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The Crucifixion of Esmerelda Sweetwater - Excerpt
By Don Elkins and Carla L. Rueckert
Prologue
The night comes upon him, standing without movement in the ocean of wheat. The planet under him stiffens in the cold, and he becomes very quiet, welcoming the cold, the wind, the light of the stars.
The heavenly constellations ride past very slowly, but he is unaware of time, for he has cleansed his mind of concept and knows only his pure, original mind, bathing itself in the Creator’s light. Into this mind comes the voice of his teacher:
“Picture with me now, if you will, a sphere that is called a planet. What is the color of this planet?
“The eye of the fish gazes upon this planet, and it sees life, and it is glad of life. For out of the planet grow living things. For what constitutes life? They are perfect, and they radiate energy.
“And the eye of the fish looks on.
“Out of the planet come living things, and they move about on its surface, and they swim in its waters, and they fly in its atmosphere, and they do various and many things. And each seeks food.
“And the eye of the fish looks on.
“And all of the life interacts with life, and evolves to great consciousness and intellect and knowing. Then rises from the surface that being known in the universe as man, with his awareness of being.
“And the eye of the fish looks on.
“Man goes forth upon his planet, and acts, and thinks, and thinks of his actions, and acts with his fellow creatures. And they learn from each other as they interact with each other.
“And the eye of the fish looks on.
“And man dresses himself in fine garments, and bows down his head to that which he holds holy, and shows great emotion and sense of being.
“And the eye of the fish looks on.
“And man dwells in great wisdom, and his power is great. He knows that he thinks the thoughts of wisdom itself, for he is wise. He knows that he gives forth love, for he is love, and he acts with dignity and grace, for he is divine and full of grace.
“And the eye of the fish looks on.
“Throughout the heavens, the multitudes bow down. And they bow down to the fish. For all that he does is look. And if all that he does is look, then he is wise. The multitudes bow down to wisdom, for they know that it is love.
“And the eye of the fish looks on.
“His wisdom permeates the heavens, and is the heavens, for the heavens are love.”
He who seeks stands alone in the field of wheat. As the meditation ends he begins to become aware of the fatigue in his body. The light that has sustained his mind leaves him, and he becomes aware of the cold. He is glad of the cold, and glad of his body. He becomes aware of the convenience of his body, of the changing attitudes of his feet, balancing against the changing wind. Of the arms so ready to use, the hands so ready to serve. Of the neck, supporting the head, cushioning the brain. Of the skin, so sensitive to its environment, telling the mind of the soft, scraping brush of the wheat against him, of the brilliant cold that is affecting him. Of his eyes that can see at his will all that dwells in his world, the moonlit color of the wheat, the velvet black of the winter sky.
And he who seeks, standing alone, accepts himself as part of the creation, and sees that he and his body and his will are part of the all, and are the all.
Stiffly beginning to move, he embarks upon the journey to which he has been summoned, from one planet to another planet, from the service of the Creator to the service of the same Creator.
He prepares his mind and loosens his body to an inner heat, and disappears from the field, summoned to the place of departure. A great hall of white marble stands before him. Birdsong filters through the vaults of the highdomed ceiling, and the sound of the wind chants in the windows. The great hall is totally empty, save for the supporting pillars standing upon its floor.
Through the pillars, walking upon the white floor yellowed by the yellow light sunning its windows, walks a delft white girl with golden hair. She walks towards him, the golden-haired boy with skin of palest stone. They are twins in coloring, in height, in delicacy of feature, in purity of thought, in strength of will.
There are no words needed; only the simple mouths of touching speak. They clasp hands and wait, for they know they are to serve together, and they know of their suitability to serve.
The mind of this temple speaks in thunder, and they see in each others’ eyes the subtly changing colors of the thought:
“In the creation of the Father there dwells a planet of sorrow. This planet approaches its harvest, and yet in its heart there dwells no joy, for its harvest shall be poor. And as it approaches its harvest, it cries out in its heart for all of those that will fall and be swept away. Few there are on this planet who may stem the tide of sadness, and build a high place for those who would have fallen before the harvest reaper came. These need your aid, to serve in their love as you serve in yours.”
The youth and the girl stand for some time, hands and eyes touching, until their will is perfectly as one. Then they speak:
“We will go, and we will serve.”
They walk in silence from the temple of their fathers and from the time of their joyful, slender innocence. What had been separate is now joined; what had been unthought is now begun. And even as they have been beloved in the garden of their childhood, now they open like flowers, to give forth the scent of their thoughts, and the crystal colors of their ripened souls. For this planet of their childhood is not Earth, with its legacy of sadness, but another, brighter star’s planet, with another and brighter legacy, where their souls have been let loose to grow naturally and in joy. And their readiness to serve is as inevitable as the turning of the leaf to the golden, silent sun.
Chapter One
There was a battered desk in one corner of the large office, and a chair that went behind the desk, and another chair that sat beside the desk. There were also about three thousand books in the room: books lining the walls, books piled in precariously high stacks on the floor, books holding other books open. The window showed its pale morning light to the books, and to the portly, curly-haired little man who sat at the desk, his bright black eyes twinkling merrily across the disarray, watching the door.
Dr. Pablo Padeyevsky was too short, too round-bellied, too reminiscent of the organ grinder without monkey to have the reputation that he had. But he managed to make people forget his rotundity, make them recognize him for the researcher, educator, and consultant that he was. His technique for making people realize his talents was simple and effortless: he opened his mouth to lecture, or answer a question.
And so, although he was no impressive figure, sitting behind the scarred old desk, round steel-rimmed spectacles framing roundish eyes, his reputation went before him, and there was no one, including Theodore Behr, who was not in awe of him.
Professor Pablo Padeyevsky’s connection with Theodore Behr began in a most tenuous fashion. In the first place, he deserved the title of professor by virtue of only one course. He taught a graduate course in the history and philosophy of science each semester, spending one morning each week at the university. The course was done mainly as a favor to the dean of the graduate school of the university: he had convinced Padeyevsky that the school’s reputation—and it was already considerable—depended to an extent on continuing to include Padeyevsky’s name in its list of faculty. Pablo Padeyevsky had therefore continued teaching the one course, the fee for which was small change to him, compared to his consulting fees and other income. He ran the course, as might be expected, along iconoclastic lines, speaking from the standpoint of the administration. He required no readings, no homework: he assigned one paper or two, depending upon the interest of the student, and graded not by the footnote or the page but by the idea. In the eleven years that Pablo Padeyevsky had been teaching this course, over four hundred people had gotten Bs; seven had gotten an A.
That Theodore Behr came into contact with the good Dr. Padeyevsky was sheerest coincidence. Theodore had almost never come to college at all. His childhood had been a quiet nightmare of being slow and awkward. He had only by miracles managed to achieve the tenth grade in high school, the miracles being allowed because teachers had nothing against the boy: he was not a fomenter of classroom trouble. They usually couldn’t even remember who he was. And so they passed him barely, to his sophomore year in high school.
This was all the boy needed to work from. In this year, he was given his first pure science courses, and he took off from his zero status like a rocket from the launching pad. Before his junior year, he had been given IQ tests, and other tests: he was acclaimed a genius; he was accelerated; he was forgiven the foreign languages and athletics credits he would not pay attention to; he was graduated from high school with a near-perfect grade record at the tender age of sixteen, and enrolled post-haste in pure sciences at the local university, where Pablo Padeyevsky taught his single course.
Theodore Behr’s own attitude towards his environment had not changed just because it had begun looking at him as a genius instead of a dodo. His eye had always been a cold eye, an outsider’s eye; he hadn’t meant it to be, but there was only one way his mind worked. And that was, apparently, one hundred and eighty degrees from the way everyone else’s minds worked. When other people thought he was a dodo, he agreed with them. It was self-evident. He could not understand what made his classmates’ jokes funny, what made their lives interesting enough to continue with. He had never met anyone he considered worth talking to. Therefore, he was most likely a dodo, a real out-of-step person. And when the people around him decided he was a genius, Theodore could again see what they meant. He knew the answer to most scientific questions because they seemed self-evident. Obviously, this self-evidence was unusual. Other people didn’t see it. So, all right, they could call him a genius. To himself, it simply felt normal to know what he knew, to think what he thought, to speculate as he did speculate.
But both the genius and the dodo are lonely types, and Theodore was very lonely. He had had a brief hope that in college he would meet someone worthwhile, someone with whom to share his ideas, his developing philosophies. The hope did not last. He was accelerated again; he approached the age of nineteen and the status of second semester college senior without meeting a soul to talk to.
Just on a whim, he decided to sit in on the graduate course on the philosophy of science taught by Dr. Pablo Padeyevsky. He was not eligible to enroll in the course, for he was not in graduate school, but it was quite common for the brighter undergraduates voluntarily to fill up the back seats in his lectures, simply to listen. Because, when Padeyevsky was on, when he was letting his mind run, when he was talking about hermetic philosophy or theosophy or alchemy or the relativistic implications suggesting the worlds of anti-matter, he could hold a group of coupon-minded, professional-student-geared grade getters in complete thrall. He could work miracles of spellbinding. It worked on the students who had come to learn; it worked on the ones who had come to get a degree; it worked very strongly on Theodore Behr. He was, in fact, inspired to write and hand in a paper to Dr. Padeyevsky, even though he was not officially a member of the class. The chance to share his thoughts with the first man he had ever met that might appreciate them was irresistible.
Pablo Padeyevsky was reading that paper through for the fourth time, now, in the light of early morning. He was refreshing his mind on each inflection of thought. He had found this paper remarkable, exciting, surprising. He had summoned Theodore Behr when he had read it, because he wanted to see the boy who had done this work, and because he couldn’t imagine an undergraduate, or even a graduate student, having the background necessary to write this paper. The technical competence was outstanding, but the insight linking physical science with metaphysics, the maturity of mind that could produce such exploration, was a puzzle and a joy to him.
The young man had begun by listing quite a few basic equations in the fields of electricity, quantum mechanics, relativity, and atomic physics. In each equation was found the value ‘c’, which was the symbol for the velocity of light. The fifteen pages of the paper answered the simple question: ‘why were so many basic equations dependent on a property of light; namely, its speed?’ The paper was replete with many mathematical analogies to metaphysical concepts, and was sophisticated and incredibly accurate in detail, but the basic postulations were even more incredible, and were much simpler. The young man had said that there were two basic substances in the universe: light and consciousness. From these two substances, one physical, one non-physical, were formed all the various physical materials that we know of, collectively, as matter, in each of its various and infinite configurations. He postulated that consciousness acted upon light in order to form these varieties of matter, and further postulated that all changes, all of what we call evolution, came about as a function of changing and evolving consciousness. He went on to state that consciousness was a field of energy that gained its power from duality, or polarity. Just as there were positive and negative poles in the material or physical universe, so were there positive and negative poles which affected consciousness. These poles were known, he postulated, as good and evil. He set forth the theory, in conclusion, that the physical phenomena which body themselves forth as the physical universe, were reflections of corresponding phenomena within the realm of consciousness; that duality of good and evil in consciousness was responsible for the physical interactions and changes that made up the material world. All energies in the physical creation were aberrations from total perfection. These aberrations resulted from a corresponding energy bias in the good/evil potential difference which moved consciousness away from its total perfection.
So had spoken Theodore Behr, and Dr. Pablo Padeyevsky was very, very eager to meet him. His office hours were, admittedly, a bit odd, seven to eight in the morning, but that was the time of day that suited him best; he liked sunrises and sunsets, and went to bed as early as he could, whenever he could. He sat, cheerful and sturdy in his big chair, almost elf-like, and very expectant.
Theodore was expectant too, but the feeling partook much more of nervousness. He had told the truth about what he thought in the paper, and had gone out on a limb emotionally by showing it to another human being. Theodore was no fonder of ridicule than anyone else And he expected that, having exposed himself to the outside world, he would get ridiculed. His relations with that world had been so uniformly unhappy that he waited in apprehension for the emotional blows to fall. What a fool he had been, to think that anyone would ever be in sympathy with him. He threaded his way through the morass of short hallways and cul-de-sacs and finally discovered where the capricious numbering system had deposited Pablo Padeyevsky’s office. He knocked tentatively on the frosted glass door.
“Come in.”
He opened the door to the ocean of books, and his eyes rebelled for just a minute; then he found the moving entity in their midst. Padeyevsky was bouncing towards him, beaming at him, one plump hand stuck out for a warm handshake. Holding on to Theodore’s arm, he steered him through a two-foot avenue in the stacks of books, and sat him down on the chair beside the desk.
“Have you eaten breakfast?”
Theodore stared. He kept on staring. This was the ridicule he had been afraid of? This was the biting and satirical barrage of gibes about his paper? “Ah, no, Professor Padeyevsky, I, ah, no, I haven’t.”
“Very good. Sweet rolls, lemonade ... do you like cheese? Here’s some milk, just got it today, and instant coffee, if the water’s hot.” Padeyevsky opened a gap in the wall of books that turned out to be a refrigerator, and removed things. He checked an aluminum break in more book stacks that turned out to be an electric heating plate. “And call me Pablo. You’ll sprain your tongue with Professor Padeyevsky.” He spooned coffee powder into two dubiously clean cups. Behr took things into limp hands, ate first bites, and stared, until he discovered he was being stared back at. Then he found that it wasn’t such a bad idea to return the warm, friendly appraisal which Pablo’s bright, blackbutton eyes were giving him. He didn’t mind being a specimen under this particular microscope.
Pablo Padeyevsky was staring, staring with rising elation. It was too good to be true. This boy was the one he had been looking for, he and his two fellow experimenters, for years. He examined Theodore’s features. The slender, pale face, with its high cheekbones, its wide-spaced, rather deepset eyes, the high forehead, the carefully modeled, almost arrogant discipline of the nose and mouth, all bore an uncanny resemblance to his niece, Esmerelda Sweetwater. The same features that made for startling beauty in a girl added up to totally unremarkable, quiet good looks in a boy. He judged Theodore’s height to be about six feet; that was right, Esmerelda was exactly six feet tall. And Theodore was of the same blonde coloring that his niece enjoyed. There really didn’t seem to be any doubt.
Padeyevsky held up the paper he had just been rereading. “I was wondering what the source of these thoughts might be.”
Theodore considered. “Really, there isn’t any source. I’ve been doing my own research in the natural sciences for quite a while now, since I was about fifteen. And philosophy has always interested me; I’ve read a lot of it. But these particular ideas are just my own, I guess. I’ve never read them anywhere. It just seems to me to be the way that things work.”
Dr. Padeyevsky’s face was incandescent with his smile. “Perfect, perfect. I’ll tell you what, Theodore. I’d like for you to work with me on a special project.”
Theodore was having intense difficulty believing what he had heard. The man hadn’t even begun to discuss the paper. Now he wanted the help of an undergraduate. “Uh,” he said.
“It is a very unusual experimental project. Are you interested?”
“Uh,” repeated Theodore.
Pablo Padeyevsky waited.
Theodore got part of himself under control. “Why me?”
“Because I believe that you are an alien. In fact, I believe that you are the one alien that we have been looking for for years.”
“Oh, no, sir. I was born right here in this county, lived here all my life. I’ve never even been out of the United States.”
“Not that kind of alien. I think that your spirit has dwelled other places than this planet.”
Theodore sat in stunned silence.
“Do you know what I mean by ‘spirit’?” Padeyevsky spoke gently, taming his exuberance. “Have you run across the words ‘mental body’ or ‘astral body’ or ‘soul’ in your reading in philosophy? Meaning the true body, the one that does not die when the physical body dies?”
Theodore had indeed run across each of these words.
“Then that is what I mean. I believe that your mental body, your soul, is not native to this planet. It is an alien to Earth.”
Theodore’s mind was beginning to function. If Dr. Padeyevsky hadn’t held such a very high place in his estimation prior to this meeting, Theodore would probably have left. As it was, he sat and munched absentmindedly on cheese and danish, and tried to follow the peculiar conversation. “You mean you think I lived other places than here, before I was born?”
“Exactly.” Dr. Padeyevsky’s beam extended still further towards each ear. “Every particle of consciousness, Theodore, has to come from someplace. You have explained how consciousness acts and how it changes in your paper, and you are to be given full credit for that. Now, it should make sense to you that each particle of consciousness continues, through these changes, and grows with each new experience, whether it is the consciousness of a rock, a tree, an animal, or a person. This individualized consciousness continues with the evolution, grows with it. Do you not agree?”
Of course Theodore agreed. It was, more or less, in his paper.
“Very well then. In the case of some human entities such as you, Theodore, the consciousness that assimilated the chemicals that formed a physical body for you to use here, upon the surface of this planet, was a consciousness alien to this Earth. Totally alien, in nature, in knowledge, in understanding. Haven’t you ever felt like an alien here?”
The question was easy, Theodore had answered it, to himself, many times. “Yes, I’ve always been different from everybody else. In fact, I always noticed one simple rule. If society believes something is right and correct and proper, then it must be wrong. Because society always seems to look at things just the opposite of be way I do.”
Pablo reached over the desk’s heaps of books and pounded Theodore heartily on the shoulder. “That’s wonderful. Just wonderful. Now, I repeat. I have reason to believe that you are an alien. And, because of your thinking, and the fact that you and my niece have a great similarity of physical appearance, I believe that you are the alien, the one that we have been waiting for, for several years. Will you join me in working on this experiment?”
Theodore had never been an unkind or surly person; he had just been alone. Now, for the first time in his life, he was being offered a part in something by someone he could respect and admire, even if he sounded strange at the moment. “Yes, sir, ah, Pablo. There’s nothing I’d rather do.”
“Excellent. I’m almost sure that you’re the right one, but of course the acid test will come when you meet my niece, Esmerelda Sweetwater.”
Theodore nodded, uncomprehendingly.
“I’ll give you a map. Do you have a car?”
Theodore nodded affirmatively again.
“That’s fine. Can you visit us this weekend?”
A third nod from the very happy and very confused Theodore. He accepted the accurate pencil map of the way to the Padeyevsky farm, and thought of very little else for the rest of the week. The October days seemed as crisp as his anticipation; he wondered about the experiment, about the person known as Esmerelda—an odd name, an interesting one—and, most of all, about being an alien.
Finally Friday’s classes came to an end, and he was soon moving down the highway out of town, as per Padeyevsky’s instructions. The map he had drawn had detailed the twenty or so miles of winding road which led off the main highway to his farm with clarity, but had said nothing about the great beauty of these roads, the October radiance of the trees shielding the blacktop like a tawny arch in the late afternoon sun. The autumn glow of the maples lent a russet sweetness to the fields and woods Theodore passed, and he felt like the solitary viewer of a perfect and fleeting work of art.
He mused on the conversation that had so interested him in Pablo Padeyevsky’s office. He must practice saying Pablo, instead of Professor Padeyevsky. What had he meant by it all? Well, he thought, if the map was correct, he would soon find out; the map stated that there was a gravel road marked with his name just beyond this single-lane bridge. The map did not lie, and Theodore’s middle-aged Ford passed under an even more richly furnished canopy as it began to follow the winding, hilly private road. The driveway extended nearly two miles; there was an abandoned farmhouse, nearly leveled by years of weather, at the head of the drive; there was a side road and a mailbox marked ‘Mathpart Fendler’ off to the right; these were the only dwellings close to the Padeyevsky house. The good doctor certainly had privacy.
Then the ‘farm’ itself opened up in front of Theodore. FARM, he thought, as he slowed the car to an idle in the broad, circular driveway which spread generously from the gravel road. This was no farm: it was an estate, a domain, a plantation. The circle of drive was bordered with peonies; there was thick forest on each side of the house. The house itself was three stories tall, and had the look of a grand ship that had come to rest on high ground. It was brick, with a verandah across the columned front and going around on the left side to form a covered, open-sided porch; the right side of the house was indented for half a room, then it elled asymmetrically into an enclosed screen porch. Through the long windows across the front of the house, Theodore could see the elegance of draped velvet curtains. He began to feel obscurely apologetic for everything: his casual clothes, his venerable and never dignified automobile, his unprepossessing face, his unassuming personality. He awaited the liveried footman.
None appeared. As he parked in the shade of a huge, low-branched walnut tree, a collie bounded up to him, tail wagging happily, no sign of the watchdog personality about him. Theodore took an instant liking to the friendly animal, and got out of the car to pat him. The beast put his head down to enjoy the greeting and was standing, leaning against Theodore’s caresses, when the boy looked up to see a girl walking towards him.
The dog nearly fell over as Theodore abruptly took his hand away and straightened up, staring. Now he understood the mansion: no other background would have been suitable as a frame to her beauty. She came walking across the drive, the gentle bloom of autumn trees against her face, and Theodore hoped with all his heart that this was Esmerelda Sweetwater. Because if it was, he was the most fortunate of men. He remembered to breathe just as she neared, and held out her hand.
“Hello.” Her voice was as light and strong as her smile. “You must be Theodore Behr. I’m Esmerelda Sweetwater.”
He shook her hand, looking at her hard, attempting to speak. The first try was a solid failure; he had temporarily forgotten how to breathe and talk all at the same time. He managed finally to acknowledge that he was Theodore Behr. He let her hand go.
There was a period of silence, while he looked at the girl in front of him, and tried to think of something witty to say. She was as tall as he, and as blonde. Her hair grew to below her waist, and she wore it unbound, the bangs across her high forehead wisping past straight eyebrows, the sides and back falling free down her shoulders. Her height was in such proportion that, away from reference points with which to judge her size, she would have appeared light, delicate. She was the most beautiful woman Theodore had ever seen. He could think of absolutely nothing to say. For what seemed to be about five years, he worked on the difficulty. Finally, he remembered his first impression of the house. “Say, this place looks just like the setting for a Civil War movie.”
“It was the setting for a Civil War movie,” said Esmerelda, putting her head to one side and grinning at him. “A movie company bought it and remodeled it for a film about fifteen years ago, and Pablo bought it from them.”
“Oh,” said Theodore. He breathed again, with an effort of will.
Esmerelda held out her slender hand. “Come up to the house,” she said, smoothing his intense shyness with her gesture. “I’ll give you a tour of the rest of the movie set. It’s really a very pleasant place to live.” She kept Theodore walking, to relieve his tension, and chatted about the history of various pieces of furniture. He began to feel more at ease in her presence, as her good humor and simple friendliness began to ease him away from the worst of his awkwardness. She stopped looking so unbelievable to him and began looking right, just perfectly right. Her face began to seem very dear, very familiar; her slender body seemed to float in front of him; he began to have the vague feeling that he could remember how she felt. He watched the golden hair move as her head moved, and listened to her talk, and all his senses seemed to come alive to her. Though he was still tense, in a way he began to feel comfortable for the first time in his life. As though he had come home.
“... and Uncle Pablo told me that he thought you might be the one,” she was saying, “and he wanted me to help him find out for sure.”
He came out of the reverie, no longer shy, no longer uncomfortable, but peaceful, fulfilled. Nothing seemed to matter right now. He looked at the girl he had come home to. “Hmm?” he said.
She was smiling warmly, her blue eyes sparkling with their moving flecks of gold. “Let’s wait for Uncle Pablo to talk about it,” she said, moving to a small couch and pulling him gently down beside her. They looked at each other and Theodore felt somehow as though they shared some knowledge, some understanding. “Hello, Ted,” said his mind. He started slightly, and looked closer at Esmerelda. She regarded him with the same warm expression. “Is it all right if I call you Ted?” she said aloud.
He thought, “Yes, it is,” and before he had had a chance to verbalize it, she had stood up and walked the few steps to the front windows. “Very good,” she said, pulling the windows down halfway. It was beginning to be chilly outside, with the swift chill of October evenings after sundown.
Theodore sat watching her. He thought of saying something about the fact that they seemed to have communicated with each other without speaking, but his mind felt warmed again, and reassured, and he knew that he had indeed discovered telepathy with Esmerelda, and that communication between them was going to be effortless. And so, instead of speaking, he simply projected his realization of the situation, and his enjoyment of it, and immediately he felt the pressure of her agreement and understanding.
“It really doesn’t need saying,” she said, turning back to him and reseating herself beside him on the loveseat. “But I shall say it anyway, just to make it official. I completely agree with Pablo. You’re the one, all right.”
He nodded. He still had no idea of what he was the one for, but that he belonged here, with Esmerelda, was unquestionably so. The rest would come in its own good time. Theodore sat back comfortably, his arm across the back of the small couch, his fingers playing with strands of Esmerelda’s hair that had fallen across his arm when she sat down.
“This house is fantastic. I can’t imagine how Pablo was able to buy it, on a professor’s salary, but it’s the greatest place I ever saw.”
“Oh, Uncle Pablo does a little bit of a lot of things. He doesn’t just teach and do research for the university. Mostly, he consults, with corporations all over the United States. He’s even done work with the army. He flies all over the country, and has a long waiting list of clients.”
“How did he learn all those different fields?”
“He has a rather unusual ability,” she said, “to assimilate knowledge more quickly than most people. He’s been developing these techniques for years with a friend of ours, who is a magician. When he wants to get inside a new subject, he just gets the relevant literature together and absorbs it, in a few days’ time. Sometimes he even manages to do better than do most of the slower readers of the books, because he has some ability towards reading between the lines.” She gave Theodore a mental picture, of a book acting somehow as a link between two minds, the reader’s and the author’s. “He can see past a lot of awkward language, and sometimes understands what the author means better than people do who have to depend on the written word alone. So many good minds have the ability to understand, but not to express, what they discover. Probably more important, though, than his knowledge of any single subject is his ability to link supposedly unrelated fields so as to produce new methods in technology. He has a very associative mind.”
Her eyes watched Theodore’s carefully, and she waited in his mind for his reaction to what she had said.
He mentally grinned at her, feeling clear at last about the reason for all those books in Padeyevsky’s office. “Oh,” he said. It was all right with him; he welcomed the whole unique set-up—a house with lovely trees, refreshing breezes, and a totally successful collie dog, and most of all a girl who was, improbably but certainly, his girl, his companion, his mate. It sounded strange, but it felt fine. It felt like home.
He felt her understand all these thoughts as he thought them, and the mental grin spread to his normally sober face, as he reflected on how much an ‘oh’ could convey, if it didn’t have to be dissected by language.
“Meow,” said the next room.
“Here comes Uncle Pablo now. Has he told you about his research with animals?”
“No, he hasn’t. Greetings, uh, Pablo,” said Theodore, as the rotund little man entered the room, with a tiger-striped cat walking sedately beside him. She flopped slab-sided down on the rug and he was down on all fours beside her instantly. “Meow,” he said, in a different tone than the first offering. The cat said nothing in return, but seemed to smile, slightly; then, abruptly, she bent double and licked her tail, one front paw waving casually in the air just above her middle.
Pablo hitched himself up to a sitting position, and then got completely vertical. He went over to Theodore with the same beaming greeting with which he had welcomed him to his office. “So you got here, Theodore. What do you think of the farm?”
Theodore was over being nervous about this household. “I think I can see now why people talk about the good old days, ah, Pablo.”
“And you’ve met my niece?”
Theodore looked in utter contentment at the girl sitting beside him. “Yes.”
Esmerelda turned her golden-flecked eyes to Padeyevsky. “You were right, Uncle Pablo. He’s the one.”
All three smiled their gladdest smiles. “Yes,” said Pablo.
Theodore knew he was the one; he’d heard it several times by now. “Can you really talk to animals?” On to other matters.
“Well, it’s not actually talking.” Pablo squirmed around in his seat until he was comfortable; Esmerelda was putting lemonade within reach. “You’ve met me, and Esmerelda, but there’s another member of the group that you haven’t met. His name is Joshua Starr. You may have heard of him; he’s the celebrity in our midst. Does television work.”
Theodore shook his head; he hadn’t heard of anyone named Joshua Starr.
“Well, maybe you wouldn’t have; he’s on during the daytime. But I thought you right have noticed his name in the credits of some of the shows that are on in the evenings. He’s also a writer for TV.”
Theodore hadn’t heard of him.
“Well, anyway.” Pablo gulped like a little boy at the lemonade. “He’s also a very close friend of ours. He and Esmerelda worked on this problem with me. They have some talents I don’t have. More about that in a minute. Anyhow, they studied animals, and discovered that animals transmit thoughts, using a primitive form of telepathy, and modulate the thoughts with sounds so as to convey meaning. They’ve helped me, and now I can interpret a good many of these animal thought-sound modulations.”
“Oh.”
Padeyevsky finished his lemonade and took another glass. “It probably sounds a little unusual, to you.”
“Well—unique, anyway.” Theodore was enjoying the situation too much to call it unusual. It was all right if Pablo wanted to talk to his cat. More power to him.
“Are you interested in magic?” asked Pablo.
Theodore’s eyebrows raised, in confusion. “I really don’t know anything about it.”
“Most people identify magic with trickery.” Pablo got up and began to pace as he talked, a habit with which Theodore was familiar from watching him lecture. “True magic has very little to do with tricks, or the production of any physical phenomena. It operates within the realms of consciousness and thought, in the astral and mental planes. And all of its objectives and purposes lie there, in the world of thought. In the case of white magic, anyway. Now black magic, unfortunately, does have some objectives that lie within the physical world.”
Well, son of a gun, thought Theodore. Pablo could call that magic, but it sounded to him like what he’d been writing about in his paper the power of the thought world to affect the physical world. That wasn’t unique, or unusual, after all. “Sure. That makes sense.”
Pablo put his head back and laughed. “Well, Theodore,” he said, finally, “you’re going to be all right, I do believe.” He poured him more lemonade. “It’s in the field of magic that this experiment that I spoke about earlier lies. Are you still interested?”
“Sure.”
“There is much to do then, Ted. Although you already know more than I do, I’m afraid. You just have the talent for it. You see, I’m not an alien.”
Theodore frowned, turned to Esmerelda.
“That’s right, Ted. He can’t use telepathy as well as you, for instance, and he’s been practicing for years.”
Theodore turned to Pablo. “Still, how could I possibly know more than you do, about anything?”
“Well, Ted, this experiment has to do with an area much deeper than the intellect. Of course I know more than you, in some areas, intellectually. But this magic is concentrated upon the spirit. And so you will be working with Esmerelda and my good friend, Joshua Starr, not with me. Because I’m not much good, and they both are. They are both white magicians. You’ll meet Joshua as soon as Esmerelda says you’re ready.”
Esmerelda’s golden eyes were warm. “It won’t be more than a week, Uncle Pablo.”
Chapter Two
Joshua Starr lay flat on his back in the middle of his living room carpet. His hand spread across one side of his face, and he talked through spread fingers to Susan Quinn, his secretary, who sat at her desk, taking down each word he said. He was speaking rather loudly because she was some twenty feet away, her typist’s chair backing up to the expanse of window that constituted the entire wall of that side of the living room.
Even lying flat on the floor, Joshua looked weatherbeaten and tough, with the appearance of a merchant seaman, or a range rider. His face, with its strongly marked, almost exaggerated features, and its lines of weathered humor and experience, seemed to complete the picture of Joshua as an outdoor man, carefree, thoughtlessly strong, perhaps even a bit cruel; it was only the subtle details of expression and gesture that showed to the experienced eye the high intellect that was so much a part of Joshua’s human personality.
He traced a pattern in the air whose meaning was known only to himself; the tracing took only a few seconds. Susan waited, her fingers poised above the typewriter keys, and looked at him as he lay there. His face was known to millions of TV viewers as the moderator of a daily morning interview that made up a fifteen minute segment of a news and weather show that came out of Washington, and was picked up by one of the networks. The distinctive baritone, not deep-toned, but with an edge of harshness and a slight drawl to its timbre that continued the visual suggestion of the outdoor man, was also familiar to many, many housewives. But, reflected Susan, she knew in some detail what the housewives would never know, for they saw him only in his role as interviewer, sitting in anonymous chairs in conservative suits while she saw him every working day in the far more private role of scriptwriter for television. He and Susan worked well together; she was an excellent typist and quite literate enough to translate Joshua’s spoken word into written syntax at a speed at which Joshua found comfortable to dictate.
He had chosen her for this talent, and had been pleased enough with her intelligent, demonstrative personality to keep her. This was their fourth year together. Susan, for her part, was strongly motivated towards keeping her job, for besides the obvious advantages of a very generous salary and a four-hour working day, there were the manifold delights of knowing Joshua Starr.
He was, today as always, an easy man to look at; although some people thought of him as a homely, even an ugly man, his physical presence was very strong, and it arrested the attention even when it did not please. Most, however, joined with Susan in finding Joshua very handsome indeed. Today his lean, deep-muscled frame was covered with blue jeans and a longsleeved sweatshirt. He looked shorter than he really was, usually; he carried himself with the unconscious grace of an athlete, and his height seemed entirely in keeping with the proportions of his body. On the carpet, however, he looked his full six feet two inches. From her position above him, Susan could see his face upside down, features calm in concentration, dictating in the direction of the ceiling through his spread fingers, the slightly graying, heavy mop of hair tangling through his fingers and onto the expanse of floor.
“Scene Two,” Joshua was saying.
The telephone rang to break his concentration, and he moved to his feet to answer it, walking the six long strides of space with the ease that was his nature. His hand paused on the receiver while he took a few seconds to reorient his thinking. He had learned not to try to do business with his mind still in the creative realms. The results were always total fiascoes, decorated with confused choruses of, “But you SAID ...!” His face lost its inward-looking blankness and put on the mask of the celebrity. “Starr speaking,” he said to the telephone.
There was a long pause, while he listened less and less intently. The monologue seemed ultimately to bore him, for he cut in. “Listen, Herman. I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again today. Handle the money, man, just handle the money. Don’t bug me about the money. Just do your thing. You’ve got full authority with the money bit ... No, Herman, I won’t blame you if you lose the money. Just go ahead with the plan .... Whatever you think is best .... Yes, Herman, I really mean that. I really do. Go ahead with the whole plan .... You said all that yesterday, Herman .... Well, second thoughts or no second thoughts, I think you’re right. Go ahead, all right? ... OK. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good-bye, Herman.”
Joshua shook his head as he replaced the receiver. “He’s one of the best financial wizards around. If he’d just learn to trust his own judgment he could make a bundle for himself instead of for other people.” He rose from his seat by the telephone and roamed to the glass wall which extended forty feet across the back of the house, looking down, from the crest of the hill on which the house stood, onto the informal, very extensive garden which constituted Joshua’s back yard. The slopes of the valley had been cleared of wild brush and groomed with flowering bushes and rock gardens, and the ground was laid with winding paths and clearings. Its centerpiece was a white building whose roof gleamed in the late afternoon sun.
His secretary’s glance followed his over the lovely grounds which fell away gradually from the window. “Don’t you think you ought to keep a closer watch on Herman? If he did lose your money, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy all this luxury.”
“Luxury?” enquired Joshua. “This bit here with the pretty trees and all the gadgets is here for one reason only. It makes it easier to work. Luxury is a state of mind, girl. Ask anybody where he’d like to be, and chances are that he’ll say some island in the south seas. Well, if I lose all my money I just declare bankruptcy and hold out a ticket for the south seas. That’s luxury, right?”
“Still, I think you ought to pay more attention to what Herman is doing. Wouldn’t you hate to lose all your money?”
Starr turned back from the window and pulled his hands out of their roost in his back pockets to make a mock-Italian gesture towards her. “You trying to ruin me? What about that bit about the camel and the needle, and the rich man and the kingdom of heaven? You trying to keep me out of the kingdom of heaven?”
Susie waved the thought away. “No, no, I mean you’ve already got enough money to be rich. You’re rich whether you like it or not.”
“I sort of figured the parable had to do with how you think about money, not how much of it you have. Anyway, I’ve got things I’d rather do than think about money. Herman knows a lot more about that stuff than I do. If I wanted to go to all the trouble of figuring out what he was doing, I wouldn’t need to hire him in the first place.” He walked as he talked, back to the small black cube which was Susan’s typewriter table. It sat facing away from the front window, and Joshua perched one hip on it. “Now, let’s forget about money and get back to writing this script. After all, I have three minutes left to work.”
Miss Quinn consulted her watch. “6:14, eh? My watch must be slow. It only says 6:12.”
Starr looked faintly shocked. “Gadgets! Of course your watch is running slow again. Because it is precisely ...”
Susan cut in. “I know, I know. Spare me. It is precisely 6:14. How do you know what time it is, anyway? I never even see you look at a watch.”
“I don’t own one. I just sort of narrow things down a little closer than people who know whether it’s night or day.”
Susan waited in silence. “That’s all?” She hesitated, looking at him from under her eyelashes, and decided not to ask further. Questions about his various skills and oddities tended to aggravate his normal good humor; it was better to let the question drop. Not that she understood how he knew about time. But she did understand that under no circumstances did Joshua Starr work after 6:17 in the evening. He had not answered her questions about why that cutoff time, either. In fact, he was not an explainable man. She had found the outer surface very attractive; he was extremely good looking, in his rangy way; his face held great strength and self-confidence, and his eyes could be very gentle. He exuded a masculine virility that men felt comfortable with and women were always drawn to; he had many acquaintances and very few enemies.
But she had never been able to see beneath the surface with Joshua. In three years, he had yet to discuss any personal problem with her, although he was always very careful to ask about her affairs, and she had confided in him on occasion. He really baffled her, and although she was fascinated by him, she wondered sometimes what she would do if he ever asked her to marry him. A lifetime of not understanding the man you loved was not a comfortable one.
But of course, she always reminded herself, he would never ask her in the first place; which relieved her as well as being a bit deflating. That would be too understandable a thing to do, too much within the social pattern. He seemed to operate totally outside, and to Susan’s way of thinking above, the normal society, rambling through life without any particular goal or deep ambition, constantly finding new things to think about, never staying mentally still, although he was a fairly settled person physically, seldom leaving his home base.
And as a professional and careful secretary, she admired the use he made of himself and of her during the four-hour work sessions. He dictated to her at precisely her typing speed, and in one day, he could turn out as much as most television writers did in three. He seldom hesitated for a word and never for an idea, and what he wrote was good, very good. She suspected that he could have worked much faster if it had not been for her limitations of typing speed and the need to change the paper in the machine; he had tried dictating into a recording device, but had found that he was used to having an audience, and, besides, he liked to roam while he was creating, and without the ability to move around freely and get rid of some of the energy his body constantly put out, he found himself unable to work nearly as well. And so they had gone back to, and stayed with, the two two-hour sessions in the afternoon, with his goal being one television hour’s worth of material at each two-hour session. He hadn’t missed that goal in a long time; when he did, it was only because the telephone rang too often.
Now the work was over for the day. Joshua put his palms on the carpet and inverted his body, walking across from the desk to the bar, which was at one end of the room, on his hands.
Susan watched with great affection as he reached the bar and flipped himself to a sitting position on one of the low stools there; she had had no idea he could do that. “Learn something new every day,” she laughed, and then said quickly, “No, no, I’ll do that.”
Josh dropped his hand from the gin bottle as if it carried an electric charge. “OK, OK, officer, I promise I’ll never do it again.”
He put his hands back in his back pockets and began to roam in his habitual way across the room. He stood still when he came to the far end of the back window; the sun was in its last moments of setting, and the brassy orange half-disc poured its last thick rays over the far distance and into the valley. He spoke very quietly. “Thirty-eight trips around that star, and it’s getting to me.”
Susan was coping with gin and ice; the clinking of glass on silver obscured his words. “What?”
“Thirty-eight trips around their star. I shouldn’t be this worn out after only thirty-eight trips. Look at me, breathing like a beached whale, and all I did was walk twenty feet on my hands.”
“What are you talking about?” said Susan. “I’ve got no idea what you mean. Here.” She handed him a shaker full of martinis. “Now thirty-eight trips around what star?”
He took the shaker and began to do the honors. “Look. Why should I be so worn out after only thirty-eight trips around this star?” He gestured towards the setting sun. “I mean, that’s not any distance at all. This is really a weird place.”
Susan was catching up now. “You mean you’re thirty-eight years old, you’ve been around the sun thirty eight times?”
“Right, that’s what I said.”
“I never thought of it that way, but I guess that is how we tell ages. By how often the planet goes around the sun.” The thought interested her; she had an active mind, and thoroughly enjoyed playing with new thoughts. “But you don’t look thirty-eight, Josh, you don’t really look thirty, except for the gray in your hair.”
“It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t look even that old. Going this short distance shouldn’t have had any effect at all.”
“Distance?”
“Right. Using a heliocentric coordinate system, and assuming a circular orbit—Josh paused, mentally calculating—well, the planet travels about five hundred and eighty-five million miles a year. So I’m about twenty-two billion miles old.”
“Time equals distance, eh?” Susan’s mind was racing, trying to encompass the new concept. “Well, there goes philosophy. If space and time are the same thing, then the only one who had it right was old Heraclitus, who said that all things were one. And even he didn’t think he could step in the same river twice.”
“Don’t forget the twentieth century.” Josh was shaking the martini mixture gently; “Philosophy isn’t the thing any more. It’s all science. And most of that has gone the way of Einstein. They haven’t come right out and said it yet, but if everything is relative to everything else, then it looks like the old idea that time is time and space is space and never the twain shall meet is wrong. And I am twenty-two billion miles old, and feel about a light year older than that.”
“Tell you what, old man. Get on the next space flight out and go counterclockwise around the earth for about ten years. That should youthen you.”
“The fountain of youth at last. That’s good, Susan. We could sell tickets. Get on our spaceship and unwind!”
“Listen, if we could do that, you could forget about writing for TV. I know a terrific market. The whole country wants to be younger” She stopped, intrigued by another thought. “How far am I?”
“Oh, you’re just a short distance runner; let’s see, you’re a mere sixteen billion.” He decanted ice-cold martinis into two glasses.
“Wow, does that look good,” said Susan, reaching for hers. “You really wear a girl out with that machine-gun dictation.”
Josh grinned, the lines at the corners of his eyes crinkling into crowsfeet. “A toast to the fastest typewriter in the east.”
The telephone interrupted their first sip.
“After business hours,” said Susan, putting her hand on top of his to keep it from moving.
He patted her hand with his free one, and disengaged himself. The phone rang again, and he looked intently at it for a few seconds. “This isn’t business.” He picked up the receiver. “Hello, Pablo. How’s the funny farm?”
Pablo Padeyevsky’s voice came clearly into the quiet room, his clipped accents quite audible to Susan. “Fine. Listen, I’ve found just who we’ve been waiting for.”
“What? You mean for the contact?”
“Yes. We all knew it would have to happen sooner or later, and it did. He just walked into my office at the university.”
“That’s what I would have expected. It never does any good to go looking for things; he was bound to show up. But it’s still hard to believe it’s happened. Are you sure?”
“Well, I was fairly certain, but Esmerelda says she’s absolutely sure. And he’s here right now, Esmerelda’s been working with him for a week or so.
Josh was tangling fingers through his hair in his excitement; the fingers stopped moving. “I wondered why she didn’t show up for work in the temple.” Josh started pulling at his hair again. “Well! Great! Beautiful! Can we go ahead with it now? Can you get over here pretty soon? Do you think we can go ahead with the communication attempt?”
“Well, I thought we might all get together tonight and talk about it. How about our dropping by your place later?”
“Any time. Like, how about any time in the next ten minutes.”
“We can’t make it quite that soon. But we’ll be there.”
“I’ll be expecting you.” Josh put the receiver down and looked up at Susan. She smiled at him. “You look like a little boy who just found out there are two Christmases this year.”
He reached over and took her by the two shoulders, his hands tensing with excitement. “There are for me! I’ve been waiting for this for years.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Well, that’s a little complicated. It has to do with some of my experimental work.”
“Which I don’t understand, nor never will. You tried once to tell me what went on in that garden of yours, and it just sounded strange to me. But I’m very happy for you. Really I am. Here, drink your martini! Celebrate!” She held his glass out for him.
“Nope. I’m on the wagon as of right now, and for a few weeks to come.”
Susan put the glass down, picked hers up, and sipped it thoughtfully. For Josh to stop drinking was a great departure from his normal habits; it told her just how important this call must have been to him. Not that Josh was an alchoholic, he was able to function with or without his evening drinks. But he did have periods of fairly heavy drinking; often lately the martini hour would end after dinner and find Josh wandering out to the porch or garden chairs, carrying a bottle of Matuselum. There he would sit, sipping steadily at his drink, looking off into the deepening night sky until the stars came out. Susan stayed some evenings, at his request, and during these periods would find things to do by herself, for she sensed, and quite rightly, that these moods of his were solitary. He never seemed depressed, nor could she say that he was moody; he just became very detached, and withdrew into himself. She thought of them as times of adjustment for Josh, a sort of substitute for an analyst.
In actuality, although Joshua respected Susan’s competence, and enjoyed her intelligence, he was aware that she would never come close to understanding him. She thought that he sat alone to realign his thinking, get the kinks out of his days; the purpose was quite different: he sat on a planet he had been weary of for some time, dulling a little the daily pain of living in a mental atmosphere that was completely the opposite of what he desired to find, and he looked up at the creation, the millions of stars, and thought of the greatly remote suns as one would wish for home. Susan, he knew, thought of him as an entertaining, but ultimately shallow, person, a person who did not take anything at all seriously. In fact, he was a man who had taken himself so very seriously that it had put him completely alone for a long time, for he had found no one else who paid any attention at all to what he considered utterly central. He had, long ago, found Pablo, and they were friends because Pablo did at least attempt to search for wisdom. And with Esmerelda, Joshua had found one other person who cared as much as he did for her spirit’s welfare. And together they had practiced the rituals of white magic in the temple Joshua had built in his garden.
But, because Joshua had worked with Esmerelda first as a child, he had never discovered her full personality; he thought of her as part of his own consciousness, part of his spiritual strength. Her daily world and his had never meshed at all. And Joshua continued finding the people that he met to be like Susan, aiming at some goal in the temporal future, thinking about their lonelinesses and adjustments and chances for success and chances for failure, and worrying endlessly over things he could only think of as foolish games. And, more and more, he sat alone on a planet to which he was alien, sipping rum, and looking at the stars.
Susan was quite right in thinking that Joshua would never ask her to be his wife; but she had no idea why. She would never have considered herself as lacking in qualifications as a candidate for a wife. But to Josh she was hopelessly inadequate. She was pretty, intelligent, and useful, but she had no ability whatever to warm him, to make his spirit rest. She thought he had no desire to be married; on the contrary, he was already settled, and the very coziness of his home made his aloneness in it more intense; he would have been most happy to fill the place with the genuine warmth of a family. A long, long time ago, he had decided that there was no hope, on this planet, of finding any woman who could be a family to him, and he had closed a door in his mind, and stopped looking. He had grown accustomed to seeing his environment as an alien one, and not expecting anything but foolishness from his fellow humans. The one thing still worthwhile to him had been his research, by himself, and with Esmerelda, and for the past seven years increasingly with Pablo, in the realms of ritual magic. Now, at last, things wished for on spiritual planes were coming to pass in the physical. There was no loneliness in Joshua tonight. He looked at Susan’s surprised and quizzical face and said, “Imagine that, Susie. Me on the wagon! What’s this world coming to?”
Susan gave up again on trying to understand him. “I heard you say that they’ll be over soon. Is it time for me to go?”
Josh put one hand back of her shoulder and shook it, gently. “You sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. Are you going to be tied up more than tonight?”
‘I really don’t know right now. Can you call in tomorrow, or do you want me to call you?”
Susan thought. “Tell you what. I’ll call tomorrow morning after you’re through with your work at the studio. You tell me then when to report in. If you need some time, I’ll just have the answering service switch all your calls to me. You can call me to give me instructions.”
“Good,” said Josh, steering her to her light coat and helping her with it. “We’re ahead on the writing anyway, and this really might take some time. I’ve got some interviews taped, too, for that matter. You can handle the routine stuff for quite a while. If I don’t phone in, just do what you think best.”
He kissed her lightly, and she responded, putting her hand to his cheek. “OK, Josh. I’ll bankrupt you, or Herman and I’ll do it between us. He’ll probably have a heart attack, come to think of it, without you to talk to every day. But don’t worry. I’ll like you just as well after I ruin your finances.”
“Good girl.” He walked her out to the three car garage which tucked under the first floor at the rear of the house, using the slope of the hill for space. His Lamborghini Muira sat small and elegant next to another car he had owned in the past and never sold; the third space belonged to Susan’s convertible; she was an inveterate driver-with-tops-down, thoroughly enjoying four gears, and driving quite well: she drove the way she typed, quickly and without error, her mind set far ahead of where she actually was, taking all available hints as to her whereabouts in the immediate future, and putting them to good use.
Joshua watched her taillights recede down the driveway and around the first bend in the road. He felt some relief that she was gone, which he would not have felt any other night. But, with the news of Pablo’s discovery fresh in his mind, he was thinking only of the group’s imminent arrival. Lean and dark in the twilight, he hurried back into the living room and cleaned up the bar and tables, removing glasses and wiping up rings of moisture. The typewriter went under its table and the piece of furniture became a simple black cube, sitting between two comfortable chairs. Then, placing himself by the back window, he took off his shoes and squatted to the floor, crossing his legs Indian-fashion, looking out at the sky and the first stars, and waiting.
Chapter Three
Pablo had just finished the telephone conversation with Joshua about Theodore, and set the receiver back in its cradle, when it jangled at him. On its third ring, he picked it up. “Padeyevsky,” he said into it
“You win this time too,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “The New York people have to do it your way. Unless some accident befalls you.”
“I’d be very careful about threats, if I were you,” said Pablo. “Of course, I’m sure you didn’t mean that as a threat.”
“Take it any way you want,” said the voice. “We don’t have room to deal in threats, do we? You win.”
“Well, just look at it this way.” Padeyevsky grinned into the telephone. “Money is the root of all evil. I’ve just cleared a broad path to your reform.”
The voice at the other end shook slightly. “Look, Padeyevsky, don’t give me that. Just tell me what you’re going to do, that’s all. What are you going to do? You know you can’t let this go on.”
“Yes, I can,” said Pablo, cheerfully, “and I have. The whole thing is finished now. You’re through. Be a good sport about it. Look at the advantages of financial disaster: no more wearing conferences, no more late nights, no more ...”
The voice cut in, hard and tight with rage. “I’ll get you Padeyevsky. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll personally get you for this. Do you hear me?”
Padeyevsky smiled very coldly into the receiver. “The moving finger writes,” he said, “and, having writ, moves on.” Very slowly, he lowered the receiver to its cradle. There he sat, his mind moving with satisfaction over the recent conversation, one small hand to his chin, his portly body relaxed. Perhaps he’d better make a trip to New York soon, just to be sure. His small black eyes wandered blankly over the familiar hall, narrowing in their creases as he saw Esmerelda for the first time, standing by the door from the back of the house, hands pressed together, body somehow huddled in on itself.
“Esmerelda! You startled me.”
She said nothing, only continued looking at him.
“Is there something wrong?” he asked. “Something happen to Theodore, or ...”
“Oh, Pablo,” she said softly, trying not to cry. “Oh, Uncle Pablo, your aura. What is it, Pablo? While you were on the telephone, it was full of such darkness.” She gave up and started to cry into her clenched hands, walking towards him. In spurts, she said, “I don’t understand it. It changed, and then it changed back, so fast, when you saw me. It’s all right now, the way it always is. Oh, Pablo! How could you let it get to you?”
She was close now, and Pablo stood up and held her against him awkwardly, letting her cry against his vest, eyes no longer creased but as soft as their blackness would ever get, with his love for his niece. “My dear, there is much in this world both of good and of bad, and each of us has a little of each. You have discovered this in me and I am sorry. But this is the world we live in, and you have to face both sides of it. I am very, very sorry that you saw this, for I have kept many ugly things from you for a long time, and this ugliness is the one closest to you. But your good old Pablo is still here too, still real.”
Esmerelda cried on into his shoulder, and Pablo stopped speaking, aware now that there would be some waiting, while she got cried out. Women, he thought to himself with affection. He patted on in silence, while his vest got quite saturated across the front, and his arm went to sleep. Finally, Esmerelda raised her pink face from his shoulder.
“All right, so it’s there, all this negativity,” she said, not quite steadily, “and my own Uncle, the safest man in the world, has it too, but no matter how long I face it I won’t get used to it. You can make me face the darkness, but you can’t make me turn from the light just because the darkness exists. I’m as tough as it is, Pablo. I can face it, and understand it, and see it for what it is.”
“And what is that?”
“Separation,” said Esmerelda. “Times when somebody has forgotten the one who is all, and has begun making up his own universe and his own reasons. Times when a person hides from being kind, and makes up rules that hurt people. Times when people are scared, and run away from the creation. You can make me look at it, and make me see it in you, but it still looks like separation from the light to me. And I stand with the light.”
Pablo’s voice was gentle. “And why do you stress the separation, my child? The light and the darkness are one thing. Two faces of the same creation, only subtly different. You think the chasm is so wide between the two, my child, and yet only your intellect can find the difference great, and your intellect is of no use. It only makes you put the bogeyman from you, so you won’t have to think about it. But evil is as respectable as good, my dear. Don’t be shallow. For evil is all around you, more evil by far than good, and you shouldn’t discount it.”
He looked at her then, and saw the expression, and stopped his lecture in the middle. “Oh, Esmerelda, please forgive me. I’m sorry. I only wanted to make you see that everything that is positive can be negative too. That there is only the smallest difference between the two. My child, can you forgive me that?”
She looked at him, confusion and repugnance melting into quieter emotion. The Santy Clause smile, as she had so often called it, was there again, and his aura was gentle and clear, as she had seen it for years. And yet, a few minutes ago he had been a rude and ugly affront to her consciousness, his aura dark and evil. It was going to take considerable meditation to compass this in understanding.
Pablo was still waiting for her to say something. She cast her mind back and found the thread of the talking. “It’s all right, Uncle Pablo I am only here to learn. I only wish that I had met this a long time ago, so I could have begun trying to become one with it. How could you let me be so sure of myself, when you knew I had so much to learn?”
She didn’t sound angry, or even irritated. Pablo looked at her closely. She shook her head. “No, I’m not getting ready to cry again. That’s done. But talk to me. What draws you to this negativity? That must be what really confuses me. I just don’t feel any pull to it at all.”
“There is much confusion to be cleared away, my child. By you, by me, by us all. What makes you think I am consciously drawn to negativity? Perhaps it simply finds a channel in me. You have named it evil, and yet is it not simply a pole, in a dually polarized universe? Why should one pole be better than the other? You have recoiled against my duality. And yet, in a dual universe, why not be dual?”
“All right, Pablo. I’ll understand in time, and meanwhile you’re still Uncle Pablo, and I cherish you. Nothing could change that. But this has all been very sudden. I thought you were one thing, and now you have me thinking you are two, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I was sure, and now I’m not sure at all. I thought you and Joshua had taught me everything. Now I know differently.”
“My child, my child,” said Pablo, standing in the dim hall wishing he had never begun this lesson, and anxious to have it done, now it was begun. “I have taught you nothing. For I know nothing.”
“Then, Pablo, where are we going?”
Pablo stepped the one step that separated them and took her head again to him. “Put your feet back on solid ground, my child. We aren’t going anywhere. There is much for us all to learn. You will learn this, and when you know it, you will be where you were before: at one with wisdom, yet knowing nothing. For we can know nothing. This is not an environment that allows wisdom. We must simply act. Am I not right?” He smiled at her, feeling abashed at his uncharacteristic bluntness towards his niece.
“I suppose so, Uncle Pablo.” Esmerelda smiled back at him, her face clear again. “And, speaking of action, we’re due at Josh’s, aren’t we? Ted’s ready. I’m ready.”
“I’m ready too,” said the Doctor. “Shall we?”
She took his arm, and they walked out to Theodore, waiting for them beside the Mercedes.
Copyright © 1986 by L/L Research, a subsidiary of the Rock Creek Research & Development Laboratories, Inc.
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