Goddesses Never Die

by George B Mair

  In the middle of each of three sides an almost motionless figure was seated on a dais similar to Persia’s Peacock Throne and Grant had seen comparable splendour only in a few Byzantine cathedrals of Russia. One man, in fact, reminded him of the Patriarch of all the Russians, wearing, as he did, bejewelled robes and a mitre which were museum-pieces in their own right. Black figures wearing the masks of African witch-doctors squatted almost shoulder to shoulder along one side of the vast oblong courtyard, while young girls with naked breasts and holding a snake in each hand sat along the other.

  The Mother Goddess herself was now seated on a facsimile of Britain’s Stone of Destiny upon which Moses had once laid his head, while a circle of people around her represented most of the world’s great religions: a cardinal with skull cap, and a living Vishnu . . . the second aspect of that holy Hindu trinity known as the Preserver; a muezzin serious below the fez which proved his pilgrimage to Mecca; and a silent man whom Grant knew by sight to be one of the world’s most-respected Bahais.

  But the Mother Goddess dominated everything and everyone, not only by the splendour of robes which were designed from carvings Grant had once admired on friezes of Egypt’s third dynasty but by the plain wooden cross which she held in her left hand and the host sodden with mud which she held in the other. Goodness and Evil were the symbols, and Grant suspected that the Goddess had reached a moment of decision, but more important, he respected the sheer genius which had stage-managed a setting rivalling anything conceived even in Hollywood.

  But above all he respected the power which seemed to radiate from the figure sitting on the hard stone, the hypnotic force of her eyes and the authority which had snapped into her voice while she spoke into a microphone, the only other concession to modernity which Grant could immediately place in an area which was jam-packed with humanity, and an area in which the sheer emptiness of the courtyard seemed strangely sinister.

  She motioned Grant to a bamboo and basketwork chair close to her side and again spoke into the microphone, but this time with an impartial objectiveness which was frightening as she detailed stories covering every continent, yet known as a whole only to a few.

  And it interested him that she chose to start with the student world, and riots which had rocked Western civilisation off and on for years.

  Closed-door ‘teach-ins’, she said, had been held in many centres, but some of the most important at the London School of Economics and Paris’s Sorbonne. During earlier days seed had been planted by pioneers who recognised the needs of a rising generation to create a new world. Then Lewis Cole, at that time of Columbia University, had preached that student revolt was not enough: ‘Revolt must be made to spread to workers as it did in Paris and New York.’

  Danny the Red (Daniel Cohn-Bendit), leader of an earlier revolt in Paris, had almost succeeded in overthrowing the French government, and he had been joined by leaders of movements in West Berlin, Italy, Yugoslavia and other countries. Together with Yasuo Ishi from Japan, Dragana Stavijel, Alan Geismar from France, Jan Kovan from Czechoslovakia, and Tariq Ali a meeting had been held behind closed doors, and delegates or members from America’s Ambassador College news teams had reported lectures on how to create national revolution.

  Two theatres had then been used, and speakers had commuted from one to the other, teaching disciples in each.

  Ambassador College had also reported that there was then a standard pattern of revolt around the world, that it was fired by a new-style revolutionary Marxism, and that the object was to bring down the established order of society by violence.

  An able young leader called Luca Meldolese had once advised that this could most easily be done, given that members refused—ever—to negotiate with authority, and provided that they were first conditioned into resentment and a sense of being oppressed, or discriminated against, by a hidebound establishment. They must then be taught to ‘demand their rights’ and play their own part in organising the student body to fight for the upheaval of bourgeois society.

  As early as 1969 it was believed that in at least forty world universities there was a hard core of dangerous student cadres training to create revolution, yet all striving to identify themselves with ‘the workers’ so that for the first time both ‘workers’ and students or intellectuals were struggling to ‘unite’.

  A pamphlet had appeared during 1968 in Paris, and part of it was captioned Sorbonne Soviet. Its story described how red flags had been hoisted from flag-posts while authority looked on helplessly: how portraits of Che Guevara, Trotsky, Lenin, Marx, Mao and Castro had been hoisted on to public places and where the chapel had been covered by inscriptions saying ‘finis les tabernacles’ and ‘religion is the last mystification’.

  A blasphemous comment had even been written which said: ‘We want somewhere to f——, not somewhere to pray’.

  Ambassador College news teams had continued to report that throughout America and other places the student body was demanding, and had indeed often received, permission for the removal of traditional taboos. In some places students had won permission for girls to visit their rooms until midnight; in others there had been gross abuse of alcohol; social extremes appeared to appeal to most students, and Ambassador College had reported a demand to sweep away all rules.

  The Goddess paused. ‘All that,’ she then said in her deeply husky voice, ‘was but the beginning of those many other events which have now brought us all together. Rising youth wants freedom. But not freedom for goodness, only freedom to play with evil. And that,’ she added, ‘is where the Mafia and Cosa Nostra become important.’

  Grant began to glimpse how she was going to tie up her arguments, but listened, spellbound, while she detailed the plot which had been hatched to bring down the old ways and throw new ones right up to the very top.

  During 1968 a Pittsburgh educator had preached that colleges had no right to attempt to regulate the sexual morality of students.

  San Antonio Express and News had also reported around the same time that fourteen male and female students had met during a nude session entitled ‘for sensory awareness’.

  The Chicago American, on April 19th, 1968, had published another piece advocating that unmarried students be allowed to live together, while in London a university dean had urged much the same thing.

  Then an Associated Press release in Sweden, May 17th, 1968, had stated that of 1,300 young people interviewed in Stockholm only one boy and three girls had not had intercourse until they were married.

  Student protests against authorities which tried to interfere with their rights had closed over three dozen universities in Italy, the United States, Tunisia, Mexico, Ethiopia, Spain and elsewhere.

  ‘Not even quiet countries like Denmark, Switzerland or the Netherlands escaped,’ said the Mother Goddess loudly. And there was more involved, she continued, than slick talkers advising young people to live together. Drugs, too, had played a part and the Mafia was responsible more than anyone else for the corruption of many youthful intellectuals.

  In fact the Mafia, with its little brother Cosa Nostra in the States, had used kif, acid and stronger drugs like heroin to create psychedelic fantasies and sensory awareness which had angled maturing minds towards even a new religion.

  And it was at this stage that Grant learned of developments which came as a total and complete surprise. Immediately after the Israeli-Arab war of June 1967 rumours had begun to spread about a temple which was to be rebuilt in Jerusalem. ‘Not simply built,’ said the Goddess quietly, ‘but re-built.’

  It had been rumoured in Britain that stone had been ordered from a quarry in the United States, and indeed an El A1 Airlines pilot had even owned a fragment of stone said by him to have been taken from stocks within Israel.

  Hatred between Jew and Arab was undiminished today. And at this stage Grant remembered his last visit to the Lebanon where he had discovered an almanac on sale, but where two pages dealing with the state of Israel had been actually glued together so
that no one could readily read it or open it. A supreme act of childishness, but a pointer to Arab feelings.

  Israel was, as Grant well knew, partially in the grip of political Zionism, just as the Arab world was dealing on a sophisticated level with the Kremlin. But he had never heard of any Israeli idea to rebuild the Temple of Solomon, which was what the Goddess was now stating. And it would be built, she said, near the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s most holy places, yet including part of the Wailing Wall in its actual interior. ‘And,’ she added grimly, ‘all the world knows that Judah’s Wailing Wall is probably its most sacred single symbol.’

  And then, to Grant’s surprise, she opened a bible and read from Thessalonians in the second chapter where she claimed that a divinely inspired apostle had predicted the building of this very temple, yet only after much war, ‘and,’ she added softly, ‘the apostle prophesies that a god-man will sit within the new temple.’ Her voice rose to a harsh crescendo. ‘And that supposed god-man will try not only to be dictator of the world but also supreme head of all the world’s churches.’

  Her voice again dropped, and her face became serious. ‘This man has been called a false prophet in the book of Revelations and a beast in the book of Daniel. Yet he will ally himself with many of the world’s heads of state and military leaders in their attempt to overthrow the established order of society.’

  And Grant was hardly surprised when she explained that this would, inevitably, provoke global war when the great powers saw their centres of religion in the world’s most sacred city either desecrated or destroyed by the ‘beast’ who sat within the new temple.

  The Mother Goddess paused to sip a glass of orange juice, and then she continued.

  Military leaders could succeed only with the help of both students and workers.

  And she had made it clear that the student body was now on a global scale, virtually under control of those silent men who controlled the drug trade. So Mafia and Cosa Nostra were, directly, the real powers behind the scenes.

  The students had now been conditioned to support world revolution when some as yet unknown leader gave the signal.

  Jerusalem had also been selected by a caucus of student, military and political leaders as capital of the new world, but all the old ways to God, together with their temples, would be destroyed, as prophesied in St. Luke’s gospel, before the rebuilding of the temple known to Zerubbabel, rebuilt by Herod, and spoken of by Christ in Matthew, chapter twenty-four, took place. But within that temple the future world ruler would make decisions and control mankind, while the Mafia would enjoy not only stupendous privilege as purveyors of drugs and controllers of men’s thoughts, but also as the force which had manipulated scores of differing philosophies or religious creeds into one cohesive whole while believing in the same things—a permissive world of drugs, drink, sex, and the killing of all opposition.

  The Goddess then switched her argument. Detailed research had been carried out which proved beyond dispute that of all mankind 95 per cent were drones and only 5 per cent were ‘leaders’. But for this purpose a ‘leader’ was anyone who accepted even small responsibilities. Bearing in mind—as Japs, Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans had done during the mid-twentieth-century wars—that one needed to fear only 5 per cent of prisoners or of enemy, this new organisation would use its 5 per cent totally to discipline the remaining 95 per cent who would end as virtual slaves.

  George Orwell had been close to the mark! She felt only that events had moved faster than even he had once anticipated.

  In fact she believed that at this very point in time the world had already begun to erupt. Yet the really interesting thing, she said, was that the true centre of everything which would happen was before them all, that she was the one factor which really mattered and that it was she and she alone who could now control events.

  She turned towards Grant and her voice was a command. ‘Stand beside me and speak into this microphone.’

  Mehmet Ali handed over a mike the size of a plum. ‘Hold it about a foot away from your mouth and answer the Goddess’s questions.’

  Her first comment shook him rigid. ‘Today you slept for the second time with a certain girl. Why?’

  Grant hesitated. It was almost the last question he had expected. And then he saw no reason why he should lie. ‘Because I liked her.’

  The Goddess stared at him dispassionately. ‘Liked or loved?’

  ‘Liked,’ said Grant. ‘No question of love.’

  The old woman’s eyes seemed to harden for a split second before she asked her third question. ‘Then you accept immorality as normal?’

  ‘No.’ Grant was unexpectedly irritated. ‘I’m not married and I’m a normal man. I was attracted to a girl who seemed to be attracted to me. We loved and that covers everything where two mature adults are concerned.’

  ‘Does it?’ said the Goddess cynically. ‘But continue. Did you know that you may have sired a child, or that the girl wanted a baby?’

  Grant sensed that Harmony Dove was staring at him with unexpected curiosity while he swallowed an unpalatable news flash. ‘She knew what she was doing,’ he said at last. ‘But if she has a child then it will be cared for.’

  ‘As a bastard or would you marry?’

  He shook his head. No girl would trap him into marriage by a trick like that. ‘I wouldn’t marry her.’

  The woman suddenly changed the subject. ‘You have also killed both men and women. Or am I wrong?’

  ‘Correct,’ said Grant. ‘That can be part of my job.’

  ‘And you neglected your parents. I have been told that you seldom even exchanged letters.’

  Grant again hesitated. None of his family had ever been enthusiastic letter-writers, and to some extent they had been content to drift.

  ‘So you broke a third Mosaic commandment through failing to honour your father and mother.’ This was stated as a fact, and Grant saw that Mehmet had stooped to lay a third slender rod of green wood on the dust. ‘But continue,’ said the woman. ‘When did you last attend what your Christian church calls Holy Communion?’

  Grant again shook his head. It was so long ago that he hardly remembered. And Mehmet laid a fourth stem of wood on the dust while the Goddess spoke to the crowds through her microphone. ‘So on his own admission he has broken four commandments. Let us now turn to stealing.’

  ‘This has also been part of my job,’ said Grant slowly. ‘I’ve often taken state secrets from enemy powers or stolen information which mattered from enemy agents. So to that extent I’ve stolen.’

  The Goddess appeared to nod as though with understanding. ‘Yet you stole. And you have been heard to make remarks like “for crissake” or “for God’s sake” or in other ways taken the name of the Christian God in vain. Or do you disagree?’

  Grant felt a bead of sweat break upon his brow, but he aimed what even he knew to be a feeble excuse. ‘Phrases like that are commonplace in the West. They are almost a sort of patois.’

  ‘Yet they break the third commandment of Moses. So let’s now think of the second. You have not been in a house of worship for many years, yet you almost worship your extravagant car; you treasure that extraordinary bed which has entertained your mistresses in Paris; you store your London flat with antiques which are worth a small fortune; you seem to worship your chief in your job more than you do your God in heaven, and you find more pleasure in handling a gun than you do in touching a glass of holy wine.’ She turned to Mehmet. ‘That covers both the first and second commandments and now only two remain. But it has been reported that you have told lies against men and which led to their later execution. You have, as the law of Moses would say, borne false witness against your neighbour.’

  ‘Hardly neighbours,’ said Grant dryly. ‘The men I framed were evil and the work was again part of my job.’

  ‘So now the last,’ said the old woman. ‘You can hardly deny that you have not only coveted the wives of others. You have also taken them. And on that cou
nt for certain you stand self-convicted.’

  Grant thought fast and furiously. And then he remembered how he had taken Maya Koren away from her father’s home, how he once had had a passionate affair with the wife of a Brazilian Ambassador and still another with the wife of a general in Mexico. The Goddess had his dossier in detail and he would have written a four-figure cheque to know how she had come by her information. He looked at nine green stems lying in a row on the dust and laid down the tenth himself. ‘Guilty, ma’am,’ he said.

  The Goddess motioned to an empty seat on her right-hand side. ‘Sit down,’ she said. And then she spoke to the immense crowd. ‘This man has admitted to breaking each of the ten commandments. But one thing remains to be decided. Is he a good man? Or is he bad?’

  Mehmet suddenly produced, as though on cue, a parchment from below his robes and the Goddess raised it in her right hand. ‘This,’ she said softly, ‘will tell us. And I shall give you only those facts which matter.

  ‘He has devoted his life to fighting enemies of decent society.

  ‘He has risked his life on many occasions to save both nations and continents from disaster.

  ‘He destroyed one of the Devil’s forces which operated under the name SATAN. The word means the Society for the Activation of Terror Anarchy and Nihilism. And the world owes it to David Grant that this group of men was either killed or jailed.

  ‘He has saved the lives of several simple people, usually at risk to himself, and he has prevented a lunatic scientist from sterilising much of Western Europe.

  ‘He has proved his devotion to beauty through his adoration of many beautiful women; through his love of music and ballet; through his obsession with the great works of antiquity, some of which he has preserved for the good of his own soul, and within his own home; he has been loyal to his friends and not even his greatest enemy has ever accused him of jealousy, of breaking his promise, or failing to help those in need or of failing to give of his best in his profession.