Shadowfires

ashamed of. Only madmen have no fear.”

----
24 SPECIAL
FEAR OF
HELL
    Dr. Easton Solberg had been more than fifteen
minutes late for his one o'clock meeting with Julio Verdad and Reese Hagerstrom. They had stood outside his locked office, and he had finally come hurrying along the wide hall, clutching an armload of books and manila folders, looking harried, more like a twenty-year-old student late to class than a sixty-year-old professor overdue for an appointment.
    He was wearing a rumpled brown suit one size too large for him, a
blue shirt, and a green-and-orange-striped tie that looked, to Julio,
as if it had been sold exclusively in novelty shops as a joke gift.
Even by a generous appraisal, Solberg was not an attractive man, not
even plain. He was short and stocky. His moonish face featured a
small flat nose that would have been called pug on some men but that
was simply porcine on him, small close-set gray eyes that looked
watery and myopic behind his smudged glasses, a mouth that was
strangely wide considering the scale on which the rest of his visage
was constructed, and a receding chin.
    In the hall outside his office, apologizing effusively, he had
insisted on shaking hands with the two detectives, in spite of the
load in his arms; therefore, he kept dropping books, which Julio and
Reese stooped to pick up.
    Solberg's office was chaos. Books and scientific journals filled every shelf, spilled onto the floor, rose in teetering stacks in the corners, were piled every which way on top of furniture. On his big desk, file folders, index cards, and yellow legal-size tablets were heaped in apparent disorder. The professor shifted mounds of papers off two chairs to give Julio and Reese places to sit.
    “Look at that lovely view!” Solberg said, stopping suddenly and
gaping at the windows as he rounded his desk, as if noticing for the
first time what lay beyond the walls of his office.
    The Irvine campus of the University of California was blessed with
many trees, rolling green lawns, and flower beds, for it sprawled
over a large tract of prime Orange County land. Below Dr. Solberg's second-floor office, a walkway curved across manicured grass, past impatiens blazing with thousands of bright blossoms-coral, red, pink, purple-and vanished under the branches of jacarandas and eucalyptus.
    “Gentlemen, we are among the most fortunate people on earth: to be
here, in this beautiful land, under these temperate skies, in a
nation of plenty and tolerance.” He stepped to the window and opened
his stubby arms, as if to embrace all of southern California. “And
the trees, especially the trees. There are some wonderful specimens
on this campus. I love trees, I really do.
That's my hobby: trees, the study of trees, the cultivation of unusual specimens. It makes for a welcome change from human biology and genetics. Trees are so majestic, so noble. Trees give and give to us-fruit, nuts, beauty, shade, lumber, oxygen-and take nothing in return. If I believed in reincarnation, I'd
pray to return as a tree.” He glanced at Julio and Reese. “What about
you? Don't you think it'd be grand to come back as a tree, living the
long majestic life of an oak or giant spruce, giving of yourself the
way orange and apple trees give, growing great strong limbs in which
children could climb?” He blinked, surprised by his own monologue.
“But of course
you're not here to talk about trees and reincarnation, are you? You'll
have to forgive me… but, well, that view, don't you know? Just captured me for a moment.”
    In spite of his unfortunate porcine face, disheveled appearance,
apparent disorganization, and evident tendency to be late, Dr. Easton
Solberg had at least three things to recommend him: keen
intelligence, enthusiasm for life, and optimism. In a world of
doomsayers, where half the intelligentsia waited almost wistfully for
Armageddon, Julio found Solberg refreshing. He liked the professor
almost at once.
    As Solberg went behind his desk, sat in a large leather chair, and
half disappeared from view beyond his paperwork, Julio said, “On the
phone you said there was a dark side to Eric Leben that you could
discuss only in person-”
    “And in strictest confidence,” Solberg said. “The information, if
pertinent to your case, must go in a file somewhere, of course, but
if it's not pertinent, I expect discretion.”
    “I assure you of that,” Julio said. “But as I told you earlier,
this is an