'Oh, most definitely for form's sake,' said Dr Christian.
As she passed him she glanced at him quickly, suddenly not quite sure of herself or him; but she put her chin in the air and stalked magnificently through the big double doors which led into the sitting room, far enough ahead of him to show him how deliciously her big bottom oscillated from side to side as she moved.
'I'll ring for coffee,' she said, settling in her end of the couch and waving her hand at its other end, a signal that he was to sit there.
Instead, he chose a wing chair and turned it courteously so she could see him easily. He sat down, crossed his legs one over the other with the immense ease and comfort of the very thin, steepled his fingers like a pompous cleric and stared at her darkly over their tips.
'My God, you're a cold fish!' she said.
'So are you.'
She gasped and showed her bottom teeth. 'Well! That's sure straight to the point!'
'Yes, I meant it to be.'
Her head tilted to one side, she lowered her lids and looked at him from under them. 'What do you really think of me, Joshua?' she asked.
'Mrs Reece, I am not sufficiently your friend to say.'
That puzzled her, she had to mull it over. As a result, she changed her tack. Her face puckered like a sulky child's, and her eyes filled with genuine tears. 'Joshua, I need a friend desperately!' she said. 'Please, won't you be my friend?'
He laughed heartily. 'No!'
The outrage was gathering fast, but she gave it one more try. 'Why not?'
'I don't like you, Mrs Reece,' he said.
For a moment he thought she was going to slap him and scream for help while rending the bodice of her gown, but something in his face stopped her in mid stride; she swung round instead and ran from the room, weeping.
Thus when twenty minutes later Tibor Reece came in, he found Dr Christian sitting alone.
'Where's Julia?'
'Gone.'
The President sat down limply. 'She didn't take to you, did she? Damn!' He looked around vainly for the after-dinner tray. Haven't you been served with coffee and drinks yet?'
'I thought I'd like to wait for you, sir.'
When Tibor Reece smiled his face lit up beautifully, it became ten years younger and very attractive. 'I thank you, Dr Christian! You are indeed a civilized man.' He got up again and went outside, calling for some servant by name.
The cognac was a Hennessy, admittedly not Paradis (Dr Christian had imagined it would be, given that his host was the President of the United States), but still a most acceptable XO served in properly warmed balloons, and the coffee was excellent.
'You can't help me with her, can you?' the President asked of his guest sadly.
Dr Christian studied the amber contents of his balloon without speaking for a moment, then sighed. 'Mr President, no one can help you in this situation except you yourself.'
'She's that bad?'
'She's that good. Sir, your wife is not any of the things you suspect — she's not a nymphomaniac, nor is she particularly neurotic. She is a spoiled brat who should have been shown that she is not the centre of the universe when she was a child. It's too late now, of course. And I don't know what you can do to improve her disposition so far along in your marriage, either, because she has no respect for you. And that,' Dr Christian explained, burning his boats with a vengeance, 'is no one's fault except your own. She craves attention, she insists on being the absolute centre of any world she lives in, and she has no sense of duty or responsibility. So she takes a delight in trying to render you incapable of doing the job she now regards as her enemy. The only thing I can tell you that might relieve your mind a little is that I very much doubt anyone would ever be able to make an accusation of promiscuity against her stick. She's all show and no go, sir.'
No man likes to be told by a relative stranger that he has made a bed of nails for himself with his own hands, but Tibor Reece was a gentleman, and he was fair-minded. So he swallowed it. With difficulty, but he swallowed it. 'I see. You don't think then that if she read your book—?'
Dr Christian laughed. 'If you offered it to her, sir, I strongly suspect she'd throw it at your head! I may as well tell you that in your absence she and I had a falling out. I told her — not in so many words, perhaps, but plainly enough all the same — exactly what I thought of her. She didn't like the experience one little bit'
The President sighed. 'That's that, then. There's never an easy way out, is there?'
'No,' said Dr Christian gently.
'I pinned all my hopes on you.'
'Yes, I was afraid you had. I'm truly very sorry, sir.'
'It's not your fault, Dr Christian! I can see very well that it's mine — but I felt so sorry for her, so guilty myself — oh, well! Not to worry. Life goes on, as they say. Do have another brandy! Not bad stuff, is it?'
'It's very good stuff. Thank you.'
Suddenly the President peered about, his expression a mixture of conspiracy and illicit glee. 'There are very few private compensations for holding down this particular job, Dr Christian, but one of them is that I am less likely than most men to get into trouble for smoking a cigar indoors. I am not going to ask you if you mind, because I don't give a shit whether you do. But — care to join me?'
'Sir,' said Dr Christian, 'in answer I can but quote you the one bit of Kipling I know by heart — "a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke."'
Tibor Reece shook with laughter. 'By God, considering the circumstances, that's apt!' he said, and fetched cigars.
They got quite mellow on the third Hennessy, sitting back in their wing chairs puffing noxious clouds of smoke at the ceiling with open relish.
Dr Christian then found the courage to say the one thing he had so far left unsaid.
'Mr President, about your daughter.'
Tibor Reece looked suddenly wary. 'What about her?'
'I don't think she's a standard case of simple mental retardation.'
'You don't?'
'No. She strikes me as possibly very highly intelligent. But she's either violently traumatized or maybe biochemically psychotic. It's hard to tell on limited observation.'
'What is this?' demanded the President, his voice showing his pain. 'Do you take away with one hand and give with the other, or something? My God, my God, I can stand hearing the truth about Julia, but don't tamper with my daughter!'
'I'm not, sir. But I can't not try to help Julie. Who for instance has seen her? What actual evidence do you have that she's retarded? Was the birth hazardous? Was the early pregnancy adulterated by drugs? Is there a family history?'
The President looked blank. 'Everything was fine through pregnancy and birth. And I doubt there's any history in my wife's family. There's none in mine, for sure. I guess I just left matters in Julia's hands. There have been doctors. Julia insisted from the beginning that Julie wasn't right, that's why she had her heart so set on another child.'
'Sir, can you forgive me my failure with your wife, and grant me a very great favour?'
'What?'
'Let me have Julie tested.'
The fair-mindedness came to the fore at once. 'Why, of course I will! What have I got to lose, tell me that?' He drew a deep breath. 'What do you expect to find?'
'Nothing very consoling, sir, unfortunately. I think your daughter might be an autistic child. If she is, things won't be any easier for you, at least not right away. Nor will a diagnosis like that soften your wife's dislike of the child. But the cerebral potential is there, which it isn't in simple retardation, and the long-term results both in autism and psychosis of other kinds is very good these days. But all I want to do is test her properly. I may be wrong, she may be retarded. The tests will show us beyond any doubt.'
'I'll send her to your clinic whenever you want.'
Dr Christian shook his head vigorously. 'No, sir! I would much rather send my sister-in-law Martha here for a couple of days, if you don't mind. That way the testing c
an be done discreetly, and without the world knowing I'm involved. I have no desire to cash in on the illness of a President's child. In fact, I won't. If the test results indicate that Julie will benefit from some kind of active treatment, I'll give you the names of some very competent men.'
'You wouldn't consider treating her yourself?'
'I can't, sir. I'm a clinical psychologist, which in this year of Our Lord 2032 means I do indeed have quite a lot in common with psychiatrists, but I specialize in neuroses, and one thing your daughter is not, is neurotic'
The President ushered Dr Joshua Christian to his car in person, and shook him warmly by the hand at parting. 'Thank you for coming.'
'I'm sorry I wasn't of more help.'
'You were a great help, actually, and I don't mean with my daughter. Dr Christian, the company of a kind and a sensible man who isn't grinding an axe of his own is sufficient of a rarity in my life to have made this evening memorable. And I wish you well with your book. I think it's magnificent, and I mean that.'
The President stood in the porch and watched until after the glistening red tail lights of Dr Christian's car had been snuffed out by the driveway's curve. So! That was the surrogate Messiah manufactured by Dr Judith Carriol to heal the lost folk of the third millennium. He couldn't in all justice say the man had fired him with wild enthusiasm, or indeed even that he had perceived the much-vaunted charisma. But there was something. A warmth, a kindness, a genuine and caring interest in his fellow men. A real man. Guts. Scads of guts, by God. He tried to visualize what sort of confrontation might have occurred between his wife and a man so incapable of compromise, and grinned. But the amusement faded very quickly.
What to do about Julia? Only two months until an election, so nothing right away. Oh, there had been divorced Presidents, even, late, in the twentieth century, one who had survived a White House divorce to the extent of being re-elected. Of course old Gus Rome hadn't made any mistake in the marital department. Sixty years of wedded bliss. The grin came and went. Old fox! They said when he was in his early twenties and so new in Washington he still smacked of the boondocks, he had cast his eyes around all the Washington wives; he picked Senator Black's wife Olive for her beauty, her brains, her organizational genius and her relish of public life, then simply stole her from the Senator. It worked, though she was thirteen years older than he. She was the greatest First Lady the country had ever known. But behind the scenes — oh, man, what a tartar! Not that he had ever heard old Gus complain. The public lion was perfectly content to be a private mouse. Gus do this, Gus don't do that — and he was so lost when she died that he abandoned Washington the moment her funeral was over, went to live in his home state of Iowa and died himself not two months later.
Well. Julia was no Olive Rome. Maybe he had been a bachelor too long. A couple more terms and he was through anyway; his inclinations leaned towards only one further term, for all he really wanted to do was go back to the beautiful house teetering on the treacherous cliffs of Big Sur, the house he saw too rarely, and there live quietly with his daughter, keep her from the madding crowd. Fish a little. Walk the leafy needly mossy paths. Imagine nymphs behind the rocks and all manner of dryads in the trees. Smoke cigars until his lungs were tarred better than a highway. And never have to lay eyes on Julia again.
'Shit, shit, shit!' hissed Dr Judith Carriol, erupting into Dr Moshe Chasen's cluttered office.
Startled was too mild; he was shocked. In all the years he had known her, he had never seen his chief in a royal rage before. And a right royal rage it was. Her eyes were big water-worn stones, basilisk-staring, and her whole body was visibly shaking.
He thought immediately of Dr Joshua Christian and the newly titled Operation Messiah; surely nothing else had the power to rattle this woman!
'What's gone wrong?'
'That bloody fool!' She was so incensed she could find no stronger adjective. 'Do you know what he did to me?'
'No,' said Dr Chasen, naturally assuming she was referring to Harold Magnus.
'He accepted an invitation from Tibor Reece to see that silly slut of a wife of his! Without telling me! How dared he? How dared he?'
'Judith, how dared who, for crying out loud?'
'Who does he think he is, gallivanting off to the White House without so much as a by-your-leave? What's he done? I will tell you what he's done! Fucked up everything!'
The truth was dawning. 'Not Kublai Khan? Joshua?'
'Of course Joshua! Who else could be so unworldly?'
'My God!' Dr Chasen's brain went connecting the wrong threads again and wove a picture of Dr Christian falling victim to the First Lady's undeniable charms. Of course the whole of Washington knew she was frisky, but thought little of it; every man in public office had an Achilles heel, and the wife was almost as good a bet as a more illicit woman. Or man. Or whatever. 'Well, for God's sake tell me what's happened, Judith! Did someone like T.R. himself catch our Josh with his pants down in the First Lady's chamber?'
Dr Carriol was beginning to regain her equilibrium, so she contented herself with casting her confidant a glance of withering scorn. 'Oh, Moshe, how dumb can you be? Not that! T.R. asked him to come down to Washington and work a miracle cure on Jolly Jumbo Julia. And he actually went! Without telling me! So he screwed it up, of course. He went there without being briefed, he didn't know what the hell he was walking into, and there was sure no laying on of hands, I can tell you! Instead of having the hots for him, J.J.J, went right the other way. Probably he's so like T.R. to look at, how do I know? All I do know is that she's totally reversed the President's high opinion of Joshua and his book, and she is out to get Joshua no matter what!'
'Oh, shit indeed.' But his brain was starting to function clearly again, so he asked, 'How did you find out?'
'I fixed myself up with a date with Gary Mannering a couple of weeks ago because I knew he was one of Julia's most faithful cicisbeos. Why else would I go out with the guy? He's a creep! The only way he could get it in would be if someone dropped it in for him. Like all her lotharios. The macho's a full molecule thick and the IQ's about six points higher than plant life, but the pedigree's faultless and the money's wall to wall.'
Dr Chasen was fascinated, never having seen this oddly feminine side to Dr Carriol before. It embarrassed him, he couldn't really say why. Except that maybe if a man was saddled with a woman boss, he was more comfortable if she remained one of the boys at all times. This present mood of Judith's was too close to what he called powder-room stuff. 'Why pick Gary Mannering? Why not an aide or an executive officer? I presume it's the President you want to know about, not Julia.'
'An aide or an executive officer would smell a rat if I started asking questions about the President And Joshua is not the kind of incendiary topic he'd save to discuss during working hours. He'd be much more likely to discuss Joshua casually over dinner. I mean, there's no secret our man is producing a book, and I know the President didn't intend to keep quiet about having read it. So the best way I could figure to keep tabs on what the President really thinks about Joshua was to get to know one of his wife's boyfriends. That simple, Moshe.'
'My God, Judith, you're devious! So tell me the rest.'
'Gary Mannering phoned me not five minutes ago and told me about Joshua's visit — and his effect on Julia. And I had to come somewhere to let off steam or the whole of this side of the building would have blown apart. It's too public up there in Magnus's corridor.'
'Maybe the report is exaggerated? Too one-sided?'
Her rage was almost gone. 'Could be, I suppose,' she admitted grudgingly. 'Let's hope it is! But how dared he, Moshe? How dared he make a move like that without telling me, without asking my advice?'
Dr Chasen looked sly. 'Do I detect just a tad of badly wounded ego, Judith?'
'Wounded ego be damned! It's him! He's like handling a greased pig. Oh, God, Moshe, what am I going to do? How long is it going to take the President to kill Operation Messiah before it's even off the gro
und? Here, wait a minute!' She grabbed at his phone and punched John Wayne's extension. 'John? Has Mr Reece or Mr Magnus been trying to reach me? Oh. Well, if you need me or if either of them should call, I'm in Dr Chasen's office. Okay?' She hung up. 'No word from the big boys yet.'
'When was this supposed to have happened?'
'Saturday.'
'It's Monday afternoon now, Judith. Plenty of time for the President to have contacted Kublai Khan and killed our beloved Messiah stone dead if he was going to.'
'Not him! He's too deliberate, he'd think it over from all sides. No, Moshe, we've got to sweat for a few days yet'
Another line of thought occurred to Dr Chasen. 'Then how about getting the true story from Joshua?'
The second baleful glare in minutes daggered its way to Dr Chasen. 'How can I do that, Moshe? How can I do that and not give too much away? In some of his incarnations he's a dear, sweet, absent, bumbling fool, but in other incarnations he's the sharpest and most dangerously perceptive guy I've ever met. And I don't know if I'm ever going to know him well enough to pick when he's going to zip from one state of being to the other. Damn! Damn, damn, damn!'
Moshe Chasen saw what he thought was the light. 'My God! I didn't realize!'
'Realize what?'
'You're in love with Joshua!'
She reared up and back with the speed and horrific menace of a cobra; Dr Chasen literally shoved his chair away.
'I am not in love with Joshua Christian,' she said, her teeth bared. 'I am in love with Operation Messiah.' And she turned on her heel and walked out.
Dr Chasen picked up his telephone and punched John Wayne's extension. 'John? If you're smart you'll dig yourself a hole and hide. The boss is on her way up, and she is not a happy woman.'
His computer readouts had quite lost their usual allure; he finished pushing his chair back and sat for a long time just looking out his window. Shit. It sure was easier to deal with so many human beings they had to be reduced to nice anonymous ciphers. The big question was whether Judith could survive this first encounter with a flesh-and-blood statistic.