A Creed for the Third Millennium Read online

  'The worst feature of the SCB lottery is the means test placed on all applicants for second children. Who is to say which group in the community will make the best parents of two children. A certain amount of material comfort is good, I suppose, especially since education is so prohibitively expensive after secondary school. But we can't run a country entirely on graduates, especially when the average age of the manual tradesmen in the country is far higher than the average age of teachers or computer technicians. We need our few young to become plumbers and electricians and carpenters as well as sociologists and surgeons.'

  'The means test has added an extra element of unnecessary rancour to the SCB lottery. Unlucky people can always level a charge, no matter how ill founded, of collusion, bribery, string-pulling, whatever. Because the means test weeds out those not in a financial or social position to have influence.'

  Mortification had already set in with his hostess, it showed in her too-bright eyes and her uneasy pose; now he increased it by raising his voice slightly, and letting it show his disapproval.

  'But that wasn't what you really asked, was it? You asked what qualifications I have to condemn the way the unlucky applicants treat the lucky ones, so I gather you yourself condone the means test. And quite clearly you condone this abhorrent attitude of malignity and revenge.'

  He leaned forward in his chair, dropped his head, put his arms on his knees and stared down at his hands loosely folded between his legs. So his voice was very low, though quite audible.

  'What qualifications do I have?' he asked. 'No, indeed I can never be a mother. But I am the parent of two cats, the maximum number the law allows me. Both neutered as kittens, since I had no wish to apply for a breeder's certificate. Yes, I am the parent of a male cat named Hannibal and a female cat named Dido. Beguiling creatures, Hannibal and Dido. They love me very much. But do you know what they do with most of their time? They don't wash themselves. They don't hunt mice and rats. They don't even tuck their paws under their bodies and doze the hours away. My cats are ledger keepers. A his ledger and a hers ledger. And they scribble, scribble, scribble. A typical day's entry from Hannibal's ledger might read something like this: "Dad put her plate of food down first this morning. She got four pats to my three when Dad came in for lunch. When Dad came in for dinner tonight he picked her up and ignored me. And she got to sleep on Dad's bed while I was forced to make do with a chair nearby." Dido's ledger for the same day might read more like this: "Dad put more food on his plate this morning. When he left for the clinic after lunch Dad gave him six pats and me none. Dad sat with him on his knee for half an hour after dinner. And when Dad went to bed he put him on a special chair while I had to make do with the bed." Yes, my cats do that every day of their lives. They waste their days watching each other to see how much of my attention each gets. Weighing me up — and to the last tiny scruple! And every slight, real or imaginary, is entered in their ledgers. Scribble, scribble, scribble.'

  He lifted his head and looked straight at the camera. 'So all right. I can put up with this kind of mean-spirited pettiness from my cats. Because they are cats. They are a lower form of life than L Their manners and their ethics are based on instinct and self-preservation. In a feline brain there is little room for any image outside the self. And when it comes to love, the feline instinct is to keep a ledger.'

  His voice changed, freezing his hapless interviewer to her marrow. 'But we ate not cats!' he roared. 'We are far higher creatures than cats! We have feelings we can discipline, or learn to discipline. We can apply logic to our baser emotions and cancel them out. Our brains are big enough to accommodate far more than just ourselves. And I say this to you! If our spirits are so mean that we must qualify love by keeping a ledger, then we are no better than cats. Any loving and caring relationship, be it husband and wife, parent and child, friend and friend, neighbour and neighbour, countryman and countryman, human being and human being — any loving relationship that counts how much is given against how much is received is doomed! That is animal thinking! And—' he turned to his interviewer so quickly she shrank away '—in my humble, completely unqualified opinion, it is beneath our dignity as men and women. To weigh one's own sorrow against another's joy and punish that other person for his joy versus our own sorrow — anathema! Do you hear me, woman? Anathema! I say to everyone, not only to you, cast it out!'

  ABC bought the segment from this small unaffiliated local station and showed it cross-country that night on their evening news. With two immediate results. The first was a joint directive from Congress and the President to the effect that the Second Child Bureau would abolish its means test at once. The second was an indignant flood of letters to Dr Christian from cat lovers who felt cats were much nicer, more loving and more worthwhile than any human being, including Dr Christian. There were two further results, much slower in surfacing; it became less socially condoned to persecute parents with second children, and the little allegory passed into the Christian myth where some very much more important things he said were quite forgotten.

  'I never knew you had any cats, Joshua!' shouted Dr Carriol to Dr Christian that evening in the helicopter as it whipped them from St Louis to Kansas City.

  'I don't,' he grinned.

  She didn't comment for a moment, then she said, 'No wonder Mama looked stunned! But I must say she handled it very well. Mama!' she shouted into the front seat, leaning forward. 'What a terrific actress you are, you villain! Telling that poor squashed girl after we got off the air all about Hannibal and Dido! A ginger and a stripey, for crying out loud!'

  'Well, I did think of making them Siamese!' Mama shouted back, twisting her head to laugh at her son. 'But then I decided that if ever Joshua should decide to keep cats, he would never keep a breed! Waifs and strays, that's Joshua!'

  'You're bound to be asked a lot more about Hannibal and Dido, Joshua. What are you going to say?'

  'Oh, I'll field the questions to Mama. I've appointed her the real expert on Hannibal and Dido.'

  'Ledger-keeping cats! Where on earth did you dig that one up?'

  'A friend,' he said tranquilly, and would say no more.

  Mobile and St Louis marked the emergence of what Dr Carriol later catalogued as Personality Three in the changing parade of Dr Joshua Christian. Personality One was the old original Dr Christian of purely Holloman days. Personality Two was the happy, fulfilled, intolerably energetic, people-guzzling Dr Christian of the first month after God in Cursing was released. The new personality was bewildered and slightly numbed, but still capable of flashes reminiscent of Personality Two; Personality Three was also more enclosed, more obdurate, more Messianic. But none of her knowledge of those three Dr Christians prepared Dr Carriol for Personality Four, waiting in the green room for an appearance still months away in the cold impenetrable future.

  He never spoke to her about his feelings on learning of the closure of the Holloman clinic, the dispersion of his brothers and sisters-in-law across the face of the globe in his service; all she had to go on in assessing the importance of this as a cause of the emergent Personality Three was his initial reaction when Mama had broken the news. He was shocked, most definitely. Dismayed too. Brokenhearted? That she did not know. Oh, she could reason shrewdly enough that like most people shot to sudden fame, he had never thought about its personal consequences, either for himself or for those around him; he had probably assumed that when the tumult and the shouting died down he would be at liberty to go quietly back to where he was before it all started. Besides which, the man had a natural humility and some sound scepticism about himself. It was possible he thought that despite his aspirations his success would be modest, or at greatest a flash-in-the-pan thing, quickly up, quickly down, quickly dead. But to turn overnight not into the object of a fantasy-based adulation, but into a super-guru, reverenced, thanked, respected — ah, that was a very different adjustment to make.

  So there were more than enough reasons to account for the emergence of Personality Three,
which Dr Carriol called the super-guru. And, in retrospect, more than enough for the emergence of Personality Four as well.

  Inside himself Dr Christian had abandoned any kind of self-analysis. His circumstances had simply turned him into a sponge, doomed to sop up every scrap of the hugely strong and pervasive emotions he now encountered on every hand.

  During the first few weeks he had indeed fared best, for his self-image was partially anaesthetized by the shock of sheer novelty and the remorseless travel, so many different faces and places. Then he stood outside himself enjoying himself, at a distance from the shabby, ugly, too-thin, too-dark scarecrow of a man who always seemed to be surrounded by people. And beneath the fantastic joy, all his revelling in this astonishing success, beneath the pleasure of knowing his aspirations fulfilled, a pool of sorrow waited. He so singularly unhandsome was told he was the handsomest man this or that woman had ever seen, he so unaware of his switched-on dynamo of a self was told how magnetic he was, what charisma he had, how mesmeric and hypnotic and electrifying and powerful and and and… The adjectives and the metaphors tumbled one on top of another into the formidable recesses of his brain like bits of glitter down a chute in a sequin factory.

  So how he felt, and what he thought, and who he became, and where he went, all were taken care of without his knowing volition. The tides of the sea of idolatry in which he found himself swimming, poor seal out of his element again, carried him hither and thither, too strong to fight against. The best he could do was try to remain afloat.

  The second and third engagements of the day in Kansas City were in close proximity to each other, a radio station four blocks from another radio station. When Dr Christian emerged from the first of the two, WKCM, his chauffeur-driven car was drawn up right outside the main entrance. Wherever he went such a car was laid on for him, not a real limousine, because the days of the limousine were long over, but a big comfortable government car nonetheless, all evidence of its legitimate owner removed.

  Mama had trained herself to leave wherever her son was two or three minutes early, so she would be installed within the car by the time her son came out. It was Dr Carriol's practice to march Dr Christian briskly and with great determination through the knots of people who always gathered outside, and thanks to this uncompromising escort service, all Dr Christian was able to do was smile and wave and call a few greetings before Dr Carriol had him safely inside the car, and the car moved immediately away.

  But this morning he baulked. The gathering waiting on the sidewalk outside Station WKCM was large enough to be called a crowd, thanks to the detailed itinerary the local morning newspaper had printed along with its front-page article about Dr Christian's visit to Kansas City. Half a dozen policemen had cleared a wide lane through the middle of the three or four hundred people who would otherwise have completely blocked Dr Christian's path from the doors of the radio station to the doors of the waiting car. It was shockingly cold, between a temperature of 25 degrees Fahrenheit and a strong wind, yet the crowd waited.

  Dr Carriol looked through the glass of the foyer's outer wall and locked her fingers firmly around Dr Christian's upper arm. 'Come on, we've got to be quick,' she said, pushed open the doors, and almost frogmarched him out.

  The moment he appeared the crowd sighed; some of the people in it began to call his name and reach out to him. But he was no movie star, and they knew it No one rushed forward, no one pushed, no one commenced a movement which would have ended in his being mobbed.

  Halfway across the sidewalk he baulked. And angrily he wrested himself from Dr Carriol's grasp.

  'I must speak to these people,' he said, turning to his left, where the crowd was thickest.

  Dr Carriol got her hand on his arm again, again was shaken off.

  'I will speak to them,' he said.

  'Joshua, you can't!' she cried, not caring how many heard her. 'You have an appointment in five minutes at WKCK!'

  He laughed, approached a policeman and touched the padded navy nylon of his parka almost caressingly. 'Officer, you don't mind if I talk to these good people, do you?' he asked, and in his next breath called to the crowd, 'Where is WKCK?'

  A dozen voices answered him; the policeman moved aside.

  Dr Christian laughed and spread wide his arms. 'Come on, walk me to WKCK!' he shouted.

  The crowd closed around him, but respectfully, awed and delighted and solicitous for his welfare. Uncertain as to how they should proceed, the police tagged along behind as Dr Christian and the crowd walked away.

  Dr Judith Carriol found herself alone.

  Mama wound down the car window and stuck her head out. 'Judith, Judith, what's the matter?'

  Dr Carriol swung round and strode to the car, shook her head at the driver preparing to alight, and climbed into the back seat unassisted.

  'Drive us to WKCK, please,' she said curtly. Then she turned to Mama. He's decided to walk, if you can believe that. In this weather! He wants to speak to the people. And he's going to be late. Shit!'

  He was late, half an hour. But such was his reputation that the radio station happily shuffled its programmes around to accommodate him, and the newspaper which was next on his schedule scrubbed a formal interview in favour of attaching a reporter to the swelling crowd which escorted Dr Christian from the second radio station to the town hall, where he was to give a luncheon speech. Word was spreading as WKCK ecstatically broadcast Dr Christian's unorthodox behaviour, with the result that people came from every direction.

  Impotent, Dr Carriol seethed in the background, only poor Mama available to listen, and since Dr Carriol was not a pointless talker, Mama listened to her thunderous silence. And shivered, not merely from the cold.

  But it was not until they checked into their new hotel in Little Rock that Dr Carriol had a chance to voice her displeasure in the privacy it demanded. Thanks to the continuous addition of new towns to Dr Christian's tour agenda, so far their progress had been in the nature of a will-o'-the-wisp; north today, south tomorrow, north the day after, east of the Mississippi one day, west of it the next. So after she finished chewing Dr Christian out, Dr Carriol intended to telephone Harold Magnus and ram a giant flea down his ear. To the effect that, while Dr Christian seemed willing enough to take on the extra load, several of the best people in Section Four must start plotting a logical route immediately. Places like Kansas City and St Louis were too far north; from Little Rock the tour must go southward and westward, thus avoiding the worst of what was promising to be a terrible winter.

  But first things first. And her primary target was Dr Joshua Christian.

  They had been given a suite for him, with two more rooms alongside it for the women, and Billy, independent of his own wise choice, on a lower floor.

  The moment the door of his sitting room closed behind the porter and Mama, she prepared for battle.

  'Just what did you think you were doing today, Joshua?' she demanded.

  In the act of walking through into his bedroom, he stopped and turned back, genuinely puzzled. 'What was I doing?'

  'This walking business! Shoving yourself into the middle of a crowd, for God's sake! You might have been shot!'

  His face cleared. 'Oh, that! I don't know why I didn't think of it before, Judith.'

  'What?'

  'Walking among the people. It's so obvious I could kick myself! It's with flesh-and-blood people that I do my best work. Oh, radio and television are fine in their place, but I've done the most useful of them already in Atlanta. These local stations aren't nearly as important as the local people. Today I did more good walking and talking to the people who came in person to see me than I could have done on a hundred local media shows.'

  She was flabbergasted, could find absolutely nothing to say in reply; she just stood staring at him.

  He laughed at her expression, came across to her and took her tight pugnacious chin in his hand. 'Judith, please don't spoil everything by making a scene! I know, I know, you're a punctuality nut, and you
like every little i dotted and every little t crossed well ahead of time. But if you want me to go on with this tour, its nature has got to change. I saw that the moment I walked out of WKCM to find all those people waiting for me in the freezing cold. I'm not doing this tour to give media ratings a boost, I'm doing it to help the people. So why am I insulating myself from them? Why am I spending my time looking into little glass lenses and talking into little wire meshes? Why am I travelling in a car? Oh, Judith, don't you understand? They came to wait for me in the freezing cold! Hoping I'd do just what I did, acknowledge them with more than just a regal smile and wave. When I walked among them, they blossomed like crocuses after a thaw. Today I — I really felt as if I accomplished some good. I didn't feel guilty or uncomfortable climbing into a car when they have none — I walked among them, and I was one of them. Judith, I loved it!'

  Her rage was all gone. No use fulminating when the reason made so much sense. What a long way up it was to his face! And what a comforting face it was, not beautiful, not sexy, not synthetic. 'Yes,' she said, her voice sad. 'I understand, Joshua. And I'm sure you're right.'

  To gain victory so easily rattled him; he had girded his loins for a real scrap, so now he didn't know what to say. Instead of saying anything at all, he swung her off her feet and waltzed around the room carrying her, he laughing uproariously while she squealed and struggled.

  Mama came in while this was going on, and almost wept with joy. It was all right, they were still on good terms, whatever resentment Judith had cherished was gone.

  The sight of his mother sobered him. He put Dr Carriol down immediately and brushed his palms together awkwardly. 'I've just won,' he explained lamely. 'Mama, from now on I am going to walk through every town I visit'

  'Oh, my God!' Mama tottered to a chair and collapsed.

  'It's all right, I don't expect you and Judith to walk,' he said soothingly. 'You can travel in the car.'