The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [93]
"I've always been too busy to take a wife," said Stern sifting through his regrets.
"Harem life doesn't sound so bad to me," said Innes. "Not much work. Lots of free time."
"You're lost in a dream about the harem's compliance and round-the-clock availability; do you have any idea what can happen to one of these girls if she runs afoul of the ruling male?" Doyle turned to Presto.
"Torture, disfigurement. Beheading," said Presto.
"Really? That's dreadful."
"But how would you feel if these women were granted the same equality of sexual freedom you enjoy? If they could choose to make love with whomever they wanted, whenever they wanted?"
"What an appalling thought," said Innes. "I mean the whole point of the thing is lost then, isn't it?"
"My argument is that while men have made the civilized world as it is, they have done so at the expense of these partners our Creator had the good sense to grace us with; they are the invisible oppressed among us."
"Are you in favor then of giving women the vote, Mr. Doyle?" asked Presto.
"Oh good God, no," said Doyle. "You have to go about these things sensibly. We should educate them first; they need to know what they're being asked to vote on. Rome wasn't built in a day."
"Maybe it wouldn't be so bad," said Innes, summoning up a rosy world of sexual equality. "Be a lot less expensive getting a bird in the bed; no flowers, no fancy dinners for two in some pricey bistro."
"I'm afraid the prospect fills me with despair," said Presto. "To abandon the ritual of the hunt, the thrill of conquest, and have everything I desired about a woman handed to me from the first moment without resistance or some modest reticence would ruin the entire experience."
"So you didn't actually enjoy your visits to the harem, then?'' said Innes, like a dog digging up his favorite bone.
The discussion continued, lively and spirited, nothing laid to rest, as if in this delicate and fertile area anything could ever be settled. Doyle looked up at Jack driving the carriage, missing his participation in exactly the sort of philosophical free-for-all in which he used to take particular delight. Certainly, Jack could hear what they were saying from up on that lonely perch, but he never glanced their way, remote and purposeful as a lighthouse keeper watching a storm out at sea. How far had Jack journeyed beyond the reach of these essential animal concerns; and if they were lost to him forever, could he still in the same way be thought of as a man?
It was nearly one in the morning when their destination appeared, in a valley spreading below them illuminated by an impossible volume of light: a quadrangle of long brick buildings ringed with electric lamps and a high white picket fence. No identifying signs. After a whispered conversation with a guard stationed at the gate, their carriage was admitted; Jack drove them to the tallest structure in the center of the square and parked outside; through its large windows, they could see vast rooms crowded with machinery, laboratory apparatus, and scientific supplies.
They followed Jack through a steel door, down a corridor, and into a great hall sporting a thirty-foot ceiling; second-floor galleries flanked either side of bookshelves climbing the far wall—at least ten thousand books, estimated Doyle. Immense glass cases displayed stores of minerals, compounds, and prototypes of various inventions. Greek statues filled corners; photographs and paintings packed every available inch of wall. The room felt both cluttered and spacious; objectively grand and intensely personal.
At a simple rolltop desk in the middle of the room, a rumpled middle-aged man slumped in a tilt-back chair, angled away from them, his worn boots resting on the edge of an open drawer. He appeared to be asleep; a steel bowl sat in his lap below his folded hands. Touseled, graying hair lay every which way on his large, noble head. Jack signaled the others