Vera’s entire demeanour shifted. She seemed stern. Where there had been a mother hen, there now sat a sergeant major. She cheesed the shoulder-patting routine and crossed her arms at me.
“It’s time for you to grow some ovaries,” she said.
I eh-whatted.
“Woman up,” she added.
“What in Abe’s name are you on about?”
“It seems to me you have two choices. You can sit here and sulk, or you can roll up your sleeves and see what you can do to help Zeus. His memories are gone? Fine. Then it’s your job to help him. And while you’re at it you can find a way to stop what they’ve been doing to the Napoleons. It’s not right. They’re cooped up in cells and being experimented on. Somebody has to do something, and that somebody has to be us. Especially you. The Regent and Norm think of you as the Hand of the Intercessor, right? Then use that! They think you’re important and influential? Tell them to let the Napoleons go! Just stop sitting around and whining. Buck up and get to work.”
“But dash it,” I said, “how can I? I’m in the midst of one of those things you sometimes get.”
“Huh?” said Vera.
“A kind of crisis. They start with e.”
“An emergency?” hazarded Vera.
“Egg-zee-stential?” said Nappy.
“That’s the bunny,” I said. “I’m having one of those existential crises. Like the one I had before — when Ian Brown stood revealed as the leading man in my last adventure, and I was cast in a mere supporting role — Hand of the Intercessor, forsooth. And now . . . well, I’m fairly convinced I really do exist — but to what end? I emerge as the protagonist in a book without a plot, and one in which all of my actions have amounted to less than nil.”
“That isn’t true!” said Vera. “You got me out of the hospice. You found Zeus and made sure he was safe. You’ve discovered what’s been happening to the Napoleons.”
“Zis is true!” said Nappy. “Wizzout you, none of zis might ’ave ’appened.”
I might have argued the point, but it’s dashed depressing to have to explain, in no uncertain terms, that the sum total of the impact of your efforts is less than advertised, particularly when that impact is being hyped up by your pals. They were right, of course, that I’d discovered a good many things in the course of the last few weeks — but these were things that were happening whether I discovered them or not, and I hadn’t had any impact on them at all.
Vera’s words of encouragement had, however, reminded me of one thing: it wasn’t time to throw in the towel. Say what you will about we Feynmen, we know how to keep the upper lip stiff. Faced with the bludgeonings of fate, our heads are bloodied but unbowed, as the fellow wrote. We do not raise the white flag or turn our faces to the wall. We might wallow for a paragraph or two and take stock of our chagrin as I’d just done, but we don’t make a habit out of the thing. Having engaged in a bit of this self-indulgent wallowing, we sink our dudgeon and carry on. In a word, we can take it.
The patented Feynman resilience — or resolve, if you prefer — was just starting to kick in, and would, in any cinematographic depiction, have been heralded by a chorus of Voix Céleste rising up toward a crescendo. And after they’d made their way through a couple of bars’ worth of glory-glory-hallelujah-ing, they’d fade into the background as I kicked in with an inspirational speech.
I was on the point of coming across with the inspirational s., but was interrupted by the sound of a polite cough coming from my immediate rear. This was revealed to be the domestic servant William, once again turning up to chivvy me elsewhere.
“You must rise early on the morrow, sir,” he said, in that respectful way of his. “The Regent has called for a meeting of great importance and bids you thither in your capacity as Hand of the Intercessor. If you’ve concluded your conference with Ms. Lantz and Ms. Napoleon, I shall convey you to your room.”
And on that officious note, the evening ended. William ushered me to my room, where I found Fenny curled up with a book and looking as though he hadn’t a care in the world. I apprised him of the day’s events and tucked myself into bed for a good night’s sleep.
Chapter 24
But I didn’t get much of it, and what I did get was interrupted by dreams of killer whales chasing me over difficult terrain. Some of them looked like Oan, some of them looked like Isaac Newton, and for some reason I couldn’t fathom, a few of them looked like the butler William. When I finally gave up my pursuit of sleep, the day was dawning bright and fair, the sun was beaming through the windows, and these same windows revealed a treeful of about one hundred and forty birds who tootled and tweeted as though they hadn’t a damn thing on their collective mind. Fenny was snoring on the bedside table — his habit when we spend the night in unfamiliar quarters — and William, his trained senses knowing just when a guest of the house would be in need, was manifesting himself in the doorway with a trolley topped with tea and all the fixings.
“Good morning, sir,” he said.
“It strikes you as that, does it?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“The morning. You deem it good?”
“I do, sir. The weather is extremely clement.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I said, a touch austerely. And there must have been something in my demeanour indicating that chagrin had marked me for her own, for William’s next words indicated that he’d divined my mood.
“Is something bothering you, sir?”
“You bet it is,” I said. “It’s this dashed meeting with the Regent. I can’t face it. They’ll be all over me about interpreting Vera’s poem, they’ll repeatedly call me the Hand of the ruddy Intercessor, and they’ll probably insist that we spend some time planning a wedding or two. Not,” I added, “intending to suggest anything derogatory about marriage — it’s just that all of this fuss and bother about me being something of a Church Icon gives me the pip, as it would any man of spirit.”
“That is regrettable, sir.”
“But it’s not me who’s going to regret it. It’s everyone else. I’m oiling out. Convey my RSVP in the negative, William. Tell them I can’t make the meeting.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, sir.”
“Impossible? Just watch me. It’s practically the easiest thing in the world — not attending a meeting, I mean. You simply don’t turn up.”
“But the meeting is here, sir,” said William.
“How do you mean the meeting is here? You can’t mean to imply that they’re holding their official tête-à-tête here in the Feynman HQ, among my bed and luggage and other personal whatnots?”
“I do, sir. In fact, unless I’m much mistaken I hear the Regent and her party approaching now. Shall I show them in?”
As a general rule we Feynmen keep open house and are happy to entertain whatever huddled masses choose to enter our orbit. But I was still in bed, dash it, and not yet prepared to face whatever it was that the Regent and her party — whomever that might entail — wished to unleash in my direction. I was about to indicate this to William when I realized that his question, “shall I show them in,” I mean, was one of those questions that aren’t really questions — purely rhetorical, if you take my meaning, for as soon as he’d finished asking it he turned on his well-polished heel, beelined his way to the door, and gave entry to the Regent and her p.
And what a p. it was. It included the Regent herself, carrying that little pyramid thingummy from the table and looking like she was about to start shooting flames from both nostrils, as well as the prophet Norm Stradamus, the dog Memphis, and — as if to suggest that this little shindig also constituted a jamboree for the Society of Those-Affianced-to-Rhinnick-Feynman — both Vera and Oan, standing shoulder to shoulder when I’d prefer to have seen them separated by a couple of oceans and impassable mountain ranges. Seeing the two of them standing here, together in my
room, made me chafe more than a little — this despite the fact that I was currently tucked to my chin in luxurious sheets of the nigh-infinite thread count variety.
Of course, if there’s one thing Rhinnick Feynman has always been nippy at, it’s bearing up in the face of impending ruin and desolation. I therefore maintained such composure as I had, smiled a welcoming smile, and bade the party to rally ’round the Feynman bed and pull up chairs.
They seemed to prefer standing, and gave every indication of having no time for civil chit-chat.
“Mr. Feynman,” said the Regent, who looked to be in a mood for chewing bottles and spitting nails. “You must tell us everything you know of R’lyeh.”
“R’lyeh?” I said, befogged, “I thought you were here to talk about Vera’s poem.”
“No need,” said Norm Stradamus. “Vera’s already filled us in.”
“R’lyeh, Mr. Feynman,” said the Regent, still looking about as ornery as a regimental commander with a toothache. “Tell us what you know about R’lyeh.”
I took a moment to shake the cobwebs from my attic and marshal the brain. And just when I was on the point of saying I hadn’t a notion of what she was babbling about, memory regained her throne.
“Oh, R’lyeh!” I said, remembering, and turned toward Vera. “That was the password you used to access the basement of the City Hall, wasn’t it? The room with the frozen ancients?”
“That’s right,” said Vera. And something about her tone — a sort of rummy, stammering, tremulous quality — told me that Vera was not her usual fizzy self. Now that she’d entered the conversation and I’d subjected her to that penetrating Feynman scrutiny which has been so widely publicized, I perceived that this generally rosy-cheeked medium was now about as ashen-hued as you can be without actually lying facedown in the hearth. And whatever views you have on Rhinnick Feynman, you’ll have to admit that he does not stand idly by when he sees a pal exhibit a clouded brow.
“There’s something troubling you,” I said.
Vera stood there, staring mutely.
“It’s nothing,” said the Regent. “You must tell us about R’lyeh now.”
“You want me to tell you about the password?”
“No, the place,” said the Regent.
“It’s what they’re calling sub-basement nine,” said Vera, before finding herself caught in a rather caustic glare from the Regent.
“Tell us what you know,” said the Regent.
“Please forgive us, Hand of the Intercessor,” said Norm Stradamus, in a placating sort of way, “but we really must know. It’s of vital importance.”
“Please, Rhinnick, do tell us,” said Oan, who seemed be chewing her lower lip.
“There isn’t much to tell,” I said, shrugging a shoulder or two. “It’s just a big, warehouse-sized space in the bowels of City Hall. Filled to the brim with — what did you call them, Vera? It’s on the tip of my tongue. Not sarcasm or sarcomas, but—”
“Sarcophagi,” said the Regent, once again pinch-hitting for Vera, who stared intently at her own shoes.
“That’s right,” I said. “The joint was filled to the brim with sarcophagi containing freeze-dried ancients. Vera said they were dormant. And for some reason or other — we weren’t vouchsafed time to conduct a thorough investigation — some officious chap, possibly Isaac, was pumping these sleeping ancients full of lessons.”
“Lessons?” said Norm Stradamus.
“That’s right, lessons. Things about science. New research. All of these sarcophagus-bound oldsicles were joined together in this neural network thingummy which seemed to pump them full of a serum that filled their heads with information.”
“And what do you know of its purpose?” asked the Regent.
“Its purpose?” I said, and my shoulders got a bit more shrugging done to them. “Why, nothing at all. Why anyone would bother going to all the trouble and expense of building one of these network thingummies, all with a view to putting ideas into the heads of elderly birds, is beyond yours truly.”
“I told you,” said Vera, apparently to her shoes, “he doesn’t know anything.”
The Regent shushed her with an imperious gesture — a practice to which she seemed far too addicted.
“What’s all this about?” I asked. “And why does Vera seem as though she’s been caught stealing coins from the collection plate?”
The Regent turned to Norm Stradamus and cupped a hand over his ear, proceeding to whisper in a way that would have drawn a firm tut-tutting from the author of any book of manners. Vera looked up at me and seemed on the point of tears, and Oan stood mutely by her side, still chewing her lip — her own, I mean, not Vera’s.
It seemed to me that the time had come for a spot of decisive action. But what action to take? That was the question. Here I was, sitting in bed surrounded by a bevy of church officials and nervous fiancées, with no idea of why everyone in the zip code was acting so dashed odd. I was hampered by my lack of information.
I adjusted the pyjamas, pushed the covers aside, and scooched my way out of bed with as much dignity as I could muster in the circs. Then, doing my best to adopt a haughty air — though possibly not coming within several miles of it — I reissued my demands.
“I say!” I said, preparatory to chewing out the Regent, “I appreciate the lavish bit of real estate you’ve let me occupy during my convalescence, and I’m grateful that you gave my pal Zeus — better known hereabouts as Terrence — a comfortable post for which he is well suited. You’ve been my host, kept me beneath your rooftree, and earned a bit of leeway in the area of departing from basic rules of etiquette and civility. And I’ve been patient. I’ve done my best to furnish you with all requested information, and I’ve entertained requests to interpret poems. But there are limits, and strictly defined ones! I now see that you’ve reduced Vera practically to tears, you’ve rendered Oan a fairly speechless lip-chewer, and you whisper amongst yourselves in flagrant violation of the book of social rules. I’ve never been one to invoke titles, but whether I like it or not I am apparently the Hand of the ruddy Intercessor, and I demand that you fill me in on whatever it is that’s caused this unacceptable state of affairs.”
My earnest rebuke of the Regent’s conduct appeared to have unmanned her — if you can call it unmanning when it happens to a woman. Her features softened, her brow unfurrowed, and the storm clouds brewing around her head seemed to abate. To say she stopped shouting orders and started cooing like a dove would go too far, but her manner did improve.
“Hand of the Intercessor,” she said, causing me to cringe a bit and regret having invoked that blasted title. “Mr. Feynman,” she continued. “I regret keeping you in the dark. There are forces at play that you do not understand.”
“Enlighten me,” I riposted.
“Tell me,” she said, “what do you recall of the battle you witnessed with Norm Stradamus — the contest of wills between the Intercessor and the City Solicitor?”
“You mean the Intercessor’s wife. It wasn’t Ian who fought against the City Solicitor — or rather, he did fight, but his efforts amounted to less than nil. It was his wife, Penelope Somethingorother, who busted up the City Solicitor’s plans.”
“Very well,” said the Regent, “please tell me what you recall about the City Solicitor’s battle with Penelope.”
“I’m the one in need of information,” I replied with a touch of asperity, for I was beginning to grow impatient with this habit of grilling Rhinnick on both sides when he was the one left in the dark.
“Your answer will help the Regent explain matters,” said Norm, diplomatically.
“All right,” I said, doing my best to appear tolerant. “Well, the City Solicitor popped into the grotto, interrupted Norm et al. as they were trying to coax Ian to bung himself into the river, and ruined everyone’s day by firing a gun — apparently loaded with
those memory-wiping rounds — directly into Ian’s brain. I’m given to understand that this was followed by some sort of cosmic battle, most of which took place beyond my line of sight — I having been confined to an oddish sort of amber cocoon thingummy once things really heated up. I did manage to collar the gist, though, and understand that both the City Solicitor and Penny flexed a bit of omnipotence, flinging thunderbolts hither and thither and rearranging the geography through a psychic battle of wills. Penny won, Abe turned up, and Ian and Penny biffed off to parts unknown. Abe then offered yours truly a quest — my quest to thwart whatever it was Abe mistakenly thought Isaac Newton was planning — and my pursuit of this quest, through twists and turns too numerous to mention, landed me here.”
The Regent, Norm, and Oan nodded throughout, as though approving of my oration. Vera raised her head and stared in something approximating slack-jawed wonder, as though indicating that all of this had been news to her.
“Excellent,” said the Regent. “And do you recall what passed between the City Solicitor and Ian prior to this battle?”
“You mean apart from the bullet?”
“Yes. What did the City Solicitor say to Ian?”
“Oh, that,” I said. “Just some rot about the nature of the universe. Old stuff, really — things Oan covers in those sharing sessions of hers. Not,” I added, for I was cognizant of the fact that this same Oan was standing three feet from my bed and clearly hanging on my lips, “that hospice patients shouldn’t appreciate those sessions. Vision Boards, friendship bracelets, musings on the Laws of Attraction — always just what the doctor ordered in the realm of mental health. But suffice it to say the Solicitor said a lot of things about expectations and desires forming the universe. What we expect to happen, happens. He added some guff about Abe and other ancients shoring up the walls of reality and preventing things from getting out of hand. I think that covers it.”
Afterlife Crisis Page 26
