The Gorgon Festival (2 page)

“I didn’t like that man’s eyes,” Ruth commented and turned back to Ward. “Have you told anyone else about this discovery?”

“I tried to tell Ester, but what’s this about random errors?”

“Tell no one. You may have a cure for arthritis, and if Carrick found out, you’d never get your grant extended without giving his pharmaceutical company a piece of the action… How long will it take to find a theory to explain your facts?”

Ward shrugged. “Probably longer than I keep the lab, if I don’t publish.”

“When can you come to my house in absolute secrecy?”

“Tomorrow. Ester should be away on an overnight shopping tour to San Francisco.”

“Listen carefully.” She leaned closer. “Come up at 7:33 tomorrow evening. Bring a pint of solution and your electrolysis equipment. I’ve got an absorbent I use on my arthritis which should carry the solution to internal body cells, and I have an arthritic hamster we can use for the experiment… Now, Alex, you get right up from this table, corner Carrick, and demand an extension of your research grant. Tell him you’re working on a secret formula for an aphrodisiac—that’ll stop him—and the research is too personal to publish.”

Ward sought Ester first and found her near the bar talking to five young graduate student instructors who were jostling for a front view. As he went by her to the bar, he gave her elbow a conspiratorial touch and shouldered his way through to order a double Scotch. It was best to be anesthetized when one cornered Carrick.

Ester joined him and leaned backward against the bar, whispering, “What’s up?”

“I’m cornering Carrick. Get him alone for me. If I run into trouble, I’ll report later. Where’s Cabroni?”

“He was miffed because he thought I squealed on him to you… Double bourbon, bartender… To make him suffer, I introduced him to some New Leftists who are roasting the pig.”

“After you isolate Carrick, rescue Cabroni,” he said, alarmed by her cavalier treatment of the primitive.

They sighted Carrick in the living room talking to a visiting professor from Cambridge whose name evaded Ward but who, he remembered, had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his work in the mathematics of molecular structures. The Englishman was deferred to on the campus because most of Ward’s colleagues didn’t know a knight from a lord and considered him nobility.

“I’ll peel off the limey,” Ester said, “and you give Fred this drink.”

She handed Ward the double bourbon and moved ahead of him with a more pronounced sway to her hips than usual.

“I say, Sir Doctor Peter Waverly-Pritchard, old chap, are you having a love affair with this bloody Yank, Carrick?”

“We’ve just had a falling out,” Waverly-Pritchard smiled.

“You need fresh gin and tonic, and I want to introduce you to an elderly lady who’s friend of a friend of yours, Queen Elizabeth.”

She had the Englishman by the arm, leading him away, and her otherwise masterful ploy, Ward thought, was marred by a touch of malice. Indeed Ruth Gordon had been presented to the Court of St. James’s, but Ruth preferred to drink alone, as Ester well knew.

“Enjoying your party, Fred?”

“I was, Alex.” Carrick looked down at his empty glass.

“Presto,” Ward said and produced the drink from behind his back. “Now I’ve patted your back, you pat mine. Sign my extension request.”

“I’m taking it under advisement,” Carrick said.

Since no one advised Carrick, and since his signature, as a Nobel scientist, was tantamount “to government approval of Ward’s research grant, Ward could only read Carrick’s remark one way.

“Fred, I take this as a vote of no confidence in my research project.”

“Alex, I have confidence in your work, on the gut level.”

“How do you acquire confidence in a complex biologic experiment on a gut level?” Ward asked.

“Well,” Carrick was hesitant, “married to Ester, you wouldn’t spend so much time in your laboratory if the work wasn’t important, but nobody knows what you’re doing out there in the annex. You never publish your findings.”

Here was the spot to introduce Ruth’s tactics, but Ward had spotted a fallacy in Ruth’s suggestion. If Carrick wanted a piece of the commercial action in a cure for arthritis, he’d want four-fifths of the play in an aphrodisiac.

“But you have confidence on the gut level,” Ward reminded him.

“True, but there’s another consideration, the paucity of your request. You’re asking $22,000 for a two-year grant. That sum won’t impress the Federal boys, and Stanford is a proud university. It monkeyfies our image to ask for peanuts. Since no one knows what you’re doing, the only way to impress the government with the importance of your work is by the size of the grant. I advise you to up your request to $180,000.”

“Fred, I’m not building a cyclotron.”

“The government doesn’t know it.”

“What could I do with $180,000?”

“This research business being what it is,” Carrick said, “we have to take care of our better graduate students. I have eight good boys with no place to go. If you would consider adding them to your staff, the grant might be extended.”

Suddenly Ward remembered a fragment of patio gossip, “Henderson asked for eighty thousand, but Carrick cut his request to twenty grand.”

Things were adding up. Carrick wanted to put spies in his laboratory. If Ruth was correct, if he had discovered a cure for arthritis, the adroit pragmatist, Carrick, would have the product past the Pure Food and Drug Administration and onto the market before Ward could formulate an analysis of the DNA bonding process.

“What’s your deadline for extension requests?” Ward asked.

“July thirty-first.”

Little more than two months remained for Ward to find the answers, and he didn’t yet know the questions. Finding out would cut into his Tuesdays with Ester unless Ester, herself, could pull a coup.

Returning to the patio, Ward saw Ester standing beside Cabroni. Around the police lieutenant, gesticulating guests were hurling words against Cabroni’s granite face.

As Ward neared the group, he heard someone say, “The fallacy of the police mentality lies in its tacit assumption of the father role.”

“I deny paternity charges,” Cabroni answered. “The bastards are not of my making.”

Cabroni was handling the dialectics, all right, Ward decided as he moved up beside Ester and said, “Carrick’s giving me a qualified ‘No.’ He wants me to publish or work with a staff. Either way, he figures to find out what I’m doing.”

“Guard Cabroni’s flank,” Ester said, “and I’ll try my hand with Carrick.”

Ward decided on a diversion. Turning, he tapped Cabroni’s shoulder.

“Joe, I’d like to make a statement. To me, the initials P-I-G stand for pride, integrity, guts. In the continuing dialogue with youth, certain concepts must be stressed, and nothing stresses a concept so much as a billy club…”

Moving away, Ester sensed her husband’s political tactics and applauded him. Alex was diverting the anti-police bias of the group by offering himself as a sacrificial goat. Ester was proud of her husband and delighted by the image of Alex as a goat.

When excited, Alex had the most sensual walk in the world. On his blunt-toed feet extended from long legs swung slightly forward on his pelvis, he pranced toward her like the front half of a goat pulling a cart on every other Tuesday, and Ester always tingled when he walked.

Carrick stood near the bar with another professor talking of nucleotides. Ester caught his eye and pointed toward the front door with a swing of her shoulders. Without a word, she walked through the living room and onto the front porch. Shortly thereafter, Carrick stood behind her.

“I know you’re interested in horticulture, Fred, and I wanted to show you my geraniums.”

Carrick had no interest in horticulture, but he was gallant. “Ester, I’ve always wanted to take a good peek at your geraniums.”

She took him by the hand and led him to the steps, where they paused. She took a single step down from Carrick and turned toward one of the boxes flanking the steps on concrete abutments. The geraniums flared pink in the sunset.

“Aren’t they gorgeous, Fred?” she said, looking down at the flowers.

“Never saw anything like them before,” Carrick agreed.

“I wish you could see them in broad daylight.”

“Ester, they’d be beautiful at night,
especially
at night.”

She averted her eyes to the flowers to let Carrick peek unseen. Academic men were shy and she had a technique, Alex called it antiphrasis, which she used on shy men.

“Fred, you’re a handsome, impressive man with your lion’s mane hair and your Phi Beta Kappa key dangling. Do you ever think of taking time off from your grubby old office?”

“Some times more than other times, but I’m an administrator with a staff that’s more willing than able, and it’s hard to keep my staff on an even keel.” His voice trailed off.

From years of practice, Ester had learned to read a man’s conversation on a subliminal level. Carrick had a mild case of impotency, she decided.

“You might find someone who could handle it for you. Perhaps a woman. Some women have capacity you men never suspect.”

“I’ve got all kinds of problems,” he said.

“I specialize in problems.”

“Some are confidential.”

“I can keep a confidence.”

“Even from Alex?”

“Especially from Alex. Why don’t you drop by Wednesday for lunch? That’s the maid’s day off and Alex always takes lunch in his laboratory. We can discuss our problems.”

“Do
you
have problems, Ester?”

“Alex is my greatest problem. He’s at the laboratory so much of the time; there’s no staff to take care of things.”

“Why does he like to work alone?”

“He says other people’s world lines warp his world lines and he can’t concentrate.”

“What’s he doing down there in the annex, anyway?” Carrick’s voice sounded peevish.

Out of loyalty, Ester never spoke of Ward’s work, knowing his love of secrecy. “Carpentry work,” she evaded. “He is putting rungs back in broken ladders.”

“Fixing ladders, eh? Warped world lines? Maybe Alex has a problem… Well, I’d certainly like to meet you Wednesday.”

Nervously, Carrick clinched and unclinched his hand.

“You do that, Fred. I might help you firm up some of your weak areas, realign your staff.”

Ester looked away, inwardly troubled. She had been careful not to operate on campus. Some men were indiscreet, and she didn’t want Alex’s colleagues to think she was married to a cuckold. But Alex wanted the Nobel Prize, and there was no sacrifice she wouldn’t make for her husband.

“I swear, Ester,” Carrick breathed above her, “you have the most beautiful geraniums in the world.”

“Somebody wants you, Doctor Carrick,” Joe Cabroni called from the doorway, “way back in the rear of the patio.”

“I’ll see you later, Ester, and thanks for showing them to me.”

Cabroni was obviously angry as he walked up.

“What did he mean by I’ll see you later’?”

“At the buffet table, Joe. It’s almost time to be served.”

“What were you showing him?”

“My geraniums,” she pointed to the flower box. “Has someone given you a bad time, Joe?”

“Not me, but your husband’s about to get lynched while you’re out here flirting with that geranium-loving pansy.”

“Are you telling me the barrel-chested Doctor Carrick is a pansy?”

“That’s no barrel chest. That’s his bosoms. We learn a lot about perverts down at headquarters and believe me, Ester, he’s a morphadyke.”

She would have to ask Alex what a morphadyke was, she thought, as she took Cabroni’s arm and steered him back toward the house. Fifteen years with Alex had aroused in her a bemused curiosity as well as an awareness of inconsistencies in logic.

“Should you fear for my virtue around a pansy, Joe?”

“He’s got fingers,” Cabroni muttered. “I could tell by the way he kept moving his fingers, his female half’s a Lesbian.”

Ester’s duties as a hostess kept her from reporting to Ward immediately, but after she started the guests on the buffet, she managed a word with him.

“I don’t know where we stand with Carrick, yet. Joe got jealous and broke up our conversation. Joe says Carrick’s a morphadyke.”

“The word is ‘hermaphrodite,’ ” Ward told her. “It means one who is half a man and half a woman.”

“That would make for a cozy arrangement.” Ester spoke lightly, but she was troubled. With only half a man to work with, and that half impotent, she had a problem with Carrick.

Late Saturday afternoon under jacarandas arching purple over Pinyon Verde Lane, Ward nursed his VW up the hill to Ruth Gordon’s house, but he was less concerned about weak car batteries than about yesterday’s conversation with Ruth. She planned to use only one hamster for the experiment.

Although in later years she had grown crochety and frank in speech, Ward had never suspected Ruth of mental disintegration even when she turned her experimental animals into pets, and he considered multiple pets the last infirmity of a failing sentimentalist. Yet, however devoted to hamsters she might be, as a scientist she should know one animal did not constitute a control group.

High above Palo Alto, in a modified Gothic house flanked by groves of pines, Ruth lived in such isolation Ward feared for her safety. She seldom locked her doors. Inside was nothing worth stealing, she averred.

As Ward pulled up into her circular driveway at the end of the lane, he had to admit that some indices pointed toward Ruth’s senility. Since she was completely alone except for him, eventually he would have to consider her his responsibility, morally and financially.

Ward parked the car headed down the incline, set its brakes, and took his carpenter’s kit containing his electrolysis equipment and a pint of sugar phosphate from the back seat. At the doorway, with both hands full, he shouldered his way through the unlocked front door and entered. Down the hall he could see the back door was open. Ruth was probably in the rose garden behind.

Ward set the gear in the kitchen and noticed that an electrolysis vat, with built-in cathode, anode, and step-down transformer, had been placed by the sink. Mildly curious that Ruth should ask him to bring his heavier equipment when she had the vat available, Ward continued through the house and out onto the back porch.