The Rebel Angels

"He hasn't read it. Publishers have no time to read books, as I suppose you know. He handed it on to a professional reader and appraiser. The report, based on a description and a sample chapter, isn't encouraging."

"Really?"

"Carpenter says they get two or three such books every year – long, wandering, many-layered things with an elaborate structure, and a heavy freight of philosophy, but really self-justifying autobiographies. He's sending it back."

"Parlabane will be disappointed."

"Perhaps not. Carpenter says he always sends a personal letter to ease the blow, suggesting that the book be sent to somebody else, who does more in that line. You know: the old down-ready-pass."

"Has Maria got on any farther with it?"

"She's beavering away at it. Chiefly because of the title, I think."

"I didn't know it had a title."

"Yes indeed, and just as tricky as the rest of the thing. It's called Be Not Another."

"Hm. I'm not sure that I would snatch for a book called Be Not Another. Why does Maria like it?"

"It's a quotation from one of her favourite writers. Paracelsus. She persuaded Parlabane to read some of Paracelsus and Johnny stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum. Paracelsus said, Alterins non sit, qui suus esse potest; Be not another if thou canst be thyself."

"I know Latin too, Clem."

"I suppose you must. Well, that's what it comes from. Rotten, if you ask me, but he thinks it will look well on the title-page, in italic. A hint to the reader that something fine is in store."

"I suppose it is a good title, if you look at it understandingly. Certainly Parlabane is very much himself."

"I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard. I'm surer than ever that McVarish has that manuscript you didn't dig out of him. I can't get it out of my mind. It's becoming an obsession. Have you any idea what an obsession is?"

Yes, I had a very good idea what an obsession is. Maria.

Sophia.

3

"I've been seeing something of that girl who was here last time you visited me," said Ozy Froats. "You know the one – Maria."

Indeed I know the one. And what was she doing in Ozy's lab? Not bringing him a daily bucket for analysis, surely?

"She's been introducing me to Paracelsus. He's a lot more interesting than I would have suspected. Some extraordinary insights, but of course without any way of verifying them. Still, it's amazing how far he got by guesswork."

"You won't yield an inch to the intuition of a great man, will you Ozy?"

"Not a millimetre. No, I guess I have to hedge on that. Every scientist has intuitions and they scare the hell out of him till he can test them. Great men are rare, you see."

"But you're one. This award has lifted you right above the clutch of Murray Brown, hasn't it?"

"The Kober Medal, you mean? Not bad. Not bad at all."

"Puts you in the Nobel class, they tell me."

"Oh, these awards – I'm very pleased, of course – but you have to be careful not to mistake them for real achievement. I'm glad to be noticed. I have to give a lecture when I get it, you know. That's when I'll find out what the boys really think, by the way they take it. But I haven't shown all I want to show, by any means."

"Ozy, the modesty of you great men is sickening to those of us who just plug along, doing the best we can and knowing it isn't very much. The American College of Physicians gives you the best thing they have, and you demur and grovel. It isn't modesty; it's masochism. You like suffering and running yourself down. You make me sick. I suppose it's your Sheldonian type."

"It's a Mennonite upbringing, Simon. Beware of pride. You people are all so nice to me, I have to watch out I don't begin patting myself on the back too much. Maria, now, she insists I'm a magus."

"I suppose you are one, in her terms."

"She wrote me a sweet letter. A quotation from Paracelsus, mostly. I carry it around, which is a sign of weakness. But listen to the quote: 'The natural saints, who are called magi, are given powers over the energies and faculties of nature. For there are holy men in God who serve the beatific life; they are called saints. But there are also holy men who serve the forces of nature, and they are called magi… What others are incapable of doing they can do, because it has been conferred upon them as a special gift.' If a man started thinking of himself in those terms, he'd be finished as a scientist. Doubt, doubt, and still more doubt, until you're dead sure. That's the only way."

"If Maria wrote to me like that, I'd believe her."

"Why?"

"I think she knows. She has extraordinary intuition about people."

"Do you think so? She sent me a very queer fish, and he's certainly an oddity in Sheldonian terms, so I've put him on the bucket. An interesting contributor, but only about once a week."

"Anybody I know?"