“But we don’t know any of that,” he said. “It’s not you and me here in this auditorium in December two thousand thirteen. No. We are another species evolved from humanity by technologic and biological means fifty thousand years in the future. We have ocelot genes in our eyes and elephant folds in our brains. Our socialized souls have been colonized by bee and termite DNA and our emotional hearts have been conditioned by the best fiction ever written. Every one of us has the same last name and the stars have replaced our monetary system. A poor man owns only a few suns while the wealthy count their hoards in galaxies. We don’t even know what a turkey was. Drugs are manufactured by synthetic, surgically implanted organs. Our condition has surpassed the archaic definition of life with physical hearts replaced by plasma cells and micro-robots, instead of blood, replenishing and evolving us.
“And when we look back on these items — shopping receipts, traces of blood and memoirs — we find that they are priceless touchstones to our onetime humanity. Abraham Lincoln is of no more importance than Andrew H the checkout clerk at the twenty-four-hour drugstore. They, Abraham and Andrew, were just two apes who used primitive sounds to communicate rather than the subtle manipulation of the ten thousand strands of gravity.”
John stopped there. He’d taken the sense of history beyond its accepted border. Six months later he would look back on this talk as intellectual flummery.
The faces in the auditorium were angry, rejuvenated and bemused.
A man who makes his stand, Herman had said of heroes past, is a man ready to dig his own grave.
“Questions?” John said in an upbeat tone.
He luxuriated as the seconds passed.
Then:
“Shouldn’t you have turned the drugs and photograph and maybe even the bloody bandanna over to the police?” The questioner was Arnold Ott.
“I’m a scholar not a policeman,” John said. “I don’t know what this white powder is. Blood alone does not indict and photographs without a pedigree mean nothing. I am simply a conduit for the partial knowledge allowed mortal human beings. In other words — a historian.”
“But,” a female voice chimed in, “isn’t it dangerous to get that close to your subject?”
“Exactly!” Professor Woman ejaculated. “The most important lesson to learn is that we are dealing with life in all of its beauty and peril. Our history is material but it is also subjective, experiential. It can be as dangerous as a blow to the head.”
“You’re saying that Abraham Lincoln, the greatest U.S. president, is no more important than a late-night checkout clerk in a small-town drugstore?” Gregory Tracer asked.
“Yes,” John answered.
“That’s ridiculous,” the Civil War professor said. He then intoned, “Great men made this world.”
“No,” John replied. “Unknowable historical fate created us.”
“That’s crazy!” Ira Carmody shouted. “The world would have been a vastly different place without Socrates, Aristotle and Plato.”
“And they themselves would have been different without mothers, fathers and lovers. What about the ancient Greeks? Where would they have been without their tongue? Beyond that where would they have been without their Egyptian forebears?”
The shouting match continued for long minutes. John had one or two allies in the crowd but most of his peers thought him a fraud and a fool. His scholarship was dismissed, his renunciation of the written word ridiculed; his comparison of the great works of history to a public trash can caused the greatest insult.
“That is what you want to do to our lifework,” Annette Eubanks said, “discard it in the garbage with maggots and refuse.”
John smiled at his tormentors, returning time after time to his theme of the impossibility of the project on which they had all embarked.
“History is the primary edifice of the universe,” he said in an attempt at a summation. “We are bit players in events that surpass the religions, sciences and philosophies of the world. There is nothing too small or insignificant to have a place in this tapestry. There is nothing that can exist without the collaboration of everyone and everything else. It is ecstasy beyond our imagination and truth exceeding our ability to comprehend or express.”
Soon after that Dean James ascended the stage and dismissed the audience. He wouldn’t allow any more questions or anyone to approach John, who now sat on the table between his jacket and the Containment Report trunk.
He was exhausted and exhilarated by the presentation, feeling that he’d actually accomplished something. He sat on the table looking at the polished pine stage unaware that the room had been emptied and the doors locked.
John went over the words spoken and questions asked. He was aware that he’d soon be fired, that maybe he’d be arrested and dragged off to prison, but none of that mattered. He stood his ground before bellowing barbarians ready to end him. That was worth a reversal or two.
“That was a pretty good talk,” a man said.
John raised his head. Ron Underhill was the last person he expected to see.
“You liked it?” the professor asked the gardener.
“Very much. It made me think about things. You know most people believe that they understand their world but really it’s not true. I mean, we know things that we do with our hands pretty much. But what happened in some other country or century or even behind a closed door while we slept, well, it’s all just speculation now isn’t it?”
“Have you always been a gardener, Mr. Underhill?”
“I told you before,” he said gently. “I used to work in an office. I started out shuffling papers and then it was computer files. One day my position became what they called redundant and I was unemployed. But that was okay because gardening was always my first love.”
“For me it’s history,” John said. “It’s like some mythological beast that preys on the souls as well as the flesh of men. I follow it through the battlefields of our defeats knowing that one day it will turn on me.”
There was concern in the older man’s mild features. In ways Ron Underhill reminded John of France Bickman.
“I only had one question, Professor,” Ron said. “I didn’t ask because I’m only just a gardener and this seemed like some kind of official thing.”
“What’s that, Ron?”
“Why do you bother trying to educate these people?”
“What do you mean?”
The gardener hopped up on the table next to the teacher. John looked up and out at the empty hall.
“You been studying this idea of yours for a very long time haven’t you?”
“Nearly my entire life.”
“But the people out there.” Ron gestured at the empty pews. “They haven’t spent two hours thinking about any of it. They came here to advance their careers not get down on their knees in the dirt and smell the droppings they grew from. They don’t want to hear about blood and hatred, about the junkyard that’s their history.”
“You did listen” John said.
“Talk like that takes a whole lifetime to understand, Professor. These people here are apprentices, tyros who can’t imagine what the war they’re marching to will be.”
“You’re well read, Ron.”
“I only got one room and no TV or radio. Once a year I go to a family reunion but other than that my nose is either in the earth or a book.”
“I don’t know why I feel like I have to say something,” John said answering the gardener’s question. “I guess it’s my duty.”
“Duty is any creature’s greatest virtue,” Ron said. “Most people have no idea what it means. They think they do. For them it’s badgering children to get good grades or making piles of money, making sure some dead religious leader’s ideas are made sacrosanct or simply that the world doesn’t change.”