I suppose on reflection it ought to have been “from what does the world need saving,” but that didn’t occur to me at the time.
“Isaac Newton, ass,” she said, punctuating the remark with a silvery laugh. “Don’t you remember? You were sitting here with Oan, back when I couldn’t think of anything but ‘two chairs,’ and you decided that one of Isaac’s experiments would put Detroit in jeopardy, and it was your job to save the day. I can help you with that.”
I could see that this was another moment to bring this psychic gumboil up to speed. As adroit as she was at peeping into the future, she seemed to have a dashed difficult time with current events.
“Ah,” I said, rather tolerantly. “Events have overtaken you. I’ve already been to Isaac’s lab, where I inquired about his experiments.”
“And what did you find out?”
“There’s nothing to fear. Everything’s boomps-a-daisy. Isaac can carry right on fiddling with his test tubes, telescopes, and electron-scanning thingummies ’til the cows come home, and I hope he has a fine day for it. Nothing he’s doing poses any danger at all.”
“Oh!” said Vera. “That’s a surprise.”
“But what about Abe?” said Oan, her eyebrow furrowed with concern. “I thought he told you Isaac was dangerous. The most dangerous man in the world. Abe can’t be wrong, can he? It’s more likely that we’ve misunderstood his warning. We merely assumed that any danger caused by Isaac must relate to his experiments. If his experiments are safe, maybe Isaac is up to something else that will put us all in danger. Maybe we should investigate Isaac’s—”
“Dismiss the notion!” I said, for I could see that this Oan was making the same error as Abe. “You’re making the same error as Abe,” I said. “You see, Isaac’s experiments sound dangerous, to the untrained observer. But if there’s one kind of observer Rhinnick Feynman isn’t, it’s an untrained one. While it is true that Isaac remains intent on changing the world, he means to do it in an entirely sciencey way.”
“A sciencey way?” said Vera, looking askance, and I recalled that she herself was something of a dab hand with science and engineering.
“You know,” I said, attempting to make matters clear for the meanest intellect, “in the way all these science nibs want to change the world. Invent a more efficient mousetrap. Create a hangover cure. Find a way to keep dress shoes from coming untied. In Isaac’s case, his aims and objects are focused entirely on teensy weensy quantum doodads and maths. He seems to think the aforementioned quantum thingummies don’t jive with his mathematical models, causing him much agitation and alarm. Thinking that some sort of agreement between the aforementioned doodads and models would just make his day, Isaac has set out to bridge the gap, bringing harmony between, as I think he called it, observation and calculation.”
“And that’s not dangerous?” Vera asked.
“How could it be dangerous?” I said, chuckling tolerantly, for the young boll weevil amused me. “Isaac is, by his own admission, fiddling with only the most subatomic of subatomic things. And only where they don’t square up with his figures. Mucking about with things on that scale couldn’t harm the smallest flea. Like all academics, Newton’s merely shedding a bit of pseudo-light upon non-problems.”
“Well, I suppose you know,” said Vera, “but it does seem strange that this Abe person would send you on a quest without realizing there wasn’t a point to it.”
“We all err from time to time,” I said. “Even Abe. So you see, the world doesn’t need saving. The old thing is ticking along nicely.”
This seemed to deflate the young prune, who must have been looking forward to a bit of world-saving at the side of yours truly. Never wishing to disappoint the delicately nurtured, I offered whatever I could by way of consolation.
“There’s still my quest to track down Zeus,” I said. “You could help with that if you like. And in so doing you’ll be aiding the cause of science by helping Isaac with his experiments.”
“How do we do that?” said Vera.
“With those files you’ve brought with you. Buried within their contents may be data which will help me hone in on my friend Nappy — and if I know Nappy, she won’t be more than a stone’s throw away from Zeus, provided she has any choice in the matter.”
“And helping Isaac with his experiments?” said Vera, still thirsty for information.
“He needs brain scans, psychological profiles, and other data relating to Nappy’s memory. Something to do with aberrant memory patterns and their relationship to quantum whatnots, I gathered.”
“Oh,” said Vera, still seeming a trifle puzzled by it all. “I was sure I remembered seeing something in the future about you and me teaming up to save the world. And I remember seeing that Oan can’t come with us. I’m sure it’s true. I still think it’s best that I stick with you.”
“I agree,” said Oan. “The Laws of Attraction have brought us someone blessed with the gift of foresight, and—”
“We all know the one about gift horses and mouths,” I said, completing the thought.
Then, perceiving it was about time to get this show on the road, I asked Vera to hand over the files, and the three of us spent a goodish bit of time poring over the contents. And what we found can be all be placed under a single, bold-font heading, viz, “Nothing Bloody Useful.” This file was bursting to the seams with test results and medical data but had nothing in the way of personal info, all of which must have been coded and shoved aside for safekeeping. There was no forwarding address, no contact info, no way at all of tracking down the Napoleonic bird whose brain scans, test results, and psycho-assessment thingummies filled these pages.
“You’re sure this is Nappy’s?” I asked.
“I am,” said Vera. “Television. But there’s nothing in here that will help us find her.”
“What do we do now?” said Oan.
“There’s only one thing to do,” I said. “We take the files to Isaac and hope they’ll be of use to him. If they are, they’ll speed his experiments, and he’ll make time to hasten to the hospice and convince Dr. Peericks to set you free. Grateful for the gesture, Peericks will, I hope, unseal his lips with respect to Zeus’s current abode.”
And it was at this point that I was struck by an idea.
“Vera,” I said. “You showed excellent initiative — if initiative means what I think it does — in pinching Nappy’s file from Peericks’s office. No chance of you pinching a nice round number of files, then, and laying your hand on Zeus’s, too?”
“No,” said Vera. “I looked for them. I remembered you would ask. Nothing filed under Z, nothing filed under Princk, nothing filed under Beforelife Delusion complicated by canine past. Sorry.”
“Dash it,” I said, and if I registered a spot of despair, who could blame me? While we Feynmen are renowned for keeping the upper lip stiff, the head bloodied but unbowed, there still comes a time when the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune start to wound the spirit. At this point in my affairs I had become fed to the eye teeth with fate’s habit of sidling up behind me and kicking me in the pants. I mean to say, I am the hero of this story, but I do have my off days.
It was at this moment that Vera came through with a honeyed word aimed at curing my spot of dudgeon.
“Don’t worry, Rhinnick. It’s still possible that he has a file on Zeus stored somewhere else. Maybe he set it aside for safekeeping once he knew you were interested in it. But unless he cooperates with us, we’re sunk. There’s no hope of finding them without Peericks handing them over.”
“That settles it, then,” I said, bracing myself for the coming journey back to Detroit University. “I’ll have to take these files to Isaac and hope for the best.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Vera. “Like I said, you’ll need my help.”
“But how can you?” said Oan, raising a point worth threshing out
. “You’re confined here in the hospice. You may be able to use your television to retrieve some of your memories, but will Dr. Peericks believe you? He wouldn’t believe what happened to me in the sacred grotto — who knows what he’ll think if you tell him you’re able to see the future?”
“She’s right,” I said, surprising myself by agreeing with one whom I had hitherto pencilled in as the loopiest specimen ever to cross my path. “It’s not as though you can saunter up to Peericks, tell him everything’s okay because your television’s back in working order, and whatever you lack in memory you make up for in ‘messages from beyond.’ He’d probably pat your head, say something along the lines of ‘There there, it’ll be all right,’ and install you in one of the hospice’s special rooms with softer walls before you can say what ho.”
“Just let me worry about that,” said Vera, “I have a plan to deal with Peericks.”
“Wonderful,” said Oan, suddenly beaming rather freely. “And while the two of you visit Professor Newton, I’ll stay here and plan the wedding!”
I winced as though she’d touched an exposed nerve. What with the rush of events that began when Vera blew into the room with Nappy’s files, I’d largely managed to sublimate any thought of my betrothal to this disaster, if sublimate means to bury a dashed hideous thought into the darker unexplored bits of one’s mental storage locker. Whatever you call it, I had almost forgotten that this loopy bird had signed me up for a trip to the altar rail, filling the air with v-shaped depressions bearing down on Feynman, R. Once again, all I could manage to say in response was “oh, ah,” and it occurred to me that, if these nuptials came to fruition, a good deal of my future life would be spent staring dumbly at the adored object and groping for something civil to say in response to her latest flood of goofy pronouncements.
“I do hope you’ll be able to join us at the wedding, Vera,” said Oan, brazenly pouring salt on the w.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Vera. “Now let’s get out of here. The world ain’t saving itself.”
And in the space of a couple of ticks Vera and self were headed down the hall toward Peericks’s office, where Vera would let loose this plan to free herself from captivity. And when you hear what her plan was, and how she intended to execute it, you’ll have no choice but to agree that, while Vera’s strategy might have earned an A+ for its ability to fling wide the hospice gates, the plan promised nothing short of desolation for yours truly.
Chapter 10
I don’t know if you’ve ever broken out of a loony bin, but I have, and I can assure you that these things take some doing. The last time I’d ditched this particular brain infirmary, kicking its dust from the Feynman shoes and legging it for the open spaces, the plan had involved the use of three explosive devices, four or five Napoleons, a getaway van, and the assistance of a particularly resourceful supermodel ninja who’d committed herself to the cause. Zeus had been there, too, lending his tree-trunk arms in yeoman service of our escape. On the present occasion I had no such resources at my disposal, and I hadn’t a notion of what Vera had in mind when it came to extricating — do I mean extricating? — herself from the watchful eye of Peericks and his cronies. Nor did she seem especially fussed about vouchsafing the plan to me before we nosed our way through the door of Peericks’s office.
On our arrival in that sanctum, we found the doctor deep in thought, furrowing a brow or two over his datapad (another of Isaac’s I-Ware models) as if doing long division or working out a complex sauce.
“Oh!” he said, looking as startled as a nymph surprised while bathing. “Mr. Feynman — I wasn’t expecting you.”
And on seeing that it wasn’t Feynman alone who’d darkened his door, the poor blighter’s bafflement only deepened.
I did my best to put him abreast. I mean to say, I didn’t get into the business of purloining Nappy’s file and using it to convince Isaac to make his way to Detroit Mercy, as dishing up this bit of the plan to Peericks seemed to be well outside of the realm of practical politics. Instead I began by telling him that I now found myself in a posish to solve a mystery for him, viz, the identity of the lightly charred beazel at my side whose identity had hitherto been cloaked in mystery. I wasted no time in making the formal introduction.
“That’s right!” said Vera, once I’d supplied the informash. “By the time I went back to my room, my burns had healed enough that Rhinnick recognized me straight away! It’s so lucky that he was there. The one man who was sure to know me on sight — at least, once I started to look more a bit like myself.”
“You . . . you know each other?” said Peericks.
Before I could get a word in edgeways, Vera charged ahead with something unexpected.
“Know each other?” she said, laughing merrily. “Why, of course we know each other! Mr. Feynman’s my fiancé!”
I reeled. It’s not going too far to say you could have knocked me down with a pencil, for this pipsqueak’s statement had unmanned me.
What do you call that feeling you get when, after hours and hours of staying half a step ahead of the gaping jaws of fate you turn ’round and realize that, rather than giving up the chase, said jaws are gaining on you and they’ve been joined by a pack of even more ravenous friends? It starts with an X. Zeus would know. Exasperated! That’s the bunny. I was feeling a good deal exasperated by the vicissitudes of life here at the hospice. If one wasn’t finding oneself signed up to wed a goofy Sharing Room Director, one was finding oneself engaged to a psychic beazel, if not both. And I don’t mind telling you that the target of this recent exasperation — the principal source of all of my troubles — was neither of the two popsies who seemed intent on taking me off the spousal market, but rather the Author, Himself, in person. I’m sure you’ll agree that He’d been making my life a dashed sight more difficult than any man would like, and the fault lay squarely on this apparent habit of His of making changes to the Feynman bio without consulting with yours truly, or even bothering to advise me of His revisions, something you’d think both professional courtesy and politeness would require.
Take the case of this young Vera. She now claimed openly to be affianced to me, and I’d be dashed if I remembered us being anything more than mere acquaintances. I mean, I did loan her my hamster on one occasion, and I suppose it’s possible that this could be a marker of betrothal in some far-flung cultures, but if it was, that was news to me. At a loss to explain how any of this could be, the only answer I could find was that the Author had revised the Feynman archives such that Vera was now slated in as a long-term romantic interest and I was now en route to becoming Mr. Rhinnick Feynman-Lantz. Had He asked for my input — a thing the Author seldom does — I’d have assured him with word and gesture that a marriage between myself and Vera was not something that would draw applause from the reading public. “Out of character!” they might shout, complaining over a glass of wine or two at a book club. For these readers, no doubt eager to keep up with my adventures, would be keenly aware that Feynman — at least as far as he’d been presented in prior volumes — would never link his lot to a girl like Vera. To be sure, I admired the young prune, and thought most highly of her prowess at getting self and others out of a jam in an hour of need, but there are women who — though highly respected and revered — one would readily run a mile in tight shoes to avoid marrying. This Vera I counted among them, what with her strange habit of peering off into the distance, losing the thread of conversations, and coming up with some pronouncement that, likely as not, would land Feynman rather deeply in the soup.
But then again, I mused, for one always likes to weigh both sides of a thing, I could do a lot worse than hitching up with this Vera. Take Oan, by way of example. A marriage with Oan would be far worse. And thinking of Oan, I suddenly realized that Vera had done me yet another good deed by not immediately objecting to Oan’s recent announcement that she and I were soon to be bride and groom. I mean, here was Vera, fully convi
nced that she herself was on the verge of donning the veil and fusing her soul with mine, suddenly hearing Oan proclaiming the bans and exclaiming that I would be her groom. “What do you mean!” Vera might have cried, rising to her full height and confronting us, “You can’t have him; he’s mine!” — a situation which, I think you’ll agree, would have caused a good deal of embarrassment and confusion on all sides. But she hadn’t done any of that. Instead, she had taken Oan’s announcement on the chin and simply stood there, rather stoically, letting Oan carry on with planning the wedding. Vera kept her words to herself, perhaps hoping Oan’s views on wedding Feynman were some sort of temporary attack of the crazies which would pass before yonder sun had set. But for whatever reason, she had avoided what one might call a “scene,” and in doing so she deserved well of Feynman. Yes, if the Author had pencilled me in to become the groom to this bride, I supposed that, as far as marital choices went, I could have done a good deal worse.
I mused on this for a space before realizing that events were overtaking me, as they so often do. When I popped out of my reverie I perceived that Vera was still embroiled in her tête-à-tête with Peericks and had apparently apprised him that her memories were restored. She gave a good deal of credit to Peericks’s memory treatments, giving the chap the old oil, as it were, but also claimed that some of her mental rebooting was due to me, I having recognized her now that her burns were healing and wasted no time in supplying the missing details in her biography.
To say that Peericks responded by chanting hosannas would be to deceive my public, because he didn’t. Not by a jugful. No, this psychiatric louse sat there regarding us rather skeptically, like a man who’s just been told that the used car before him has only ever been driven on a private driveway on Sundays during the summer.
Afterlife Crisis Page 11
