A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 28

  Dr Carriol gathered her tattered dignity about her and attempted a rearguard action. 'That's all very well, Joshua, but you have to be sensible too,' she said. 'You'll have to do a little radio and television, and the worst feature of all towns is that the main television stations are miles out. So you'll have to compromise by using a car to go to any venue more than a mile from the rest.'

  'No, I'll walk. No car for me.'

  'Look, be reasonable! We're five weeks into a national tour and we've got at least another ten weeks to go. Every day the tour gets longer, every day the powers-that-be decide it will be good policy if we include this goddam town and that goddam town… Joshua, it's got to end as quickly as it possibly can, or we'll both be dead from exhaustion! I'm already losing the war with Washington—' She broke off, aghast at her own indiscretion.

  He never even noticed. 'This is not a publicity tour! It's my life's work! It's what I was born to do! I was pulled out of Holloman and that other life to do this! I thought you said you understood!'

  'Of course I understand,' she said, but she missed the change in his outlook since Mobile and Mama's news. 'You're right, Joshua. You — are — right! Okay!' She put both hands to her head. 'No, not another word! Let me think! I have got to think.' And she went to a chair to sit, to compose herself, to think. 'Okay. We're in Little Rock, and we can't go north again. Winter's here with a vengeance. So we'll move south. We've got some relocation towns to do in Arkansas, then we'll head for Texas, after that New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Let's say twelve more weeks, maximum. But instead of spending one day in each town, we'll spend two, so you can walk without exhausting yourself. And we'll can the north completely.'

  This horrified him. 'No! That's not the way at all! Judith, we have to go north into the winter! The people who have stayed behind are going to need me more than anybody down south, whether they're on relocation or they've been in the south for generations. The northern cities and towns aren't dead yet, Judith. But after Washington's decision to make relocation six months instead of four, it's obvious they are going to die. So this year, hard on that news, think of how many people up there in the northern winter are trying to face a truth they haven't been able to cope with so far. They'll be afraid, they'll be depressed, they're feeling the ground has been cut from under them. No way do we go south! North it is, or nothing. Christmas in Chicago. New Year's in — I don't know — Minneapolis or Omaha.'

  'Joshua Christian, you're raving mad! You can't walk up there in winter! You'll freeze to death!'

  Mama added her mite, pleading tearfully, while Dr Carriol tried the more logical approaches.

  But to both women he turned a deaf ear, a walled-up heart. North he would go or nowhere. Walk he would.

  So north they went from Little Rock, working ever further into the depths of the worst winter the world had ever seen. Even on the Gulf coast there had been snow already; the northern cities were feet deep in it, and enduring one blizzard a week. But he walked. Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne. And he was right. The people turned out to meet him, and the people walked with him.

  At first Dr Carriol tried valiantly to walk with him, as did Mama. But neither she nor Mama had his reserves of fuel, for they weren't interested in burning themselves up or out. So while he walked, if possible she and Mama had themselves driven, or if not, they sat and waited for him in their hotel. They knitted, they chatted, they read. And they waited.

  The new schedule had stretched each town to three days instead of the old one, and after a while Dr Carriol and Mama admitted it was easier on them, if not on Joshua. They got to sleep longer, didn't change beds so often, and from Dr Carriol was removed the burden of keeping unfaltering vigil during the media appearances Dr Christian had almost entirely eliminated from his daily round. Billy the pilot was equally pleased at having more time between flights; he did his own engineering, and now he knew he could keep his little bird flying like a bird.

  And slowly, incredibly, Dr Christian worked his way towards the southern tip of Lake Michigan. His appearance had changed somewhat. He remained cleanshaven and he liked to keep his hair short, but instead of the shabby beanpole in tweeds of the 'Tonight' show, he was now a polar explorer. He walked very fast. Five miles an hour on a good day when conditions favoured walking. By walking fast he kept no more than twenty people around him at a time; they would stride alongside him for perhaps two hundred yards, then fall away, and be replaced by others waiting along his well-publicized and well-prepared route.

  The efficiency of all the local city authorities in keeping Dr Christian's path physically clear may have given Dr Christian a false impression of general conditions in the north, an impression reinforced by the cessation of the blizzards that had come one after another earlier in the winter. For in Decatur he announced that he was going to dispense with the helicopter.

  'I'm going to walk from one city to another,' he said.

  'God Jesus in heaven, Joshua, you can't!' Dr Carriol literally screamed. 'Decatur to Gary at Christmas? You'll freeze to death! And if you don't freeze to death, you'll be weeks on the road! What happens if a blizzard catches you? You know we have to gear everything around blizzards, from flying to walking. Why the hell do you think we've given ourselves so much time all of a sudden? Oh, Joshua, Joshua, please be sensible!'

  'I walk,' he said.

  'Oh no you don't!'

  Dr Carriol's raised voice penetrated through Mama's wall; she came in timidly, afraid of what she might learn but convinced it was worse to stay in her own room wondering.

  Dr Carriol turned to her at once. 'Do you know what this — this idiot wants to do? He wants to walk from Decatur to Gary! And what happens if he's caught in a blizzard? Are we supposed to hover above him all the way to snatch him up? Mama, doesn't this son of yours have any sense? You talk to him! I give up!'

  But Mama didn't talk. The image of her husband's frozen, perfectly preserved body rose up in front of her as clearly as if it had been yesterday they called her to Buffalo to go through the countless corpses in search of Joe. Only in her mind the frozen body wasn't Joe; it was Joshua.

  Memories pushed and crushed and squashed, memories of the thousands of others like herself plodding from one stiff cold thing to another, the muffled sobbing, the sudden keening of an identification, the hideous hope that maybe — just maybe — the loved one wasn't there after all, but still snowed in in some lonely farmhouse. Until the moment. The face.

  She went into hysterics, screeching, howling, yammering, beating herself against walls and furniture like a great golden moth. Neither her son nor Dr Carriol could get near her, they had to stand by helplessly and let her bruise and break herself into the relative calm of huge and stormy weeping.

  It sobered him; from somewhere very dim and ancient he grasped at a memory, of his father. Of his father who — who froze to death in a blizzard?

  'We'll use the helicopter between cities,' he said to Dr Carriol abruptly, and went into his bedroom.

  Thanks! thought Dr Carriol, left to cope with Mama. If that isn't typical of a man, even a man as different as Joshua Christian!

  So violent had the hysterical seizure been that Mama was still partially insensible when Dr Carriol and her son loaded her into the helicopter. Obtaining medical help in strange towns was difficult in this weather, and perhaps in a way it was better for Mama to run the full gamut of physical distress. Certainly by the time Billy helped her alight in Gary and passed her tenderly to her son, she was able to speak without hiccoughing her way into a fresh storm of tears.

  'Dearest Joshua,' she said to him as he helped her across the ice to shelter, 'you can only do so much. You're only a man. Flesh and blood and bones. So do a sensible part of what you'd like to do, because that's all you can do.'

  'But I'm missing the farmers!' he pleaded.

  'Not all of them. It's amazing how many manage to get into whichever town you're visiting. Don't forget that your book is out there in the farmlands. It's going
to all the places you'd never be able to reach if you lived to be two hundred years old and kept walking the whole time.'

  Billy the pilot, hand firmly under Dr Carriol's elbow to help her keep her footing, followed mother and son across the ice at a discreet distance.

  He was of them yet not of them; still a serving member of the armed forces with the rank of master sergeant, he had been seconded to the President's helicopter fleet three years before. When Dr Christian was allotted government transportation, Billy was handed over to Dr Carriol because he was engineer as well as pilot. The days were long gone when parts and repair services for machines as sophisticated as helicopters could be found in most places.

  And much to his surprise, Billy had found himself enjoying working for this mad bunch of people. Instead of buzzing placidly around the Washington skies or taking Presidential VIPs south somewhere, he was really flying the bird. Not to mention acting as errand boy, purchaser of underwear and outerwear, mechanic — it sure was an interesting life. After Mama joined the party Dr Christian transferred himself into the spare front seat alongside Billy, leaving the two women together in the back; and, as is the wont of men thrown together, they became friends despite their very different backgrounds and outlooks.

  On the ground Billy kept himself very much to himself. He didn't dine with them, he didn't travel in the car with them, he didn't stay in the same hotel as them if he could help it. And all his spare time he spent with his beautiful bird. Tonight he knew something was very wrong, of course, but it went against the grain to ask. However, the formidable Dr Carriol was a kind of Service person, so when he found himself escorting her, he did nerve himself to ask.

  'Ma'am, what's up?'

  She didn't try to sidestep. 'Dr Christian is being a little difficult,' she said. What an understatement! 'He wanted to walk from Decatur to Gary.'

  'You're kiddin'!'

  'I wish I was. You probably know from the articles about Dr Christian that his father perished in a blizzard. So when Dr Christian told his mother he planned to walk from town to town in future, she went off the deep end. I'm glad she did. It brought him to his senses. I hope!'

  Billy nodded. 'Thanks, ma'am.' They had reached the small building at the edge of the helipad, and Billy gazed around its unwelcome interior. 'Here we go again!' he said, but to himself. 'Gary, Indiana, on Christmas Eve. Man, I gotta be crazy too!'

  10

  As Dr Joshua Christian in Wisconsin and Minnesota walked through forty-below weather during January of 2033, Dr Carriol chanced a separation and flew back to Washington. It was high time she checked at first hand what the current feelings were in the corridors of power about Dr Christian; besides which, she knew she must have this break, or break down. Billy got her as far as Chicago, where she caught one of the scheduled priority flights out of Chicago bound for Washington. Thank God for Alaska! And the Canadians! So much experience and equipment meant things could be made to function in all weather save the worst blizzards — at least on a limited scale.

  Moshe Chasen met her at the airport. There was snow on the ground here too, but compared with where she had come from its six inches were a mere powdering, and the temperature was in the high twenties Fahrenheit, a real heat wave. And to see dear old Moshe's big broad rugged face almost triggered tears. My God! What's the matter with me? Am I so tired? Am I so at my wits' end?

  Dr Chasen had followed the soaring star of Dr Christian with bated breath ever since Dr Carriol had filled him in about Operation Messiah. Proud as if the man had been his own son (his own son was a marine biologist living in Haiti), he revelled in the twin feelings of self-vindication and his candidate's vindication. What a man! Did he have charisma, or did he have charisma?

  However, when the first month of Dr Christian's progress became the second month and Dr Chasen realized that the tour was going to be very long, then realized that the tour was going north into this terrible winter, he began to experience twinges of doubt. After that he worried. What was with Joshua, trying to do what no man could do? Yet Joshua kept right on doing it! And what was with Judith, to let him do it?

  'Shalom, shalom!' he cried, kissing Dr Carriol on either cheek and tucking her arm through his.

  'I didn't expect to be met,' she said, blinking.

  'What, not here to greet my Judith? Meshugge! The ice has got into your brain.'

  'You are absolutely right, it has.'

  He had a car, evidence of her increasing importance; oh, that was a consolation!

  Until they reached her house in Georgetown they did not speak again, Dr Chasen contenting himself with sitting and occasionally squeezing her hand, sensing her despondency and appalled that he sensed such an alien mood in her. Judith Carriol despondent? He hadn't thought it possible.

  What paradise it was to walk into her own dear house, flop down in one of her own dear chairs, look at her own dear pictures on her own dear walls.

  'All right, Judith, what's going on?' Dr Chasen demanded after Dr Carriol had prepared them hot toddies.

  'How can I tell you when I've given up asking myself the same question?'

  'Whose idea was it, this walking through the snow?'

  'His, of course. I'm pretty hard-driving, Moshe, but even I couldn't push another human being to that kind of self-torture!' she said tartly.

  'I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't really think you were capable of it, but on the other hand I didn't think he was, either. He struck me as more sensible.'

  She laughed, not a happy sound. 'Sensible? Moshe, he doesn't even know the meaning of the word! Oh, he did once, but that was a long time ago. B.B.'

  'B.B.?'

  'Before Book'

  The phone rang. Harold Magnus, impatient and edgy.

  'The President wants to see both of us tonight,' he said.

  'I see.' She debated whether to ask, decided she had better. 'Is he displeased, Mr Magnus?'

  'Hell, no! Why? Is there any reason he should be?'

  'Not at all. I'm a little distraught at the moment — weeks and weeks on the road get to you, you know. Especially if you're not calling the plays, but just running interference.'

  'Wisconsin and Minnesota in January? I'm not surprised. Would you like a special heating allowance to put some warmth back into you, Judith?'

  The first gesture of genuine thoughtfulness the man had ever made her! And the first time he had ever called her by her given name. Sufficient evidence to deduce the President was anything but displeased.

  'Believe it or not, I'm inured to the cold,' she said, and laughed, again not a happy sound. 'Thank you for the offer. I may take you up on it about next June.' Another laugh, more a dry cackle. 'It's going to take that long to thaw out enough to feel heat.'

  'Meet me here at five-thirty,' Harold Magnus commanded.

  She hung up and turned to Moshe Chasen. 'A royal summons to the White House. Six o'clock, I presume.'

  Dr Chasen drained his glass and rose. 'Then I'd better get out of your hair. You'll want to bathe and change.'

  'I'll see you tomorrow, Moshe. We can talk better then. Take the car and have the driver drop you home. By the time he gets back here I'll be ready.'

  'Are you sure I should use your car for myself, Judith?'

  'Positive! Go, go!'

  Tibor Reece was grinning from ear to ear. 'Well, my dear Dr Carriol, your Operation Messiah has certainly given the people of this country a boost! I am delighted.'

  'So am I, Mr President'

  'Who gave him the idea to walk? Brilliant!'

  'He thought of it all by himself. I'm healthy enough to tell myself I'm a very dedicated person, but going where he is — I would never have dreamed of walking.'

  Harold Magnus pursed his rubbery lips, blew through them in a way which made them audibly vibrate. It was an irritating habit, but the only one who ever had the courage to tell him so was his wife, and he never took notice of her, let alone believed anything she said.

  'I wonder if you fully realize what
you've just said, Dr Carriol?' he asked. 'Walking is crazy! You don't think he's heading that way, do you?'

  Tibor Reece had one great weakness; he always interpreted the deeds and actions of others in terms of himself. Since he was no altruist and possessed superb political acumen, it rarely got him into hot water, but it was there just the same, waiting for the right opportunity to trip him up. 'Nonsense!' he said vigorously before Dr Carriol could formulate a reply. 'It's the exact right thing to do. In the same situation I would have done it myself.' He put his glasses on and turned to a sheaf of papers lying on his desk. 'I won't keep you, but I did want to thank you personally for Operation Messiah. I think it's working magnificently, and I congratulate you both.'

  Today there was no question as to whether Dr Carriol would walk back to Environment; today she had her own car and driver, waiting just behind the Secretary's vehicle.

  'I want to see you in my office,' he said as he separated from her at the edge of the driveway.

  'I want to see you too, sir.'

  Of course Mrs Helena Taverner was on duty when Dr Carriol walked into the Secretary's suite of offices. Dr Carriol gave the woman a smile and looked at her watch pointedly.

  'Don't you ever go home?'

  Helena Taverner laughed, blushed. 'Well, he keeps such odd hours, Dr Carriol, that's the trouble. And I live quite a way out. If I'm not here, he wrecks every system I've got looking for something. So I have a couch in my private rest room, and I use it.'

  'As long as you do,' said Dr Carriol over her shoulder.

  Harold Magnus was behind his desk, waiting.

  'Right. Total candour if you please, Dr Carriol.'

  'You shall have it, Mr Secretary.'

  'You're not a bit happy about the situation, are you?'

  'No.'

  'Why? Tangible evidence aside from the walking?'

  'Difficult to answer. After all, I christened it Messiah myself, so why should it worry me if he does indeed shows signs of becoming Messianic?'