Gore Vidal - Messiah

"He was busy those days," said Jessup, nodding. "He must have dictated nearly two million words in the last three years of his life."

"You think he wrote all those books and dialogues himself?"

"Of course he did." Jessup sounded surprised. "Haven't you read Iris's accounts of the way he worked? The way he would dictate for hours at a time, oblivious of everything but Cavesword."

"I suppose I missed all that," I mumbled. "In those days it was always assumed that he had a staff who did the work for him."

"The lutherists," said Jessup, nodding. "They were extremely subtle in their methods but of course they couldn't distort the truth for very long…"

"Oh," said Butler. "Mr Hudson asked me the other day if I knew what the word lutherist came from and I said I didn't know. I must have forgotten for I have a feeling it was taught us, back in the old days when we primitives were turned out, before you bright young fellows came along to show us how to do Caveswork."

Jessup smiled. "We're not that bumptious," he said. "As for lutherist, it's a word based on the name of one of 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 he is still alive." Jessup looked at me then; his eyes, in a burst of obsidian light, caught the sun's last rays. I think he knows.

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."