Distance Haze

Institute Drive's brand-new, lamppost-flanked asphalt climbed in a graceful curve between vast lawns where a few ancient oaks and cedars arched gnarled branches nearly to the ground. Several sprawling three-story buildings were surrounded by shrubs and flower beds. Away to his right two pillared, domed structures like Classical-style observatories sat on hills landscaped like English Romantic wild gardens. Sunlight made green brilliance of the forest treetops, and was just beginning to fire the flower beds and dewy grass. The whole place exuded affluence, like a particularly businesslike country club. The Administration Building entrance was a heavy plate-glass door of watery green. Within was a high atrium with trees in huge pots, walled and ceilinged with the same glass; morning sunlight made a bright shaft on expensive-looking Oriental carpets in faded red motifs. A reception booth contained a confection of long brown fingernails, auburn hair, and green eyes, as if she had been picked to match the decor. Wayne was acutely aware of his own jeans, T-shirt, and slightly sweaty sports jacket. He mumbled that he had an appointment with Dr. Rilfs¬bane, and she spoke into a headset. Dr. Alan Rilfsbane, when he came down the open staircase at the back of the atrium in a dark double-breasted suit, shiny black loafers, and silver cuff links, looked more like a symphony conductor or the maitre d' of an exclusive restaurant than the administrator of a sci¬entific foundation. "Mr. Dolan," he said in a soft, deep voice. "How nice to meet you." He gestured gracefully toward the stairs. "We are naturally flattered to have attracted the inter¬est of so accomplished a writer," he said as they climbed. "Mr. Del Mar tells me you're the author of some half dozen critically acclaimed books." “Five," said Wayne reflexively. "And critically ac¬claimed and a dollar'll get you a cup of coffee." Rilfsbane laughed, rearing back his head in approval. "I thought we would go directly up to the office of Dr. Florisbund, the Institute's Director. I assume you have heard of him? The pioneering neurobiology researcher?" He held another heavy glass door on the mezzanine between elaborate, glass-walled conference rooms, led Wayne down a pearl-white hallway with doors on either side. Through those that were open Wayne saw spacious, well-appointed offices, some neat, some messy, occupied by persons in various stages of reading, writing, or staring out the window. At the top of another flight was an even more silent hallway, flooded with sun from skylights, with precious-looking vases on wooden stands and a rusty Ori¬ental runner. Rilfsbane ushered Wayne through a door at the end. An ancient secretary whose brocade dress and golden hairdo sat on her like armor gestured toward an in¬ner door. Wayne followed Rilfsbane in. An old, sunken man sat behind a desk in a big, sunny office with windows that looked out over the Institute grounds as over Paradise. As Rilfsbane and Wayne came in he was holding a paper in a quavering hand, as if try¬ing to remember which of the piles in front of him it be¬longed to. He looked up at them with dazed, intelligent, rheumy eyes. Wattles of flesh hung at his neck, and the grey hair on his narrow head stood up stiffly. "Ah, Dr. Rilfsbane," he said in a wavering voice. He looked politely at Wayne. "Dr. Florisbund," said Rilfsbane cordially. "May I in¬troduce Mr. Wayne Dolan." Dr. Florisbund now rose slowly and shakily, helping himself with a hand on the top of the desk and another on the arm of his chair. Once he was all the way erect he held a Parkinsonian hand behind a large, veined ear and looked at Wayne again. There was a hearing aid in the ear. "Mr. Wayne Dolan," Rilfsbane said again loudly. "Ah, Mr. Boyland, welcome," said Florisbund. Wayne shook a cool, bony, trembling hand. "Please, sit," said Dr. Florisbund, lowering himself slowly and painfully into his chair again, until he dropped the last few inches with a deep sigh. Wayne and Rilfsbane took two comfortable armchairs. Rilfsbane's cordial, smil¬ing expression had been on his face long enough to look slightly phony by the time Dr. Florisbund had settled him¬self. He said, loudly: "Mr. Dolan is a well-known writer who is working on a book about the Institute." The rheumy, intelligent eyes surveyed Wayne. Then his slow, wavering voice said: "Mr. Boyland, welcome. I suppose Dr. Rilfsbane has explained the philosophy and mission of the Institute?" "We haven't had time," Rilfsbane said loudly. "I brought him directly to you." "Ah," said the old man. He tremblingly opened a drawer and scrabbled in it, came up with a three-color brochure, which he unfolded clumsily. He put on a pair of thick reading glasses. Wayne could feel the muscles of his own face strained from keeping a look of earnest at¬tention. He wondered if his edginess was a result of 21st-century short attention span, or whether it had always been this tedious listening to the wisdom of elders. “Mr. Deriwelle observed in his bequest to the Institute—" Dr. Florisbund read slowly and waveringly from the bro¬chure "—that 'the wonderful potentialities of Electricity, which have accomplished so many marvels in the areas of Commerce, Science, and Domestic Life, have inexplic¬ably never been put to service in the study of Religion. It is my fervent belief that the Electrical Study of Religion could illuminate many of the dark recesses of this most important Matter, throwing light upon questions hereto¬fore the subjects only of Dry Speculation and Fruitless Metaphysical Debate. I therefore devise my entire estate [with the exception of reservations mentioned elsewhere in the will for the support of certain distant relatives of Mr. Deriwelle's] to the exclusive and perpetual establish¬ment of an Institute for the Electrical Study of Religion.'" "The Electrical Study of Religion," said Wayne. "The Institute's Board of Directors has interpreted the phrase in the sense in which Mr. Deriwelle obviously meant it," Rilfsbane said, glancing at Florisbund. "As `the use of modern technology in the study of religion.'" "So you're using modern technology to try to prove the existence of God?" "Our forty Senior Research Fellows come from every shade of the spectrum of religious belief. Some are dedi¬cated atheists, others devout believers, with every grada¬tion in between." "Where do the two Nobel winners come out?" Rilfsbane smiled urbanely. "I believe they 'come out,' as you put it, in different ways. But I hope you will avail your¬self of the opportunity to speak with them personally, and to observe their experimental and theoretical methods." Dr. Florisbund nodded approvingly, though Wayne wasn't sure how much of this he had heard, and went on in his courtly, old-world way. "My point is, in a culture where we study everything to death scientifically, even the smallest item, nowhere in our intellectual landscape until the establishment of the Deriwelle Institute for the Technological Study of Religion has there been a single institution dedicated to studying what is after all the thing that concerns us most closely." Both Rilfsbane and Florisbund were smiling at him now, as if they had gotten him on their team and were just awaiting the flood of questions he would certainly have. "So, how did you decide to set up in this part of the country?" he asked obligingly. "That was part of Mr. Deriwelle's will as well," said Rilfsbane. "In addition to the groundbreaking research undertaken here, Mr. Deriwelle's bequest has also accom¬plished a significant work of historical preservation. The Institute campus and the surrounding areas owned by the Institute are part of sacred medicine land used until early in the last century by the Blue Water tribe of Native Americans, a people now completely extinct." Florisbund scrabbled in his drawer and held waver¬ingly across the desk a blurry three-color brochure titled "The Blue Water State Historical Preserve," which l