— Just a moment—who had said that he was God? — No one had said that he was God. Nothing had. That was the beauty of the explanation. It was simply an extreme case of what Dr. Wilfred was talking about. Of what he was bringing into being, as God had done himself, by his very act of talking about it.
There was a silence at the end of this section of the conversation, as everyone contemplated the profundity of what Dr. Wilfred had said, and rejoiced in their good fortune in having him there in person among them. And the hair flopped over his soft brown eyes in such a fetching manner.
I can relate this to my own experience as a financial consultant, thought Chuck Friendly, the second-richest man in the state of Rhode Island. In just such a way have I, even without divine powers, created value where no value previously existed.
And he’s still just a kid! thought Mrs. Chuck Friendly, the second-richest woman. I wish I could take him home and look after him a bit. Show him around, introduce him to a few people. Get him some shirts and pants that fit better than the ones he’s wearing, which seem to be several sizes too big. Pamper him some. Feed him up. Give him his personal space, of course, to get on with his work …
* * *
Not everyone was quite so impressed by Dr. Wilfred, though. K. D. Clopper, for example, who had made his money as a nationwide franchiser of golf-cart concessions, thought that it all sounded complete bunkum, but then almost everything he heard sounded the same, and he had learned to keep his opinions to himself if he didn’t want to get a roasting from Mrs. Clopper afterwards.
Wilson Westerman hadn’t even thought it was bunkum. He had formed no opinion at all, because he was busy trying to decide whether to sell his Manganese Industries Preferred. Mrs. Wilson Westerman, for that matter, had been worrying about whether to change her t’ai chi trainer.
The almost egregiously English couple, Cedric and Rosamund Chailey, had slipped quietly away when the conversation turned to God. It had not seemed polite to be present when anything so American was being discussed.
“Oddly enough,” said Cedric Chailey to his wife as they walked back to their room, “Norman Wilfred and I were in college together.”
“You’ll have something to talk about, then.”
“Year after me. I didn’t know him well.”
“You should have reminded him.”
“I was going to. Only it’s a funny thing. He’s not Norman Wilfred.”
“Not Norman Wilfred?”
“This one. No. Nothing like him.”
“You mean this is another Norman Wilfred?”
“Same one, apparently. I looked up the biographical note in the brochure.”
“So it is him?”
“But not him.”
“Odd.”
“I thought so.”
He waited, because Mrs. Chailey had stopped to inhale the scent of a low-hanging branch of deep blue blossom.
“Heavenly!”
“Heavenly.”
They walked on.
“Are you going to mention it to anyone?” said Mrs. Chailey.
“I don’t know. What do you think? Bit awkward. I don’t want to cause trouble.”
Mrs. Chailey had stopped again to stroke a cat that had emerged from the bushes.
“Anyway,” she said. “Motes and beams, perhaps. Since I’m not Mrs. Chailey.”
“That’s true.”
He stopped and looked round. Mrs. Chailey stopped as well and looked at him.
“What?” she said.
Mr. Chailey took her hand and kissed it. She smiled at him.
“Also,” she said, “you’re not always Mr. Chailey.”
“Hush, my love,” said Mr. Chailey. “You don’t know that.”
21
High up in the villa called Empedocles, behind shutters forever closed and blinds forever drawn, Christian Schneck, the director of the foundation, sat cross-legged on the floor in his prayer shawl. His lank gray hair fell on his shoulders. His face, lit only by the little colored sanctuary lights on the low table in the middle of the austerely empty room, was lined and emaciated. He listened in silence, expressionless, as his assistant, Eric Felt, reported to him on the foundation’s guest lecturer.
“He’s got a lot of blond hair,” said Eric Felt. “He brushes it out of his eyes and smiles. He’s always smiling. He’s the kind of scientist who appears on television. A celebrity. A popularizer. Is there a role for God in physics? That kind of stuff. Jokes. Paradoxes. Pseudo-profundity. Pretty much the sort of fraud that you’d expect Nikki Hook to pick.”
Eric Felt was not just Christian’s assistant. He was his companion and his confidant. His ally in the fight to prevent Nikki from dismantling everything that Christian had fought for since he had taken over from Dieter: proper European intellectual standards, the seriousness that he had always silently embodied. Since Christian never spoke these days, it was Eric Felt who had to express to the world the concern he knew Christian felt. And since Christian never left his room now, Eric was his eyes and ears as well as his voice. This morning he had been lurking unnoticed at the back of the guests surrounding Dr. Wilfred, because he knew how concerned Christian was about Nikki’s choice. It was a testimony perhaps to Dr. Wilfred’s appeal that no one had noticed Eric, even though he bulged at people so aggressively. He bulged partly from indignation, partly from a high intake of organic noodles combined with the sedentary life that he and Christian led together in Empedocles. It was difficult to bulge inconspicuously, particularly if you were doing it as Eric was, in a plum-colored T-shirt and three-quarter-length orange skateboarding trousers.
He bulged much less when he was talking to Christian, because he was sitting cross-legged on the floor himself, and leaning forward to take the strain off his spine. With Christian, also, he was expressing not indignation but reverence. Christian had suffered and had mastered his suffering. The suffering and the mastery were recorded deep in the eroded dry limestone of his face. Once upon a time he had done things. Now he had gone beyond that. What was it that he had once done? No one could now remember, not even Eric. This was how far above and beyond doing he had gone.
“Another Brit, of course, Dr. Wilfred,” said Eric. “The whole place is crawling with them! It’s all Nikki Hook’s doing. Everything you have ever stood for is being Anglo-Saxonized! Trivialized! Ironized!”
Eric knew about Brits. He was one himself.
“I do my best, Christian,” he said. “But I can’t do it all on my own. Nikki Hook’s got her claws into everything. She twists Mrs. Toppler round her finger. And last week I saw her talking to Mr. Papadopoulou. She’s up to something with him as well.”
The whole future of the foundation hung in the balance. Dieter had made the foundation what it was, and Christian, Dieter’s companion and personal assistant, had been his chosen successor. When Dieter had faded quietly away, worn out by austerity and dedication, and been quietly laid to rest under the stones of the agora, head down towards the center of the earth in accordance with his highly specialized private beliefs, there had been no question but that the board of trustees would appoint Christian in his place. In the fullness of time Christian in his turn had taken Eric as his companion and personal assistant, and it seemed that the foundation was developing a line of succession as part of its unwritten constitution. One day, many years hence, no doubt, when Christian faded away in his turn, Eric would assume his office as director. Wouldn’t he? Eric himself wasn’t entirely confident. If Christian failed to make his wishes clear … If he let his powers trickle away through his fingers, while brash newcomers with no sensitivity to the constitutional niceties thrust themselves forward …