“I have two eyes; also, Iris told me.”
“She knows too?”
“Of course she knows! Why else do you think she’s so anxious to get
Cave away from this place? She knows Paul can have him killed at any
time and no one would be the wiser.”
I grunted with amazement: I understood now what it was that had
happened on the terrace. I felt a perfect fool. Of them all I alone had
been unaware of what was going on beneath the surface and, in my folly,
I had detonated the situation without knowing it. “_He_ knows too?” I
asked weakly.
“Of course he does; he’s on his guard every minute against Paul.”
“Why has no one ever told me this?”
Clarissa shrugged. “They had no idea which side you’d take. They still
don’t know. Paul believes that you are with him and though he curses
you for an impetuous fool, he’s decided that perhaps it’s a good idea
now to bring all this into the open, at least among ourselves. He hopes
for a majority vote in the directors’ meeting to force Cave to kill
himself.”
“And Cave?”
“Has no wish to die ... sensible man.”
“I am a fool.”
“What I’ve always told you, dear.” Clarissa smiled at me. “I will say,
though, that you are the only one of the lot who has acted for an
impersonal reason, and certainly none of them understands you except
me. I am on your side, in a way. Voluntary deaths don’t alarm me the
way they do you but this obsession which Cave has of death being
preferable to life may have ghastly consequences.”
“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.
2
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 modern
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.”
Paul shrugged convincingly. “I’m as much in charge now as I would
be with him dead,” he said with a certain truth. “I’m interested in
Cavesword, not in Cave. If his death enhances and establishes the Word
more securely then I must do all I can to convince him to take that
course.”
“There is another way,” I said, smiling at the pleasant thought.
“Another way?”
“To convince us of your dedication and sincerity to Cavesword.”
“What’s that?”
“You kill _yourself_, Paul.”
There was a long silence. I pressed the buzzer and my secretary came
in. Without a word, Paul left.
Immediately afterwards, I took the private elevator to Cave’s
penthouse. Two guards stopped me while I was announced by a third.
After a short delay, I was admitted to Cave’s study, but not to Cave;
instead, Iris received me.
“I know what’s happening,” I said. “Where is he?”
“Obviously you do.” Her voice was cold. She did not ask me to sit down.
Awkwardly, I faced her at the room’s center.
“We must stop him.”
“John? Stop him from what?”
“Doing what Paul wants him to do.”
“And what you want as well.”
“You’re mistaken. I thought I made myself clear the other night. But
though my timing was apparently bad, under _no_ circumstances do I want
him to die.”
“You made your speech to force him.”
“And Paul thinks I made it to stop him.” I couldn’t help smiling. “I
am, it seems, everyone’s enemy.”
“Paul has told me everything. How you and he and Stokharin all decided,
without consulting us, that John should die.”
I was astonished at Paul’s boldness. Could he really be moving so
swiftly? How else explain such a prodigious lie? I told her quickly,
urgently what I felt, what I had said to Paul and he to me. She heard
me to the end without expressing either belief or disbelief. When I’d
finished she turned away from me and went to the window where, through
yellow glass, the city rose upon the band of horizon.
“It’s too late,” she said, evenly. “I hadn’t expected this. Perhaps
you’re telling me the truth ... if you are, you’ve made a terrible
mistake.” She turned about suddenly, with a precision which was almost
military. “He’s going to do it.”
The awful words fell like a weight upon a scale. I felt blindly for a
chair and sat down, all strength gone. “Stop him,” I said, all that I
could say. “Stop him.”
“It’s too late for that.” She took pity on me. “I think you’re telling
me the truth. Gene.” She came over to where I was sitting and looked
down at me gently. “I’m sorry I accused you. I should have realized
Paul was lying.”
“_You_ can stop him.”
“I can’t. I’ve tried but I can’t.” Her control was extraordinary. I did
not then guess the reason for her calm, her strength.
“Then I must try.” I stood up. She backed away at the expression on my
face.
“You can’t do anything. He won’t see you. He won’t see anyone but me.”
“I thought he told Paul he agreed with me, that he didn’t want to ...
to countenance all this, that he....”
“At first he took your side, if it is really what you yourself feel:
then he thought about it and ... this morning he decided to go ahead
with Paul’s plan.”