A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 32

  'If Joshua is going to walk on a high pathway, won't he be a sitting target for assassins?' asked Miriam quietly.

  'That,' said Dr Judith Carriol with great deliberation, 'is a risk we've decided to take. Joshua refuses to walk between two shields of bulletproof plexiglass, which is what we originally planned. He also refuses to cancel the March, and he refuses an escort on his walkway. He says he'll walk alone, and unshielded.'

  Mama mewed softly, reaching out a hand to Miriam, who took it comfortingly.

  'Yes, Mama, I know,' said Dr Carriol. 'But there's no point in concealing this from you, you're better prepared. And you know Joshua! Once he makes up his mind, there's no shifting him. Even the President couldn't shift him on this.'

  'Joshua is too proud,' said Andrew between his teeth.

  Dr Carriol raised her brows. 'Be that as it may, I for one don't have any kind of feeling that he'll be attacked. Wherever he's gone, Joshua has always been a calming influence, and I couldn't begin to count the number of people he's moved amongst quite fearlessly and without any protection. Never a hint of an assassin! Hardly a crackpot! It's astonishing. Public response to the March has been uniformly good too. It's along the lines of an old-time Easter festival, I suppose, though it's too late in the year for Easter. But the winters are much longer than they used to be. Easter was the original New Year, the welcome to spring and the rebirth of life. So who knows? Maybe with spring coming later and later as the centuries pass, we'll end by changing Easter to coincide with the new date of spring.'

  James sighed. 'It's a new kind of world, for sure. So why not?'

  On the night before the March was scheduled to begin, the family split up early. Mama was the last one to go, after which Dr Carriol enjoyed sole possession of the big sitting room in the Christian suite.

  She went to the window and looked down on Central Park, where the first contingents of marchers were setting up camp, those who had come in from Connecticut, New York State, and even farther. Down there she knew there were mummers and minstrels, dancers and clowns, puppets and buskers and bands, for she had been walking herself; Central Park was harbouring the biggest gathering of commedia dell'arte the world had ever seen. Though it was cold it was not wet, and the mood of the campers was eager. They talked to each other freely, they shared what they had, they laughed a lot, they showed no fear or suspicion of strangers, they had no money, and they had no cares. For two hours she had moved among them, watching and listening, and it seemed to her that though of course he was not forgotten, somewhere along the way to this gigantic starting point, those who had congregated in the park had abandoned all thought of actually seeing Dr Christian himself. Everyone she had quizzed there felt that if they really did want to see Dr Christian, they were better off to remain at home and watch the March on television. Those who had come in person had come to be a physical part of the March of the Millennium.

  'It's my idea! I thought of this!' she wanted to shriek to them; but didn't; merely hugged her secret triumph.

  She had asked many how they were going to get home again, though she knew better than almost everyone that the Army had mobilized to undertake the most massive transportation of people in the history of the country. Simply, she wondered how many of these willing walkers had actually absorbed the weeks and weeks of preparatory messages. But no one seemed concerned about getting home again. They just figured they would, sooner or later; worry about getting home again was not going to be allowed to spoil their great day.

  Dr Joshua Christian had probably the least idea of anyone as to what was happening; how big his march was, how colossal an undertaking, how terrifying it might be if things went wrong. He was going to walk from New York City to Washington, D.C., and further than that he couldn't think Wouldn't think. Dr Carriol had told him that he would be expected to make a speech at the end of the march on the banks of the Potomac, but he wasn't dismayed or fearful. Words came so easily to his tongue, now as before. If they wanted him to speak, he would speak Such a little, little thing to do. Why did these little things he did mean so much? To walk — what was that except the most natural activity of all? To talk — how easy. To hold out his hands in comfort — a nothing. He could offer no real solace. That they could only find within themselves, among themselves. Yet wasn't that what they had been doing all along? He was merely a sounding board, a catalyst of the mass mind, a conductor of spiritual currents.

  These days he felt ill all the time. He walked in a most dreadful pit of physical and mental pain. Though he had told no one, nor showed anyone, he was indeed disintegrating. The bones of his feet and legs were beginning to flaw, jarred by the last months of walking without caring, walking without inner warmth. He had learned to tuck his hands inside his parka pockets when he walked, for in the first months when he had held them down his sides, his shoulders had begun literally to give way in their sockets. And his head was sinking into his neck, and his neck was sinking into his chest, and his chest was sinking into his belly, and his belly and his chest and his neck and his head were all sitting lumped on top of his creaking pelvis. When the fire had gone out because the vital ichor was all drained away, he had ceased to care for himself; too often he didn't bother to don the fresh underwear Billy bought faithfully, too often he forgot his socks, or he donned his trousers without noticing how the thermal layers beneath had rumpled and crinkled into hard little tubes along his skinny legs, around his skinny sides.

  It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He knew this great walk would be his last. And he had given up trying to think of what he was going to do with himself when he could no longer walk. The future had no future. When a man's work is done, when a man has burned himself out, what is left to him? Peace, brother, his soul answered tranquilly. Peace in the longest, soundest sleep of all. How beautiful! How eminently to be desired!

  Lying full length upon his bed in that last night before the March of the Millennium was due to begin, he worked the miracle of his mind upon his poor macerated body, softened to mush by the sweat he generated inside his polar garments. But cease thy complaining, O bones, leave off thy rawness, O skin, be gone from me with thy sharp pain, O spine, unknot thy ropy sinews, O muscles. I will lie in sweet oblivion, I will taste no more pain, I am not me, I am not anything, I am blankness, I am nonexistent. Lead weights of coins for Cheiron be on my two eyelids in readiness, stick fast my lashes, roll, O balls of my two eyes, within thy orbits, roll up and out of this conscious living agony…

  Just after the sun was risen on a chaste cushion of sweet and cloudless air, and the tops of the skyscrapers around Wall Street flashed golden and pink and copper, Dr Joshua Christian commenced his last walk. With him were his two brothers, his sister, his two sisters-in-law, and for the first few blocks his mother too, until her fashionable shoes forced her sore little feet to tiptoe quietly into the back seat of a car parked round the corner, under orders to trail the VIP walkers in case of distress. An ambulance also trailed the VIP walkers, in case of extreme distress.

  Liam O'Connor the Mayor of New York was walking and fully expected to finish the march, for he had been in training for weeks and had been quite an athlete in his youth. Not to be outdone, Senator David Sims Hillier VII was right in there beside the Mayor, also intending to walk to Washington. Governor Hughlings Canfield of New York, Governor William Griswold of Connecticut, and Governor Paul Kelly of Massachusetts were all walking, so determined to finish that they had been training since Bob Smith announced the March back in February. Every New York City councilman was walking, so was the commissioner of police, the fire chief, and the city comptroller. A large group of city firemen was walking in uniform, the American Legion had gathered outside the Plaza Hotel to join the March, and the band of the one remaining Manhattan high school was present, complete with cheerleaders and every other student to boot. Black Harlem's remains were assembled around 125th Street, and what was left of the Puerto Rican West Side was gathered at the entrance to the George Washington Bridge.
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  It was cold and there was a fairly sharp wind blowing from around the corners to pounce on the marchers, but on this occasion Dr Christian elected to walk with his head unhooded and his hands ungloved. He made no ceremonious start; he simply appeared from out of the hallowed portals of the bank where he had waited since well before dawn, strode out into the middle of the street without seeming to notice anyone, and kept on walking. His family moved in a group just behind him, the waving smiling dignitaries came next with the high school band to give them a tune, and then the thousands who had cheered Dr Christian's appearance tacked on obediently as the waiting police gave them leave to begin.

  Dr Christian was quiet and a little stern, looking neither left nor right; he lifted his chin and aimed his eyes at a point somewhere between the CBS and ABC camera vans as they cruised along in front of him, having outmanoeuvred NBC for the crown of the road. The media were under strict orders not to get in Dr Christian's way at any time, nor to attempt to interview him as he walked. No one broke the taboo, especially after the first four blocks, when no walking journalist had the breath left for questions. Dr Christian was walking very fast, as if the only way he could finish was to commence with a winding up that would allow him to coast later.

  Ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand, ninety thousand… Ever growing, the crowd came out of every side street as he passed to latch on behind, fed into the back ranks of the walkers by the soldiers and police who lined the way shoulder to shoulder, saluting Dr Christian very gravely as he came abreast of them, a continuous undulation of moving arms that went for miles. Their buttons and buckles and badges gleamed, their uniforms were freshly cleaned and pressed, they looked and felt wonderful.

  From SoHo and the Village issued a great stream of colourful people dancing to every musical instrument they could find, feathers in their caps, scarves floating in divers hues, beads and sequins and ribbons and fringes and braids glittering. A few precious helicopters hovered vibrating like dragonflies around the south end of Central Park, the cameras they contained picking up Dr Christian as he emerged from the canyon of Fifth Avenue with half a million people behind him spreading east and west along Madison and Park, Sixth and Seventh, moving two hundred abreast with eyes shining and teeth braving the Manhattan spring wind.

  And they tumbled out of Central Park in his wake, the out-of-towners who had camped and talked and laughed all night, pouring along and singing as they went. Those within hearing of the jazz bands strutted and cavorted, those near guitar-playing and lute-playing minstrels tried to follow their lays, whole hundreds dipped and rose like gangling birds in a ritual dance, while others marched militantly left-right left-right in time to brass bands, and some in the vicinity of flutes and pipes seemed to float. They walked on stilts. They hopped on pogo sticks. Some balanced on their hands. Many many just walked and enjoyed those who preferred more unusual locomotion. There were Harlequins and Pierrots, Bozos and Ronald McDonalds, Cleopatras and Marie Antoinettes, King Kongs and Captain Hooks. A group of over five hundred came dressed in togas and had a Roman general in full triumphal regalia perched atop a sedan chair they carried on their shoulders. Martial arts clubs came in their white baggy gear with various colours of belts. Horses and bicycles were outlawed, but there were wheelchairs galore with fox tails fluttering from the ends of makeshift wands and tinsel streamers bedizening their chrome utility. An organ grinder strolled tunefully along with his monkey on his shoulder, the monkey squealing and grimacing, the organ grinder singing in a cracked tenor voice. Three frock-coated gentlemen with stovepipe hats flaunting moth-eaten peacock feathers skittered along on unicycles because no one had thought specifically about unicycles and the frock-coated gentlemen won their argument with the police. A fakir on a bed of nails was carried by a saffron-wrapped, shaven-headed band of disciples, his hollow belly filled with water lilies. Several Chinese dragons a hundred people long weaved and caterwauled amid rattles and drums, cymbals and firecrackers. A black man seven feet tall clad in all the feathered beaded glory of a Zulu prince stalked through the crowd bearing his assegai, its tip rendered impotent by a block of cork painted and feathered to seem the skull of an enemy killed in battle.

  Dr Christian's pain-racked sobriety broke as he came up Fifth Avenue towards the Metropolitan Museum, where a big group of prospective walkers clustered. They began to pelt him with flowers — daffodils and hyacinths, a few last crocuses plucked dying from the grass, roses and cherry blossoms and gardenias. He turned aside from his determined onward plunge and crossed the great wide avenue to where they stood behind police and soldiers, and he reached his hands between crusty uniforms to take theirs, laughing at their joy, stuffing the flowers he had managed to catch behind his ears, in his pockets, between his fingers. Someone stuck a crown of big daisies lopsided on his head, and someone else flung a garland of begonias around his neck. He went on to the steps of the museum adorned the prince of spring, with their flowers all dredging his brain his flaring brain in perfume. Mounting the steps, he flung wide his arms, and his shouted words were picked up by the vigilant loudspeaker microphones the March's high command had commissioned just in case, his shouted words were relayed instantly to the walking masses and stilled them in their tracks, and they listened raptly.

  'People of this land, I love you!' he cried, in tears. 'Walk with me into this beautiful world! Our tears will make it paradise! Throw off your sorrows! Forget your griefs! The race of Man will long outlast the coldest cold! Walk with me holding the hands of all your brothers and sisters! For who can mourn the lack of brothers and sisters when every man is every man's brother and every woman his sister? Walk with me! Walk with me into our future!'

  Then on he went amid a profound roar of cheers, the flowers falling one by one on the road behind him, gathered up by those who saw them tumble so, and pressed between the pages of Joshua's book for all their browning tomorrows.

  On he went, the grotesqueness of his body disciplined into the long swinging rhythmic stride that ate up miles and defeated those who meant to keep up with him.

  He crossed the George Washington Bridge at noon and led three million people into New Jersey, a vast walking singing mass that had found a rhythmic cadence of its own, and squeezed itself across the two levels of the bridge with tranquil ease. They were following this pied piper of their dreams they cared not where, and worried not at all. Such a beautiful unique momentous day, on which they knew no trouble, and no pain, and no ache of the heart.

  It was here in New Jersey that the true genius of the March of the Millennium's high command displayed itself, for as Dr Carriol had said, he would walk the whole length of I-95 from New York to Washington atop a low-fenced elevated walkway that straddled the highway's median divider and raised him far above the throngs who marched down both sides of the road.

  'Hosanna!' they shrieked. 'Hallelujah! Bless you all of your days for loving us! God keep you and thank God for you, Joshua Joshua Joshua christian!'

  And they spread like a slow and sluggish delta of hairy brassy ball bearings, an ocean of bobbing heads, through the slag heaps and ancient industrial wastelands of dying New Jersey, through the old boarded-up towns of Newark and Elizabeth, through the green dairy meadows and the plaited strands of railroad yards, with Dr Christian at their head atop his walkway and all their cares forgotten somewhere behind them. They helped one another, they passed the exhausted out of their ranks very tenderly, they slowed down and dwindled away and followed him no more, passing the torch to those who waited to pick it up.

  Five million people walked that first day, never so many again, glad and free, lame and purged, happy and together.

  Dr Judith Carriol did not march. She remained inside the Pierre suite to watch the start on television, chewing her lips and feeling her purpose trickle away between her legs like a slow haemorrhage. When the head of the vast procession passed by beneath the hotel she leaned from a window and she watched it painfully, her eyes fixed on Dr Christian's bare bla
ck brush of a head. The sight of those assembled moving masses left her breathless; she had never before comprehended how many many people the world contained. Unable to understand the nature of genuine suffering, now she began to grope after it consciously, stimulated and annoyed by her own bewilderment. Yet her kind of intellect would never be capable of assessing quality; only quantity.

  And they walked on and on and on below her, half a day long, three-quarters of a day long, until the sun began to die, and the city crashed headlong into a hugely bellowing silence.

  The moment this desolation happened she went downstairs, crossed Fifth Avenue and entered the park, where a helicopter waited to take her to New Jersey. She would join her incubus at his night camp, wherever that might be.

  In the White House it was a ragged day, for the President's temper was ragged. He fretted at the nightmare thought of something going wrong, of that human sea going berserk for no good reason any one of the March's high command could predict, of some kind of magnetic eddy forming amid the unnumbered multitudes and dashing heads together like so many eggs, of a black speck of hatred festering undetected somewhere and erupting through the human cells in bloody waves of violence, of one lone fanatic bringing the sights of his rifle to bear on Dr Joshua Christian as he strode defenceless and exposed along his broad-walk