SO I WAS ON THE brink of reassuring him, for I sensed he was trying too hard to persuade me — and maybe himself — that his work was ethical. I was about to tell him that I and probably most other human beings were guilty in some way or other of some awful self-betrayal.
But just then our van surmounted that final hill and the lights of a substantial town were spread out below.
“Waterville, dead ahead!” said Dupont in a quite cheerful voice. “I hope my friend’s there by now.”
5
Our destination turned out to be Ye Olde Mill, a nineteenth-century ruin turned into an upscale hotel, restaurant, and bar on the edge of Waterville. A plaque on the fieldstone wall of the lobby informed us that a hundred years ago the place had been a “manufactory.”
“That’s the fancy word for ‘factory,’ which is yet another fancy word for ‘sweatshop,’” said Dupont as we went inside. He seemed to be in good form, maybe relieved at having made his confession to me or maybe because he didn’t think of it that way at all.
The maître d’ led us to our table. There a striking woman with long blond hair rose to greet us. She was dressed in some kind of silken gown that fell to her ankles and had a loose, open weave that was pleasing to the eye.
Dupont kissed her lightly on the lips then introduced her. “This is Marsha Woods,” he said to me with a little wink. All along, he’d let me assume we were to meet a male friend and not a breathtaking woman.
“This is the Harry Steen I mentioned — the man from Duncairn,” he said to her.
I shook her extended fingers and we all sat down.
“I just arrived a few minutes ago,” she said. “I left my suitcase at the front desk. I haven’t even had time to order a drink.”
Now that my eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim restaurant lighting, I realized she was older than I’d first thought — in fact she must have been much my own age. Her makeup didn’t quite mask the tiny wrinkles around her eyes.
“Marsha flies to Washington at noon tomorrow,” Dupont said to me. “She’ll be staying with us overnight at the institute and we’ll have breakfast together. One of my staff will drive her back to the airport in time for her plane.”
DUPONT ORDERED A bottle of wine and we sipped and talked till dinner was served. Marsha, I discovered, worked for the United Nations. She and Dupont had met only a few months ago. He’d amused her with stories about his various postings around the world and the strange customs he’d encountered.
“One thing led to another,” she said, glancing at Dupont affectionately.
“Including the bedroom,” Dupont added. They both laughed at that.
The more wine I drank, the more I liked the look of her. She was really quite the opposite of Dupont’s long-dead lover, Clara, who’d been aged prematurely by the African sun and made no attempt to disguise it. Marsha was in fact middle-aged but, by artifice, tried to appear younger. She didn’t smile much and I wondered if even that was an attempt to discourage the wrinkles.
WE WERE ALL HUNGRY, so while we ate the main course, talking was minimal. But as we relaxed awaiting dessert we began to talk more. Remembering that Dupont had spent some time in the Pacific, I told them about my trip to Oluba and seeing the tattooed women there. I mentioned that in recent years the fertility cults associated with full-body tattooing had disappeared, but it was still a form of female ornamentation.
“How interesting,” said Marsha.
I liked how she looked cool and curious at the same time.
“Well now, Harry,” said Dupont. “You say the women’s tattooing was full body, eh? How did you find out?”
We all laughed.
“Still, the fact that tattoos don’t have a ritualistic significance in Oluba any more might be taken as a sign of progress,” said Dupont. “Some of the other island chains used to cling hard to old customs, and that interfered with any efforts to bring them into the modern world.” He began to reminisce about his years on Manua, which was a long way south of Oluba. He remembered especially his attempt to set up a clinic there and coming up against traditional beliefs — a story he’d told me back when we first met. The Manuans had a complex belief system centred on reincarnation. They wouldn’t take his medicine for they didn’t want to be cured of any illnesses they suffered in this life. If they did, they were convinced they’d be smitten even more painfully in their next incarnation.
“So how did you get them to use your medicine?” said Marsha.
“I didn’t,” said Dupont. “I tried every way to persuade them, with no success. It was actually quite humbling, as a man with a scientific background, to be completely baffled by a view of the world that hadn’t changed since the Stone Age. Part of the problem was that we didn’t share any common ground for arguing the point.
“For example, their head shaman couldn’t even grasp what I was getting at when I tried to explain the basic concept of two and two adding up to four. He showed me how wrong I was. He took two pieces of string and tied two knots in each of them. Then he said to me: Look, you can’t join them without another knot! See? He tied the two strings together and pointed out that now there were five knots. After that, he treated me like one of their pre-adolescent children.”
We were amused at such perversity.
“Couldn’t you have claimed that your knowledge came from the gods, just as a shaman’s did?” Marsha said.
Dupont shook his head.
“The power of rational thinking is the one thing a scientist must believe in. It’s more important than life itself,” he said, not in a pompous way but as though he really meant it — and didn’t work at an institute where he cut out parts of people’s brains in the name of scientific research.
From the way Marsha looked at him it was obvious she was impressed. Oddly enough, in spite of what I knew about his work, I envied him his conviction, at least to an extent. Long ago, it seemed to me, I’d lost sight of any principle worth more than life.
AFTER DESSERT, we left the restaurant and went to the barroom with its great stone walls and fireplace. We found a quiet table where we could sit and enjoy our brandies. I told them about my recent trip to La Verdad, my finding of The Obsidian Cloud, and its description of a fantastic occurrence over the skies of Duncairn back in the nineteenth century.
“Duncairn!” said Dupont. “Well, well. I’ve already told Marsha you lived there years ago.”
She’d been listening to my account with great interest.
“Yes, he did tell me you’d been there,” she said to me. “I’m afraid the days of fantastic happenings are gone now, from Duncairn and everywhere else in the Scottish Uplands. I know that only too well, for my department’s concern is with depopulation in various parts of the world. We try to determine its causes and possible remedies for it, if remedies are called for.
“About five years ago, I was assigned to study the situation in the Uplands because of the steady exodus of its people. I drove from one end of the region to the other interviewing as many of the remaining inhabitants I could find, as well as occasional visitors such as hunters and anglers.
“As for Duncairn specifically … well, the town isn’t really there anymore. At least, not as you’d remember it. That entire area doesn’t have many permanent inhabitants now, except for the occasional shepherd.”
MARSHA NOW LAUNCHED into a devastating history of the decline of the region during the decades since I’d left it. The main cause was that the coal mines, which had employed most of the male population, were shut down — either because they’d run out of coal or because changing economic and political times made it an unpopular form of energy. Towns like Cumner, Rossmark, Lannick, Taymire, and Gatbridge — which had all existed in some form since at least the Middle Ages — were now abandoned.