Gore Vidal - Messiah

"What can I do?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. It's enough that you were warned in advance."

"What would you do?"

"Exactly what I'm going to do: pull out for good and take a long trip."

"I mean if you were I."

She sighed. "Save your life, if possible; that's all you can do."

"I have a few weapons, you know. I have the Journal and I'm a director. I have friends in every Center." This was almost true. I had made a point of knowing as many Residents as possible. "I also have Iris and Cave on my side since I'm willing to do all I can to keep him alive, that he not become a supreme symbol."

"I wish you luck," Clarissa was most cynical. She rose "Now that I've done my bit of informing, I'm off."

"Europe?"

"None of your business. But I will tell you I won't go back there: they've gone quite mad too. In Madrid I pretended to be a Catholic and I watched them put Cavites up before firing squads. Of course our people, despite persecution, are having a wonderfully exciting time with passwords and peculiar college fraternity handclasps and so on." She collected her gloves and handbag from the floor where, as usual, she had strewn them.

"Well, now good-by." She gave me a kiss; then she was gone. I never saw her again.

Events moved rapidly. I took to bolting my bedroom door at night and, during the day, I was careful always to have one or another of my assistants near me. It was a strange sensation to be living in a modem city with all its police and courts and yet to fear that, in a crisis, there would be no succor, no one to turn to for aid and protection. We were a separate government within the nation and the laws did not reach us.

The day after Clarissa had said good-by, Paul appeared in my office. I was surrounded by editors but at a look from him and a gesture from me they withdrew. We had each kept our secret, evidently, for none of those close to us in that building suspected that there had been a fatal division.

"I seem to be in disgrace," I said, my forefinger delicately caressing the buzzer which I had built into the arm of my chair so that I might summon aid in the event that a visitor proved to be either a bore or a maniac, two types curiously drawn to enterprises such as ours.

"I wouldn't say that." Paul sat in a chair close to my own; I recall thinking, a little madly, that elephants are supposed to be at their most dangerous when they are quite still. Paul was noticeably controlled. Usually he managed to cross the room at least once for every full sentence; now he sat looking at me, his face without expression.

"I've seen no one since our dinner except Clarissa," I explained; then I added, earnestly: "I wonder where she plans to go. She didn't…"

"You've almost wrecked everything," he said, his voice tight, unfamiliar in its tension.

"I didn't want to," I said, inaccurately. I was at the moment more terrified than I'd ever been, either before or since. I could get no real grip on him: the surface he presented me was as formidable, as granitic as a prison wall.

"Who told you? Iris? Cave? or were you spying?" Each question was fired at me like a bullet.

"Spying on whom?"

"On me, damn you!" Then it broke. The taut line of control which had held in check his anger and his fear broke all at once and the torrent flowed, reckless and overpowering: "You meddling idiot! You spied on me; you found out; you thought you'd be able to stall things by springing it like that. Well, you failed." I recall thinking, quite calmly, how much I preferred his face in the congested ugliness of rage to its ordinary banality of expression. I was relieved, too, by the storm. I could handle him when he was out of control. I considered my counteroffensive while he shouted at me, accused me of hostility to him, of deviationism from Cavesword and of numerous other crimes. He stopped, finally, for lack of breath.

"I gather," I said, my voice shaking a little from excitement, "that at some point recently you decided that Cave should apply Cavesword to himself and die, providing us with a splendid example, an undying (I mean no pun) symbol."

"You know you found out and decided to get in on the act, to force my hand. Now he'll never do it."

That was it then. I was relieved to be no longer in the dark. "Cave has refused to kill himself?"

"You bet your sweet life he has." Paul was beginning to recover his usual poise. "Your little scene gave him the excuse he needed: 'Gene's right.'" Paul imitated Cave's voice with startling accuracy and malice. " 'Gene's right. I never did mean for everybody to kill themselves off… where'd the world be if that happened? Just a few people. That's all.' And he's damned if he's going to be one of them. 'Hate to set that sort of example.'"

"Well, you'll have to try something else then."

"Why did you do it?" Paul's voice became petulant. "Did Iris put you up to it?"

"Nobody put me up to it."

"You mean to sit there and try to make me believe that it just occurred to you, like that, to suggest Cave would have to kill himself if he encouraged suicide?"

"I mean that it occurred to me exactly like that." I looked at Paul with vivid loathing. "Can't you understand even the obvious relationship between cause and effect? With this plan of Stokharin's you'll make it impossible for Cave not to commit suicide and, when he does, you will have an international death cult which I shall do my best to combat."

Paul's hands began nervously to play with his tie, his lapels: I wondered if he'd come armed. I placed my finger lightly upon the buzzer. Implacably, we faced one another.

"You are not truly Cavesword," was all that he said.

"We won't argue about that. I'm merely explaining to you why I said what I did and why I intend to keep Cave alive as long as possible. Alive and hostile to you, to your peculiar interpretation of his word."

Paul looked suddenly disconsolate. "I've done what I thought best. I feel Cave should show us all the way. I feel it's both logical and necessary to the Establishment that he give back his life publicly."

"But he doesn't want to."

"That is the part I can't understand. Cavesword is that death is not to be feared but embraced yet he, the man who has really changed the world, refuses to die."

"Perhaps he feels he has more work to do. More places to see. Perhaps, Paul, he doesn't trust you… doesn't want to leave you in control of the Establishment."

"I'm willing to get out if that's all that's stopping him." But the insincerity of this protestation was too apparent for either of us to contemplate for long.

"I don't care what his motives are. I don't care if he himself is terrified of dying (and I have a hunch that that is the real reason for his hesitancy) but I do know that I don't want him dead by his own hand."

"You're quite sure of that?"

"Absolutely sure. I'm a director of the Establishment and don't forget it, Paul: it's Iris, Cave and I against you and Stokharin. You may control the organization but we have Cave himself." I gathered courage in my desperation. I purposely sounded as though I were in warm concert with the others.

"I realize all that." Paul was suddenly meek, conciliatory, sublimely treacherous. "But you must allow me as much sincerity as you withhold for yourself. I want to do what's best. I think he should die and I've done everything to persuade him. He was near agreement when you upset everything."

"For which I'm happy… though it was something of an accident. Are you sure that it is only for the sake of Cavesword you want him dead?"

"What other possible reason?" He looked at me indignantly. I could not be sure whether he was telling the truth or not. I doubted it.

"Many other reasons. For one thing you would be his heir, in complete control of the Establishment; and that of course is something worth inheriting."