Zelaskowich caught up with us just as we were leaving the building. He'd been running. 'Excuse me,' he said, red-faced and panting. 'Can you wait just a minute? I may have something else for you.'
'What is it, Samuel?' I asked.
The botanist took a deep breath, slowly let it out. 'Garth, you said there's a little girl in danger?'
'A great deal of danger,' my brother replied evenly. 'And she's hurting very badly. Mongo and I have to find her in order to stop that hurting.'
'Oh, my,' the moon-faced man said as he made a birdlike motion with his hands that seemed surprisingly delicate for such a big man. 'That's terrible.'
'Yes,' Garth said in the same flat tone. 'That's terrible.'
'And you think that soil sample is a key to finding her?'
I nodded. 'We're certain of it, Samuel.'
'In that case, you don't have to concern yourselves with keeping my name out of any discussions you may have. I wanted you to know that. And I'll be happy to do whatever else I can to help, if you need me.'
'You've already helped, Samuel. Garth and I will have no need to mention your name. But thanks for the offer.'
'I thank you, but what I'm most concerned about right now is the possibility that nobody at Nuvironment will agree to talk to you. Perhaps I should call them and try to do something to pave the way.'
Garth shook his head. 'The people at Nuvironment will be our concern, Samuel.'
'Well, there is somebody else who might know something about that soil sample.'
My brother glanced quickly at me, grunted slightly. 'And who would that be, Samuel?'
'Craig Valley; Dr. Craig Valley.'
'Does Valley work here?'
'Craig used to, but I'm afraid he was fired about three months ago. He was our curator of orchids. As I mentioned, many staff members here have done consulting work for Nuvironment at one time or another, but Craig was the primary liaison between the company and the Botanical Garden. Indeed, more than a few of us suspected that Craig considered his efforts on behalf of Nuvironment more important than his regular duties. All requests from Nuvironment came through him, and he doled out the consulting assignments-which could be quite lucrative. It was Craig who received the initial request from Nuvironment for the rain forest soil; indeed, he'd already made preliminary shipping arrangements when the Customs Service intervened and stopped him. He took it personally; he was quite upset. I'm thinking that it's possible Craig may have continued to work for Nuvironment after he left here, and that he may have finally persuaded the Customs Service to give him the required permits. In any case, he may have information that could prove useful to you.' Zelaskowich paused, looked down at the floor, continued quietly, 'Craig is a rather. . uh, strange man. He can be very difficult to talk to, but I don't see how he could refuse to cooperate with you on a matter of this importance, something that concerns the well-being of a child.'
'We'll see,' I said.
'The personnel department may have his address and phone number, and I'd be happy to check it out for you. I seem to recall that he lives in a town house on the East Side of Manhattan, somewhere in the sixties or seventies.'
'We'll find him.'
Garth asked, 'Why did Valley get fired?'
Again, the botanist lowered his gaze. 'I don't like to gossip, Garth. Do you really need to know that?'
'At the moment it's difficult for us to be certain just what it is we'll need to know in order to find the girl,' I answered. 'Knowing something about Craig Valley before we go to talk to him might be helpful to us in ways we can't anticipate now. You described him as a 'strange man.' Why? In what way is he 'strange'?'
Zelaskowich sighed, then shoved his large hands into the pockets of his lab coat. 'Well, in my opinion it was his religious zealotry that got him fired-although that wasn't the official reason given; after all, the city and the Botanical Garden wouldn't want to be charged with religious discrimination.'
'He was fired for religious reasons?'
'He was fired for incompetence and inattention to his duties.'
'But you said that the real reason may have been his religious zealotry.'
Zelaskowich shrugged. 'I think it was a factor that, in the end, weighed against him. It wasn't so much his religious beliefs in themselves so much as the way he tried to foist them on others. His behavior could make Craig. . well, obnoxious on occasion. I believe he was one of those. . what do you call them? Charismatics? Pentecostals? Whatever he is, I believe it's much more fanatic than simple Christian Fundamentalism; that's just my opinion, though, and I don't claim to know that much about any religion. Craig was always warning us that we were going to be sent to hell very soon if we didn't accept Jesus Christ as our savior and if we weren't, as he put it, 'born again.' It seemed to me very odd behavior for an educated man. There are a number of Jews on the staff here, and a few Muslims. I'm a humanist, myself. At first, we used to dismiss Craig-condescend to him, and laugh among ourselves behind his back. I'm afraid that didn't stop him from trying to 'save us,' if you will. I really believe that the man thinks the world is going to end soon, within our lifetimes, and that all sorts of demons are going to pop up out of the ground to make mischief. Then, it seems, Jesus Christ is going to descend from heaven to defeat the demons and start a new world in which only people who believe like Craig will be allowed to live. I know it sounds absolutely lunatic, but I think the man actually believes these things.'
'Did Dr. Valley ever mention somebody named William Kenecky to you?' I asked, catching Garth's curt nod of approval out of the corner of my eye.
'Kenecky? You mean the crazy television preacher who's on the run from the tax people?'
'That's him.'
Zelaskowich thought about it, shook his head. 'No, Craig never mentioned him to me. But now that you bring it up, it occurs to me that a lot of the nonsense Craig used to spout sounds like the nonsense Kenecky spouted. Maybe that's where Craig got his silly notions from. I still can't understand how somebody who's been to college- and earned a doctorate, no less-could believe such ignorant, vicious stuff. It's very sad.'
But not nearly as sad as what somebody-maybe William Kenecky-was doing to a little girl named Vicky Brown. 'Was Valley really incompetent as well as obnoxious?'
'He became so, yes. I think his belief that the world was going to end about the day after tomorrow finally sort of infected his brain. Obviously, he's one of the world's leading experts on orchids; if he weren't, he wouldn't have been our curator. However, in the last few months he simply let his work go. In fact, he was warned about it; and he was so bold-or stupid-as to say that it didn't matter if all his orchids died because Jesus was on His way. Can you imagine?'
'Religious zealotry can do strange things to people,' I said as I glanced at Garth, who smiled thinly and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.
Zelaskowich nodded. 'Indeed. In any case, Craig had been steadily neglecting his work for some time, but in somewhat subtle ways. However, after the Customs Service interfered with the importation of the rain forest soil, he became positively unhinged. Then the administration had to let him go. You'd have expected him to be upset, but he really wasn't. In fact, he told me that it was almost a relief not to be distracted by work while he was waiting for Jesus to come, and that now we'd see he was right about the imminent end of the world and the rising of demons.' The botanist paused, shook his head sadly. 'Poor Craig. On his last day I came across him in one of the gardens. He was down on his hands and knees, rocking back and forth, babbling absolute nonsense in a very loud voice. He seemed almost hysterical. In fact, I think there's a name for that sort of thing.'
'There is,' I said. 'It's called glossolalia-'speaking in tongues.' '
3
Dr.Craig Valley's three-story town house was on East Sixty-third Street, half a block away from one of the shifting, ephemeral boundaries so common to New York City, where architecture, patterns of street activity, planted things, and commercial activity abruptly changed to become an entirely different 'neighborhood.' The neighborhood in the next block was considerably seedier, with dirtier buildings plastered with advertisements for rock conceits, no trees, and dirtier sidewalks. Judging from the condition of Valley's town house, with the flaking paint on its window
