A Creed for the Third Millennium Read online

  '"Be quiet. Be still. Have hope in the future. Hope stemming from the knowledge that you are not alone, you are not abandoned, for you are an essential part of the congregation of souls called Man, and an even more essential part of the congregation of souls called America. Hope stemming from the fact that you have been entrusted by God with a mission, to preserve and illuminate this planet in the name of Man. Not in the Name of God! In the name of Man! Hope for tomorrow, for tomorrow is worth hoping for. No tomorrow will ever come that will see the light of Man extinguished, if you as Man work to preserve that light. For though it came originally as a gift from God, only Man can keep it burning. Remember always that you are Man, and Man is Man, and Woman united.

  '"I offer a creed for this third millennium. A creed as old as this third millennium. A creed summed up in three words — faith, and hope, and love. Faith in yourselves! Faith in your strength and your endurance. Hope in a brighter and better tomorrow. Hope for your children and your children's children, and their children. And love — ah, what can I say about love that you, all too human, do not already know? Love yourselves! Love those around you! Love those you do not even know! Waste not your love on God, Who does not expect it and does not need it. For if He is perfect and eternal, then He needs nothing. You are Man, and it is Man you must love. Love wards off loneliness. Love warms the spirit no matter how cold the body might be. Love is the light of Man!"'

  Tibor Reece was weeping openly, but the four Christians sat and stood around him dry-eyed, utterly composed. Yet no one watching made the mistake of thinking them without grief.

  'He is dead,' the President continued through his tears, 'but he died knowing he had lived better than most of us. How many of us know ourselves to be truly good, as he was? I have chosen to speak to you tonight in his own words, because I have absolutely none of my own to offer you that can sum up so well what Joshua Christian stood for. He was faith. He was hope. He was love. He has offered you a creed for this third millennium, a creed which is a restatement of the unquenchable spirit in Man and Woman, a creed which can offer all of you a positive and ongoing philosophy of life in the midst of this cold, hard, unrelenting third millennium. Hold on to his words and hold on to your memories of him, the man who said the words. And know that as long as you do, he who insisted always that he was only a man can — never — truly — die.'

  That was the end of it. Dr Carriol switched off her set before the network she had chosen to watch could come on with its frantically collated two-hour special on the life and the work of Dr Joshua Christian.

  She got up, went through to her kitchen, and opened her back door. There was a floodlight, hardly ever used because it devoured far too much electricity, but nonetheless a most necessary adjunct for a woman living on her own, illuminating as it did her entire backyard with dazzling efficiency.

  Throwing the switch now, she walked outside. A very neat scene. A high brick wall around the yard, and a padlocked gate which led into the side passage. Fieldstone flagging instead of grass. No garden beds, but many shrubs and bushes, and three larger trees. First a weeping cherry, its drooping branches past the full glory of its pale-pink blossoms. Then there was a silver birch, its lime-green leaves still half furled, fresh and young. And a huge, very old dogwood in white flower, its branches spreading so perfectly it belonged in a Japanese composition; and it had a ghostly, carven serenity about it, all its flowers turning their faces upward, laid on with the unerring instinct of a master builder greater than any mortal man. In legend, Judas hanged himself from a dogwood. And, then as now, it would have been in flower. How beautiful to die amid such perfection!

  Someone in the next house was weeping inconsolable tears for Dr Joshua Christian, who had come to save the race of Man and died as kings had died in the beginning of the human experiment, a sacrifice to placate the gods and preserve the people.

  'You will look for me in vain, Joshua Christian!' she said, not to herself, but to the dogwood tree. 'I have a lot of living to do yet.'

  She switched off the floodlight, went inside and shut the kitchen door. In the backyard in the moonlight the dogwood blossoms glowed up into the still cold silver vault above, a patient, dreaming loveliness.

  Of all the people who heard the President's broadcast, and though it seems an excessive thing to say, Dr Moshe Chasen mourned for Dr Joshua Christian more deeply and more painfully than anyone.

  The moment Tibor Reece uttered his first words, Dr Chasen burst into a paroxysm of grief, keening, wailing, weeping, tearing at himself; his wife could do nothing to console him.

  'It isn't fair!' he said when he was able. 'I meant him no harm! It isn't fair, it isn't fair! What is the pattern? Why is the pattern? I meant him no harm!'

  And he wept again.

  The President sent the Christians back to Holloman by helicopter, promising them that he would bring them back to Washington the following Wednesday for Joshua's state funeral and the interment at Arlington. They were transferred from the Holloman airport to 1047 Oak Street by car, and they arrived in the early hours of Saturday morning. James let them in, into the welcome pure white light that streamed down on the springtime flowering glory that was the Christian living room. The plants had not suffered in Mary's absence, for Mrs Margaret Kelly had volunteered to come in and care for them, and she had not fallen down on her word. The air was sweet and very softly quiet.

  'I don't suppose Mary and Martha will be home until at least tomorrow,' said James.

  'Oh, poor things! To think that they'll hear without us there to help them,' said Mama, who had not shed a tear.

  'I'll make some coffee,' said Miriam, disappearing to the kitchen because she was unable to sit down, unable to let herself think, unable to look at those three beloved faces.

  'What are we going to do?' asked Mama, not of James but of Andrew, standing near her with his hand on her shoulder.

  'We carry on. The work isn't finished, it's only begun. So we carry on.'

  James shivered. 'Oh, Drew! It will be so hard without Joshua to guide us!'

  'No. It will be easier.'

  'Yes,' said James after a moment. 'Yes, it will!'

  They sat, the mother and the two brothers, in a perfect understanding.

  Mary and Martha were on a train when they heard the news. Though at the time Mary had not appreciated Andrew's high-handed treatment of herself and Martha, she had had time to cool down while she struggled to catch the train, especially because she was coping with Martha as well; now that they were safely on board, she found herself more inclined to thank Drew than to hate him.

  The train dawdled, as trains had a habit of doing, and because of the March of the Millennium it was nearly empty. At nine in the evening they drew into Philadelphia, and stopped yet again. The platform was utterly deserted, it lay there in all its stagnant dreary indignity, swept clean of humanity, but not of humanity's detritus. Beautifully and ornately painted on the waiting room's outside wall was a huge despairing cry from some human soul beyond Joshua Christian's help: gravity sucks! Oh, poor mortal bird! thought Mary from out of her aching heart; you too?

  The station's public address system was reeling out words in a professional announcing voice that came across loud and clear, emanating not from the station master's office but from the local NBC radio affiliate.

  Mary and Martha sat alone in their long carriage and heard the voice talking about the dead Dr Joshua Christian.

  Martha slumped against Mary, heavy and limp, but not fainted. Mary put her arms about the toneless shoulders and listened to the loudspeaker voice without surprise. The train started again almost at once, as if the man who operated it preferred to be somewhere away from that remorseless public address system.

  I knew, thought Mary. I knew this morning that I would never see him again. And I didn't want to be with them when they heard. Let the boys and Miriam deal with Mama. I shall resign. I cannot bear any more. All I truly wanted was to travel, and they denied me. He denied me. The o
nly person I have ever loved does not love me, can never love me. He claimed her without even wanting her.

  'Oh, Mary how can I live?' asked Martha, her face folded against that spare flat unstimulated bosom.

  'The same as the rest of us,' said Mary. 'Forever in his shadow.'

  Dr Charles Miller, vascular surgeon, to his wife, while preparing for bed: 'He crucified himself, I tell you! And I keep asking myself, is that how we made him feel? Is that truly how we made him feel? As if he had to die for us? Oh, God! Oh, God!'

  Dr Ignatius O'Brien, plastic surgeon, to his male lover, in an Arlington studio apartment: 'I don't think my flesh will ever stop crawling! At first I thought he was still alive, because his eyes looked down with such a world of bitter pain and knowing life in them — I tell you, I cannot believe that his eyes have died along with the rest of him.'

  Dr Samuel Feinstein, general physician, to his spinsterly middle-aged secretary in their Walter Reed office: 'Well, at least this time they can't blame it on the Jews, Ida! If I was a Christian I'd probably know right off whether what Dr Christian did was blasphemy or martyrdom, but I don't and I never will. But do you know what really scared the shit out of me? The Carriol woman standing there with a big smile on her face saying something like, "Well done, Jay See! I couldn't have dreamed up a better end to the operation myself, Messiah!" Oh, Ida, do you suppose he was?'

  Dr Mark Ampleforth, specialist in shock and exposure, to his eighteen-year-old fiancee, during a meeting originally planned to discuss their impending marriage: 'Listen, Susie, when I'm upset I know I talk in my sleep. But it's all total gobbledygook, honest! So if you do happen to hear me talking, don't for God's sake believe anything I say, okay?'

  Dr Horace Percy, psychiatrist, to his own analyst, in his analyst's office, at the beginning of a hastily convened session: 'Gruesome, Martin! The hollow man from Holloman, codpiece stuffed with straw. Did you hear The Man tonight? A creed for the third millennium, yet! A new opiate for the masses, more like!'

  Dr Barney Williams, anaesthetist, to his wife, over the dinner table: 'The poor, poor bastard! All alone in that awful place, and with the guts to die like that. It must have taken an hour after he managed to hang himself up there. Oh, and his face…!'

  Miss Emilia Massimo, general nurse and captain in the U.S. Air Force, to her male lover, defending her inability to get in the mood: 'I will never be able to forget it as long as I live, Charlie. You know how those pictures of Jesus always have eyes that follow you around the room? Well, that's what his eyes did. I laid him out when we got back here, so I moved all around him. And wherever I went, his eyes just followed me. Followed me…'

  Mrs Lurline Brown, nurse specialist intensive care and major in the U.S. Army, to her minister: 'Oh, Reverend Jones, it was meant that I be there! I come from that country, and every time I go back, I have a mystical experience. Now I know why! So I just told my brothers and my husband, you go on over there to that old island and you get his cross. He is the new Redeemer! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!'

  Two days later a hard-pressed and grieving Tibor Reece remembered something he had neglected to do, and issued orders. As a result of those orders, three dour middle-aged professional Marines in a Marine helicopter were dispatched the same day to Pocahontas Island, in Pamlico Sound, North Carolina. Their orders were to go into the courtyard of the only house on the island, there locate a stone shed, enter it, remove any large wooden beams of any kind it might happen to be sheltering, take them outside the environs of the house into a no-risk, no-defacement area, pour gasoline on the beams, and wait until they were burned to ashes.

  Theirs not to reason why. They landed, they entered the courtyard and then the shed, and out of the latter they carried five dismally ordinary, ancient wooden railroad ties. They bore them to the middle of the grassy clearing in front of the courtyard wall, and as ordered, they saturated the beams with gasoline before setting fire to them. The ties burned well, for they were old and dry and very tired of living. In half an hour a black patch on the swampy grass was all that remained of them.

  The Marines boarded their chopper and took off. Back at Quantico they reported to their commanding officer that the mission was accomplished. Their commanding officer reported to his general, and his general reported to the White House. Mission accomplished, sir! Since no one, least of all Tibor Reece, had asked for a count of the number of beams, nor mentioned that one of them should be a T-shaped affair made out of two beams, no one realized that the T-shaped affair made out of two beams was not burned. It was not burned because it was not there.

  The following week, a rather red-faced scion of an old North Carolina tobacco-growing family telephoned the Department of the Environment, and regretfully informed his friend in Parks and Wildlife that his family had decided to withdraw their offer to donate dear old Pocahontas Island to the nation, thereby also withdrawing their hope that the President might consider it suitable for a nearby yet isolated retreat.

  'We've had an offer for it we just can't refuse, a cash offer half as big again as our original asking price!' the North Carolinan voice explained. 'To make things even more complicated, the offer comes from a very big and very powerful black religious organization. Seems they want to turn the place into a centre of worship. And since they're more than willing to keep it designated as a bird and wildlife preserve, we honestly feel we just should not refuse. I'll be real honest with you, George. We need the money! We need the money bad.'

  The Parks man on the Environment end of the telephone conversation sighed, but he was not unduly upset. He had thought the possibility of its being picked up as an Executive retreat was nebulous, and there was nothing in any way unique about it from the Parks and Wildlife point of view.

  However, when next he went upstairs to report, he did not mention the fact that Environment had lost out on Pocahontas Island to Mr Harold Magnus, because Mr Harold Magnus had very suddenly and very unexpectedly been removed from office. The official reason given out was ill health, but the whole of Environment was buzzing with a mysterious rumour that somehow or other, Harold Magnus had been involved to his discredit in the death of Dr Joshua Christian, of all people! The newly appointed Secretary for the Environment was an Environment professional, a Presidential decision which delighted the whole Department. Dr Judith Carriol.

  So when George in Parks and Wildlife went upstairs to report the sad news about Pocahontas Island as part of his routine accounting, he reported it to Dr Judith Carriol.

  She went very still, and her eyes, which he always found unsettling anyway, her eyes just leaped into life. Then she threw back her head and she laughed, laughed, laughed until she literally cried and gasped for breath.

  'We can of course insist,' he said, at a loss. 'The offer to us was verbal, but we also have a letter of intent.'

  The paroxysm ended; Dr Carriol pulled a tissue from her personal drawer and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  'I wouldn't dream of insisting,' she said, gulped, had to suppress another spasm of laughter. 'Oh, dear me, no! Our interest in that area primarily is in preserving bird and wildlife, and that's not a problem in this case, is it? In fact, I think this comes as a blessing in disguise. I can assure you there is no way the President would ever contemplate asking the nation to acquire the property as a retreat! I happen to know it isn't a part of this great country he admires or enjoys. Besides, it is a black religious body which has asked for Pocahontas Island, and I do not think it would be good Environment policy to wield a big stick, do you? Tell your friend to go ahead and firm up his sale. You can also tell him not to sweat it out until closing day. I would bet my life this is one sale that won't fall through at the last minute!'

  And she began laughing again, harder than ever.

  'What I can't understand, Judith,' said Dr Moshe Chasen to his new Secretary several days later over lunch in the new Secretary's office, 'is why you ever accepted this position. You can't serve two masters! You are now a political appointee ti
ed to Tibor Reece forever and a day. When he leaves the White House, as leave he must sooner or later, even if he does shoot for a fourth term, you will probably be asked to leave your political chair, and you won't be asked to resume your permanent position in Environment. The Secretaryship is not an elected office, but it's sure as hell political. You can't come back on the permanent staff. They're very sticky about public servants having political affiliations and rightly so, in my opinion.' He shrugged. 'Public servants ought to be above politics. Their elected masters come and go, so they've got to be prepared to throw their weight behind whatever masters are in power.'

  'I didn't know you felt so strongly about this,' said Dr Carriol, eyes dancing with some secret amusement.

  Whatever Dr Chasen might have answered under the provocation of that amusement was never offered, for Mrs Taverner buzzed.

  'Dr Carriol?'

  'Yes, Helena?'

  'The President is calling.'

  'Oh. Would you explain to him that I'm in conference at the moment, but that I'll call him back later?'

  'Certainly, Dr Carriol.'

  Dr Chasen's eyebrows climbed nearly to his hairline. 'I don't believe it! Judith, Judith, you don't relay messages like that to the President of the United States! It's tantamount to kiss my ass!'

  'Nonsense,' she said composedly. 'He wasn't calling on official business. I'm having dinner with him tonight.'

  'I don't believe it!'

  'Why not? He's a free man these days, and I'm a free woman, as ever. You've just finished telling me that my career as a public servant is over, that I'm just a political appointee tied to the White House. So who can object if we have dinner together, appointer and appointee?'