Richard Powers - Gold Bug Variations

It wasn't foresight; he never thought he'd make it to old age. "Part of me dearly wants to pay taxes. I love schools, sidewalks, museums, research funding, food relief. You simply cannot get a better return on investment. But I hate to pay for anything that can incinerate twenty million people at a pop. I know. At my infantile tax bracket, less all desirable governmental expenditures, my contribution wouldn't even cover the decals on one of those things. It makes no measurable difference. But withholding is all I can do."

Efficiency had Franker by the throat. He would urge bananas on me, broccoli — anything that might be in danger, in some future, of spoiling. "We've got to keep at that pilaf." He was brutal when I took slices from the fresher loaf. Yet he refused the antidote that progress held out to people with his mania: the bacteria-resistant, stabilized foodstuff, BHA added to preserve freshness. "I try not to eat anything that's newer to the food chain than I am."

He liked the dark and the cold. Saved on utilities costs, but more than that. He aspired toward that life that would not use any of the earth's resources. He deserved only what absolute efficiency could not eliminate. While he roomed with me, the compulsion got noticeably worse.

But when I pressured him to make use of the years already tied up in his obscure painter, efficiency became another matter. "I need more work. I just came across an early primary source that…"

"You already know more about him than anyone alive."

"Me? I haven't even seen all the panels."

"Go see them, then." I cringe to think of it: my suggestion. I even offered to pay, forgetting that he could write the flight off.

"Can't. Got a job."

"This thesis is your job. It's important."

He looked at me sardonically: right. Raging issue. But he did not speak the sarcasm. He seldom stooped to snideness. The words he used in his defense were so much smoke. He believed; he wanted. The project was lodged in him, staved off a worse drift. But he would never knock off a perfunctory proofwork. And putting a closely reasoned and deeply felt piece on the public auction block as a bid for self-promotion, packaging ongoing thought as a completed effort, was worse than immoral.

I frequented MOL as often as ever. I still assisted in dangling in front of Dr. Ressler the slow coax of companionship. Now that he was ready to emerge, I felt I had to make the place as ample as we'd advertised it. I couldn't have been more wrong. Yes, he loved me, loved Todd, loved, for the first time in decades, talk for pure talking. And yes he was again researching. But not what I thought, or for my reasons. What had coaxed him out again, said go, recalled him to the roster, was something else: the one liberating whiff.

Dr. Ressler refused to take part in my debates with the club creationist. Annie, even-tempered, devoid of suspicion, never knew these were anything but earnest exchanges of conviction.

Do you believe that the earth was made in 4004 B.C.?

Don't be silly! That was some medieval bishop. The Bible doesn't give the age. It's very old, the beginning. But put together in no time flat.

Do you believe that species change?

No. They were made. Look around! Two creatures that need each other to survive: wouldn't they have to be made together? One without the other would be like a ship without a carriage. They'd die if left to chance.

What of the fossil record? Small horses, huge lizards, cats with fangs?

I don't know. Perhaps the Flood— Trilobites? Fish covered with plate bone?

I don't know.

I flush in shame. I didn't want to destroy the woman's faith, but it maddened me that I couldn't. Ressler sometimes stopped to clear up facts, and Todd liked to push the argument back on track, like a kid righting a slot car. But Annie was unshakable; she would, after a day or two of quiet thought, match any forensics I sprang on her with an equal and opposite blow for verbatim truth.

I should have known that measurement and religion will always be two split continents bumping up for the first time, without interpreters. What drove me to distraction, made me ready to jump into the breach every time however ashamed I always came away, was the woman's insistence that the spirit could address the mechanical world, but mechanics weren't allowed to mess with the spirit. She accepted the age of the earth, dog breeding, inheritance of variant characteristics, organic chemistry, even the reality of genetic tampering. But not evolution.

"Try this," she said, "it can't hurt. A simple experiment, and who knows? It might mean a lot to you in the future." She handed me a pocket Bible, which she carried at all times. "Open it randomly to a passage and read what's written there." I don't know how I managed, but I kept sober as I read the passage chance had sent me. "Does it mean something to you?" I nodded gravely, and handed the passage to Todd. He had to leave the room to keep from bursting. Exodus 22, xviv: Whosoever copulateth with a beast shall be put to death. Contemptible just remembering it.

I was guilty1 of believing that evidence had progressed so far that a creature like Annie, endowed with native intelligence, would have to accept it. And it broke her heart to fail to convert me. Todd and Dr. Ressler were lost causes, to be loved more strongly on earth because they wouldn't make the last cut come the signs, seals, and trumpets, unless through benevolent intercession of the Maker. But me: for some reason, Annie thought she could win me for belief.

How did I ever presume to undermine her certainty? What did I have to replace joy with? Annie was surer of her right to happiness than I ever was of mine. Even the loss of her life savings did not ruffle her. She told us of the ugly event one night, still trembling, not in anger, but at the danger she had just come through.

Three days before, while looking over the books in those stalls at the southeast corner of the Park, she noticed something on the sidewalk near her feet. Just as she realized it was a purse, another book-browsing woman also noticed it, bent down, picked it up, and handed it to her. "Did you drop this?"

Annie said no. The two women looked around, finding only one other nearby browser. The third woman also said that the purse wasn't hers. "Perhaps there's an address," Annie suggested. Still in possession, she opened it. No address. No credit cards. No ID. Only about fifteen thousand dollars in cash. The second woman yelped. They were holding the proverbial hot tuber. The three drew toward one another, herding instinct, and sat down on an empty bench. "This doesn't look good," Annie said. "Maybe we should notify the police."

"The New York Police?" the others objected.

They sat in a scared knot, no one knowing what to suggest. At last the third mentioned, "My brother-in-law's a lawyer." Instant relief. The second woman was parked in a lot not far from Columbus Circle, and they drove to the brother-in-law's on the Upper West Side.

The lawyer laughed at their nerves, asked facetiously if they were being tailed. "Relax. You'd be surprised at the amounts of cash some people carry on them."

"Only they usually notice if they've left it lying on the street," the second woman said acidly.

The brother-in-law rummaged in his red-spined library and found the passage he was after. "If you three can put up a cash retainer equal to a third of the amount, and if we make a public declaration of the find — a newspaper ad will do — and if no legitimate claimants show after one week, then it's all yours. Manna from heaven."

They punched the numbers up on a calculator. Adding a dash for the ads, they each needed to put up sixteen hundred dollars. They drove to their apartments, each woman running in and securing the funds. Annie and the second had to cash checks; the third, embarrassed, admitted that she kept her money under a rug. Annie's collateral cleaned her out. They left the earnest money with the brother-in-law, who notarized receipts. They exchanged names and numbers, and agreed on the restaurant where they would eat out a week from then.