Chapter VII: Part 7

I felt that in these dialogues I could quietly combat those absolutist tendencies which I detected in the disciples. Cave himself made no pretense of being final on any subject other than death where, even without his particular persuasiveness, he stood on firm, even traditional ground. The attacks he received he no longer noticed. It was as simple as that. He’d never enjoyed reading and to watch others make telecasts bored him, even when they spoke of him. After the fateful Empire State Building conference he ceased to attend the world; except for a few letters which Paul forwarded to him and his relations with us, he was completely cut off from ordinary life, and perfectly happy. For though human contacts had been reduced to a minimum, he still possessed the polished glass eye of the world before whose level gaze he appeared once a week and experienced what he called: “Everyone: all of them, listening and watching everywhere.”

In one year he had come a long way from the ex-embalmer who had studied a book of newspaper clippings on a Washington farm and brooded about an old man in a hospital. Though Paul was never to refer again to the victim of Cave’s driving, I was quite sure that he expected, sooner or later, it would return to haunt us all.

By midsummer, however, Cave had grown restless and bored and since the telecasts had been discontinued until the following November, he was eager to travel. He was never to lose his passion for places. It was finally decided that he spend the summer on one of the Florida keys, a tiny island owned by a Cavite who offered to place everything at Cave’s disposal. And, though warned that the heat might be uncomfortable, Cave and his retinue left secretly one night by chartered seaplane from Long Island Sound and for at least a month the press did not know what had happened to him.

I declined to accompany Cave and Iris. Paul remained in New York while Iris’s work was temporarily turned over to various young enthusiasts, trained by her. I went back to the Hudson Valley, to my house and....

2

I’ve not been able to write for several days. According to the doctor, it is a touch of heat but I suspect that this is only his kind euphemism.

I had broken off in my narrative to take a walk in the garden last Friday afternoon when I was joined by Butler whose attentions lately have been more numerous than I should like.

“He’ll be here Sunday, Hudson. Why don’t we all three have dinner together that night and celebrate.”

I said nothing could give me more pleasure, as I inched along the garden path, moving toward the hot shaded center where, beneath fruit trees, a fine statue of Osiris stood, looted in earlier days by the hotel management from one of the temples. I thought, however, with more longing of the bench beside the statue than of the figure itself whose every serene detail I’d long since memorized. Butler adjusted his loose long stride to my own uneven pace. I walked as I always do now with my eyes upon the ground, nervously avoiding anything which might make me stumble for I have fallen down a number of times in the last few years and I have a terror of broken bones, the particular scourge of old bodies.

I was as glad as not that I didn’t have to watch my companion while we chatted, for his red honest face, forever dripping sweat, annoyed me more than was reasonable.

“And he’ll be pleased to know I’ve got us a Center. Not much of one but good enough for a start.”

I paused before a formidable rock which lay directly in my path. It would take some doing to step over it, I thought, as I remarked, “I’m sure the Pasha doesn’t know about this.”

“Not really.” Butler laughed happily. “He thinks we’re just taking a house for ourselves to study the local culture. Later, after we get going, he can find out.”

“I should be very careful,” I said and, very careful myself, I stepped over the rock: my legs detested the extra exertion; one nearly buckled as it touched the ground. I threw my weight on my cane and was saved a fall. Butler had not noticed.

“Jessup is going to bring in the literature. We’ll say it’s our library. All printed in Arabic, too. The Dallas Center thinks of everything.”

“Are they ... equipped for such things?”

“Oh yes. That’s where the main university is now. Biggest one in the world. I didn’t go there myself. Marks weren’t good enough, but Jessup did. He’ll tell you all about it. Quite a crew they turn out: best in the business but then they get the cream of the crop to begin with.”

“Tell me, are the Residents still in charge of the Centers or do they share the administration with the therapists?”

“Therapists?” Butler seemed bewildered.

“In the old days there used to be the Resident and his staff and then a clinic attached where....”

“You really are behind the times.” Butler looked at me as though I’d betrayed a firsthand knowledge of earth’s creation. “All Residents and their staffs, including the Communicators like myself, get the same training; part of it is in mental therapy. Others who show particular aptitude for it are assigned clinical work just as I do communication work in foreign countries. People who get to be Residents are usually teachers and administrators. Sometimes a Communicator gets a Residency in his old age as a reward for the highest services.” He then explained to me the official, somewhat Byzantine structure of the Cavites. There were many new tides, indicating a swollen organization under the direction of a Counsel of Residents which, in turn, was responsible for the election from among their number of a unique Chief Resident whose reign lasted for the remainder of his lifetime.

With relief, I sat down on the bench beside Osiris. Butler joined me. “Dallas of course is the main Residency,” he said.

“It used to be in New York, years ago,” I said, thinking of the brownstone house, of the loft on Twenty-third Street.

“Around twenty years ago it was moved to Dallas by the Chief Resident. Not only did they have the best-equipped Center there but the Texans make just about the best Cavites in the country. What they won’t do for Cavesword isn’t worth mentioning. They burned the old churches, you know ... every one in the state.”

“And one or two Baptist Ministers as well?”

“You can’t break eggs without making an omelet,” said Butler sententiously.

“I see what you mean. Still, Cave was against persecution. He always felt it was enough for people to hear Cavesword....”

“You got a lot of reading to do,” said Butler sharply. “Looks like you’ve forgotten your text: 'And, if they persist in superstition, strike them, for one idolator is like a spoiled apple in the barrel, contaminating the others.’” Butler’s voice, as he quoted, was round and booming, rich in vowel-sounds while his protruding eyes gazed without blinking into the invisible radiance of truth which hovered, apparently, above a diseased hibiscus bush.

“I’ve forgotten that particular quotation,” I said.

“Seems funny you should since it’s just about the most famous of the texts.” But, though my ignorance continued to startle Butler, I could see that he was beginning to attribute it to senility rather than to laxity or potential idolatry.

“I was a close follower in the first few years,” I said, currying favor. “But I’ve been out of touch since and I suppose that, after Cave’s death, there was a whole mass of new doctrine with which I am unfamiliar, to my regret.”

“Doctrine!” Butler was shocked. “We have no doctrine. We are not one of those heathen churches with claims to 'divine’ guidance. We’re simply listeners to Cavesword. That’s all. He was the first to tell the plain truth and, naturally, we honor him but there is no doctrine even though he guides us the way a good father does his children.”

“I am very old,” I said in my best dying-fall voice. “You must remember that when you are with me you are in the company of a man who was brought up in the old ways, who uses Christian terms from time to time. I was thirty when Cave began his mission. I am, as a matter of fact, nearly the same age as Cave himself if he were still alive.”

This had its calculated effect. Butler looked at me with some awe. “Golly!” he said. “It doesn’t really seem possible, does it? Of course there’re still a few people around who were alive in those days but I don’t know of anybody who actually _saw_ Cave. You did tell me you saw him?”

“Once only.”

“Was he like the telecasts?”

“Oh yes. Even more effective, I think.”

“He was big of course, six feet one inch tall.”

“No, he was only about five feet eight inches, a little shorter than I....”

“You must be mistaken because, according to all the texts, he was six feet one.”

“I saw him at a distance of course. I was only guessing.” I was amused that they should have seen fit to change even Cave’s stature.

“You can tell he was a tall man from the telecasts.”

“Do they still show them?”

“Still show them! They’re the main part of our weekly Get-togethers. Each Residency has a complete library of Cave’s telecasts, one hundred eight including the last. Each week, a different one is shown by the Resident’s staff and the Resident himself, or someone assigned by him, discusses the message.”

“And they still hold up after fifty years?”

“Hold up? We learn more from them each year. You should see all the books and lectures on Cavesword ... several hundred important ones which we have to read as part of our communication duties, though they’re not for the laymen. We discourage nonprofessionals from going into such problems, much too complicated for the untrained mind.”

“I should think so. Tell me, is there any more trouble with the idolators?”

Butler shook his head. “Just about none. They were licked when the parochial schools were shut down. That took care of Catholicism. Of course there were some bad times. I guess you know all about them.”

I nodded. Even in Egypt I had heard of massacres and persecutions. I could still recall the morning when I opened the Cairo paper and saw a large photograph of St Peter’s Cathedral smoldering in its ruins, a fitting tomb for the last Pope and martyr who had perished there when a mob of Cavites had fired the Vatican. The Cairo paper took an obvious delight in these barbarities and I had not the heart to read of the wanton destruction of Michelangelo’s and Bernini’s works, the looting of the art galleries, the bonfire which was made in the Papal gardens of the entire Vatican library. Later, word came of a certain assistant-Resident of Topeka who, with a group of demolition experts and Cavite enthusiasts, ranged across France and Italy destroying the cathedrals with the approval of the local governments, and to the cheers of Cavite crowds who gathered in great numbers to watch, delightedly, the crumbling of these last monuments to superstition. Fortunately, the tourist bureaus were able to save a few of the lesser churches.

“The edict of Washington which outlawed idolatrous schools did the trick. The Atlantic government has always believed in toleration: even to this day it is possible for a man to be a Christian, though unlikely since the truth is so well known.”

“But he has no churches left and no clergy.”

“True, and if that discourages him he’s not likely to remain too long in error. As I’ve told you, though, we have our ways of making people see the truth.”

“The calculable percentage.”

“Exactly.”

I looked at Osiris in the green shade. His diorite face smiled secretly back at me. “Did you have much trouble in the Latin countries?”

“Less than you might think. The ignorant were the big problem because, since they didn’t know English, we weren’t able to use the telecasts. Fortunately, we had some able Residents and after a little showmanship, a few miracles (or what they took to be miracles) they came around, especially when many of their ex-priests told them about Cavesword. Nearly all of the older Residents in the Mediterranean countries were once Catholic priests.”

“Renegades?”

“They saw the truth; not without some indoctrination, I suspect. We’ve had to adapt a good many of our procedural methods to fit local customs. The old Christmas has become Cavesday and what was Easter is now Irisday.”

“Iris Mortimer?”

“Of course; who else? And then certain festivals which....”

“I suppose she’s dead now.”

“Why, yes. She died six years ago. She was the last of the original five.”

“Ah, yes, the five: Paul Himmell, Iris Mortimer, Ivan Stokharin, Clarissa Lessing and....”

“And Edward Hastings. We still use his introduction even though it’s been largely obsoleted by later tests. His dialogues will of course be the basis for that final book of Cave which our best scholars have been at work on for over twenty years.”

Hastings, of all people! I nearly laughed aloud. Poor feckless Hastings was now the author of _my_ dialogues with Cave: I marveled at the ease with which the innumerable references to myself had been deleted. I began to doubt of my own existence. I asked if Hastings were still alive and was told that he too was long dead.

I then asked again about Iris.

“Some very exciting things have come to light,” said Butler. “Certain historians at the Dallas Center feel that there is some proof that she was Cave’s sister.”

I was startled by this. “How could that be? Wasn’t she from Detroit? and wasn’t he from Seattle? and didn’t they meet for the first time in southern California at the beginning of his mission?”

“I see you know more Cavite history than you pretend,” said Butler amiably. “That of course has been the traditional point of view. Yet as her influence increased in the world (in Italy, you know, one sees her picture nearly as often as Cave’s) our historians became suspicious. It was all perfectly simple, really: if she could exert nearly the same power as Cave himself then she must, in some way, be related to him. I suppose you know about the Miami business. No? Well, their Resident, some years ago, openly promulgated the theory that Cave and Iris Mortimer were man and wife. A great many people believed him and though the Chief Resident at Dallas issued a statement denying the truth of all this, Miami continued in error and it took our indoctrination team several years to get the situation back to normal. But the whole business _did_ get everyone to thinking and, with the concurrence of Dallas himself, investigations have been made. I don’t know many of the details but my colleague probably will. He keeps track of that kind of thing.”

“If she is proven to be Cave’s sister will she have equal rank with him?”

“Certainly not. Cavesword is everything; but she will be equal to him on the human level though his inferior in truth: at least that appears to be the Dallas interpretation.”

“She was very active, I suppose?”

“Right until the end. She traveled all over the world with Cavesword and, when she grew too old to travel, she took over the Residency of New York City which she held until she died. As a matter of fact, I have a picture of her which I always carry. It was taken in the last years.” He pulled out a steel-mesh wallet in which, protected by cellophane, was a photograph of Iris: the first I had seen in many many years. My hand shook as I held the picture up to the light.

For a split second I felt her presence, saw in the saddened face, framed by white hair, my summer love which had never been except in my own dreaming where I was whole and loved this creature whose luminous eyes had not altered with age, their expression the same as that night beside the western sea ... but then my fingers froze; the wallet fell to the ground; I fainted into what I supposed with my last vestiges of consciousness to be death, to be nothing.

3

I awakened in my own bed with my old friend Doctor Hussein beside me. He looked much concerned while, at the foot of the bed, stood Butler, very solemn and still. I resolved not to die with him in the room.

“My apologies, Mr Butler,” I said, surprised that I could speak at all. “I’m afraid I dropped your picture.” I had no difficulty in remembering what had happened. It was as if I had suddenly shut my eyes and opened them again, several hours having passed instead of as many seconds. Time, I decided, was all nonsense.

“Think nothing of it; I’m only....”

“You must not strain yourself, Mr. Hudson,” said the doctor: a touch of sun, a few days in bed, plenty of liquids, a pill or two, and I was left alone with a buzzer beside my bed which would summon the houseboy if I should have a coherent moment before taking a last turn for the worse. The next time, I think, _will_ be the final one and though I detest the thought, these little rehearsals over the last few years, the brief strokes, the sudden flooding of parts of the brain with the blood of capillaries in preparation for that last arterial deluge, have got me used to the idea. My only complaint is that odd things are done to my memory by these strokes which, light as they have been, tend to alter parts of the brain, those parts which hold the secrets of the past. I have found this week, while convalescing from Tuesday’s collapse, that most of my childhood has been washed clean out of my memory. I knew of course that I was born on the banks of the Hudson but I cannot for the life of me recall what schools I attended; yet my memories from my college days on seem unimpaired though I have had to reread this memoir attentively to resume my train of thought, to refresh a dying memory. It is strange indeed to have lost some twenty years as though they’d never been and, worse still, to be unable to find out about oneself in any case, since the will of others has effectively abolished one. I do not exist to the world and very soon (how soon I wonder?), I shall not exist even to myself, only this record a fragile proof that I once lived.

Now I am able to work again. Butler pays me a daily visit, as does the doctor. Both are very kind but both tend to treat me as a thing which no longer matters. I have been written-off in their minds: I’m no longer really human since soon, perhaps in a few days, I shall not be one of them but one of the dead whose dust motes the air they breathe. Well, let it come. The fraternity of the dead, though nothing, is the larger kingdom.

I’m able to sit up in bed (actually I can get around as well or as badly as before but it tires me too much to walk so I remain abed). Sunday is here at last and from the excited bustle in the air which I feel rather than hear, Butler’s colleague must have arrived. I am not ready for him yet and I have hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, composed emphatically in four languages. It should keep them out for a few days.

I have a premonition of disaster which, though it is no doubt perfectly natural at my age with the last catastrophe almost upon me, seems to be of a penultimate nature, a final _human_ crisis. All that I have heard from Butler about this young man, this colleague of his, disposes me to fear him. For although my existence has been kept a secret from the newer generations, the others, the older ones, the chief counselors are well aware of me and though I have so far evaded their agents and though they undoubtedly assume that I am long since dead it is still possible that a shrewd young man with a career in the making might grow suspicious and one word to the older members of the hierarchy would be enough to start an inquisition which could end in assassination (ironic that I should fear _that_ at this point!) or, more terrible, in a course of indoctrination where my apostasy would be reduced by drugs to conformity. It would be the most splendid triumph for Cave if, in my last days, I should recant: the best victory of all, the surrender of the original lutherist upon his deathbed.

Yet I have a trick or two up my sleeve and the game’s not yet over. Should the new arrival prove to be the one I have so long awaited, I shall know how to act: I have planned for this day. My adversary will find me armed.

But now old days draw me back; the crisis approaches in my narrative.

4

The first summer was my last on the Hudson, at peace. Iris wrote me regularly from the Florida keys: short, brisk letters completely impersonal and devoted largely to what “he” was doing and saying. It seems that “he” was enchanted by the strangeness of the keys, yet was anxious to begin traveling again. With some difficulty, I gathered between the lines, Iris had restrained him from starting out on a world tour: “He says he wants to see Saigon and Samarkand and so forth soon because he likes the names. I don’t see how he can get away yet, though maybe in the fall after his tour. They say now he can make his talks on film all at once which will mean of course he won’t have to go through anything like last winter again.” There followed more news, an inquiry into my health (in those days I was confident I should die early of a liver ailment: my liver of course now seems the one firm organ in my body; in any case, I enjoyed my hypochondria) and a reference to the various things I was writing for the instruction of converts and detractors both. I pushed the letter away and looked out across the river.

I was alone, awaiting Clarissa for tea. I had actually prepared tea since she never drank alcohol and I myself was a light drinker at best ... a non-drinker that summer when my liver rested (so powerful is imagination) like a brazen cannonball against the cage of bones.

I sat on my porch which overlooked the lawn and the water; unlike the other houses on that river, mine had the railroad behind it instead of in front of it, an agreeable state of affairs; I don’t mind the sound of trains though the sight of them on their squalid tracks depresses me.

Beside me, among the careful tray of tea things, the manuscript of my dialogue lay neglected. I had not yet made up my mind whether to read it to Clarissa or not. Such things tended to bore her; yet, if she could be enticed into attention, her opinion would be useful: such a long memory of old customs would be invaluable to me as I composed, with diligence rather than inspiration, an ethical system whose single virtue was that it tended to satisfy the needs of human beings as much as was possible without inviting chaos. I had, that morning over coffee, abolished marriage. During lunch, served me by my genteel but impoverished housekeeper (although servants still existed in those days in a few great houses, people like myself were obliged to engage the casual services of the haughty poor), I decided to leave marriage the way it was but make divorce much simpler. After lunch, suffering from a digestive-inspired headache, I not only abolished marriage again but resolutely handed the children over to the impersonal mercies of the state.

Now, bemused, relaxed, my eyes upon the pale blue Catskills and the summer green, the noise of motorboats like great waterbugs in my ears, I brooded upon the implications of what I was doing and, though I was secretly amused at my own confidence, I realized, too, that what I felt and did and wrote, though doubtless unorthodox to many, was, finally, not really the work of my own inspiration but a logical result of all that was in the world: a statement of the dreams of others which I could formulate only because I shared them. Cave regarded his own words as revelation when, actually, they only echoed the collective mind, a plausible articulation of what most men felt even though their conscious minds were antipathetic, corseted and constricted by stereotyped ways of thinking, the opposite of what they truly believed.

Yet at this step I, for one, hesitated. There was no doubt but that the children and the society would be the better for such an arrangement ... and there was little doubt that our civilization _was_ moving toward such a resolution. But there were parents who would want to retain their children and children who might be better cared for by their progenitors than by even the best-intentioned functionaries of the state. Would the state allow parents to keep their children if they wanted them? If not, it was tyrannous; if so, difficult in the extreme, for how could even the most enlightened board of analysts determine who should be allowed their children and who not? The answer, of course, was in the retraining of future generations. Let them grow up accepting as inevitable and right the surrender of babies to the state. Other cultures had done it and ours could too. But I was able, vividly, to imagine the numerous cruelties which would be perpetrated in the name of the whole, while the opportunity for tyranny in a civilization where all children were at the disposal of a government brought sharply to mind the image of the anthill society which has haunted the imagination of the thoughtful for at least a century.

I had got myself into a most gloomy state by the time Clarissa arrived, trailing across the lawn in an exotic ankle-length gown of gray which floated in yards behind her, like the diaphanous flags of some forgotten army.

“Your lawn is full of moles!” she shouted to me, pausing in her progress and scowling at a patch of turf. “And it needs cutting and more clover. _Always_ more clover, remember that.” She turned her back on me to stare at the river which was as gray as her gown, but, in its soft tidal motion, spangled with light, like sequins on a vast train.

She had no criticism of the river when she at last turned and climbed the steps to the porch; she sat down with a gasp. “I’m boiling! Tea? Hot tea to combat the heat.”

I poured her a cup. “Not a hot day at all.” Actually it was very warm. “If you didn’t get yourself up as a Marie Corelli heroine, you’d be much cooler.”

“Not very gallant, are we today?” Clarissa looked at me over her cup. “I’ve had this gown for five hundred years. There used to be a wimple which went with it but I lost it somewhere.”

“The material seems to be holding up quite well,” and now that she had mentioned it, there _was_ an archaic look to the texture of the gown, like those bits of cloth preserved under glass in museums.

“Silk lasts indefinitely, if one is tidy. I also don’t wear this much, as you can see, but with the devalued state of the dollar (an ominous sign, my dear, the beginning of the end!) I’ve been forced to redo a lot of old odds-and-ends I’ve kept for sentimental reasons. This is one of them and I’m very fond of it.” She spoke this last slowly, to forestall any further ungallantry.

“I just wondered if it was cool.”

“It is cool. Ah, a letter from Iris.” Like a magpie she had seen the letter beside my chair and, without asking permission, had seized it and read it through quickly. “I admire a girl who types,” she said, letting fall the letter. “I suppose they all do now though it seems like only yesterday that, next to opening a tearoom, one typed, working for men, all of whom made advances. That was when we had to wear corsets and hatpins. One discouraged while the other quite protected.” Clarissa chuckled at some obscene memory.

“I wonder if Paul can keep Cave from wandering off to some impossible place.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.” She picked at the tea sandwiches suspiciously, curling back the top slices of bread to see what was underneath: tentatively, she bit into deviled ham; she chewed; she swallowed; she was not disappointed; she wolfed another sandwich, talking all the while. “Poor Cave is a captive now. His disciples are in full command. Even Mohammed, as strong-headed as he was, finally ended up a perfect pawn in the hands of Abu Bekr and the women, especially the women.”

“I’m not so sure about Cave. He....”

“Does what they tell him, especially Iris.”

“Iris? But I should have said she was the only one who _never_ tried to influence him.”

Clarissa laughed unpleasantly. A moth flew into her artificial auburn hair; unerringly, she found it with one capable hand and quickly snuffed out its life in a puff of gray dust from broken wings. She wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. The day was full of moths but, fortunately, none came near us again, preferring lawn and trees to us. “You are naive, Eugene,” she said, her little murder done. “It’s your nicest quality. In theory you are remarkably aware of human character; yet, when you’re confronted with the most implausible appearance, you promptly take it for the reality.”

I was irritated by this and also by the business of the sandwich, not to mention the murder of the moth; I looked at Clarissa with momentary dislike. “I was not aware....” I began in a chilled voice but she interrupted me with an airy wave of her hand.

“I forget no one likes to be called naive ... calculating, dishonest, treacherous, people rather revel in those designations, but to be thought trusting....” She clapped her hands as though to punctuate her meaning; then, after a full stop, she went on more soberly. “Iris is the one to look out for. Our own sweet, self-effacing, dedicated Iris. I adore her; I always have, but she’s up to no good.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You will. You would if you weren’t entirely blind to what they used to call human nature. Iris is _acquiring_ Cave.”

“Acquiring?”

“Exactly the word. She loves him for all sorts of reasons but she cannot have him in the usual sense (I found out all about that, by the way). Therefore, the only thing left her to do is acquire him, to take his life in hers. You may think _she_ may think that her slavish adoration is only humble love but actually it’s something far more significant, and dangerous.”

“I don’t see the danger, even accepting your hypothesis.”

“It’s no hypothesis and the danger is real. Iris will have him and, through him, she’ll have you all.”

I did not begin to understand that day and Clarissa, in her pythoness way, was no help, muttering vague threats and imprecations with her mouth full of bread.

After my first jealousy at Iris’s preference of Cave to me, a jealousy which I knew, even at the time, was unjustified and a little ludicrous, I had come to accept her devotion to Cave as a perfectly natural state of affairs; he was an extraordinary man and though he did not fulfill her in the usual sense, he gave her more than mere lover might: he gave her a whole life and I envied her for having been able to seize so shrewdly upon this unique way _out_ of ordinary life and into something more grand, more strange, more engaging. Though I could not follow her, I was able to appreciate her choice and admire the completeness of her days. That she was obscurely using Cave for her own ends, subverting him, did not seem to me possible and I was annoyed by Clarissa’s dark warnings. I directed the conversation into the other waters.

“The children. I haven’t decided what to do with them.”

Clarissa came to a full halt. For a moment she forgot to chew. Then, with a look of pain, she swallowed. “_Your_ children?”

“Any children, all children,” I pointed to the manuscript on the table.

She began to understand. “I’m quite sure you have abolished marriage.”

“As a matter of fact, yes, this morning.”

“And now you don’t know what to do about the children.”

“Precisely. I....”

“Perfectly simple.” Clarissa was brisk: this, apparently, was a problem she had already solved. “The next step is controlled breeding. Only those whose blood lines seem promising should be allowed to procreate. Now that oral contraceptives are so popular no one will make babies by accident ... in fact, it should be a serious crime if someone does.”

“Quite neat, but I wonder whether, psychologically, it’s simple. There’s the whole business of instinct, of the natural desire of a woman to want her own child after bearing it.”

“All habit ... not innate. Children have been subordinate woman’s ace in the hole for generations. They have had to develop certain traits which, in other circumstances, they would not have entertained. Rats, whom we closely resemble, though they suckle their young will, in moments of mild hunger or even exasperation, think nothing of eating an entire litter. You can condition human beings to accept _any_ state of affairs as being perfectly natural.”

“I don’t doubt that. But how to break the habits of several thousand years.”

“I suppose there _are_ ways. Look what Cave is doing. Of course making death popular is not so difficult since, finally, people _want_ it to be nice: they do the real work or, rather, their terror does. In place of superstition, which they’ve nearly outgrown, he offers them madness.”

“Now really, Clarissa....”

“I don’t disapprove. I’m all for him, as you know. To make death preferable to life is of course utter folly though a perfectly logical reaction for these poor bewildered savages who, having lost their old superstitions, are absolutely terrified at the prospect of nothing. They want to perpetuate their little personalities forever into space and time and now they’ve begun to realize the folly of that (who, after all, are they? are _we_? in creation?) they will follow desperately the first man who pulls the sting of death and Cave is that man, as I knew he would be.”

“And after Cave?”

“I will not say what I see. I’m on the side of change, however, which makes me in perfect harmony with life.” Clarissa chuckled. A fish leaped gayly in the still river; out in the channel a barge glided by, the muffled noise of its engines like slow heartbeats.

“But you think it good for people to follow Cave? you think what he says is right?”

“Nothing is good. Nothing is right. But though Cave is wrong, it is a _new_ wrong and so it is better than the old; in any case, he will keep the people amused and boredom, finally, is the one monster the race will never conquer ... the monster which will devour us in time. But now we’re off the track. Mother love exists because we believe it exists. Believe it does not exist and it won’t. That, I fear, is the general condition of 'the unchanging human heart.’ Make these young girls feel that having babies is a patriotic duty as well as healthful therapy and they’ll go through it blithely enough, without ever giving a second thought to the child they leave behind in the government nursery.”

“But to get them to that state of acceptance....”

“Is the problem. I’m sure it will be solved in a few generations.”

“You think I’m right to propose it?”

“Of course. It will happen anyway.”

“Yet I’m disturbed at the thought of all that power in the hands of the state: they can make the children believe anything; they can impose the most terrible tyranny; they can blind at birth so that none might ever see anything again but what a few rulers, as ignorant as they, finally, will want them to see. There’ll be a time when all people are nearly alike.”

“Which is precisely the ideal society. No mysteries, no romantics, no discussions, no persecutions because there’s no one to persecute. When all have received the same conditioning, it will be like....”

“Insects.”

“Who have existed longer than ourselves and will outlast our race by many comfortable millennia.”

“Is existence everything?”

“There is nothing else.”

“Then likeness is the aim of human society?”

“Call it harmony. You think of yourself only as you are now dropped into the midst of a society of dull conformists. That’s where you make your mistake. You’ll not live to see it for, if you did, you would be someone else, a part of it. No one of your disposition could possibly happen in such a society. There would be no rebellion against sameness because difference would not, in any important sense, exist, even as a proposition. You think: how terrible! but think again how wonderful it would be to belong to the pack, to the tribe, to the race, without guilt or anxiety or division.”

“I cannot imagine it.”

“No more can they imagine you.”

“This will happen?”

“Yes, and you will have been a part of it.”

“Through Cave?”

“Partly, yes. There will be others after him. His work in the future will be distorted by others, but that’s to be expected.”

“I don’t like your future, Clarissa.”

“Nor does it like you, my dear. The idea of someone who is gloomy and at odds with society, bitter and angry, separate from others ... I shouldn’t wonder but that you yourself might really be used as a perfect example of the old evil days.”

“Virtue dies?”

“Virtue becomes the property of the race.”

“Imagination is forbidden?”

“No, only channeled for the good of all.”

“And this is a desirable world? the future you describe?”

“Desirable for whom? For you, no. For me, not really. For the people in it? Well, yes and no. They will not question their estate but they will suffer from a collective boredom which ... but my lips are sealed. Your tea was delicious though the bread was not quite fresh; but then bachelors never keep house properly. I’ve gone on much too long; do forget everything I’ve said. I’m indiscreet. I can’t help it.” She rose, a cloud of gray suspended above the porch. I walked her across the lawn to the driveway where her car was parked. The breeze had, for the moment, died and the heat prickled me unpleasantly; my temples itched as the sweat started.

“Go on with it,” she said as she got into her car. “You may as well be on the side of the future as against it. Not that it much matters anyway. When your adorable President Jefferson was in Paris he said....” But the noise of the car starting drowned the body of her anecdote. I caught only the end: “That harmony was preferable. We were all amused; I was the only one who realized that he was serious.” Dust swirled and Clarissa was gone down the drive at a great speed, keeping, I noticed, to the wrong side of the road. I hoped this was an omen.

5

I got through an unusually sultry July without much interference from either Cave or the world. Paul paid me a quick visit to get the manuscript of the dialogues and I was reminded of those accounts of the progresses made by monarchs in other days, or rather of great ministers, for his party occupied four large cars which gleamed side by side in my driveway like glossy beasts while their contents, Paul and fourteen assistants, all strange to me save Stokharin, wandered disconsolately about the lawn until their departure.

Paul, though brisk, was cordial. “Trouble all over the map but b-i-g t-r-o-u-b-l-e,” he spelled it out with relish, size was important, I knew, to a publicist, even to one turned evangelist.

“Is Cave disturbed by it?”

“Doesn’t pay any attention. Haven’t seen him but Iris keeps me posted. By the way, we’re hiring a plane the first week in August to go see him, Stokharin and me. Want to come along?”

I didn’t but I said I would. I had no intention of being left out of anything: there was _my_ work still to do.

“I’ll let you know details. This is hot stuff?” He waved the sheaf of papers I’d given him.

“Real hot,” I said but my irony was too pale, only primary colors caught Paul’s eye.

“I hope so. Got any new stunts?”

I told him, briefly, about my thoughts on marriage or rather Cave’s thoughts. The literary device was for me to ask him certain questions and for him to answer them or, at least, to ask pointed questions in his turn. Cheerfully, I had committed Cave to my own point of view and I was somewhat nervous about his reaction, not to mention the others. So far, only Clarissa knew and her approval was pleasant but perhaps frivolous: it carried little weight, I knew, with the rest.

Paul whistled. “You got us a tall order. I’m not sure we’ll be able to handle that problem yet, if ever.”

“I’ve done it carefully,” I began.

Stokharin, who had been listening with interest, came to my aid. “In the Centers we, how you say, Paul? soft-pedal the family. We advise young boys to make love to the young girls without marrying or having babies. We speak of the family as a social unit, and society changes. I am most eager to study Mr Luther’s approach. Perhaps a little aid from those of us in clinical work....”

But then the dark sedans began to purr; nervous attendants whispered to Paul and I was soon left alone with the fragments of our brief conversation to examine and interpret at my leisure. I was surprised and pleased at Stokharin’s unexpected alliance. I had thought of him as my chief antagonist. But then, my work finished, I tended roses and read Cassius Dio until the summons in August came.

6

The plane landed on a glare of blue water, more blinding even than the vivid sky about the sun itself which made _both_ elements seem to be a quivering blue fire in which was destroyed all of earth save a tiny smear of dusty faded green, the island of our destination.

The pilot maneuvered the plane against a bone-gray dock where, all alone, Iris stood, her hair tangled from the propellers’ wind and her eyes hidden by dark glasses. Like explorers in a new country, Paul, Stokharin and I scrambled onto the dock, the heat closing in about us like blue canvas, stifling, palpable. I gasped and dropped my suitcase. Iris laughed and ran forward to greet us; she came first to me which, even in my dazzled, shocked state, I realized and valued.

“Gene, you must get out of that suit this minute! and get some dark glasses or you’ll go blind. Paul, how are you? It’s good to see you, Doctor.” And, in the chatter of greetings, she escorted us off the dock and across a narrow white beach to a grove of palm trees where the cottage stood.

To our delight, the interior was cooled by machinery. I sank into a wicker chair even while Cave was pumping my hand. Iris laughed, “Leave him alone, John. He’s smothered by the heat.”

“No hat,” said Cave solemnly after the first greeting which, in my relief, I’d not heard. “You’ll get sunstroke.”

Paul was now in charge. The heat which had enervated both Stokharin and me filled him with manic energy, like one of those reptiles which absorb vitality from the sun.

“What a great little place, John! Had no idea there were all the comforts of home down here, none at all. Don’t suppose you go out much?”

Cave, unlike Iris, was not tanned though he had, for him, a good color, a ruddiness of tone unlike his usual sallowness. “I don’t get too much sun,” he admitted. “We go fishing sometimes, early in the morning. Most of the time I just hang around the house and look at the letters, and read some.”

I noticed on the table beside me an enormous pile of travel magazines, tourist folders and atlases: this had obviously been Cave’s reading. I anticipated trouble.

Paul prowled restlessly about the modern living room with its shuttered sealed windows. Stokharin and I, like fish back in their own element after a brief excursion on land, gasped softly in our chairs while Iris told us of the keys, of their fishing trips. She was at her best here as she had been that other time in Spokane ... being out of doors, in Cave’s exclusive company, brought her to life in a way the exciting busyness of New York did not. In New York she seemed like an object through which an electric current passed; here on this island, in the sun’s glare, she had unfolded, petal after petal until the secret interior seemed almost exposed. I was conscious of her as a lovely woman and, without warning, I experienced desire: that sharp rare longing which, in me, can reach no climax. Always before she had been a friend, a companion whose company I had jealously valued: her attention alone had been enough to satisfy me, but on this day I saw her as a man entire might and I plummeted into despair while talking of Plato.

“The Symposium was the model, yes. There are other ways of casting dialogues such as introducing the celebrated dead brought together for a chat in Limbo. I thought, though, that I should keep the talk to only two. Cave and myself ... Socrates and Alcibiades.” Alcibiades was precisely the wrong parallel but I left it uncorrected, noticing how delicately the hollow at the base of her throat quivered with life’s blood and although I attempted, as I often had before with bitter success, to think of her as so much mortal flesh, the body and its beauty only pulp and bone, only beautiful to a human eye ... hideous, no doubt, to the eye of a geometric progression ... that afternoon I was lost and I could not become, even for a moment, an abstract intelligence again: I saw the bone; I saw the dust, yet I saw her existing, despite her nature and her fate, triumphant in the present. I cursed the flaw in my own flesh and hated life.

“We liked it very much,” she said, not divining my mood, unaware of my sudden passion and its attendant despair.

“You don’t think it’s too strong, do you? All morality, not to mention the churches, will be aligned against us.”

“John was worried at first ... not that opposition frightens him and it is _his_ idea; I mean you wrote the dialogue but it reflects exactly what he’s always thought.” Though in love’s agony, I looked at her sharply to make certain she was perfectly serious: she was; this helped soothe the pain. She had been hypnotized by Cave. I wondered how Clarissa could ever have thought it was the other way around.

“In a way we’re already on record,” Iris looked thoughtfully across the room at Cave who was showing Paul and Stokharin a large map of some strange country. “The Centers have helped a good many couples to adjust to one another without marriage and without guilt.”

“But then there’s the problem of what to do with the children when the family breaks up.”

Iris sighed. “I’m afraid that’s already a problem. Our Centers are taking care of a good many children already. A number, of course, go out for adoption to bored couples who need something to amuse them. I suppose we’ll have to establish nurseries as a part of each Center until, finally, the government assumes the responsibility.”

“_If_ it becomes Cavite.”

“When it becomes Cavite.” She was powerful in her casualness.

“Meanwhile there are laws of adoption which vary from state to state and, if we’re not careful, we’re apt to come up against the law.”

“Paul looks after us,” she smiled. “Did you know that he has nearly a hundred lawyers on our pay roll? All protecting us.”

“From what?” I had not kept track of this.

“Lawsuits ... mostly attempts by state legislatures to outlaw the Centers on the grounds of immorality and so on. The lawyers are kept busy all the time.”

“Why haven’t I read about any of this in the papers?”

“We’ve been able to keep things fairly quiet. Paul is marvelous with the editors ... several have even joined us, by the way ... secretly, of course.”

“What’s the membership now?”

Iris gestured. “No one knows. We have thirty Centers in the United States and each day they receive hundreds of new Cavites. I suspect there are at least four million by now.”

I gasped, beginning to recover at last from the heat, from my unexpected crisis of love. “I had no idea things were going so fast.”

“Too fast. We haven’t enough trained people to look after the Centers and on top of that we’ve got to set up new Centers. Paul has broken the country up into districts, all very methodical: so many Centers per district each with a Resident in charge. Stokharin is taking care of the clinical work.”

“Where’s the money coming from?”

“In bushels from heaven,” Iris smiled. “We leave all that up to Paul. I shouldn’t be surprised if he counterfeits it. One thing I know, though, I _must_ get back to New York soon, to the school. I shouldn’t really have gone off in the middle of everything but I was tired and John wanted company so I came.”

“How is he?”

“As you see: calm. I don’t believe he ever thinks of any of our problems. He never talks about them; never reads the reports Paul sends him. He seldom reads the attacks from the churches and we get several a day, not to mention threatening mail. It’s got so bad that we now have full-time bodyguards.”

“You think people are _seriously_ threatening him?”

“I don’t know how serious they are but we can’t take chances. Fortunately, almost no one knows we’re here and, so far, no cranks have got through from the mainland. We get our groceries and mail brought in by boat every other day from Key Largo. Otherwise, we’re marooned here.”

I looked about me for some sign of the guards but they were elsewhere: a Cuban woman glumly vacuuming in the next room was the only visible stranger.

Cave abandoned his maps and atlases long enough to tell me how much the dialogues pleased him.

“I wish I could put it down like you do. I can only say it when people listen.”

“You feel I’ve been accurate?”

He nodded solemnly. “Oh, yes ... it’s just as I’ve always said it, only written down.” I realized that he’d already assumed full responsibility (and credit, should there be any) for my composition; I accepted his presumption with amusement. Only Stokharin seemed aware of the humor of the situation. I caught him staring at me with a shrewd expression; he looked quickly away and his mouth was rigid as he tried not to smile. I liked him at that moment: we were the only two, evidently, who had not been possessed by Cave. I felt like a conspirator.

For several days we talked, or rather Paul talked. He had brought with him charts and statements and statistics and, though Cave did not bother to disguise his boredom, he listened most of the time and his questions, when they did occur, were apposite. The rest of us were fascinated by the extent of what Paul referred to as the “first operational phase.”