A Creed for the Third Millennium (55 page)

Dr Carriol knew by heart the number which
connected her with the President's helicopter squad. She dialled it. 'This is Dr
Carriol speaking,' she said quietly. 'Where is Billy?'

'Hasn't checked in yet, ma'am. Hasn't
radioed either, and we can't raise him.'

Her head was thumping. Or maybe it was
her displaced heart? 'He went on a special job for me at six-thirty this
morning, but he should have been back in Washington by eight-thirty at the
latest. However, he did say he had to refuel.'

'We know, ma'am. We understand his
destination was classified, but he requisitioned charts and possible fuel depots
between Washington and Hatteras and Raleigh. We've already gone the whole route
and he hasn't checked in anywhere to refuel yet. But no one's reported a May Day
even on the ham bands, so we kind of assumed he must be landbound at his
destination with an empty tank and a bum radio.'

'Very likely, as he seems to have decided
to do my job before refuelling. If he did run out of fuel in midair he could get
down safely, couldn't he? I seem to remember that actually happening in Wyoming
a few months ago, when he was coming to pick us up.'

'Oh, sure!' said the phone heartily.
'That's the great thing about those birds, they can land anywhere. And he'd have
enough warning to get down, ma'am.'

'Then we must assume he's stuck at his
destination rather than somewhere en route. There's not a soul where he was
going and no telephone either, so if his radio isn't working he'd have no way to
contact us.' She glared across at Harold Magnus sourly. 'Thank you. If you hear
anything, let me know at once. I'm with the Secretary for the Environment in his
office. No, no, don't get off the line yet, man! I need one helicopter big
enough to carry about eight to ten people and several hundred pounds of medical
equipment. Top priority. Hold it for me until I give you the word.'

'Can't do it, ma'am,' said the phone.
'All available craft have been earmarked by the President himself for lifting
VIPs down to the Potomac for the ceremony.'

'Fuck the ceremony and fuck the VIPs!'
said Dr Carriol. 'I want that helicopter.'

'I'll need the President for this one,'
said the phone laconically.

'You'll get him. So start moving
now.'

'Yes,
ma'am!'

Another line was flashing.
'Yes?'

'Walter Reed, Dr Carriol, the duty
administrator.'

She held the phone out to Harold Magnus.
Here, you take this one,' she said curtly. 'It's your mess.'

While Harold Magnus spoke to the duty
administrator at Walter Reed, huddling with Mrs Taverner and John Wayne over the
list Dr Carriol had dictated some hours earlier, Dr Carriol went into the outer
office and asked to be connected with the President himself.

'Trouble, Judith?'

'Big trouble, Mr President. We have an
emergency situation. Dr Christian apparently is stranded on Pocahontas Island in Pamlico Sound
without the medical attention he should have had hours ago. Your helicopter
squad can't provide me with a suitable craft to get this medical attention to Dr
Christian without your personal okay. The ceremony has swallowed all the craft
in the area. Please will you get in touch with your squad HQ and okay my request
for priority?'

Hold on.' She could hear him relaying
instructions to someone, then he came back on the line. 'What's up?'

'Mr Magnus had a slight heart attack just
after I left him in the early hours of this morning. I'm afraid it happened
before he organized the medical attention I had arranged with him to be sent to
Dr Christian. God, that's about as clear as mud, but I guess you know what I
mean. I'm going down to Pocahontas Island with the medical team immediately.
There is definitely some kind of problem down there, because his helicopter
pilot hasn't made contact with base since he left Washington at six-thirty this
morning.'

'So Harold had a heart attack, huh?' Was
it her imagination, or did the President sound ever so faintly
satirical?

'He collapsed in his office, sir. I've
got an ambulance coming from Walter Reed.'

'Poor old Harold!' This time the
Presidential voice was blatantly sarcastic. 'Keep me posted, will you? It's good
to know there's someone in Environment with a level head.'

Ouch, Harold! 'Thank you, Mr
President.'

Back into the inner office, where she
waited for her chief to conclude his arrangements with Walter Reed.

'There, that's done!' he exclaimed,
mildly jaunty now that things were getting back under control. 'I can leave this
mess with you from here on in, can't I? I've got to get changed for the
ceremony.'

'Oh, no!' said Dr Carriol with steely
calm. 'I have just covered your great bare ass with the President by informing him you had a heart attack
—
minor only, of course — this morning. So you are going to look very sick, and be
taken by ambulance to the Walter Reed Hospital as soon as I can spare someone to
get it organized.'

He did turn green and he did look very
sick. 'But I'll miss the King of England!' Then his expression became dangerous.
'What did you want to run off at the mouth to the President for?'

'I didn't have any choice. There isn't a
helicopter to run the medical team down to Pocahontas, so I had to have an
executive order. That meant he had to know about the fuckup. Sorry, Mr Magnus,
but I did not create the fuckup. You did. So no ceremony, that's your
punishment.'

And never again, she thought, walking out
to leave him and Mrs Taverner and John Wayne gaping after her, never again will
Harold Magnus be in a position to send my transportation away and leave me to
wait ill clad in the snow for a bus.

By the time the big Army chopper took off
from Walter Reed Hospital bearing Dr Judith Carriol, Dr Charles Miller (a
vascular surgeon), Dr Ignatius O'Brien (a plastic surgeon), Dr Samuel Feinstein
(a general physician), Dr Mark Ampleforth (a specialist in shock and exposure),
Dr Horace Percy (a psychiatrist), Dr Barney Williams (an anaesthetist), Miss
Emilia Massimo (a general nurse) and Mrs Lurline Brown (a nurse specialist
intensive care), it was eleven-thirty. All of the medical team held high service
rank, and all had top-flight security clearances.

Before the helicopter took off, Dr
Carriol briefed the team, thanking them for giving up their time, and assuring
them that while Dr Joshua Christian was extremely seriously ill, she very much
doubted that more than two or three of them would have to remain with the
patient longer than twenty-four hours. For those obliged to remain, she said with a
smile, there would be a flight to Palm Springs and a few weeks in the southern
California sun to compensate. All food and other supplies for Pocahontas Island
would be flown in by Presidential helicopter, as domestic staff could not be
engaged. The pilot of the Army craft which flew them down could be relied upon
to start the diesel generator up. With them they carried a day's rations of food
and drink in thermal containers, a large amount of medical equipment, including
a hospital bed, and several drums of diesel fuel in case the fuel on the island
had gone off.

They flew over the same terrain Billy had
negotiated some hours before, the pilot and Dr Carriol watching the ground
closely for evidence of a crash. As they left Washington well behind, the sky
began to cloud over until a general overcast existed, but it was stratus cloud
and not dangerous for a helicopter at routine altitude. And by the time that
Pocahontas Island came into view, it seemed fairly certain that they would find
Billy and his bird on the ground.

Then the shock; circling the house and
buzzing the whole strip of land revealed no sign of Billy or the helicopter. Dr
Carriol's pilot shrugged.

'Beats me, ma'am, but it sure looks as if
they never got this far,' he said, hovering over the precise spot where Billy
had landed.

'Go down anyway. I want to have a
look.'

It was by now after twelve-thirty, for
the big Army machine was a slower, more conventional helicopter than Billy's
bird.

'I'd bet the generator will be in that
shed under the edge of the trees,' said the pilot, pointing to a spot about four
hundred yards away from the house. 'Generators make a racket, especially if
there's no wind, or it's blowing from the wrong quarter. I'd rather have you all
out before I go take a look, because the ground's swampy and I don't have
pontoons.'

'Thanks for waiving the rules about
carrying diesel as well as passengers.'

'The President asks, I waive.'

The medical team disembarked and got
their equipment out quite handily; the pilot lifted his machine a few feet into
the air and idled on over to the generator shed.

Everyone was standing around looking to
her for a lead, so Dr Carriol took the initiative and moved to the double gate
in the courtyard wall, tugged the plank bolt back and gave both leaves of the
gate a push. They swung inward without a squeak until they bounced against stop
bolts in the ground.

'Man, this place must have been riddled
with malaria in the old days!' said Dr Ampleforth. 'Why build a house
here?'

'From what I remember, the whole of the
east coast even up as far as Massachusetts was riddled with malaria,' said Dr
Carriol. 'And I guess they coped. I for one think it isn't a bad place to build
— you'd be king of all you surveyed.'

She led the way inside. All seemed quite
normal, for the grey man on his grey cross hung in the dense noonday shadows
plugging up the mouth of the tunnel to the front door.

Still leading, Dr Carriol walked briskly
into the open space of the courtyard and headed for the house, the team in a
clump behind her, unsure of themselves, unsure of this peculiar and sudden
mission.

About halfway, and her mind finally
grasped what was in the archway. She stopped abruptly.

'Oh, my God, my God!' came from
someone.

She started to walk again, her feet
groping feebly after traction on the grey paving of herringboned railroad ties
that heaved and shifted in great undulating waves from one wall to another and
another.

About eight feet away, and she stopped
again, extending her arms sideways to prevent anyone behind her from moving forward. 'Stay
where you are, please.'

He hung with the bones poking out of his
tattered toes, just barely clear of the ground, all his weight yearning for
contact with that ground, only his head with the rope cut into its neck just
beneath the jawbone and his hands with their fingers still tightly clutching
onto the rope loops around his wrists preventing his weight from achieving its
aim. His face jutted far forward over the noose, which had cut so deeply into
his neck in trying to help his body reach the ground that it was level with his
ears. So he looked not up, not straight ahead, but downward, his eyes half open.
All the cruellest work of the rope had been done after he died, for his face was
no more congested than the rest of him, his tongue was inside his parted lips,
those lips were not swollen, and his eyes did not start out of their orbits. The
respiratory arrest which had killed him had simply starved his tissues of
oxygen, and so all of him had gone the colour of weathered wood. The bruises,
for instance, hardly showed.

It would be many weeks before Dr Judith
Carriol would be able to face the emotions the sight of him had aroused in her,
let alone catalogue those emotions. During the time when she did physically
stand there gazing on him, she felt only an extraordinary sense of fitness, of
inevitability, of a pattern completed save for a few final strands which would
add satisfying but quite unnecessary finishing touches.

'Oh, well done, Joshua!' she said,
smiling. 'Beautifully and perfectly done! A better end to Operation Messiah than
I could ever have dreamed of.'

The white nurse was weeping, the black
nurse on her knees keened thin and mournful, the doctors were shocked to
silence.

Judith Carriol was the only one with a
voice. 'Judas!' she said, turning the word over on her tongue in wonder. 'Yes, some things
are
immutable. I did indeed give you up for your crucifixion.'

In Washington it was all over too. The
March of the Millennium concluded amid a Roman holiday, two million people
spilling through the streets and parks of Washington and Arlington, holding
hands, touching each other, weeping, singing, dancing, kissing.

The President was waiting on the banks of
the Potomac to welcome the Christian family, the U.S. senators, the Mayor of New
York, the governors and the service chieftains and all the motley rest. He spoke
from the white marble platform raised on high where Dr Joshua Christian should
have been, after which the King of Australia and New Zealand, the Prime Minister
of India, the Premier of China and a dozen other heads of state all spoke, just
a few graceful words each that were too brief to bore and too well phrased to
offend anyone. They thanked Dr Joshua Christian for giving new hope to the
people of the world, they marvelled at the human spirit behind the March of the
Millennium, they praised various versions and professions of God, and they
praised each other.