A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 16

  There was a brief cut to the lovely face and tear-bright eyes of a young-middle-aged woman (His mother,' sotto voce from Dr Carriol), then the picture returned to Dr Christian.

  'I asked him if he had any religious persuasion at any time, and he said no, that his family had abandoned religion when nuclear weapons began to stockpile three generations ago. But he had done some reading. He could tell me the names of the innumerable ways that have been fought in God's name with His bishops in the vanguard — he even told me Allah's wars and Jehovah's wars! He threw the Chosen People myths in my face, he reeled off the various religions still extant which teach that only their adherents can be saved. Saved from what? he asked. He despised God, he said — an interesting contradiction, isn't it? Then he told me I was not his first port of call on this desperate voyage for help. He had gone first to his wife's minister of religion, from whom he had never bothered to conceal his contempt for God. And the minister took great pleasure in telling him his child had been taken from him as a punishment! I ask you, how could a fellow man appealed to by one in such pain have repaid the compliment by such an answer? The old vengeful God, alive and still dwelling in our midst. How far have we come? I ask myself. That is the answer a man might have been given three thousand years ago, when there was a great deal more excuse for human ignorance! You would think that by this day and age Man must surely have come closer to understanding God than the behaviour of that so-called Christian minister would indicate, wouldn't you? To attribute such mean, petty, spiteful vengefulness to a Being as far from where we stand now as we are from our arboreal ancestors — I tell you, I despair! Not of God, but of Man!'

  The anguished twisted face was abruptly removed by a split second of darkness, then replaced by a face fair and beautiful as the mother's, but male ('His brother Andrew,' sotto voce from Dr Carriol). 'Forget that, Josh,' said Andrew. 'What did you do to help?'

  The picture returned to Dr Christian. 'I sat down with the poor wretch, and I talked. I talked and I talked and I talked. Trying to help him find the truth in understanding, and a God he could accept.'

  Another picture change, another and different male face, like Andrew but less striking ('His brother James,' sotto voce from Dr Carriol). 'Did you get anywhere?' James asked.

  Back to Dr Christian. 'A little. But I had nothing to send home with him except the memory of my words, and memory is treacherous. I'm going to see his wife in their home tomorrow, but again I can't stay with her twenty-four hours a day, and anyway, neither of them is really in need of my professional services. They just want a strong and understanding heart beside them constantly through the first and darkest days. And in such situations, my book would be of more help than I in person, because my book won't leave them. It will be there in the middle of the night, when the pain is worst and the loneliness most appalling. I'm not trying to say my book has all the answers, but at least it is written for people who must live through these days. It's utterly relevant, and I know it can help because I know how many people I've managed to help by being there in the flesh.' He laughed, a broken, almost sobbing sound. 'You know, a book is a little like the loaves and fishes — it can feed the multitude.'

  Dr Carriol stopped the videotape player and gave a manuscript copy of Dr Christian's book to the President, then got up to give a second copy to Harold Magnus.

  'The Atticus Press is publishing this in the autumn, with a full publicity tour by the author — radio, television, newspapers, magazines, personal lectures and appearances. It's too early yet to have any readers' reports on the manuscript, this is a rough draft and maybe not very fair to the author, but it's well worth reading nonetheless.'

  Harold Magnus was leaning forward incredulously, furious to discover that he was going to have opposition where he had most trusted for support — hadn't he made his message strong enough to her as they drove over? 'Dr Carriol, are you trying to say that this man — this Dr Joshua Christian — is your choice for the job?'

  'Oh, yes,' she said calmly, smiling.

  'But it's ridiculous! The man's an unknown!'

  'So,' she said deliberately, 'were Jesus Christ and Mohammed. So it took a few centuries to get the Christian and the Muslim balls rolling. But in this day and age we have more facilities to make an unknown man known than ever in the history of the world. If the winner of Operation Search is not already famous, we can make him famous literally overnight, and you know it.'

  The President had gone very still, and hooded his large dark eyes. 'Dr Carriol, five years ago I gave you and your people the job of finding me one person — man or woman did not matter so long as he or she was the right person — one person capable of teaching a sick nation how to heal itself. A person with his finger on the pulse of the common people, capable of firing their imaginations as no religious figure seems capable of doing any more. Now you yourself are talking religion!'

  'Yes, Mr President'

  'What the hell is going on?' roared Harold Magnus. 'No one said anything about religion!'

  Dr Carriol rounded on him. 'Oh, come on, sir! Surely you must have realized by now that the only way to cure this country's ills is to give the people not a moral boost, but a spiritual one! The man we're looking for has to be possessed of a truly unique ability to influence the mood of the people, and when you talk that kind of influence, you're talking about spirituality, religious thought, God, whatever! We need an American approach to it, a contemporary approach to it, a code for living in this time devised for the people of the United States of America by a man they can call their own! A man who understands and appeals to them, not the Irish or the Germans or the Jews or any other group who came here, however long ago! If our asses weren't dragging on the ground, we wouldn't be here now looking at the results of one of the biggest and most expensive investigations ever mounted! But our asses are dragging on the ground!'

  Tibor Reece watched, his thoughts not deflected from the main business of the day, yet fascinated even so to discover what kind of people Judith Carriol and Harold Magnus really were. A man might have considerable congress with another man, and think he knew him well enough thereby, but nothing could beat a gloves-off altercation for showing up true colours. The little lady was a terrier; Harold Magnus was mostly bark

  'Look at this,' commanded Dr Carriol, abandoning the fray just when it was getting interesting. She pressed a button on her hand-held console, and the dull grey face of the video monitor blossomed into an image of Dr Christian, sitting at a desk this time. His face was drawn and tight, and the eyes suffered.

  'I don't know why I feel like this, Lucy, and I know I shouldn't even be saying it, but somehow I have always had a feeling that I have something more to do than sit here and see my poor patients. I fight it, mind you! It's too inside my own person, too self-oriented to be of good intent. Or so I keep trying to tell myself. But I know I have a mission! Something to do, Lucy! Something to do out there among the millions who don't even know I exist. I want to take them into my arms and love them! Show them someone cares! Someone — anyone — even me.'

  Dr Carriol flicked the Off button, and the video monitor died completely.

  'That man,' said Harold Magnus, jabbing his finger towards the expired monitor, 'is either a revolutionary or a maniac!'

  'No, Mr Secretary,' contradicted Dr Carriol. 'He is not by any stretching of the definition a revolutionary. At heart he himself is a very law-abiding man indeed, and his ethos is constructive rather than destructive. He doesn't hate. He loves! He doesn't burn. He bleeds! Nor is he a maniac. His thought processes manifest logic and method, and he is in firm touch with reality. I agree he may be a potential depressive, but if he's given the kind of work he obviously feels driven to do, he'll thrive.'

  'He comes across very powerfully on screen,' said the President thoughtfully.

  'His is the genuine brand of charisma, Mr President. It's actually because of the charisma that Dr Chasen and his team preferred him over Senator Hillier, and after my own persona
l contacts with Dr Christian, I am just as convinced that he's the only runner in the field. I could go on showing you clips of him talking all day, but I'm not going to. The two clips I have already shown you are relevant to Operation Search and its whole reason for being. The best backup I can offer is his book. You must read it.'

  'I take it you yourself have absolutely no doubts about Dr Christian's suitability?' asked the President, studying her closely.

  'None, sir. He is the only man with the characteristics necessary to see the job done the way it must be done.'

  'Hillier, Hillier!' growled Harold Magnus.

  'What about the Senator?' asked Tibor Reece, not of his Secretary for the Environment, but of Dr Judith Carriol.

  Dr Carriol put the remote-control panel down on the table to one side of where she was sitting, and leaned forward, her hands clasped on her knees. In this pose, but with her head lifted so she could stare straight at Tibor Reece, she spoke. 'Mr President, Mr Secretary, I am going to be absolutely honest with you. I can't offer you positive proof to back up my contentions, because my contentions are deduced from certain largely semiotic behaviour patterns only someone with my training and experience could properly assess. It is my firm opinion that Senator Hillier cannot be considered for this job for one reason above and beyond any charisma he may or may not have. Recently I spent an afternoon with him, very pleasantly, very easily. And I came away utterly convinced that the good Senator is in love with power for the sake of power. We dare not give this job to a power freak! That simple.'

  'Interesting,' said the President, whose face betrayed nothing of what he thought.

  'Also, the Senator doesn't have that slight streak of compulsive I-am-chosen about him, where Dr Christian does. You heard Dr Christian for yourselves. I think the I-am-chosen is essential. We agreed that we couldn't put a religious in this role because of two factors. The first, that a brand of religion prejudices all those who don't share that particular brand against the religious. The second, that we are in the midst of a terminal failure of existing religions to grasp and hold the feelings and the minds of the people. Yet the right man for this job must have a religious aura about him! In the old days, before cars, planes, computers, education for the masses, freedom from real pestilence, inside bathrooms and all the other trappings of our age, only a religious could have done this job. It is neither my place nor my inclination to comment upon our times in respect of religion, gentlemen. I know you're both churchgoing men, and I know there are still a few churchgoing people out there. But every single year they fall away in millions! The mild rise in church attendance that occurred during the last quarter of the last century was due apparently to the hawkish nuclear weapon policies of the men in office at the time, because with the removal of that threat, down went church attendance again. And down. And down. The latest statistics show that only one in every thousand persons will admit to a religious persuasion of any kind, and only one in every fifty thousand regularly goes to church. I'm not saying that whoever does this job has to bring the people back to God, but I do think there has to be a strong element of that in him. Dr Joshua Christian possesses the godly element, the slight streak of I-am-chosen, the charisma, and a great deal of down-to-earth common sense as well. He's not all up in the heavenly clouds, as you'll find out soon enough when you read his book. It's stuffed with the practicalities of life as well as the metaphysics: how to make a boarded-up house beautiful, how to live with the cold, how to make the most of relocation, how to deal with boards, bureaux, committees, councils and the like, how to fill the vacuum of huge chunks of leisure, how to treasure yet not spoil a single child — great stuff! In the book you'll also discover how much love there is in Dr Christian for all the people of the world, but particularly for the people of his own country. He is first, last and always an American.'

  'Important,' said Harold Magnus, listening but still chewing over what Dr Carriol had said about Senator Hillier. Clever, clever woman, Carriol! That had been exactly the right thing to say to an existing President about the fundamental nature of a potential rival.

  'We agreed five years ago that we have to do more for our people than we are, yet we have to find a way of doing it that isn't going to cost us untold millions we just don't have. We're too committed to Project Phoebus to split off money it can't spare. So why not offer the people someone they can believe in, not as a god, not as a political axe grinding away, but simply as a good, kind, wise man! A man who loves them! They have lost so much of what they once had to love, from plenty of children to comfortable permanent homes to long summers and short winters. Gone! Yet is this the Sodom and Gomorrah retribution for generations of sin, as so many churchmen would have the people believe? That kind of explanation doesn't go down any more. Most people are not convinced they're wicked and won't be convinced they're wicked. They live largely decent lives, and they've come to expect credit for that. They don't want to believe that they must pay for generations of sin simply because they happen to be around at the beginning of the new millennium. They don't want to believe in a God Who they are told has sent an ice age to punish them! Organized churches are human institutions, and the best evidence for that is the fact that each and every one of them claims to be the only true church, the only God-guided church. But the people for whom they exist these days are sceptical, and if they accept a church at all, it tends to be on their terms rather than the church's.'

  'I take it, Dr Carriol, that you are not a churchgoer,' said the President dryly.

  She stopped at once, her heart accelerating as she did a lightning calculation as to whether she had said too much, too little, or simply the wrong thing. Then she drew a deep breath. 'No, Mr President, I am not a churchgoer,' she said.

  'Fair enough,' was all he answered.

  She read that as a signal to change course, and did so.

  'I guess what I'm trying to say is that no one seems to tell the people they are loved any more, even the churches. And a government can care, but by definition it can't love,' she said. 'Mr President, give them a man who isn't out for personal power, or aggrandizement, or financial gain!' She unclasped her hands, and straightened. 'That's all, I guess.'

  Tibor Reece sighed. 'Thank you, Dr Carriol. I am going to go through the seven candidates you have offered me by name, and I want you to give me your opinion about that man or woman in a very few words. I now understand Operation Search a lot better than I did, and I'm happy to admit it. But can I ask you one thing?'

  She smiled at him gratefully. 'Of course, sir.'

  'Did you always understand the purpose of Operation Search so well?'

  She chewed her answer over before she spoke it. 'I think so, Mr President. But since meeting Dr Christian, I maybe see the overall pattern better.'

  He stared at her. 'Yes.' Then he put on his reading glasses and picked up the seven files. 'Maestro Benjamin Steinfeld?'

  'He's been the darling of the musical intelligentsia too long for the good of his ego, sir.'

  'Dr Schneider?'

  'I really think she's too tied to NASA and Project Phoebus to cut the cord.'

  'Dr Hastings?'

  'I doubt whether we could divorce his image sufficiently from the football field, sir, which is a pity, because the man himself is worth a lot more than football.'

  'Professor Charnowski?'

  'In some ways he's a very liberal person, but I think he's still too committed to the old form of Roman Catholicism to be able to give the way our man must.'

  'Dr Christian?'

  'For my money, he's the only one, Mr President'

  'Senator Hillier?'

  'A power freak.'

  'And Mayor d'Este?'

  'He's a good man, a most unselfish man. But his attitude is just too parochial.'

  'Thank you, Dr Carriol.' The President turned to his Secretary for the Environment. Harold, have you any comment other than that you favour Senator Hillier?'

  'Only that I don't like the way religion has
crept into the picture, Mr President. It's a hot potato, none hotter. We may be biting off more than we can chew.'

  'Thank you.' The President nodded to both of them, a signal that the meeting was over. 'I'll get back to you with my decision in a week or so.'

  Outside the White House Dr Carriol discovered the extent of the Secretary's ire. He had always known she did not favour Senator Hillier, but he had not expected her to be so vigorously outspoken to the President, and of course he had no idea that a Dr Joshua Christian was going to upset his applecart. He and Dr Carriol had travelled over from Environment in the Secretary's comfortable Cadillac, during which short journey he had thoroughly briefed Dr Carriol on procedure.

  Now he demonstrated the extent of his ire by climbing into the car and waving his driver to shut the door in Dr Carriol's face. She stood on the sidewalk and watched the vehicle purr away down to Pennsylvania Avenue, turn the corner eastward, disappear. Oh, well! Easy come, easy go. It was back to Environment on foot, then.

  The President's decision came through only four days later, and its overture was a command that the Secretary of the Environment and Dr Judith Carriol should present themselves at the White House to see Mr Reece at two in the afternoon precisely.

  This time Dr Carriol walked over as well, for no message came down from the Secretary inviting her to share his car, and she was not about to go cap in hand, asking. Luckily it was warm and sunny; how lovely to see an early spring! But how depressing to consider May an early spring in this part of the country. Cherry blossom time was just over, but the dogwoods were still two weeks off flowering; however, the grass was smothered by daffodils, and enough small trees were in bloom to make the walk a joy.