The Man in the Tree

by Damon Knight

  "Translation," said Margaret.

  "Yes, a very good point. That would come under the heading of an information section, I think, but we will also need interpreters."

  "Let's talk about some of the legal problems," Cliff Guthrie said. "Is this going to be a not-for-profit corporation, or what? Do you want to incorporate it as a church, for the tax advantages?"

  "Not a church," Gene said. "There are one or two things I won't do, and one is to let anybody put a halo on my head."

  "Then probably it has to be a scientific and educational corporation, but I.R.S. doesn't like to hand out that designation. Then there's another thing. A non-profit corporation can't engage in political activity of any kind. That means lobbying is out."

  "Here's something we haven't talked about. The organization has to have a name -- what are we going to call it?"

  "Maybe an acronym, something with the initials G.E.N.E.?"

  "General Exodus of Nuclear Energy."

  "Why not just something descriptive like, A World at Peace?"

  "Peace is a good word, but a lot of people are using it."

  "There are some other words we can't use either, like Crusade. Popular. People's."

  "How about 'A World for Mankind'? Then you could have a great logo, with the 'W' and the' M.'"

  "What happened to womankind?"

  "I like the idea of getting 'World' into it, and I like the M. World of Miracles."

  "Let's keep this simple. Remember whatever we pick has to be translated into a lot of languages -- you don't want any ambiguities."

  "The World Movement."

  "Sounds like a giant laxative."

  "One World would be perfect, but that's been done."

  "As far as the initials are concerned, they've got to be different in every language anyhow, so let's not get hung up on them."

  Wilcox suggested a committee to look into the question of names; Gene promptly appointed him the head of it, and then said, "Let's break for lunch. Afterward, I'd like to spend the rest of the afternoon talking to you in the library, one at a time -- or if two or three of you want to come together, that's all right." He got up and left the room.

  The others got up more slowly. As they straggled out, Stan Salomon said, "Do you realize that when we went in there it was just a game, and when we left we were committed?"

  Gene's place was still vacant at lunch.

  "You know, it is possible, what he is talking about," said Coomaraswami. "It really is possible. It took about a century for the Islamic movement to spread through North Africa and Spain, and it took a lot of fighting also, but imagine what Mohammed could have done if he had been able to go around the world on jet planes, and preach by television. It is very much easier now to persuade a lot of people very quickly. And if you tell them something sensible that they want to hear, and you also can demonstrate a kind of supernatural ability, then you sort of get them both ways, because you are giving them something practical, and also something transcendental. I am willing to believe that he can do it. The only question in my mind is, will it be a good thing or a bad thing?"

  "How could it be a bad thing?"

  "Well, I have a picture in my mind of the world Gene wants -- fewer people, not so many big cities. And I think it may be a world in which it is not possible to do physics."

  "Come in, Mike."

  Wilcox sat down and crossed his legs nervously. Gene was in his outsize black leather armchair; between them was a table with a coffeepot, cups, sugar.

  "Coffee?"

  "No, thanks. You know, all this has more or less knocked my pins out from under me. I mean, all my life I've been going on the assumption that magic is a highly specialized form of deception. Now I have to get used to the idea that there really is a sort of magic."

  "There isn't anything magical about it," Gene said.

  "Well, if you say not. Anyhow, I'm curious about something. What's your limit, I mean in size? Could you make an elephant appear, for instance?"

  "No. I think the limit is somewhere around my own size, and I haven't even got very close to that. Why do you mention elephants?"

  "Just something that crossed my mind. I'd like to talk about these meetings of yours. Stop me if I speak out of turn. I suppose you've never spoken in public before? Are you nervy about it?"

  "Yes, a little."

  "How long will your speech run?"

  "About an hour."

  "Pardon me, but that's not enough. When people come to a meeting, or the theater or whatever, they expect to be entertained or jawed at for two hours, more or less."

  "I don't think I can make it last that long."

  "No, that's what I'm getting at. There's got to be something else to fill up the evening, and my idea is to use magic. I can get some really spectacular illusions from New York if you say the word. An hour of magic, an hour of lecture -- do the healing, and there you are."

  "What sort of illusions?"

  "The famous glass box on wheels, for one. I take it money is no object?"

  "Right."

  "Well, I know a man who will rent us one if we make him an offer he can't refuse. I can get his stage crew as well. It will pack the customers in, I promise you."

  Gene said, "Mike, I'm grateful, but if we use fake magic, won't people think I'm a fake too?"

  "Not with the healing. We could make a point of that, in fact -- the contrast. Anyhow, it's quite likely that some people will call you a fake, whatever you do. The point is, the people who're seen you won't believe that, and people who haven't seen you will come because they're curious."

  "Come in, Cliff. Coffee?"

  "No, thanks."

  "Cliff, there's one good reason why this can't be a church. I want to thank you for that suggestion; I know you were thinking of what's best for me and putting aside your own religious feelings. But we can't do that, because a church can only grow at the expense of other churches. We can't get three billion people in ten years that way. This has to be a movement that anybody can belong to, Christian, Jew, Moslem, whatever."

  "That's right. I wasn't thinking."

  "And I hope I can say what I have to say without tearing down anybody's religious beliefs. If you catch me doing that, tell me."

  "I will. But I'll tell you one thing."

  "Yes?"

  "If I had a choice between you and the Baptist Church, I'd follow you."

  "What's the matter, Cliff? What happened?"

  Guthrie had a curious look on his face. "He touched me on the forehead," he said.

  "Coffee, Piet?"

  "Yes, please." Linck sat down, took out a cigar, and settled himself comfortably. "There are some practical details that I want to discuss with you, and then I have a frivolous question."

  "Good."

  "Practical things first. You realize that you are going to need a large number of professional people of very high caliber. The best place to recruit them would be New York. If you wish, I'll go there and talk to some headhunters, do some preliminary interviews."

  "Yes, Piet. Thank you."

  Linck waved his cigar. "I have nothing else to do. I have to go back to Amsterdam for a week or so in July or August, otherwise I am free. Now for the frivolous question. Frivolous is not the right word, perhaps, but it is just something I'm curious about. Don't answer if you would rather not. Have you ever had what people call a religious experience?"

  "Funny you should ask," Gene said. "Years ago, When I left home, something did happen. I was eleven at the time. Out in eastern Oregon one night I hitched a ride with an old man who got suspicious of me and left me off on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. It was getting late, and it was cold. I didn't know where I was. I started walking down that road and I came to a forest. It wasn't like any other forest I've ever seen. Tall pines and little twisted junipers, spaced pretty widely apart, growing in white sand. That place scared me, it was so quiet. There wasn't a sound, no insects, no birds, nothing. Then it began to rain, and in a funny way that
made it easier to take, because of the sound. I walked into the forest a little way, out of sight of the road, and lay down curled up around the trunk of one of those trees, and went to sleep there.

  "Sometime just after dawn I woke up and the rain had stopped, the place was deathly still again. And then -- this is the hard part. I don't know how to explain it. I felt, I sensed, that there was somebody up there, and then I heard a voice. Not a voice, but a -- I don't know what. Telling me something. It was a word, or maybe a number -- some number too big to grasp. Just the one thing, the big voice that wasn't a voice. And I heard what it said, and I couldn't understand it. Not because the voice wasn't speaking clearly, but because my head was too small for what it was saying."

  He shifted in his chair. "That was all. I started walking again, and got to another road, hitched another ride, and I wound up in San Francisco."

  "And you've never gone back there?"

  "No. I don't know if it would be worse if I went back and it happened again, or if it didn't -- if nothing happened. I know where that place is -- I looked it up later. It's called the Lost Forest, in eastern Oregon. It's a place that shouldn't be there, because those are Ponderosa pines, growing in sand, in a place that never gets more than about six inches of rainfall a year."

  "And you still don't know what the voice was trying to say to you?"

  "I know. But I don't know what it is that I know. My head still isn't big enough."

  "Irma, I've got to talk to you."

  "Come in the pantry, honey. What is it, did he touch you on the forehead too?"

  "Yes, but that's not it. He told me he's going to need a personal secretary, and an appointments secretary, and a press secretary, and at least two office managers, one for here and one for downtown, and he asked me to choose."

  Irma cocked an ironic eyebrow at her. "You want me to guess?"

  Margaret picked up a cocktail napkin and began to shred it. "Irma, I know I should have said I wanted to be an office manager. But then somebody else would have been with him all the time."

  "I understand," Irma said~ "Isn't it hell?"

  Chapter Twenty-six

  From the St. Petersburg Times:

  "An Evening of Magic and Mystery," presented Friday through Sunday at the Sherman Theatre, is a puzzling mixture of entertainment and propaganda.

  At the Friday performance, stage illusions, offered by a magician who called himself the Astounding Willy, dominated the earlier part of the evening. Ghostly heads floated out over the audience, there were showers of rose petals, and many things appeared and vanished, including cards, coins, pigeons, and the magician himself.

  As a climax of this part of the evening, the Astounding Willy stepped into a large glass box on wheels, which was then covered with a drape by his assistants. When the drape was removed, Willy had disappeared, and in his place was Gene Anderson, eight feet six inches tall, billed as "The World's Tallest Man."

  Emerging from the box, Anderson, a former circus performer who has made his home in Pinellas Park for the last two years, spoke to the audience about peace and brotherhood. At the end of his lecture, he brought up a young man in a wheelchair, allegedly suffering from muscular dystrophy, and healed him, or appeared to heal him, by miraculous means.

  On leaving the theater, members of the audience were handed application forms for an organization called "Peace, Prosperity, and Justice," and were also given pink play money to exchange with each other.

  The performance will be repeated tonight and Sunday.

  Margaret pasted the clipping into a scrapbook, along with copies of the newspaper advertisements, flyers, and handbills. Within a few months the scrapbook was full, and she began filing clippings in the first of a series of fat folders.

  Coomaraswami had taken a leave of absence from the university to set up a think-tank in Orlando; it was beginning to issue position papers on renewable resources, birth control, the economics of a declining population. "It turns out there are a lot of things you can do," he said. "For instance, if population is declining, there is a lot of work just in tearing down large buildings that you don't need anymore, and salvaging the materials, and so on. Then the demographics are different too, so there is room for new products and we need different services. It is not hard to keep people working if you just look at the needs and opportunities."

  One evening, after a private talk with Gene, he reported that Gene had touched him on the forehead. "You know, when he touched me, I felt as if I could feel those two marks of his fingers on my forehead afterward. It was really strange. I think it was just something he did, but it was really extraordinary how I felt about it."

  "You don't think he can -- rearrange your brain, or anything, do you?" Wilcox asked."

  "No, no." Coomaraswami waved the suggestion away. "I am sure my brain has not been rearranged. As far as I can tell, I am thinking as clearly as ever. Maybe a little more so. Just before I came in here I had the idea for a really marvelous physics paper. But, you know, something happened when he touched me. I can't explain it. But I feel now that it made everything definite in some way. As if he had confirmed a decision. And, really, I am very happy about it, but still it is strange."

  The "kitchen cabinet," as Irma called it, still met on weekends when Gene was at home, but now there were new faces in it: lawyers, managers, publicity people. The head of the new legal staff was Brian Altman, who looked more like a choir boy than a corporation lawyer.

  After St. Petersburg, Gene and Mike Wilcox took their show to Tampa, Orlando, Miami, and Savannah, setting up local organizations in each city. Arrangements were being made for a national tour beginning in June -- not in theaters this time, but in stadiums and civic centers.

  "How will you manage the magic part in a big stadium?" Linck asked Wilcox. They were in the kitchen, with Irma, Pongo, and Margaret; Linck had just returned from a New York trip. Gene was in his room.

  "It can't be done," Wilcox said. "I mean, I suppose you could do an elephant, but Gene doesn't want anything like that. We're giving up the magic. It was fun while it lasted, and it served its purpose."

  "Is he relieved about that?"

  "No, in a funny way I think he liked the idea, because he hates these comparisons with Jesus, and the magic made him different."

  "How is that?"

  "Well, I mean, Jesus at least wasn't a magician."

  "Perhaps not, but he was crucified for being one. Don't repeat this to Gene, please, but when Jesus was brought before Pilate, you probably remember, Pilate asked the Jews, 'What is this man accused of?' And they answered, 'If he were not a doer of evil, we would not have brought him before you.' Well, you know, this sounds at first rather like the trial scene in "Alice in Wonderland." But 'doer of evil' at that time was a common term for a magician."

  "Good heavens."

  "The story is only in John, not the other three gospels. But it is a convincing story to me, because it makes good sense of this episode. In the other gospels, the charge against Jesus is blasphemy. If that had really been the charge, he would have been stoned to death under Mosaic law, not turned over to the Romans. Under Roman law, blasphemy against the Hebrew god was not a crime. But the practice of magic was, and the penalty was crucifixion."

  Wilcox said after a moment, "I never heard that before, and I've read a good bit about magic. Why isn't there a little footnote or something to explain it in the Bible?"

  "The meaning of 'doer of evil'? I suppose because the translators didn't know it. There are many mistakes in the English bible -- and in the Dutch one, too. Every translation is different. Did you know that in the French Bible, where it says in the English version, 'Blessed are the meek,' it says in French, 'Heureux sont les debonnaires'?"

  "Debonnaires! That's very good. Maurice Chevalier at the Pearly Gates. But there's something else that bothers me. You know, Gene won't hear of any idea that he's the Second Coming or anything like that. You seem to be suggesting that he really is. I'm curious to know if that's wh
at you actually think."

  "No, and that's why I asked you not to mention this to Gene. I don't believe in reincarnation, you know. I think that when we die the universe takes us apart and uses us to make other things. That's just my opinion. But I also believe that there are patterns in the universe, and perhaps sometimes they repeat. Why not? The Platonists and Pythagoreans believed in the 'magnus annus,' the great year, when history would begin to repeat itself. I don't think for a moment that Gene is Jesus come again. But just consider a few things. His father was a carpenter. He has the power to heal and to make things appear and disappear. 'Gene' means 'born,' and 'Anderson,' well, you could interpret it as 'the son of man.'"