Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [98]
Coleman slumped back in his chair. The quartet of balloons had settled into close orbit around him and Cal. He picked up his book and said, “In no way do I wish to minimize what you face losing. But there are times I have thought that, the longer I’ve lived, the more elaborate have grown the disasters in which I have enmeshed myself.”
IX
“And how is your work proceeding, Mr. Coleman?” Dunn asked. Isabelle and Cal had retired to their room for an hour before a late dinner. Coleman was seated in the lounge, his notebook open in his lap, when Dunn walked into the room. Closing the notebook, Coleman said, “My latest is still in the early stages.”
“Would I be presumptuous,” Dunn said, seating himself on the chair next to Coleman’s, “if I asked its plot?”
“I don’t suppose so,” Coleman said, “although I should warn you that most of the interest in my fiction arises from its execution, rather than its conception.”
“You do yourself a disservice. You must forgive me—I have a terrible memory for the titles of these sorts of things—but your story about the man who is haunted by the ghosts of the family he did not have struck me as very original.”
“ ‘The Undiscovered Country,’ ” Coleman said, “and thank you. The piece I am working on now is in a similar vein. It concerns a man who, as a result of an injury received in battle, has lost the ability to feel. He is a scientist, and he devotes his efforts to understanding the nature or source of human feeling. This leads to his performing a series of ghastly experiments upon a pair of innocents who seek his aid.”
“Fascinating,” Dunn said. “You intend the scientist as a villain.”
“Not a villain so much as a . . . monomaniac, I would say. Of course, his inability to feel complicates the matter. Can he be held responsible for his actions if he is deficient in so fundamental a way?”
“Yes,” Dunn said. “I thought you were going to say that it is the knowledge he pursues that muddies the waters.”
“Oh?”
“Surely a great deal may be forgiven if the objective is the advancement of human understanding.”
“I’m not sure,” Coleman said. “It seems to me more the case that a great number of sins have sought to hide themselves under the fig leaf of knowledge.”
“Sin? I am surprised to hear you employ such a useless word. What the world calls sin, Mr. Coleman, is little more than the courage of the uncowed intellect to follow its inclinations.”
“A sentiment worthy of Goethe’s Faust.”
“A character, I remind you, who is rewarded for his ceaseless striving.”
“What a consolation to poor Gretchen,” Coleman said.
Dunn laughed. “You have an answer to everything, sir.”
“So my brothers always complained.”
X
“It will not be long, now, will it?” Isabelle said.
Coleman opened his mouth to offer a comforting platitude, but none would come. The sour smell that emanated from Cal had spread throughout the house. He said, “Your husband is in a great deal of pain.”
“He is,” Isabelle said. “I cannot understand how he bears it. But I might wish he were bearing it with me, rather than Mr. Dunn. I will lose my husband soon enough, Mr. Coleman; I would like to spend what time I have left with him in his company.”
“Didn’t Dunn inform you—”
“That he would be taking my husband from me for sessions morning, afternoon, and evening? That those sessions would continue for a week, with no end in sight save Cal’s? No, Mr. Coleman, he did not. I assumed our stay would last a few days, no more. And I assumed that Mr. Dunn would require a few hours at most to prepare my husband for what is to come. I had read about Mr. Dunn’s house—the