"You mean this to be a religion, Paul?"
He smiled, "Maybe, yes… something on that order perhaps. Something workable, though, for now: I've thought about what you said the other night."
"Does Cave want this?"
Paul shrugged. "Who can tell. I should think so but this is not really a problem for him to decide. He has happened. Now we respond. Stokharin feels that a practical faith, a belief in ways of behavior which the best modern analysts are agreed on as being closest to ideal, might perform absolute miracles. No more guilt-feeling about sex if Cave were to teach that all is proper when it does no harm to others… and the desire to do harm to others might even be partly removed if there were no false mysteries, no terrible warnings in childhood and so on. Just in that one area of behavior we could work wonders! Of course there would still be problems but the main ones could be solved if people take to Cave and to us. Cavesword is already known and it's a revelation to millions… we know that. Now they are looking to him for guidance in other fields. They know about death at last. Now we must tell them about living and we are lucky to have available so much first-rate scientific research in the human psyche. I suspect we can even strike on an ideal behavior pattern by which people can measure themselves."
"And to which they will be made to conform?" Direction was becoming clear already.
"How can we force anyone to do anything? Our whole power is that people come to us, to Cave voluntarily because they feel here, at last, is the answer." Paul might very well have been sincere: there is no way of determining, even now.
"Well, remember, Paul, that you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new law imposed by enthusiasts."
"Don't say 'you.' Say 'we.' You're as much a part of this as I am. After all you're a director. You've got a say-so in these matters. Just speak up Friday." Paul was suddenly genial and placating. "I don't pretend I've got all the answers. I'm just talking off the top of my head, like they say."
A member of the team burst into the office with the news that Bishop Winston was outside.
"Now it starts," said Paul with a grimace.
The Bishop did not recognize me as we passed one another in the office. He looked grim and he was wearing clerical garb.
"He's too late," said a lean youth, nodding at the churchman's back.
"Professional con-men," said his companion with disgust. "They've had their day."
And with that in my ears, I walked out into the snow-swirling street, into the bleak opening of the new year, of Cave's year.
I was more alarmed than ever by what Paul had told me and by what I heard on every side. In drugstores and bars and restaurants, people talked of Cave. I could even tell when I did not hear the name that it was of him they spoke: a certain intentness, a great curiosity, a wonder. In the bookstores, copies of my introduction were displayed with large blown-up photographs of Cave to accompany them.
Alone in a bar on Madison Avenue where I'd taken refuge from the cold, I glanced at the clippings Paul had given me. There were two sets. The first were the original perfunctory ones which had appeared, short, puzzled… the reviewers, knowing even less philosophy than I, tended to question my proposition that Cavesword was anything more than a single speculation in rather a large field. I'd obviously not communicated his magic, only its record which, like the testament of miracles, depends entirely on faith and to inspire faith one needed Cave himself.
"What do you think about the guy?" the waiter, a fragile sensitive Latin with parchment-lidded eyes mopped the spilled gin off my table (he'd seen a picture of Cave among my clippings).
"It's hard to say," I said. "How did he strike you?"
"Boy, like lightning!" The waiter beamed; a smile which showed broken teeth spoiled the delicate line of his face. "Of course I'm Catholic but this is something new. Some people been telling me you can't be a good Catholic and go for this guy. But why not? I say. You still got Virginmerry and now you got him, too, for right now. You ought to see the crowd we get here to see the TV when he's on. It's wild."
It was wild, I thought, putting the clippings back into the folder. Yet it might be kept within bounds. Paul had emphasized my directorship, my place in the structure… well, I would show them what should be done or, rather, not done.
Then I went out into the snow-dimmed street and hailed a cab. All the way to Iris's apartment I was rehearsing what I would say to Paul when next we met. "Leave them alone," I said aloud. "It is enough to open the windows."
"Open the windows!" The driver snorted. "It's damn near forty in the street."
4
Iris occupied several rooms on the second floor of a brownstone in a street with, pleasantest of New York anachronisms, trees. When I entered, she was doing yogi exercises on the floor, sitting cross-legged on a mat, her slender legs in leotards and her face flushed with strain. "It just doesn't work for me!" she said and stood up without embarrassment for, since I'd found the main door unlocked, I'd opened this one too, without knocking.
"I'm sorry, Iris, the downstairs door was…"
"Don't be silly." She rolled up the mat efficiently. "I was expecting you but I lost track of time… which means it must be working a little. I'll be right back." She went into the bedroom and I sat down, amused by this unexpected side to Iris: I wondered if perhaps she was a devotee of wheat germ and mint tea as well. She claimed not. "It's the only real exercise I get," she said, changed now to a heavy robe which completely swathed her figure as she sat curled up in a great armchair, drinking Scotch, as did I, the winter outside hid by drawn curtains, by warmth and light.
"Have you done it long?"
"Oh, off and on for years. I never get anywhere but it's very restful and I've felt so jittery lately that anything which relaxes me…" her voice trailed off idly. She seemed relaxed now.
"I've been to see Paul," I began importantly.
"Ah." But I could not, suddenly, generate sufficient anger to speak out with eloquence. I went around my anger stealthily, a murderer stalking his victim. "We disagreed."
"In what?"
"In everything, I should say."
"That's so easy with Paul." Iris stretched lazily; ice chattered in her glass; a car's horn melodious and foreign sounded in the street below. "We need him. If it wasn't Paul, it might be someone a great deal worse. At least he's intelligent and devoted. That makes up for a lot."
"I don't think so; Iris, he's establishing a sort of supermarket, short-order church for the masses."
She laughed delightedly. "I like that… and, in a way, you're right: that's what he would do left to himself."
"He seems in complete control."
"Only of the office. John makes all the decisions."
"I wish I could be sure of that."
"You'll see on Friday. You'll be at the meeting, won't you?"
I nodded. "I have a feeling that between Paul and Stokharin this thing is going to turn into a world-wide clinic for mental health."
"I expect worse things could happen, but Paul must still contend with me and you and of course the final word is with John."