An Affair Of Sorcerers

attention. I wouldn't be able to continue this investigation in the manner it deserves. That wouldn't be fair to you-or to Dr. Smathers.'

He looked at me for a long time, his eyes boring into mine. 'Continue?' he said at last. 'Have you found out anything?'

'As you indicated, there are rumors,' I answered after giving it some thought. 'But that's all.' I took Barnum's check out of my pocket and placed it on the desk between us. I wasn't about to destroy a man on the basis of what I'd heard. Neither, apparently, was the Chancellor.

'But you have heard some things?' Barnum said tightly.

'Yes; but as far as I'm concerned, what Smathers does with his personal life is his business.' For all I knew, Smathers had been living like a monk since coming to New York; the brush with notoriety and the law in Boston had to have given him a scare.

Barnum thought about it, nodded. 'Please keep the check, Dr. Frederickson,' he said, picking up the piece of paper and holding it out to me. 'I insist. You have gone to some trouble.'

Reacting to the pride in his voice, I took the check. I got up, started for the door, then hesitated and turned back. Barnum was still seated at his desk, staring absently after me. He looked like a man suffering from acute indigestion. I respected the man, and knew that I'd probably left him with an even heavier burden than he'd come to me with. I'd been coy, to say the least, and I felt I owed the man something for his money.

'Chancellor,' I said, 'I've been up to Smathers' complex, but I couldn't find out anything other than the fact that Kee's Chinese assistant spooks easily. Smathers has everything locked up tighter than a drum. I suppose that's his right-maybe even his responsibility, if he's working with expensive equipment and bizarre types. But I'd think that somebody in the administration has a right to know what he's doing-and you don't need a private investigator to find out what it is. That's my opinion as a faculty member, not a detective.'

'I agree, Frederickson,' the man said thoughtfully with a curt nod of his head. 'I think perhaps I've been neglecting my responsibilities. I'll look into Dr. Smathers' professional activities myself. Thank you for your time and advice.'

Walking out of the Administration Building, I felt a surge of relief; I hadn't wanted to investigate Smathers to begin with. Now I was free of that burden, and I didn't think the Chancellor had been offended. It was, after all, Barnum's responsibility to monitor research activities at the university; if he wanted to find out about Smathers' extracurricular activities, he could hire somebody else to do the investigating.

As if to underline my reticence to dig up personal dirt, I glanced up and spotted a Chinese walking toward me. He was tall for an Oriental-over six feet-and stocky. His head was shaven, and he wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses. His dress was rather odd for New York: flowered Hawaiian shirt, ill-fitting blue serge slacks, white socks and wing-tipped cordovans. He looked almost comical, like something out of a World War Two propaganda film. But there was nothing funny about the way he walked and carried himself; his movements and bearing had a distinct military stamp. I was convinced the man was Kee, and I instinctively sucked in my breath. However, the Chinese walked on past me with barely a glance in my direction. That was worth a sigh of relief: I'd been expecting Round Two of Frederickson versus the behavioral psychologists.

My good feeling didn't last long.

'Mongo!' a familiar voice called from behind me. 'What luck! I was just looking for you over at your office.'

The woman who approached me across the stone plaza was young-twenty-four-and brilliant. Dr. Yvonne Mercado had graduated from the university at seventeen, earned her master's at nineteen and her doctorate at twenty-one. A widely published cultural anthropologist, she'd been around the world several times, charting various cultures. Yvonne also happened to be lovely, with a dark, lusty beauty. She was touted by the university as the successor to Margaret Mead, but I didn't see it that way. Mead had obviously empathized with the people she studied; I tended to look on Yvonne as something of an academic hotshot, seeing people in terms of statistics, books, monographs and awards. She had an unsettling habit of saying exactly what was on her mind. But I liked her, and suspected she might mellow with age.

'Hello, Yvonne,' I said, uncomfortable because I was pretty sure I knew what she wanted to talk to me about.

'I tried to call you last night, but your service said you were out.'

'I got the message. I was planning to get back to you later.'

'Do you mind if I walk with you?' the pretty woman asked. 'Where are you heading?'

'To my office; and I don't mind at all.'

Yvonne fell into step beside me. 'Janet told me you're trying to help Esteban, and she thought you might want me to give you some more background on him. He's such a precious man. Have you talked to him yet?'

'Not yet. I'm on my way to make arrangements for that now. I've had other things on my mind.'

Yvonne glanced sideways at me, raised her eyebrows. 'Mongo,' she said reprovingly, 'Senator Younger's daughter will die without Esteban's help. What could be more urgent than that?'

I told her. Yvonne listened with intense interest, her dark eyes shining brightly.

'My God,' she whispered when I'd finished. 'That's fascinating.'

'Is it?' I showed her I could raise my eyebrows too. 'I haven't had the time to be fascinated; I've been too scared.'

Yvonne was impervious to the sarcasm. 'You know,' she said thoughtfully, 'you're only assuming that the child's been poisoned. Have you considered the possibility that she's under some kind of spell?'

I stopped walking and wheeled to face her. 'What the hell are you talking about, Yvonne?' I said impatiently. 'For Christ's sake, I'm up to my eyeballs in this mumbo-jumbo garbage. What amazes me is that I'm hearing it from people who are supposed to know better.'

The excitement in the anthropologist's eyes turned to hurt. 'I've never heard you be intentionally rude before, Mongo,' she said quietly. 'Why are you angry with me?'

'Forget it, Yvonne. I'm just feeling boorish. I'm sorry.'

'No, I'm sorry,' she said after a long pause. 'I can see now that … I must have seemed insensitive. I do get carried away with. . strange situations. But I am concerned, believe me.' She hesitated, and her voice dropped. 'Will you listen to what I have to say? I've seen this kind of thing before; if there's even a remote possibility that this is a spell, the girl's life could depend on what you do. Give me the benefit of the doubt that I wouldn't waste your time.'

'C'mon, babe,' I said, squeezing her elbow. 'Let's sit down.'

We moved off the plaza and sat down on the surrounding grass, crossing our legs Indian fashion and facing each other.

'Are you familiar with the concept of 'membership'?' Yvonne asked.

'I belong to the New York A.C.,' I said. 'Aside from that, I'm not much of a joiner.'

'I'm talking about an anthropological concept,' she said tightly. It was her turn to be impatient.

'What's your point, Yvonne?' I asked, trying to soften my bluntness with a smile.

She plucked at the grass in front of her as though she were having trouble selecting her words. 'You know, Mongo,' she said at last, letting the broken blades of grass fall to the ground, 'I maintain that it's anti-intellectual to deny that other realities beside our own exist; there's too much evidence to the contrary. The 'membership' I'm talking about is different. You don't consciously join one of these groups; your induction begins at birth. And the terms of your membership are stamped on your conscious and subconscious mind.'

'All right: so I'm a member of a Western, technological, rationalist society.'

'Yes!' Yvonne said excitedly. 'My point exactly!'

'Membership' was obviously a subject Yvonne enjoyed talking about, and I had a vision of her anxiously stalking me ever since Janet had told her I might want more information about Esteban. Despite my affection for Yvonne, I wondered how much she really cared about the healer-or Kathy.

'Your membership in this society automatically affords you a set of immunities to some anxieties, and vulnerability to others,' she continued. 'In many ways, we are what we believe.'

'Are you implying that Esteban can't heal anyone who-doesn't believe in him?'