddled with the one-child family. Well, we've got to
stop harking back to the good old days and bemoaning our fate and passively
resisting the inevitable. We've got to stop yearning for yesterday, because
yesterday is gone and it can never come again.