10

Rud returned along the painted corridor to his own apartments.

He felt irritated by his Fundamental Law conference and he realised that his irritation was unreasonable. Evidently they had to discuss women even if they discussed them only to thrust sex out of the main propositions of the Fundamental Law. But why should they have chosen that topic on this particular morning? And why had they not kept it high and austere? It was Chiffan's touch. Why should Chiffan drag in a word like "embraces", a discomfiting word, a warm, enervating word.

Hitherto in his strenuous life he had kept these suggestions out of his imagination, except in those vague phases that come between sleeping and waking—and then they were soon disposed of. But here they were invading the day. Here they were producing something like a self–betrayal to his colleagues. Here they were with a plain intimation that he might forget himself…

He fretted about his apartment for a time. His mind seemed to have lost all its discipline. What had he to do with embraces? Damn that word! He decided that he needed to refresh his sense of the mighty role that he was playing in the world, to get things back into proportion. In fact he went to look for himself. He made his way over an arcaded bridge that spanned a gorge to the series of offices in which the development of his personality was in progress, and there he found Quinlan ready to refresh his memory.

"And how am I getting on with humanity to–day?" asked Rud.

Quinlan showed him a vast pile of photographs, papers, trial records and beflagged world maps of the birthday celebrations.

"It is amusing to think that no religion has ever had this universality. Never has Christmas for example ever been celebrated as your birthday is being celebrated."

A gleam of satisfaction appeared upon Rud's pale face. "I suppose not," he said. "I suppose not."

Then came a twinge of modesty. "Of course it is all this new apparatus. It is just the new scale of things that makes it more universal."

"But so it is," said Quinlan. "None the less."

Rud looked at the methodical assemblage of Quinlan's publicity machinery. He felt as if he was standing on stilts a mile high. It was perfectly right, reasonable, fantastic and mad. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, had anticipated this sort of thing, but never had the significance of their elevation been brought home to them to quite this extent. The stilts seemed steady enough, but the perspective was terrific.

"We have some new schoolroom cartoons," said Quinlan. "They hit reaction hard."

Conspicuous in this display was a cartoon of a mighty winged figure with the face of Rud, idealised and yet recognisable, and in his hands was a drawn sword. He defended the world against a squirming mass of necks and heads, bearing crosses, mitres, crowns, red caps, Federalist shakos; all the symbols of the principalities and powers of the pre–Revolutionary world.

"Of course, this is an immense exaggeration," said Rud. "I suppose that in a way it is necessary."

"It is no exaggeration. Maybe it symbolises. It is a symbolical statement. It is the only way in which we can get the Revolution over to ninety–nine per cent of them. This—for the run of mankind—is what you are."

"After all," said Rud, searching in his mind for ideas that were fading away from him. "It is their own collective self…"

Quinlan was too busy with his display to discuss meta–politics.

"There will be much to tell you to–morrow," he said, "as the reports and pictures of all that come in and are analysed…

"Of course, if you would like to see something of what is actually happening now, for example—" He considered the buttons before him and decided: "Here."

He motioned Rud's eyes to the screen. It lit up and an elfin clamour of cheering voices became audible. "This is Pekin," he said. "They are celebrating you. Look at them."

The crowd was just a waving stipple of faces, an undulating close–spotted snake's skin. It bustled with banners bearing inscriptions, in the new Chinese alphabet. Save for faint floating iridescences it was as real as direct vision. Everyone was singing some sort of shrill song to pseudo–oriental music.

"Here you can see them quite closely," said Quinlan.

And suddenly almost within touching distance were flushed faces and bright eyes, and mouths that shouted his name. Mostly they were quite young girls and their excitement poured out upon him.

"That's enough," said the World Trustee abruptly, and turned away.

The apparatus clicked and was still.

"All over the world," said Quinlan.

"Thank you," said Rud, dismissing him, and went out through a further arch that opened upon a rock garden. He strolled slowly up a winding path with occasional steps, and came to a pavilion in which he seated himself. "All over the world," he repeated. "And here I am—solitary."

"All over the world."

He had never thought of his home for years—he had indeed deliberately not thought of it. Now he imagined that forgotten family of his joining in the world chorus. Would they realise that this great Rud was indeed their—Rudie? And then, thrusting all the rest of them out of the way, came his vehement little cousin Rachel. He had slapped her and she had slapped back and then he had pulled her soft abundant hair and they had scuffled. It all came back to him intensified. He saw and felt her face very vividly close to his. She was gripping his wrists, she was putting out her sharp red tongue at him and saying "Yaaaa" at him. Was she still somewhere in this conquered world, marvelling at him? He hoped she was still in the world. He would like to feel he had got square with her.

What had become of her? What would she be like now?

Queer, but she must be, she was, the only girl he had ever come to grips with. He had never seen her since. Her mother took her abroad, to South Africa was it? Or Australia. And after that slowly he had become aware of his Destiny. Slowly his Destiny had enveloped him, absorbed him.

He imagined Cousin Rachel was sitting beside him and that he was talking to her about the intervening years.

"In a way I have done my task too well. I stand over the world like that mighty archangel you may have seen out there, the Guardian of the Revolution. I am frozen in the same attitude. On guard against any reaction. But I am not really frozen through. I am not really a mighty archangel. Not altogether. I am something more. I am a living man—most terribly alone…"

(What was that book Norvel spoke about? The Golden Bough and sacrificial kings? I must read it.)

"You are wonderful," said Cousin Rachel, sitting beside him in his imagination and speaking very softly.

"Sacrificial king of the world. For whom no sacrifice could be too great, my Master."

Rud started at the extravagance of his own thought and looked round guiltily for fear that some one might have observed what he was thinking. Cousin Rachel had evaporated. His haunting fear of self–betrayal occupied his mind again. This sense of an ever–watching eye in the open spaces cancelled, as it so often did, the ease of his Atheism. He sat up and then let himself droop into a pensive pose as who should think thoughts for all the world.