Phantoms

popular in the States, especially thriller writers.”
    “MacLean, Follett, Forsythe, Bagley, that crowd?”
    “Yes, very popular, some of them.”
    The caviar was superb. At the professor’s urging, Sandler tried some of it with chopped onions. Flyte piled gobs on small wedges of dry toast and ate it without benefit of condiments.
    “But I’m not only scouting for thrillers,” Sandler said. “I’m after a variety of books. Unknown authors, too. And I suggest projects on occasion, when I have a subject for a particular author.”
    “Apparently, you have something in mind for me.”
    “First, let me say I read The Ancient Enemy when it was first published, and I found it fascinating.”
    “A number of people found it fascinating,” Flyte said. “But most found it infuriating.”
    “I hear the book created problems for you.”
    “Virtually nothing but problems.”
    “Such as?”
    “I lost my university position fifteen years ago, at the age of forty-three, when most academics are achieving job security.”
    “You lost your position because of The Ancient Enemy? ”
    “They didn’t put it quite that bluntly,” Flyte said, popping a morsel of caviar into his mouth. “That would have made them seem too closeminded. The administrators of my college, the head of my department, and most of my distinguished colleagues chose to attack indirectly. My dear Mr. Sandler, the competition among power-mad politicians and the Machiavellian backstabbing of junior executives in a major corporation are as nothing, in terms of ruthlessness and spitefulness, when compared to the behavior of academic types who suddenly see an opportunity to climb the university ladder at the expense of one of their own. They spread rumors without foundation, scandalous tripe about my sexual preferences, suggestions of intimate fraternization with my female students. And with my male students, for that matter. None of those slanders was openly discussed in a forum where I could refute them. Just rumors. Whispered behind the back. Poisonous. More openly, they made polite suggestions of incompetence, overwork, mental fatigue. I was eased out, you see; that’s how they thought of it, though there was nothing easy about it from my point of view. Eighteen months after the publication of The Ancient Enemy , I was gone. And no other university would have me, ostensibly because of my unsavory reputation. The true reason, of course, was that my theories were too bizarre for academic tastes. I stood accused of attempting to make a fortune by pandering to the common man’s taste for pseudoscience and sensationalism, of selling my credibility.”
    Flyte paused to take some champagne, savoring it.
    Sandler was genuinely appalled by what Flyte had told him. “But that’s outrageous! Your book was a scholarly treatise. It was never aimed at the best-seller lists. The common man would’ve had enormous difficulty wading through The Ancient Enemy . Making a fortune from that kind of work is virtually impossible.”
    “A fact to which my royalty statements can attest,” Flyte said. He finished the last of the caviar.
    “You were a respected archaeologist,” Sandler said.
    “Oh, well, never really all that respected,” Flyte said self-deprecatingly. “Though I was certainly never an embarrassment to my profession, as was so often suggested later on. If my colleagues’ conduct seems incredible to you, Mr. Sandler, that’s because you don’t understand the nature of the animal. I mean, the scientist animal. Scientists are educated to believe that all new knowledge comes in tiny increments, grains of sand piled one on another. Indeed, that is how most knowledge is gained. Therefore, they are never prepared for those visionaries who arrive at new insights which, overnight, utterly transform an entire field of inquiry. Copernicus was ridiculed by his contemporaries for believing that the planets revolved around the sun. Of course, Copernicus was proved right. There are countless examples in the history of science.” Flyte blushed and drank some more champagne. “Not that I compare myself to Copernicus or any of those other great men. I’m simply trying to explain why my colleagues were conditioned to turn against me. I should have seen it coming.”
    The waiter came to take away the caviar dish. He also served Sandler’s orange juice and Flyte’s fresh fruit.
    When he was alone with Flyte again, Sandler said, “Do you still believe your