A Creed for the Third Millennium (34 page)

'Hey, Doc, you say we ought to keep
busy,' said a male voice from the audience. 'But these days it takes money to
keep busy.'

'I don't agree,' said Dr Christian.
'There are many ways to keep busy that cost a minimum of hard cash. Growing
things need not be expensive, except in time and care. There are hobbies which
can yield a small income if done well enough, community projects, grants from
local government bodies as well as from state and federal bodies. There is, I
venture to say, not a town in this whole country not well endowed with books — borrowable books, I mean. I'm preaching, I know, but keeping busy is a
habit!
And like all habits, it needs a lot of practise before it becomes ingrained.
In my family we can always tell when my mother is really worried or upset,
because she scrubs the floors on hands and knees. That's a form of keeping busy.
Let me tell you, for acutely worrisome situations, it's a therapy that's hard to
beat Sporting activities are wonderful for those who enjoy sports, and nowhere
these days is without public sporting facilities. You must keep busy! And you
must teach your children to keep busy! The most soul-destroying thing a man or
woman can do is lie around and think, unless the thinking is productively
designed and directed. Otherwise all that happens is self-analysis,
self-preoccupation and self-destruction.' He stopped for a moment, then asked,
'What do you like to keep busy at that takes a lot of money?'

'I like to count it, Doc! I used to be a
bank teller before banks got self-service money dispensers, and phased us
tellers out.'

Dr Christian's face creased into
laughter. 'Then I suggest you learn to play Monopoly,' he said. He sobered
abruptly, opened his mouth to speak about the problem of redundancy, and found
himself confronted by a determined Bob Smith.

'How about we go back to the desk and sit
down, Dr Christian?' he asked, putting his arm as high around the sloping
shoulders in their shabby tweed coat as he could reach, and steering his guest
into a turn towards the empty podium. 'I guess there are still a lot of people
including me who want to ask you questions, so let's have a proper
question-and-answer time, huh?'

So they sat down in their .original
places, with Manning Croft on the near end of the long sofa. Dr Christian was
near exhaustion, sweating and trembling from the enormous effort he had put into
that long impassioned speech.

'Are you trying to form a new religion?'
asked Bob Smith seriously.

Dr Christian shook his head vigorously.
'No! Oh no! I'm simply trying to offer disillusioned people a more mature and
acceptable idea of God. As I emphasized, it's just my own view of God, so I
can't say how good or bad it might be. I'm not a theologian, by training or by
inclination. It isn't God Who matters to me in fine detail. People matter. So
what is important to me is that people start thinking about God again, and start
believing in Him. Because Man without God is a purposeless speck of protoplasm
coming from nowhere and going nowhere, not responsible for himself or his world.
He's an accident, a wart on the skin of the universe, a nothing. Therefore I
believe that if a man cannot believe in any of the assorted concepts of God
offered to him by the various religions of the world, he should find God for
himself, and owe his God to no one but himself.'

'You can't have God without a church!'
cried a big bass voice from the audience.

Dr Christian raised his whole forehead.
'Why? What is really important, God or a church? No human being should feel he
has to go to or belong to a church in order to believe in God! Because the word
"church" has two meanings. It can be the house of worship in which religious
ceremonies are conducted. Or it can be a religious institution which has come to
formulate a method of worshipping a defined God, in which case it has lands,
invested wealth and human personnel to care for. Personally I don't like either
kind of church much, but that's purely an individual choice I have made. The
cardinal mistake would be if I shut out God from my mind and spirit because I
cannot take up membership in a church. Don't you see how depressing it is that
people automatically equate refusal to conform to some orthodox religion with
nonbelief in God, or with intrinsic wickedness? But
I
ask, which is more
important, God or a church?'

'Are you saying we should leave our
churches?' asked Manning Croft.

'Oh, no!
No!
If any human being
can find God in either kind of church, it is a wonderful thing. I'm not saying
that to minimize the shock of my own avowed nonconformity, or to curry favour
with devout practising churchgoers. I'm utterly sincere in saying I envy them
their faith. But I
cannot
subscribe to what I do not believe in, and I
cannot agree that my disbelief is evidence of personal wickedness or lack of
grace. If I did subscribe to what I cannot believe in, I would be the most
contemptible type of human being known to Man or God — a hypocrite. Nor am I
here to proselytize
anyone,
even an atheist! I'm here simply saying that
I want people to go back to God, because there is a God, and that God must
continue to be a part of humanity for the rest of the time of humanity. It
appals me that there are many people who believe God is a concept we should
abandon, that we will never attain maturity as a race until we have abandoned
Him. I could not abandon God! Nor will I let my patients abandon God! Nor will I
let you who listen to me now abandon God!
Because I have seen the patterns
—
in the world — in other people — and in myself.'

In the green room Dr Judith Carriol sat
back with a big voluptuous sigh of sheer pleasure. Her man had come through his
ordeal with his colours flying, and it was going to be all systems go right down
to blastoff. He would do it! He would give every man, woman and child in this
country something to hang on to. Somewhere to go outside of themselves. Oh, the
bliss! Oh, the
relief
of this moment! Not that she had ever seriously
doubted him. Only that she was a sceptic about everything, including God. Sorry
about that, Joshua! Yes. All systems were go right down to blastoff. Hmmmm…
Blast-off. What an interesting word! Blast-off? Something for the future.
Something absolutely gargantuanly astronomically cosmic, in concept and in
execution. 'Tonight with Bob Smith' was not blast-off. It was no more than an
engine check. Blastoff was still in the future somewhere. A bang to end all
bangs.
Millennial!
The progress of Dr Joshua Christian could not be let
fizzle out, it could not be let die away in an anticlimactic series of repeat
performances of tonight's fireworks on 'The Dan Connors Show' and 'The Marlene
Feldman Hour' and 'Northern City' and the rest. Oh, he would have to go that
route, yes. But he would have to cap this first bombshell appearance in some
other way than by mere repeat performances.

'Well, you certainly picked the right man
for the job, Mr President,' said Harold Magnus affably.

'I
picked him? Oh, Harold, give
credit where credit's due, you can afford to!' cried the President. 'You brought
her and her Operation Search to my attention in the first place, you gave her
the money and the staff and the equipment to arrive at Operation Messiah, so a
big slice of the credit must go to you. But it's Dr Carriol's baby, no one
else's.'

'Yep.' The Secretary for the Environment
was in a mood to be magnanimous. 'I have to give her this, she's no fool, Judith
Carriol. But God, does she frighten me!'

The President turned his head. Does
she?'

'To death. The coldest-blooded woman in
the world.'

'Interesting. Now I find her not only an
extremely attractive woman, but a most charming and caring human being.' The
President used his remote-control panel to switch off the television set, and
rose to his feet. 'I'm on my own for dinner. Can you join me?'

Under Tibor and Julia Reece's rule the
White House food was little better than mediocre, so in actual fact the gourmet
side of Harold Magnus would have preferred to dine at Chez Roger, the newest and
best of Washington's many French restaurants. However, the ambitious side of
Harold Magnus was quite willing to forgo langouste and canard, in order to eat
littlenecks and rib roast with the boss.

'Julia not going to join us?'

The President for once didn't seize up
like a robot in a rainstorm at mention of his wife; he merely shook his head and
kept on strolling down the corridor. 'No. I believe she's going to Chez Roger
tonight.'

'Shit. Lucky lucky Julia! How's
Julie-girl?'

'She's marvellous,' said the President,
sounding pleased. 'There's been a change of direction in her diagnosis, and
she's away at a special school. I miss her, but every time I go to see her, I
can also see improvement.'

They dined in Tibor Reece's private
study, at a small table for two, on the expected littlenecks and rib roast. The
clams were tough and the beef too well done, but Harold Magnus pretended both
were delicious. When the equally predictable dessert of strawberry shortcake was
placed in front of him, he plucked up the courage both to eat this indigestible
mess, and to ask Tibor Reece a question.

'Mr President, aren't you concerned about
the terrific emphasis Dr Christian is obviously going to place on
God?'

Tibor Reece blotted his lips with his
napkin, placed it to one side of his empty dessert plate, leaned back in his
chair and thought a while before he replied.

'Well, it's pretty revolutionary
God-talk, and he's sure no trained theologian, but I agree with Dr Carriol. If
this man can offer the people a hope of divine purpose without railroading them
into a formal religious persuasion they apparently don't want, I can't see the
harm in it. I'm actually a God-fearing man myself. I was born an Episcopalian,
and I'm happy to admit that I still draw great comfort from my church and my
beliefs. God has saved my sanity on too many occasions for me to take God
lightly, that much I can tell you! Yes, I think Dr Christian and
God in
Cursing
are going to be a good thing for the country.'

'I wish I could be so sure, sir. I mean,
think of the antagonism he's going to rouse among the organized
churches!'

'True. But how powerful are they today,
Harold? Hell, they can't even get together a decent Washington
lobby!'

Harold Magnus grinned. 'There speaks the
politician.' He huffed a little to help the strawberry shortcake down. 'There's
one comfort, at any rate. The man's a patriot'

'On that score there's no worry at all, I
agree.' The dark, habitually saturnine face lit up in a glorious smile. 'Oh,
Harold, doesn't that give you your answer? It should! God is definitely an
American!'

'Tonight with Bob Smith' had been running
for perhaps six minutes that night when Dr Millie Hemingway's telephone rang,
and kept on ringing until she came grumbling out of the bathroom still hitching
up her clothing.

'Millie,' said the voice of Dr Samuel
Abraham, 'turn your TV onto NBC. You've got to see Bob Smith.' And he hung up
immediately.

She did as she was told, and in the
moment of coming to life her television screen filled up with the face of Dr
Joshua Christian, animated, intense.

'My God!' she said, and sat down limply
in a chair. 'I don't believe this!' she said a minute later, when a white notice
ran through the bottom of the picture announcing that tonight's 'Tonight' would
be run without commercial breaks or station identification.

The wraps kept on Dr Joshua Christian had
been very thorough, especially for shielding premature news of him from people
like the Environment think tank chiefs, too concerned with their own projects
and affairs to be devout newspaper readers or television watchers
anyway.

Yet there he was, the man Operation
Search had dragged up from the primordial ooze of total obscurity. But it was
only an exercise, a drill!

Dr Millie Hemingway watched on to the
end, enthralled and appalled. Her phone rang again just as she turned the
television set off.

'Millie?'

'Yes, Sam, it's me.'

'What's going on ?'

She shrugged, though her questioner could
not see it. 'I don't know, Sam.'

'It was an exercise!'

'Yes.'

'But it can't have been!'

'Now, Sam, don't jump to conclusions.
Just because one of the final candidates crops up now doesn't mean it wasn't an
exercise. I think it's just as valid to assume that we did a better job on
Operation Search than even we dreamed of. We were after the people who could
influence a nation. And Moshe found this guy. We all laughed because he didn't
seem a likely bet. But obviously Moshe was right, and we were
wrong. That simple.'

'
I
don't know, Millie… I
tried to phone Moshe, no reply. No reply all night.'

'Oh, Sam! Go to bed, and stop
speculating.' Dr Millie Hemingway hung up.

Chance. Coincidence. Further evidence of
Moshe Chasen's undeniable brilliance, if they had needed further evidence. That
was all it was. My God, Dr Christian was powerful! He came out of that screen
three-dimensional. Moshe was right. Charisma. And what he said made a lot of
sense. Patterns. He couldn't know of course that he himself was a perfect
example of his own contentions.