A Creed for the Third Millennium (32 page)

Bob Smith held up a copy of
God in
Cursing.
The Atticus art department had produced a wonderful jacket, white
with scarlet lettering and a jagged raised bolt of silver lightning running
through title and author's name from the top right of the cover to the bottom
left. The monitor screens filled with it, dramatic, telling.

The star of the show was not a happy man,
though this did not reveal itself even to his guest, the source of all trouble.
A serious subject, a serious doctoral guest, and a serious implication, all
rolled up into the number-one spot on his show. Never before had every one of
his perfectly valid objections been swept aside by the network chiefs; in vain
he had protested that Dr Christian ran counter to the whole philosophy of the
show, that the entire country would switch channels five minutes into the
number-one guest spot, that they were going to lay the biggest egg in the
history of Bob Smith's 'Tonight'. His producer and his producer's bosses merely
nodded all the way through his protests, then told him Dr Christian went on no
matter what, and he would just have to deal with Dr Christian as best he
could.

So at the end of his monologue he had
announced that he was going to introduce a book and its writer first off and
that both were a bit away from the usual slant of the show, but he felt both
were so important he must draw the attention of the country to them. He ended by
looking into the camera very seriously, adjuring his audience to keep watching
while giving an unspoken impression of intense excitement and
anticipation.

Minus his usual infectious grin, Bob
Smith waited until Dr Christian had disposed of his plethora of bones within the
inadequate recesses of the guest chair. After which he held the book up to
the camera, turned to Dr Christian, and said, 'Dr Christian, what
is
millennial neurosis?', feeling an utter fool.

Nor did Dr Christian behave like the
normal guest He didn't smile, he didn't make it easy for his host, he didn't
focus all his attention on his host Instead, he seemed to fix his gaze on some
point high in the rigging which hung above the stage; his chin was raised, his
hands loosely linked on his crossed knees.

'I was born literally at the dawn of the
third millennium,' he said, staccato, 'only days from the end of the year 2000.
My father and mother had four children. I am the eldest We children are each not
more than a year apart in age. While my youngest sibling Andrew was still
newborn, our father froze to death in his car somewhere on the Thruway in
upstate New York. He was going to see a patient on consultation. My father was a
psychiatrist Somewhat unorthodox, but beginning to be very respected all the
same. He died in January of 2004, but he wasn't dug out until April. He was one
of several thousand who died in that same storm on the same stretch of road. It
was the worst winter in the history of the country to that time. And we ran out
of petroleum. The seas were ice, we didn't have enough icebreakers to keep the
harbours and the sealanes clear, we couldn't keep the roads and the railbeds
clear, the blizzards were so continuous between January and April that we
couldn't get enough planes into the air, and all across North America above the
fortieth parallel, people died. That winter of 2004 was the first of the great
shocks which were the devastation of us.'

He lowered his head and looked into the
lens of the camera with the red light glowing, so naturally that the action was
remarkably professional; and in the control cubicle hung sponsonlike on the wall
one storey up, a frisson of shock and excitement passed down every spine.
Something was leaping out of the screens concentrated upon him, a most
extraordinary projection of power and compulsion.

'The third millennium was not
Armageddon,' said Dr Christian. 'None of the things the doomsday merchants had
been predicting for a century actually came true. We didn't have the war to end
all wars. We didn't perish in flames. Instead, the glaciers were on the move,
and so were the people. All over the world's northern hemisphere the people
began to move south. Where there was sun. Where it was still warm. Where the
winters were endurable. A mass migration bigger than any other human migration
this planet has seen.

'Some hard decisions were taken. That
nowhere could men and women be permitted to procreate indiscriminately. That
fossil fuels must be stringently preserved. That further expansion of any kind
must not merely come to a stop, but must actually be reversed to the point of
contraction. The alternative was to reduce global population by nuclear
holocaust, slaughter ourselves back into equilibrium with the shrinking chilling
environment. If after nuclear holocaust what was left might still be called an
environment.

'We were wise enough to see this
millennial message from God, yes, but the people were driven out of the Promised
Land into the wilderness in ignorance and fear. There was just too much to be
done, and not enough intelligence to go round. All too often the laws had to
come first and the explanations afterwards. All too often the explanations were
tendered in language beyond the comprehension of the many. All too often the
news was imparted to the many with the irresponsible and exaggerated drama the
yellow media have made their trademark. And — this is the tragedy of third
millennial humankind — all too often our emotions and our drives pushed us where
common sense and farsightedness
screamed
we shouldn't go.'

The studio audience was very still. No
one even coughed. Nothing Dr Christian had said so far was news to them, but he spoke so sincerely
and so strongly that they listened to him like Celtic tribesmen to a master
bard. He had the bardic witchery that was part wording, part rhythm, part
cadence, part voice, and wholly the intangible ability to bind his listeners
with the spell of himself.

'It is the children who bite deepest, it
is the children we suffer most. Though we are not alone in this. The people of
every land endure the same fate, the people of every land feel the same sorrow.
A man wants a son, but has a daughter instead. Behind him there stretches a son
tradition all the way back to the dawn of history. Or a couple have a son and
want a daughter. A woman overflows with maternal longings and simply wants to
have lots and lots of babies. Even those whose mating preference lies with their
own sex experience a strong urge to reproduce. Only in a relative yesterday
there still existed one of the most basic human tenets — populate or perish. Only
in a relative yesterday some religious institutions held that any attempt at
curtailing progeny was against the teachings of God and a sure precursor of
eternal damnation.'

He couldn't sit still on that ridiculous
chair facing the wrong way a moment longer; he got up from it and strode into
the middle of the stage, the bulk of the lighting behind him and the audience
visible to him at last Off-camera, Bob Smith was gesturing frantically to his
gaping floor manager to produce a chair. This, when found, Bob carried himself
to the middle aisle, and there sat down on it. Since the show was taped between
six and eight in the evening, eastern time, a full three hours would have to
elapse before watchers across the country could see the unimpressionable Bob
Smith carrying his chair, could see him sit like a freshman college student
experiencing his first truly brilliant lecturer. Manning Croft decided to be
less formal, thereby providing a nice contrast to Bob, and just sat down cross-legged on the floor
among the feet of the front row.

'Inside most of us there is a strong love
of hearth and home as well as of children,' said Dr Christian, voice soft, 'and
the three go together. The hearth is the source of warmth and family focus, the
home is the shelter and family protector, and the children are the natural
reason for the existence of the family. Man is an essentially conservative
creature who dislikes being uprooted unless the place where he lives becomes
utterly untenable, or some new place becomes equally alluring. This country was
founded on emigrants who came looking for religious freedom, the space to pursue
new kinds of living, greater earthly comfort and riches, and emancipation from
the shibboleths of ancient custom. But having settled in this country, back came
that love of hearth and home. Take me. My ancestors came from the Isle of Man
and Cumberland in Britain, the fiords of Norway, the mountains of Armenia and
the southwestern plains of Russia. In the United States of America the
succeeding generations of my family prospered. The United States of America
became the homeland, for where else could the seed of such disparate racial
strains have become intermingled, and what could they have in common save this
new homeland?'

He stopped, looked around the audience as
if to discover how many different kinds of faces comprised it, nodded to
himself, and suddenly — for the first time — smiled. Not any smile; the special
smile that loved and embraced and comforted and distinguished.

'I still live in Holloman, Connecticut,
in the house where I grew up, near the schools I went to and the great
university I chose to attend. After the cold came down, I weighed the
alternatives and I deliberately elected to be cold in winter. For outside of a
lack of heat and rationed amounts of electricity and gas, my home still offered
me a degree of comfort and heart-warming familiarity no southern
relocation apartment ever could. But as a result of my ancestors' industry, I
have a certain amount of money, and my personal needs are minimal. I can for
instance well afford to pay my federal and state and city and goods taxes even
though they are at an all-time high and my choosing to remain in Holloman gives
me no relief. I decided not to exercise my right to have one child by being
vasectomized. Now, a full fifteen years after my family made the decision to
remain in Holloman, we face the fact that we will after all have to leave
Holloman. Yet — yet it might truly be said of me that I am
happy.'

In the green room there was silence too.
Dr Carriol covertly watched the other guests to see who was restless, who
thought it was high time Dr Christian got the hook, but no one moved. No one
even commented upon the fact that the tapes were running without thought of
commercial breaks. All attention was focused on the monitors.

'Most people in this age of our world are
not happy,' said Dr Christian, 'and the deep and wretched misery in which they
dwell today is what I call millennial neurosis. Do you know exactly what a
neurosis is? Well, I define it as a reversible negative mental state or
attitude. Its cause may be tenuous or even entirely imaginary, in which case it
is said to be grounded in a person's own inadequacies or insecurities. Then
again, the cause of a neurosis may be real. Valid. Inescapable. As with some
physical peculiarity or illness, as with other concrete factors severe enough to
warp or maim the psyche. Millennial neurosis is caused by reality. Millennial
neurosis is
not
imaginary! In itself it is real. And God knows it is
valid! We keep telling ourselves that we are adult, grown up — mature and
responsible people. But inside every last one of us there lives somewhere at the
core a little child. That child cries when it doesn't understand why it cannot
have what it wants. That child has the power to create psychic havoc within its adult host. And
it often does. It can also end up in ruling its unknowing adult host'

His voice changed, lost its crisp clear
definitive delivery and became louder yet more tender, stronger yet more loving,
a most extraordinary and compelling transmutation, akin to the difference
between a diamond and rich red gold. And as did his voice, so did he change in
himself.

'Why
do
you cry so?' he asked. 'I
who have never needed to cry for myself can tell you, you the cause of the only
tears I shed. You cry for the children you cannot have. You cry for the
impermanence of your homes. You cry for the freedom to do as you want and live
as you want. You cry for a kinder, warmer earth. You cry because the concepts of
God fostered in you are concepts you can accept no longer, that you do not
understand and therefore cannot draw comfort from.'

Across the country no one watched as yet
except in the White House, where via a special land line permanently installed
between Atlanta and Washington (more secure and interference-free than
satellite), President Tibor Reece and Secretary of the Environment Harold Magnus
sat in comfortable chairs in the Oval Office watching the actual recording of
Bob Smith's 'Tonight'. And they watched very closely indeed, hypersensitive to
every nuance in Dr Christian's words and voice, waiting for any indication that
the winner of Operation Search was going to turn out to be disappointing, or
plain unsatisfactory, or even subversive. So far, so very good,
however.

'Natural griefs,' said Dr Christian, 'are
just that. They result from the loss of someone or something that can never come
again. Death. Innocence. Health. Youth. Fertility. Spontaneity. When living
conditions are normal, the mind has mechanisms which deal with natural grief.
And never forget that grief is natural. Time is the greatest friend, and to keep
busy accelerates the passing of sufficient time. But we in the
millennial neurosis situation are surrounded by
perpetual, remorseless reinforcement of our grief. Time is never given the
chance to do its healing work. Many of us my age and older have multiple
brothers and sisters, so we know the joys of large families. We have cousins
galore, we have aunts and uncles. Our children have no brothers and sisters, and
their children will have neither aunts, uncles, nor cousins. Many of us are
still journeying between old homes and new, or have left old homes permanently
for new homes less well built, smaller, less private — or perhaps we have gone
from a slum dwelling of the north to a shanty in the south. Many of us have been
made redundant, so we do not even have the solace of useful work. But none of us
actually starves, or even endures a particularly monotonous diet. None of us is
as badly off as the northern Europeans or the central Asians. Nor do we suffer
an indifferent government. The law of the land is mercilessly just, cruelly
impartial, and no citizen can escape the fate of all citizens. Yet nothing do we
suffer that fires our emotions. Everything we suffer only serves to quench them.
And thus — millennial neurosis.'