proceed with it, you may be sure the danger is sizeable.” He nodded to himself and said again, “Sizeable.”
Deeming, the hotel clerk, got just this far with his clerkly posture: “Mr. Rockhard, I am absolutely mystified as to why you should turn to a man like me for any …” because Rockhard brought both hands down with a crash and leaned half across his desk. “Mr. Deeming,” he said, in his gentle, edged voice, with all the power in the world throttled way back and idling at the ready, “I know about you. I know it because I needed to find such a man as you and I have the resources to do it. You may wear that common-man pose if it makes you comfortable, but do not deceive yourself that it deceives me. You are not a common man or—to put it on the very simplest terms—you would not be in this room at this moment, because the common man will not be tempted by anything which he knows offends the Angels.”
So Deeming dropped the invisibility, the diffidence, the courtesy and deference of an assistant to an associate, and said, “It is hardly safe for even an uncommon man to offend them.”
“You mean me? I’m perfectly safe from you, Deeming. You wouldn’treport me, even if you knew I couldn’t strike back. You don’t
like
Angels. You never met another man before who didn’t like them. Therefore you like me.”
Deeming had to smile. He nodded. He thought, but when is he going to point out that if I don’t help him he will blackmail me?
“I will not blackmail you,” said the old man surprisingly. “I will pull you into this with rewards, not push you into it with penalties. You are a man whose greed speaks higher than his fear.” But he smiled when he said it. Then without waiting for any response at all, he made his proposition.
He began to speak of his son. “When you have unlimited credit and an only son, you begin by being quite certain that you can extend yourself through him to the future; for he is your blood and bone, and he will of course want to follow in your footsteps. And if it occurs to you that he might veer from that course—it never does occur to you until late in the game, too late—then you let the situation get past curing by the smug assumption that the pressures you can put on him will accomplish what your genes could not.”
“Ultimately you realize that you have a choice—not the choice of keeping or losing him; you’ve lost that already; but the choice of throwing him out or letting him go. If you care more for yourself and what you’ve built than you do for your son, you throw him out, and good riddance. I”—he stopped to wet his lips and glanced quickly at Deeming’s face and back to his folded hands—“I let him go.”
He was still a moment and then suddenly wrenched his hands apart and then laid them carefully and silently side by side before him. “I don’t regret it, because we are friends. We are good friends, and I helped him in every way I could, including not helping him when he wanted to make his own way, and giving him whatever he asked me for whether or not I thought it was valuable.” He smiled suddenly, and whispered more to his sleeping hands than to Deeming, “For a son like that, if he wants to paint his belly blue, you buy the paint.”
He looked at Deeming. “The blue paint is archaeology, and I bought it for him. Dead diggings, pure knowledge, nothing that will make a dime to buy a bun with. That isn’t my kind of work or my kind of thinking, but it’s all Donald wants.”
“There’s glory,” said Deeming.
“Not this trip. Now hear me out. That boy is willing to disappear, cease to exist, become nothing at all, just to follow a thread which almost certainly leads nowhere, but which, if it leads somewhere, can become only an erudite curiosity like the Rosetta stone or the Dead Sea scrolls or the frozen language in the piezo-crystals of Phygmo IV.” He spread his hands and immediately put them back to bed. “Blue paint. And
Deeming, the hotel clerk, got just this far with his clerkly posture: “Mr. Rockhard, I am absolutely mystified as to why you should turn to a man like me for any …” because Rockhard brought both hands down with a crash and leaned half across his desk. “Mr. Deeming,” he said, in his gentle, edged voice, with all the power in the world throttled way back and idling at the ready, “I know about you. I know it because I needed to find such a man as you and I have the resources to do it. You may wear that common-man pose if it makes you comfortable, but do not deceive yourself that it deceives me. You are not a common man or—to put it on the very simplest terms—you would not be in this room at this moment, because the common man will not be tempted by anything which he knows offends the Angels.”
So Deeming dropped the invisibility, the diffidence, the courtesy and deference of an assistant to an associate, and said, “It is hardly safe for even an uncommon man to offend them.”
“You mean me? I’m perfectly safe from you, Deeming. You wouldn’treport me, even if you knew I couldn’t strike back. You don’t
like
Angels. You never met another man before who didn’t like them. Therefore you like me.”
Deeming had to smile. He nodded. He thought, but when is he going to point out that if I don’t help him he will blackmail me?
“I will not blackmail you,” said the old man surprisingly. “I will pull you into this with rewards, not push you into it with penalties. You are a man whose greed speaks higher than his fear.” But he smiled when he said it. Then without waiting for any response at all, he made his proposition.
He began to speak of his son. “When you have unlimited credit and an only son, you begin by being quite certain that you can extend yourself through him to the future; for he is your blood and bone, and he will of course want to follow in your footsteps. And if it occurs to you that he might veer from that course—it never does occur to you until late in the game, too late—then you let the situation get past curing by the smug assumption that the pressures you can put on him will accomplish what your genes could not.”
“Ultimately you realize that you have a choice—not the choice of keeping or losing him; you’ve lost that already; but the choice of throwing him out or letting him go. If you care more for yourself and what you’ve built than you do for your son, you throw him out, and good riddance. I”—he stopped to wet his lips and glanced quickly at Deeming’s face and back to his folded hands—“I let him go.”
He was still a moment and then suddenly wrenched his hands apart and then laid them carefully and silently side by side before him. “I don’t regret it, because we are friends. We are good friends, and I helped him in every way I could, including not helping him when he wanted to make his own way, and giving him whatever he asked me for whether or not I thought it was valuable.” He smiled suddenly, and whispered more to his sleeping hands than to Deeming, “For a son like that, if he wants to paint his belly blue, you buy the paint.”
He looked at Deeming. “The blue paint is archaeology, and I bought it for him. Dead diggings, pure knowledge, nothing that will make a dime to buy a bun with. That isn’t my kind of work or my kind of thinking, but it’s all Donald wants.”
“There’s glory,” said Deeming.
“Not this trip. Now hear me out. That boy is willing to disappear, cease to exist, become nothing at all, just to follow a thread which almost certainly leads nowhere, but which, if it leads somewhere, can become only an erudite curiosity like the Rosetta stone or the Dead Sea scrolls or the frozen language in the piezo-crystals of Phygmo IV.” He spread his hands and immediately put them back to bed. “Blue paint. And
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