Stratman had sighed over expediencies, and then remembered the huge sum that he was being offered, and he had not interrupted again.
The Secretary had gone on crisply. There were competent physicists throughout the nation toiling night and day to develop further Stratman’s recent discovery. The Defence Department had studied the programme, and had felt that it was too scattered, too disjointed, and that lack of direction and cohesion might cause a fatal lag in the work. The facts had been laid before the President, and he, himself, had recommended that Max Stratman be appointed co-ordinator of the vast programme and be well paid out of unassigned Defence Department funds.
Impressed, Stratman had inquired, ‘What would the job entail?’
‘Constant travel around the country. You could headquarter in the Pentagon. But we’d want you in Palo Alto, Boston, Key West, Death Valley, Phoenix, El Paso, out in Libya at Azizia, wherever the solar people are working, to see that they’re getting the most out of their time, to see that they’re on the right track, to straighten them out when necessary, to show them shortcuts, to give them pep talks, when necessary. You know the kind of men they are, and you know that you are about the only person in the world they’d listen to. It could accelerate our programme and be a real contribution to the government. You’d be responsible only to the President, and report to him at monthly intervals.’
‘How long would you need me?’
‘Two years.’
Stratman did not like the job. He saw through the subterfuge. It was really a glorified salesman’s job, one that might be done as well by a politician or militarist or educator. What the government really wanted was his name, possibly to impress the young men on the project, possibly to extort more money from Congress. They wanted his name, and he wanted-nein, he needed-their money. It was a dilemma. It was a dilemma because the work at the Society, which they could not yet understand until it was reality and utilitarian, was far more important. He was on the verge of new breakthroughs in converting solar energy, but he could never give them a date, and so it would have no value to them. Also, capsuled in his office at the Society, he could live on in his old way, undisturbed, free to breathe and think. The new job might demand energy and strength that he did not possess. It was this last that made him remember his summer visit to Dr. Ilman, and at once he knew that his decision would develop not from his wishes but from the oracle that was Dr. Ilman’s electrocardiograph machine.
‘I will need the remainder of the week to decide,’ he had finally told the Secretary of Defence.
‘We must know by Saturday,’ the Secretary had said.
‘You shall.’
‘Please keep in mind that it was the President, himself, who suggested you for this job, Professor.’
‘I am not unaware of it, Mr. Secretary.’
When he had hung up the receiver, he had known that he must accept the offer. It was then that he had lifted the receiver off the cradle again and had telephoned Dr. Fred Ilman for an immediate appointment.
Suddenly, he realized that the door beside him had opened, and that the nurse was standing in the doorway.
‘You may dress, Professor,’ she said. ‘Dr. Ilman will see you now-in his office.’
He searched her bland face for an opinion, but there was none. He rose, took his shirt off the hook, and began to dress.
A few minutes later, he entered Dr. Ilman’s small, grey office. The physician was hunched over his desk, writing on a sheet of paper. He was hardly taller than Stratman himself, a slender, wiry Missourian in his late forties, with crewcut and darting eyes and a reputation for candour. Although he was no longer in the army, he worked for the army as an orthopaedic surgeon in Lawson General Hospital, one of the major amputee hospitals in the nation, and several days a week he doubled as an M.D. to treat government personnel at the hospital as well as the geniuses at the nearby Society for Basic Research.
No sooner had Stratman come through the door than Dr. Ilman dropped his pen, leaped to his feet, and extended his hand.
‘Max-how are you?’
Stratman took his hand cordially. ‘That is for you to tell me, Fred.’
Dr. Ilman waved Stratman to the hard-backed chair across the desk. ‘Sit down, light up your pipe, and we’ll straighten everything out.’
Stratman sat down and put a match to his cold pipe, and Dr. Ilman settled into the swivel chair behind the desk.
‘I’m curious, Max, extremely curious, about what brought you here today. You weren’t due until January. Why the request for a cardiograph today? Didn’t you feel well? Did you have chest pain? What?’
‘I think I told you on the phone. I wanted a checkup.’
‘But why? There must be a reason.’
Originally, Stratman had not planned to go into his motivations for Dr. Ilman. He did not wish to be forced into explanations and family history and mysteries. Still, Ilman was a friend-he met Ilman and his wife socially at least once a month-and a perceptive and penetrating man, and Stratman saw that it would be time-wasting to be devious.
‘I see it is no use to evade you, Fred,’ he said, at last. ‘There is a specific reason, yes.’
Dr. Ilman waited patiently.
Stratman resumed. ‘The government has offered me a bigger job, a better one. It will be a management job, and I will have to be exceedingly mobile. The position would require constant travel and, well, certainly an added burden of work and responsibility. I thought I should have a checkup before accepting-’
‘Why do you need such a job, Max? You are full of honours-’
‘Ach, honours. Did you ever have a cooked entrée of honours? Money, Fred, there is twice the money I am making, and I need it.’
‘I had imagined you were comfortable-’
‘It is not enough. I am thinking ahead-of Emily.’
‘In my opinion, you have done nicely by your niece. And when you are no longer here, I’m sure she will do nicely by herself. I would guess she has problems, whatever they may be, but she is competent, attractive-more than attractive-and young enough to manage for herself, when and if it becomes necessary. I can’t for the life of me see why any decision you make in the present must be based on her future.’
Dr. Ilman waited, but saw that Stratman was not prepared to reply at once. Instead of pressing for an explanation, Dr. Ilman found a cigar in his lower drawer, bit off the end, and made elaborate preparation to smoke it.
Stratman sat meditatively, peering through the shutters, hypnotized by the rain as it splattered against the window, and fanned into rivulets that trickled slowly to the sill. He wondered how he could explain the truth to a physician who was merely a friend and not of his blood.
Could he tell Ilman about the events of 1934? Both he and his older brother Walther had considered themselves agnostics, if anything. Although the mother he cherished had been Jewish, Stratman’s father had been Lutheran. Stratman had grown up between the two faiths, or, as a compromise, outside them, and consequently he had known as little of Judaism as of Protestantism. As an adult, he had not affiliated himself, or interested himself, in any religion, beyond that of Science. He had not believed in a Maker, a Creator of an orderly universe, but had believed that if the universe were truly orderly, it had been an accident of natural forces. He had felt that to ascribe the beginning of the universe, the planets, earth, man, to Something was merely evidence of man’s lack of imagination. Groping mankind had invented words like ‘beginning’. Did there have to be a beginning? Could not the universe have always been here? Could not its existence have been beyond the grasp of man’s feeble understanding and semantics? If explanations need be sought, they could only be sought by Science. Meanwhile, let cretin man satisfy himself with his spiritual playthings-holy books, relics, churches, temples, Jehovah, Zeus, Buddha, Quetzalcoatl, Son of Man, Prophet, and all the rest of the tranquillizers.