“That’s it exactly!” The baronet appeared delighted. “I congratulate you, doctor—you’ve caught my character to a ‘T.’ At some season when it’s convenient for both of us, you must allow me to shake your hand.”
“But as it happens, your egocentricity is justified. I did mean it literally, about the world dying with you.” Locating a piped-in water supply, Chuck filled a small bronze kettle and added the potatoes.
“Ah,” said Sir Ruthven. “The famous theory called…well, I forget the name. ‘I (the cogitator) am the only thing that exists, and all things else are merely my imagination.’ But I refute this theory for three reasons, namely: First. If the world were entirely my own imagination, I would certainly imagine it a good deal more favorable to myself. Second. If this theory were true, I would, by definition, be God. But one of the attributes of God, again by definition, is omniscience; suggesting that if I were God, I should at least entertain some suspicion of the fact. Third. Granting this theory to be true, it should be impossible for me to destroy myself by any means—poison, dagger, noose, cliffs—all, being mere effusions of my own mind, should prove utterly ineffective against the only true reality, myself. But if you truly believed this to be the case, you would have no need to try to dissuade me from making the attempt.”
Chuck hung the potatoes on an iron hook over the fire to boil.
Maybe the most direct therapy—the full truth—might both effect a cure and gain the information they wanted—if Osborne was right, desperately needed—with no further loss of time and no further danger to anyone.
“Does the name Robert Lozinski mean anything to you?” said Dr. Falcon.
The baronet took a moment to adjust to what clearly seemed to him a sudden change of subject. “No…no, I think not. Should it?”
“It very definitely should.” Chuck found a flitch of bacon and began cutting it.
Sir Ruthven pondered a moment or two, apparently humoring his guest. “Robert was more or less my own chosen pseudo-forename for some years, but Lozinski…a foreign name, is it not? Japanese?”
“Polish.”
“Polish! There you have it—yet a fourth refutation of the famous theory (whatever it is called). If all things existed only in my own imagination, it should be impossible to surprise me with any new scrap of knowledge.”
Having chopped enough bacon, Chuck began on some leeks. “I could refute every one of your arguments, but I’m talking facts, not philosophy. I’m not trying to tell you that you’re God, or that the world around us is all there is anywhere. Because there’s a world outside us big enough to swallow us down and never even belch—a whole universe that’ll go on existing without knowing whether we’re alive or dead.”
“I notice you’ve begun using the first-person plural, Dr. Falcon. Are you including yourself with me in the putative creative mind, now?”
Dr. Falcon thought, Am I wrong? Is this Bob Lozinski? Still, having come this far, what did he have to lose? “I’m telling you that you’re no one named Ruthven Murgatroyd. Your name is Robert Lozinski, and at this moment you are lying unconscious, in a deep coma.”
Sir Ruthven looked startled. Then he smiled. “Am I comfortable?”
“Physically, as comfortable as good nursing can make you.” Yes, the virtual-reality equipment both of them were wearing “out there” really was pretty comfortable.
The baronet made an elaborately visible attempt to shift his position. (Not even the best hojojutsu could eliminate all physical annoyance.) “You’ve no idea what a relief it is to learn that. Might I ask how you know all this?”
Chuck put the bacon and leeks in the bottom of an iron saucepan and set it on a rack above the fire. “I’ve come here from that big world outside.”
Sir Ruthven cocked an eyebrow. “Some gentleman of science come inside my own brain to visit me?”
“Stripped of technical language, you might think of it that way.” Chuck’s own thought was, He’s intelligent, but I’m not getting through to him.
“I’ll resist the temptation to ask for the technical language, at least until we’ve dined on—why, I suppose we must call the contents of my larder literally food for thought!” The baronet leaned back and chuckled. “At least it’s a novel presentation of the theory of…whatever it is called. With all due apologies, Dr. Falcon, I hope that your culinary art is more substantial than your philosophy.”
Forcing a grin, Chuck began to carve the cold roast beef. He had lost the first round, but that worried him less on his own account than on Lozinski’s. Well, all he could do for the present was learn as much as he could of the young man actually before him, and meanwhile finish cooking dinner. Apropos of both projects, he remembered his earlier suspicion on failing to spot garlic among the kitchen stores. “My culinary art would be all the better for a little garlic,” he said with another grin. “Got any around?”
“Garlic?” Sir Ruthven glanced around at the spices and condiments in his line of sight, then closed his eyes and frowned. “Try that cupboard,” he said after a moment, pointing one forefinger. “The third shelf down.”
Chuck tried the cupboard. On the third shelf down, among jars and canisters of rice, dried peas, and other staples, he found a dozen heads of garlic. He broke off two or three cloves, returned, and chopped them fine before the baronet’s unperturbed gaze.
At least he wouldn’t have to worry about a bite in the neck. But he wished he had some way of knowing for sure whether those heads of garlic had been on that shelf before Sir Ruthven turned his mind to the problem.
Chapter 5
Encounter on the Cliffs
Chuck took care not only of cooking the meal, but also of laying the table in the dining-room immediately upstairs and of selecting the wine—a bottle labeled “Pommery ‘74.” By now he had decided that his host’s earlier statement about a servant on the premises had been a mere pretext to make the half-hearted attempt on his life. Either that, or Lozinski had somehow quietly written the servant out of the virtual script.
On being released for the meal, Sir Ruthven seemed deeply moved to find himself trusted with a table knife. “True,” he observed, “it is far from sharp, but, for all that, a sudden lunge at the face—”
“Would probably do less damage with a table knife than with a fork,” Chuck replied. “And I’m not going to make you eat with your fingers.”
He abandoned his earlier design of sleeping in a room with an inside bolt. He had no intention of leaving his host alone to make another suicide attempt. To help ensure them both a good night’s rest, he mixed a harmless sleeping compound from the virtual medkit in his knapsack into the baronet’s after-dinner brandy. “How very clever of you!” was Sir Ruthven’s comment on learning he had just been drugged. “Not quite necessary…I rarely make the attempt at night…the more unpleasant aspects of the next life look a little too strong by night. Still, deuced clever of you…” Then the drug took effect.
After carrying his host upstairs and finding a suitable bedroom, Chuck left him long enough for a brief trip back to the library. A quick check of the reasonably well arranged shelves did nothing to disprove the theory of the Gilbert and Sullivan libretti being unavailable as such in a virtual scenario based on them. Good thing he had that virtual copy in his knapsack. Reasoning that sitting Sir Ruthven down with a ponderous tome which required at least two hands to manage, and instructing him to read aloud, would keep him out of mischief while Chuck fixed breakfast in the morning—any cessation in the reading voice would alert him to trouble at once—he selected more or less at random what looked by title to be the least weighty—in