Mission (34 page)

‘You mean because you were not talking to us but to the Ain-folk
inside
us.…'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘But ‘Brax had made it impossible for me to reach them on what you might call the “Celestial wavelength”. The bond between each Ain-folk fragment and its host body was now so tight, I could not make direct contact. I had to get into your heads first and open up the other channels into your mind. But I couldn't blast my way in on a shockwave of sound like some rock star screaming through two-thousand-watt speakers. It had to be done in a whisper.' He fixed me with his eyes. ‘You see, Leo, the deepest truths cannot be communicated in the same way that you tell people the time, or what's for dinner. They have to be discovered. True knowledge comes from within. And by that I mean an awareness and understanding of the ultimate reality as opposed to external reality. That's why the word “insight” is so aptly descriptive. Teaching is an unlocking process. But before the doors of perception can be opened, the mind has to be engaged. Tuned in. Switched on.'

‘By drugs?' I said.

‘No,' said The Man. ‘Drugs only stimulate biological brain functions. The sensory distortions of a psychedelic trip do not lead to enlightenment. And any claim that it does are bogus. You can't mainline your way to the Ultimate Principle. The only sure path is through contemplation.'

‘Yes, well, I've given it a whirl,' I said. ‘But there aren't many people who are able to sit around all day with their legs crossed.'

‘That's true,' replied The Man. ‘But as a result, most people's minds shut down in early childhood and they sleepwalk through the rest of their lives – '

‘Rather like the way I used to drive before I got the Porsche,' I interjected. ‘I would arrive at Point B and suddenly realise that my last conscious memory was of leaving Point A. I'd driven the whole way in a kind of trance.'

He nodded. ‘Most people's lives are like those car journeys of yours – boring and predictable. That's why you need to engage the mind. Preach from a soap-box on a street corner and people will walk right past you. But whisper a secret in someone's ear and tell them to guard it with their life …'

‘“Knowledge is power”,' I said, quoting the old adage.

‘Francis Bacon,' said The Man. ‘Very interesting guy. I met him on the way here.'

I let it pass.

‘But,' he continued, ‘if you offer to tell a man a secret that is also a mystery, then you've really got him interested. It's no good handing out the answers on a plate. The words just go in one ear and out of the other. ‘Brax knows this. First he creates the spoken word to stop people communicating with each other, and now he has engineered the information explosion that has rocked the planet. He rules through the tyranny of the media. You now have TV, radio and newspaper coverage of the world but what has happened? Books and magazines pour off the presses like so many boxes of popcorn and are consumed just as mindlessly. People watch without seeing, they listen without hearing, they read without understanding. Knowledge has become just another product that is packaged and marketed like soap. And just as detergents are choking your rivers, so the garbage that is being pumped into your head through your eyes and ears is polluting your mind. Silting up the channels that lead into the crystal-clear stream of cosmic consciousness.'

I had the feeling he was right but, short of a thermo-nuclear war, there was no way we could stop it now. Unless we turned to God for help. But in a way, that was just as dangerous because, if we didn't all speak with one voice, we could end by tearing each other apart like a pack of mad dogs.

‘Let me ask you another question,' I said. ‘I know that my ‘Braxian logic may prevent me from ever understanding but it's been worrying me. If, as you say, time is linear but also simultaneous, so that past, present and future all co-exist, it follows that every event is predestined.'

‘Yes, it is,' he said.

I took a deep breath. ‘So that means I didn't have any choice about whether I went downtown to get you out of jail. And in the same way, the disciples didn't have any choice whether they followed you or
not. But if everything is already worked out and has already happened –'

‘Wrong,' he interjected. ‘Nothing has happened. It is all still happening.'

‘Okay,' I said. ‘It doesn't alter the fact that nothing can be changed. At some point further along the linear time-track, in what Isaac Asimov christened the “up-when” ‘Brax, or the Empire are in the process of coming out on top. The victory celebrations is already taking place. Am I right?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘You look confused.'

I reached for my glass of wine. ‘It's your time-travelling that's bugging me. You're here now in the twentieth century and, from what you've said, you've obviously stopped off in between here and first-century Jerusalem. So you must know how ‘Brax fouls things up after you leave the Apostles to get on with the job. But if you
know
that, why don't you stop it before it happens and save yourself all these problems?'

‘That's a good point,' he said. ‘But you happen to have overlooked something. Way back at the beginning when we first started to talk about this, I compared the centuries of Linear Time to the pages contained between the covers of a book. With the beginning, middle and end existing simultaneously. And here we are on page 1981 of one of the numberless chapters, sharing a glass of wine in your apartment while we wait for Miriam. Both of you, and all the other characters in the book are living your lives line by line, page by page. But even though you know that your life is predestined it doesn't change anything –'

‘You mean because I was predestined to acquire that knowledge?' I said, with a feeling that our conversation was turning full circle.

‘Exactly,' he replied. ‘And like all the other characters, you will either accept the idea, or rebel against it, and go on making conscious decisions to change your life-situation, or just drift with the tide. It's all down in the book. And that's why
I
can't alter the course of events. You see, this is where the Christians got it all wrong. I was not God, or the Presence, or whatever you choose to call the author of this
roman fleuve.
I am from the Empire, yes. I come from beyond Time and Space. But I also happen to be another of the characters in the book. Who enters the story at the beginning of this chapter with his birth at a place called Bethlehem, drops out thirty-four pages later,
travels forward in time, making the odd brief appearance on the way, then returns again in a major role near the end.'

I held on tight to my glass as my brain tried to grapple with this new revelation. ‘Wait a minute, there's something wrong here. I accept that this life-between-the-covers-of-a-book idea is just an analogy but, if you logic it through, how can you – as one of the characters – know anything about the person who's written it?'

‘Very easily,' he said. ‘It's a well-known fact that all authors put something of themselves into the characters they create.'

There really was no answer to that.

And I could not argue that it was impossible for the future to coexist with the present. There had been too many well-authenticated cases of specific predictions ranging from events a century or more in the up-when, by people like Nostradamus, and uncannily accurate short-range seers like Swedenborg. Later, I dipped into some other books and found that a noted Christian luminary, St Thomas Aquinas had formulated a similar proposition namely that, ‘to God, all Time is eternally present'. And Calvin had come to the same conclusion.

But in order for it to work – or rather, to satisfy my earth-bound logic – ‘Brax would also have to be one of the
dramatis personae
and not an unfettered external agency. It tied in with those much-quoted lines of Shakespeare's – ‘
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players'.
And I couldn't help wondering, as I reflected on our conversation whether this was the fundamental truth which lay behind the opening lines of St John's gospel – ‘
In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with God, and The Word was God'.
If this was so, and if one took into account The Man's disclosures about the birth and endless rebirth of the universe, it was clear that we and the whole of world history were a relatively minor incident in just one of an infinite number of drafts of an unpublished work.

I turned aside from this daunting prospect and cheered myself up with some more fruit of the vine. ‘So, does this mean that the issue is still in doubt?'

‘It is in this chapter,' said The Man. ‘That's why it's important that The Word is passed to this present age in a way people can understand.'

‘And is – ' I hesitated, ‘ – is that what you want me to do?'

He smiled that quiet infuriating smile. ‘Leo, I'm just here to explain the way things are. It has to be your decision.'

I put my glass down and clawed air. ‘How can it be? You've just told me that my part has already been written! Whatever I decide to do has been already
decided
!'

‘Yes, that's true,' he said. ‘But now you're pursuing logic to the point of absurdity. You cannot have a system where every individual has total freedom of choice. Your decisions will always be influenced by factors beyond your control because each choice you make between alternative courses of action automatically limits the choices available to others. And the decisions made by others have a cumulative effect on the course of your own life. Economic, social or emotional pressures. The strengths or weaknesses of your own personality. Physical and mental factors influenced by heredity and environment. Always remember you cannot choose to be who you are. By the nature of your birth you have no control over your genetic make-up and are unable to alter the circumstances of your early childhood. All you can do is work towards a realisation and acceptance of the true nature of your being. When you achieve that, you will realise that free will is an illusion, cunningly woven by ‘Brax to make you think you are master of your own little universe.'

It was unreal. A classic Catch-22 situation.

The Man sensed my mental disarray and raised his glass to me with a smile. ‘Just let it happen.'

I didn't reply. What was the point? The Man knew exactly what I was thinking. However much we might kick against the idea of predestination, we had no choice but to go along with it. Because until we got to the bottom of our particular page, we couldn't tell how our lives were going to turn out. Our creator had cleverly arranged for each of us to experience the agony of choice, and the sweet or bitter consequences of our actions. And he had also given us the option to accept or reject the notion of his controlling presence.

Miriam turned up at my apartment just after nine. I took her coat and she gave me another of those chaste pecks on the mouth. I can only think she was trying to compensate for going overboard the night before.

‘I bought a pizza.' She thrust it at me and went in to greet The Man.

I put some plates and the pizza in the oven to warm, uncorked another bottle of Valpollicella and picked up a glass for Miriam. As soon as I got a chance to butt in, I told her about my encounter with Russell and Marcello and showed her the colour Polaroids the cops had taken of The Man.

She studied them in silence then handed them back. ‘I wonder how they knew you went jogging in the park?'

‘I've been trying not to think about it,' I said. ‘It means they must have been watching the apartment. They could have talked to the janitor. On the other hand, I may have had someone on my tail since we walked out of the Seventh Precinct. You too.'

‘Uhhh …' said Miriam. ‘I hadn't thought of that.'

I shrugged. ‘They've obviously been asking questions. In fact the more you go into it, the worse it gets. The fact that Russell decided to check up on you means that he never swallowed our story. If so, why did he let us off the hook?'

Miriam shook her head. ‘You're being too devious again. It's equally possible that Russell could have been telling someone about what happened. Let's face it, a nut who thinks he's the Risen Christ makes a good bar story. And during the discussion, someone could have queried my diagnosis. Psychotic cathexis may sound impressive to a layman but it wouldn't fool anyone in the profession.'

‘But how did he get hold of the pictures?' I insisted. ‘The Man was found in the Seventeenth Precinct.'

‘Leo,' said Miriam, ‘if he checked up on me, it wouldn't be hard for him to work back from there. Come on, you know what these guys are like once they start picking away at something. Relax. It's all over. The Man fixed it this morning.' She turned to him. ‘Right?'

‘Yes …' he nodded. ‘You can forget about Russell.'

‘Okay,' I said. ‘But I still don't like the idea of being shadowed.' I looked at them both. ‘I think it would be a good idea to cut down the public appearances, including that trip to the Manhattan General.'

Miriam's lips tightened. ‘Why don't we let The Man decide that? And why don't you go check the pizza?'

I trotted obediently into the kitchen. I have learned from experience that Miriam's mind cannot be changed by playing the
macho
male. Where the feminist monkey was concerned, this particular piglet had to tread very softly indeed.

When we'd finished our cartwheel sections of pizza, Miriam pushed her plate aside and said, ‘Okay … may I now ask some questions?' She sounded as if she meant business.

I took a tight hold on my glass and sat back. The Man eyed me with a smile and turned to Miriam. ‘What do you want to know?'

She lit a cigarette. ‘Let's backtrack to the point where you decided to regenerate inside a human foetus. Are we talking about what the Catholics call the “Immaculate Conception”?'