The Prize (5 page)

This was as he saw himself in the University days, and this was as he saw himself today. Apparently, nothing about him had grown older than old, through the decades, except maybe his heart. Maybe.
Ach
, we shall see, he thought.

He heard the nurse’s voice behind him. ‘That’s it, Professor Stratman,’ she said, tearing the graph paper strip from the machine and placing the roll on a small desk.

‘Thank you,’ said Stratman politely.

‘It was an honour, Professor,’ she said, as she removed the electrodes from his chest, arms, legs, and wiped the paste from his body.

He watched her curiously, She had said, so respectfully, that it was an honour. He had thought that he was old hat here. Squinting at her now, he realized that she had not been at
Lawson
General
Hospital
, or at least not with Dr. Ilman, when he had been here in the summer. She was new. He admired her tallness, short haircut, pert, intelligent face, trim white uniform. She was not Emily, of course, but still he admired the handsomeness of American young women, and especially the Southern ones.

As she returned to the electrocardiograph machine, he nodded at the instrument. ‘An interesting and valuable toy,
gn
ن
dige Fr
ن
ulein
,’ he said. ‘One day there will be better machines, deeper probing, more sure. But, for its limitations, it is good. It is a fact I knew quite well the man who invented the EKG.’

‘You actually knew him?’ She was as impressed as if he had said that he had known Pasteur.

‘Yes—yes. Willem Einthoven, a Hollander. I spent several weeks with him once in
Rotterdam. He won many prizes for that gadget—even the Nobel money.’

‘I bet you’ve known everyone, Professor. Dr. Ilman says you knew Einstein.’

‘It is true. Albert, I knew well. I met him first in
Berlin
—
ach
, what times, what times we had—and then I would see him, occasionally, in
Princeton. A terrible loss, not only for science, but for humanity. You know Fr
ن
ulein, good men there are not many—most men are good, yes, but always, always, for reasons—but Albert, he was a
good
man, pure and simple, no reasons.’

‘When he talked, could you understand him?’

‘Understand him?’ Stratman sat up. ‘A child could understand him, if she listened. I remember, once, somebody, an ordinary person, asked him to explain his theory of relativity, of time, of why all motions of the universe are relative and not absolute, and you know what Albert said? He said, “My friend, when you sit with a nice girl for an hour, you think it is only a minute—but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it is an hour. Relativity!” ’

Both the nurse and Stratman laughed, and then he requested his pipe and pouch. While the nurse found them in his unpressed jacket, Stratman went on. ‘I will tell you one Albert Einstein joke for your friends. There was a Mr. Goldberg who wanted to know about the Einstein theory, and when it was explained to him, he nodded. “I see,” he said, “and from this he makes a living?” ’

The nurse screamed with delight, and Stratman chuckled and was happy. At last, he stood up on his bare feet and began to fill his pipe. ‘Now, if you please, enough of Albert Einstein. We must devote ourselves to Max Stratman. I will dress.’

‘No, please, Professor—’ She grabbed up the EKG graph paper. ‘Dr. Ilman must see the results first. He sometimes makes us do it again. Will you please wait, as you are, until I show him this? Excuse me—’

She was gone. Max Stratman shrugged, put a flaring match to his well-seasoned meerschaum, and felt the chill on his feet. Despite her injunction against dressing, he decided to sit down and pull on his socks and shoes. As he did so, slowly, seated on the chair beside the desk, he reviewed with precision the events of yesterday.

The call from
Washington
had been from the Secretary of Defence. The civilities had been brief. The Secretary had asked him, bluntly, if he would care to undertake a bigger, more vital job, at more than twice the money he was now being paid at the Society. Although Stratman was an international figure of renown, the salary that he received for thinking and speculating at the Society for Basic Research was comparatively modest. The new sum offered him was, by his terms, staggering, and immediately he saw that it would completely cancel his debt to Walther and solve his problem with Emily. He evinced his interest.

‘I know you’re deeply immersed in further researches on the possibilities of solar energy,’ the Secretary had said, ‘and it’s all very promising—I’ve seen your reports—but it’s all way off in the future.’

Stratman had found that he must come to the defence of basic research in general. ‘All research is a dream for the future, Mr. Secretary. Rockets were once way off in the future, and nuclear fission, too. And even my work in converting and storing the sun’s heat for energy, that was once in the future. Yet, if I had been given no time to think about it a few years ago—’

The Secretary had not wanted to be thus engaged. ‘I know, Professor Stratman,’ he said, ‘we are in sympathy with the way you people work. However, the fact is you have harnessed solar energy. It’s a reality. It’s one of the big things we have to work with. And we want to move ahead. We want to exploit our gain before our enemies do—’

Stratman had sighed over expediencies, and then remembered the huge sum that he was being offered, and he had not interrupted again.

The Secretary had gone on crisply. There were competent physicists throughout the nation toiling night and day to develop further Stratman’s recent discovery. The Defence Department had studied the programme, and had felt that it was too scattered, too disjointed, and that lack of direction and cohesion might cause a fatal lag in the work. The facts had been laid before the President, and he, himself, had recommended that Max Stratman be appointed co-ordinator of the vast programme and be well paid out of unassigned Defence Department funds.

Impressed, Stratman had inquired, ‘What would the job entail?’

‘Constant travel around the country. You could headquarter in the Pentagon. But we’d want you in Palo Alto, Boston, Key West, Death Valley, Phoenix, El Paso, out in Libya at Azizia, wherever the solar people are working, to see that they’re getting the most out of their time, to see that they’re on the right track, to straighten them out when necessary, to show them shortcuts, to give them pep talks, when necessary. You know the kind of men they are, and you know that you are about the only person in the world they’d listen to. It could accelerate our programme and be a real contribution to the government. You’d be responsible only to the President, and report to him at monthly intervals.’

‘How long would you need me?’

‘Two years.’

Stratman did not like the job. He saw through the subterfuge. It was really a glorified salesman’s job, one that might be done as well by a politician or militarist or educator. What the government really wanted was his name, possibly to impress the young men on the project, possibly to extort more money from Congress. They wanted his name, and he wanted—
nein
, he needed—their money. It was a dilemma. It was a dilemma because the work at the Society, which they could not yet understand until it was reality and utilitarian, was far more important. He was on the verge of new breakthroughs in converting solar energy, but he could never give them a date, and so it would have no value to them. Also, capsuled in his office at the Society, he could live on in his old way, undisturbed, free to breathe and think. The new job might demand energy and strength that he did not possess. It was this last that made him remember his summer visit to Dr. Ilman, and at once he knew that his decision would develop not from his wishes but from the oracle that was Dr. Ilman’s electrocardiograph machine.

‘I will need the remainder of the week to decide,’ he had finally told the Secretary of Defence.

‘We must know by Saturday,’ the Secretary had said.

‘You shall.’

‘Please keep in mind that it was the President, himself, who suggested you for this job, Professor.’

‘I am not unaware of it, Mr. Secretary.’

When he had hung up the receiver, he had known that he must accept the offer. It was then that he had lifted the receiver off the cradle again and had telephoned Dr. Fred Ilman for an immediate appointment.

Suddenly, he realized that the door beside him had opened, and that the nurse was standing in the doorway.

‘You may dress, Professor,’ she said. ‘Dr. Ilman will see you now—in his office.’

He searched her bland face for an opinion, but there was none. He rose, took his shirt off the hook, and began to dress.

A few minutes later, he entered Dr. Ilman’s small, grey office. The physician was hunched over his desk, writing on a sheet of paper. He was hardly taller than Stratman himself, a slender, wiry Missourian in his late forties, with crewcut and darting eyes and a reputation for candour. Although he was no longer in the army, he worked for the army as an orthopaedic surgeon in Lawson General Hospital, one of the major amputee hospitals in the nation, and several days a week he doubled as an M.D. to treat government personnel at the hospital as well as the geniuses at the nearby Society for Basic Research.

No sooner had Stratman come through the door than Dr. Ilman dropped his pen, leaped to his feet, and extended his hand.

‘Max—how are you?’

Stratman took his hand cordially. ‘That is for you to tell me, Fred.’

Dr. Ilman waved Stratman to the hard-backed chair across the desk. ‘Sit down, light up your pipe, and we’ll straighten everything out.’

Stratman sat down and put a match to his cold pipe, and Dr. Ilman settled into the swivel chair behind the desk.

‘I’m curious, Max, extremely curious, about what brought you here today. You weren’t due until January. Why the request for a cardiograph today? Didn’t you feel well? Did you have chest pain? What?’

‘I think I told you on the phone. I wanted a checkup.’

‘But why? There must be a reason.’

Originally, Stratman had not planned to go into his motivations for Dr. Ilman. He did not wish to be forced into explanations and family history and mysteries. Still, Ilman was a friend—he met Ilman and his wife socially at least once a month—and a perceptive and penetrating man, and Stratman saw that it would be time-wasting to be devious.

‘I see it is no use to evade you, Fred,’ he said, at last. ‘There is a specific reason, yes.’

Dr. Ilman waited patiently.

Stratman resumed. ‘The government has offered me a bigger job, a better one. It will be a management job, and I will have to be exceedingly mobile. The position would require constant travel and, well, certainly an added burden of work and responsibility. I thought I should have a checkup before accepting—’

‘Why do you need such a job, Max? You are full of honours—’

‘
Ach
, honours. Did you ever have a cooked entrée of honours? Money, Fred, there is twice the money I am making, and I need it.’

‘I had imagined you were comfortable—’

‘It is not enough. I am thinking ahead—of Emily.’

‘In my opinion, you have done nicely by your niece. And when you are no longer here, I’m sure she will do nicely by herself. I would guess she has problems, whatever they may be, but she is competent, attractive—more than attractive—and young enough to manage for herself, when and if it becomes necessary. I can’t for the life of me see why any decision you make in the present must be based on her future.’