the first followers of Cave. I don't know his other name or even much about him. All that I know I've been told… as far as I remember, the episode was never even recorded. Much too disagreeable… and of course we don't like to dwell on our failures.'
'I wonder what it was that he did,' I asked, my voice trembling despite all efforts to control it.
'He was a nonconformist of some kind. He quarreled with Iris, they say.'
'Wonder what happened to him?' asked Butler. 'Did they send him through indoctrination?'
'No, as far as I know.' Jessup paused. When he spoke again his voice was thoughtful. 'According to the story I heard… legend really… he disappeared. They never found him and though we've wisely removed all record of him, his name is still used to describe our failures: those among us, that is, who refuse Cavesword without indoctrination. Somewhere, they say, he is living, in hiding, waiting to undo Caveswork. As Cave was the anti-Christ so he, or rather another like him, will attempt to destroy us.'
'Not much chance of that.' Butler's voice was confident. 'Anyway, if he was a contemporary of Cave he must be dead by now.'
'Not necessarily. After all Mr Hudson was a contemporary and
4
There's not much time left and I must proceed as swiftly as possible to the death of Cave and my own exile.
The year of Cave's death was not only a year of triumph but one of terror as well. The counter-offensive reached its peak in those busy months, and we were all in danger of our lives.
In the South, groups of Baptists stormed the new Centers, demolishing them and killing, in several instances, the Residents. Despite our protests and threats of reprisal, many state governments refused to protect the Cavite Centers and Paul was forced to enlist a small army to defend our establishments in those areas which were still dominated by the old religions. Several attempts were made to destroy our New York headquarters; fortunately, they were all apprehended before any damage could be done though one fanatic, a Catholic, got as far as Paul's office where he threw a grenade into a wastebasket, killing himself and slightly scratching Paul who had, in his usual fashion, been traveling nervously about the room, getting out of range at the proper moment. The election of a Cavite-dominated Congress eased things for us considerably, though it made our enemies all the more desperate.
Paul fought back. Bishop Winston, the most eloquent of the Christian prelates and the most dangerous to us, had died, giving rise to the rumor, soon afterwards confirmed by Cavite authority to be a fact, that he had killed himself and that, therefore, he had finally renounced Christ and taken to himself Cavesword.
Many of the clergy of the Protestant sects, aware that their parishioners and authority were falling away, became, quietly, without gloating on our part, Cavite Residents and Communicators.
The bloodiest persecutions, however, did not occur in North America. The Latin countries, the seat of the old Catholic power which was itself the shadow of the Roman Empire, provided the world with a series of massacres remarkable even in that murderous century. Yet it was a fact that in the year of Cave's death, Italy was half-Cavite while France, England and Germany were nearly all Cavite while only Spain and parts of Latin America held out, imprisoning, executing, deporting Cavites against the inevitable day when our Communicators, undismayed, proud in their martyrdom, would succeed in their assaults upon these last citadels of paganism.
On a hot day in August, our third and last autumn in the yellow tower, we dined on the terrace of Cave's penthouse overlooking the city. The bright sky shuddered with heat. Clarissa, who had just come from abroad where she had been enjoying several seasons under the guise of an official tour of reconnaissance, was entirely the guest of honor. She sat wearing a large picture hat beneath the striped awning which sheltered our glass-topped table from the sun's rays. Cave insisted on eating out-of-doors as often as possible even though the rest of us preferred the cool interior where we were not disturbed by either heat or by the clouds of soot which floated above the imperial city, impartially lighting upon all who ventured out into the open.
It was our first 'family dinner' in some months (Paul insisted on regarding us as a family and the metaphors which he derived from this one conceit used even to irritate the imperturbable Cave). At one end of the table sat Clarissa, with Paul and me on either side of her; at the other end sat Cave, with Iris and Stokharin on either side of him; Iris was on his left and on my right and, early in the dinner, when the conversation was particular, we talked.
'I suppose we'll be leaving soon,' she said. A sea gull missed the awning by inches.
'I haven't heard anything about it. Who's leaving… and why?'
'John thinks we've all been here too long; he thinks we're too remote.'
'He's quite right about that.' I blew soot off my plate. 'But where are we to go? After all, there's a good chance that if any of us shows his head to the grateful populace someone is apt to blow it off.'
'That's a risk we have to take. But John is right. We must get out and see the people… talk to them direct.' Her voice was urgent. I looked at her thoughtfully, seeing the change that three years of extraordinary activity had wrought: she was overweight and her face, as sometimes happens in the first access of weight, was smooth, without lines, younger-looking but also without much character or expression… I kept thinking irrelevantly of a marshmallow for, in the light of day, her casually made-up face did resemble a pale smoothly powdered confection. Her wonderful sharpness, her old fineness was entirely gone and the new Iris, the busy, efficient Iris had become like… like… I groped for the comparison, the memory of someone similar I had known in the past, but the ghost did not materialize; and so haunted, faintly distrait, I talked to the new Iris I did not really know, to the visible half of a like-pair whose twin was lost somewhere in my memory.
'I'll be only too happy to leave,' I said, helping myself to the salad which was being served us by one of the Eurasian servants Paul, in an exotic mood, had engaged to look after the penthouse and the person of Cave. 'I don't think I've been away from here half a dozen times in two years.'
'It's been awfully hard,' Iris agreed. Her eyes shifted regularly to Cave, like an anxious parent. 'Of course I've had more chance than anyone to get out but I haven't seen nearly as much as I ought. It's my job, really, to look at all the Centers, to supervise in person all the schools but of course I can't if Paul insists on turning every trip I take into a kind of pageant.'
'It's for your own protection.'
'I think we're much safer than Paul thinks. The country's almost entirely Cavite.'
'All the more reason to be careful. The die-hards are on their last legs; they're maniacal, some of them.'
'Well, we must take our chances. John says he won't stay here another autumn. September is his best month, you know. I think he's a little superstitious about it: it was September when he first spoke Cavesword.'
'What does Paul say?' I looked down the table at our ringmaster who was telling Clarissa what she had seen in Europe.
Iris frowned. 'He's doing everything he can to keep us here… I can't think why. John's greatest work has been done face to face with people yet Paul acts as if he didn't dare let him out in public. We have quarreled about this for over a year, Paul and I.'
'He's quite right, I know. I'd be nervous to go about in public without some sort of protection. You should see the murderous letters I get at the
'We've nothing to fear,' said Iris flatly. 'And we have everything to gain by mixing with people. We could easily grow out of touch, marooned in this tower.'
'Oh, it's not that bad.' To my surprise, I found myself defending our monastic life. 'Everyone comes here. Cave speaks to groups of the faithful every day. I sit like some disheveled hen over a large newspaper and I couldn't be more instructed, more engaged in life, while you dash around the country almost as much as Paul does.'
'But only seeing the Centers, only meeting the Cavites. I have no other life any more.' I looked at her curiously. There was no bitterness in her voice yet there was a certain wistfulness which I'd never noticed before.
'Do you regret all this, Iris?' I asked. It had been some time, three years, since I had spoken to her of ourselves, of personal matters: we had become, in a sense, the offices which we held; our symbolic selves paralyzing all else within, true precedent achieved at a great cost. Now a fissure had suddenly appeared in that
