Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (14 page)

           
The two-breakfast morning was bad
for Congressman Stephen Schlurn, as he well knew, but how could he avoid
it?
There are only so many hours in the
day, there’s a re-election every two years, and the primary job of any
congressman is to
keep in touch.
It
used to be a goal of hometown newspapers to mention every family in the area at
least once a year, to keep alive the notion that this is
your
newspaper, which you should read all the time; a congressman’s
task was similar, except there was the question of power added to the equation.
Powerless families need not be stroked so often; the powerful need constant
reassurance of their power.

           
Thus the two-breakfast morning, and
often the two- or three-lunch mid-day, the two-dinner evening, and, during
campaign time, horrid “ethnic” snacks as well, all day long. Jerry Seidelbaum,
the congressman’s chief administrative assistant, kept a large supply of
tablet-form Pepto-Bismol in his attache case, but the damage was being done,
nonetheless.

           
This morning’s first breakfast, at
eight, was in a yellow- concrete-block-and-glaring-overhead-fluorescent-light
Knights of Columbus hall, with an entire Little League’s coaching staff, the
kind of local businessmen who volunteer their time and effort and money—good
qualities, very good qualities—but only to what they think of as manly
endeavors.

           
Congressman Schlurn found it hard as
hell to be manly at eight in the morning, but that was the task, so his remarks
were modified Harry Truman give-em-hell stuff, with some slighdy off-color
baseball jokes thrown in. The food was miserable dank scrambled eggs that
looked like Litde Orphan Annie’s hair and tasted like baby vomit, plus Vienna
sausages that had been cremated for several days and white toast drowned in
butter.

           
This way lies cardiac arrest. The
congressman contented himself with just enough coffee to give him heartburn,
smiled for an hour, and got out of there just as rapidly as he could.

           
In the car, with Lemuel the
chauffeur up front and Schlurn and Jerry Seidelbaum in the roomy back, Schlurn
moodily chewed Pepto-Bismol and listened as Jerry briefed him on breakfast
number two: “The food should be better, anyway.”

           
“That doesn’t help. What I need is
no
food, possibly for a week.”

           
Jerry knew not to respond to
Schlurn’s self-pity, but merely to march on: “Your host is Hodding Cabell
Carson, president of Grayling University.”

           
“Ah, Grayling,” Schlurn said,
smiling in a rare moment of honest pleasure. “They gave me an honorary degree
once, didn’t they?”

           
“Twice. Nine years ago, and three
years ago.”

           
“Lovely place. Ivied buildings, long
walks in the quad. That’s where I should have gone.” In fact, Schlurn had gone
to Queens College and City University in New York; his law degree was the sort
that made Ivy Leaguers smile patronizingly. But a congressman didn’t get smiled
at patronizingly, no matter what his collegiate background; one of the
advantages, to make up for those scrambled eggs.

           
Jerry said, “In addition to Carson,
there will be Tony Potter, chief executive officer of Unitronic Labs.”

           
“Defense?”

           
“Only peripherally. Blue-sky stuff,
mosdy, alternative energy sources.”

           
“Oh, God,” Schlurn said. “Windmills.”

           
“No, no, no, Steve, these aren’t
Greenpeace people. They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of Anglo Dutch Oil.”

           
Which rang a bell. Schlurn said,
“I’ve
met Tony Potter. He’s a Brit.”

           
“Almost to excess,” Jerry commented.

           
‘What’s our subject?”

           
“Dr. Marlon Philpott.”

           
Schlurn’s round pasty face wrinkled
with thought. “Why do I know that name?”

           
“Scientist. Physicist. Testifies in
Washington
sometimes.”

           
“He teaches at Grayling, right?”

           
“He’s one of the jewels in their
crown,” Jerry agreed. “He’s also funded by Unitronic.”

           
‘Will he be there?”

           
“I don’t believe so.”

           
‘Then what’s the purpose of our
joyful gathering?”

           
“I imagine they’ll tell us,” Jerry
said, “when we get there.”

*
 
*
 
*

           
Schlurn remembered
Carson
when he saw him again: the kind of
vainglorious WASP who made his teeth ache, as though he’d bitten down on
aluminum foil. Being, like all American WASPs, a fawning anglophile, Carson
introduced Tony Potter as though he were the Second Coming at the very least.
“From across the pond,”
Carson
said, showing his big horse teeth. “We’re happy he could make time this
morning. Happy you both could.”

           
‘We’ve met,” Tony Potter said. His
handshake was firm without being aggressive. A big-boned but trim man in his
mid-forties, with a pleasantly lumpy face and calmly self-confident eyes, he
would have stood six foot four if he didn’t slouch so much, as though his spine
were made of rubber. That the slouch itself was a form of condescension to the
lesser orders was clear, but unimportant; Tony Potter was insignificant to the
life and career of Stephen Schlurn. It was Hodding Cabell Carson who was
important to Schlurn, unfortunately.

           
The fifth member of the group was
Wilcox Harrison, Grayling’s provost, from the same background as Carson but
less obnoxious. Introductions were completed and idle breaking- the-ice
chitchat continued for a minute or two in Carson’s impressive office before
Carson said,
^cc
Well, shall we go in to breakfast?”

           
“Lovely,” Tony Potter said, and
smiled at Schlurn, saying, “My third of the morning, actually”

           
“Only my second,” Schlurn said,
warming to the man.

           
Carson
, sounding a bit frosty, as though he didn’t
like hearing about other suitors to his guests’ hands, said, “Well, I think
you’ll find this the best of them. Shall we?”

           
They were about to file through the
dark-paneled door when
Carson
’s secretary—a pretty girl—came in from the outer office with a small
white slip of paper in her hand. “Congressman? Your Washington office called.
Mr. Metz?”

           
Now what? Schlurn looked pleasant:
“Yes?”

           
“He wanted me to give you this reminder.”

           
“Thank you.” Schlurn took the paper
from the girl, who left as he turned it around and read, “Remember Green
Meadow.” He frowned, and showed the note—it was on one of those “While You Were
Out” forms—to Jerry, saying, “That’s not till Thursday, is it?”

           
“That’s right.” Jerry grinned. “A
little panic in the office while the boss is away.”

           
Schlurn shook his head and tucked
the note into his side jacket pocket, and they went on to the next-door dining
room for breakfast.

*
 
*
 
*

           
Wonderfully fresh orange juice.
Chilled sweet melon. Thin- sliced salmon and cream cheese with triangular toast
dps. Velvety coffee. All in a room with portraits of former Grayling presidents
on the walls, silent black servitors, and wonderful views of the campus out the
windows. It was as though that Knights of Columbus hall and those scrambled
eggs had never been.

           
Carson was, if nothing else, a
gendeman; he did not bring up the subject of the meeting until the plates had
been cleared and his guests were setded comfortably with their final cups of
coffee and small chocolate candies. Then, steepling his fingertips over his
coffee cup, looking at his own fingernails rather than meeting anyone else’s
eye, he said,
^cc
What I
⁵
d like to talk with you about this
morning, Steve, Tony, if I may, is a small problem here at the university you
might be able to help me with”

           
Chuckling, Tony said, “A
small
problem, Chip?”

           
While Schlurn thought, I will
never
call him “Chip,” Carson chuckled
back at Tony and said, “Small with your help, I think.” “And what is the name
of this problem?” Tony asked. Carson sighed. “Dr. Marlon Philpott.”

           
At once, Tony’s expression grew more
serious. He said, “Women? Alcohol? Embezzlement?”

           
But
Carson
, almost in a panic, was madly waving his
hands in front of his face, like a man bedeviled by gnats. “Oh, no, no, no,” he
cried, “nothing like that. Good heavens, I don’t want to malign the man’s
reputation.”

           
“Well, that’s a relief,” Tony said.
“What in fact
is
his problem, then?”

           
“Explosions,” Carson said.

           
They all waited for more, sitting
around the table like people who haven’t quite gotten the joke and know they
haven’t quite gotten the joke, but
Carson
had said it all. Silent, he sipped coffee
and looked at them in mute appeal.

           
Since Tony had been handling the
conversation up till now, Schlurn saw no reason to leap in at this baffling
juncture, so he sat back, fiddling with his coffee cup’s handle—even velvety
coffee is less than pleasant if you already have heartburn—and eventually Tony
said, “Do I take you to mean, Chip, that our friend Marlon blows things up?”

           
“Not often,” Carson said. “I’ll give
him that, the explosions are rare enough. But, gendemen, look at this setting!”
he cried, passion suddenly in his voice as he gestured broadly at the windows. “This
is not the setting for explosions! Not even occasional explosions, minor
explosions, unimportant explosions. The students are not paying twenty-two
thousand dollars a year to be in an environment of explosions.”

           
With a reminiscent grin, Tony said,
“Some of them might quite like it, if I remember rightly my own undergraduate
days.”

           
“Their parents wouldn’t,”
Carson
said.

           
“Quite right,” Tony said. “Point
taken. And now you have something to suggest to alleviate this problem, I take
it?”

           
“It’s more in the form of a
question, or a request, than a suggestion,”
Carson
said. “What I would like to do, with your
assistance, Tony, and yours, Steve, is find Dr. Philpott another location, not
terribly far from campus, for his laboratory.”

           
Tony frowned, clearly not seeing
it. “Some sort of concrete bunker out in a field somewhere, you mean?”

           
“Oh, no, nothing like that.” Carson
toyed with his coffee cup, choosing his words. “Dr. Philpott does need a fairly
sophisticated infrastructure in which to work. I was thinking, frankly, in
terms of an existing installation, I don’t know yet precisely
which
installation, but one that could
house Dr. Philpott in the manner he requires, but would at the same time be
more... adaptable to the idea of the occasional small controlled explosion.” “I
can’t think what sort of installation that might be,” Tony said.

           
“Well, that’s where Steve comes
in,”
Carson
told him, smiling at Schlurn with those big
teeth.

           
I’m not going to like this, Schlurn
thought. He said, “I do?”

           
“Through your excellent efforts,”
Carson
pointed out, “we have a number of military
bases in this general area.”