Messiah

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 idolater 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 idolaters?'

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 texts. 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.'