normal and aboveboard; after all, he was the president's senior scientific adviser, and he therefore went along with no other intention but to relax and enjoy himself and breathe in the rarefied atmosphere of the Washington socialites, an opportunity that didn't come his way all that often.
His benign and relaxed disposition lasted up until the moment he found himself strolling with the secretary of defense down by the lake --which at that relatively early hour was molten with the light of the setting sun.
Wildfowl made desultory muted sounds in the reeds as they settled down for the night, and behind the two men a garland of fairy lamps marked the perimeter of the festivities--voices, laughter, the
'Oh, yes, a number of times,' Lucas said in answer to a question. 'We've served on various presidential committees together since 1990. In those days General Wolfe was, as I recall, a colonel and Madden a lieutenant.'
'Do you know anything about the work they're engaged upon?'
Lucas exhaled pipe smoke, his mouth small and prim beneath a neatly clipped moustache. He was only an inch or two shorter than Lebasse, which made a change from having to crane his neck in order to converse. 'On the military side, you mean? I know they're both with Advanced Strategic Projects at the Pentagon. But no, not specifically.'
They walked on, Lucas puffing his pipe and watching Lebasse covertly. The man was ill, shrunken, his eyes dull, his movements lethargic. Ulcer? Liver trouble? Something pretty serious, Lucas guessed, and the germ of suspicion entered his mind that this meeting wasn't as accidental as it appeared.
'Then I take it you know nothing about a project code-named DEPARTMENT STORE?'
Lucas shook his head. 'No.'
'Have you heard of it?' Lebasse persisted in a low voice.
'No. Never.' Lucas stood aside to allow the other man to mount the four concrete steps leading up to the short wooden jetty. It was just wide enough for them to walk side by side. They came to the end without speaking, Lebasse's breath whistling in his chest. Lucas stood and waited, curiously ill at ease. His party mood was fading with the sun's last rays behind the Blue Ridge of Shenandoah National Park.
'I'm breaking my oath of office by what I'm about to tell you,' said Lebasse, his face ruddily imbued with a fake glow of health by the sunset. 'This is for your ears only. DEPARTMENT STORE has special category classification and isn't to be divulged to anyone without ASP clearance. Now, Gene--okay if I call you that?' and at Lucas's brief nod, went on, 'two reasons I'm telling you this, Gene. One, I need advice. You're qualified to give it and I trust you. Two, I don't trust General Wolfe and I trust Madden even less. They both have a vested interest in seeking and gaining approval for this project and will go to any lengths to get it. Are you with me?'
Lucas nodded slowly, pipe clamped between his teeth. This sounded serious and he knew that he was going to hate it. It smelled to high heaven of political and military intrigue, which he abhorred.
'DEPARTMENT STORE is part of a long-term strategy to threaten the USSR with total environmental war,' Lebasse was saying. 'According to ASP intelligence the Soviets have a plan of their own to alter the geophysical structure of western Siberia, which will affect the ecological balance of the Arctic Circle and lead to a widespread disruption of our climate here in the United States. They--Wolfe and Madden, that is--maintain that nuclear and bacteriological modes are outdated and ineffective in combating this situation, and therefore we have to be ready with a war plan that will, at the very least, stalemate the Soviet threat and prolong the balance of power. That's their contention--' He broke off, choking on something, and wiped spittle from the corner of his mouth.
Lucas waited. 'I don't dispute that the Soviets are up to something, Gene, because we have corroborative evidence from other sources. But I'm not a scientist. I have to know whether employing DEPARTMENT STORE as a deterrent is a greater risk than having no deterrent at all. It could pose a bigger threat to our own security-- goddammit, the world's existence is what I'm talking about--than anything the Soviets could do to us. I don't know, I'm not an expert; but the decision is mine and I have to be right.'
Watching him all the time he was speaking Lucas had noticed how, as the light failed and died behind the ridge, his face assumed a sickly gray pallor, his eyes sunken in their sockets. Lebasse was waging a losing battle. Was this the reason for the secrecy, the urgency? He had to make this one last vital decision before time ran out?
'I need an answer within two weeks.' Lebasse was speaking more quickly now, as if time were indeed running out. 'Report to me and only to me, but not through my office. Here's an unlisted number you can call. Make the call from a public pay phone. I'll arrange to meet you. In the meantime if you need more information, call me on that number.'
'I'll need a complete dossier on DEPARTMENT STORE, of course,' Lucas said. 'Everything you have relating to the scientific and the military data.'
'You already have it. It's in the glove compartment of your car.'
'Very well.' Lucas was about to add something, but there didn't seem much else to say.
Lebasse turned. 'Let's get back before we're missed.' He took two paces and halted. There was a figure on the jetty. In the deepening twilight it was possible to make out only a white dinner jacket and the glowing tip of a cigar.
'He said there were trout, but I don't believe it,' Lebasse chortled, moving on. 'Crawford spinning a line, the old bastard. Eh?'
'Yeah, guess so,' said Gene Lucas jovially, in what sounded in his own ears to be an incredibly bad piece of ham acting.
9
He had walked many thousands of miles, clad in black robes and carrying only his stick and his bowl, and in all that time he had rarely been hungry. The people were poor and had little, but he had nothing, and it was the custom to provide for those less fortunate than oneself. A handful of brown rice. A hunk of maize bread. On good days a small portion of goat's meat, sometimes with mashed beans. Perhaps even small fishes, cooked underneath flat stones in the glowing embers until the skin was crisp and brittle. Each meal was a feast.
No, his body had never suffered the pangs of hunger, even though his soul constantly hungered.
He had sat with priests and wisemen, listening to them while remaining silent himself, struggling to understand. Letting them fill the empty bowl of his mind as the villagers replenished his feeding bowl. The knowledge had been dreadfully slow in coming and painfully acquired. In the early days language was the obstacle. Using signs and gesture and his scant vocabulary he had come to understand the essence of their teaching, yet the greatest obstacle still remained: the rigidity of his mind, its dogmatism and unwillingness to accept.
Eventually he found himself in the mountainous region of the northeast where the holiest men lived. There he discovered, as if by divine revelation, that the enlightenment he was seeking was in a place he had never suspected--inside himself. And with the knowledge came the awareness that first he had to strip off, layer by layer, the defenses that had been erected and reinforced since birth to protect his vulnerable personality.
The vast majority of human beings were encased inside this protective shell all their life. The love of self and the desire to impose it on others, on the world at large, made them try to re-create every person and every thing in their own image.
So the first step, he now came to see, was to let go--to disinherit his bodily needs and accept the world as it is. To accept what is given. From this moment on he discarded his own personality, his own identity, and miraculously found himself beyond the barrier in a world that was completely changed because he himself had undergone a metamorphosis.
His body erupted in sores, which festered and became succulent feeding places for parasites and flies. He almost died of malaria and lay for days in a burning, shaking stupor, tended by two old women who starved the fever out of him. Twice he was bitten by venomous snakes, which had curled close to share his body heat while he slept. He became thin, almost to the point of emaciation, with stringy arms and lean flanks; yet harder, tougher, and more resilient, able to withstand the heat and cold and the hardships of travel over long distances, always on foot.
One accident damaged him permanently; he had fallen down a steep rocky ravine and smashed his left knee. The healing took many months, leaving the limb misshapen, and thereafter his walk was lurching and ungainly and caused him much pain.
His face changed beyond recognition--burned and cracked by the sun and blistered by the wind, the flesh tautened on his cheekbones, leaving deep hollows beneath. His chin became a jutting knob of bone. In this
