A Creed for the Third Millennium (29 page)

If President Reece had expected his
dinner guest to shine verbally, he was doomed to disappointment. Though Dr
Christian held his end of the table discussion capably up, he said nothing even
the most biased of auditors could have termed brilliant, witty, profound or
original. The presence of so unsympathetic and jarring a woman as Julia Reece he
found not so much inhibiting as enervating; she possessed the disastrous habit
of saying exactly the right thing to kill decent talk. Poor Tibor Reece! Either
he had experienced an elderly man's fascination with young girls at a precocious
age, or he had been caught like an unsuspecting fish. Dr Christian thought it
was probably the latter; Julia could conceivably behave very
differently.

The consomme came and went, the salad
came and went, and the roast chicken main course came. The promised urgent
message was served just before the roast chicken remains were whisked away;
Tibor Reece rose to his feet with an apology and a promise to Dr Christian that he would return in time
for coffee and cognac.

Which left Dr Christian alone at the
table with Mrs Tibor Reece. He sighed to himself, feeling depressed.

'Do you really want dessert, Joshua?' she
asked; she had called him Joshua from the moment of introduction, where her
husband had preferred to retain his title and his last name, not because of any
lack of warmth, but because to do so was a small courtesy Dr Christian for one
deeply appreciated.

'No,' said Dr Christian.

'Then let's go back to the sitting room,
shall we? I don't suppose Tibor will get back, he rarely does, but we'd better
give him an hour, for form's sake.' This last was said in conspiratorial
accents.

'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 can 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.