She turned over impossible alternatives, explanations. His phone was a dummy: he couldn’t see her, didn’t know who was on the phone. Or: it was his way of being funny, and she was too tired to understand. Or ... or ... it was no use: it had really happened, he had known what he was doing, he had a reason.
But what reason? Why? Why?
In her mind she again heard that roar from the audience: Horowitz. With difficulty, because it still stung, she pieced together the conversation and then, moving her forefinger toward her phone and the trideo, back and forth, puzzled out what had gone out over the air and what had not. Only then did she fully understand that Heri Gonza had done what he had done to make it seem that his first call was from Dr. Horowitz. But if he needed that particular gag at that time, why didn’t he fake it to a dead phone? Why actually converse with her, cut her down like that?
And he hadn’t let her help. That was worse than any of the rudeness, the insult. He wouldn’t let her help.
What to do? Making the gesture she had made had not been hard; having it refused was more than she could bear. She must help; she would help. Now of all times, with all this useless money coming to her; she didn’t need it, and it might, it just might somehow help, and bring Billy back home.
Well then, expose Heri Gonza. Give him back some of his own humiliation. Call in the newsmen, make a statement. Tell them what she had offered, tell them just who was on the line. He’d have to take the money, and apologize to boot.
She stood up; she sat down again. No. He had known what he was doing. He had known who she was; he must have a telltale on his phone to get information on his callers from that screening committee. She knew a lot about Heri Gonza. He seemed so wild, so impulsive; he was not. He ran his many enterprises with a steel fist; he took care of his own money, his own bookings. He did not make mistakes nor take chances. He had refused her and the Foundation would refuse her: the Foundation was Heri Gonza. He had his reasons, and if she had any defense at all against “ what he had done, he would not have done it.
She wasn’t allowed to help.
Unless—
She suddenly ran to the phone. She dialed 5, and the cave lit up with the floating word DIRECTORY. She dialed H, O, R, and touched the Slow button until she had the Horowitzes. There were pathetically few of them. Almost everyone named Horowitz had filed unlisted numbers: many had gone so far as to change their names.
George Rehoboth Horowitz, she remembered.
He wasn’t listed.
She dialed Information and asked. The girl gave her a pitying smile and told her the line was unlisted. And of course it would be. If Dr. Horowitz wasn’t the most hated man on earth, he was the next thing to it. A listed phone would be useless to him, never silent.
“Has he screening service?” Iris asked suddenly.
“He has,” said the girl, company-polite as always, but now utterly cold. Anyone who knew that creature to speak to . . . “Your name, please?”
Iris told her, and added, “Please tell him it’s very important.”
The cave went dark but for the slowly rotating symbol of the phone company, indicating that the operator was doing her job. Then a man’s head appeared and looked her over for a moment, and then said, “Dr. Barran?”
“Dr. Horowitz.”
She had not been aware of having formed any idea of the famous (infamous?) Horowitz; yet she must have. His face seemed too gentle to have issued those harsh rejoinders which the news attributed to him; yet perhaps it was gentle enough to be taken for the fumbler, the fool so many people thought he was. His eyes, in some inexplicable way, assured her that his could not be clumsy hands. He wore old-fashioned exterior spectacles; he was losing his hair; he was younger than she had thought, and he was ugly. Crags are ugly, tree-trunks, the hawk’s pounce, the bear’s foot, if beauty to you is all straight lines and silk. Iris Barran was not repulsed by this kind of ugliness. She said bluntly, “Are you doing any good with the disease?” She did not specify: today, there was only one disease.
He said, in an odd way as if he had known her for a long time and could judge how much she would understand, “I have it all from the top down to the middle, and from the bottom up to about a third. In between—nothing, and no way to get anything.”
“Can you go any further?”
“I don’t know,” he said candidly. “I can go on trying to find ways to go further, and if I find a way, I can try to move along on it.”
“Would some money help?”
“It depends on whose it is.”
“Mine.”
He did not speak, but tilted his head a little to one side and looked at her.
She said, “I won ... I have some money coming in. A good deal of it.”
“I heard,” he said, and smiled. He seemed to have very strong teeth, not white, not even, just spotless and perfect “It’s a good deal out of my field, your theoretical physics, and I don’t understand it. I’m glad you got it. I really am. You earned it.”
She shook her head, denying it, and said, “I was surprised.”
“You shouldn’t have been. After ninety years of rather frightening confusion, you’ve restored the concept of parity to science—” he chuckled—”though hardly in the way anyone anticipated.”
She had not known that this was her accomplishment; she had never thought of it in those terms. Her demonstration of gravitic flux was a subtle matter to be communicated with wordless symbols, quite past speech. Even to herself she had never made a conversational analogue of it; this man had, though, not only easily, but quite accurately.
She thought, if this isn’t his field, and he grasps it like that—just how good must he be in his own? She said, “Can you use the money? Will it help?”
“God,” he said devoutly, “can I use it. . . . As to whether it will help, Doctor, I can’t answer that. It would help me go on. It may not make me arrive. Why did you think of me?”
Would it hurt him to know? she asked herself, and answered, it would hurt him if I were not honest. She said, “I offered it—to the Foundation. They wouldn’t touch it. I don’t know why.”
“I do,” he said, and instantly held up his hand. “Not now,” he said, checking her question. He reached somewhere off-transmission and came up with a card, on which was lettered, AUDIO TAPPED.
“Who—”
“The world,” he overrode her, “is full of clever amateurs. Tell me, why are you willing to make such a sacrifice?”
“Oh—the money. It isn’t a sacrifice. I have enough: I don’t need it. And—my baby brother. He has it.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, with compassion. He made a motion with his hands. She did not understand. “What?”
He shook his head, touched his lips, and repeated the motion, beckoning, at himself and the room behind him. Oh. Come where I am.
She nodded, but said only, “It’s been a great pleasure talking with you. Perhaps I’ll see you soon.”
He turned over his card; obviously he had used it many times before. It was a map of a section of the city. She recognized it readily, followed his pointing finger, and nodded eagerly. He said, “I hope it is soon.”
She nodded again and rose, to indicate that she was on her way. He smiled and waved off.
It was like a deserted city, or a decimated one; almost everyone was off the streets, watching the telethon. The few people who were about all hurried, as if they were out against their wills and anxious to get back and miss as little as possible. It was known that he intended to go on for at least thirty-six hours, and still they didn’t want to miss a minute of him. Wonderful, wonderful, she thought, amazed (not for the first time) at people—just people. Someone had once told her that she was in mathematics because she was so apart from, amazed at, people. It was possible. She was, she knew, very unskilled with people, and she preferred the company of mathematics, which tried so hard to be reasonable, and to say what was really meant. . . .