Oh, you sultry minx. “Post-grad? Staff?”
Ghost of a smile. “Do I dress like an academic?”
“Definitely not.” There are Francophone curves in her soft voice. “Though I’m guessing you can sting like one.”
No acknowledgment. “I just feel at home here.”
“Almost true for me—my rooms are at Humber College, only a few minutes away. Most third-years live off campus, but I can drop in to hear the choir most days, supervisions allowing.”
A droll look, saying, Someone’s a quick worker, isn’t he?
I shrug cutely. I might get hit by a bus tomorrow.
She says, “Cambridge has met your expectations?”
“If you don’t use Cambridge well, you don’t deserve to be here. Erasmus, Peter the Great, and Lord Byron all lodged in my rooms. It’s a fact.” Bullshit, but I love to act. “I think of them, lying on my bed, staring up at the very same ceiling, in our respective centuries. That, for me, is Cambridge.” And that’s one tried-and-tested pick-up line. “My name’s Hugo, by the way. Hugo Lamb.”
Instinct warns me off attempting a handshake.
Her lips say, “Immaculйe Constantin.”
My, oh, my. A seven-syllable hand grenade. “French?”
“I was born in Zьrich, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m fond of Switzerland. I go skiing in La Fontaine Sainte-Agnиs most years; one of my friends has a chalet there. Do you know it?”
“Once upon a time.” She places a suede-gloved hand on her knee. “You major in politics, Hugo Lamb.”
That’s impressive. “How could you tell?”
“Speak to me about power. What is it?”
I do believe I’m being out-Cambridged. “You want me to discuss power? Right here and now?”
Her shapely head tilts. “No time except the present.”
“Okay.” Only for a ten. “Power is the ability to make someone do what they otherwise wouldn’t, or deter them from doing what they otherwise would.”
Immaculйe Constantin is unreadable. “How?”
“By coercion and reward. Carrots and sticks, though in bad light one looks much like the other. Coercion is predicated upon the fear of violence or suffering. ‘Obey, or you’ll regret it.’ Tenth-century Danes exacted tribute by it; the cohesion of the Warsaw Pact rested upon it; and playground bullies rule by it. Law and order relies upon it. That’s why we bang up criminals and why even democracies seek to monopolize force.” Immaculйe Constantin watches my face as I talk; it’s thrilling and distracting. “Reward works by promising ‘Obey and feel the benefit.’ This dynamic is at work in, let’s say, the positioning of NATO bases in nonmember states, dog training, and putting up with a shitty job for your working life. How am I doing?”
Security Goblin’s sneeze booms through the chapel.
“You scratch the surface,” says Immaculйe Constantin.
I feel lust and annoyance. “Scratch deeper, then.”
She brushes a tuft of fluff off her glove and appears to address her hand: “Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed. Power is a visitor to, not a possession of, those it empowers. The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long-term side effects. Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul. Power’s comings and goings, from host to host, via war, marriage, ballot box, diktat, and accident of birth, arethe plot of history. The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.” Immaculйe Constantin now looks up at me. “Power will notice you. Power is watching you now. Carry on as you are, and power will favor you. But power will also laugh at you, mercilessly, as you lie dying in a private clinic, a few fleeting decades from now. Power mocks all its illustrious favorites as they lie dying. ‘Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.’ That thought sickens me, Hugo Lamb, like nothing else. Doesn’t it sicken you?”
Immaculйe Constantin’s voice lulls like rain at night.
The silence in King’s College Chapel has a mind all its own.
“What do you expect?” I say eventually. “We all have to die one day. End of. But in the meantime, doing unto others is a damn sight more attractive than being done to by others.”
“What is born must one day die. So says the contract of life, yes? I am here to tell you, however, that in rare instances this iron clause may be … rewritten.”
I look at her calm and serious face. “What level of nuts are we talking here? Fitness regimes? Vegan diets? Organ transplants?”
“A form of power that allows one to defer death in perpetuity.”
Yes, she’s a ten, but if she’s Scientologically slash cryogenically oriented, Ms. Constantin needs to understand that I don’t eat bullshit. “Did you just cross the border into the Land of the Crazy People?”
“The lie of the land has no notion of borders.”
“But you’re talking about immortality as if it’s real.”
“No. I’m talking about the perpetual deferral of death.”
“Hang on, did Fitzsimmons send you? Or Richard Cheeseman? Is this a setup?”
“No. This is a seed.”
This is too creative to be a Fitzsimmons prank. “A seed that grows into what, exactly?”
“Into your cure.”
Her sobriety is unsettling. “But I’m not ill.”
“Mortality is inscribed in your cellular structure, and you say you’re not ill? Look at the painting. Look at it.” She nods towards The Adoration of the Magi. I obey. I always will. “Thirteen subjects, if you count them, like the Last Supper. Shepherds, the Magi, the relatives. Study their faces, one by one. Who believes this newborn manikin can one day conquer death? Who wants proof? Who suspects the Messiah is a false prophet? Who knows that he is in a painting, being watched? Who is watching you back?”
THE SECURITY GOBLIN is waving his palm in front of my face. “Wakey-wakey! So sorry if I’m dis turbin’ you, but would you an’ the Almighty resume your business tomorrer?”
My first thought is, How dare he?There isn’t a second thought because his Gorgonzola-and-paint-thinner breath makes me gag.
“It’s closin’ time,” he says.
“The chapel’s open until six,” I tell him tersely.
“Uh— yeah. Exactly. And what’s the time now?”
Then I notice the windows; they’re shiny dark.
17:58, insists my watch. It can’t be. It’s only just gone four. I peer around my tormentor’s belly to find Immaculйe Constantin, but she’s gone. Long gone, I feel. But no no no no no; she told me to look at the Rubens, just a few seconds ago. I did, and …
… I frown up at Security Goblin for an answer.
“Out at six,” he says. “Closing time’s closing time.”
He taps his watch in front of my face and, even upside-down, its cheap and nasty digital face is quite clear: 17:59. I mutter, “But …” But what? Two whole hours do not vanish in the space of two minutes. “Was there …” my voice is thin, “… was there a woman here? Sitting there?”
He looks where I point. “Earlier? This year? Ever?”
“About … half three, I think. Dark blue coat. A real looker.”
Security Goblin folds his stumpy arms. “If you’d kindly get your herbally enhanced arse into gear, I’ve got a home to go to.”
· · ·
ME, RICHARD CHEESEMAN, Dominic Fitzsimmons, Olly Quinn, and Jonny Penhaligon clunk our glasses and bottles in the roar and slosh of the Buried Bishop, across the cobbled lane behind Humber College’s west gate. The place is heaving: Tomorrow the Christmas exodus begins, and we’re lucky to have found a table in the furthest nook. I hole-in-one my Kilmagoon Special Reserve, and the fat Scotch slug scorches a trail from tonsils to stomach. Here, it gets to work on the knot of gut-worry I’ve been suffering from since my zone-out in the chapel earlier. I’ve been rationalizing. It’s been a tiring month with essays and deadlines; Mariвngela keeps leaving those nagging messages; and I’ve endured two all-nighters at Toad’s in the last week to tenderize Jonny Penhaligon. Losing track of time isn’t proof of a brain tumor; it’s hardly as if I keeled over, or found myself wandering among the chimneys of the college, naked. I lost track of time while sitting in the finest Late Gothic church in the country, meditating upon a Rubens masterpiece—surroundings designed to transport you. Olly Quinn puts down his half-drunk pint and suppresses a belch. “So, did you solve the mystery of How Ronald Reagan Accidentally Won the Cold War, Lamb?”