A Creed for the Third Millennium (46 page)

And they walked on and on and on below
her, half a day long, three-quarters of a day long, until the sun began to die,
and the city crashed headlong into a hugely bellowing silence.

The moment this desolation happened she
went downstairs, crossed Fifth Avenue and entered the park, where a helicopter
waited to take her to New Jersey. She would join her incubus at his night camp,
wherever that might be.

In the White House it was a ragged day,
for the President's temper was ragged. He fretted at the nightmare thought of
something going wrong, of that human sea going berserk for no good reason any
one of the March's high command could
predict, of some kind of magnetic eddy forming amid the unnumbered multitudes
and dashing heads together like so many eggs, of a black speck of hatred
festering undetected somewhere and erupting through the human cells in bloody
waves of violence, of one lone fanatic bringing the sights of his rifle to bear
on Dr Joshua Christian as he strode defenceless and exposed along his
broad-walk

Naturally he had assented immediately to
the concept of the March of the Millennium when Harold Magnus brought it to him,
but as time went on and the March grew more irrevocable, he became more and more
frightened of it, and wished with ever-increasing frequency that he had not
given his consent. When, just after May arrived, Harold Magnus twitted him about
his jitters, he grew snappy and defensive; he had been informed of Dr
Christian's refusal to be protected. He demanded more and more proof from
Environment, the Army, the National Guard — and anyone else he could find — to
the effect that every contingency was planned for and covered in quintuplicate.
Only the piles of evidence deposited before him stiffened his original resolve.
Yet still his presentiment of disaster persisted, now focused on Dr Christian's
vulnerability, because this was the one contingency beyond control.

So on this commencement day he fretted
and he fretted. More positive behaviour was utterly denied him, for the March of
the Millennium, Dr Christian's fame, and the amazing success of the Christian
philosophy abroad, all conspired against his acting positively. For the first
time since the Delhi Treaty the leaders of the world were gathering in
Washington, for the first time since the Delhi Treaty it seemed as if real amity
might be achieved between the United States of America and the other major
powers. So much was riding on the broad thin shoulders of the man his video monitor showed him striding
along with credible swiftness, mile after mile, hour after hour, a perfect
target for an assassin. And he knew if Dr Joshua Christian came crashing down
with his blood flying that America would receive a blow more crippling than
Delhi. For her own people and the people of the world would point once more to
the senseless destructive anarchistic element that dogged her and flawed her.
Oh, too much to pin on too little!

He had denied everyone access to him
since dawn, sitting with Harold Magnus for company, chafing and starting up in a
panic whenever it seemed to him that the panning cameras might have focused on a
possible nucleus of trouble. He had chosen Harold Magnus for sole companion
because if anything did go wrong, he had someone on hand at whom he could lash
out with complete justification.

It awed him. It terrified him. It made
him understand for the first time what the reality of abstract millions was
actually about. There they were in the flesh, genuine millions, his faceless
masters and his responsibility. There they were,
five million
little
blobs of heads spewing across the face of a New Jersey countryside without end,
and every one of these blobs housed a brain that had voted for him or against
him. How had he ever dared to presume to govern them? How had his predecessors
ever dared? How had he ever been deluded into thinking he could control
something so astronomical? How could he ever again nerve himself to act? He just
wanted to run away and bury his own blob of a head where no one would ever find
it. Who was Joshua Christian? Why had he come out of a nameless obscurity to
this utter dominion? What right did a computer have to determine living fates?
Could the man on the boardwalk truly be so selfless he didn't understand the
awesome possibilities that ocean of flesh was offering him? I am afraid, I am so
afraid!
What have I done?

Harold Magnus was aware of the doubts
tormenting Tibor Reece, but he experienced none of them for himself. He purred.
What a sight! What a fucking miracle! What a triumph for himself, to orchestrate
a happening of this magnitude! Oh, what a thing to do! Nothing disastrous was
going to happen, he was sublimely confident of that. And he swallowed all of it
greedily, the visual offering that came in on the monitors from New York, plus
the nine other marches going on across the country, shorter versions of the
March of the Millennium designed to finish in a day or two at most — Fort
Lauderdale to Miami, Gary to Chicago, Fort Worth to Dallas, Long Beach to Los
Angeles, Macon to Atlanta, Galveston to Houston, San Jose to San Francisco, Puebla to Mexico City, and Monterrey to Laredo. He gorged himself on the sight
of all those millions of walking people, he gobbled up dreams and hopes and
aspirations, he frolicked and basked and gambolled, a lone whale soaking in the
richest sea of human plankton soup ever made. Oh, what a
clever
boy am
I!

Moshe Chasen watched at home with his
wife Sylvia, and his emotions were much closer to those roiling inside Tibor
Reece than to the careless rapture of Harold Magnus.

'Someone's going to get him,' he
muttered, the moment he saw Dr Christian climb onto his high walkway and begin
his march down I-95.

'You're right,' said Sylvia, no
comfort.

He rolled his eyes towards her in
anguish. 'You were not supposed to agree with me!'

'So I'm your wife, so I argue a little!
But when you are right, Moshe, I agree with you. Maybe it just goes to show how
seldom you are right.'

'Swallow your tongue, woman!' He clutched
his head in his arms and rocked it. 'Oi, oi, what have I done?'

'You
done?' Sylvia took her eyes
away from the television screen to look at him. 'What's with this
you
done, Moshe?'

'I have sent him to his death, that's
what I've done.'

Her first impulse was to deride this
statement; then she decided on a different tack. 'Come on, come on, you look as
happy as Benny in search of a home! He will be fine, Moshe.'

But Dr Chasen was beyond cheering
up.

Darkness had fallen an hour before Dr
Christian finally came down off his walkway and parted the cheering crowds all
around him. He had walked for over twelve hours without letup, no break for
food, no pause to relieve himself; he had even waved the offered drinks away.
Not good, thought Dr Judith Carriol, waiting in the walled-off compound of tents
in which he and his family and the walking dignitaries were to stay for the
night. He has become a complete fanatic, with the superhuman strength and
endurance of such men, the indifference to his own bodily welfare. He will burn
himself out very soon. But not before he makes it to Washington. Such men never
burn out untimely.

What security measures were possible and
feasible had been implemented to protect him, of course; above his head hovered
several helicopters that were not in any way connected with the media, though
they purported to be. They were there scanning the crowds ceaselessly, ever
alert for the flash of a gun barrel or the trajectory of a missile. The
boardwalk was actually some protection, in spite of its nakedness, for it was
well elevated and it kept him remote. Anyone intent on killing him would, if in
the crowd, have to lift his weapon up and thus display it to those around him,
and if removed from the crowd, would have to be several floors high in a
building. Not one such place had been left unscoured if it was within
accurate shooting range of the highway.

When Dr Christian came into the big tent
allocated to him and his family, Dr Carriol came forward at once to help him out
of his parka. He looked totally exhausted, as well he might. When she suggested
he visit the toilet, he nodded and disappeared in the direction she indicated,
but was back again within a minute.

'We've set up whirlpool baths for all of
you,' she announced in general. 'Nothing better to iron out the
kinks.'

'Oh, Judith, it was wonderful!' said
Andrew, cheeks pink from the breezy day.

'I'm bushed, but I'm so happy I could
cry,' said James, flopping into a chair.

None of them had walked with the
single-mindedness of Dr Christian; he and he alone had gone without food or
drink, rest or respite. Every two hours the official marchers had been whisked
from the highway to enjoy an hour's break, then were transported to a point
ahead of the March so they could rejoin it when Dr Christian arrived.

'Here, boys, let me get you a drink,'
said Mama from behind laden tables.

But once he returned from the toilet Dr
Christian simply stood without moving or speaking, staring in front of him as if
nothing he saw had substance, or needed substance.

Mama had begun to notice this peculiar
behaviour and was preparing to make a fuss, so Dr Carriol got in first. She
walked across to him and took him gently by the arm.

'Joshua, come and have a bath,' she
said.

He followed her to one of the rooms
tacked onto the end of the tent, wherein whirlpool tubs had been placed. But
once inside the especially big cubicle reserved solely for his use, again he
stood without moving.

'Would you like me to help you?' she
asked, a sudden alarm knocking at her ribs.

He didn't seem to hear her.

Silently she stripped off his clothes,
while he stood docilely still and unprotesting.

What she saw when he was naked sucked
everything out of her but the pain that came squealing to fill the vacuum
up.

'Joshua, does anyone know?' she summoned
up the strength to ask, her faintness dissipating.

At last he did seem to hear; he shivered,
shook his head.

She inspected him minutely,
incredulously. His feet were enormously swollen, the toes partially eaten away
from frostbite. All up the front of his shins a network of deep cracks oozed
redly. The insides of his thighs were bloody meat, every hair rubbed away along
with the skin. Both armpits were abscessed, so were his groin and perineum and
buttocks. And he was smothered with bruises, old bruises and new bruises and
bruises halfway between.

'My God, man, how have you kept going?'
she cried, to fuel her self-defensive anger. 'Why haven't you asked for help, in
God's name? You're quick enough to give it!'

'I don't honestly feel anything,' he
said.

'Well, it's the end. You can't walk
tomorrow.'

'I can walk. I will walk.'

'Sorry, no way.'

And he rounded on her, took her between
his hands and cracked her viciously against the wooden side of the tub seething
with vile bubbles like an acid bath in a horror movie. And as he spoke to her
with his face thrust into hers, he cracked her again and again into the side of
the tub.

'Don't you presume to tell me what I can
do and what I can't do! I will walk! I will walk
because I must walk! And you will say nothing. Not one word to
anyone!'

'It's got to stop, Joshua. And if you
won't stop it, then I must,' she gasped, unable to break free of him.

'It will stop only when I say so. I walk
tomorrow, Judith. I walk the day after tomorrow. I walk all the way to
Washington to keep my appointment with my friend Tibor Reece.'

You'll be dead long before you get
there!'

'I'll last the distance.'

'Then at least let me get you a
doctor!'

'No!'

She moved angrily within his hold,
twisting and beating at him with her hands. 'I
insist!'
she
cried.

He laughed. 'The time has long passed
when you could control me! Do you honestly think you do still control me? You
don't! You haven't since Kansas City. From the moment I began to walk among my
people I have listened only to God, and only done God's work.'

She gazed up into his face in dawning
fear and sudden understanding. He really was mad. Perhaps he had always been
mad, just hidden it better than anyone she had ever met. 'You must stop this,
Joshua. You need help.'

'I'm not mad, Judith,' he said gently. 'I
see no visions, I have no communications with unearthly powers. I am more in
contact with reality by far than you. You are a hard, ambitious, driving woman,
and you have used me to further your own ends. Do you think I don't know that?'
He laughed again. 'Well, I have turned the tables on you, madam. I am going to
use you to further
my
ends! Your power trip is over, so is the subtle
manipulation. You will do as you are told, you will obey me. If you don't, I'll
destroy you. I can! And I will! It's no concern of mine if you don't understand
what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I have found my life's work, I understand
how to do that work, and you are my assistant. So
no doctor! No word to anyone.'