Darwinia

Chapter Ten

The summer of 1920 was a chill one, at least in Washington, for which people blamed the Russian volcanoes, the fiery line of geologic disturbance which marked the eastern border of the Miracle and which had been erupting sporadically since 1912, at least according to the refugees who left Vladivostok before the Japanese troubles. Blame it on volcanoes, Elias Vale thought, on sunspots, on God, the gods — all one and the same. He was simply glad to step out of the dreary rain, even into the drearier Main Hall of the National Museum, currently under renovation — work which had been postponed in 1915 and each of the four following years, but for which Eugene Randall had finally prodded funds from the national treasury.

Randall turned out to be an administrator who took his work seriously, the worst kind of boor. And a lonely man, compounding the vice. He had insisted on bringing Vale to the museum the way mothers insist on displaying their infants: the admiration is expected and its absence would be considered an insult.

I am not your friend, Vale thought. Don’t humiliate yourself.

“So much of this work was postponed for so long,” Randall was saying. “But at last we’re making headway. The problem is not what we lack but what we have — the sheer volume of it — like packing a trunk that’s a size too small. Whale skeletons to the South Hall, second story, west wing, and that means marine invertebrates to the North Hall, which means the picture gallery has to be enlarged, the Main Hall renovated…”

Vale gazed blankly at the scaffolding, the tarpaulins protecting the marbled floor. Today was Sunday. The workers had gone home. The museum was gloomy as a funeral parlor, the corpse on view being Man and All His Works. Rain curtained the leaded windows.

“Not that we’re rich.” Randall led him up a flight of stairs. “There was a time when we had almost enough money — the old days — bequests thick as fleas, it seems now. The permanent fund is a shadow of itself, only a few residual legacies, useless railroad bonds, a dribble of interest. Congressional appropriations are all we can count on, and Congress has been chary since the Miracle, though they’re paying for the repairs, steel stacks for the library…”

“The Finch expedition,” Vale added, moved by an impulse that might have been his god’s.

“Aye, and I pray they’re safe, the situation being what it is. We have six sitting congressmen on the Board of Regents, but in matters of state I doubt we rank alongside the English Question or the Japanese Question. Though I may be maligning Mr. Cabot Lodge.”

For weeks Vale’s god had left him more or less alone, and that was pleasant: pleasant to focus on simple mortal concerns, his “indulgences,” as he thought of his drinking and whoring. Now, it seemed, the divine attention had been once again provoked. He felt its presence in his belly. But why here? Why this building? Why Eugene Randall?

As well ask, Why a god? Why me? The real mysteries.

On into the labyrinth, to Randall’s oak-lined office, where he had papers to pick up, a stop between the latest afternoon salon of Mrs. Sanders-Moss and an evening seance, the latter strictly private, like an appointment with an abortionist.

“I know there’s tension with the English on the issue of arming the Partisans. I fervently hope no harm comes to Finch, unlikable as he may be. You know, Elias, there are religious factions who want to keep America out of the New Europe altogether, and they’re not shy about writing to the Appropriations Committee… Ah, here we are.” A manila file extracted from his desk top. “That’s all I need. Now I suppose it’s on to the infinite… no, I can’t joke about it.” Shyly: “This isn’t meant to insult you, Elias, but I do feel the fool.”

“I assure you, Dr. Randall, you’re not being foolish.”

“Pardon me if I’m not convinced. Not yet. I—” He paused. “Elias, you look pale. Are you all right?”

“I need—”

“What?”

“Some air.”

“Well, I— Elias?”

Vale fled the room.

He fled the room because his god was rising and it was going to be bad, that was obvious, a full visitation, he felt it, and the manifestation had clogged his throat and soured his stomach.

He meant to retrace his steps to the door — Randall vainly calling after him — but Vale took a wrong turn and found himself in a lightless gallery where the bones of some great alien fish, some benthic Darwinian monster, had been suspended by cords from the ceiling.

Control yourself. He managed to stand still. Randall would have no patience with operatic gestures.

But he desperately wanted to be alone, at least for a moment. In time the disorientation would pass, the god would manipulate his arms and legs, and Vale himself would become a passive, semiconscious observer in the shell of his own body. The agony would retreat and eventually be forgotten. But now it was too imminent, too violent. He was still himself — vulnerable and afraid — and yet he was in a presence, surrounded by a virulently dangerous other Self.

He sank to the floor begging for oblivion; but the god was slow, the god was patient.

The inevitable questions ran through his tortured mind. Why me? Why am I elected for this duty, whatever it is? And to Vale’s surprise, this time the god offered replies: wordless certainties, to which Vale appended inadequate words.

Because you died, the phantom god responded.

This was chilling. I’m not dead, Vale protested.

Because you drowned in the Atlantic Ocean in 1917 when an American troop ship took a German torpedo.

The god’s voice sounded like Vale’s grandfather, the ponderous tone the old man had adopted when he harped about Bull Run. The god’s voice was made of memories. His memories, Elias Vale’s memories. But the words were wrong. This was nonsense. It was insanity.

You died the day I took you.

In an empty and ruined brick building by the Ohio River. How could both those things be true? A warehouse by a river, a violent death in the Atlantic?

He whispered, “I died?”

Wrenching silence, except for Randall’s timid footsteps in the dark beyond the bone-draped gallery.

“Then,” Vale asked, “is this — the Afterlife?”

He received no answer but a vision: the museum in flames, and then a blackened ruin, and stinking green gods walking like insectile conquerors among the toppled bricks and heatless ashes.

“Mr. Vale? Elias?”

He looked up at Randall and managed a rictus of a grin. “I’m sorry. I—”

“Are you ill?”

“Yes. A little.”

“Perhaps we should call off the, uh, meeting tonight.”

“No need.” Vale felt himself stand. He faced Randall. “Occupational hazard. I only need a breath of air. Couldn’t find the door.”

“You should have said something. Well, follow me.”

Out into the cold of the early evening. Out into a rainy, empty street. Out into the Void, Elias Vale thought. Somewhere deep inside himself, he felt an urge to scream.