Chapter 5 — Reluctant Recruit

IF YOU’RE NEW HERE, WITH A PAID SUBSCRIPTION EARLIER VOLUMES AND CHAPTERS CAN BE DUG OUT OF THE SUBSTACK ARCHIVE, OR EARLIER VOLUMES CAN BE PURCHASED ON LINE.

~ 1 ~ "Why do you want my assistant to be a woman, Herbert?” Eugene had been busy working in the newly twinned Workspace of Herbert’s Antechamber, putting together the small chemical laboratory that he needed for helping Herbert in his work on the Separator and Dwight’s dog. Herbert had asked him, “Do you know a woman whom you might persuade to accept the position of assistant to you in this work?"

Recently, Herbert had eagerly accepted Rhoda’s offer to twin the Workspace of his Antechamber, which gave him a separate Workspace for each of his two Soma projects. In the Workspace which now housed the Separator and Dwight's Dog, he was able to work with Eugene independently of the Workspace in which he worked with Het and Esther. While Het and Esther had access only to one Workspace, and Eugene had access only to the other, Herbert was able to enter each of them. From either Workspace, Herbert was able to enter into his Inner Sanctum which Het, Esther and Eugene were unable even to see.

While Herbert was beginning his work on the Separator, Eugene was creating his chemical laboratory, pleased by the freedom from Uncle Georg’s fussing, and by his ability to draw upon all of the resources of Hemming Chemical to obtain the equipment that he wanted for his work. For the moment, he was reveling in the pleasure of using his new toys. Herbert had led him to understand that the poison made by his father, Dwight, was the object of their research in this Workspace, and Eugene knew that he would be able to make the precursor of the poison by using Dwight’s Dog.

Eugene had looked up from his fine equipment, and he was waiting for Herbert’s answer:

“Well, Eugene, you charmed Miss Knox into configuring this extension of my Workshop so that we can work on the Separator ourselves.”

"That was nothing, Herbert. Her company had a contract to give us assistance, and they weren’t doing much, so I confronted her and asked for them to get on with the work. It's what Georg should have done.” Eugene returned his attention to his new equipment. His focus was on doing chemistry, and he had so far gained little appreciation of the Makers’ art.

“But he didn’t do it, Eugene. You did, and you’ve got the job. As I've been telling you, we need to get a better handle on the Goth techniques that were used to make the Separator Device. Their techniques utilized the work of a male-female pair.”

Giving Herbert only half of his attention, Eugene said, “Like Het and Esther? Okay, I could ask my fiancée. Evelyn has run off to Rhoda’s Clan in Texas, but she hasn't returned my ring, so I guess we still have some kind of relationship. I’ve sent her a letter pretty recently.”

“Is she at their Home Ranch?”

“No; she’s in San Antonio.”

Maybe she’s not committed to the Clan. “Eugene, go ahead and ask Evelyn. Write to her again. If she’s still interested in you, she might respond to persistence. If she’s in San Antonio, she may not be keeping really close company with Clan people, so she may not share in their narrow view of life.”

A few days later, after Eugene had reported having sent a second letter to Evelyn, Herbert said, “Good; let’s hope that something comes of it.

~ ~ ~

"Eugene, now that your mother has shared with you the chemistry for making it, have you verified that your father’s poison actually works?"

"It killed him.”

"Well, without killing yourself, Eugene, can you provide me with a sufficient quantity of his poison for a modern pathology laboratory to get a dose-response curve for rats? We need to have up-to-date documentation."

"Sure, Herbert. I can do that with Dwight’s dog. I’ll have to do some organic chemistry on its product to make the poison according to Mom’s directions, so I’ll need to set up a larger safe-lab.” Eugene used the name of the apparatus with pride, in spite of Ellie Herder’s derision in naming it “Dwight’s dog”.

“Okay, Eugene, I'll put you in touch with the pathology lab so you can work with them to determine the quantities of the poison that they'll need."

"Does the poison have market value?"

“If it has a rapid loss-of-toxicity curve, Eugene, as your father claimed, it will have potential for receiving research funding."

“So, is that loss-of-toxicity curve of value for weapons use?”

"That's right, Eugene. I'm thinking of floating a proposal for funding to the Defense Department.”

"I understand that it breaks down very fast. The work that my father did indicates a toxicity half-life of only a few minutes after the poison is exposed to air. But it would be nice to have some solid data. I’ve studied my father’s notes, and frankly, Herbert, his pathology tests were pretty sloppy. He was interested only in the poison’s chemistry, and he never published anything substantial about its toxicity, although the War Department’s funding of his research was based on the sloppy data he had shown them."

"All the more reason for you to get a credible toxicity curve report, Eugene."

Eugene had discovered, among the items in Georg’s lab, a vial of the denatured poison which was several years old. Eugene suggested to Herbert that they send it to the pathology lab as an extreme point on the toxicity curve, but Herbert argued that it was unnecessary to add years to a curve which was defined in minutes. Later, after Eugene had lost interest in it, Herbert quietly took the old vial for his own purposes, knowing that, if Marge was correct, the contents of that vial would be the Friend's perfume.

~ ~ ~

Alone in Eugene's chemistry laboratory, Herbert donned a gas mask and opened the vial. He diluted a small portion of its contents a thousand-fold in distilled water. After resealing the vial and removing the gas mask, he leaned over the diluted substance in its glass vessel, and inhaled very briefly and shallowly. It smelled delicious to him, as Marge had said that it would, but he experienced no erotic effect. He thought for a moment. Then he dipped a finger of one hand into the vessel and smelled the palm of his opposite hand. In seconds, he was experiencing an erotic attraction to himself. Shit!

Herbert rubbed a drop of the perfume between his hands, left the Workshop, and strolled casually through the Keep. After observing that both male and female Circle members looked at him with new interest as he came near them, he hurriedly returned to the laboratory. Then, on the next day, he asked Esther to cautiously inhale the diluted perfume. She told him that she found it faintly malodorous.

Because Herbert had not been attracted to the perfume solution itself, although it smelled sweet to him, he reasoned that the attracting effect required absorption of the active ingredient into the metabolism of the body. He considered the fact that the perfume was mildly radioactive, because of the radioactivity of the poison’s precursor. He considered also that the decay of radioactive elements involves the natural essential presence of Sunderer and Cleaver—the Friend and the Comrade. He concluded that in some way, the perfume’s metabolization reveals—to a member of the Circle who smells the product of the perfume’s metabolization—the nearness and essential direction of the Friend’s personal presence.

Herbert thought that since the Comrade had inspired Ellie Herder to discover the chemistry of the Separator, he must have understood, in his godly way, this relationship between plutonium chemistry and personal presence. But he knew the near impossibility of getting practical technical information from a god. It might take Herbert a hundred years to work out this relationship between plutonium chemistry and personal presence. Yet Ottilie Krüger had turned Ellie’s chemical schema into a Design for the Separator. Oh, how he wished to read Ottilie’s journals! Herbert remembered that, on the day that he had given Ricardo Chavez a tour of the Keep, Dr. Chavez had mentioned that he had an interest in plutonium chemistry. Did Chavez have access to Ottilie Krüger’s journals?

That evening, Herbert brought his Maker's journal up to date. Except for the chants which he used in fabricating Devices, he did not inscribe it in the Old Goth which would bind it to the Clan's Chronicles. By writing in old German or Polish, he kept the journal only for himself. In a rare mood, he began to write, "Dear Ellie, wherever you are enjoying your non-existence, I would like you to know what I have learned about the sweet side of that poison of Dwight’s which worked for you, but worked you ill."

Herbert abandoned the whimsy and began writing out a technical account of his experiments with the perfume, for his own future reference. He was beginning to understand better, the relationship between the Separator and the Soma.

~ 2 ~ The seeds of Old Goth planted in Evelyn by her father, in her childhood, had sprouted quickly under her Aunt Judith’s cultivation. At the same time that Hans, in California, was in the process of becoming Ricardo’s apprentice, Evelyn, in Texas, was gradually assimilating everything that she had learned. She was deliberating the choice: Throw in her lot with the Clan, or stay out of Clan affairs in the way that her parents had attempted.

Judith had learned that Evelyn had caused a journal to fly off a library shelf into her hands, so she had proceeded to teach Evelyn how to retrieve items of the Histories out of the Air of the Ottokars’ library room.

One day Judith entered the library where Evelyn was reading and asked, "What are you reading, dear? Do you need help?"

"This is incredible, Aunt Judith!”

“What’s incredible, Evelyn?”

"It's Ellie Herder's diary; the incredible part is in German.”

Judith's blood ran cold. How did Evelyn get her hands on that? Does she know about Klaus and Ellie Herder? Does Sandra?

“It’s all about chemical reactions. It's the design of that Separator that you and Dad told me about. I didn't believe you then, but I can read the German, and I've been working out the chemistry. I had thought that orbital theory and isotope chemistry were modern, but I think this is actually more advanced! In the 1930s! Ellie Herder is brilliant! Because she wrote in ink, I can tell that she wrote out whole blocks of reactions with no revisions or corrections. All of the equations are perfectly balanced, and there are new notations for things like the scale and strength of electrochemical and magnetic fields necessary to make reactions go, and to separate the products from the reactants. How could she have hoped to construct the material apparatus to carry out these micro-reactions?”

Evelyn’s outburst of scientific enthusiasm relieved Judith’s fears that she would learn about the family scandal. She said, “Ottilie fabricated the Separator, Evelyn. She told me once that it was just tubes and wires. I asked her, 'What's special about that?’ and she said, ‘Well, Judith, most of them are much less that a billionth of a millimeter in diameter’. Is that a big deal, Evelyn?"

"I think it’s impossible! Ellie thought so, too, Aunt Judith. She knew that, if it really could be done, the reactions that she had worked out would work, and the isotopes for making atomic weapons could be readily produced. Then, when ’that cunning vixen’—as Ellie calls Ottilie—made the demonstration apparatus ‘Dwight’s dog’, which worked perfectly, Ellie calculated faultlessly (I can show you the page.) that the physical volume of the apparatus could not possibly contain all of the super-refined plumbing and superfine wires required. Ellie says Ottilie explained to her, ’There is space and there is space. Reaction space and measured space need not coincide.' I know Ottilie meant the same sort of thing as the existence of two rooms in the same place in your house, or three superimposed gardens. But Ellie didn’t understand. Aunt Judith, do you understand how your Makers do that?"

"No, but Ricardo told me that I have Maker hands, and that I could learn. It must be something like making music on an instrument like my violin."

"Rhoda is a Maker, isn't she?"

“Yes, Judith. I've heard that most other Makers, except for Ricardo, don't even understand how her creations work. Whatever Ottilie was able to do, Rhoda can do—and more, I think.”

"I suppose that includes her airplane—or spacecraft—that brought us here?"

“Yes, Evelyn. That thing, certainly, and the Great Maze at Home Ranch. Speaking of which, it's about time I took you to the Ranch. Your parents are not eager to visit it, but you're young and you're learning Old Goth 'magic' very fast. The Guild regards you as belonging to a Head family; otherwise you would not have been able to obtain Ellie Herder's diary."

“Is it possible that I can learn to do what Makers do?"

"Probably you can, by becoming apprenticed to a Maker. And, Evelyn, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you: I’ve learned that a couple of your New City University peers are members of the War Thing. They are Yohanna Okubo and Isabel Tavares."

"Oh! I know Yohanna! She's Rhoda's closest friend. Who is Isabel? Her name is familiar to me."

"Isabel is a mathematician."

"Oh, her! She's a lesbian who hangs around with Scott, the guy who works for Het. Scott's gay, and he’s kind of cute, like Eugene, but not athletic; he’s kind of comfortable-looking.”

"I don't think Isabel is really a lesbian, dear. Most of the young ladies in the Guild are envious of her because she’s very obviously romantically involved with the handsome young ranch chief, Diego Mendoza."

"Really?"

“Evelyn, there’s another of your peers whom you need to know about. Emil and I have a son who was born out of wedlock when we were young, and he was adopted. You know him."

“Victor! Of course! He looks like Uncle Emil.”

“Yes. Victor is our love-child. He’s your cousin, Evelyn. Please tell me some things about him. Emil and I want to meet him, and Rhoda has said that he may not be keeping the best company."

"Well, Victor is a biologist, like me, and he has a keen interest in trees that survive in harsh environments—like junipers and Joshua trees. In fact, I think he feels a kind of love for them. I’m fascinated in the same way by shore birds, like oyster catchers and plovers; they kind of live on the edge, too. I think that kind of fascination is in the blood, like singing or playing the violin."

"Don't all biologists like plants and animals—for whatever reason?"

"Oh, no, Aunt Judith. For instance, there’s Victor's girlfriend, Esther. She's a phycologist, who..."

"A what?"

"Someone who works with algae. She studies very small single-cell organisms called chlamydomonas. They’re the things that make pond scum and tree bark green."

“Oh.”

"She's an expert in culturing them in the laboratory. Esther doesn't have any interest in them for their own sake. She's fascinated—if you can call it that—with changes in culture conditions that cause them to assume different growth forms. She pretends to be a nature romantic, but she's really a control freak. Her father is a big east coast political boss, almost like a mafia head, I think. Victor's going to catch on to Esther someday, but she's very sexy and she’s rich. She pays his way."

"This is Esther Rosen?"

“Yes; do you know her?"

"I know of her family. You're right about them."

“Do you think they’re as bad you’ve said Eugene's family is?"

“I think they probably are. I haven’t known that her family has had anything to do with the Circle, but Rhoda said something indicating that Esther has something to do with the Circle now. Can you tell me what Esther’s relationship is with Dr. Het Kerrigan of New City University?”

“Well, Aunt Judith, I did date Het a few times, before New City University. Just drinks and dancing. He's a womanizer, but only in his spare time. He's full of his own evolutionary theories and he’s always working on them and looking for someone else's data to test his ideas with. He doesn't do his own field work. He and Victor and Esther have been friends since their undergraduate days, and I know the three of them get together for a meal every week or so. I've wondered if Het and Esther have a relationship, but it’s not my business. We biologists all used to get along pretty well together, and we'd have a party every month or so when we’d talk biology over beer. The first parties were at the Marine Biology Station, where we’d cook fish or crab on the beach. The last of those parties was in a mountain cabin, on the night when Eugene proposed to me, and those strange things happened with Rhoda and Het."

Evelyn studied her Aunt Judith's face, seeing in it, for the first time, some resemblance to her father—especially in her eyes.

"Aunt Judith, you've worried a lot about your brother, haven't you?"

"How can you tell?" Judith’s apprehension was renewed: What had Evelyn read in Ellie Herder’s diary?

"It shows in your eyes. I haven’t had a brother to worry about—or to worry about me. Did my father have his eyes on Ottilie?"

"No, not on her!" Too late, Judith realized that she likely had confirmed Evelyn’s suspicions about Klaus and Ellie. She looked down silently, searching for a way to take back her words, and her eyes fell on Ellie Herder's diary in Evelyn's hands.

Evelyn handed the open book to her. “Aunt Judith, I can't read Polish, but I've guessed what the Polish sections are about. I recognized my father’s name on this page.“

"Do you want me to translate it for you, Evelyn?"

“… No. Does my mother know?"

"Not unless Klaus has confessed. Evelyn, there’s also something that Klaus may not know. It’s about your mother."

"Tell me; I’m sitting down."

"Sandra had an affair with Dwight Hemming, Eugene’s father, when she was a graduate student in his laboratory before the War. The original idea for the chemical separation of isotopes was cooked up between Dwight Hemming and Georg Kiefer, your Eugene's 'great guy’ uncle."

"Mother of God! Aunt Judith, I’ve seen Dwight Hemming’s portrait. Eugene pointed him out to me in his parents’ home, when he briefly introduced me to his family. So he was once my mother’s lover! It’s no wonder that she went in disguise to the Hemming Building. I had thought it was all because of her fear of Georg.”

"Where did you learn that expression you’ve just now used, dear child?"

“Oh. I used to hear it at Dad’s workplace, but I began using it after it got started among the biologists. Esther started it. I think she called it, 'an impolite, calculated impiety.’ We were all drinking."

"Around here, that expression might identify you as a Catholic."

"It just came out, because I was appalled: What you said suddenly made it clear to me that my life has been—without my knowing it—woven around the Fire Baby. But, Aunt Judith, I freely gave my consent when I said, ’Yes,' to Eugene. What am I going to do? My father and mother ran away, but you and Uncle Emil stayed with the Clan. Was it difficult to stay?”

“Yes. It was, except for one thing: Ottilie had sent ‘Stalin's Surgeon’ (which is what some of her countrymen called her) to save Emil’s life. I don't know how Ottilie was able to do it, but I was so grateful, I would have followed Ottilie to my grave if she hadn’t already gone to hers. It’s because of that bond with Ottilie, that Emil and I stayed, in spite of all.”

Evelyn stood up and wrapped her aunt in a bear hug. “Let’s talk with Rhoda. I think it’s time for me to face my future.”

“Because of this?” Judith held up Ellie Herder’s dairy.

“That, and Eugene. Two letters from him were forwarded to me, and in his most recent one he asks me to go work with him on a chemical project that requires a male-female team. That seems odd. I’m sure Rhoda knows about it.”

Eugene had written, “…Evelyn, maybe we can also, while working side-by-side in the laboratory, work through the personal differences which our families have caused us.”

~ ~ ~

To Eugene’s surprise, two weeks later Evelyn (who was now secretly Rhoda’s neophyte apprentice) walked into his laboratory saying, "Hello, Eugene. What do you want me to do here?”

Evelyn saw Eugene looking at her hand, where his engagement ring was not on her finger. She nodded. “We'll wait and see about that, Eugene. Things have changed between us and our families.” Eugene thought then that things might work out between them—when this business was over. His feeling was that his fling with Marge was over, and that he had forgotten how very attractive Evelyn was, when she wanted to be.

~ 3 ~ “Evelyn, how do you feel about working with Eugene and Herbert?” Rhoda glanced at her. They were putting away their garden tools.

"I'm very glad that you’ve rescued me from the Hemmings in New York, Rhoda."

"How do you mean that?"

"How ever would I have understood my relationship with Eugene, Het and the others, if you hadn't rescued me?"

"Did you have some feeling for Het, too?”

"Not really. Although we dated a few times before our New City University days, he was never all present to me. Eugene can be all present to me, and I like it, even though I know I may be deceived by him. I’ve missed any chance I might have had with the good guys like Diego, Leo and Ricardo. Well, Ricardo can be only yours, Rhoda. You two know and do such strange things…" Evelyn looked away.

"Evelyn, I've been raised in it and Ricardo has been raised for it." Rhoda laughed. "It's like a match made in Heaven."

"Or the Netherworld?"

"I had to take you there."

“Rhoda, how many other people have been there—and returned?"

"Only a few members of some War Things, and of course nearly all of the Garth Delvers who’ve fabricated the Bleak Berm of Thiuderieks’s Garth.”

“I could not have borne it without you, Rhoda.”

“Well, you fainted only after we had returned and looked back over the Bleak Berm from my land moat. You've never told me what it was that caused you to faint."

“You’ve never asked me, Rhoda."

“That’s because we were in the Commons when you recovered, and that’s not a place for discussing such things. And when we were back in Earth's Province, you were sober and you were upbeat. You said you had a lot to think over."

"Rhoda, are Visions of that place true?"

“They’re true as Partial Visions, but not as facts—although they’re often not far removed from becoming facts of history, in which Doing and Meaning are sealed."

"I saw Eugene and Het—and myself—in there when I looked back. It was more than horrible: The two of them were fighting over me. I was their prey! Eugene was a Death Eel. Amid all of those tentacles and teeth around its sucking mouth, I knew his eyes. The eel’s body was enormous, and it was trying to fasten itself around my chest, squashing my breasts. Het was one of those Stalkers, and he was grabbing the Eugene Death Eel in his hands, trying to rip it away from me. Het’s body had hundreds of little Death Eels protruding from it, and they were latching onto me, pulling me toward him by my legs into Het's body to be raped and eaten. ….I was frozen, and I blacked out."

Rhoda took Evelyn's trembling hands. "That was a dark Vision, Evelyn. May I read your Living Memory of it? I can help to lighten your burden by doing that."

After holding Evelyn’s head between her hands for a few moments, Rhoda released her and sat down hard on the wooden bench next to the toolshed. Evelyn, still standing, watched her uncertainly. Suddenly, Rhoda gripped the edge of the bench so tightly that her hands whitened, and the normal brightness of the small Gardenland grew dull. Evelyn was finding it difficult to focus on Rhoda's face, and then it was transformed into that face. She had seen it in a photograph of bodies lying in a pit in a Nazi concentration camp, and the emaciated young woman’s face had haunted her for months. She's still alive. Did they save her? The picture had been taken on the day of the American army’s arrival at the death camp.