A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 10

  She smiled. 'A bit garbled at the end, but I get it.'

  He didn't smile; she found herself wondering if indeed he had much sense of humour, and concluded he probably didn't.

  'It isn't enough any more to live with self at the sole centre of the personal universe. If it ever was,' he said, half to himself. 'Spiritually the Communists are very much better off than we, because they've got the State to worship. We love America passionately, but we don't worship it. Our people must find God again. They must learn to live again with God and self at the centre of their personal universes. Only not the same old Judaic God distorted by yet another recutting. He's been demolished and put together again by so many men — Paul, Augustine, Luther, Knox, Smith, Wesley — and on and on. And He was a graft in the first place, between the God of the Jews and the Roman pantheon. He's a human concept. Yet God is not human! God is God, is ever and always simply God. I tell my patients, believe. I tell them, if they cannot believe in any existing concept of God, then they must find their own concept. But they must believe! For if they don't, they will never be whole.'

  Dr Carriol caught her breath, visited by an enlightenment so clear and defined she saw a whole world unfolding; not a visitation from God, any God, but a visitation from her own intellect. Without knowing it, he was telling her how and what to do.

  'Oh, bravo!' she cried. Unimpelled by her conscious brain, her hand went out to rest on his. 'I would dearly like to see you get your chance to prove your contentions, Joshua Christian!'

  He blinked, taken aback at this fervid response after so much cool listening (he was not, he realized, used to cool listening). Then he stared down at the white slender sinister arachnoid fingers curled around his own; he removed them gingerly with his other hand. 'Thank you,' he said, rather lamely.

  The mood was over. He had pulled down the shades and switched off the light, even to himself.

  She rose to her feet. 'Time to go back, I think.'

  That night in her room Dr Carriol paced the floor, oblivious to the chill; the heating had been cut back severely at ten o'clock. All good guests were supposed to be abed and snuggled down by then, and if they were not, they had perforce to suffer the consequences.

  Damn fool thing she did, touching him! From the moment he felt her hand he had shied away from her as if from acid. This was not a man to appeal to through his hormones. But still, if he could provoke a Judith Carriol into putting out her hand in the first place — what a man!

  And somewhere between the midnight moon and the rising of the sun all misgiving vanished. Dr Joshua Christian, unknown, untried, was the man. What a man. The man! If he could affect her that way, he could affect millions. No doubt about it. And finally she understood how tortuous were the ramifications branching out from the central conception behind Operation Search. Maybe all along her subconscious had divined what the overall pattern must be, but the layers of thought that had risen higher than that part of her she called her living consciousness had never sniffed down the alleyways and corridors she saw stretching away now. Yes. He was the man.

  From here on in it was merely a question of logistics, getting the man to his millions. Something was working in his mind already, he was warm wax that only needed shaping.

  However, a major overhaul of the relocation system was not the answer. He was the answer, complete in himself. In him they would find all their answers. In him they would find healing for their pain. And she was going to give him to them. She. No one else.

  Somehow the woman had spoiled the whole of the rest of his day, thought Dr Christian, lying in his bed between layers of down. It was not easy any more, controlling the tides that flowed sucking in and out of his mind and tossed the frail ship of his soul up and down and around as if he the person he the being he the living house no longer possessed true validity compared with that awful force working within him. All wondering and afraid, he debated the nature of that force, whether its origins were internal or external, whether he had generated it, or it had generated him, unknowing and uncaring, to fuel him and use him and toss him aside when his purpose was fulfilled.

  He had to search. Through this long winter he had thought and thought and thought. That his time was running out, that he had something to do. But what? He didn't know. A mission? He didn't know! Yet he was aware that he would not be able to resist himself much longer. Resist himself doing what? He didn't know! He just didn't know what he had to do or how he had to do it.

  And what was the significance of the woman? Such a very unusual woman, Judith Carriol. Mysterious. Her eyes were like lustrous but opaque pearls, layer upon ultrathin layer that a man would have to keep peeling off forever to come at the kernel of truth in their centres. Still and lissome, elegant and remote. Leonardo da Vinci would have used her instead of La Gioconda to produce his most memorable painting. Though indeed she was a painting. A self-portrait. The question he should be asking himself was, How cunning was her hand as artist? She had been wearing violet, a colour exactly opposite to the colour of her eyes, a colour that shaded her thick white white skin with exquisite opalescent subtlety, and made her hair seem blue-black.

  When she had touched his hand with her hand, he had undergone a presentiment. Not a thrill of the flesh; more the opposite, a thrill of the unflesh. And in the throes of the moment he knew she possessed meaning for him. So he became instantly hideously afraid, and recoiled from her. Now he lay without sleeping, thinking of all the things he least wanted to remember. He had his niche, he was happy and content in it. But why had she come this winter, the winter of his discontent, and made his vague restlessness more lonely and acute? Why had she come now? Patterns. Of course there was God. How else could a single thread make so much sense out of so much randomness?

  She was not young. Forty, at least. He was good at delving beneath a well-preserved exterior to guess at real age. It would have been better had she been young. Youth was easier to spurn, youth was insecure and could be brought to blame itself without questioning why it was spurned. She was psychically perceptive, she was a knowing one. Not one to be turned away without a valid and intelligent reason. He didn't know why he should feel so incredibly strongly that he must succeed in turning her away, that he must go back to Holloman and the predictable tenor of his days. Could a man read his future in a woman's face? Could a future be so great, so awful?

  Mama. I want my mother! I want my family! Why did I refuse to let James come with me? Even Mary would be better than this isolation. Why did I congratulate myself on slipping their delicate loving and serving leash?

  And as the night wore on his eyes grew sloppier, their lids more willing to be flaccid. O sleep, great healer, take this pain from me! Give me peace! And sleep did. The last conscious vestige of thought he remembered when he was awake again was a steadfast resolution. That he would not let her steal his soul. That somehow, no matter what, he would remain his own man.

  They both slept in, so neither of them went to the trial of Eddie Marcus the following morning. And they met quite accidentally at the street corner beyond the motel, he coming back from a walk, she starting out.

  They stopped to look at one another, her eyes eager and bright and young, his eyes apprehensive and tired and old.

  Then he turned and began to pace alongside her.

  'Part of you,' she said, her breath spreading as white as the snowy world, 'is very happy in Holloman.'

  His heart lurched as his mind recognized the beginning of the fulfilment of a presentiment. 'All of me is very happy in Holloman, Dr Carriol.'

  'After listening to you through lunch yesterday, there's no way I can believe that. There's at least one part of you which cares too much about the whole world to be happy living and working in Holloman.'

  'No! I have no wish to be anywhere else or do anything else!' he cried loudly.

  She nodded. In violet she had been enigmatic; this fine, agonizingly cold morning she was triumphant in scarlet. 'That is undoubtedly true. Just the same, I want
you to come to Washington with me. Today.'

  'Washington?'

  'I work in Washington, Joshua. The Department of the Environment. I am the head of Section Four, but I suppose that news doesn't tell you a thing.'

  'No, it doesn't.'

  'Section Four is the Environment think tank.'

  'Then you have a very responsible position,' he said, not knowing what else to say.

  'Yes, indeed I do. I care about my job, Dr Christian.' She seemed unaware that a moment before she had called him Joshua. 'I care enough to risk a rebuff, enough even to persist in the face of a rebuff. Because you are trying to rebuff me, aren't you?'

  'Yes.'

  'I know you're a loner. I know what a brilliant little clinic you have in Holloman. I know you're completely dedicated to the individual approach. And I am not trying to wean you away from your chosen life and work, believe me. I'm certainly not about to offer you a job in Washington, if that's what's worrying you.'

  Her voice was beautiful, deep and lazy and tranquil; it washed over those who heard it like a fall of silk, and it could if it wanted mitigate the effect of the words it uttered. As it did now. Listening to it, Dr Christian began to relax, to think of his fears if not as baseless at least as too morbid. She wasn't trying to persuade him to leave Holloman for good!

  'I want you to come with me to Washington to meet one of my very dear colleagues. Moshe Chasen. You won't know the name, because he's not in our field. Moshe is a purely statistical analyst working in Section Four. On relocation. Since lunch yesterday I have done nothing but think about what you were saying, and I am very concerned that you and Moshe should meet before he gets into stride. You see, I have just given him the task of completely reorganizing relocation, and he's groping for the right direction to head. Come with me today! If he could talk to you, it would be a godsend for him.'

  He sighed. 'I have too much work in Holloman.'

  'Nothing that can't wait a week, or you wouldn't have come to Hartford to sit in on a trial,' she countered.

  'A week?'

  'Just a week.'

  'All right, Dr Carriol, you can have your week. But not one minute longer.'

  'Oh, thank you! My name is Judith, if I didn't tell you that already. Please call me Judith! Because I intend to call you Joshua.'

  They turned back towards the motel. 'I'll have to go home first,' he said, thinking that might shake her.

  But she had no intention of letting him shake her. 'All right, I may as well come with you,' she said, linking her arm through his cosily. 'We can catch the night train from Holloman straight through to Washington. It isn't even out of our way.'

  'I'm not booked on the train.'

  She laughed. 'No problem! I have priority status.'

  Dr Christian had no choice save to give in.

  They caught the noon bus from Hartford to Holloman with ten seconds to spare, Dr Carriol sitting carefully hugging her glow of victory within her, Dr Christian sitting silently wondering what he had let himself in for.

  He didn't like being away from the clinic, though there was really no reason why he couldn't absent himself more often than he did; and she was inarguably right when she contended that he could spare the time to come to Washington if he could spare the same space of time to sit in a court. How to explain to her that the Eddie Marcus trial had been in the nature of a small vacation? And that a trip to the federal capital complete with serious conferences would be anything but a vacation? She was pushy, not the sort to take no for an answer once she had made up her mind to get a yes. He detested the feeling that he had been and was still being manipulated by her, yet on the surface he had no grounds for calling her conduct manipulatory. However, gut instincts were feelings he respected deeply; and his gut instinct about this trip to Washington was to get out of it at all costs.

  She elected to walk the mile from the Holloman bus depot to 1047 Oak Street, declining to let him carry her suitcase.

  'I travel light,' she said, 'on purpose, so I don't have to stand around looking weak and helpless, waiting for a nice man to rescue me. Such a waste of time!'

  Outside his twin dwellings he lost his courage, a typical bachelor son unable to face his mother's inevitable curiosity. So he took Dr Carriol into 1045 instead, put both their suitcases down in the back stairwell, and ushered her soberly through the inner door. What had originally been the kitchen of the bottom apartment was now a reception and waiting room. Empty. Thank God! They tiptoed through into the hall.

  Just as they approached his office, Andrew came out of it and stood stock-still, astonished.

  'Back so soon? What happened?' But his eyes were on the woman behind his brother, too smartly clad in her scarlet to be a Holloman woman. She smacked of a big prosperous city.

  'Judith, this is my youngest brother, Andrew. Drew, I'd like you to meet Dr Judith Carriol. We were at the Marcus trial together, but Dr Carriol thinks it's more important that I go to Washington than kibitz in Hartford. It seems she's got a week's work for me to do.'

  'Dr Carriol! What a pleasure!' said Andrew. A startlingly handsome young man who looked not a scrap like his brother, he stepped up to her with hand extended. 'Of course I know who you are, I've read your papers. James! James!' he called.

  And then there were flurries of greetings, all that family she had read about in Dr Christian's dossier and mentally catalogued as X or Y or Z. Much as she had expected. Yet she had greatly underestimated the quality of the relationship between Joshua Christian and the rest of them. They — reverenced him. He voiced a wish, and they were at once galvanized. He moved his hand, and they sprang to attention. How then had he managed to escape the taint of egocentricity? He had escaped it! But after a while she decided he simply didn't notice. To him, his family's behaviour was absolutely normal. It was the way his world worked, had always worked. So he didn't attribute it to any personal power or authority; he just assumed he was filling the role his mother must have assigned him upon his father's death. His mother. Dr Carriol was dying to meet his mother, about whom the file was quite informative.

  She did meet his mother, but only after several hours had elapsed with patients and discussions and a general tour of 1045, from its waiting room at the bottom back to the occupational therapy rooms which filled the entire top floor. What a coup to have collared Miriam Carruthers! So this was where she vanished when she suddenly gave up her massive teaching job at Columbia!

  The clinic was, Dr Carriol decided, the neatest and most self-sufficient setup of its kind she had ever seen. You couldn't beat a family business when the members of that family loved working together and regarded one member as undisputed leader. And after watching Dr Christian deal with a new patient, she could appreciate better the disclosures in his file about a cult following. He had no professional mannerisms, because what most others in his line of work had to be taught, he knew by instinct. And his patients sensed that. They also drew enormous spiritual strength from him. No wonder the old patients she talked to had never really lost their closeness to him, or their sense of belonging to an inner sanctum. The difference between a superlative clinical psychologist and the rest of the breed lay in a combination of personality and insight into the workings of minds other than his own. Dr Christian knew how people ticked, he felt the depth of people's pain, and he loved people far more than he loved himself. Or his family. Poor family. He gave and he gave, but obviously always to strangers.

  Given the world to deal with, she thought as she walked with him across the bridge from 1045 to 1047, he would bend the world. Only he must never suspect the world was given to him; he must always think he found it for himself.

  Mama gushed and cloyed and simpered out of pure quietly frenzied nervousness; Mary had warned her of Dr Carriol's advent hours earlier, and with considerable enjoyment — and a little embroidering of the truth. So Mama, tickled pink that her son had finally brought home the woman of his choice, and a fitting one at that, brilliant, sophisticated, in his own field �
�� Mama gushed and cloyed and simpered. No fool, Dr Carriol guessed why his mother was so flustered; during a lull which occurred just after Mama had persuaded them to remain long enough to eat dinner, Dr Carriol found her eyes resting on Mary. Joshua Christian's only sister was standing well back from the group, and she was watching her mother's antics with dour — contempt? shame? Fair of face was Mary, but dark of soul; not evilly dark, not even maliciously dark, just dark because probably no one had ever kindled her light. In any family there always had to be one member less remarkable, less noticed than the rest; in the Christian family, that member was Mary.

  His dossier had said nothing about the rest of the family's spectacular frost-fair good looks. Dr Carriol made a mental note to circularize all the members of Section Four's investigative staff with a tart reminder that files were about human beings and therefore interesting comments on human physical characteristics were not only permissible, but mandatory. However, a large photograph of Joshua's father in a pale-green, gold-speckled Murano glass frame on a lacquer side table in the living room set Dr Carriol's unspoken doubts to rest. He was the image of his father. The offspring had all thrown purely to one or the other parent, an interesting fact in itself.

  How very beautiful his houses were! The bottom floor of 1047 especially was like walking into a Rousseau painting of the jungle; it had the same unreal symmetry and magnified perfection of leaf, no spot of brown or curled edge or bare dead limb. If lions and tigers had appeared, and the place suggested they well might, they were sure to have a round-eyed Rousseau moonishness about them, not devoid of fang and claw, yet innocents in Eden. How could one remain sick of soul in this so beautiful environment? The future unrolled before her eyes in one staggering revelation after another, all named Joshua Christian. A way of living, an ideal of living, a place of living…