Gore Vidal - Messiah

"Thanks for those kind words," said Butler, flushed now with pleasure as well as heat. "Which reminds me, I was going to ask you if you'd like to help us with our work once we get going?"

"I'd like nothing better but I'm afraid my years of useful service are over. Any advice, however, or perhaps influence that I may have in Luxor…" There was a warm moment of mutual esteem and amiability, broken only by a reference to the Squad of Belief.

"Of course we'll have one here in time; though we can say, thankfully, that the need for them in the Atlantic states is nearly over. Naturally, there are always a few malcontents but we have worked out a statistical ratio of nonconformists in the population which is surprisingly accurate. Knowing their incidence, we are able to check them early. In general, however, the truth is happily ascendant everywhere in the really civilized world."

"What are their methods now?"

"The Squad of Belief's? Psychological indoctrination. We now have methods of converting even the most obstinate lutherist. Of course where usual methods fail (and once in every fifteen hundred they do), the Squad is authorized to remove a section of brain which effectively does the trick of making the lutherist conform, though his usefulness in a number of other spheres is somewhat impaired: I'm told he has to learn all over again how to talk and to move around."

"Lutherist? I don't recognize the word."

"You certainly have been cut off from the world." Butler looked at me curiously, almost suspiciously. "I thought even in your day that was a common expression. It means anybody who refuses willfully to know the truth."

"What does it come from?"

"Come from?" Semantics were either no longer taught or else Butler had never been interested in them. "Why it just means, well, a lutherist."

"I wonder, though, what the derivation of it was." I was excited: this was the only sign that I had ever existed, a word of obscure origin connoting nonconformist.

"I'm afraid we'll have to ask my side-kick when he comes. I don't suppose it came from one of those Christian sects… you know the German one which broke with Rome."

"That must be it," I said. "I don't suppose in recent years there have been as many lutherists as there once were."

"Very, very few. As I say, we've got it down to a calculable minority and our psychologists are trying to work out some method whereby we can spot potential lutherists in childhood and indoctrinate them before it's too late… but of course the problem is a negligible one in the Atlantic states. We've had no serious trouble for forty years."

"Forty years… that was the time of all the trouble," I said.

"Not so much trouble," said Butler, undoing the bandana and mopping his face with it. "The last flare-up, I gather, of the old Christians… history makes very little of it though I suppose at the time it must have seemed important. Now that we have more perspective we can view things in their proper light. I was only a kid in those days and, frankly, I don't think I paid any attention to the papers. Of course you remember it." He looked at me suddenly, his great vacuous eyes focused. My heart missed one of its precarious beats: was this the beginning? had the inquisition begun?

"Not well," I said. "I was seldom in the United States. I'd been digging in Central America, in and around the Peten. I missed most of the trouble."

"You seem to have missed a good deal." His voice was equable, without a trace of secondary meaning.

"I've had a quiet life. I'm grateful though for your coming here; otherwise, I should have died without any contact with America, without ever knowing what was happening outside the Arab League."

"Well, we'll shake things up around here."

"Shake well before using," I quoted absently.

"What did you say?"

"I said I hoped all would be well."

"I'm sure it will. By the way, I brought you the new edition of Cave's prison dialogues." He pulled a small booklet from his back pocket and handed it to me.

"Thank you." I took the booklet: dialogues between Cave and Iris Mortimer. I had never before heard of this particular work. "Is this a recent discovery?" I asked.

"Recent? Why no. It's the newest edition but of course the text goes right back to the early days when Cave was in prison."

"Oh, yes, in California."

"Sure; it was the beginning of the persecutions. Well, I've got to be on my way." He got heavily to his feet and arranged the bandana about his head. "Somebody stole my hat. Persecuting me, I'll bet my bottom dollar… little ways. Well, I'm prepared for them. They can't stop us. Sooner or later the whole world will be Cavite."

"Amen," I said.

"What?" He looked at me with shock.

"I'm an old man," I said hastily. "You must recall I was brought up in the old Christianity. Such expressions still linger on, you know."

"It's a good thing there's no Squad of Belief in Luxor," said Butler cheerily. "They'd have you up for indoctrination in a second."

"I doubt if it'd be worth their trouble. Soon I shall be withdrawing from the world altogether."

"I suppose so. You haven't thought of taking Cavesway have you?"

"Of course, many times, but since my health has been good I've been in no great hurry to leave my contemplation of those hills." I pointed to the western window. "Now I should hesitate to die until the very last moment, out of curiosity. I'm eager to learn, to help as much as possible in your work here."

"Well, that of course is good news but should you ever want to take his way let me know. We have some marvelous methods now, extremely pleasant to take and, as he said, 'It's not death which is hard but dying.' We've finally made dying simply swell."

"Will wonders never cease?"

"In that department, never! It is the firm basis of our truth. Now I must be off."

"Is your colleague due here soon?"

"Haven't heard recently. I don't suppose the plans have been changed, though. You'll like him."

"I'm sure I shall."

And so John Cave's period in jail was now known as the time of persecution, with a pious prison dialogue attributed to Iris. Before I returned to my work of recollection, I glanced at the dialogue whose style was enough like Iris's to have been her work. But of course her style was not one which could ever have been called inimitable since it was based on the most insistent of twentieth-century advertising techniques. I assumed the book was the work of others, of those anonymous counterfeiters who had created, according to a list of publications on the back of the booklet, a wealth of Cavite doctrine.

The conversation with Cave in prison was lofty in tone and seemed to deal with moral problems. It was apparent that since the task of governing is largely one of keeping order it had become, with the passage of time, necessary for the Cavite rulers to compose in Cave's name different works of ethical instruction to be used for the guidance and control of the population. I assume that since they now control all records, all original sources, it is an easy matter for them to "discover" some relevant text which gives clear answer to any moral or political problem which has not been anticipated in previous commentaries. The work of falsifying records, expunging names is, I should think, somewhat more tricky but they seem to have accomplished it in Cave's Testament, brazenly assuming that those who recall the earlier versions will die off in time, leaving a generation which knows only what they wish it to know, excepting of course the "calculable minority" of nonconformists, of base lutherists. Cave's term in prison was far less dramatic than official legend, though more serious. He was jailed for hit-and-run driving on the highway from Santa Monica into Los Angeles.