Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

“Only in passing,” I said. “But everybody he worked with, including his students, all thought very highly of him.”

Eventually I was able to get back to Frank’s failure to report what he’d found. “It baffles everybody. Harvey, his department head, says if he’d revealed what he knew, he’d have won the Nobel.”

Margaret nodded. “I can tell you why he said nothing.” Her voice shook.

“Why?” I asked.

“The newspapers say the process is so convoluted, that it requires such a conjunction of unlikely events, that the odds against it are almost infinite.”

“And—?” I said.

“Scientists,”—she said it as if she were referring to a disreputable pack—“were expecting that it would be routine. You get water, and sunlight, and a few basic elements, and next thing you know you have squirrels.”

“It didn’t work out that way,” I said, trying to encourage her.

She nodded. “No. Despite all the talk, it took the hand of God. That’s what Frank proved, what he wanted to deny. It’s the fifth day.” Tears were beginning to run down her cheeks.

Gelper came up behind her, held her shoulders, and looked down at me. He was an imposing figure. “He couldn’t have stood that kind of result,” he said in a soft voice. “He abandoned his faith a long time ago. I don’t know where you stand, whether you understand what that means. But it’s why he kept it quiet. He lived in denial. Denied everything we know to be true.” He looked shaken. “He was denying the Lord right to the end. Think about it. At this moment, our son is in hell.”

Well, I didn’t know how to respond to that so I said thanks for your time and left. As soon as I was clear of the neighborhood, I called Harvey. “I don’t think his folks approved of him.”

“ You figure out why? ”

“It’s a religious thing, apparently. They said something about a fifth day.”

“ It figures. They would have been referring to Genesis, I guess. The biblical one. The fifth day was when God created the first living things. ”

“It was a sad scene back there, Harvey. I thought religion was supposed to be a comfort.”

“ Not always. I guess his being gay didn’t help, either. ”

I thought about Gelper standing there trembling and it occurred to me that he was the one in hell.

I rode down to the local library, commandeered a computer, and did a search on Francis Gelper. I’d done that before, of course, when I’d been putting the original story together. Thousands of entries had popped up. Gelper on telomeres for Nature . Gelper discusses evolutionary extracts for The Darwin Newsletter . Gelper on cell cycle checkpoints for The Scientific American .

But this time I narrowed the search. I added ‘gay.’

The usual range of off-the-subject results showed up. Joe Gelper plays Gaylord Batterly in Over the Top , with George Francis conducting. Time travel novel Back to the Gay Nineties by Marie Gelper one of the year’s best, according to Mark Francis.

Then I saw the one that froze me. It was from something called The Revelation Bulletin .

Exorcism Rites Performed on Three Boys

Twin Rivers, Ala. April 11. Three teenaged boys received exorcism rites this past Sunday at the Divine Beneficence Church. The ceremony was conducted by the Rev. Harry Michaelson, while hundreds of worshippers watched in awe.

The article went on to name the teens. One of them was Francis Gelper. I checked the date. He would have been fifteen.

I looked up the Divine Beneficence Church and drove over. It was a picturesque place, not as big as it sounded in the story. It was freshly painted, with a white picket fence sealing off the grounds, and a large signboard exhorting everyone to attend the Mighty Soldiers of the Lord Revival that weekend. The Rev. Michaelson was listed as rector.

Ten minutes later I was back at the Gelper place.

They were surprised to see me. “Tell me about the exorcism,” I said.

Margaret went pale; Gelper took to glaring at me. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business,” he said.

“What did he have to do? Stand at the front of the church while all his friends watched? And somebody prayed over him?”

Margaret looked through me. “We had no choice. We were fighting for his soul.”

“Did he have to confess his sins to the entire congregation?”

Gelper started for me. “Get out,” he said.

“That explains why he kept it quiet, doesn’t it?”

“I already told you why. He was denying his God. No wonder he died young.”

He was moving toward me with his fists balled. I’m not normally all that brave when it comes to physical confrontations. But on that afternoon I was in a rage and I stood my ground. “You got it wrong, Gelper,” I said. “He knew the conclusion you’d jump to. That his results supported your notions of creation. And he didn’t want that. He wasn’t denying God. He was denying your vision of things. He was denying you . He sacrificed everything rather than allow you to appropriate his work.”

Harvey informs me the odds against life in any one place are so remote that they exceed the estimated number of worlds in biozones in the entire universe by a factor of three. If we assume that the sort of life we know, the carbon-based type that needs liquid water, is the only kind possible, then the chances were two to one against the appearance anywhere of a single living creature. We got lucky. That’s what Harvey says.

But the estimate of the number of eligible planets is wildly speculative. Nobody has a clue how big the universe actually is. So all the talk about probabilities is, in the end, just talk.

Still, when I look at the night sky now, it’s different from what it used to be. It feels cold. And impersonal. Just a machine.

I wonder if Frank Gelper had felt the same way. And if, in the end, that was the real reason he kept everything to himself.

The building was dark except for a table lamp in the living room and a ruddy glow on the third floor. The upstairs light didn’t give us any concern because a lot of people leave a second light on somewhere when they go out.

I looked around at the railroad tracks and warehouses and freight terminals and wondered why anybody would want to live down here. But Armin Rankowski had.

At least he had until he walked in front of a truck. That had happened the previous evening. Hatch had seen the story and had read that there were no known survivors. That meant nobody home until the county got its act together.

The telephone book listed his home address as 511 S. Eddy in Pemberton, a small industrial town just south of Houston. We found a partially-refitted warehouse at the address. It was three stories high, with new siding and a freshly-painted front entrance, and plants and curtains in the windows.

The ambiance was by no means luxurious, but it was of a higher order than we’d expected. “Definitely worthwhile,” Toxie said.

I mean, somebody lives alone, he dies, his place is an easy hit. We moved to the rear of the building, out of sight of the street. Hatch measured the window, levered it open and poked his head in. “I think we’re okay,” he whispered. He threw a leg over the sill. Like the rest of him, it was big and meaty.

Toxie was little and sharp-nosed and rat-quick. He was good to have along because he scared easy and you knew he wasn’t going to let you take any chances. You might think excessive caution is not a good idea, but in our line of work, it is a virtue of the first order. He went next and I followed.