think God's arranged all this. That's absurd. You must stop yourself thinking it. It's dangerous.'
'God doesn't exist.'
'I know that as well as you do. Better than you do. You're afraid he might exist. You've got to convince yourself absolutely that there's no such thing, if you don't want to go mad.'
'But you're a parson.'
'What about it?'
Churchill tried feebly to disengage himself from Ayscue's grip.
'This is worse. Pretending to agree with me. It won't work.'
'Now you listen to me,' said Ayscue loudly. 'You're not quite as original as you think you are. To believe at all deeply in the Christian God, in any sort of benevolent deity, is a disgrace to human decency and intelligence. Of course it is. We can take that as read. I was so convinced of it when I was about your age that I saw the Church as the embodiment of the most effectively vicious lie ever told. I declared a personal war on it. That was why I joined-so as to be able to work against it more destructively from within. I used to have a lot of fun in those days with things like devising an order of service that would please God much more than merely groveling and begging for mercy or praising him for his cruelty in the past and looking forward to seeing more of the same in the future. Selected members of the congregation getting their arms chopped off and/or their eyes put out as a warm- up. Then a canticle about his loving-kindness. Then some whips and scorpions treatment on children under sixteen, followed by a spot of disemboweling and perhaps a beheading or two at the discretion of the officiating priest, with the choir singing an anthem about the beauty of holiness. Then an address explaining about God's will and so on. Then a few crucifixions, bringing out the real meaning of the Christian symbol. Finally a blessing for the survivors, plus a friendly warning that itll probably be their turn next. I used to think it was the Aztecs who came nearest to establishing the kingdom of God on earth. What was it they were notching up, a thousand human sacrifices a week? But then the Christians arrived and soon put them down. He's a jealous God.'
When he began this speech, the tone of emotion in Ayscue's voice had been partly synthetic. Now it was all genuine. He was conscious of this and of the silence when he paused. He let go of Churchill, who lay there as before. A glance showed that Naidu had turned his back and was looking out of the window.
Ayscue said, in a hurried, apologetic way, 'But I got converted. That's to say I realized that not wanting to see these things as they are, which most people don't, doesn't necessarily make them completely stupid or insensitive or not frightened of life and death. Christianity's just the thing for people like that. A conspiracy to pretend that God moves in such a mysterious way that asking questions about it is a waste of time and everything's all right really. I joined that conspiracy. As you know. The only awkward part is covering up one's sex activities and so on. One can't bring the cloth into disrepute because that would weaken the conspiracy. And then there are times like this.'
He felt he was on the threshold of an important point, of something that would resolve the current situation, but could not grasp what it was. Churchill had not moved. Ayscue got up from the bed.
'I'm afraid I haven't been any help at all,' he said.
'No,' said Naidu, turning. 'I'm afraid you haven't.'
'I didn't expect to be. Will you see what you can do?'
'Of course.'
Naidu walked briskly forward and sat down on the bed at a conversable distance from Churchill.
'My dear friend James,' he said. 'Let's please agree to omit God from our considerations. Your God, or indeed your no-God, or anybody's God. If you bother about such ideas, you'll have no time or attention to spare for how you should be behaving. If you make God responsible for situations, you're not responsible for how you should behave in them. But if you love even one other person you must be responsible for this. In your present state you're no use to Catharine at all. You're trying to be in her state. You're making an effort to take her place. Yes you are indeed. Now. However these events came, they're here and you must deal with them. And you can do this, because they're not unchangeable. Oh, nobody can work miracle cures, I don't mean any such thing. But you can modify these events, you can make them less bad. But to do that you must accept them first. You must forget hatred and all feelings of blame. Unless you do that you can do nothing.'
'Nobody can do anything,' said Churchill quite suddenly.
'Oh yes, my dear James, somebody can. You can. But not unless you want to. Now consider-consider with me, James, what we have. We have a chain of bad events. They're made much worse by your being afraid. And what you're afraid of is in the first place your own death. Not Catharine's.'
'No,' said Churchill. 'At least, I am afraid, I can be afraid. But not now.'
'Yes, now. And this is not intelligent of you. Death is not your enemy. Death's nobody's enemy. Your enemy's the same as everybody else's. Your enemy is fear, plus ill feelings, bad feelings of all descriptions. Such as selfishness, and not wanting to be deprived of what comforts you, and greed, and arrogance, and above all belief in your own uniqueness and your own importance. All these bad feelings come from considering yourself first. It's hard to say and I don't want to be a preacher, but if you could simply begin to love Me in everything there is, then your bad feelings would start to diminish. You must make up your mind to love Catharine with all your heart, so that your heart has no room for the fear that you'll be deprived of her. You must cast out that fear, and then you'll have begun to cast out all fear. At the moment you're so afraid that you're pretending to be dead. Please stop, James, and begin to try. We must all try to become men.'
Five minutes later, Churchill said, 'There's nothing to say, except about this thing. And there's nothing to say about that.'
'What about cover?' asked Jagger.
Leonard fastened the flies of his scarlet dress trousers and examined their hang in his triple mirror. The disposal of Best had bred in him an unaccustomed kind of buoyant off-handedness.
'Everybody's used to comings and goings in this camp,' he said when he felt ready to. 'A special technical section can easily be posted in. The more unrnilitary they are the better. I hope I get sent some good people, by the way. Those blokes they gave me to keep an eye on Best were very sub-standard. Perhaps you could have a word with our masters about that when you get back. Are you traveling by helicopter again?'
