Their whispering brought turned heads and affronted glances.
At the stage something moved.
A rustle passed over the crowd as a ripple had passed before, an indrawing of breath, a powering for the hail of greeting.
It was not Campion. The rustle returned as a sigh.
A head, enormous, bloated, encased in a metal skullcap which covered the entire cranium, appeared above the edge of the stage, rising slowly.
Lindley breathed, ‘God forgive them; I never will.’
The vast bulk of Robert, huger than life in the looseness of a silver-grey caftan, rose as though on a concealed lift – which he probably was. As the size of him became apparent, six and a half feet of rounded blubber topping more weight than anyone was likely to guess, a sound of puzzlement rose in prickles over the staring heads.
At stage level Robert advanced with the tiny paces which were the best his muscles could achieve without leaving him blown red-faced and ridiculous, until he reached the group of three metal chairs placed for him. He paused a moment, gazing across the rally with amazed disgust, and sat – a single fluid collapse which spread him, amoeba-like, over the three chairs.
Lindley felt sick. So they had found a means of control … drugs … conditioning … In a world where such parodies did not survive to adulthood he was horrifying. Some might have doubted that he was human. Their voices rose, buzzed, roared, subsided.
Joseph and Henry, in white with heads also insulated, came quickly, not attempting to repeat Robert’s stunning entry. They came on stage and sat, one right, one left. To Lindley they seemed terrified; Robert, concerned with little but himself, would be unaffected by anything less than direct threat.
Datchborn asked, ‘Who are they?’
He said stolidly, ‘I don’t know.’ Their very presence made rational explanation out of the question.
When silence had become absolute with expectation, Campion appeared. He also wore a type of caftan – cut with cunning to lend him height and power and to cling as he moved – in brilliant, electric blue.
They ripped the sky to welcome him.
Fomin frowned. Datchborn’s condescension vanished. Bellamy hooded his eyes like a man measuring his enemy.
There were minutes of it. Campion waited, let it die away. To kill the last sounds he opened his lips as if to speak, and silence fell like sudden death.
Behind him the soundscreen glittered hazily, ready to throw his voice in the new ventriloquism.
He said nothing.
He half turned from them, looking to the back of the stage.
Another head appeared – a dark, narrow, angular face – a figure slenderer than Campion’s but erect as a spire – a caftan as craftily made in blazing scarlet to set beside the sparkling blue.
The rally did not at once recognise the man whose face was only occasionally publicised and whose name was so far only furtively muttered as sympathiser.
But some knew him, and the name swept back from the stage to the riverbank – and the meeting crashed into a sound of triumph that left Campion’s welcome a rehearsal.
The messiah had produced a magician.
With the police – the only power which could oppose un-deciding, wait-and-see Security – with the police to back them Melbourne Town was theirs and all the state for hundreds of miles around it. Exultate, jubilate!
Bellamy sighed, a bubbling sound of delivering his lifework up to the unknown.
Datchborn’s gasp was a rattle in the throat, a premonition of wreckage, a foreseeing that it might engulf him.
Fomin’s lips moved. Perhaps he prayed, not perceiving the miracle before his eyes nor conceiving yet that ‘miracle’ does not mean ‘blessing’.
Through pandemonium the newscasts sent out the scene to a world more puzzled than impressed by this incomprehensible Australian outburst. Suspicion lurked behind the puzzlement. Nobody really liked the Australians, who had emerged too healthily from planetary catastrophe. But the Ombudsmen were noticed, and if Soviet and Hegemony thought this uproar worth their attention …
Parker accepted his ovation in stillness, an absolute control of the flesh through unpredictably long minutes; he did not stir until the last whisper had faded. Then he moved his lips only, and the soundscreen flickered more brightly as the words activated it and were flung outward in a great fan, entering each ear as if the speaker stood at his elbow.
‘Anger! A rage for peace in the heart!’
Of course they exploded all over again. The almost meaningless, gnomic phrase Campion had tossed at them one day had assumed semi-mystic significances which each clutched for himself. Cried out in Parker’s unschooled, grinding voice it was as if a donkey had essayed a song. But the words were right and the gift of police support was right; it would not have mattered if he had assaulted them with a coloratura shriek.
With excitement roused to the pitch where they could be manipulated by any jackass, he sat down.
Campion waited because all through the crowd grey police uniforms had suddenly appeared, to become foci of welcome and demonstration.
On the outskirts black uniforms watched, having no power to do more.
When Campion was ready he spoke gently, not pushing it out for hysteria, like Parker.
‘What is the first enemy of promise?’
An answer crashed from throats still amazingly capable of response – one word, incomprehensible in thirty thousand united bellowings.
Fomin asked, ‘What do they say?’
‘ “Ignorance”.’
‘Well, that is true.’
Oh, but you’ll learn, Brother in God, you’ll learn.
Campion asked, ‘And where are the roots of ignorance?’
Lindley translated the howling, ‘In the hands of those who entrap knowledge.’
Datchborn caught the point before the others and was not amused; the Soviet pivoted on centralised intelligence.
‘How can the hands be forced open?’
‘By refusal to co-operate.’
‘And then?’
‘The state will wither.’
‘Unless?’
‘Unless all knowledge is made free for all. Then we will co-operate.’
Fomin muttered, ‘This sounds like worship perverted.’
Doesn’t it, Brother in God? Keep listening.
Campion asked, ‘Whose hands entrap knowledge?’
The confusion was impenetrable, a babel of answers.
Lindley transmitted drearily, having heard it all before. ‘Psychologists. Deep-question technicians. Political advisers. Statisticians. Security. Archivists. Data bank attendants.’
Datchborn snorted, ‘Who the hell wants all that stuff in the public domain?’
‘I do,’ Lindley said. ‘Who wants secrets wants power.’
‘You can’t run a state—’
‘You can!’ Datchborn shut up, troubled.
The soundscreen made possible miracles of emphasis and inflection as Campion began again. ‘What is the second enemy of promise?’
‘International Security.’
‘But are the Techs not men of good will?’
‘Yes!’
‘But?’
‘We need freedom to make mistakes.’
‘Why?’
‘To learn.’
‘Learn what?’
‘To run our own lives for better or worse.’
‘And what of Security?’
Heads turned to the dark uniforms at the outer edges. ‘Security must abdicate.’
‘Or?’
‘We will not co-operate.’
‘And?’
‘Security will wither.’
The black uniforms listened, motionless.
‘And if Security abdicates?’
‘There is a role for them, but servants must not be masters.’
So much for Security – bend or vanish. The black uniforms held rock-steady, betraying nothing, but Lindley knew that Security was shocked to the core by
the public eruption of the condition it had always known and ignored – that it was an expedience, and expendable.
Datchborn snorted, ‘Litany! The dead end of thought.’
Bellamy knew better. ‘This is a receptiveness preparation. He’ll snap them out of it when he’s ready.’
Campion was not yet ready. He asked, ‘What is the third enemy of promise?’
‘Repression?’
‘Of?’
‘Of freedom of choice. Of the mind. Of the soul.’
‘Repression leads to?’
‘Violence.’
‘Which is?’
‘A madness.’
On that Campion made a pause, turned heel and toe for his gaze to encompass the whole gathering, then folded his hands. He asked, ‘If violence is madness, what is the alternative?’
‘Understanding.’
He paused again, and said, ‘Consider it.’
Silence covered them like private prayer.
Datchborn muttered disgust. ‘Love crusade!’
Lindley whispered harshly, ‘Like hell it is!’
On the stage Campion said at last, ‘Understanding. You who have been with me from the first have considered it often and deeply. We must desire understanding of each other because without it there is no future, only a progress of technology down the years, with no man knowing more than the first man knew. That killed the twentieth century and can kill this one.’
He did not elaborate. It was preamble, and they knew it all. He moved instead towards new statement.
‘We must consider what is involved in understanding each other. We must prepare to comprehend violence and cruelty and murder, deceit and treachery and hate, theft and fraud and extortion.’
As if the catalogue of disgust had surprised himself he dropped back to an intimate note, with little hesitations, as if the ideas came extempore.
Bloody mountebank!
‘It’s easy to say, “Love one another” – but it isn’t enough … you can’t actually love brutality and betrayal and double dealing. But you must – we must – understand them because they are part of the matrix of humanity. Perhaps saints exist, but I have never met one. Not being saints, we must accept ourselves as being privately stained with the same weaknesses that publicly we treat with contempt. That makes us hypocrites, doesn’t it?’
He prodded at the question as if testing it. ‘Aren’t we hypocrites? All of us, I mean? Little ways, big ways – things we don’t like to have known – habits, thoughts … Even thoughts …’
A murmur spread, a groping at difficulty.
‘Not one of us would like to have his private mind laid open. Open at all times, I mean. I couldn’t stand it. I’ll admit it. Could you?’
The murmur became articulate. They agreed with him because what he said was true but they could not see where he was leading; their answer held questions.
Campion let tension stretch, and broke it with a touch of lightness. ‘Telepathy would be an unpopular talent, I think.’
It was a rueful geniality rather than a joke, and they laughed gently with him.
Oh, those poor, pre-damned animals seated behind him in their helmets, half-stupefied, unaware how he readied hate!
An unexpected voice cut across the murmur – Datchborn’s nasal tone, penetrating and loaded with histrionic boredom.
‘I didn’t come from New York to watch a variety act, Mister Campion. What have you got?’
Excellent, excellent! Split his attention and his confidence.
The Ombudsmen’s platform was no more than fifty feet from Campion’s stage; Datchborn’s razor voice carried strongly to faintly activate the soundscreen. Thousands of heads turned like a single animal with a host of eyes; the multiple mouth exclaimed against insult and danger rumbled below the protest.
Datchborn stood, a very tall old man, straight and dignified and most angry. ‘What have you got, Campion, that needs ritual mummery to make it acceptable?’
Campion watched him, unmoving. Round the Ombudsmen’s platform his followers surged menacingly; Jenny and her circle closed in, staring enmity.
The girl called viciously, ‘We need to understand violence, mister, and not be ashamed of it. Do you understand it? At first hand?’
Lindley rose and pitched his voice to carry over the angry applause. ‘Mister Datchborn is an Ombudsman of the American Soviet!’
The title still held magic to demand restraint. Voices – one was Jenny’s – cried that the day of Ombudsmen was over, but they fell quiet again.
Lindley called out, risking the doubtful calm. ‘It was a good question, Ian. Won’t you answer it?’ Campion’s smile wavered. Parker’s head pointed, hound-like, over his red robe. ‘After all, Ian, the Ombudsman wants only a plain statement.’ Excitement was seizing him, or perhaps the flat alcohol was stirring again. Resentments streamed to a node of anger – the quasi-humans in their helmets staked out for sacrifice – the so casual joke about telepathy – only Parker’s role was still unclear – and Parker was ruthless where Campion might be termed merely practical.
He called recklessly to undercut Campion’s para-hypnotism, ‘Your litany and staging make it seem as though you’re preparing a bluff.’
Campion reacted at last. ‘Tour litany and staging, Jim.’
True, true. What now? He raised his voice to catch the soundscreen, to have his words carry, however faintly, to the limits of the rally. ‘I didn’t design these meetings to have all you youngsters turned into chanting robots. Only months ago he saved you from the drugs of Gangoil, but now he’s using you just as they used you—’
The rising growl cut him off in fear; excitement had carried him past sense. He saw Parker bend to speak to someone behind the stage. Campion remained still, letting him call down his own destruction.
The crowd rippled and rustled, as if the great animal twitched before the spring.
He could go on, without hope or effect, because there was no road back.
‘Ombudsmen! Here’s his simple statement!’ A hand stretched over the edge and plucked his ankle; he stepped quickly back from the line of furious faces. ‘He’s been building up to this from the talk of all the secret information stored in data banks, the weapon that makes it possible to control the way you think and act.’ He was yelling because yelling was now necessary. ‘He’s getting ready to bind you to him with fear!’ Fresh action stirred in the crowd, a movement of big men from the stage towards his platform; Parker had set the clone in motion. ‘He’s going to tell you there’s telepathy loose in the world. It’s a lie!’
Instantly Campion’s voice, magnified with the full power of the screen, bore down in thunder. ‘STILL! ALL OF YOU! BE STILL!’
The crowd came to heel, assaulted by appalling noise.
Campion said coolly, quietly, ‘It is not a lie. Telepathy is loose in the world.’
A section of the crowd swayed as clone-brothers pushed through them.
Lindley howled, knowing he had only moments, ‘He has three broken sticks of near-telepaths on the stage there. Three helpless mental cripples who he will tell you are the menace of the future. He’ll tell you that the only way to hide your thoughts, to remain individuals, is to bond yourselves to a common belief. Not individuals at all is what he’ll have you be, but a great sprawling hive of a single entity!’
Thunder struck. ‘ENOUGH! QUIET!’
At his feet a clone-brother said, ‘Come with us, Jim. You’re making useless trouble.’
‘I mean to make more.’
The edge of the platform was lined with clone faces. The one before him said, ‘You will gain nothing. Ian holds them in love. What better can you offer? Please come, Jim.’
He was aware of the thousands poised in expectation of action. Spectators at the arena. That would not change quickly, for all litanies of love.
And the clone-brother had called him ‘Jim’.
‘Albert?’
‘Yes, Jim. Come with me. There is no peace up there.’
‘There is no peace anywhere while your beloved bastard son betrays the tricks I taught him.’
With triumphant accuracy he kicked Raft in the mouth.
He saw blood flow before his ankle was hooked and he was jerked from his feet. His head struck a chair arm as he fell; he was barely conscious of being dragged from the platform, of being carried head high by the clone-brothers while others of them fought off the youngsters who would have killed him with clawed hands. Perhaps someone came near enough to strike or perhaps he fainted, for there was an interval of darkness.
7
Cold stone under him – the mosaic tiling of the cathedral floor. The air cool and dim, none of the candelabra lit.
They had laid him at the base of one of the huge anchoring pillars which took the weight of the roof just inside the porch doors; his eye roved upward and along a curve of grace to the point of a gothic arch and upward again to the timbered vaulting of the ceiling. There the dark wood was palely luminous with the light of the setting sun beating through ranks of stained-glass saints in the high windows.
He ached. Crowd-murmur penetrated the closed doors, washing round the edges of the soundscreen which flung the stage voices forward and blocked them behind.
He lifted his head and it throbbed abominably. On either side tall legs in khaki rose up to identical faces. Beyond them open floor stretched from wall to wall; there were no pews. Rotted and discarded? Stolen for firewood in the dog-days and never replaced? Did the new Christianity worship on tortured knees?
Facing him sat Parker – trust Parker to find one chair where no other existed – in his melodrama of scarlet robe and hawk face, chewing his lips. When he saw Lindley’s open eyes he rasped in a voice close to pain, ‘In God’s name why couldn’t you keep quiet?’
It would be interesting to know Parker’s vision of God. A neat, businesslike type who didn’t mind a little rule-bending so long as you were honestly doing your best and who always listened to the prayers of the man who knew just what God wanted and didn’t hold with sentimental claptrap? Better still: what did unbeliever Campion think about God? Campion was a demagogue who found a deity useful – good enough for the peasants, so to speak.
‘I am old-fashioned. I love truth.’ Is this Lindley talking such bull? But it’s true, it’s true.
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