Black Easter by James Blish

Author:James Blish [Blish, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf, azw3
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780575104013
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-09-28T11:00:00+00:00

10

Ware’s period of recovery did not last quite as long as he had prophesied. He was visibly up and about by Twelfth Night. By that time, Baines – though only Jack Ginsberg could see and read the signs – was chafing at the inaction. Jack had to remind him that in any event at least two months were supposed to pass before the suicide of Dr Stockhausen could even be expected, and suggested that in the interim they all go back to Rome and to work.

Baines shrugged the suggestion off. Whatever else was on his mind, it did not seem to involve Consolidated Warfare Service’s interests more than marginally … or, at least, the thought of business could not distract him beyond the making of a small number of daily telephone calls.

The priest or monk or whatever he was, Father Domenico, was still in attendance too. Evidently he had not been taken in by the show. Well, that was Ware’s problem, presumably. All the same, Jack stayed out of sight of the cleric as much as possible; having him around, Jack recalled in a rare burst of association with his Bronx childhood, was a little like being visited by a lunatic Orthodox relative during a crucial marriage brokerage.

Not so lunatic at that, though; for if magic really worked – as Jack had had to see that it did – then the whole tissue of metaphysical assumptions Father Domenico stood for, from Moses through the Kabbalah to the New Testament, had to follow, as a matter of logic. After this occurred to Jack, he not only hated to see Father Domenico, but had nightmares in which he felt that Father Domenico was looking back at him.

Ware himself, however, did not emerge officially, to be talked to, until his predicted fourteenth day. Then, to Jack’s several-sides disquietude, the first person he called into his office was Jack Ginsberg.

Jack wanted to talk to Ware only slightly more than he wanted to talk to the barefooted, silently courteous Father Domenico; and the effect upon Baines of Ware’s singling Jack out for the first post-conjuration interview, though under ordinary circumstances it could have been discounted as minor, could not even be conjectured in Baines’s present odd state of mind. After a troubled hour, Jack took the problem to Baines, not even sure any more of his own delicacy in juggling such an egg.

‘Go ahead,’ was all Baines said. He continued to give Jack the impression of a man whose mind was not to be turned more than momentarily from some all-important thought. That was alarming, too, but there seemed to be nothing to be done about it. Setting his face into its business mould of pleasant attentiveness, over slightly clenched teeth, Jack marched up to Ware’s office.

The sunlight there was just as bright and innocent as ever, pouring directly in from the sea-sky on top of the cliff. Jack felt slightly more in contact with what he had used to think of as real life.

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