The Man in the Tree (30 page)

"No." After a moment Cooley added, "Just leave me the hell alone,
will you?"
Gene's eyes were still bright, but his expression had changed. "Pongo,
wait for me in the Monster," he said.
Pongo stepped out; the door closed behind him. He listened a moment,
then walked down the stairs.
"Is everything all right?" the desk clerk asked.
"Sure."
"Do you know how long Mr. McIver will be staying?"
"Beats me."
Pongo walked out to the parking lot, got into the mobile home, lighted
a cigar, and waited.
In a few minutes he saw Gene coming toward him. The giant climbed in,
sat down in the chair beside the driver's seat.
"What did you do?" Pongo asked.
"I talked to him. I told him I wasn't expecting any gratitude, but if he
ever tried anything like that again, I would probably kill him. After a
while he cried again -- different kind of crying, not so much anger. I
think he's going to be okay." He leaned over and hugged Pongo for a
moment. "Let's go home."
Pongo started the engine and maneuvered the motor home out of the
lot. "You could have killed him, in the lobby, but you cured him
instead. How come?"
"I didn't know I was going to do it. I didn't know I could do it. It
was -- " Gene hesitated. "It felt just like a big hand pushing me in
the back."
Chapter Twenty-four
All the rest of that week, the household was in a state of tension. Pongo
had told the others briefly what had happened at the Costa Brava Motel;
Gene would not discuss it. Irma stayed in her room Tuesday morning and
let messages pile up in the answering machine. Margaret broke a pencil
and threw the pieces at the wall.
On Thursday Gene and Pongo went into Tampa again in the morning and did
not come back until mid-afternoon; Irma and Margaret had cold turkey
sandwiches for lunch.
That afternoon, at Gene's direction, Irma called Cliff Guthrie, Nirmal
Coomaraswami, and Stan Salomon, and invited them for the weekend. On
Friday, Gene and Pongo went into Tampa again. That afternoon, after the
others had arrived, the gate signal rang. Irma said, "Yes -- Oh, Mike!"
"Yes, it's me, luv. Can I come in?"
Wilcox entered beaming a few moments later. Irma hugged him and introduced
the others. "You didn't bring Nan?"
"No, she's getting married actually. How is everyone?"
"Frantic," said Irma. "Gene has some big secret that he won't tell
anybody about. I'm glad you're here."
Pongo came in a little after three. "Gene's in his room," he announced.
"Says he won't be down for dinner, but he wants to see everybody in the
dining room at nine o'clock."
"Pongo, what's going on?" Irma said. "This is too much."
"He went into the hospital and stayed two hours. That's all I know." Pongo
got a slab of beef out of the refrigerator and began doing things to it.
At dinner, Cliff Guthrie said, "Nirmal, you look kind of tired. Is
everything okay?"
"Well, it is not really okay. Some things I don't like are happening
at the university. A good friend of mine, you probably don't know him,,
but he is quite well known in his field, and he happens to be gay. The
university dismissed him this week for moral turpitude."
Linck nodded. "These swings in attitude are a very effective way of
weeding out deviants," he said. "The door opens, people come out of
the closet; then it shuts, and they are outside. What will your friend
do now?"
"I don't know. He probably cannot get another job teaching. I have another
friend who is gay, a philology professor; he was fired in November, and the
last I heard he was tending a bar in Detroit."
"I don't think there has ever been an administration in this country
that I have disliked so much," Linck said. "They are militarist; they
are bigoted, and they are very ignorant. This adventurism in Central
America and Africa -- that is only the beginning."
"How long would you say we've got before the world blows itself to
hell?" Salomon asked.
Linck shrugged. "On days when I am optimistic, I think we may last as
much as thirty years. By then I will be eighty-four, and it won't so
much matter to me. But if there is any advance warning, I think I will
try to get out of the northern hemisphere."
"Why the northern hemisphere?" said Wilcox.
"Because if the Soviets and the West bomb each other, they are capable
of making the northern hemisphere uninhabitable. I will go to Bolivia,
probably. My first choice would be Australia, but there are too many
military installations there. Bolivia is an unimportant little country."
"I have heard people talk like this before," said Coomaraswami, "and it
is really bizarre, because people are saying, well, the world is going
to be destroyed by atomic war, and they all agree, yes, it is going
to be destroyed, and then they talk about something else. It is like
people going down a river on a raft, and they say, tomorrow morning we
will all go over the falls and be killed, and then they play pinochle
or something."
"What should they do instead?" Margaret asked.
"Well, I think they should at least talk about some ways of getting off
the raft."
"Suppose you were the President -- what would you do?"
"Probably I could not do anything; the problem is global."
"If you were God, then?"
"Well, if I were God," said Coomaraswami, "I think I could make some very
good improvements just by changing the rules a little bit. For instance,
I could change the rate of radioactive decay so that an atomic explosion
would not be possible. Or I could do something even simpler, I could
change the rules in such a way that there would be no transparent solids
in nature."
"How would that be an improvement?"
"Well, think about it. If there were no transparent solids, then you
could not have windshields in cars or airplanes, and you would not be
able to travel very fast. We could not have modern bombers or fighter
planes. People would have to travel less and stay closer to home;
then they would mind their own business more. Also we would not have
cameras or telescopes, and that would keep us from killing each other
at long distance."
"We wouldn't have eyeglasses, either, or windows."
Coomaraswami shrugged. "No, well, then it would be more of an advantage
to have good eyesight, and therefore there would not be so much myopia
and astigmatism. And people got along very well without glass in their
windows for thousands of years."
Gene paused outside the dining room. His throat was dry, and that was
absurd, because it was his house, his friends and companions, and yet he
felt that he was about to attempt something ultimately perilous. That was
where the excitement came from. It was one thing to solve a problem in
a daydream, and it was another to translate it into reality. For that,
he needed to persuade other people -- real, living people, the people
he had never understood. Would they be indifferent? Incredulous? Would
they laugh7
Their heads turned as he walked in and took his seat; he could tell
by their expressions that they saw him as somehow changed, as a new
enigma. That was good.
Mike Wilcox was sitting between Margaret and Nirmal; he raised his hand
slightly in greeting.
"Hello, Mike. When did you get here?"
"Just this afternoon. I'm not sure I'm meant to
be
here actually --
I didn't know there was going to be a meeting."
Gene pulled his chair out and sat down. "It's all right, I want you to
hear this. Has anyone told you that I healed a man named Cooley, Monday
afternoon in Tampa?"
"Well, Irma did say something. I can't quite follow it."
"He had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- Lou Gehrig's disease. I healed
him by touching him. I know how this sounds, but reserve your judgment.
The doctor who looked at him afterward is named Montoya. I got hold of
him Wednesday and talked him into taking me through the intensive-care
unit at Tampa General; He didn't want to do it, but I put some pressure
on through the head of the fund-raising committee; I'm one of their heavy
donors. He took me in there Thursday morning. It was an awful place --
I had no idea. It's one big room partitioned off with portable screens
-- people yelling in pain, blood on the nurses' uniforms, blood on the
floor, just a madhouse. Anyhow, we went down the row. I healed an old
man with a massively bleeding ulcer, and a woman dying of cancer, and a
girl with a crushed larynx. I'm getting follow-up x-rays, but I know I
did it. I healed them. Yesterday I went in and tried it again. I healed
three patients; that seems to be about my limit -- after that I feel as
if I'd been running uphill."
There was a silence.
"Had you ever done this before?" Salomon asked.
"I'm not sure. I remember once in Greece, a friend of mine hurt his
toe. He was barefoot, and he tripped and hit the doorsill. He thought
his big toe was broken, and I looked at it and touched it, and it was
all right. I didn't think anything about it then -- just thought he'd
made a fuss over nothing. The only time I ever tried to heal anybody
was years before that, in New York, when my best friend was dying of a
heart attack. I couldn't do it; I didn't know enough. If I had, I could
have saved him. There were things I could have done -- open the airway,
chest massage, mouth-to-mouth breathing. It wouldn't have taken a miracle,
just somebody being there who knew the right thing to do. But I didn't
know. After that, I never tried again, until Cooley."
Wilcox cleared his throat. "I'm not sure if this means anything," he said,
"but you remember looking at Nan's leg, before we left? Well, when I
got her home, she went down to start her physical therapy the next day,
and when they took off the brace, the knee was completely mobile -- not
a thing wrong with it. They told her to go home and not be a nuisance."
"So. Maybe I healed her too. If so, I wasn't aware of it." Gene folded
his hands on the table and leaned forward. "Now I've got to demonstrate
something, because I want you to believe me. Pongo and Irma have already
seen this, the rest of you haven't. Nirmal, will you hand me something
from your wallet -- something you think would be hard to duplicate?"
"Hard to duplicate?"
"Yes. Not a pack of cigarettes, not a coin. Something one-of-a-kind. Don't
worry, I'll give it back,"
"I am not worried, but I am confused. Will this do?" Coomaraswami handed
over a credit card with a broken corner.
"Sure. Now watch." Gene laid the card on the table, covered it with his
big hand for a moment. His hand moved sideways across the table. When he
lifted it, there were two credit cards. He handed them to Salomon, who
stared at them a moment before passing them to Coomaraswami. Margaret
and Cliff Guthrie got up to look over his shoulder. Both credit cards
had the same embossed twelve-digit number, both said "N. K. COOMARASWAMI"
on the front; both had the lower right-hand corner broken in the same way.
"May I see?" said Wilcox. He took the two credit cards and looked at
them closely.
"Mike, could you do that?"
"Yes, with a little preparation."
"Could you do it the way I did -- not knowing in advance what Nirmal
would give me?"
"Oh, yes. Not at all difficult."
Gene sighed, "All right," he said. He reached into his pocket, took out a
little cloth bag with a drawstring and slid it down the table. The others
stood up to see better as Wilcox opened the bag and drew out an oblong
bar of bright gold. On the surface of the bar was the embossed legend,
"CREDIT SUISSE, 500g GOLD, 999.9."
"Have you ever seen one of those before?" Gene asked.
"No, never. My lord, that's heavy. What's it worth?"
"About seven thousand dollars, I suppose. I haven't followed the market
lately. Have you got a penknife?"
"A knife? Yes."
"Scratch your initials in it, or any symbol you like. Pongo, will you
get a grocery bag from the kitchen?"
"Aha," said Wilcox good-humoredly. He took a knife out of his pocket,
opened it, and carved the initials "MBW" on the bar.
Pongo came back and handed him a brown paper bag. "Examine it, please,"
said Gene. Wilcox turned the bag over in his hands, opened it, and
peered in.
"Now put the bar in the bag. Take it out again. Now fold the top of the
bag and hold it with both hands. Raise the bag a little, so it doesn't
touch the table." Wilcox followed instructions, watching Gene with a
glint of amusement in his eyes.
Gene stood up. He walked down the table until he was behind Wilcox;
then he reached over and lightly touched the side of the brown paper
bag. The bag dipped suddenly in Wilcox's hands and hit the table with
a solid thump.
Wilcox had turned pale. He opened the bag and looked in, then drew out
a gold bar and laid it beside the first. They gleamed in the middle of
the table, each one with the same initials scratched in it.
After a moment Wilcox looked up. "I'll give you a thousand dollars if
you'll teach me that trick," he said.
Gene sat down again. "Mike, if I can do this, what do I need your money
for? Haven't you ever asked yourself how I got so rich?"
"Well, I did wonder -- "
"I bought diamonds and copied them, just the way I copied that gold bar,
and sold them to Piet's firm in Amsterdam."
Linck was nodding. "lt's true. Millions of dollars' worth, over a period
of years. It was very profitable to us."
"I still think it is a trick," said Coomaraswami, laughing weakly.
"Why?"
"Because it is impossible,"
"Have you ever heard of the 'many-worlds' explanation of quantum physics?"
"Yes, of course. That is Hugh Everett's theory. He says that when two
things can happen, at the particle level, both things do happen, and so
you get a kind of splitting of reality into two separate worlds. It is
a very interesting theory."
"And it's true, I've known it all my life. I can see into those other
worlds, a little bit; I can reach in and turn them, I haven't created
anything, I've just taken that gold bar from another world and moved it
into this one. And I now know that I can heal people the same way."
He went on, "This is what I've been waiting for. A couple of years ago,
in Japan, I woke up one morning and realized I was almost forty years old,
and I had a power that I'd never done anything with except to kill people
and make myself rich. So I came back here and built this house. I wanted
a place where I could sit still for a while and get things straight in
my head, and I wanted a place where I could spend the rest of my life
in reasonable comfort, if I couldn't figure out anything better to do."