The Last Western (49 page)

In the non-JERCUS nations, the speech received more extensive press and TV coverage. But the
New Delhi Times
said, “The pope speaks for no one but himself, tragically enough.”

G. D. Goldenblade in an interview in Houston called the speech a moment of monist madness.

General Clio Russell in Brazil called it a lie.

Willie saw neither of these two private statements and Felder tried to show him only the more flattering news stories of the non-JERCUS press. But Willie could not be fooled.

“Brother Herman,” he said, “you are a kind man, but I have seen the telenews and heard some of the commentators. The speech wasn’t a bad idea, but words—you see, words aren’t enough, as our Society teaches.”

Felder said, “I am a Servant also and I, too, am wary of word games. Still I believe we should try anything and everything that might help.”

“I believe that too, Brother Herman,” said Willie. “But we must be ready to take on the undreamed.”

Felder went back to the RevCon office.

Now he drew technicians and specialists from around the world to the design center, as he had begun calling the RevCon office.

Tisch said, “These are anthropologists, psychologists, behaviorists, Herr Felder. This man, Professor Spinner, from your country—he does not believe in free will.”

“He has views on man that our computers need to digest,” said Felder. “We have to develop every tactic possible.”

The tactic Willie developed, together with Truman and Benjamin and Joto, was to work in the slums. But every time he came to the slum areas, a spectacle would develop—a near riot. Finally the police asked him to stay away.

In his apartment he wept with frustration.

Felder told him, “We will keep on with the work in RevCon. We’ll produce something.”

But Benjamin said, “It is too late for RevCon.”

Three weeks went by. Felder took his meals, slept at the RevCon office. He had all the computers working now, digesting the data of the Western world’s greatest specialists. At the end of the three weeks, he came once more to Willie’s office.

“There’s no middle ground,” he said, “no solid center for the church to appeal to.”

“If we were a certain way, more truly human ourselves,” said Willie, “wouldn’t that be an appeal?”

Felder shook his head.

“There is no humanity to appeal to. People up here,” he waved his hand over the map’s red-colored JERCUS nations, “they are either in beastlike war or beastlike stupor. When they do not fight, they sleep before their great video icons, like beasts before the hearth. Or else they are just the opposite. They play spiritist games—to get out of the world which they despise.”

“If
we
are different—” Willie began, but Felder went on.

“They choose to be either something much greater or something much less, either spirit or beast. And down here,” Felder pointed to the southern undeveloped nations, “here you have the people living as beasts also, though not through choice, and surviving in the state through a sort of trance, calling the world an illusion or a punishment.” His hand fell from the map. “People nowhere want to be people. Only spirit. Or beast. Why, within the past year alone, half the churches in the U.S. have gone over to worship exclusively in tongue. Hysteria—on a national scale—and it’s getting worse.”

“But we are beast and spirit together,” said Willie slowly. “We are—”

“That,
that
is the old dream,” said Felder. “Gone now. Everywhere we turn, no matter how we measure, we reach this same reduction, this either-or choice. It’s the biggest division in society today and it cuts across everything: politics, religion, nationality, the oldest cultural affiliations. Beast people, spirit people.”

Willie thought back to the people of Delphi.

“Surely you are too hard in your judgment, Brother Herman.”

“You were in Angola,” said Felder. “Etherea.”

“We should go back to Etherea,” Willie said. “That’s the one thing I can grasp. Go back and be with those children.”

Felder crossed his arms. “You know that tabulator in the little booth near the A computer?”

“You know I don’t like to go there, Brother Herman.”

“You have seen the tabulator though.”

Willie had seen it. It was the counter that kept the starvation statistics.

“Yesterday,” said Felder, “it hit 17,000. 17,241.”

Willie tried to take it in, that impossible number.

“So, there are many Ethereas,” Felder said. “And to the beast mentality it’s to be expected. Because, you see, it’s all still the jungle. The spirit-minded ones think it’s all right too. Because to them, the idea is to get out of the world anyway.”

“Seventeen thousand two hundred forty-one,” said Willie numbly.

“The human enterprise has simply disappeared,” Felder said. “Granted, it was never a world goal, but now, now we can’t pick it up anywhere.”

Willie grabbed Felder’s arm.

“Don’t say that. You know that isn’t true. If people have a choice, they will be people. Say you believe that.”

Felder, looking him straight in the eye, said, “Beast or spirit, my pope. That is the choice people have settled on.”

“The Lord Jesus has come to change that—we are here to change it. That’s why, in spite of everything, you can’t lose faith!” He took Felder’s hands.

“Brother Herman, I am a stupid man. I don’t know anything about economics. I don’t know the first thing about computers. But there is a way for us to be, a certain way for us to share life and show life, that will help people want to be people once more.”

“Once more,” Felder murmured. “When was it so the first time?”

Willie, closing his eyes, fell silent. Then, from far away, from the old, warm country he had known once, he said softly:

“When you were a boy, did you like to play ball maybe? When the mornings were sweet, like apples? And the friends you had then, when nothing was complicated? And there was a girl with eyes so—”

Felder pulled away.

Quickly Willie went to him.

“I’m sorry—Brother Herman. I—I didn’t mean to bring up anything sad.”

“Perfectly all right.”

“I meant—I was only thinking of—simple things.”

“I understand.”

“When just being alive was—wonderful.”

“Yes.”

Feeling wretched, he took Felder’s hands once more.

“You are such a brilliant person, Brother Herman. Better still, you are a man of love. If there is anyone in this world who can do anything at the RevCon office, you are the man. So—so go back once more. And do your best. God will help us.”

Felder went away. When he was gone, Willie kicked a sixteenth century Flemish chair.

“Let him alone. Let him
alone!
” he said over and over again.

So Felder worked on, like a computer himself, for another week, a sleepless week and still another week.

Then one night he joined the Servants at table.

“They’re right to call them computers,” he told them. “They compute is all. They’re just extensions of the prevailing mentalities. Sometimes beast. Sometimes spirit.”

“You will convert them, Brother Herman,” Willie said. “I’ll come over there and baptize them.”

“It’s all—it’s processing really,” Felder said, “just a sort of acceleration. It can handle spirit data and it can handle beast data. It cannot handle the mix we’re trying to feed it. If we could build different computers. …”

Father Benjamin looked up from his soup. “We need more than computers.”

“It’s all we’ve got at the moment,” Felder snapped. “You see something I don’t, Benjamin? Tell me. I’ll be glad to work it into the program.”

The Servants looked at Felder kindly, seeing his fatigue and frustration.

Two nights later Felder came to Eucharist wearing a haggard, desperate expression.

“You are all right, Brother Herman?” Willie asked.

Felder nodded, but throughout the evening meal he had nothing to say.

Joto tried to joke with him about the old times and the great movie they had never made, but Felder could not laugh.

At the end of the meal, Willie said gently, “Brother Herman, you have worked so hard. Sleep tonight and let your hope build up. God will show us the way.”

But Felder went back to the RevCon office, to his white-coated crew and the great computers.

Cardinal Tisch, in a tiny observation chamber, watched him carefully and made a note when at three in the morning, Felder beat his fists against the most sophisticated computer in Europe.

“Damned tin ape!” he cried, and burst into tears.

The next day Herman Felder was gone. He was out of sight for a week. When he came back, the Servants received him with joy. He said simply, “It’s no use trying to go through that,” and pointed to the RevCon office. “We need something beyond the newest of the new.”

Willie thought Felder looked refreshed but somehow changed.

That night, at Felder’s request, the Servants held a special listening service to trace what Felder called “another design.”

The listening service, held in a small chamber just off the great aula where the audiences took place, began with Joto’s reading of a text from the sixteenth chapter of John. Benjamin continued with several verses of Romans. Then Herman Felder read a number of the sayings of the child Servant, Sidney of Sydney, who had died in a substitution activity in South Vietnam in 1968.

Once one stops counting on God, one has no choice but to count on oneself. When that comes to nothing, one counts on others. When finally that gives way, one stops counting altogether. It is then that life can begin.

Fear is the only enemy. Who can love God who fears him? But God had to start with something. This enemy of man is sometimes a useful tool, especially in the beginning.

Should we hate any creature? No. Not even the evil one.

Life is without limits except as we make them. All our possessions are limits. Some would call death a limit but it is rather only a kind of staging, a regathering. We do not understand it at all except in X. This morning, at death-point, 
I am down to my last possession, my body, which was given to me by others and which is now being taken away. Still am I not part of limitless life? Assuredly, that part of me which knows this, that part of me which loves, remains after death, and even as you read these words, brothers and sisters, I live. Gentle peace to you all.

Felder closed the Guidebook, and the five men, kneeling in a circle, sat for thirty minutes in absolute silence.

Then they exchanged their remarkable dona.

Felder: “A gathering of men and women—here in Rome, it would appear. But not an audience such as Pope Willie has. Another gathering. It seemed to concern urgent matters. I saw the great hall next to the room we now sit in. I could see you, Willie, very clearly, sitting in the midst of this gathering.”

Felder gazed at him steadily. There was something about the look that was not right, and Willie felt it immediately. It was not anger or excitement or unfriendliness or anything he could name, but something had moved in Felder’s spirit, and he had caught its stir.

Joto: “I too see crowd, not very large, maybe 100 people. I see Eucharist. Then time pass and I see airport and other crowd, not the same. Then we all in plane together going someplace. Next we come to sandy place, a beach perhaps. That picture last only five seconds and once more I see the first meeting—in Rome. I listen hard for message. Word come: Get together ding-a-lings of universe. Very strange.”

Truman, making the beautiful signs that he always made, showed people getting off trains, planes, ships, getting out of autos. He indicated that the travelers were coming here to Rome, to the Vatican, to this very place. He gave the sign that meant advance, and which in the understanding of the Society referred to evolutionary opportunity.

Willie, in the silence, had received nothing and had seen no pictures—only a fleeting image of an open field covered with snow. It did not seem worth mentioning.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I could try a little longer.”

Father Benjamin said, “We must not force messages.”

“Yes, Father,” said Willie in the tone he had used as a novice.

Father Benjamin rose. “Brothers, my message is similar to your own. A gathering is indicated, only in my own visualization—and let us recall that our visualizations are not always to be trusted—I recognized faces in this gathering, men and women who are members of our venerable society. As I let the message enter and come to me, I felt a sudden association of these people with this city, even though they are scattered across the face of the earth. Tell me, brothers, for this is crucial, did you feel the need to join these gatherings?”

“Yes,” said Herman Felder immediately.

Truman gave the yes sign.

“Absolutely,” said Joto. “Felt myself part of ones who come together.”

Father Benjamin’s eyes were suddenly brilliant with tears.

“Brothers, we are to have the first worldwide congress of our Society to be held in 500 years.”

They shouted together, clapped shoulders, and Joto did a dance step he had invented when he had owned his own art gallery in Tokyo.

“It’s wonderful!” cried Felder. “Wonderful!”

Not quite a part of the excitement at first, Willie gradually caught the spirit of the others.

“Our brothers and sisters will help us,” he said in his slow way. “We will learn together. The Lord will instruct us and tell us how to be.”

“Let us praise the Lord for His goodness,” said Benjamin.

So they chanted the thanksgiving prayer of the Society, all fourteen verses, with its ninety-six names for God, and went joyfully to their quarters.

As he opened the door of the little room he had reserved for his sleeping place, Willie felt Felder place his hand on his shoulder.

“Sleep well, young pope.”

“Good-night, Brother Herman.”

Once again, that measuring glance, the bat squeal of some intricate message. Felder was young and smiling; he looked confident and happy. But there was something going on behind the eyes that filled Willie with vague fears.

He had a hard time trying to sleep. He could still see the dark streets of Etherea and Angola against the walls. The words of Clio’s telegram came to him once more, as they did whenever he was alone. There was a night light burning near his bed. It threw a pale glow over the clothing he had washed earlier in the evening and strung across the end of the room to dry. He could see the red stain that would not come out of the shirt.