"And that?"
"Prove yourself!"
"But, doctor, it is you who must provide the testimony--!"
"Empirical evidence is my condition. Something measurable. Suspend, for
one moment, one natural principle--"
Ruefuly, Chris laughed. "To simple men--fishermen, farmers, tax
collectors--the power of any genuine conviction seemed miraculous
because of its accomplishments. I healed the neurotics of my day. By
suggestion, I added to the innocent gaiety of many a gathering. But
even that poor, positive procedure is inverted now; many churches find
their miracles in the hysterics of their own sick--bleeding, stigmata,
fits!" He sighed. "Surely you, doctor, a miracle-maker in reality--are
not naïve enough to ask that the very heart of truth be magically
violated so you may _accept_ truth? The evidence is--_within you_. I
never said more. Find it there, man!"
"I thought so," the doctor replied in a cold voice.
Chris spoke persuasively. "_You_ could work a miracle of transformation
within _yourself_. But--even if I should suspend the very forces upon
which that possibility depends--you would exert the last resource of
your ingenuity to find out by what mechanical trick I achieved your
illusion, as you'd call it! Prove, doctor, that you would not!"
"Let's see the experiment." Sopho's eyes were hard.
The stranger thought a moment and presently chuckled to himself. "The
unsolved riddle of the _cause_--the _source_--the nature--of the energy
in your atoms, doctor! Would you like to understand that next step in
your science?"
"Impossible!"
Chris looked ardently at the old man.
A moment later, the scientist's eyes shut. An expression of immense
concentration came upon his features. Perspiration welled and trickled
on his countenance--as on the colonel's. Suddenly his eyes opened
again. He grabbed the colonel's arm. "Great God, man! I've cracked the
toughest problem in physics! The thing just came to me this moment!
Why! With this equation--we'll be able to make bombs that will assure
American domination for a century! I'll win my second Nobel Prize!
Every nuclear physicist's head will swim with envy! The financial
possibilities--billions!--trillions! I'll just get it on paper--!"
He broke off. "Wasn't there--somebody else--standing here?" he said
perplexedly. "Never mind! Lend me a pencil, Learned!"
"Somebody else?" The colonel shook his head. "Nobody but the three of
us. And the gunners. Jesus, I wish this mission was ended! I've been
having a terrible struggle in my conscience about it!"
Learned said, "Have you? Me--too. I kind of hate humanity today. I kept
wishing--something would break down, and stop the whole thing. I get a
choked-up feeling when I think of those people."
The scientist was crouching, now--gazing at the streaming gray
desolation beyond the windows. "Funny," he said to the gunner at his
side. "A minute ago--I was sure I'd got a new insight into a very
complex problem. Now--I can't even remember my approach."
The gunner, who held palaver of the brass and all VIPs to be but one
more nuisance of war, said, "Yeah?"
The B-29 flew on toward its as yet unspecified destination.
The City of Horror and Shame.
Back at the base, the brass was laying plans for a second run--to the
City of Naked Sorrow.
9
A scorcher.
It was my father's phrase and came back to me as familiarly, when I
opened my eyes, as the heard reveille of my childhood. The sun glared
on the dark window-blinds, penetrating them at myriad pinpoints. I
remembered summer mornings in Massachusetts, Ohio, North Dakota,
Jersey, and on the cool, bright shores of Lake George.
"Rise and shine, everybody! It's a scorcher!"
The buoyant baritone of a man of God, excited by his life, frustrated
in every excitement by his Faith; a man in there, as we used to say,
trying.
The room was a fumarole--its atmosphere spent by my breathing and
stained with the carbonic reek of yesterday's cigarettes. Nothing came
through the windows; they were open to the eye--but invisibly walled by
the heat. A stratum of smoke and dust lay across a sunbeam; the light
pierced it, struck the corner of a mirror, broke, and rebounded to the
ceiling in a prismatic dazzle: red, green, blue, yellow, purple.
The little awl had ceased pecking my throat. I swallowed--without
unnatural sensation--reached for the phone, ordered coffee, and sat up
naked on the bed's edge, leaving a damp plaster cast of myself in the
sheet. I took a short shower and picked up the Sunday papers cautiously.
Karl didn't speak.
Saving his strength for the exhaustion of the day.
Ten-fifteen.
The coffee set my nerves dancing like a swarm of gnats, without
bringing relief from the deadness, the ache, the recollection of sleep
in every cell--fatiguing sleep--and the yearn for youth's restful
slumber.