The Ninth Configuration by William Peter Blatty Page B

billion years have come and gone a trillion times, an infinite number of times! Ahead of us and behind us is an infinite number of years in the case of matter always existing. So heat death has already come and gone! And once it comes, there can never be life! Never again! Not for eternity! So how come we’re talking, huh? How come? Though notice that I am talking sensibly while you just sit there drooling. Nevertheless, we are here. Why is that?” Interest quickened in Kane’s eyes. “Either matter is not eternal, I’d say, or the entropy theory is wrong.”
    “What? You reject my basic foos?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Then there can be only one alternative, Greg: matter hasn’t always existed. Which means that at one time-or before time began-there was absolutely nothing-nothing-in existence. So how come there’s something now? The answer is obvious to even the lowliest, the meanest, of intelligences, and that, of course, means you. The answer is that something other than matter had to make matter begin to be. That something other I call Foot. How does that grab you?”
    “It’s very compelling.”
    “There’s only one thing wrong,” said Cutshaw. “I don’t believe it for a minute. What do you take me for, a lunatic?” The astronaut walked up to the desk. “You’re so dumb, you’re adorable,” he said. “I copied that proof from a privy wall at a Maryknoll Mission in Beverly Hills.”
    “It doesn’t convince you?”
    “Intellectually, yes; but emotionally-no. And that,” he concluded, “is the problem.”
    He marched to the door and turned. “Incidentally,” he demanded, “what were you doing in the clinic in the middle of the night?” He stood there, waiting for some reaction; but there was none; no change of expression.
    “What are you looking for, Cutshaw?” Kane asked him.
    “Joe DiMaggio,” Cutshaw said, and walked out slowly.

     

 

     
     

    9
     
     
    Kane stayed in the office for several more hours, deliberately leaving the office door open. A number of the inmates wandered in, each on some outrageous pretext. Kane would watch and listen and soothe. Fell poked his head in once, but waved and went away when he saw that Reno was there: the inmate had asked for Kane’s opinion on whether two Pekingese “would look ridiculous” as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
    After dinner, Kane roamed the mansion’s main hall for a time, seemingly encouraging the inmates to approach him. He checked some new paintings on the easels. He waited. But Cutshaw did not appear. At ten, Kane went up to his bedroom and began to prepare himself for sleep. But there were constant visitors barging through his door, inmates with problems and with grievances. The last of them were Fromme and an inmate named Price.
    “May I speak to you for a moment?” Fromme asked him, standing at the door.
    “Of course.”
    “I want schooling, sir. May I have it? I want to fulfill my life’s ambition. When I get out of here, of course. But I just can’t live without my dream, sir. It’s been my dream since I was a boy. I’m thirty-five, but it isn’t too late if I go to school. Could I go right away? Maybe ‘Operation Bootstrap,’ Colonel?”
    Kane asked him what level of schooling he had completed and whether his credits would be sufficient to admit him to medical school.
    “Medical school?” Fromme blinked. “No. I want to play the violin. I want to play like John Garfield in Humoresque. I want to play that scene. I want people to think I’m just a kid from the slums, and then, zappo! I whip out the violin and I stun Joan Crawford and her snotty rich friends. I want to play that scene all the time.”
    Kane was kind.
    Price was more difficult. A wiry, blond-haired man with deep-set eyes that probed like death rays out of a gaunt and cadaverous face, he bulled his way into the bedroom.
    “I want my flying belt,” he demanded.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    Price looked away in disgust. “Yeah, yeah, same