A Creed for the Third Millennium Read online

  And in the end he had two beams, one with its middle section halved in thickness, the other with an end section halved in thickness. He laid the one with the middle rabbet on the ground and lifted the one with the thin end over it, and joined the two rabbets together simply by resting one tie on top of the other. He fixed them permanently together with two spikes, though swinging the mallet was one long curve of agony that pinned him on an axis of time eternal. And he brought the mallet down so hard and strong and true on the splayed ends of the spikes that when he was done he found he had nailed his cross to the paving beneath it. He wept then, kneeling and rocking back and forth, but after a little while he grew calmer, and applied the same will to this new horror that he had to walking through the depths of winter. He fetched the axe head, wedged it underneath his cross and hit its flat hollow rear with the mallet. The cross came away, shifting a few inches sideways with the force of the blow.

  But now that he had made his cross he found that there was nowhere to take it, no convenient hole in the ground dug by a KP legionary with his Marius-issue shovel. No secure place where he could prop it against a wall and be sure it would not tumble over under his weight when he mounted it. Somewhere, somewhere… If he had made his own cross — and he had made his own cross — there had to be somewhere he could fix it upright.

  He found his answer at the beginning of the arched tunnel which led to the front door. In the middle of the top curve there was a great iron hook, where maybe in the old halcyon days of tobacco and tobacco kings they might perhaps have hung a brazier or a beacon.

  Back he went to his cross, picked up the axe head, wedged its blade deep into the join of his two interlocking rabbets midway between the two spikes holding the ties together. One blow from the mallet, and the axe head was embedded in the join so deeply even his weight plus the weight of all that wood could never budge it.

  The thicker rope he cut with the pocket knife, making himself a loop by threading it through the handle hole in the axe head. He knotted it and reknotted it and knotted it again, then used the ten feet of rope still dangling from the knot to drag his cross over to the arch. The hemp bit into his shoulder like a dull blade, his back humped itself, his legs and his feet and his toes pushed, pushed, pushed, all to pull.

  A chair. He couldn't go any further without a chair. Into the house, through one of the black wooden doors. Here was a dining room, with a black wooden table like a monks' refectory table, along each side of it a backless wooden bench. They were too heavy and too long; he could not manage to drag a bench through the doorway and turn it within the hall on his own, not now that his purpose was nearing its end, and his fevered burst of strength was dying too.

  In the fifth room he entered he finally found what he was looking for, a low backless stool, very big and square of seat, but only about fifteen inches high; a good height for the doing, a bad height to reach the iron hook. Getting the stool outside was so hard, took a long time considering the amount of time he had devoted to making his cross, a far harder task. His strength was running away. But he couldn't let himself be beaten now. Babbling and swaying, he called on all his last reserves, drumming his fists against his skinny sides in anguish, the tears running to join the sweat seeping into his writhing mouth.

  Finally he positioned the stool beneath the hook in the tunnel entrance. And climbed upon it, and threw his rope's end through the curve of iron above.

  The cross moved when he pulled on the rope, it came up off the ground at its top end where the T-junction was, and the buried axe head held without moving. Hauling on the rope, he stopped the upward progression of his cross while it still lay at an angle, knotted the rope to hold it there, and went to climb down from the stool. He fell, grabbing at the long vertical of the cross as it flashed by, then lay beneath it looking up at it, rocking uneasily.

  'I am a man!' he said fretfully, levering himself slowly upright again.

  In the shed he took the coil of thin twinelike rope and some of the nails and the pocket knife, still sprung from its sheath. Back to the cross. He drove two nails into each end of the horizontal top beam, first measuring the length of his arm against each side to ensure that the nails would sit on each side of a wrist. He bent the nails over outward, and fixed a loop of twine between them.

  One last task, and all would be ready. Done the way it had surely been done in reality two thousand years before, almost to the day. No man's weight could be held by mere nails, his flesh and small bones would tear apart; the Romans didn't make simple physical mistakes like that. The occasional nail they might have used to immobilize, but they tied their condemned to their crosses. As he would tie himself.

  He removed both top and bottom of the flimsy pyjamas, humming a little under his breath in happy pain-racked triumph, for he had shown the hidden watchers how a man could do the impossible. Yes, he had shown them, Pilate and his tiny army of practical Roman clerks, the high priests and the synod, the people. Let them watch now! Let them see how a mortal man with no more god in him than any other man could make and go to his dying!

  Standing on the ground, he finished hauling up his cross, and when it was fully upright the end of its vertical beam was neatly balanced on the wooden paving with which it was by nature one. He held the rope in his hand and clambered upon the stool; the cross was indeed so perfectly balanced that he didn't even need to steady it while he edged to stand on the stool, muscles groaning. The nether ends of the horizontal crosspiece just cleared the archway on either side. He hadn't considered the possibility that they might be too long, so finding now that they weren't was a confirmation of this most perfect of all patterns. Pulling the rope just taut, he wound it round and round itself in a hangman's noose, and knotted it securely. But he didn't cut off the surplus six feet of rope that still dangled from the end of the noose holding his cross to the iron hook.

  He had positioned his stool this time so that it just brushed the front of the vertical upright. Facing his cross, he brought the spare rope down behind the left-hand arm, pulled it through beneath the arm to the front of the cross, linked it very loosely over the front surface of the upright, pushed it back under the right-hand arm, and tied it with many knots to the left-hand side of the same rope. His cross now had a sagging piece of rope along its front just below the junction of the T.

  He turned around to place his back against the wood and look out across the courtyard, then bent his knees and worked his head inside the loop of rope, tucking it securely under his chin before straightening up. With arms outstretched he slid his hands beneath the twine at each end of the crosspiece; these loops were far too loose to hold his arms without their sliding out the moment they had to take any weight. But he had reasoned that also in this most insanely logical of all madnesses. His fingers groped for and closed over the excess twine, and tightened it until it bit into the skin cladding his wrists.

  'Into Thy hands I commend my spirit!' he cried out in a huge brazen voice, and kicked the stool away.

  The whole weight of his body dragged down immediately upon those three pieces of rope, the one across his throat and the two at his wrists, and he let his body feel its weight. Oh the pain was not so bad! No worse than pressing his arms down on top of the massive lumps of pus at their roots. No worse than Judas Carriol's kiss. No worse than all those endless miles of walking, walking, walking. And oh so much easier to bear than the pain of the burden, the grief of his calling, the long sorrow his mortality had been. No the pain was not nearly so intolerable as that!

  'I am a man!' he tried to declare, but man that he was, he could not for the rope which cut off speech and let only the thinnest trickle of air go down into his heaving labouring bursting lungs.

  And in his tormented mind the courtyard filled with people. His mother was there, so beautiful, kneeling looking up at him with the marmoreal restraint of perfect sorrow. James and Andrew, Miriam and Martha. Mary. Poor, poor Mary. Tibor Reece and a fat man he knew was Harold Magnus. Senator Hillier and May
or O'Connor and governors all. And Judas Carriol, smiling as she trickled a silver stream of perks and promotions from one serpentine hand to the other. The gates he looked directly at flew open with a clap of thunder, and there beyond stood all the men and women and pitifully few children of the world with their hands stretched out to him, crying for him to save them.

  'But I cannot save you!' he said to them within his slow, greying mind. 'No one can save you! I am only one of you. I am a man. I am only a man. Save yourselves! Do that and you will survive. Do that and the race of Man will live forever!' And the last word he knew was 'forever'.

  He died not from the rope around his neck but from the weight of his body dragging down so heavily as he wandered closer and closer to death and farther and farther away from consciousness of his burden, dragging down so heavily that he could not lift the webbed tissues on the bottom of his chest against this intolerable weight of himself, and so could not push the used-up air out of his lungs. He died gently asleep, a grey man on a grey cross in a little grey corner of the big grey world.

  It rained a little, greyly, and washed away the blood that spattered him, put a sheen on his colourless grey skin.

  He had been on the island for exactly three hours.

  13

  The last stage of the March of the Millennium began on that fine Friday morning in May with Andrew and James, Miriam between them, at the front of the cavalcade. They led the marchers out of the compound and into the road, followed by a bevy of waving, smiling governmental and military chiefs. No one had been too upset at the idea of stealing this last day's thunder from the absent Dr Joshua Christian, which may have accounted for the sheer width of the smile on the face of Senator David Sims Hillier VII, who somehow had managed to place himself alone in the road just behind the remaining Christians, and several paces in front of anyone else.

  All along the way as the people waited for the leading procession to pass by so they could tag on in its wake, the crowds gave that curious collective sound which is not a moan nor yet a sigh, but lies somewhere between. For Dr Joshua Christian was not there, and grand as this climax was, it could not be the same without him.

  Ever afterward in her more cheerful moments, Mama stoutly maintained that she led the March of the Millennium into Washington and down to the banks of the Potomac; for she was the most senior Christian of all, and she rode in the back of the ABC van as it ambled along in front, filming the faces and striding legs of the vanguard.

  Exactly at eight Dr Judith Carriol arrived at the White House and was shown immediately into the Oval Office, where Tibor Reece already sat watching his video monitors. The March was due to arrive at the specially constructed Vermont marble platform at noon sharp, so he had still several hours in hand before he would have to leave. He was sitting by himself.

  'I'm sorry, Mr President, I must be early,' Dr Carriol apologized when her eyes failed to find Harold Magnus.

  'No, you're punctual as always, Doctor. May I call you Judith?'

  She flushed, made a deprecating gesture with her hand, very gracefully and expressively and not at all reminiscent of snake or spider. 'I would be honoured, Mr President.'

  'Harold is late. The March, no doubt. They tell me it's well-nigh impossible to move out there on the streets for the hordes of people everywhere.' The President's dark mournful Christianesque face lit up with amusement. 'And I just can't see Harold Magnus walking, somehow.'

  'No, sir, nor can I,' she said demurely. Dr Christian's plight had slipped into the background of her thoughts, their forefront being taken up with the pleasantnesses she was at this moment drinking in. Thank you, Harold, for being late! I might never have got to see him alone otherwise. And I like him! Why couldn't Joshua have had his detachment and good sense? They're so alike in face and body. Still, a Tibor Reece couldn't achieve the oneness with his people that Joshua Christian did. The comparison is pointless and invalid.

  'What a grand thing this has turned out to be,' said the President warmly. 'Truly the most memorable experience of my life, and I am humbled to think it happened during my incumbency.' His Louisiana origins showed in his voice when he was moved, so he sounded suddenly very southern gentleman, the more recent California twang he had adopted to catch more votes quite gone. 'There is so little an American President can do to show his appreciation to those who have served him so faithfully and well, Judith. I can't create a peerage for you like the Australians, I can't grant you a dacha and paid vacations at premier resorts like the Russians, I can't even overturn the ironclad rules of the federal public service by bumping you up a couple of grades overnight. But I do thank you, and I can only hope my thanks are enough.' His eyes, dark as Joshua's and as deeply set, rested upon her extremely affectionately.

  'I've just done my job, Mr President. I'm well paid for it, and I love doing it.' God in heaven, which were the proper platitudes to mouth? And where the hell was Harold Magnus?

  'Sit down, sit down, my dear girl! You look exhausted.' The President of the United States of America fetched her a chair and handed her into it courteously. 'A cup of coffee?'

  'Sir, that I would appreciate more than a peerage!'

  And he fetched it himself, on a small silver tray with creamer and sugar bowl alongside a big full china cup.

  She drank it down thirstily and would have liked another, but didn't dare ask for it.

  'I am very fond of Dr Christian,' Tibor Reece said, and sat down himself. 'Please tell me about this illness.'

  She told him only as much as she thought he ought to know, therefore she was not nearly so frank as she had been to Harold Magnus; it was still more than enough to perturb the President, however, on a personal rather than a national level. This he confirmed when she had finished by saying:

  'He came to see me at my invitation before God in Cursing was released, and I have rarely enjoyed an evening more than I did in his company. He is a man! I had a few personal decisions to make at the time, and he was a great help to me in making them, though in the one case he declined to offer positive help. Very intelligent of him! It was a decision I had to make, that no one else could have. But in the matter of my daughter — he put me onto exactly the right people to help her, and changed her life. She's doing about a thousand per cent better now.'

  So that was what it had all been about! How amazing. All that spleen she had poured on Moshe Chasen, and for what? All that boredom too, dating Gary Mannering. Serves you right, Judith Carriol!

  'Yes, that's Joshua,' she said out loud.

  'I remember that when his name came up as our choice for Operation Messiah — prophetic of you, Judith! — you implied that you and he had established a very close relationship. I am so sorry that you've had to bear the burden and the worry of his illness, as well as the March of the Millennium. And why didn't you let me know this morning that you were planning to accompany him for treatment? I would have understood.'

  'In retrospect I realize that, sir. But at the time it was — well, it was pretty hectic. Hard to make the right decision, so many things seemed to be happening. Still, he's in the best hands, and I'm flying to join him straight from here.' And she let her large strange eyes look into his.

  He cleared his throat, shifting his chair so he could see the video monitors more comfortably; she followed suit, and they sat watching the progress of the marchers through a bunting-decked, brilliantly sunny Washington. Waiting in vain for Harold Magnus.

  By nine he hadn't come. Something was definitely wrong. Dr Carriol got to her feet.

  The President looked around at her, raising his brows.

  'Mr President, I would like to go across to Environment. It isn't like Mr Magnus to be so late without letting anyone know. Would you excuse me?'

  'I'll phone,' he said, not about to tell her that at four o'clock that morning his Secretary for the Environment had been silly drunk.

  'No, sir, you carry on watching. I'll go over.' She had to get to Environment herself, because she knew something was
wrong. Very wrong.

  Of course there were people milling everywhere around the White House, waiting for the President to emerge. Dr Carriol went to the helipad and asked her pilot to put her down as close to Environment as possible, preferably closer than the Capitol landing area. The pilot scratched his head, then elected to set her down in K Street right outside her entrance, hovering down slowly enough to permit the few people in the vicinity to scatter safely.

  It was the greatest public holiday in the history of the country, so of course Environment was closed, but when she got up to Section Four she found little John Wayne at his desk, working busily.

  'John!' she cried, tossing off her coat. 'Have you seen or heard anything of Mr Magnus?'

  He looked up, looked blank. 'No.'

  'Come on, then. He was supposed to be at the White House over an hour ago, and he hasn't turned up.'

  Mrs Taverner's desk was unoccupied, the small telephone multi-line console on it flashing every light it could; Harold Magnus disliked bells, so it was not wired to ring. No doubt the White House was trying to get him too.

  'Find Mrs Taverner,' she said to John Wayne curtly. 'I believe she has a couch in her private rest room, so look there first and the hell with your natural modesty.' She went on into Harold Magnus's office.

  At some stage he had transferred himself, still hovering between sleep and coma, from his desk to the big comfortable sofa against the far wall. And there he lay on his back, one foot trailing off, a big old-faced dribbling snoring baby.

  'Mr Magnus!' She bent down to shake him. 'Mr Magnus!'

  The level of sugar in his blood had been falling slowly during the hours between the last time Dr Carriol had seen him and this moment, but it still took a good two minutes to rouse him.

  Finally his lids lifted, fluttered, opened, and his eyes goggled up at her like two boiled skinned gooseberries, pale greenish grey.

  'Mr Magnus, will you wake up?' she asked for the twentieth time, tight-lipped.