A Creed for the Third Millennium (37 page)

'Oh for God's sake, Mama, don't get the
shits with me,' said Dr Carriol tiredly. 'I know what I'm saying, and so do you.
Be honest! You were sitting up there in Holloman with the clinic in ruins and
your other sons taking off for exciting tasks in exciting places, and you felt
left out of everything. If concern for Joshua's welfare was really what was
driving you, you would have sent Mary down here and stayed behind yourself in
Holloman to do the fortress-holding. That is a good girl you sit on all the
time, poor Mary! Be honest! You were feeling left out and you were dying of
curiosity, your apple-of-the-eye firstborn has gone and got himself famous, and
you know
you
did it, and so you decided you were going to have some of
the excitement. You're a very beautiful woman, you're still in the prime of
life, and people are going to look at you. They're going to admire you. They're
going to congratulate you on producing Joshua. They're going to accord you a lot
of the credit.'

'Judith!'

'Look, Mama, the wounded martyr act
doesn't cut any ice with me at all, so don't bother. I'm the one has to care for
him while he's crazily barnstorming his way round this enormous country, and he
doesn't need you to worry about as well as himself. Because he will worry about you
— whether you're busy
destroying all his good work by prattling on about the joys of having four
children while he's trying to convince people that the ideal number of children
is one, whether you're feeling as fucked and bedraggled as he is, if you've had
enough to eat because he hasn't, if you're bored, if you've been left behind in
some radio station or newspaper office — that's the truth of it,
Mama!'

The only possible refuge was tears, so
Mama trotted the tears out. Genuine tears too, for she really hadn't thought to
question her motives for coming to join him, and now that someone she trusted
and admired as much as Judith Carriol had pointed them out to her with
disastrous clarity, she was not only devastated but ashamed. Ashamed too of her
unthinking treatment of Mary, the dowdy spinster who never got any of the
attention and never got any of the bonuses.

'I'll go home first thing in the morning,
and send Mary down,' she grieved.

'No, it's too late for that You're here
now, so here you stay,' said Dr Carriol with weary resignation. 'But I'm warning
you, Mama! Keep a low profile. Don't open your mouth — and don't keep it shut
looking like a martyr either. Content yourself with looking like the ravishing
fallen angel you are, and don't do
anything
to increase his
anxieties.'

'I won't, Judith, I promise I won't!' She
was cheering up second by second. 'And I will be useful, honestly I will! I can
do all his washing, all your washing—'

The laugh she hadn't known she still
possessed came tumbling out of Dr Carriol. 'Oh, Mama! Who has time or facilities
to do washing? We move on too fast for hotel laundries, and the rooms are too
cold to wash in a bathroom basin — we don't do it. Every day while he's waiting
for us, our pilot goes and buys the few bits of fresh clothing we need, for
himself too. And since you're joining the menage, you'd better give Billy your size in underpants and bras
before you run out, or you'll be wearing dirty ones.'

Mama blushed. She actually
blushed.

Dr Carriol gave up. 'Here, you'd better
have my room,' she said, picking up her single suitcase from where it still lay
unopened. 'I'll go down to the desk and see about another one. Where's your
bag?'

'Downstairs,' whispered Mama
wretchedly.

'I'll have it sent up.
Goodnight.'

After the bag came Mama went to bed, and
cried herself desolately to sleep.

Dr Christian was in bed too, but neither
tears nor sleep came to heal him. Where had all the pleasure gone, so swiftly,
so suddenly? Oh, he had enjoyed this past month! He had found it supremely
satisfying to move freely among so many pain-racked people, watching their faces
as they listened to him speak, knowing that indeed his inner promptings had not
led him astray, that he could indeed help. The days had fled in joyous activity,
he hadn't needed to count his energy because it flowed through him in rivers of
fire impossible to quench. Such an adventure to whip through the air from town
to town with Billy the pilot, silent and smart and Service, guiding his craft
wherever he was bidden. So many questions, so much that people yearned to know —
and there he was, magically enabled to help them through the offices of Fairy
Godmother Carriol. It had been so
easy!
A landbound seal finding the
water at last. He had frolicked in his natural element, so happy, so content.
The people had received him, the people had not rejected him.

But ever in the back of his mind had lain
Holloman, his dear beloved clinic, the work he would go back to in a relatively
short time, even if only to begin planning the removal of that clinic to some
desperately needy place in the south of the country.

Not true. Not there. He closed his aching
eyes. Think, Joshua Christian! Think! He had spoken of
change and of patterns, of the future's viability and the present's uncertainty
and the past's mortality. So was this trouble not a part of the pattern too, was
this direction not intended to guide his ignorant feet? He had taken himself and
he had deliberately altered the conditions of his life. And once conditions have
been altered, something entirely different must emerge.

Be optimistic, Joshua Christian! How
lovely and how very satisfying, that James and Miriam and Andrew and Martha were
to be a positive part of all this newness. Fitting. They had always been
shoulder to shoulder with him — so why not now, in this altered condition? Be
positive, Joshua Christian! It is for the best. It is meant. It is a part of
some pattern shaping itself so subtly and so secretly that you cannot as yet so
much as glimpse its nature. But you will! You will.

He concentrated upon sleep. O sleep close
mine eyes! O sleep heal my pain! O sleep show me that I am mortal man! But sleep
was far away, it curled through the brains of those he helped.

From Mobile the augmented Christian
manage moved to St Louis. Mama behaved herself beautifully, making friends with
Billy the pilot immediately, and endearing herself to him by coyly handing him
her vital statistics in a sealed envelope.

'What colour do you like?' he
whispered.

She smiled at him angelically. 'White,
thank you.'

On the surface St Louis went very well,
and out of it came one of the most charming of the little allegories with which
Dr Christian peppered his talks. Luckily it was preserved for posterity on
videotape, for it occurred during a morning show on one of the local television
stations.

The hostess was lightweight and
terrifyingly gushing; very pretty, very blonde, quite young. Dr Christian was
the most important guest she had ever collared, so an acute attack of nerves made her just
the slightest bit patronizing. And since she was not equipped to patronize him
on an intellectual level, she concentrated on his masculinity and his
childlessness.

'Doctor, I'm interested in the way you
defend those who have been lucky enough to obtain a second-child approval,' was
her opening gambit. 'But it's awfully easy for you to be magnanimous, isn't it?
I mean, you're not married, you have no children, and — uh — well — you can never
feel like a mother, can you? Do you honestly think that you're in a position to
condemn the attitude of all the poor women who haven't been lucky in the SCB
lottery when they hit back at the lucky few?'

He smiled, sighed, leaned back for a
moment with his eyes closed, then opened them and stared straight into her soul,
which was not very far down.

'The worst feature of the SCB lottery is
the means test placed on all applicants for second children. Who is to say which
group in the community will make the best parents of two children. A certain
amount of material comfort is good, I suppose, especially since education is so
prohibitively expensive after secondary school. But we can't run a country
entirely on graduates, especially when the average age of the manual tradesmen
in the country is far higher than the average age of teachers or computer
technicians. We need our few young to become plumbers and electricians and
carpenters as well as sociologists and surgeons.'

'The means test has added an extra
element of unnecessary rancour to the SCB lottery. Unlucky people can always
level a charge, no matter how ill founded, of collusion, bribery,
string-pulling, whatever. Because the means test weeds out those not in a
financial or social position to have influence.'

Mortification had already set in with his
hostess, it showed in her too-bright eyes and her uneasy pose; now he increased it by raising his voice
slightly, and letting it show his disapproval.

'But that wasn't what you really asked,
was it? You asked what qualifications I have to condemn the way the unlucky
applicants treat the lucky ones, so I gather you yourself condone the means
test. And quite clearly you condone this abhorrent attitude of malignity and
revenge.'

He leaned forward in his chair, dropped
his head, put his arms on his knees and stared down at his hands loosely folded
between his legs. So his voice was very low, though quite audible.

'What qualifications do I have?' he
asked. 'No, indeed I can never be a mother. But I am the parent of two cats, the
maximum number the law allows me. Both neutered as kittens, since I had no wish
to apply for a breeder's certificate. Yes, I am the parent of a male cat named
Hannibal and a female cat named Dido. Beguiling creatures, Hannibal and Dido.
They love me very much. But do you know what they do with most of their time?
They don't wash themselves. They don't hunt mice and rats. They don't even tuck
their paws under their bodies and doze the hours away. My cats are ledger
keepers. A his ledger and a hers ledger. And they scribble, scribble, scribble.
A typical day's entry from Hannibal's ledger might read something like this:
"Dad put
her
plate of food down first this morning.
She
got four
pats to my three when Dad came in for lunch. When Dad came in for dinner tonight
he picked
her
up and ignored me. And
she
got to sleep on Dad's bed
while I was forced to make do with a chair nearby." Dido's ledger for the same
day might read more like this: "Dad put more food on
his
plate this
morning. When he left for the clinic after lunch Dad gave
him
six pats
and me none. Dad sat with
him
on his knee for half an hour after dinner.
And when Dad went to bed he put
him
on a special chair while I had to
make do with the bed." Yes, my cats do that every day of their lives. They waste their days watching
each other to see how much of my attention each gets. Weighing me up — and to the last tiny scruple! And
every slight, real or imaginary, is entered in their ledgers. Scribble,
scribble, scribble.'

He lifted his head and looked straight at
the camera. 'So all right. I can put up with this kind of mean-spirited
pettiness from my cats. Because they are cats. They are a lower form of life
than L Their manners and their ethics are based on instinct and
self-preservation. In a feline brain there is little room for any image outside
the self. And when it comes to love, the feline instinct is to keep a
ledger.'

His voice changed, freezing his hapless
interviewer to her marrow. 'But
we ate
not cats!' he roared. 'We are far
higher creatures than cats! We have feelings we can discipline, or learn to
discipline. We can apply logic to our baser emotions and cancel them out. Our
brains are big enough to accommodate far more than just ourselves. And I say
this to you! If our spirits are so mean that we must qualify love by keeping a
ledger, then we are no better than cats. Any loving and caring relationship, be
it husband and wife, parent and child, friend and friend, neighbour and
neighbour, countryman and countryman, human being and human being —
any
loving relationship
that counts how much is given against how much is received is doomed! That is
animal thinking! And—' he turned to his interviewer so quickly she shrank away
'—in my humble, completely unqualified opinion, it is beneath our dignity as men
and women. To weigh one's own sorrow against another's joy and punish that other
person for his joy versus our own sorrow — anathema! Do you hear me, woman?
Anathema!
I say to everyone, not only to you, cast it out!'

ABC bought the segment from this small
unaffiliated local station and showed it cross-country that night on their
evening news. With two immediate results. The first was a joint directive from Congress
and the President to the effect that the Second Child Bureau would abolish its
means test at once. The second was an indignant flood of letters to Dr Christian
from cat lovers who felt cats were much nicer, more loving and more worthwhile
than any human being, including Dr Christian. There were two further results,
much slower in surfacing; it became less socially condoned to persecute parents
with second children, and the little allegory passed into the Christian myth
where some very much more important things he said were quite
forgotten.

'I never knew you had any cats, Joshua!'
shouted Dr Carriol to Dr Christian that evening in the helicopter as it whipped
them from St Louis to Kansas City.