A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 31

  He nodded; whether he heard was debatable.

  'Joshua, would you be willing to lead the people in a walk from New York City to Washington?'

  That did penetrate. He turned his head to stare at her.

  'The winter is finally over, and spring is here for those parts of the country that see a real spring any more. And the President feels that with the severity of the winters increasing, the length of the summer shortening, and the mood of the people still frail in spite of all your good work… Well, he feels you could really jolt them into a — a summer mood, for want of a better description. You could do this by leading as many of them as would be willing to walk on a pilgrimage to the centre of government. And he feels that New York City is a logical starting place. It's a long way, it's going to take days. But after it's over you can rest for the whole summer knowing you've — oh, how can I describe it? — finished your long tour with a colossal upsurge of enthusiasm?'

  'I'll do it,' he said at once. 'The President is right. The people need some extra effort from me at this stage, my ordinary walking isn't enough any more. Yes, I'll do it.'

  'Oh, that's splendid!'

  'When?' he asked, indicating that he had really heard.

  'A week from today.'

  'So soon?'

  'The sooner the better.'

  'Yes. Well.' He ran his hand across his hair, which he now wore in a short crew cut to save time drying it of a morning; where he had been was no climate to venture out in with damp hair. Not, Dr Carriol suspected, that this was what had motivated him to cut it so; rather he seemed to have developed an instinct for every kind of self-punishment, everything unflattering. The crew cut did not suit him at all; it accentuated his jailbird pallor, his concentration camp emaciation, and it made what was actually a very thick head of hair look thin and dull.

  'We'll leave for New York right after we've finished here in Tucson,' she said.

  'Whatever you say.' He got up, walked off towards a cluster of bee-besieged almond trees.

  Dr Carriol stayed where she was, hardly able to believe that it had been so easy.

  In fact, if one could only set aside his growing mental oddity, all of it had been ridiculously easy. His book still sold in the hundreds of thousands, and those who bought it not only read it, but kept it to treasure. No one had ever tried to molest him. No one even harangued him! And wherever the lunatic fringe was dwelling in these days when admittedly little was left to attract the lunatic fringe, they had avoided Dr Christian like the plague. How great was the measure of his success, how many people had turned to his concept of God, could be seen in the way some very important personages had climbed on his bandwagon, from television greats like Bob Smith and Benjamin Steinfeld to political greats like Tibor Reece and Senator Hillier. The Second Child Bureau was minus its means test. Relocation was in the midst of massive change. And, on a less earth-shaking scale, a letter from Moshe Chasen relayed two bits of Washington scuttlebutt, the first to the effect that President Reece had dumped Julia after talking to Dr Christian, the second that it was Dr Christian responsible for the radical — and apparently very successful — change in the treatment of President Reece's daughter.

  Well. Dr Carriol slapped her hands upon her thighs, an I-give-up gesture. Perhaps no one would ever be in a position to evaluate exactly what had grown between Dr Joshua Christian and the people he had elected to serve. Even in the foreseeable future. He was the brightest object in the sky, a comet to whose glittering tail she was tied like the merest tin can. All she saw and felt were the cooled sparks spinning in his wake.

  To Moshe Chasen had been given the job of organizing the March of the Millennium. Oh, not in the flesh. On the computer his wife always reckoned he should by rights have married. But Dr Chasen was growing steadily more worried, not by the March of the Millennium, which was a piece of cake logistically speaking; by what was happening to Dr Christian — and to Judith Carriol. The promised meeting the day after he had picked her up from the airport the previous January had not eventuated, nor did the weekend visits to Washington John Wayne had told him she planned to make. She never wrote, and when she phoned she vouchsafed no real information. The only lengthy communication he received from her was a coded computer telex sent from Omaha in which she detailed the format of the March of the Millennium and gave him his instructions. Section Four was suffering somewhat in her absence, for she was unique, they had all come to understand that. John Wayne kept the administrative end up and Millie Hemingway was pinch-hitting on the ideas end, but without the serpentine presence of Dr Carriol some vital zip and snap and fizz was definitely missing.

  Of course they all knew where she was, and somehow too they all knew her mission was at the President's behest. A lot of correct arithmetic had gone on after Dr Joshua Christian popped out of the Holloman woodwork to take the country by storm, especially on the part of those who had worked on Operation Search. The name Operation Messiah was never bruited, so the leaks were not so much leaks as the inevitable exchange of snippets of knowledge between friends in Section Four. Millie Hemingway had clammed up a week after Dr Christian commenced his publicity tour, and poor old Sam Abraham had been shipped to Caracas on a special teaching mission. But their chief researchers were still around Environment in Dr Chasen's own employ. Loyal people, but people were still people.

  Then came the March of the Millennium. The whole concept not only staggered Dr Chasen, it appalled him. A brilliant, blatant bit of hype was how he read it. Then, his hands poised to screw up the yard-long computer telex Dr Carriol had sent from some Omaha keyboard direct to his own terminal, he changed his mind. Hype it was in her brain, the clever devil, but in the hands of Dr Joshua Christian it would take on a dignity and importance in keeping with its breath-taking size. He would obey orders for Joshua, not for Judith. For Joshua he would whack out a dream of a failproof plan. For Joshua. Not for Judith. He loved her as the ideal boss, always; as a friend, sometimes; as a child, never. He also pitied her, and he was a man whom pity moved unbearably. For the sake of pity he would perform Herculean tasks; for the sake of pity he would forgive what love would find unforgivable. A devout Jew but nonetheless the most Christian of gentlemen, his sins were purely sins of omission and due to thoughtlessness or lack of perception. Yet in the matter of Judith Carriol he sensed what no one could have perceived: the impoverishment of a spirit that in order to survive had set up its self as a totality.

  However, his worry did not prevent his getting down to work on planning the March of the Millennium. What he produced was forwarded to Millie Hemingway, who annotated it, and added to it, and then forwarded it to Judith Carriol by coded computer telexes. Dr Carriol had done the final work during the hours she spent sitting in cars and hotels waiting for Dr Christian to return from his walks. And the result was indeed millennial in its scope, its care, its vision.

  The privilege of announcing the March of the Millennium was given to Bob Smith, who broke the news on his special birthday edition of Tonight' at the end of February, 2033. Bob had adopted Dr Christian as his own creation. Every week on his Friday show he had a film clipping of where Dr Christian was, complete with mini-talks to those who had spoken to Dr Christian while he walked. There was a new 'Tonight' backdrop to the guest podium, a giant illuminated map of the United States, with Dr Christian's tracks wandering all over its southeastern and middle and northwestern sections in emerald green, and the towns he had visited lit up in starry crimson, with the states he had touched pale shimmering pink, versus the dull white of states he had still to visit.

  All through March and April the publicity built up, carefully orchestrated by the Environment think tank, which had bought time on all the networks. The spirit of the March of the Millennium was extolled, the difficulties of marching explained in meticulous detail, along with exhaustive descriptions of the various facilities available en route. Brilliantly produced one-minute commercials showed exercise programmes to fitten up prospective marchers, meditatio
n programmes to get marchers into the right mood, medical programmes to aid potential marchers in making the decision whether to march at all. Every supermarket and department store was inundated with bits of paper and instructed to place them free of charge on every counter; these bits of paper included maps of the march route, maps showing the various transportation schemes to get marchers from home and back home, leaflets of advice on what to carry, what to leave home, what shoes to wear, what clothes to wear, what headgear to wear. There was even a wonderfully stirring theme melody in two-four time, entitled simply 'The March of the Millennium', and composed on commission by Salvatore d'Estragon, the great new operatic musical genius, whose well-earned nickname at the Met was Spicy Sal. A satyr he might be, decided Moshe Chasen after hearing the composition, but there was no doubt it was the best piece of musical patriotism since Elgar wrote his 'Pomp and Circumstance' series.

  They brought Dr Joshua Christian to New York City in the middle of May, while the wind still moaned up the sunless streets and the last ice still lingered in every patch of perpetual shade, for it had been a very long, cold winter. He refused to make the short trip from New York to his home in Holloman, though Mama begged and begged. All he did after he arrived in the city was sit in the window of his room high in the Pierre and count the paths he could see winding through Central Park, then count the people he could see walking those paths. And walk, of course. He hadn't given up walking.

  'Judith, he's so sick!' said Mama after he had gone to bed on the first night after they arrived. 'What can we do?'

  'Nothing, Mama. There's nothing can be done for him.'

  'But a hospital — surely there's some kind of treatment he could have?' Though she asked it hopelessly.

  'I don't know that sick is the right word, even,' said Dr Carriol. 'He's just — gone away from us. I don't know where he's going, and I don't think he knows either. But can you call that a sickness, even of the mind? His is not like any mental or physical illness I've ever heard of. And one thing I do know. Whatever it is he suffers from has no cure outside of himself. After the March is over I'm hoping he will agree to go away somewhere for a complete rest. He has not stopped in eight months.'

  Even as she spoke to Mama, Dr Carriol knew perfectly well that Dr Christian was indeed going to rest after the March. It was all arranged, the private sanatorium in Palm Springs, the balanced regimen of diet and exercise and relaxation. A week out of Sioux Falls she had sent the heavies back to Washington; she could tell beyond a doubt that they were not necessary. Curse herself for that insane outburst of rage she might, but undoubtedly it had served one purpose; it had capped the well of fire in Dr Christian that until then had seemed in perpetual threat of eruption.

  James and Andrew and their wives were scheduled to come to New York to make the March of the Millennium, but Mary arrived from Holloman first, with the same end in mind. The moment Mama set eyes on her only daughter she was hideously reminded of Joshua, for she saw a person changed out of all recognition — growing, yet not growing familiarly; bedevilled, but not by familiar devils.

  And then hard on Mary's heels the others arrived. Both the younger brothers had mushroomed in self-confidence and initiative, separated for the first time from their too-powerful senior sibling and their suffocatingly single-minded mother. They had tasted the very special freedom of being at liberty to alter Joshua's ideas to suit their own ideas, secure in the knowledge that the changes they had wrought were safely abroad and would therefore never be drawn to Joshua's attention. Oh, Joshua's ideas were wonderful, but they didn't always fit the foreign mentality any more than his choice of words always fitted the foreign language. Big clumsy clever Miriam had grown in concert with James, but Martha the Mouse came back still Martha the Mouse.

  Of course when they arrived at the hotel, Joshua was out walking somewhere; the first ecstasies of reunion between them and Mama were over by the time he returned. Dr Carriol had absented herself too, aware that the last place she wanted to be when Joshua walked in was there amid the Christians.

  So Mama had a small breathing space between the younger children and Joshua. It was not a happy respite. She stood wondering where her family was at this moment, versus where it had been at the same time two years earlier. Long before Joshua had his restless winter, long before he went to the Marcus trial, long before he produced Judith, long before the book. It's the book. It's all the fault of that wretched book. God in Cursing! Never was a book more aptly named. God has cursed the Christians. And God has cursed me. But what have I done to deserve His curse? I know I'm not very bright, I know I'm a rather wearing woman and I get on people's nerves, but what have I done to deserve His curse? I brought up my dear children alone, I never gave in, I never cried for mercy, I never stopped looking into the future, I never took time out for myself to find a lover or a husband or so much as a hobby, I never turned my face away from trouble and pain. Yet here I am, cursed. I shall have to spend the rest of my life on this earth in the company of my one daughter, and that will be hell, for she hates me as much as she hates Joshua, and I don't even know why she hates us!

  Joshua just walked in and stood looking at the little knot of his family clustered against the brilliant backdrop of sky through a window, aureoles fuzzing their silhouettes, faces invisible. He said nothing.

  The eager chatter died instantly. The faces turned. The faces changed.

  And then, before anyone could gather together an expression of joy and welcome, Martha fainted. The giant pair of hands Dr Christian used to fantasize as delivering a stunning clap had materialized. She didn't moan or sway or sweat or gag. She dropped to the floor as from a blow.

  It took quite some time to bring her round, and by then everyone had his or her reaction to Joshua well under control, could disguise their distress by pretending it was distress for Martha. This Belsen victim could now be appropriately greeted as a long-lost and intimidatingly famous brother. But the Mouse they had to take away, Mama fussing and clucking until Mary just lifted her aside and shut the bedroom door in her bewildered face. Shut her in the sitting room with James and Andrew and Miriam and Joshua. Shut her in with her ruined world.

  'Are you all coming with me to Washington, then?' asked Dr Christian, stripping off his gloves and unzipping his parka, laying them on a table.

  'You couldn't keep us away with a team of horses,' said James, and blinked quickly several times. 'Oh, dear, I must be tired!' he exclaimed. 'My eyes are watering terribly.'

  Andrew turned away, yawning and rubbing his face. Then he cried with an exaggerated start, 'What am I doing here, can you tell me? I should be with poor Martha! You'll excuse me, Josh? I'll be back.'

  'I'll excuse you,' said Joshua, and sat down.

  'Yes, indeed, we are certainly walking!' cried Miriam with great heartiness, thumping James on his bowed back with loving gusto. 'You walked through Iowa and the Dakotas, we walked through France and Germany. You walked through Wyoming and Minnesota, we walked through Scandinavia and Poland. And everywhere the people came, just as they did here. It's so beautiful, dearest Joshua! A miracle.'

  Dr Christian looked at her out of alien black eyes. 'To call what we do miraculous is a blasphemy, Miriam,' he said harshly.

  A silence fell; no one knew what to say to break its dreadful clutch.

  At which moment Dr Carriol opened the outer door and walked in. Even not knowing what exactly to expect, she was startled to find herself descended upon by a loudly yelping Miriam and an unusually demonstrative James, with Mama fluttering just behind them, and Joshua sitting limply in a chair watching the gyrations as if they were happening on a very old, very dim, silent piece of celluloid.

  Mama ordered coffee and sandwiches, Andrew came back, and they all sat down except Joshua, who chose that moment to go to his room, for what purpose he didn't say. Nor did he come back. But they said nothing about him to Dr Carriol. Instead, they concentrated upon the March of the Millennium.

  'It's under control,' she
said. 'I've tried for weeks to persuade Joshua to rest up beforehand, but he won't hear of it. So the walk starts the day after tomorrow. On Wall Street. And he'll walk from Wall Street mostly up Fifth Avenue, crossing to the West Side at 125th Street and taking the George Washington Bridge into Jersey. Then down I-95 to Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore and finally Washington. Once he's on I-95 we've worked out the perfect way to keep him apart from the crowd yet very much among it. We've had a high wooden boardwalk constructed down the median divider, and we'll let the people walk on either side of him, but below him on the road itself. All normal truck and bus traffic will use the Jersey Turnpike. I-95 is better for our purposes anyway, because it goes through the cities rather than around them like the Turnpike.'

  'How long do you think it's going to take?' asked James.

  'Hard to tell. He walks very fast, you know, and I can't see him consenting to having his mileage planned ahead of time. He outdistances most people quickly, which I imagine he wants to do, as it gives new people a chance to be with him all the time. I don't honestly know, because he's never discussed the actual technique of his walking with me. Anyway, we've got a comfortable camping complex geared up to follow him, and as soon as we have an idea of when and where he's going to finish each day, we'll put the camp down as close by as we can. A park or some other public land. There's plenty.'

  'What about the people?' asked Andrew.

  'We estimate most people will only want to stay with the March for one day, though there's bound to be a nucleus who will stick with Joshua right to Washington. New people will join the March all the way down I-95, and we're going to make sure these people have a chance to walk with Joshua for a mile or so before he outdistances them. Transport is laid on every inch of the way, so people dropping out will be able to find their way home fairly easily. The National Guard is looking after food and shelter and medical emergencies, while the Army will have the responsibility of keeping people moving in an orderly manner. We have no idea how many people will actually turn up to march, but we're catering for several million. Oh, not all at once — all told. However, I think the first day will see a minimum of two million people turn out to march at least some of the way.'