Pan Sagittarius (2509 CE)

by Ian Wallace

  Watching from above, I reidentified Guyon as one of a large number of neo-Messianists who had sprung up here in the valley of Gallia’s River Maon, responding to the captivity of their nation Gallia at the hands of us brutal Brunildic Nazis. Guyon, however, had a different quality from most of them. I watched this Messianist with fascination.

  Guyon, a wiry thirtyish brunet whose face was darkened by twenty-four hours of beard stubble, looked around as well as he could. Probably he did not recognize any of the jeering faces with their childish open mouths; if he didn’t, presumably he was glad. They had praised him last week. I quite hoped that they were not of his own circle, any of them.

  We were on a shore of the Maon River, well outside the cathedral town of Vimy-sur-Maon. There was a moderate-sized chateau that I had confiscated as a summer house: today I held court here on a broad terrace overlooking the river. They pushed Guyon stumbling up the steps; he was weak from prolonged priestly inquisition. They stood him against a railing several steps below me.

  His weakness made Guyon’s head spin as he gazed down the slope at the crowd. He couldn’t descry the scene very clearly…

  Above him on the terrace they were talking about him. Then a policeman came down and seized the prisoner’s arm and pulled him up on my level: I was seated in a large chair rather like a throne. There was a guard behind me, and to my right a toadish Gallian in mufti: Dubois, who had become notorious even in this goat’s nest of collaboration. At Guyon’s right before me stood a legation of priests headed by the Bishop of Maon.

  I rested chin on palm while the tall prim-lipped bishop, in his black robes and his silly broad-brimmed black hat, lied about Guyon in a clipped, self-contained accent.

  I broke in: “Why is Leroy Guyon so special?” I made sarcastic use of Guyon’s full name which implied a royal title (le roi Guyon); and since my Gaulois was good, I gave the question added flavor by pronouncing roy in a sort of rustic, antique way. The priests, catching it, responded with unpleasant smiles.

  “Because,” explained the bishop, “his heresy is unusually venemous. By calling himself Redeemer, he suggests that he is a reincarnation of the One and Only Redeemer who died for us all two thousand years ago. He is clever at misquoting scriptures to bring himself into line with the doctrine of the Second Coming.”

  I smiled, being a fashionable semibeliever in Wotan and the gods of Asgard; not until later would I grow uncomfortable. “How then,” I inquired softly, “do you know that he is not the Redeemer? It is certainly high time for a Second Coming!”

  They had erred in bringing a hotheaded priestly youngster. Before his elders could stop him, he blurted: “In the Second Coming, the Redeemer will rule temporally; but this Guyon says his kingdom is not of this world—” The bishop, disconcerted, tried to cover the tactical slip; but I hit upon it as my escape from a nuisance.

  “If Guyon is not interested in worldly politics,” I pointed out, “he is no threat to the Reich. Settle the matter yourselves; I wash my hands of it.”

  When he heard that, Guyon felt a tightening in his stomach, as later I verified by subjectively haunting his track. The parallel was growing close; his beliefs about himself were almost confirmed, they were so near to complete confirmation that he would be crazy not to accept it as done. Yet, even now, Guyon felt that queer fear that a man gets when he finds himself on the verge of realizing an improbable triumph. Again his faith nearly wilted because its truth shone so bright.

  He knew that it was easy for a man like himself, believing in natural order, to suspect himself of insanity when he found himself attaching reality to connections that men counted as fantasy. On the other hand, there was more to the natural order than science had been able to pin down. And he had tested so carefully, so well—he had insisted on something that is not quite scientific proof but which nevertheless crowds doubt against absurdity: a totally improbable summation of rare coincidence. In his mind the facts were clear, the time full; and so he had acted.

  Now on the judgment-porch of Von Eltz, hearing the words “I wash my hands of it,” Guyon had a final passing doubt.

  What saved Guyon was Von Eltz himself. Studying the gauleiter’s face, Guyon realized that Von Eltz was a sort of time-mirror: Guyon himself after ten years, if Guyon should retreat now. Guyon looked behind himself; and on the banks of the Maon below, he saw hundreds of his heedless grown-up children. He looked again at Von Eltz, who was studying white Von Eltz hands: it seemed to Guyon that Von Eltz was the sort of man who would always be washing his hands in actuality.

  Then Guyon knew that, in the course of completing this design—as Jesus himself had completed a design by Isaiah—Guyon had to beat Von Eltz; or rather, to force Von Eltz into open conflict and let Von Eltz beat himself. Guyon’s triumph would be the self-defeat of Von Eltz by Von Eltz—in ironical reenactment of the other scene two thousand years before, with nearly the same forces operating in closely similar people, like the actualization of an old memory, but infused with subtle novelty.

  In the same breath it ceased to be Guyon’s story primarily and became the story of Von Eltz. The gauleiter’s tragedy, which was uncertain and in any event would be for him sterile, held more importance for him than for Guyon, being merely instrumental to the high tragicomedy of Guyon, whose ending was certain.

  One way or another Guyon had already won. But in Guyon, triumph here was tempered by sympathy…

  In Von Eltz, I stirred myself into semialertness. In this one assignment, I had already run the complete Guyon-Von Eltz track: I knew what would happen, and Guyon was right about it. But they had assigned me Von Eltz; and presumably I was supposed to nudge him onto some alternate track. And I was not at all sure that such an alternate track should be such as to change the destiny of Leroy Guyon…

  But action was proceeding; and I dissolved myself into Von Eltz again.

  The bishop was saying: “We have done everything in the power of the Church to muzzle this fanatic. We excommunicated him long ago. But he continues to be an unsettling menace. He is not merely a heretic, he is also politically subversive, and so he is dangerous to the gauleiter. If you take the obvious course, you rid yourself of a criminal who claims equality with the Führer and who preaches passive resistance to the jurisdiction of Brunilda. You rid yourself of a serious political embarrassment. And the Church will not be ungrateful, for these heresies kill souls.”

  I repressed a cynical smile: the bishop, a bleak medievalist, was running his own church in his own way here in Nazi-isolated Maon. I doubted that Ramus would be grateful; but Ramus the Eternal City was not my political concern. (Just for an instant, my hintermind told me that this reflection was ironical for reasons of historical parallelism.) I inquired: “How is he a criminal from our point of view? You’d better detail these charges.”

  “We have filed a brief,” the bishop reminded me. I grimaced: I hadn’t read it. “Guyon,” specified the bishop, “insists on repudiation of the Occupation currency, and he encourages the people to disobey the government. He wants to set up a church of his own, an international church that will dominate the political state. When he is challenged about his implied equality with the Führer as head of such a political church, he evades the issue cleverly but always leaves an inference of affirmation. I suggest that the gauleiter examine him. If he were not a criminal, we would not have brought charges.”

  I was most uncomfortable: I shifted in my chair; I did not want to push the issue. But there was nothing else to do: I had orders to placate the clergy, and these charges were serious.

  Turning to Guyon, I inquired: “Art thou the King of God’s Children?” Of course I was using the tutoiement in a scornful way, and the double entendre as well: “Toi, es-tu le roi—”

  Leroy replied in a respectful form, but conversationally, not as to a high official. “Is it that the question has occurred to your own mind, Gauleiter? Do you say it for yourself, or did others tell it of me?”

  Guyon felt as though he were rem
embering having said the words before; but he was sure that in fact he must be only reminiscently paraphrasing something in Scripture…

  Inwardly tickled at the way I had been hoist, nevertheless I managed a frown and stormy anger. “Am I a Gallian?” I exploded. “Thine own province and the priests have delivered thee to me! What hast thou done?” Deliberately I was continuing thee and thou—pronouns of love for -a child or a friend, otherwise pronouns of contempt.

  Two of the priests shook their heads in deprecation: my show of anger had been ill-timed, they knew Guyon would trip me again. And of course he did, keeping his eyes on my eyes.

  Responded Guyon: “My kingdom is not of this world: it is on the world, but not of the world.” He had ignored my second question—and, now I thought about it, my first.

  I winced; for if Guyon could prove otherworldly motives, it would remove him from political jurisdiction. But his assertion also labeled him definitely as an ape of the old Redeemer whom the Führer had set aside in favor of Baldur. “Prove that!” I commanded—hoping that he would.

  Guyon could not prove it, but he supported it indirectly. “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight to save me. They have not fought.”

  Privately Guyon was congratulating himself that none of the others had blown his mind like Peter…

  My command of the inquiry was slipping away. The crowd below—villagers, priests, and a scattering of Nazi shock troops—was growing noisy. I signaled to the police to quiet them. When that had been done, I tried to force Guyon back to the issue, for the argument had not clearly disproved my Brunildic jurisdiction over this case.

  “Art thou a king, then?” I persisted.

  Guyon opened his eyes wide, smiled, and exclaimed: “It is you who keep saying that I am a king! Your thinking is not as clear as you would like it to be. A king is the political chief in a monarchy. Our Gallia is no monarchy, and I make no pretense of being a political chief. I have basically no political quarrel with your Führer; it is rather a religious and a moral difference. I was not born a king; I was born a peasant: my father was a peasant, my mother was a peasant. It is true now that my birth had a purpose, although possibly it was not true then; but at any rate, that purpose was not to rule a worldly kingdom of today. I see your purpose, Gauleiter: the local priests want to use you as their instrument for hanging me, because I open up their cluttered interpretation of the Scripture and threaten their vested interest in the retrograde hierarchy of Maon.”

  This time there was a chorus of bellowing from the audience, bellowing that was overwhelmingly hostile to Guyon. As the noise died out—punctuated by one or two yells of physical anguish—Guyon finished: “The priests will succeed in their purpose—but not, Von Eltz, not before you suspect the truth—and despite your suspicion of the truth.”

  As he said “truth,” and said it again, I paled. For some reason he was touching an intimate chord in my soul; Guyon half understood me, for I was what Guyon might have become.

  Imperatively I motioned for silence. My nobility helped me to mask my indecisiveness behind a grand manner that was convincing to most of the watchers if not to myself.

  “Do you then tell me the truth!” I ordered with finely sarcastic emphasis; but I had dropped the “thou” and had used a man-to-man vous.

  I Pan-awoke wide: that was the preset cue. Shortly after that truth -challenge, Von Eltz on the original track had publicly given up and released Guyon for hanging. But in the John-gospel, Pilate had first momentarily taken Jesus away from the outer crowd into the judgment hall. This inner interview had always seemed to me astonishingly brief, scarcely meriting the august scene change.

  I had always suspected that in actuality Pilate and Jesus had found, semiprivately within that judgment hall, a great deal to say—things that simply had not been reported outside that hall, so that John had no way to get at them. Consequently, to fill the hiatus, John had taken some things that had been said outside the hall (e.g., “What is truth?”) and had editorially moved them inside the hall. But I was interested in the baffling question of the real inner conversation—which surely must have been a consequence of what had been said outside: particularly, “What is truth?” If Pilate had been anything at all like Von Eltz, he could not have left it there, he could not!

  What they had actually said presumably had not changed the outcome for Jesus—but it may have changed the psychic outcome for Pilate. Unluckily, this I had not checked out in Antan; and just now, coming upon the Guy on-Von Eltz crisis, I had no time for a checkout.

  Do it, then! I shot the notion compellingly into the front of the Von Eltz mind. It was up to him, whether he would act upon it: should he act, he would germinate an alternate track at this if-node. Leaving it where it pregnantly was, again I subsided into the subjectivity of Von Eltz.

  Guyon had lost his smile; and for a moment the gauleiter faded from the foreground of his attention in a transient spell of dizziness. He drove himself to reply…

  “To this end was I born or reborn,” Guyon informed me, “and for this cause have I come or returned into the world: that I might again bear witness as the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.”

  Being Von Eltz, perhaps I was the only one who noticed the peculiar phrasing: not “bear witness to the truth” but “bear witness as the truth.” For a flash-instant absurdly I thought of myself as one named Pan: it passed and did not return. In the silence—for the crowd sensed my tension—I leaned toward Guyon and asked quite seriously: “What is truth?”

  “God damn me!” muttered the hasty young priest, while the bishop compressed his lips to hold back a curse at the gauleiter’s mal à propos.

  Guyon was gazing at me, not so much composing his reply as timing it. I was oppressed; I was holding my face impassive, but probably my forehead was lined: I felt I must hear Guyon’s answer, must discuss it, and yet must not humble myself to the level of controversant with a crazy Gallian zealot.

  Achieving a minor decision, I arose. “Bring him inside, Dubois,” I ordered and disappeared through my door.

  Dubois took Guyon by an arm and shoved him inside, closing the door against the others on the terrace.

  In my salon, Guyon and I stood for a moment appraising each other, with Dubois watching sardonically.

  Then Guyon collapsed. But the if-node was breached.

  Guyon awoke to find himself seated at my desk; I sat on a little chair in front of the desk and the prisoner, looking up at him, with my chin propped in my hands and a grin set uncomfortably on my face. Guyon’s wrists, no longer handcuffed, rested on my desk. It was at first for him an inexplicable situation. Then his eyes were attracted by gold braid on his own cuffs instead of his usual frayed denim. Examining himself, Guyon understood that the gauleiter had arrayed him in the jacket of an old Brunildic officer’s uniform and had set him up there at my desk as a joke.

  I confirmed it: “Now you are a fine king indeed, Guyon!” I was amused in two directions: at him, and at myself. I commenced to chuckle.

  Abruptly Guyon was flooded with glee: he laughed heartily, being amused for three reasons into which crept hints of other reasons.

  His counteramusement disconcerted me. I stopped laughing. Guyon went right on. I tried a noncommittal smile, but it didn’t wear well.

  My mind was agile, though: I arose to pour wine by way of covering my embarrassment with a mock politesse; and as I poured, I thought of a reference to Guyon’s delusion. “The Son of Man,” I suggested, “comes eating and drinking. Are you a glutton, mon roi?”

  “I like to eat and drink,” confessed Guyon—still laughing a little, mildly hysterical, hideously fatigued. “But I shouldn’t wish to be drunk. Would you be courteous enough to give me bread to dip in the wine?”

  At my sign, Dubois brought bread—quality bread baked of bleached flour, the first Guy on had seen for a year. He dipped and ate, half chewing and half sucking: the wine was good, he could feel his color returning. I offered him
a cigarette: he declined—“I have not learned to like them”—and I lit one and puffed with dainty nervousness. I was watching Guyon closely. He devoted himself for a while to the stimulating wine sop; once he looked at me directly, and my eyes shifted.

  The crowd outside was noisy: its mass talk percolated through my closed shutters like a confused lowing of cattle. Fat Dubois peered restively at those shutters through his round horn-rimmed spectacles. I was insensitive to the noise, being occupied with finding an opening remark. Guyon finished his refreshment, leaned back, and closed his eyes, waiting. I suspected he knew that I was weighing possible sentences against their probable effects on my dignity.

  When the lull became unbearable, I reverted desperately to the bad joke. “How do you like your gauleiter’s uniform and high place, Majesty?”

  Guyon goaded me. “You are playing your role very well.”

  “Role?” blurted I.

  “Role, of course! You have washed your hands, you have asked me the meaning of truth, I am accused of playing Rédempteur—and you have rationalized a hiatus in the gospel of John by withdrawing me behind a curtain for private inquiry. And now you have arrayed me in a purple robe.” He chuckled: “I can hardly wait for the crown of thorns!”

  I stood indignant, facing it out. “You are impertinent! Von Eltz plays no role!”

  “Escape it if you can,” Guyon said gently. “I told you that you are an instrument. First you were to mock me: you are doing just that—although you are a gentleman, and so you have the good taste to do it privately, except for Dubois here. Afterward you will flog me, believing the flogging unjust. Then you will hang me, believing that I should live.”

  “Flogging and hanging, very possibly,” I said dryly. “But if either happens,‘it will be justice. That is my way.”