something—anything—to do in the evening; all of the consortium attendees other than Julie; and three reporters, one from as far away as Plymouth—plus Pete Williams, who had been hanging around all week, having come all the way from London.
Williams was an English writer who was researching a book (Movers and Shakers of the Earth) on personalities in the environmental movement. He had originally applied to be a consortium fellow himself but had been turned down by Kozlov as having no original contribution to offer. He had shown up anyway, staying at a B&B in town, and had interviewed some of the attendees for his book. Villarreal had denied his request for an interview with rather nasty condescension.
But Williams had gotten his own back at the Methodist Hall session, pretty much commandeering the question-and-answer session. He had fired hard questions at Villarreal, at first about his sense of responsibility and regret for the deaths of the two students in the Bitterroot Wilderness Area. Villarreal had put him off with pro forma regrets—“these things happen.”
“restoring the wilderness comes with a price.”
“they obviously didn’t take proper precautions,” and so on. Many had been shocked at his indifference.
Then it had turned personal. There was apparently a history of enmity between the two men, and an increasingly agitated Williams had made it clear that Villarreal was going to be “exposed” in the book he was writing.
“Isn’t it true,” he’d demanded at one point, “that you never finished your Ph.D. at Cornell, even though you advertise yourself as Doctor Villarreal?”
“That’s so,” Villarreal had responded, “but I do have a doctorate from Stanford.”
“An honorary doctorate!” Williams had shrieked triumphantly. “And isn’t it true—”
Villarreal had gotten contemptuously to his feet and outshouted him. “Isn’t it true that you’ve been playing second fiddle to me for years and just can’t stand it? Isn’t it true that you applied to this consortium and didn’t get in, while I did? Isn’t it true that you applied for the Cambridge research fellowship and didn’t get it because I did? And isn’t it true…”
In the end, Kozlov had stepped in and asked Williams to leave, although it took a constable who was in attendance to make it happen.
Villarreal had waited until Williams had been escorted out before getting in the last word. “And if anybody wants to know what I’m really sorry about,” he’d declared brutally, “what I really regret—it’s that they killed that bear in Montana. There was no need for that. What was the point? Human stupidity is not an excuse for murdering a rare, beautiful wild animal.”
“A cold fish, all right,” Gideon said now.
“It so happens I agree with him,” Joey declared, or rather blurted. “Intellectually speaking.”
“Oh, pish-tush,” Liz said with a flap of her hand. “You do not.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t,” said Julie.
“Yes, I do!” Joey’s voice went up half an octave, coming perilously close to a screech. “All right, sure, Edgar was no prize as a human being, but that doesn’t mean that what he said wasn’t right. I’ll trade a human life for a grizzly’s life any day of the week. There’s no difference between Edgar and me on that score.” He glared at the three of them, his tic going full blast.
“Sure, there is,” Liz said, using her thumb to flip another chocolate-covered cookie to him, which he deftly snatched out of the air. “That sonofabitch really believed that shit. You don’t.”
Joey started to reply, then grinned and hung his head. “Maybe not every word.”
“Look who’s here,” Julie said glancing up. “Victor.”
Gideon followed her gaze with a mixture of curiosity and dread. If there was one certified wacko in the group, he thought, it had to be Victor Waldo, editor of the Journal of Spiritual and Sacred Ecology and founder of the Crystal Butte Earth/Body Center, located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. (“Effortlessly absorb timeless shamanistic techniques for healing, growth, and homeostasis in our authentic Kirghiz mountain yurts.”)
Once again, however, Gideon was surprised at what he saw. He’d half-expected a bearded dropout in a tie- dyed sweatshirt, or maybe fringed buckskin, or with a ratty Afghan thrown over his shoulders, but Victor Waldo’s long chin was clean-shaven and his lean body was neatly attired in a tweed sport coat and well-pressed trousers. With his short, steel-gray hair, his proboscis of a nose—lifted slightly as if searching for an elusive scent—his pale, cold, intelligent eyes, and an all-around dryness of manner, he could have passed with ease for a professor of microeconomics. It was very hard indeed to imagine him thumping ceremonial drums, or whatever it was they did in an authentic Kirghiz mountain yurt.
“Hey, Victor, how you doing?” Liz yelled. “Come join us. Is Kathie with you?”
Waldo waited until he came within normal speaking range to reply. “No, she isn’t. As a matter of fact, Kathie and I are no longer… No, she isn’t. We’ve separated.”
That prompted a knowing, embarrassed glance between Liz and Julie, and they quickly moved on to another subject. “Pull up a chair, Victor,” Liz said. “Have you heard about Edgar?”
He had not, and after the bear story had been told once again and Waldo had expressed the requisite astonishment and a distinctly cool minimum of sorrow at his loss, Gideon, in the interest of furthering his own knowledge, apologized for never having read the Journal, and asked if Waldo would be kind enough to give him some idea of what exactly the province of spiritual and sacred ecology comprised. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Liz wince.
Like any expert asked to talk about his field, Waldo obliged with an enthusiasm that brought a stony glitter to his washed-out blue eyes. “Certainly. In a nutshell, it provides an alternative paradigm to the non-relational ways of being in the world that have traditionally dominated Western thought. It relies on a model that aims for a synergistic relationship with other species and ecosystems. It explores the dialectic between…”
Good gosh, Gideon thought, he even talks like a professor of microeconomics.
