"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 Journal."
"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 monument which Iris had become and, through the flaw, I heard again, briefly, the voice of the girl I had met on the bank of the Hudson in the spring of a lost year.
"I never knew it would be like this," she said, almost whispering, her eyes on Cave while she spoke to me. "I never thought my life would be as alone as this, all work."
"Yet you wanted it: you do want it. Direction, meaning, you wanted all that and now you have it. The magic worked, Iris. Your magician was real."
"But I sometimes wonder if I am real anymore." The words, though softly spoken, fell upon my ear like rounded stones, smooth and hard.
"It's too late," I said, mercilessly. "You are what you wanted to be. Live it out, Iris. There is nothing else."
"You're dead too," she said at last, her voice regaining its usual authority.
"Speaking of dead," said Cave suddenly turning toward us (I hoped he had not heard all our conversation), "Stokharin here has come up with a wonderful scheme."
Even Clarissa fell silent. We all did whenever Cave spoke which was seldom on social occasions. Cave looked cheerfully about the table for a moment. Stokharin beamed with pleasure at the accolade.
"You've probably all heard about the suicides as a result of Cavesword." Cave had very early got into the habit of speaking of himself in the third person whenever a point of doctrine was involved. "Paul's been collecting the monthly figures and each month they double. Of course they're not accurate since there are a good many deaths due to Cavesword which we don't hear about. Anyway, Stokharin has perfected a painless death by poison, a new compound which kills within an hour and is delightful to take."
"I have combined certain narcotics which together insure a highly exhilarated state before the end, as well as most pleasant fantasies." Stokharin smiled complacently.
Cave nodded and continued. "I've already worked out some of the practical details for putting this into action. There are still a lot of wrinkles, but we can iron them out in time. One of the big problems of present-day unorganized suicide is the mess it causes for the people unfortunate enough to be left behind. There are legal complications; there is occasionally grief in old-fashioned family groups; there is also a general disturbance which, though only social, still tends to leave a bad taste, giving suicide, at least among the reactionaries, a bad name.
"Our plan is simple. We will provide at each Center full facilities for those who have listened to Cavesword and have responded to it by taking the better way. There will be a number of comfortable rooms where the suicidalist may receive his friends for a last visit. We'll provide legal assistance to put his affairs in order. Not everyone of course will be worthy of us. Those who choose death merely to evade responsibility will be censured and restrained. But the deserving, those whose lives have been devoted and orderly, may come to us and receive the gift."
I was appalled; before I could control myself I had said: "But the law! You just can't let people kill themselves…"
"Why not?" Cave looked at me coldly and I saw, in the eyes of the others, concern and hostility. I had anticipated something like this ever since my talk with Paul but I had not thought it would come so swiftly or so boldly.
Paul spoke for Cave. "We've got the Congress and the Congress will make a law for us. For the time being, though, it is against the present statutes; however, we've been assured by our lawyers that there isn't much chance of their being invoked except perhaps in the remaining pockets of Christianity where we'll go slow until we do have the necessary laws to protect us."
At that moment the line which had, from the very beginning, been visibly drawn between me and them, became a wall apparent to everyone. Even Clarissa, my usual ally, fearless and sharp, did not speak out. They looked at me, all of them awaiting a sign; even Cave regarded me with curiosity. My hand shook and I was forced to seize the edge of the table to steady myself. The sensation of cold glass and iron gave me a sudden courage. I brought Cave's life to its end. I turned to him and said, quietly, with all the firmness I could summon: "Then you'll have to die as well as they, and soon."