The Gorgon Festival by John Boyd Read Free Book Online Page B

had, at least, the reality of a rainbow.
    He was scribbling a few tentative equations on his pad when a voice asked, “Are you Doctor Alexander Ward?”
    Glancing up, he saw a girl in the doorway outlined against the purple of the jacaranda; the resonance of her voice vibrated with the sound of bees in fields of summer. Her pullover cashmere sweater matched the bouffancy and color of her ash-blond hair, her blue skirt matched her eyes, and the starched white collar of her blouse, folded back over her sweater, her bobby sox and saddle oxfords were of a fashion he had not seen at Stanford since the late Forties.
    Ward was surprised. His laboratory was an annex behind the school of biology away from the main campus. With luck he might go for days without seeing a student.
    “I’m he, but what bright whim of chance has brought you here?”
    “At the registrar’s they told me where to find you. I do hope I’m not intruding, but you’re the only biology professor on the campus. All the offices were closed. I wanted to enroll as a freshman, next fall, and I though you might suggest preparatory courses I might take this summer.”
    Poised in the doorway, she was ready to turn at his dismissal or enter at his invitation and to do either with dignity. Her beauty, modesty, and poise diffused an aura of a more gracious era, a time of picnics in the park, boating, and serenades from summer pavilions. She projected into him a sense… Of what? Of belonging?
    “You need a student counselor, miss.” He smiled. “This is a research laboratory.”
    “Oh, dear. I’m always interrupting something important. Please forgive me.”
    She turned to go, rippling with a reminder of green leaves shimmering over mossy dells. Some weird nostalgia in her loveliness affected him, arranged his thoughts into iambic pentameter.
    “Wait, miss. Forgive me if I seemed aloof, but students always frighten me at first. I fear they’ll ask me questions I can’t answer. So when I saw a girl materializing from a purple haze of jacaranda, like someone stepping through a door from summer, I had to shift my thoughts from mathematics and in the lag I lost myself in silence. Please do come in and have a seat, Miss… Miss?”
    “Aphrodite. Diana Aphrodite,” she said.
    She turned to his sofa beside the door, and he was happy because he wanted her to stay awhile. In her presence, his S sub-sixteen was dropping closer to the sub-four range and limning more precise boundaries to his love concept. Her P factor operated with compelling force.
    “The name means huntress, does it not, of love?”
    Seated, her torso balanced at the waist, her knees together, her manner suggested stays and taffeta and high-buttoned shoes.
    “Don’t you think we all seek love, Doctor Ward?”
    “So I’ve heard said, by poets and by saints, but love may be a gentler name for lust, since both lead lovers to the self-same end.”
    “Semantics apart,” Diana asked, suddenly intent, “have you found love?”
    “Well, I am working on the problem.” He tapped the equations on his desk. “But I can t truly say I’ve found an answer. Love seems to be a curve that climbs beyond the bounds of my graph paper. Of course, it’s motherhood that’s chief offender in a geometry of curving space.”
    She interrupted him with a laugh which tinkled with cowslip bells. “If it’s fertility you’re speaking of, then fatherhood is equally offensive. If you could find some devastating lure to draw men to the arms of older women… But then you’re tricking nature.”
    “I’m not expert in such matters,” he smiled, “but I sincerely doubt that there’s a Gresham’s Law of Love which states that better drives out good. Still, I must compliment you. I’ve never met a girl so young and yet so practical.”
    “Oh, I’m not practical at all, Doctor Ward.” She glanced through the doorway. “I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with your jacaranda tree. May I spread my sleeping bag beneath