“Want one?”
“No thanks, dear.”
He took in a deep breath of smoke and let it out slowly. “Do you love me?” he asked gently.
“What do you think?” She moved closer and laid her head on his shoulder.
He felt a stirring of discontent, of compunction. “But I— Do you really love me? Not just because of that interview—what I made you say, but—”
Laura laughed. “You didn’t make me say it. Except that your being you is what makes me love you, and that’s what made me say it. Of course I love you. I know I’ve been frightfully slow realizing it, but now—”
“I want you to love me. I want you really to love me, of your own self—”
But even as he spoke, he realized the hopelessness of his longing. That could never be now. He had forcibly made her into a thing that loved him, and that “love” was no more like true love than the affection of a female robot or—he shuddered a little—the attentions of the moronic ghost that brought love to Professor Guildea.
He could not even revoke this forced love, unless by figuring some means of printing that she did not love him. And that then would be true, and forbid all possibility of the real love that she might eventually have felt for him.
He was trapped. His power and his ingenuity had made him the only man on earth who had not the slightest chance of ever feeling the true, unfeigned, unforced love of his wife.
It was this that brought it all into focus. MacVeagh understood now the nagging discontent that had been gnawing at him. He looked at everything that he had made, and behold, he felt only annoyance and impatience.
He tried to phrase it once or twice:
“Jake, supposing you knew it was only a trick, this change in your beliefs. It was just a hoax, a bad practical joke played on you.”
“How could it be? I used to have crazy ideas. I used to think I was too smart to believe. Now I know different. That’s no joke.”
“Father Byrne, do you think this labor agreement could have been reached without outside pressure? That men and management really could have got together like this?”
“They did, didn’t they, John? I don’t understand what you mean about outside pressure—unless,” the priest added, smiling, “you think my prayers were a form of undue influence?”
MacVeagh did not try to explain what God had answered those prayers. Even if you could persuade people of the actual state of things, that he and the Sentinel had made them what they were, the truth would remain the truth.
He realized that when Molly came back to the office. For Molly knew the whole story and understood. She understood too well. Her first words when they were alone were, “Boss, I’m really dead, aren’t I?”
He tried to pretend not to understand. He tried to bluff through it, pass it off as nothing. But she was too sure. She insisted, “I died that night.” Her voice was a rough croak. He had forgotten to specify a miraculous recovery of the iodine-eaten vocal cords.
At last he nodded, without a word.
“I suppose I ought to thank you, boss. I don’t know if I do— I guess I do, though Laura came to see me in the hospital and talked. If she loves you, you’re happy. And if you’re happy, boss, life’s worth living.”
“Happy—” Then his words began to tumble out. Molly was the first person, the only person that he could talk to about his new discovery: the drawback of omnipotence.
“You see,” he tried to make it clear, “truth has a meaning, a value, only because it’s outside of us. It’s something outside that’s real and valid, that we can reckon against. When you make the truth yourself it doesn’t have any more meaning. It doesn’t feel like truth. It’s no truer than an author’s characters are to him. Less so, maybe; sometimes they can rebel and lead their own lives. But nothing here in Grover can rebel, or in the world either. But it’s worst here. I don’t know people any more.”
“Especially me,” said Molly.
He touched her shoulder gently. “One thing I didn’t make up, Molly. That’s your friendship for me. I’m grateful for that.”
“Thanks, boss.” Her voice was even rougher. “Then take some advice from me. Get out of Grover for a while. Let your mind get straightened out. See new people that you’ve never done anything to except end the war for them. Take a vacation.”
“I can’t. The paper’s such a responsibility that—”
“Nobody but me knows about it, and I promise to be good. If you’re away, it’ll run just like any other paper. Go on, boss.”
“Maybe you’re right. I’ll try it, Molly. But one thing.”
“Yes, boss?”
“Remember: this has got to be the best-proofread paper in the world.”
Molly nodded and almost smiled.
For an hour after leaving Grover, John MacVeagh felt jittery. He ought to be back at his desk. He ought to be making sure that the Senate didn’t adopt the Smith amendment, that the Army of Occupation in Germany effectively quashed that Hohenzollern Royalist putsch, that nothing serious came of Mr. Hasenberg’s accident at the plant—
Then the jitters left him, and he thought, “Let them make out by themselves. They did once.”
He spent the night at the Motel in Proutyville and enjoyed the soundest sleep he had known in months. In the morning he went next door to chat with the plump garage proprietor, who’d been good company on other trips.
He found a woman there, who answered his “Where’s Ike?” with “Ain’t you heard? He died last week. Too much beer, I guess.”
“But Ike lived on beer.”
“Sure, only he used to drink only as much as he could afford. Then for a while seems like there wasn’t no limit to how much he had, and last week he comes down with this stroke. I’m his daughter-in-law; I’m keeping the joint going. Not that there’s any
