Martell's telephone rang at 6:00 a.m., a few moments before his alarm clock was set to sound. By the time he'd untangled his bedclothes the clock was buzzing too, and he had trouble sorting them out.
He turned the alarm off and minced across the cool linoleum to the living room, with its carpet, and the phone. It was still dark and the dial light hurt his eyes. His hand burned and itched.
"Hello?"
"Professor Martell. This is Sigfod Oski."
Martell nearly dropped the receiver. The voice was cheery and robust, as if Oski knew nothing of mornings. "I hope I didn't wake you."
"I I was just getting up anyway."
"That's all right then. I understand you're going out to the Way of the Old Wisdom farm this morning to look at their stone."
"Well yes, I said I'd look. I doubt if I'll be much use to them though."
"You're not a runologist, of course. Small call for them on this side of the pond. I suppose that's why they invited me."
"They asked you? You're not going, are you?"
"I thought we might motor together. If you have no objection."
"I well I'm surprised "
"You're surprised I'm interested?"
"I'm surprised a man of your stature would want to be mixed up with it. I mean, it's a pretty obvious fraud. Isn't it?"
"Why Professor Martell you have a prejudiced mind."
"Yes, yes I do, now you mention it."
"How refreshing. Well I can be at your apartment in about forty-five minutes, I would think. We'll take my car it's quite comfortable."
"I promised to bring Pastor Gunderson along."
"I see. Well, I'm sure it can't be far out of the way. Expect me a bit earlier then. Now tell me exactly where you live."
Martell told him, then dressed and shaved. In front of the bathroom mirror he touched the injured place on his head gingerly, then decided he could do without the dressing. He drank a cup of instant coffee standing up in the kitchenette. He hadn't eaten much in the last couple days, but this didn't seem the time to start. He wasn't looking forward to a morning with Oski.
"Elaine, Elaine," he whispered. "You were many things, but you were always independent. What have you been through, to bring you to this?"
He washed the melodrama out of his mouth with the dregs of the coffee.
At the time appointed a silver-gray Cadillac limousine appeared like a Cunard liner at the curb. A very large, very black driver got out to open the door for Martell. He wore no uniform but his dignity, and it was enough.
"Good morning, Professor," said Oski as Martell slid in beside him. The car's interior smelled like a shoestore.
"I'm just an assistant professor," Martell said. "We Americans are a little informal with our titles."
"I'll call you Martell then, in the Norwegian fashion. And you shall call me Oski."
Martell coughed. "I'm not sure I'm up to that."
"As you wish. There is much to be said for formality. In Norwegian we have the formal and familiar pronouns, de and du, so we always know where we stand."
Martell said, "Sometimes it's better not to know."
"Hm? Perhaps."
"I'm familiar with Norwegian, by the way. I studied two years in Oslo. Jeg snakker norsk, but I read it better than I speak it."
"Then let us by all means speak English. If I have to listen to another Norwegian-American practice his grandfather's dialect on me I think I'll strangle someone." Oski tapped on the glass partition and the driver hummed it partway down.
"Matthew," Oski said, "please follow Professor Martell's instructions. We are picking up a passenger."
Martell gave directions to the Gunderson house. Matthew drove with small, economical movements. The limousine moved quietly as ectoplasm through the streets.
"I'm fortunate to have Matthew's services for a few weeks," said Oski. "He generally drives visiting celebrities in Minneapolis. I fear he'll be bored in Epsom."
Matthew said nothing.
Oski reached into his breast pocket. "I hope you don't mind if I smoke," he said, producing a cigar. "Do you care for one?"
"No thank you," said Carl.
"I was delighted to find you Americans had abolished those ridiculous anti-smoking ordinances you were so mad for a few years back."
"It happened when they passed the Smokers' Re-enfranchisement Act. The smokers' and industry groups used evidence that there's a gene that makes it hard to quit smoking to argue that they were an oppressed people. The Supreme Court declared the anti-smoking laws unconstitutional, and now it's politically incorrect to suggest smokers should quit for their health. The official line is that it's the government's responsibility to find cures for cancer and heart disease."
"What a wonderful country," said Oski, blowing a ring. "The comedy never ends."
At the house Martell said, "I'd better get out and fetch Harry. He's expecting to hear a car pull up."
He met the pastor coming onto the porch in hat and overcoat, the overcoat buttoned wrong, a puzzled look on his face.
"I'm sorry, Harry. I should have called to warn you. Sigfod Oski called me and asked to drive me out. I was so surprised I didn't think."
"It's perfectly all right, Carl. I don't often get to ride in a comfortable car." They walked to the comfortable car and Harry had to clutch his hat to keep the wind from taking it.
Matthew held the rear door open for them and they got in, Martell in the middle beside Oski.
"Good morning, Herr Pastor," Oski said.
"Actually it's Pastor Harry."
"Your wit, at least, is not lame," said Oski.
Harry opened his mouth, then looked thoughtful and closed it. He settled in the seat and said, "Well, it's a beautiful morning, except for the wind. And this is a splendid car to see it from."
"I decided to lease while I was in this country," said Oski, as Matthew pulled out. "I've always wanted to travel in one of these huge American automobiles. I was disappointed at first to see how many of you drive the small ones now; but I've found that standing out this way gives me a satisfying sense of ostentation. I always suspected that wealth would be more pleasant in America, even aside from the tax structure. It was a Norwegian-American, I think, who coined the term, 'conspicuous consumption.'"
"Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class," said Harry. "He grew up not far from here."
"He knew whereof he spoke."
"Yes, I think you'll find that as long as you have wealth and influence you can get away with being almost any kind of beast."
Oski smiled wider, uncovering his indecently long teeth. "Exactly! Why else do we pursue wealth? In order to live like beasts. It's the deepest human need, to reverse evolution."
"That's rather good Lutheran theology."
"Yes, but Luther disapproved of it. He called it the Bondage of the Will. I call it the Freedom of the Spirit. Let a man lose his reason and run the hills as a wolf for a few nights he'll never need theology again."
"Until he dies. An animal can die in peace, but not an animal that was once a man."
Oski's eye glinted. He was enjoying this. "And why should a man die in peace?" he asked. "There is no peace in the world. A man should die in frenzy. A man should die berserk."
"A man should die with courage. A berserker isn't a hero he's just a short-circuited nervous system. Even the Vikings understood that."
"You'd have people expiring politely in hospital beds, I suppose, giving their lives up by inches to cancer or Alzheimer's Disease."
"I've seen greater courage in hospital beds than any Viking skald ever saw on a battlefield. I only pray I face my own death as well, when the time comes."
Oski bent towards him, wafting smoke in Martell's nostrils. His breath smelled of alcohol as well. "That's the great question is it not, 'Pastor Harry'? Tell me, how did you lose your leg?"
Harry closed his eyes and said, "It was an auto accident."
"You came near death."
"Yes."
"And how did she appear to you? Lights and music and flowers as the out-of-body-experience people tell it?"
"No. It was a nightmare."
"I thought so." Oski settled back in his place. "You have the look of a man who's been tortured. I knew many such, in the war. Once a man loses the illusion of invulnerability ah well, he may learn to function, but his spiritual balance is bad. He falls over at odd moments, like a stroke victim."
"Harry's the best balanced man I know," said Martell, looking straight ahead at the asphalt road that took them out of town. The wind was scudding leaves like tiny, thrill-seeking animals in front of the tires.
"Loyalty!" said Oski. "I like that. I like that very much." He turned his long smile on Martell.
Harry said, "Fortunately I have a faith that doesn't depend on my own courage."
"Quite so," said Oski.
Harry said, "Last night you spoke of an old European religion. Do you really believe in that?"
"Yes, in a broad sense. I serve the hard gods. My faith is a venerable one, though long underground."
"You're referring to what they call Witchcraft?"
"Yes. The Old Wisdom, if you like."
"Then we're on our way to your church?"
"Perhaps. I've never visited this farm, so I couldn't say whether it's my sort of place or not. We have schisms of our own you know."
"Do you practice the Sabbat the Black Mass?"
"Langt derifra, Herr Pastor! The Black Mass is a fantasy of the witch-hunters. It became a reality in time, in the court of Louis XIV, but that was the Church's script, acted by degenerate Christians.
"A man with your education ought to be aware that the confessions of the witch trials were extracted from people both ignorant and innocent. They confessed to make the pain stop, and embellished the stories to please the torturers. This produced wonders of fantasy, but little hard information.
"Consider an accused witch, perhaps a child, closed up in a stinking hole, stripped and raped by jailers, beaten, branded, stretched, hoisted up by arms tied behind the back, flesh torn by pincers, forced to sit on a red-hot iron chair, or to kneel on spikes "
"For the love of Heaven!" cried Harry. "I know about the witch trials. It was a shameful business. There's no excuse."
"But honestly, Herr Pastor, if you had been there in that time, that place would you have had the courage to oppose it? If you had lived in Salem, or Spain of the Inquisition "
"Not Salem and the Inquisition, please," said Harry. "You ought to be aware that they were both small potatoes as witch hunts go although any is too many and both of them stopped voluntarily and confessed that they'd been wrong.
"Meanwhile two hundred thousand people were tortured and killed in Europe over a period of a couple centuries, mostly in France and Germany. Witch-hunting was a growth industry there, run on the profits from confiscated property. Those witch-hunters never recanted. And now everybody's forgotten them."
"I commend you, Herr Pastor," said Oski. "You have done your homework. Most Christians deflate like used airbags when I mention witch trials. But the fact remains, it was a Christian crime."
"Too true," said Harry.
"What's more, you miss the irony how all the time you Christians were earnestly broiling your own, the true witches my people were going about their business almost unmolested, although in secret."
"Thank God for that," said the pastor. "In a sense."
"Do not misunderstand me. I don't consider Christianity a cruel religion. Quite the contrary. I could wish you more violent. Burn all the false witches you like." Oski smiled. "I bait you, Herr Pastor. Forgive me."
He turned to Martell. "You've been quiet. Did you sleep poorly?"
"Since you mention it, yes."
"Do you live alone?"
"Yes."
"Well there you are. I've never met a man living by himself who slept decently. Find yourself a strong, lusty woman to keep your house and warm your bed. But and this is the secret don't marry her. It gives them an exaggerated sense of their importance. I myself sleep like a stone." He showed his teeth again. Martell wanted to push them down his throat.
They rolled up to the farm driveway. The gate was opened by two husky young men in flannel shirts, and the tires rumbled on the gravel to stop where an ancient barn on the left and an equally old house on the right flanked the open side of an uneven square of farm buildings sheds, granaries, a chicken coop. Beyond the house and a neglected apple orchard the dark, bare trees of Troll Valley fell away northward. Junk was everywhere discarded rusting iron wheels, empty oil drums, a single deflated rubber dinghy.
They stepped out into the wind and a thousand smells chicken manure, hogs, cattle, alfalfa hay and gravel dust took Martell for one moment back twenty years, to a place very much like this, and a panicky sense of work undone....
A group of young people in overalls and shabby jackets came out of the barn to greet them. Their leader was easily recognized, both by his carriage and the way the young people's gazes kept swinging back to him. He was a tall, strong-looking middle-aged man, with salt-and-pepper hair and a black beard, and striking black eyes. His green hooded sweatshirt had brown stains on it which Martell knew for manure. The moment he spoke, Martell knew he was a liar.
"Good morning, gentlemen," the liar said, shaking their hands in turn. His hand was strong, but not yet callused like a farmer's. "I'm Solar Bull, the priest here. You must be Professor Martell, and of course you're Sigfod Oski. We appreciate your coming out. Uh who's this?" His eyes fell on Harry's collar.
"I took the liberty of bringing my friend, Pastor Gunderson of Nidaros Church," said Martell. "He's interested in this sort of thing. I hope it's all right."
"I trust you're an open-minded sort of minister," said Solar Bull.
"I'm relatively harmless anyway," said Harry. "Solar Bull, you say? Any relation to Ole Bull?"
"Ole Bull? I'm afraid I don't understand."
"A 19th Century Norwegian violinist," said Oski. "The pastor is having a little joke."
Solar Bull smiled bleakly.
He said, "I've got to apologize for the way things look around here. We'll make this farm a showplace in time, but there's lots of work to do yet. Jack Tysness was a good farmer he used very few chemicals on his soil for one thing but he was a lousy housekeeper. A packrat. We're still cleaning out the house. And we're modifying some of the buildings for new purposes."
"I see you've lopped the top off the silo," said Harry.
Solar Bull ignored him. "The stone we called you about is right this way. Down here in the granary." He led them towards the far side of the farmyard.
Oski walked beside him. Martell and Harry followed.
"I knew Jack a little," said Harry. "He never came to church. I didn't know he lived this badly. I don't think that house has been painted in twenty years, although I see they're painting it now. And look at the junk everywhere. Jack was one of Keillor's Norwegian Bachelor Farmers if anyone ever was. He had a bad reputation, you know. He kept sheep."
Martell said, "My father used to warn me that if I didn't straighten out I'd end up a dirty old bachelor in a place like this. I suppose Minna would say he was a prophet."
Harry laughed, and they followed Solar Bull and Oski into the granary, a white two-story building with a concrete floor and a big sliding door half open. An old hammer-mill hulked in one corner. The grain bins were on both sides and on the floor above.
A gray, rectangular stone, about a yard long, had been set on a pair of sawhorses in the middle of the floor. It was broken, almost exactly halved by a fracture across its width.
"Here she is," said Solar Bull. "I think you'll agree that it's not something we could have whipped up ourselves."
Someone switched on a bare light hanging on a cord from the ceiling. They stepped in closer, Martell and Harry circling, hanging back a bit like visitors in a museum. But Oski approached like a lover, or a wrestler, laying his hands on the slab, running them over its surface, probing the chiseled, twig-like letters with a long finger. Martell and Harry had to lean in to see.
After several minutes Oski tilted up his face. "Well Martell, what do you make of it?"
"They are runes."
"No question about that."
"It's hard to say more. I'm not qualified to judge age. I could probably translate it if I had a few days and some reference books."
"Ah well, that's no problem," said Oski. He straightened, set his finger on the top row of symbols and moved it, reading:
"Dead are Erik and Johan and Ommund. AVM and Blessed Holy Trinity grant us... er... rest. Hard it is to die in a heathen land. Remember to our account how we slew the wicked and bound the... the gelding with this sign
"The last figure has been obliterated by the fracture." He took his hand away. "That's all."
"I suppose 'the wicked' would be their description of Indians," Harry hazarded.
"Not necessarily," said Oski. "If you've read Hjalmar Holand on the Kensington stone I grant he was no scholar you'll remember he pointed to an expedition to Greenland contemplated by the king of Sweden and Norway in the mid-14th Century. There were rumors that the Greenlanders were coming back to my side, taking up the old religion, and he suddenly saw his Christian duty to chastise them, although he'd never given them a thought before.
"Supposing the expedition did sail its leader was to have been a noble named Paul Knutsson Holand thought it would have found those particular Greenlanders fled to America. The colony was declining by then."
"You think there were Greenlanders this far inland?" asked Martell.
"It's possible. A few refugees in a hostile land. Easily slaughtered by the Church's picked thugs."
"Let me get this straight," said Martell. "Are you suggesting the Kensington Runestone is genuine? I thought all the experts agreed that it's a fraud, and not even a good fraud."
"The story of historical research," said Oski, "is the story of experts with egg on their faces. I have examined the matter to my own satisfaction and am convinced of the authenticity of the Kensington inscription."
"What's this business about a gelding?" asked Harry.
"I confess I am at a loss about that," said Oski. Martell's stomach jumped. Lie! Breathing deeply he said, "It rings a bell, but..."
"Excuse me," Solar Bull put in. "What's this Kensington stone?"
Martell looked sharply at him. The man was a liar, but he wasn't lying about his ignorance.
Oski said, "Go ahead, Martell. It is an American artifact."
Martell said, "Kensington's in the western part of the state, near Alexandria. Just before the turn of the century a Swedish farmer claimed he had found a carved stone caught in the roots of a tree. When it was finally deciphered, it told the story of a party of Swedes and Norwegians who had been exploring and had lost men in a fight with Indians. The date given was 1362. Almost nobody took it seriously then, and almost nobody takes it seriously now. But its defenders have always been pretty passionate."
"You think this stone's connected with that one?" Solar Bull's nostrils were flaring.
"It almost certainly is, one way or another."
Solar Bull looked at Martell with cold eyes. "You mean you think they're both frauds?"
"I'm not qualified to say, as I keep telling people. Mr. Oski here is an expert. Ask him."
Oski was smiling. "A bit early to say. But this stone is very interesting very interesting indeed."
Watching him Martell sensed only sincerity, and it troubled him more than a lie would have.
"What the hell is that?" asked Solar Bull, turning towards the driveway. They all looked up to see a van pulling in, followed by a car. Both vehicles had insignia on their sides and the van sported a satellite dish like a jaunty cap. The guards stopped them and voices were raised.
"That will be the television news," said Oski. "I rang a station in Minneapolis. I hope that's not inconvenient, Mr. Bull."
Solar Bull said, "No! It's not time for television yet!"
Oski said, "It is precisely the time."
They glared at each other. Martell and Harry looked on, a little alarmed.
It was Solar Bull who broke eye contact at last, and when he did he seemed to Martell somehow smaller than before. He turned stiffly and waved to the young men at the gate. The gate was opened and the van and car rolled in.
Quickly the crew emerged from the van, bringing out cameras, microphones, coils of cable and various black boxes, which they assembled rapidly. A young man in a Civil War forage cap took a light meter reading on the stone and asked if it could be moved out into the sunshine. Solar Bull nodded, frowning, and four strong young men from W.O.W. carried it and the sawhorses out onto the gravel. They set it back carefully, lining up the two halves along the fracture.
A beautifully groomed young man in a handsome suit emerged from the car. His face was strong, his blue eyes clear, his teeth perfect. He carried a small notebook in one hand. He went directly to Oski and shook his hand. "I'm Ben Goss," he said. "Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Oski. Perhaps you could give me an interview later, since everything's set up."
Oski introduced the others. "Mr. Martell, Pastor Gunderson, Mr. Bull," Goss said, flashing his teeth and looking each of them straight in the eye. "Glad to meet you." Martell read that as a lie, without surprise. Goss opened his notebook.
"So what's the story here?" he asked. "First the stone. Afterwards, I want to hear about W.O.W. too. You don't mind a little free publicity, do you, Mr. Bull?"
Solar Bull glanced at Oski and said, "No," shortly.
Goss asked deft questions and took shorthand notes. When he had the story he turned to the crew and asked, "OK, you guys ready to roll? Let's do it."
Somebody ran a comb through Goss's hair, a little tangled by the wind, and it fell miraculously into place (Harry, whose hat was on sideways, watched in wonder). The cameraman focused on him and he looked into the glass eye, saying, "This is the American heartland, a typical dairy farm near a typical Minnesota small town. But then maybe not so typical. You wouldn't expect to find an unorthodox religious commune here, or a controversial archaeological find. But that's exactly what we've discovered, at the Way of the Old Wisdom, just outside Epsom.
"A few months ago this farm was acquired by the W.O.W. group, formerly headquartered in California. Its leader is a man who calls himself Roller Ball. Mr. Ball says the stone was discovered under somewhat sinister circumstances."
He pointed his microphone at Solar Bull, who scowled but spoke. "We found the stone a few weeks ago, in the roots of a tree stump, near the place where Mr. Tysness that was the farm's last owner the spot where he died last spring. But we never noticed the carvings until just yesterday."
"How old was the tree it was found in?"
Martell wanted to kick himself for not asking this question himself. The tree that had (or had not) been growing around the Kensington stone had been lost, and its size had always been a point of contention.
"I'm afraid we chopped it up for firewood," said Solar Bull. "We use a lot of wood for heating. But it was a big tree an oak." He's not lying, Martell thought.
"Mr. Tysness died mysteriously, didn't he?"
"So I understand. We were in California at the time I don't know much about it."
The camera followed as Goss turned to Oski. "This is Sigfod Oski, the Nobel-prize-winning Norwegian poet who has caused considerable stir by coming to Christiania College in Epsom. Mr. Oski, you are an expert on this kind of carvings, aren't you?"
Oski said, "Yes. They are called runes."
"Would you say these ruins are genuine? By that I mean, were they actually carved by Vikings?"
Oski smiled at the lens. "Let me clarify, please. Vikings could not have carved this stone. You must realize that the Viking Age ended, for all practical purposes, during the 11th Century. We Scandinavians have been respectable, some would say dull, Europeans ever since. But we continued to use the runes here and there up into the 16th Century. The runes on this stone indicate a date sometime in the 14th Century. The men who carved them were not Vikings, and probably would have been offended if you had called them Vikings. But they were well ahead of Columbus, which is, I think, the point."
"And you would call this stone genuine not a forgery or a practical joke of some kind?"
"Absolute certainty is impossible so early in the day. But I am inclined to judge it authentic. I know I wouldn't question it for a second had it been found in Norway." Lie. What part was a lie Martell could not tell.
Goss turned back to the camera. "Also here to view the stone is Professor Charles Marcell of Christiania College. You are an expert on the ruins also, Professor Marcell?"
Martell took a nervous step toward the microphone, and as he moved he touched the stone.
The wave ran up his arm, swift as pain. Pain, not nausea.
"Professor Marcell? Professor?"
Martell came to himself again. For a moment he looked blankly at Goss and his equipment.
"Professor Marcell?"
"Martell. It's Martell. Carl Martell."
Goss said, "Cut," irritation on his face. "Look Professor, if there's any corrections to be made we can fix them in production. For now just go with the program, OK?"
The camera was cued again and Goss pointed his microphone. "Professor Martell. You are an expert on ruins?"
"Not an expert. I'm familiar with runes. I'm the closest thing Christiania had to an expert before Mr. Oski came."
"But what's your opinion? Is it a fake or not?"
Martell took a breath. "I I'd say it's genuine."
From the corner of his eye he saw Harry turn to goggle at him.
"How sure are you?" Goss seemed to crowd in, his microphone's head as big as a cannon's mouth.
"I'm morally certain of it."
Goss turned back to the camera. "So," he said, "the mystery begins. You can be sure this isn't the last we'll hear of the Epsom Ruinstone.
"I'm Ben Goss for Viewpoint News." He stared into the camera until somebody said "Cut," then relaxed. He shook hands all around and told them they'd been just great. Then he went to Solar Bull and Oski. "We'd love to do a feature on the operation here," Martell heard him saying, "and then I'd like to set aside some time to talk to you, Mr. Oski."
Harry limped to Martell and said, "Didn't you say ?" But in a moment everyone was following the newspeople in a guided tour of the farm.
It proved unremarkable. The young people there seemed to be about twenty-five were all working very hard at painting and fixing up, and there were a lot of livestock about cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. Also chickens. Martell sneezed and stayed out of the chicken house. Even as a boy, he remembered, he had hated the smell of chickens. If bizarre sexual acts or dark and bloody rites were practised here, they were not going on that morning.
After a half an hour of it Harry told Oski he had to get back to his office for a pre-marital counseling session.
"We certainly can't have you missing that," said Oski with a smile. "Let people lose the habit of marrying in church and they'll forget what the places look like."
"And what will they do when they're looking for a hypocrite?" said Harry blandly.
"Here's what we'll do then, if you're agreeable. I'll send you home in my car now and have Matthew return for me later tonight. I'd like to see more of the establishment here, and I imagine I'll have to give Mr. Goss a few minutes."
Martell and Harry thanked him and walked back to the car. They found Matthew waiting inside, reading the Wall Street Journal.
When they were seated Matthew asked over his shoulder, "You two want some privacy?"
"How did you guess?" Harry asked.
"You spent the morning with Oski." The glass panel rolled silently up.
"He's quite a man, Sigfod Oski," said Harry, leaning his head back against the upholstery.
They were turning out of the driveway when a pickup truck roared up out of Troll Valley and shot past them. Matthew handled the limousine skilfully, braking and steering, avoiding a collision and keeping them out of the ditch as the gravel slipped under the tires. He was saying something as he steered, but the men in back couldn't hear.
Martell turned to Harry and found him white-faced, open-mouthed, clutching handfuls of soft leather in each fist.
Martell put a hand on his arm. "Are you all right Harry?"
Harry looked at him without recognition for a moment, then shook his head and relaxed a bit. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's a thing I have about auto accidents. You understand."
"Of course."
"Oski had me pegged perfectly. I'm terrified of dying. Especially in a car... and fire."
Martell nodded. Harry had been pulled from the wreck badly burned, but the burns, like the fears, were in hidden places.
Harry was still breathing hard. "He pushed all my buttons, Carl. It must be some kind of predator's instinct. Death, and then all that business about the witch trials. The shameful places in Church History. There are a lot of people out there who think I must be a closet inquisitor because I'm an orthodox Christian. They assume that if I were a man of good will I'd be broad-minded like them. It's a hard argument to refute, like all arguments from emotion."
"I think I know what you mean," said Martell, remembering Forsythe.
"What do I answer when somebody says, 'Well, how about all those good Lutherans who shoveled Jews into the ovens for Hitler?'? And to make it worse let's face it Luther said some inexcusible things about the Jews."
Harry seemed calmer now. Martell said, "I've never bought the argument that Luther was a proto-Nazi. Nazism was a heresy of 19th Century Romanticism and Darwinism, not Lutheranism."
Harry said, "Can you imagine a meeting between Luther and, say, Goebbels?"
Martell laughed. "I don't think they'd have gotten along."
"They'd have been rolling on the floor trying to gouge each other's eyes out.
"But then we go on to the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Witch Trials I'm always vulnerable in a way. I am, after all, what those men were a conservative in my time. And everyone seems to agree that it's only conservative Christianity that's evil.
"Of course how could the liberal brand be evil? You've got to be something to fall to the level of the demonic. Whoever heard of an evil sentimentality?"
"You were pretty impressive with your statistics on the witch-hunts," said Martell. "I'm a historian, and I'd forgotten a lot of that."
"Self-defence, Carl. A good, hard fact is the best defence there is against everything except tears. There's a whole generation of debators in the church who've learned that you don't have to refute an argument if you can only burst into tears and make your opponent look like a cad. And not all of them are women."
"I know," said Martell. Then he opened his mouth and found himself telling it
"I lost my nerve about eleven years ago. I had a master's and an instructorship at the University, and I thought I had the Philosopher's Stone.
"I published some of my deathless thoughts in one of the smaller journals. To make my point I attacked a book written some years earlier by one of the heavyweights in the department, a man named Riley Forsythe."
"I think I've heard of him. He wrote that biography of Mother Teresa, didn't he?"
"That's the one. An analysis of the kind of psychological dysfunction that would drive a person to waste her life in service to others, rather than in normal healthy self-interest."
"Appalling book."
"He was an appalling man, take it from one who knows. Anyway, I tore an earlier book of his apart. I was brilliant. I dismantled him point by point. My logic was elegant, seasoned with a dash of wiseacrey.
"You know what I think about History. I see a pattern it isn't a mindless process. It's a work of art. And individuals remarkable, serendipitous individuals shape and define the pattern. I don't deny that there are other forces at work, but individuals create those forces too. Anyway, some of my arguments were very good. Some of them were codswallop. Very few were as original as I thought.
"Forsythe didn't even confront me at first. He just sent a note inviting me to debate. I should have expected the rest. People started avoiding me in the halls.
"My God, Harry, he was beautiful. He didn't waste time addressing my arguments. He beat me on poise. He beat me on wit. He beat me on sarcasm and good tailoring. He opened up my belly and displayed the color of my guts to the assembly of my peers. If it had happened to somebody else I would have carried away a lot of very useful information on how the real world works. But being the victim I just had to crawl away and lick my wounds, and my broken legs."
Martell felt clammy at the armpits as he remembered Dr. Forsythe, with his long, pale face, at the podium across the stage, a half-smile on his lips, the light gleaming on his bald skull. "Mr. Martell has done us all a service," he had said. "He has brought us a new historical tool or is it an old one? Revealed Truth. Revealed to him alone, of course. But not to worry we can always come to him and sit at his feet, and listen to the divine syllables that drip from his lips. OR WE CAN LEARN TO USE OUR REASON. WE CAN LEARN TO REJECT NONSENSE.
"I do not say that Mr. Martell is a burner of heretics, or a gasser of Jews. But his thought all the myths of our barbarous and vicious past lead certainly to the stake and the death camp. We have had enough of Romance, of Heroism and Idealism. They promise much, but end in vicious parody. We shall not again be taken in by such demagogery..."
Harry said, "It's not a unique experience, Carl."
"I had a responsibility. To the truth. I failed in my defence of it. I made the truth look as foolish as I was. And, like Oski's tortured man, I never got my balance back.
"There's an epilogue to the story too. Properly farcical." He saw in a snapshot of memory Elaine standing in a sunny room, holding a yellow dress in her hands. "The next day Elaine moved out on me. It seemed to make sense. I guess the logic of the story demanded it."
"You think your life is governed by the logic of the story?"
"I suppose I do."
"And what does the logic of the story demand of you now?"
"That's easy. I have to redeem myself by a noble death."
"Kyrie eleison."
Matthew pulled the car up to the curb in front of the church, as instructed. He helped the pastor out, was thanked for the ride.
Before walking away, Harry tapped on Martell's window. When it opened he said, "I was going to ask you I almost forgot I thought you were going to be cautious about that stone."
Martell looked back, smiling crookedly. The skin around his eyes was almost blue.
"Can you believe six impossible things before breakfast?"
"I've had my breakfast. I'm probably good for a dozen."
"Somethings's happening to me, Harry. I've become a kind of human polygraph. God knows how or why, but when somebody lies to me, I know it. If I try to tell a lie myself, my gut cramps up. And it's been getting worse. Lately I've been able to tell when people are lying on paper. And, apparently, on stone.
"When I touched that stone, I knew it was no lie. I felt I felt pain, and fear and faith. But no lie. Nobody lied carving that stone. I'm sure of it.
"Of course I'm probably just losing my mind."
"It's a strange world, Carl. Turn but a stone and start a wing. Is there any evidence this sense of yours has ever deceived you?"
"Actually no."
"Then keep an open mind. You might even pray about it, if it wouldn't offend your sensibilities."
"I'd be pretending. I believe in God in some sense, but I'm not sure He or It answers prayer. It would hurt." That wasn't quite how he wanted to put it, but he had trouble saying what he meant about God.
"I'll pray for you then," said Harry.
Martell smiled again. "Yes you will."
Harry turned away and steeled himself for the walk to his office. It had been a tiring morning, and the stump hurt more than usual.
In the car Matthew rolled down the divider and said to Martell, "So, did you gentlemen have a nice morning?"
"I wouldn't call it that exactly." Martell smiled.
"That Oski's a piece of work, isn't he?"
"How is he to work for?"
"When you've driven drunken movie stars and stoned politicians brother, you learn not to let anything get to you. You'd be surprised how many of those friends of humanity call me 'boy' when they get a snootful. At least Oski's no hypocrite."
"You enjoy doing this?"
"Beats teaching school."
"You were a teacher?"
"High school. Teacher Of the Year runner-up in Illinois once."
"Why'd you quit?"
"It got worse and worse, you know how it is. One day in a class I stood up for a white student who was trying to make a point. Just trying to make a point. Freedom of speech, right? 'I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?
"Some of the students complained, and I got called up before a union disciplinary board.
"I said, 'The kid had some points. I was just trying to keep the discussion fair and open to everybody.'
"They said fair play was a dead white male concept designed to oppress women and minorities.
"I said, 'You mean I have to give up fair play because I'm black? You're saying because I'm black I have to cheat and lie and bully, to be true to my people?'
"Then they got really mad. It ended up with me losing my accreditation.
"I could have appealed it, I suppose. But I thought, 'Hell, if teaching is just propaganda, if nobody cares about finding the truth or living decently, what's the point?'
"Maybe if I'd stayed on I could have made a difference. I don't know. Driving this boat around's a lot easier on the nerves."
Martell said, "You need another driver?"
"I'm really gonna do it this time," said the young woman's voice over the phone.
"I'm not questioning your seriousness, Cassie" said Harry, hunched over his church office desk. "I'm just asking you to think it over. Think about your family think about "
"I just want the pain to go away," she said.
"I know believe me, I know something about pain but the Happy Endings clinic is no answer. You don't get another try at this, you know you go inside there and you don't come out again."
"All I care about is ending the pain."
"Will you at least come in here and talk to me about it?"
"What can you tell me I haven't heard before?"
"I love you, Cassie. I love you as Christ loves you. You know it will hurt me very much if you choose to end your life. Not to mention your mother and father."
"I can't let other people run my life, Pastor."
"Will you come talk to me?"
The voice murmured.
"What was that?"
"I'll come in."
"Thanks, Cassie. I appreciate it. I owe you one."
"You sure do." She hung up.
Harry bowed his head in prayer for a moment. The phone rang again.
He listened to a distraught voice for several minutes, then promised to get over to the hospital right away, hung up, rose and stumped down the hall to Pastor Hardanger-Hansen's office. He found the senior pastor at her computer, working on statistical reports.
"What do you want, Harry?"
"I've got a situation here I need you to help me if you can."
"What's the problem? I'm pretty busy here. The district gets nasty if we get behind on our demographics."
"Jerry Mathre just called. Amelia's passed away."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"He's pretty broken up you know how long they've been fighting it and he says he needs me over there right now. The thing is, I've got Cassie Jensen coming in in a few minutes."
"Suicidal again?"
"Yes. It's one of her bad days."
"How old is she again?"
"Seventeen."
"Poor kid."
"Indeed. Can you fill in for me? This'll take a couple hours, and then I have my Bible Study to lead. Cassie'll probably be upset that I'm not here she'll take it as a rejection. Make it clear that it was a sudden death that took me away. Do the 'just between us women' thing. Maybe she'll open up to you. She needs desperately to feel loved and important to someone."
"Yeah, OK of course this takes precedence. I'll handle it. It's what I'm here for."
"Thanks. I owe you bigtime."
"Yesterday we talked about Harald Finehair and the beginnings of the Norwegian monarchy," Martell told his Scandinavian History class. He looked out over the students and experienced a bizarre mental fugue for a moment. It seemed for just a second that the thirty desks were filled by neat rows of sharply dressed young people in dark suits and long dresses. The class of 1912. Then his vision cleared and the twelve strangely barbered heads he knew were back. Only a few of the class members were paying attention, and even more weren't present and never would be (they knew they'd pass on VQ points), yet he was determined as the sower who goes forth to sow. These young people, while he had them here, were his students. He felt a fierce responsibility for them.
"In spite of all Harald's exertions, you still could have asked the reasonable question, 'What is Norway?' Look at it on the map a ribbon of land along the coast of the Scandinavian peninsula. Incredibly rugged terrain. The easiest route between almost any two points is by sea. And populated by people who, even into the 19th Century, often couldn't understand each other's language from one valley to the next. How do you build a political entity out of what is essentially a trade route? Today we answer that question, and we answer it with an epic a saga Norway would never forget the story of the two Olafs."
"Aren't we a little overbooked with Olafs here?" asked Jason Scaretti, the designated class cynic. He had enrolled for obscure reasons but did well. Martell relished the friction Jason generated. "How do you tell them apart? All you squareheads look alike to me."
"Good point," said Martell. "Few people even realize that there were two Olafs, and most who do think they were father and son. Let me illustrate." He draw a tall stick figure with a helmet and a sword on the board, and drew a beard on him with yellow chalk. "This is a reasonable facsimile of Olaf Trygvesson. Tall, blonde, athletic, handsome. If he were alive today he'd be an Olympic skier."
"He's a lot more interesting than St. Olaf," said Cindy Hallstrom, who seemed to be recovered from her heartbreak.
"Most people would agree, Cindy. Olaf Trygvesson is the beau ideal of the Viking Age. He climbed mountains and juggled swords and ran around the outside of his ship on the oars like Kirk Douglas in the movie. And Snorri Sturlusson, in his great saga of the kings, the Heimskringla, gives him a ripsnorter of a childhood, full of chases and escapes and slavery and vengeance. Yes, Kimberly?"
Kimberly Benson-Odegaard-Martinez-Braun, the class Chronological Snob, a thinnish young woman with very long fingernails, asked, "Hasn't modern psychology proved that all this macho sword-swinging and heroism is just an outlet for repressed sexuality?"
Martell said, "No, it has not. If there's one thing I'm reasonably sure about, it's that very few Vikings were sexually repressed.
"Where was I? Oh yes, Olaf Trygvesson converted to Christianity in Britain, then sailed home to conquer Norway. He picked the best possible moment. Everybody was sick to death of Jarl Haakon, the Trondheim earl. Haakon was killed, Olaf took over. His main domestic program was to convert the land to Christianity, and he used the direct method baptism or death."
"But isn't it true," asked Gary Qualle, a fat young man who sat in the back, did well in tests, and only spoke when he thought he'd caught the instructor in a mistake, "that Adam of Bremen said Olaf Trygvesson wasn't a Christian at all? And Adam wrote a lot earlier than Snorri."
"Good point. You're right... as usual. Adam accused Olaf of subsidizing witches and practising divination with birds, so that he got the nickname 'Crowbone.'
"This brings up an important point in the Theory of History." (There were groans from the students.) "Who do you believe? Adam, because he was closer in time? Perhaps, but he had a political ax to grind related to ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Snorri, because he passes on what seems to be genuine Norwegian tradition? Again perhaps, but we can never lose sight of the fact that Snorri was primarily an artist, a storyteller.
"You can take your own choice, but the truth probably lies somewhere in between. There are plenty of historical precedents for half-savage chieftains who practice the best Christianity they can cobble together, mixing in a lot of the old Yes, Jason?"
"Does the truth always lie somewhere in between?"
"Gotcha! I have tricked you into asking a Meaningful Question.
"Does the truth always lie somewhere in between? Historians like to think in formulas, just like real people. We assume the truth lies between two extremes, but it may not. It may be crouching in ambush at one end or the other. But the extremes tend to be romantic and exciting, while the middle is nice and dull, so we bet on the middle for fear History will become too interesting and get overrun with rifraff. Yes, Jason?"
"What it comes down to is that we don't know anything for sure, right? Didn't somebody say that History is a lie that's been agreed on?"
"Voltaire, yes. And he had a point. History books are usually written by the winning side. One obvious exception is the Bible, which was mainly written by the losers, and is more dependable because of it. But when we go to an archaeological dig and look for physical evidence, it generally supports most of what the books say. It's a little like Physics, I suppose. If you take Physics too seriously, you discover that this desk I'm leaning on is really a pattern of electrical fields consisting mostly of empty space. It disappears, in theory. But in fact I remain supported by it. Too much precision can be the greatest falsehood of all for finite minds. Don't ask me what that means."
"You mean we don't see the forest for the trees," said Gary Qualle in a bored voice.
"Yes. Well put. I'll tell you this though if there were such a thing as selling your soul to the devil, I'd be awfully tempted to sell mine for the chance to watch a day in the life of somebody like Olaf Trygvesson."
"Maybe you could get into that new program at Berkeley," said Kimberly. "They say using psychic evidence in the study of History is a very promising discipline."
"If you consider wishful thinking a discipline," said Martell.
"That's pretty judgmental, isn't it? Who are you to decide what another person's truth should be?"
"If the truth is something each of us makes up for himself, then there's no reason for us to be doing this. I'm here to help you develop skills to evaluate hard evidence for real events."
"Are you saying you believe in Absolute Truth?" Kimberly had her pencil poised over the red notebook she always carried.
"I plead the Fifth Amendment."
"How would you know absolute truth if you found it? How can you judge absolutes in a relative world?"
Martell thought a moment. "The time-honored principle of Ockham's Razor," he said. "Both the principle and the razor. The principle says that you should always opt for the simplest adequate explanation. The razor says you should always opt for the answer that cuts you, because people are not essentially good, and therefore the truth always hurts us a little. That's how I judge truth simplicity and discomfort."
Silence fell on the room. It was the first moment of real silence Martell could remember in this class.
"Well Olaf must have been a Christian," said Cindy at last, "because it was his missionary work that got him in trouble, right?"
"Not necessarily," said Gary, not bothering to be called on. "Central monarchy was a new idea in Norway. Jarl Haakon's family thought they had every bit as much right to rule as Olaf, only they didn't call themselves kings. And you've got to give them credit for that."
"Absolutely," said Martell. "Also there were probably a lot of Christians in Norway already, and they weren't all friends of Olaf's. Norway was just a very bad place to king it in those days, as a long line of kings who died with their boots on testifies.
"Anyway, Haakon's son Erik joined forces with Svein Forkbeard of Denmark and Olaf Skottkonung of Sweden, and they caught Olaf at sea God knows where, but we call it the battle of Svold. Olaf jumped overboard in full armor, an act of dubious orthodoxy, and ceased to be a political force."
He drew a fat figure on the board, giving him a red chalk beard. "This was around 1000 A.D. Olaf Haraldsson here was about five years old at the time "
"He wasn't Olaf Trygvesson's son?" asked Cindy.
"No. He was some kind of cousin."
"Didn't Olaf Haraldsson have brown hair?" asked Gary.
"According to Snorri, yes. But I didn't have any brown chalk, and some sources say his beard was kind of red, like Thor's."
"And this one's the saint, right?" asked Jason.
"Officially at least. He was canonized, although he never got much of a following outside of Scandinavia. That must have left him in a pretty awkward spot in Heaven when the Scandinavians went Lutheran."
Jason said, "He should have been glad to get into Heaven at all."
"Very true. Nowadays, and all through history really, most people have preferred their saints more along the lines of Francis of Assissi. And of course they're perfectly right. Kimberly?"
"Hasn't modern sociology proved that the medieval craze for sainthood was just a misplaced manifestation of earlier polytheism?"
"I suppose you could say that if you believe that Thor is somehow more real than Francis of Assissi. Is that what you mean?"
"I'm... not sure."
"All right. Olaf Haraldsson started his career in the approved manner, raising bloody hell all over the Baltic and England, also possibly France and Spain. In France he was baptized, then he went to England to fight against Ethelred or for him as a mercenary, we're not quite sure.
"Now you all remember who kicked Ethelred out of England, don't you?" He looked expectantly at the class.
"Knut, the King of Denmark," said Gary after a sportsmanlike pause.
"That's right. Knut the Great. And apparently it occurred to Olaf that with Knut busy in England trying to turn the tide back and learn to spell his name with a C, now was the time to kiss babies in Norway. His timing was as good as the first Olaf's everybody was sick of the new generation of Trondheim jarls and Olaf got one look at the jarl's heels and found himself on the throne."
"And he made himself holy by breaking legs for God," said Jason.
"That's one way to put it. Christianity was a political program for him, and he enforced it by police methods.
"But try an experiment with me try to look at it from Olaf's point of view. Your Sociology courses are supposed to teach you to do this with people from every possible different culture, and if 11th Century Norway isn't a different culture, I don't know what is. Why was Christianizing Norway so important to Olaf?"
"Because he wanted to bring it the blessings of civilization," said Jason drily.
"You are groping towards the point," said Martell, "but sarcasm won't get you there. You've learned how to do this with Papuans and Eskimos try for once to be fair to your own ancestors. Yes Jason, your ancestors too. What did civilization mean for a country in those days?"
"Equality with other countries?" asked Cindy.
"Yes! As long as Norway served the old gods, and got its moral and social ideas from the old gods, Norwegians would see the rest of mankind as a sort of cattle, to be hunted for sport or sold for profit. And the rest of Europe would see them as subhuman barbarians. Olaf knew that the robbing, the killing, the raping, the slavetaking that all had to end. And the sooner the better for all concerned."
"Still, it was a lot to give up," said Jason with a smile.
Somebody whispered something, and Martell let it pass, but Kimberly made a note in her book with a frown.
Gary Qualle said, "Most modern historians disagree with you about that, you know. They say the Vikings were no different than anybody else, but they got a bad press from the monks because they weren't Christians."
"That's true," said Martell. "All I can say is that, from my study of the documents and the scholarship, I can't agree. Nobody loves Vikings more than I do. I study them because, for me, it's the most fun I can make a living at. But it's only a pleasure from a safe distance. I would not want a Viking in my neighborhood. The high god Odin is a magic, very moving presence in my imagination, but I have to remind myself that he also stood for death, and scavenger birds, and madness and hanged men."
"All right," said Jason. "So Olaf was a progressive politician. That doesn't make him a saint."
"Ah!" said Martell. "Here comes the intriguing part. This is where I do something really heretical. I'm going to talk to you about Providence. I apologize for using an unfashionable word, but for the life of me I can't find a better one. Never let on that I've mentioned it, because I'd be blackballed from all the historian's clubs.
"I contend that the explanation for the beatification of Olaf Haraldsson can be only satisfactorily be found through the artistry of Snorri Sturlusson. By which I do not mean that Snorri made Olaf a saint. That had been done long before. But Snorri's poetic approach gives us a perspective on what happened that ordinary history can't provide. Because Snorri gives us a peek into Olaf's heart, and it's Olaf's heart that explains what happened to him, and to all Norway after him. Yes, Kimberly?"
"Doesn't modern historical theory prove that individuals cannot influence history? That everything would have been the same regardless of who was king?"
"If you persist in that kind of thinking, Kimberly, you will probably end up a respected historian in some prestigious university, long after I've starved to death in a gutter somewhere. Yes, that's more or less what they say. I happen to think they're wrong, but I'm outnumbered and you all should know that.
"As I was saying, here's what we know without Snorri's help: Olaf was a good king. He established law. He ruled with total integrity and utter ruthlessness.
"His first big mistake was to join the Swedish king Onund Jakob in an expedition to chastise Skåne, the part of Sweden that used to be part of Denmark. Knut the Great showed up in time to cut them off at the pass or the Kattegat anyway and Olaf had to leave his ships in Sweden and go home overland. Once there he found that most of his richest subjects had gone over to Knut. Snorri says they were bribed that's probably uncharitable. The nobles were accustomed to revolting every few years, and Norwegians are creatures of habit.
"Erling Skjalgsson was one of them, wasn't he?" asked a student named Howard, an earnest, well-groomed young man who cultivated his instructors and understood nothing.
"Yes Howard, Erling Skjalgsson was one of them, and as you all know I have published a paper on him. You're not going to get me going on Erling today, except to mention that he was probably the most appealing Viking in Snorri's book the kind of man who operated self-help programs for his slaves. Also a Christian one of many opposed to Olaf. Olaf's second, and biggest, mistake was to cause Erling's murder. Apparently by misunderstanding."
"Or so he said," said Gary Qualle.
"So he said. As he pointed out to the killer, it was a disastrous political move. He fought a few battles, sniffed the wind, and high-tailed it for Russia. So now, who's in charge of Norway?"
"Denmark?" asked Cindy.
"Right. The first British Empire England, Denmark and Norway. But Knut the Great made a mistake. When his Norwegian regent died, he tried to replace him with his own son Svein. The Norwegians started sharpening their axes again. Olaf thought this was his chance. It was, but not for the kind of crown he had in mind.
"Most of the nobles and farmers didn't want Olaf any more than Knut, so they gathered an army and marched to meet Olaf at a place called Stiklestad, northeast of Trondheim, or Nidaros. It was a Norwegian army, with a lot of Christians in it. Olaf's army was much smaller, composed of anybody he was able to scrape up, including a lot of heathens, although Snorri swears it wasn't so."
"I get it now," said Jason. "The reason they made him a saint was because he was too stupid to run away."
"You're not far off. The old Vikings believed that there were times when a man started acting in self-destructive ways, when no one could persuade him to be sensible; and that meant he was doomed to die. Snorri's Olaf seems 'fey' in this way. He claims he has seen a vision of all of Norway, and all the world beyond, and he's acting in response to that vision, not strategy. The morning before the battle he puts money in escrow to pay for prayers for the souls of his enemies. This is not like him.
"Critics will tell you that Snorri made Olaf get more spiritual at the end of the story as a literary device. Maybe. But I think the men who marched with Olaf to Stiklestad saw things that made them marvel, that made them re-think their world, things that set a slow poison at the roots of the Viking ethos. The men who followed Olaf saw the logic of the story. They saw saga turn into tragedy, and a king turn into a saint, and they found that tragedy and sainthood have their own kinds of glory.
"I contend and you may be sure that nobody agrees with me that there never was a Norway before Stiklestad, and after it Norway was almost impossible to kill. What kept the Norwegians Norwegian during 400 years of Danish rule, and 100 years of Swedish? It was a memory. It went like this: 'We are the people who killed Olaf. We are the people Olaf died for.'"
"Of course that's nonsense if you reject the myth of the Great Man," said Kimberly.
"That's true. I myself reject the myth of the Myth."
"So do we follow you or the experts when we answer essay questions?" asked Jason.
"Follow your own best reasoning, and back up what you say. That's all I ask."
Jason held one fist up in a Black Power salute and said, "Fram!"
Martell looked at him. "Very good. Jason has just quoted Olaf's battle cry, "Forward, forward, Christ-men, Cross-men, King's men!' Also the motto of St. Olaf College in Northfield, where some of you are rumored to party on weekends. Speaking of weekends, your reading assignment will be " He gave them a chapter in the textbook and dismissed the class.
Howard and a few apple-polishers came forward to stroke the instructor, and between their heads Martell saw Cindy walking out in earnest conversation with Jason. It struck him that they might make an excellent couple.
The following hour he lectured a European Civilization class on the decline of Rome and the Ostrogoths. As usual he related a quotation from General Belisarius to the bromide, "Rome wasn't built in a day," and as usual no one thanked him for the insight.
He was in his office just after 11:00, when the phone rang.
"Carl? This is Elaine. Please don't hang up."
Martell's hand tightened painfully on the receiver.
"Carl? Carl? Please."
"Hello," he said. "What's on your mind?" He thought, I ought to get the Nobel Prize for Banality.
"I've got no right asking you for favors Carl, I know that. But I do need to see you if you can spare the time "
"I'm in my office. Free till one."
"I can't come to your office. Someone might see me. It's got to be someplace neutral. And not public."
Martell couldn't think of a reply.
"I know it sounds melodramatic, Carl. I'm sorry. I'll explain when we talk. Can you think of a place?"
"Well... how about the church? Nidaros Lutheran on Third Street. I can get a key from the assistant pastor."
"A church? No. Or... all right. Maybe it's a good idea. All right. I can be there in half an hour. Is that all right?"
"Fine. I'll... see you."
He sat for several minutes, his heart pounding. He had only imagined a reunion like this a few thousand times, lying awake in bed at night, wool-gathering over piles of student essays, driving in his car. None of the things he'd imagined saying seemed any good now. He wasn't at all surprised.
"All right, we are alone. What do you want?" Sigfod Oski asked Benn Goss. They stood in the dim granary room, on either side of the gray stone, which had been returned to its place. The big sliding door had been pulled closed except for a space wide enough for a man to walk through. Goss had flipped a switch, activating the bare light bulb.
"I want to talk to you about that exclusive interview," he said, smiling.
"I made myself clear when I telephoned you. The stone merits publicity in its own right. I plan no exclusive interviews at the present time. When and if I choose to grant one, you will have first consideration."
Goss shook his head. "Not good enough. I'm here. You're here. I did you a favor by showing up. I need this interview. It could be a career-maker for me. You're the biggest story in Minnesota since our last presidential also-ran. National exposure I need it and I'll do what I have to to get it."
"Are you threatening me, Mr. Goss? What could you possibly do that would inconvenience me in the least?"
"It's all on videotape, Mr. Oski. Television is a wonderful tool. With a little creative editing I can make you look like Jesus Christ or some guy naked under a raincoat. So you have a choice. Cooperate and I'll see we both look good. Hold out and I'll make you look like the front page of a supermarket tabloid. Either way, I make my name."
Oski smiled. "You can't frighten a man who's been tortured by the SS."
"Don't give me that! This isn't 1945. There's no old boys' code anymore. I do what I can, what I have to do, to get what I need."
"Even if it comes to stealing a man's honor?"
"Honor? What language are you talking?"
"What about courage? Do you despise courage? I thought journalists were supposed to possess courage, and a certain integrity. What is that but honor?"
Goss smiled. "That was before the camera. That was when it was about writing putting words on paper. That's all gone now even in the newspapers.
"It's a visual world. You know what they say 'a picture's worth a thousand words'! That's a conservative estimate. Because people always mistrust what they're told just a little, but they never mistrust a picture. They can't distrust a picture seeing's believing. So the guy who takes the picture owns the truth, you see? And only he knows the secret the public never guesses that a picture's just another point of view. One point of view at one point of time. You pick one out, you print it behold the truth!
"During your war remember that little film clip of Adolf Hitler dancing when he heard Paris was captured? Only Hitler didn't dance that was just a glitch in the film. But it doesn't matter. The event only happened once. But the film's been run thousands of times. The film cancels the event. Hitler did dance. We made him dance, us guys with the cameras.
"And that was only the beginning. Newsmen were naive then. They still had that patriotism bug. They thought they had a duty to help defeat tyranny.
"Never again. We may end war forever us guys with the cameras. At least we can make it impossible for our own country to win one again.
"Look at Vietnam. Everybody knows Vietnam was a criminal mistake, and why do they know it? Because they saw a cop execute a prisoner with a revolver, and a naked kid burned by napalm. A different set of pictures and the war could have had a different end. But we decided. Not the politicians. Not the generals."
"I begin to see," said Oski. "In my war, we endured the unendurable sometimes, because we'd been told we could. But you told the soldiers they could not endure, and they didn't. If courageous or noble deeds were done, you undid them by ignoring them. You took their honor away."
Goss laughed. "That word again. Haven't you heard? Honor's a myth."
"A myth that protects civilians from soldiers in wartime, and soldiers from themselves when they carry their memories home."
"Well it was all before my time. Look, don't get me wrong. I'm sorry we have to bury America it has its good points. But we're talking survival now. This is the nuclear age, the killer virus age, the age of terrorism. As long as we can defend ourselves there's no chance for survival. I'm not an extinctionist. I want to live, and I want my children to live, if I ever decide to have any. In a world like this we can't afford honor. My honor, if you want to call it that, is to persuade people, any way I can, that nothing nothing in the world is worth dying for. And I think people are getting the message. You know why we've only fought little wars since Vietnam? Because Americans don't have any stomach for long-term sacrifice anymore. I like to think we had something to do with that. It's an incredible power we have."
Oski stroked his chin. "Incredible indeed," he said. "And not really a new one, for all your pretensions. Think what you could accomplish if, instead of being an adversary, you made common cause with your betters. There are places where that is well understood. And suppose one wanted to bring in a new order..."
Goss leaned over the stone, staring at Oski. "What are you getting at?"
"A new kind of skald, the glory of kings," Oski almost sang. "I will need someone like you, Mr. Goss.
"But not you personally. You personally offend me very much."
The room seemed suddenly darker, and Ben Goss turned pale, like a man seeing a thing he knows does not exist.