The Gorgon Festival Read online

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

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

  “Fred, I’m not building a cyclotron.”

  “The government doesn’t know it.”

  “What could I do with $180,000?”

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

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

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

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

  “July thirty-first.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I specialize in problems.”

  “Some are confidential.”

  “I can keep a confidence.”

  “Even from Alex?”

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

  “Do you have problems, Ester?”

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

  “Why does he like to work alone?”

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

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

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

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

  Nervously, Carrick clinched and unclinched his hand.

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

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

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

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

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

  Cabroni was obviously angry as he walked up.

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

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

  “What were you showing him?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Across the garden, by the western gate in the picket fence, he saw Ruth bent over her Scarlet Churchills, gloved, with pruning shears and a demijohn of liquid fertilizer on the ground beside the bush. He called a greeting and she waved him out to see the buds. Through a prize-winning array of varicolored roses, he walked to inspect her latest species.

  For a moment they spoke of roses, hangovers, and car batteries as she completed her pruning and slowly straightened. He returned the gear to the tool box beside the western gate and she commented on the liquid fertilizer as they made their way to the house.

  “The stuff seems to stimulate the quanta in photosynthesis, makes them want to jump.”

  Ward plucked a leaf from the underside of a bush as they passed and looked at it. “There’s a substantial phytil radical, here,” he agreed. “How’s the arthritis?”

  “Bothersome. My right index finger’s so frozen I have to prune with both hands.”

  From long association he knew there was a tragedy behind her casual remark. She loved to play the piano. Once she had regaled the boys of Ethan Allen Military Prep with recitals of Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach to the point where an unofficial school song had been written, “Up the Bees.”

  Swinging stiffly up the back steps, she asked, “Ester in Frisco?”

  “All night.”

  “Could you use some vitamin C?”

  “Yes. Have you eaten?”

  “No. At my age, chocolate and cookies suffice for my evening meal. My own cookies. Union scale for bakers is twelve-fifty an hour.”

  They entered the kitchen and Ruth gave him instructions as she prepared vodka and orange juice. “Get the bottle of absorbent from beneath the sink, put half a pint in a gallon of water with a half-teaspoonful of your sugar phosphate in the solution. But don’t plug in the vat.”

  His tasks took longer than hers, and she had his drink poured and waiting on the kitchen table. He sat across from her.

  “You mentioned one hamster, Ruth. Don’t you think we need at least two? If the experimental animal dies, we’ll not be sure it’s a natural death.”

  “That’s the point of my experiment. I’m having to put Papa to sleep, anyway. At our age, the hamster’s and mine, timidity is a vanity.”

  Ward weighed her remark, wondering if she was making a philosophical observation or if she were including herself in the experiment. Surely not the latter, he decided. As a biologist, Ruth was cognizant of the delicacy of human cellular structure, unless she was senile. Then her safety would be his responsibility.

  “I’ve allotted five minutes for amenities,” she said, “so take your drink to the lab and bring me the hamster in the corner, the grizzled one that won’t huddle.”

  Ward walked down the hall to the rear room and went over to her pen of hamsters. Five were huddled together in one corner, but the sixth, gray with age, stood alone in a separate corner, its head against the wire netting.

  Ward brought it back to the kitchen where Ruth waited. “Take the rubber gloves from the cupboard and plug in the vat.”

  As Ward obeyed, Ruth cuddled the little animal to her cheek and said, “Good luck, Papa.”

  She handed it to Ward and said, “Dip him in the solution.”

  Ward obeyed. The little animal was too feeble to wriggle but lay docile in his hands as he submerged it. He held it under, all but its nose, for three minutes, and Ruth said, “That should be enough. There’s a towel under the sink. Dry him carefully and return him to his pen. Watch him for a moment and tell me what he does.”

  When he took the hamster back and placed it in the pen, it waddled over to the group, sniffing among them.

  “Congratulate me again,” he said to Ruth when he returned. “My solution eliminates antisocial tendencies.”

  “That’s just the beginning of the beginning, Alex. Now, I want to cure the arthritis in my right index finger.”

  “I don’t know if it’s advisable, Ruth.”

  “Nonsense. I use the absorbent constantly. We know the sugar phosphate’s harmless, and there’s only one volt of current in the vat.”

  She wasn’t senile, so her finger was not his responsibility. He said, “Be my guest.”

  He stood beside her as she dipped her index finger in the solution. She held it there as he watched.

  “Any pain?”

  “There was, but it’s going away.”

  She held the finger in the solution for three minutes, took it out, wiped it on a paper towel, and flexed it in front of his eyes. She could touch the heel of her palm with a finger she had not been able to bend for fear of breaking it.

  “Congratulations, Alex. You’ve found a cure for arthritis, but you won’t get the Nobel Prize without explaining the process.”

  She turned and faced him.

  “The finger was a test run, Alex, and only the beginning. I want to take a sitz bath.”

  “Oh no, Ruth.” His voice was jocular but adamant. “I don’t mind you losing your finger but we can’t risk your pelvic area. It might affect your genitourinary tract.”

  “I foresaw your objections,” she said. “On my writing table in the living room is a signed, unconditional release relieving you of all responsibility in the experiment.”

  “Ruth, you couldn’t clear me, morally or legally, if the side effects are fatal.”

  She took his arm and the eyes looking up into his were not those of the woman who had warned and commanded him for the whole of his adult life. They had lost their authoritativeness and in them was a plea, profound and pathetic.

  “Alex, I’ve had too much pride to burden you with complaints, but arthritis isn
’t fun and games. Have you ever wondered why a woman with my mind stays stewed during her waking hours? Pain! One year of life as a functioning, pain-free woman is worth more than a decade of this.”

  Though smiling, Ward shook his head. “It might make you pregnant.”

  “I’m twenty years past menopause.”

  “Nevertheless, I can’t risk you. You’re half of everyone I love.”

  “If you really loved me, Alex, you would grant my request. Look at this hand…” She flexed it before him. “Once more I can play the third movement from Bach’s Passion. After that, if my arm fell off, I would still consider myself rewarded… I’m a condemned prisoner awaiting a slow and painful death, and you have the keys to my prison. Set me free, Alex.”

  Her fervor and her logic touched him, and he smiled to hide his pity. “You give the orders.”

  “Spoken like a true son of Ethan Allen Prep. Get in there, boy, with your electrodes, and draw my bath, half a tub of water, one pint of absorbent, and one teaspoonful of the solution.”

  While Ruth went to the bedroom to undress, Ward set up the anode and cathode at opposite ends of the bathtub and drew her bath. He had no fear of electrocution—the transformer permitted only a four-volt flow of direct current—but he did fear side effects from an experiment on a human being. Ruth was his coequal in biological science, but her judgment could be warped by pain.

  It occurred to him that he should stand by while she bathed, but there was a question of objectivity involved. In his youth when Ruth was beautiful, Ward had indulged in tea-and-sympathy imaginings about her that went several furlongs beyond sympathy.

  Ruth solved the problem by entering in her bathrobe saying, “Out, boy. Out.”

  He stood for a moment outside the door waiting to hear a thump, a gasp, a cry for help. All he heard was a splash and gurgle.

  “If you need me,” he called, “I’m right outside.”

  “Nonsense, Alex. Put a pan of water on for chocolate… If the sun is down, you can turn on the light in the kitchen.”

  As a widow on a professorial pension, Ruth was sparing of electricity, and the forty-watt bulb in the kitchen added little to the twilight as Ward set water to boil.