Chase threw back his head and laughed. "By Jove, so it is! I'd forgotten; and your rating in linguistics is high, too, I remember. It had better be; Assyro-Babylonian is as bad as Basque, on which it's said the devil spent seven years only learning two words, and—"
"Look here," Finch cut in. "This won't do at all. I don't want—"
"You don't want what?" Chase said suddenly serious. "May I remind you, in your own words, that this is a scientific project, from which personal considerations must be excluded? You requisitioned for a B minus CQ 31, and it's my duty to find one wherever I can."
"But isn't it—dangerous?" Finch experienced a surge of longing and fear for the dark girl by his side, her eyes moving restlessly at the prospect of the adventure.
"Oh, yes I know—" She gripped his hand again. "I might be raped and I might be killed, you're going to say. But Arthur—we all have to take chances like that in research. Think of Walter Reed. And besides, we do have to do something. The dreams never lie, and they say we're bound to suffer a disappointment if we go on as we have been. I'll come back to you, dear, after the reconditioning, and make it all up to you."
Chase's lip took a slight but good-humored curl. "You two better not let anyone from the Eugenics Department hear you talking like this, or you'll be up for inquiry on grounds of transmissable sentimentality," he said, and stood up. "Want to come along, Thera, and take your type check?"
"All right," said the girl. "Don't worry, Arthur. I'll see you before I go in for conditioning."
Nineteen:
Finch was left with an empty feeling and the realization he had all three checks to pay; nor was his self-irritation decreased by inability to get the waiter's attention till he summoned the man, in Dr. Chase's word, as a "pastiferist." He went out, and stood for a moment in the street, idly taking in the fact that the establishment across the way announced itself as that of a "Cothurnal Engineer" and had a man fixing a shoe in the window. A sense of appointment, of being wanted somewhere gnawed at his brain, and after a couple of groping efforts, he identified it as the knowledge that he was due on the set of the historical reconstruction to relieve his co-observer.
Hilprecht, the name was, apparently—a good name for an Assyriologist if not for a geo-politician. There was something important about an Assyriologist Herman Hilprecht somewhere at the back of his mind, something out of a book or memory or waking fantasy. Hilprecht had fallen asleep over a knotty problem in cuneiform text and dreamed of a Babylonian priest who gave him a clue that proved correct—was that it? No, certainly—there was no difficulty in cuneiform, he took notes in it daily at the re-enactment, and Hilprecht was as expert as himself, that incident must belong out of time, it had no relation to his present life ...
His feet carried him in the direction of Third and Linden, where, he remembered vaguely, he was to take the No. 6 bus. He was not sure when he was due, but a glance at his watch failed to arouse any painful unease, from which he inferred that he did not have to hurry, so strolled along easily. A neat bronze nameplate caught his eye—
Washington Beauregard
Judicial and Horary Astrology
Why not? If the girl "over in economics" could use that racket to keep out of the reconstruction, the same thing might be worked by others. He went up.
"Come," said a voice as he pressed the button rather unnecessarily labelled "Bell", and he pushed open a door to find himself in a workshop which consisted of an entire floor of the place thrown into a single room, with astronomical telescopes standing in three bays. From behind a rolltop desk back up to one of them the same voice told him to come over and have a seat, and Finch rounded the corner of the structure to find himself facing a well set up negro in a wrinkled white suit.
"What can I do for you?"
"Why—I—I"
Washington Beauregard exhibited a set of teeth that would have done credit to a dentifricead. "What a special reading to convince the lady you're really soul-mates? Don't worry; communications to an astrologer are privileged, and I've taken the oath."
"No, it's not exactly that. My fiancee, Theraclia Bow, is thinking of getting into the big reconstruction on Assyrian history. I don't like it; the part she would play is likely to bring her in on some feast of the Lapithae, and I want to prevent her."
The dark face seemed a mahogany mask. "Why not ameliorate the contention through the director of the project? I can give you a reading but it is implausible that it would be exactly what you desire."
"I am the director—Dr. Finch. I tried to forbid it, but Dr. Chase seems determined to have her."
The face relaxed a trifle and the big eyes rolled. "You are referring to Dr. Theophilu Chase of the Psychologic Board, in control of projective recruitment? He certainly is sensationally determined in his operations. I disadmire his indefatigation. A friend of mine was treated with dis-consideration in that slave-trade reconstruction. It is not within the capacities of my professional reputation to give shaded readings. But you apparentively are suffering from a vigorously stressed condition, and I will be glad to submit the horoscopes to examination." "How long will it take?"
"Only a few hours, sir, after the data have accumulated." He waved a large paw, got to his feet and began hunting in a set of filing cabinets, from which he produced a negative photostat. "Here is the record of Miss Bow's generation." He thumbed some more, frowned and turned to Finch. "That's funny, I don't seem to have yours, though I thought my files were right up on everybody in this here district. Can you acquaint me with the date and hour of your birth?"
"The date was December 3, 1893," replied Finch, "but I'm afraid I can't tell you the hour."
"That's bad. Too bad. It was my expectation to use the method of systemified approximateness instead of the disreputable accurate one."
Finch could not repress a smile, or the remark: "How could it be disreputable, if it's accurate?"
"Sir, you are anti-familiar with the basis of astrological science. In the procedure of approximativity, we calculate from the sign in the ascendant at the exact moment of birth. But where as many individuals are unable to recollect this necessary moment, there was introduced some time ago the determination procedure of assumptivizing as in the ascendant the sign occupied by the sun at horizontary ascension."
"I see. I should think that would give quite different results. If I were born at sunset the sign in the ascendant might be the Dipper, but by the previous sunrise it might have been the Bridge-Table or something."
Beauregard smiled. "Sir, I suspect you are ridiculizing. Ursa Major is not within the zodiacal limitations and there ain't no constellation of the Bridge-Table. The horoscopular reading depends largely upon the relative positions of the planets, and while that is very little changed, sir, in the course of twenty-four hours, very little, you undebatively have a talking point. I feel that way about it myself."
"Why in the world do you call the new method the 'accurate' one, then?"
Washington Beauregard looked astonished. "Dr. Finch, are you humorizing me again? The entire system of scientific seniority rests on the fact, that a new method is better than an old one, since it outroots the errors of earlier practitioners in response to new evidentiary matter. But myself, I am sometimes roma'ntical." He shook his head as he shuffled over to his desk and began pulling out a couple of horoscope forms.
As Finch made his way to the bus it occurred to him that this singular scientist might come in handy now and then, but the reflection was cut short by the satisfaction with which he observed that Dr. Chase's remark about the money spent on reconstruction had not been entirely in jest. From the broad plain of West Memphis on the Arkansas side rose a steep and isolated hill, whose crest bore a replica of the capital of ancient Israel, not fresh with new paint and masonry, but looking somewhat weatherbeaten, as he himself might have conceived it. There were men moving on the battlements, just visible above the high board fence that encircled several square miles of plain around the base of the hill.