“Do your kids give a shit about the prize?” This from a bearded fellow who worked for The Leader, a pompous, “free” weekly.
“You’d have to ask them.”
I feel like a criminal, Sean thought.
“What do you think they feel?”
“They woke me up with the news, screaming joyously. They went off to St. Ignatius very proudly, it seemed to me.”
Needle this crowd about Ignatius.
Mistake. Never introduce religion at a press conference.
“Do you believe in God, Professor Desmond?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Don’t you think your prize will offend millions of American Christians?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“All those Christians who don’t believe in evolution?”
“I’m only talking about a process, not the origin or the end.”
“But do you believe that God directly created man?”
“Humans.”
“All right.”
“The evidence seems to indicate that the process was differ-
“So won’t your prize offend all those who believe differently?” Sean felt that maybe it would be a good idea to give the prize
ent.”
“I was raised a Catholic; as I understand it, Catholicism has no problem with evolution. Even St. Augustine”—God bless you Blackie Ryan—“seems essentially to have supported such a theory.”
‘Yeah, but what about all those who believe differently? Won’t you offend them?”
“I don’t want to offend anyone.” Sean drew a deep breath. “I simply report the results of testing my theory. It suggests that the process of development of human organisms moves smoothly and regularly most of the time, but then leaps forward dramatically at certain critical turning points.”
“God causes the leap?”
“If you’re a theist,” he tried to keep his voice even, “you could certainly say, if I remember my philosophy courses from Notre Dame properly”—got that jab in anyway—“that God originates and sustains the process, but the process has its own internal dynamism.”
“God didn’t cause your punctuation marks?”
Now a big mistake for Sean Desmond’s big Irish mouth.
“If He did, I didn’t see Her in my laboratory.”
The lead paragraphs in the AP wire story that day:
Chicago. Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Sean J. Desmond dismissed the possibility that God might be involved in the evolutionary process. “I didn’t see Her in my laboratory,” Doctor Desmond said at a news conference today at the University of Cook County.
Doctor Desmond dismissed the possibility that the granting of the coveted prize to someone who ruled out a role for God in creation might offend millions of Christians who believe otherwise. “I simply report the truth,” he said. “If they’re offended that’s their problem.”
back.
They got his middle initial wrong and quoted him inaccurately.
The next day, like a lamb to the slaughter he went to his second news conference, the music of Stacey’s aliens still ringing in his head.
Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, and Jimmy Swaggart had denounced him as godless. A ministerial group in Dallas had demanded that the prize be revoked. A federation of churches in Oklahoma said that he was an instrument of Satan if not Satan himself. In tones appropriate for his fellow rear admiral David Farragut damning the torpedoes, Cardinal O’Connor said that only a fool
excluded God from nature. Cardinal Louis Gabardine told the press that some people praised Professor Desmond’s work and others condemned it and that he had heard from both sides.
The second conference—now on national network cameras—was an even worse disaster than the first. The principal issues were whether biology forced one to believe in God and why Sean did not believe in God.
Did he think that science disproved the existence of God?
“No.”
“Then why don’t you believe in Him?”
“Science leaves Her existence an open question. I am a scientist.”
“Can you have morality, Professor Desmond, without religion?”
Not at this university, he thought.
“I’m not certain,” he said. “I am a biologist, not an ethician.”
“Does biology teach morality?”
“It may give us some hints, but it is not an ethical system.”
“What will happen to the family if scientists like you destroy religion?”
“The family has remarkable durability, and I am not out to destroy religion.”
“But isn’t that the conclusion that can be drawn from your work?”
And so it went.
Only a few of the journalists were fundamentalists, Blackie Ryan explained later on the phone. “They cite the fundamentalist objections because they have to ask something to fill time on the screen and space in the paper and because it gives them a chance to crucify a celebrity, which is what the media are about.”
“Indeed.”
“Arguably, you should give it back.”
“And we have yet to hear from Mona.”
“Libera nos, Domine.”
“How do I protect myself?”
“Distract them with an issue more outrageous than the one they pressed on you.”
That’s when Sean S. Desmond began to think seriously about raising the angel issue before the Royal Swedes.
Mona contributed her share to the fateful decision. She had
finally given an interview to the Trib in which she blamed his “obscene” desire to win the Nobel Prize as the “rocks on which our marriage ended, causing untold harm to our poor little kiddies.” Neither she nor the feature writer bothered to note that Sean had been granted custody of the “kiddies.” Uncontested.
As he crossed Woodlawn at 58th Street, Sean made up his mind. He would work materials about the evolution toward greater mind into his Nobel acceptance speech. The mass media would forget about creationism, they would forget about Mona. They would, truth to tell, forget about the bearded Jesuit revolutionary who had won the peace prize.
How proud of him Sister Mary Intemerata, R.S.M, would be. Was she still alive? She seemed old in 1954, but then so did everyone else over twenty-five. A wispy little woman with a long ruler, a fanatic’s glowing eyes, and a piercing voice.
Sisters of Mercy, what a wondrously inappropriate name!
Sister Intemerata was high on Poor Guardian Angel. A good boy or girl sat on the left side of his schoolroom seat to leave room for Poor Guardian Angel, slept on the left side of the bed, walked a little to the left on the sidewalk, and tried to find an empty seat on the right when he went to a movie.
“Your Guardian Angel sees everything you do, hears your most secret thoughts, watches you every day of your life,” Sister I. thundered. “You can never escape from him. He counts every one of your sins, so God can enter them into His Book of life. You can never escape from your Guardian Angel!” Well, maybe Sister Mary I. would not like his speech. Still, it would be an acceptance speech they would remember for a long time.
The Royal Swedes et al. would gape just as did his colleagues at the round table lunch. He chortled to himself. Another Desmond outrage!
The leprechaun of Dorchester Avenue rides again!
“Did you folks really sing at Bethlehem?” Sean asked, half in fun and full earnest.
They were eating in the rose and silver Trianon Room of the old Villard house, onto which the Helmsley had been grafted. It was Stanford White at his most baroque. Gaby had informed him that real baroque homes were not nearly so comfortable when they were first constructed.
Gaby, dressed in an attractive black cocktail dress with thin shoulder straps, frowned at his question about Bethlehem. “If you insist on asking questions like that, you will have to learn to whisper, Dr. Desmond.”
She was wearing an emerald brooch around her neck, a large and memorable stone, as the breasts below it w
ere large and memorable, black net stockings (pantyhose, he assumed, though you could never be sure about your women angels), and a discreetly powerful scent, Fendi’s was it? La Passione di Roma? If you made it up yourself, why not the best? Every eye in the lobby turned to watch her when they exited from the elevator. Every head in the Trianon Room swiveled when she entered. Sean thought that was fine. She was worth looking at. And I get credit for having such a woman in tow.
If they only knew who she was.
Whom she claimed to be, he corrected his thought.
She was also wearing spiked heels. But somehow she was no taller than he.
Our angels come in expanding sizes.
As far as Sean could tell from a discreet peek into her adjoining room, she traveled without any luggage. Her closet was empty, no dresses, no coat, nothing.
The cocktail dress, with its low neckline and its ruffled miniskirt, probably came from the same place where she had found his ice cubes.
There was no denying the fact that, angel or not, she had more than a touch of vanity about her.
Angels vain? Could that be? Well, if you have physical bodies, it seemed logical that you should be concerned about your physical appearance.
She was a number of different women—a prim and impatient executive (fingers drumming on the arms of chairs, eyes stern); affectionate mother (soft smile, warm eyes); merry imp (jaw tilted upward, eyes dancing). Had they deliberately designed her body and character to disarm him—the kind of woman he worshiped and avoided?
So it seemed then. Later he would have reason to suspect a much more convoluted scheme.
“I think we’re attracting attention,” he had said to her when they entered the dining room.
“Oh?” She smiled complacently.
“People have never seen so much of an angel analog’s tits before.”
“Don’t be vulgar,” she reproved him. Then, after a significant pause, she added with a chuckle, “Or thighs, as far as that goes.”
“You’re vain.” He made his accusation explicit.
“Not without some reason, wouldn’t you say, Dr. Desmond?”
Now he was “Dr. Desmond.” Riding down the elevator, a Chinese red and gilt box that looked like a closet from Versailles, he had become “Seano,” his nickname among graduate students.
“Well, did you?” he said in what he thought was a whisper.
“And not a stage whisper either,” she said impatiently. “That couple at the table in the corner are from the Other Side ... and please, don’t stare at them.”
He restrained the muscles in his neck. Gaby’s alabaster shoul-
ders, throat, and chest, undeniably attractive, had about as much impact on him as would a statue in the Vatican museum. She had not created a suntan for herself, he noted.
Nonetheless, he filed the images away for future reference.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught a quick glimpse of a man and woman in their middle thirties at the corner table. They looked like prosperous tourists from Topeka.
“Not the KGB type,” he muttered.
“Who said KGB?”
“Nor CIA.”
“Who said CIA?”
“So you won’t answer that question? Okay, what about Bethlehem?”
Gaby shrugged her shapely shoulders. “It was a night on which there was reason to sing, was it not? Do not misunderstand. Despite your religious superstitions about us, we do not act as messengers for Anyone, at least not regularly. Although there are times when there are special missions that we feel we must take on, we are as ultimately uncertain about the existence of Anyone as you are. Yet we do have certain insights that on occasion we feel we must share with those who live on this planet. Sometimes we sing.”
“Will you sing for me?”
“Perhaps.” She sipped the seventy-five-dollar Cote de Rhone red he had ordered. He bet it meant nothing to her.
Do angels drink wine?
“Is it necessary to stare at me?” Her large brown eyes regarded him severely.
Incredibly long lashes.
“I’m a scientist”—he found his quick Irish tongue—“I can’t help but wonder if it’s really you sitting across the table from me.”
“What else would it be?” she said briskly, like a senior professor dealing with a dull first-year graduate student. “I appear to you in the form of an analog: that is, what I would look like if I were in your species and at your stage of the evolutionary process. The energy patterns that constitute my body are not perceptible to your sensing mechanisms”—she shrugged those damn ivory shoulders again—“so I alter my energy patterns that you may perceive me.”
“We can’t do that.”
She smiled, a patient mother with a spoiled little boy. “When your species evolves into its next phase, we presume that you will develop that power. It is not particularly remarkable. Watching your evolutionary process is one of our interests on this planet. It will facilitate our understanding of our own past.”
Again he felt like a chimp in a laboratory. Or the wolfhound panting worshipfully next to his mistress.
“Where’s your planet and what’s it like?”
“Those are irrelevant questions.” She drew her lips together primly. “And planet is not exactly the appropriate word for the region of our ancestors.”
“Why don’t you appear like one of your damn ancestors?” he said irritably.
She threw back her head and laughed, the first time she’d done that. She was so heart-stoppingly gorgeous when she laughed that Sean had to hang on to the table.
“Our predecessors were not ugly creatures with six feet and whirling antennae and yucky scales, as your daughters would say. Nor were they cuddly little adorables like ET. You would doubtless recognize them as fellow rational beings, and graceful ones at that. But this overdecorated dining room would empty in a fraction of one of your seconds should I produce an analog of your phase in our evolutionary process.... Incidentally, your friends at the corner table are asking for their check.”
“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” As long as he asked questions, she couldn’t return to his relationships with women.
“A very stupid question.” She filled his wineglass. “Typical of your species. What do you think the answer is?”
“At Notre Dame they told us in response to that question that angels don’t dance.”
“Calumny,” she snapped. “You can do better than that.”
“Well ...” He pondered the question. “You are energy patterns with some biological base. So I’d guess”—he grinned wickedly—“that all of you could probably focus some of your energies on the head of a pin. But that it wouldn’t be much fun.”
She nodded approvingly. “You are clever. No wonder you won the Nobel Prize.”
“You really dance?”
“Really.”
“Will you dance for me?”
“Certainly not.”
“Why not?”
“It would be inappropriate.” Her chin shot up.
“Please. I mean, I never saw an angel dance.”
“Istar Variations as background, I suppose.”
How did she know he was thinking of d’Indy’s music?
“If you wanted to.”
“Certainly not.” She dismissed him and his ideas with a wave of her hand.
“Any dance you want.”
The executive was replaced by the imp. “I’ll think about it.”
He pursued his catechism. “Are you really a woman?”
She was watching the couple from Topeka intently. And her answer was preoccupied. “Am I the source of life?... No, you mean do we have sexual reproduction, don’t you? You don’t follow your own hunches rigorously enough, Professor Desmond. You say in your Nobel Prize talk that once there are biopolymers, then the emergence of life, organic structures, and memory and intellect—first unconscious, then conscious—are inevitable. Do you not find bisexual reproduction as inevitable?
”
Out of the corner of his eye again, Sean saw the man from Topeka give the maitre d’ an American Express card. Gold, of course.
“Angels screw?” he murmured.
Her brown eyes flicked back to him, like impatient bumblebees. “Your species’ ability to use distasteful language for important functions is not attractive. But the answer is yes, we do join our energy fields as part of the reproductive process and we enjoy it far more than you. And we do it for weeks and weeks of your time too. Feel inferior now, Professor Desmond?”
So now I know I can offend mothers in two evolutionary processes.
“You’re a mother and a wife?” he asked, trying to cover his confusion.
“I am here to protect you because, despite you’re obnoxious-ness, you are especially important to us,” she snapped at him. “I have not come to discuss my personal life.” “Sorry,” he mumbled. “No, I’m sorry.” She smiled apologetically. “I am unduly sensi-
tive. ... Do go on with your questions about our, ah, complementing processes, to use a word that approximates our own.”
“So you feel, analogously, lust?”
“You’d better believe it.” She actually winked. “We are rigorously pair-bonded, male and female linked by biological ties that cannot be violated. We are essentially”—she winked again at the buzzword—“like those cute pairs of birds in Arizona, the Gambel quail. Apparently that is an evolutionary development. In a million years or so, your species may be pair-bonded too, though as I’ve insisted repeatedly, the processes are at best analogous, so we cannot actually predict what your species will be like after the next, ah ... punctuation is I believe your word?”
“Stuck with Mona for the rest of my life?”
“As it moves toward pair bonding, evolution apparently selects for those reproductive information patterns—genes, in your species—that produce much greater skill in complement selection.”
“I wouldn’t have chosen her?”
“Decidedly not.” She shook her head vigorously. “Or most of the others widi whom you have more casually coupled.”
“I think I feel embarrassed.”
She smiled again. “Arguably, your problem is not the women you select—on the slave block, as your male fantasy puts it—but the ones you don’t select.”
Angel Fire Page 5
