Warren Murphy: The Last Alchemist

"Wait. I can make a donation to the Catholic Church. They serve the living. I'll build them hospitals in St. Vincense's name. That's what you can do for St. Vincense D'Ors if you see me tomorrow. The Church won't turn down helping the poor."

Again there was laughter over the transatlantic line. "Mr. Caldwell. Good old St. Vincense needs his libations and holy words. He needs them here in Brussels where he was born. Now why are you offering me so much money for a discredited science, so discredited that even in my youth I was forced to teach it as the history of the medieval ages? Why?"

"Let me ask you then, sir. Why are you so insistent on performing those ceremonies tomorrow? Why not let others do it?"

"Because, Mr. Caldwell, I am the only one to pour libations on St. Vincense's birthday. I am the last."

"I will carry it on."

"You lie. What do you care about the patron saint of alchemy? The science has been discredited for over a century. But I tell you, the alchemists were the beginning of Western science, no matter what you or anyone else says. No matter what the university feels. Other sciences have flaws. Do they call physics superstition because a theory doesn't work? Do they call psychoanalysis superstition because someone comes up with a new definition of the id? No. But alchemy, the source of Western chemistry and science, was discarded entirely as a superstition just because a few theories did not prove out."

"Why are you yelling, professor? If I didn't believe, would I be offering to pay you so much money for one day?"

Harrison Caldwell heard heavy breathing at the other end of the line. The man might be having a stroke. He had to gentle him down, not antagonize him.

"I am tired of being ridiculed. Leave me alone."

"I have something that you must believe in," said Caldwell.

"I don't have to believe in anything. I don't have to believe the world isn't composed of the four pure elements of fire, water, earth, and air. I don't have to. And I will tell you something else, you ... you mocker of our science. I never will."

"I have the philosopher's stone," said Harrison Caldwell.

"If I were to believe you, I would be even more offended. That stone. Always, always the problem. They said that because we claimed as alchemists to be able to turn lead to gold, we were a pseudoscience, the court jesters of science, the embarrassment of science, like an old grandfather born bastard instead of legal. But this bastard made your chemists of today, son."

"The stone is in four quadrants. Two of the languages I recognize. They are Latin and Arabic. The third might be a form of Greek, but I am not sure, and, Professor Cryx, I dreadfully hate talking about this on a telephone line. What sort of wine do we pour to St. Vincense D' Ors?"

There was a pause on the telephone line. Finally Professor Cryx spoke.

"It's a long ceremony. I have been using a cheap port, but you do have funds, you say?"

"What sort of wine would our blessed St. Vincense like?"

The voice from Brussels was timid, almost like a child unable to believe it was worth such a gift.

"Laffite Rothschild ... if it isn't too expensive."

"We will have two cases for Blessed St. Vincense. A hundred if you wish."

"Too much, too much. But yes, of course. Wine is one of the few pleasures of the old. A hundred cases would allow me to drink every day for the rest of my life. Oh this is too good, too good to be true. You will be here tomorrow then. Services start at sunrise."

The next day, Harrison Caldwell saw clearly why the Church never recognized good old St. Vincense. Half the prayers were pagan, and the other half were pagan-based, calling upon the elements as though they were gods themselves. The ritual was anathema to the first of the Ten Commandments, which called for reverence to one God who made everything.

Professor Cryx was a Walloon, one of the two groups that made up Belgium, and the one that usually ran things. The other group, the Flemish, only felt it should run things. Professor Cryx wore a gray jacket stained by all the meals he'd eaten since middle age. They stood in an old square near an old fountain, while Professor Cryx chanted a language Harrison Caldwell had never heard but suspected might be on one of the four quadrants of the stone. The old man was sparing with the wine, commenting to his St. Vincense that when the other hundred cases arrived there would be more wine. The wine was poured into the fountain. Some of the prayers were in English for Caldwell's benefit. Harrison Caldwell did not bother to mention that he spoke both Dutch and French, which would have enabled him to converse with anyone in Belgium. Nor did he mention that he spoke Spanish, ancient Greek, Latin, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Danish.

Nor did he even mention that he spoke all of these languages fluently, like someone who used them daily. Harrison Caldwell stood with the grace and tremendous reserve of someone who was sure that in a very short time he was going to realize a dream of generations.

With casual ease, Harrison Caldwell allowed an arm to gently rest on a hip. Oddly, this small gesture attracted a crowd. The sight of a ragged old man pouring wine into a fountain and mumbling things in one language after another aroused only pity, making people turn away. But to see someone so elegant stand there with the old man, as though about to receive a crown of a kingdom, was something to make people stop and look. And when Professor Cryx bowed four times to the four corners of the world, praising the four elements for their gifts as St. Vincense D'Ors had taught, people came over to ask what the ceremony was about.

''We're getting followers," gasped Professor Cryx.

"Move on," said Caldwell. And they did. Not just because the elegant man ignored all requests as though he had never heard them, but because when Harrison Caldwell did not respond to people he made them feel ashamed that they had ever spoken. He had that ability with employees, even from his earliest days when he had to work for a living. But those days would soon be over.

The professor's apartment was small, dim, and smelled like an unopened trash barrel. But the old professor was giddy with joy; a second life had begun even as his days dwindled. He was talking of plans, something he hadn't indulged in since the 1960s when alchemy made a very brief comeback on the coattails of the astronomy craze. Harrison Caldwell endured the smell and the conversational discomfort. Then, from a very thin briefcase, he brought forth four pictures. Each showed a quadrant of the stone in harsh clarity. Harrison Caldwell cleared a table for Professor Cryx and poured a glass of wine.

Cryx trembled the glass to his lips, letting the pure sharp wine pleasure his tongue for a delicious moment, finally swallowing almost with regret. Then a full sip, and then a swallow, and then he offered the glass for more.

"You did say we're getting a hundred cases, didn't you?"

"For the rest of your life. The pictures."

"Yes, the pictures. Just a touch there, thank you," said Cryx, making sure the bottle filled the glass. "I guess I can get used to this." His glass full, he returned to the pictures. He held the glass up for another sip while he read the Arabic. The Latin was clear. The Arabic was not, and then the ancient Hebrew, the one even before the language of the Old Testament. And of course Sanskrit. Good old Sanskrit. The Babylonian variation. The glass stayed where he had placed it. He didn't even notice Mr. Caldwell, the nice Mr. Caldwell, take it out of his hands.

"Yes. Yes. Of course. Yes. This is it. The old devil himself. Where did you find it?"

"It was sunk."

"Leave it there. This has caused us alchemists the trouble, all the trouble, from day one. This one stone has been the defamation of us all. Leave it. If you believe in alchemy, leave this stone."