The Philosopher’s Apprentice

by James Morrow

  I awoke in time to catch the end of Joan’s soliloquy. “There are no just wars,” she said. “There are no greater goods.”

  Evidently I’d wept during my ethereal reunion with John Snow 0001—my cheeks were wet: the dew of my mourning. The maid sprawled beside me, tickling my nose with the stem of a buttercup.

  “Four days ago I lost a fetus,” I told her. “A miserable and misbegotten creature, but I’m still very sad.”

  “I wish I had it to do over again,” Joan said, echoing herself. “I would have asked God a question or two.”

  Chapter 11

  MANY ARE THE CONSOLATIONS of literature, and not the least such solace occurs when an annoyingly virtuous hero succumbs to carnal temptation. Case in point: the Red Cross Knight who dominates Book One of The Faerie Queene, as pious a protagonist as might be imagined, a man whose life’s ambition is to enter orthodoxy’s dictionary—“see also holiness, probity, and St. George”—single-minded even by the norms of allegory. So how does this chain-mail messiah behave when the degenerate witch Duessa throws herself at him in the guise of the fair maiden Fidessa? We might expect Sir Red Cross to resist. But no. The enchantress has only to wiggle her wiles, and soon our randy chevalier has “poured out in looseness on the grassy ground,” which means exactly what you think it does.

  I was staring up at the starry winter sky, drained and sated and vaguely enjoying the sensation of being carried away from the Circus of Atonement on a stretcher borne by Major Powers and another Valkyrie, when it occurred to me that just as Spenser had exonerated his knight, so might Natalie eventually pardon my dalliance with Joan of Arc. Or if my wife failed to forgive me, then perhaps I would in time gain absolution from the readers of the self-serving memoir I was certain to write one day. Or maybe Joan herself would let me off the hook, coming to me and saying, “Your lack of chivalry appalls me, monsieur, but I must allow for certain extenuating circumstances and tumescent conditions.”

  In keeping with Londa’s egalitarian principles, all visiting dignitaries to Themisopolis stayed at Arcadia House, the same neo-Tudor building that sheltered the outcasts and indigents who routinely sought refuge within the city’s walls. As she tucked me into bed that night, Major Powers reported that the present population of this heartbreak hotel included seventeen orphans, eleven pregnant adolescents, ten battered wives, five abused girlfriends, and fourteen general pariahs who until recently had been eating out of restaurant garbage pails. Lolling on the mattress, I imagined that I could hear my fellow residents’ sobs, whimpers, and moans seeping through the walls: a distressing cacophony, and yet I was glad now to be among these wretches, whose phantom lamentations were serving to deepen my admiration for Londa. Yes, the woman was out of whack, unbalanced by her profligate conscience—how else to interpret the Circus of Atonement?—and yet the harvest of that disharmony, this refuge for the dispossessed, was surely among the world’s great marvels.

  The following morning, surfacing into consciousness, I immediately wished that I was still asleep. My skull had become a winepress, squeezing forth the latest vintage from the Château de Spinal Fluid. My throat and stomach were joined by an esophagus once owned by a sword swallower. By punching a bedside button labeled NURSE, I prompted a lovely young paramedic to flutter into the room, and presently she confirmed my self-diagnosis: I had the flu, complete with a 102-degree fever. My angel prescribed water, electrolytes, aspirin, and bed rest. I decided to start with the last regimen, wrapping the pillow around my head and snuggling beneath the patchwork quilt.

  Several hours later the telephone wrenched me from my dream—Donya and I were wandering the beaches of Isla de Sangre, rescuing stranded sea urchins—and dumped me back into my febrile body. The caller was Londa, inquiring after my health.

  “I expect to be on my feet in a day or so,” I told her. I wondered if she’d written the Clone of Arc script solely with her old tutor in mind: a kinky recapitulation of her seduction attempt back on the island, though with a different climax. “Tell me honestly, dear, did you get a vicarious thrill from my misbehavior last night?”

  “What misbehavior might that be?”

  I grunted indignantly.

  “I’m not a voyeur,” Londa said. “I have no idea what happened between you and Joan.”

  “You wrote the damn script.”

  “And you chose to follow it?” she said with fake dismay. “Am I to infer that you ravished that poor dead gamine? I’m shocked.”

  “Oh, come off it.”

  “You ran the bases, Socrates. Fornication, adultery, pedophilia, and necrophilia, all in one fell shtup.”

  “I didn’t ravish anybody. The Circus troupers are zombies. You said so yourself.”

  “Hey, Mason, I would love to spend the afternoon discussing the inner lives of beaker freaks, but I’ve got a million things on my plate right now. It seems you were right about Pielmeister and CHALICE having grand ideas. Get well, sir. And don’t worry about our Joan. She’s one tough gumbo girl.”

  “Grand ideas? What’s going on?”

  “Gotta run. Drink lots of fluids. Ciao.”

  I didn’t want to stick Themisopolis for a long-distance call, so I hauled myself out of bed and retrieved the cell phone from my bomber jacket, which Major Powers had thoughtfully draped across the solitary chair. My efforts were rewarded not with Natalie’s dulcet tones but with a computerized voice urging me to leave a message. What to say? “Reached Maryland safely, caught the flu, had wild, illicit sex with a reincarnated Joan of Arc, miss you, will call again tomorrow, bye”? When the beep sounded, I told Natalie I was sick in bed and hoped to be home in two days.

  Briefly I surveyed my quarters. Somebody had retrieved my overnight bag from Caedmon Hall and set it on the dresser, a sturdy antique with a pristine mirror, adjacent to which hung a paint-by-numbers canvas depicting a Gospel narrative that had figured prominently in the emergence of Londa’s Purple Pietest self, the episode of the woman taken in adultery. At the center of the tableau stood a seraphic Jesus who looked about as Semitic as Peter O’Toole. “Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone,” ran the superfluous caption, rendered in an Old English font. As I climbed back into bed, it occurred to me that, from CHALICE’s viewpoint, Londa and her colleagues had already cast many first stones, rocks of relativism, clods of infanticide, not to mention the megaliths of Lesbos, and it was high time they got their geologic comeuppance.

  A TRIBAL CHANT—BASSO, growling, ominous. A frenzied drumming, as if rival marching bands had assembled outside my window, rehearsing halftime routines for the Bedlam-Charenton all-lunatic gridiron match. I blinked myself awake. Morning, or so I guessed. Day four of my Arcadia House sojourn. Throat healed, sinuses drained, fever broken.

  “Feeling better?”

  A grain of sand had nestled in my eye, bringing a tear, so that Londa seemed encapsulated, a bouillababy in a bubble. “Much,” I said, wiping the grit away. The adamant song and the awful pounding continued, threatening to revive my headache. “What’s that damn racket?”

  Instead of answering, she made a circuit of the room, gathering up my socks, underwear, and street clothes like a suburban mom on laundry day. She tossed the pile on the bed.

  “The barbarians are at the gates,” she said, and it was then that I noticed her face, as pale and stiff as Senator Pepperhill’s. “Get dressed.”

  I did as instructed, then grabbed my phone, intending to contact Natalie. Before I could key in the number, Londa told me not to bother. The immaculoids were jamming all transmissions from Themisopolis.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “You will,” she said.

  We left the building and hurried down Shambhala Avenue, the raucous voices and the unruly percussion growing louder by the minute. Reaching the main entrance, we stepped into Londa’s private elevator—all plush Victorian velvet, like a dumbwaiter on Captain Nemo’s submarine—and ascended to the top of the rampart. Apprehension throbbing in my ches
t, I crossed the windy causeway and, accepting Londa’s offer of binoculars, set about absorbing the coming of Corporate Christi in all its lurid spectacle.

  An army was bivouacked outside the city, a seething fetal sea, roiling, churning, three thousand pock-faced, silver-haired immaculoids deployed amid rows of canvas tents and nylon pavilions, plus another three thousand arrayed in protest along Avalon Lane, their legions spilling into the snow-covered cherry orchard beyond. Dozens of bazookas, assault rifles, and grenade launchers glistened beneath the gelid eye of the January sun. Scores of placards trembled in the wind, rank upon rank of epigrammatic anger: EVERY CONDOM IS A NOOSE. SPOTLESS AS THE LAMB. NEVER TO SAVOR THE ROSE. D & C = DESTRUCTION & CRUELTY. Dressed in identical orange jumpsuits, the fetuses banged lug wrenches against trash receptacles and beat on fifty-five-gallon drums with clawhammers, simultaneously chanting like institutionalized monks convinced that their madhouse was a monastery.

  “They’ve had us sealed in since Monday afternoon,” Londa said, “commuters and residents alike.” Elaborating, she explained that upon their arrival the fetuses had employed an electromagnetic pulse to disable the city’s cell phones, satellite dishes, and wireless modems, and shortly thereafter they’d severed all phone lines and coaxial cables. “Yolly and I were watching the TV coverage of the siege when—kablooey—the screen turned to static.”

  “TV coverage?” I said. “Good, great, that should put a crimp in Pielmeister’s paradigm shift.”

  “Don’t count on it. Two days ago the news helicopters were thick as mosquitoes, but the pilots got jittery when the bazookas came out. Whatever the mackies pull next, the viewing public won’t see it.”

  The sun glinted off the snow, lancing through my irises, skating across my retinas. I yanked the Ray-Bans from my bomber jacket and slid them into place. “Is Pielmeister down there? Anthem?”

  “Our favorite Phyllistines are keeping their distance. When CNN interviewed Anthem, he said he couldn’t imagine who’d encouraged the immaculoids to bring their complaint to our door.”

  Although nearly half of Londa’s staff commuted to work, the parking lot was barren of all private sedans, station wagons, and SUVs. Instead the macadam held more than a hundred Greyhound buses, plus ten Mayflower moving vans and seven semi-rigs sporting the Mountain Dew logo: not a surprising sight, really—how else could CHALICE have gotten so many mackies and their camping gear onto the scene? Far more disturbing than the mobilization vehicles was the battery of howitzers, ideal for pulverizing our gates, not to mention the thirty-odd Caterpillar hydraulic lifts, perfect for sending waves of fetuses over our walls, and the forty or so diesel tractors pulling trailers filled with gasoline. Texaco was the principal donor, but Exxon, Sunoco, Getty, and Amoco had also made their contributions to the paradigm shift.

  “City on fire,” I muttered. “Jehovah’s holy torch.”

  “That appears to be their intention,” Londa said, each syllable dipped in venom.

  “The Maryland governor, what’s his name—Winthrop—he’ll have to call in the National Guard, right?”

  “Tucker Winthrop? Are you kidding? A major Phyllistine.” Londa slipped on her mirror shades. “The last thing Yolly and I saw on CNN was Winthrop’s press conference. Quote: ‘These poor innocent fetuses are exercising their right of peaceable assembly, and my office has no reason to thwart them.’”

  I heaved a sigh and said, “Not to mention their right of peaceable arson.”

  Londa strode back and forth across the causeway, an image that evoked various Hollywood depictions of Davy Crockett—repentant protagonist of Moon Over Bexar—sizing up Santa Anna’s army as it paraded past the Alamo. “I’m supposed to join Yolly and our security chief for a noon meeting with the mackie general. I’d like my conscience to come along.”

  “Your conscience has nothing better to do.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Again I heaved a sigh. “Suppose they gave a paradigm shift and nobody came?”

  WE ENTERED THE VICTORIAN elevator and returned to the ground. Yolly was pacing around by the main entrance, accompanied by Dagmar Röhrig and a leather-jacketed Valkyrie who introduced herself as Colonel Vetruvia Fox: an astonishingly intense woman, small but fearsome, a lark of prey. An instant later the gates pivoted away with the ponderous force of a hippopotamus shifting in its wallow of mud. Remote control in hand, our escort stepped forward, Captain John Snow 0851 according to the embroidery on his jumpsuit, a cadaverous mackie with hair the texture of a Brillo pad. He asked Colonel Fox for her sidearm. She surrendered her Glock 19 with a resentful snort. The fetal army had stopped chanting and drumming, but we still endured a barrage of bitter grunts and toxic glances as, burdened by his immaculoid limp, Captain Snow led us through the encampment. Angry words appeared wherever we turned. BURN, BABY KILLER, BURN. OUR PORTION WAS ABORTION. NEVER TO FEEL A PUPPY’S TONGUE. ABLATED LIKE A TUMOR.

  Our destination proved to be a prefabricated tin shanty reminiscent of Charnock’s Quonset-hut complex back on the island, cold as an igloo, drafty as a crypt, without a single kerosene heater in sight. Apparently these immaculoids were all still strangers to sensation. Captain Snow seated us at a collapsible aluminum picnic table, directly across from a short, scowling fetus labeled Major John Snow 3227 and his commanding officer, the squint-eyed, simian-shouldered General John Snow 4099. Wrapped in shadows, a dozen mackies of indeterminate rank stirred in the background.

  “The evacuation begins at dawn,” General Snow announced, his exhalations turning visible in the frigid air.

  “We expect you all to show up promptly,” Major Snow said. More palpable breaths. Everyone seemed to be speaking in League of Londa dialogue balloons.

  “Evacuation?” snarled Colonel Fox.

  “What?” gasped Dagmar.

  For some reason Captain Snow preferred to remain erect, strutting back and forth on the dirt floor. “We’ll march the lot of you to Quehannock State Park, where your commuters will find their missing cars and vans,” he said. “Next we’ll issue cell phones to your residents, so they can commission private transportation and thereby continue the exodus.”

  Colonel Fox stared at the vaulted ceiling and muttered, “Fuck this.” The tin walls replayed her words, turning her throwaway epithet into a malediction.

  General Snow glowered at the Valkyrie and said, “In other words, your people will be at a safe distance when the conflagration starts.”

  “Conflagration?” said Yolly, who’d evidently not spent much time mulling over the implications of the gasoline trucks parked outside the city.

  “Conflagration,” General Snow repeated, rolling the word around on his tongue like a cherry stone.

  A hush descended. The stillness held dominion for two full minutes. Wordless dialogue balloons hovered here and there throughout the hut.

  “What makes you think we won’t stand our ground?” Londa asked, digging into her thumb with the nail of her index finger.

  Major Snow issued a toothy immaculoid smirk. His diseased mouth suggested an encounter between a piano keyboard and a sledgehammer. “If it’s a fight you want, Dr. Sabacthani, we’ll gladly give you one. But remember that every mackie will be dead of his infirmities within the week. You’d be battling the very legions of despair.”

  “We have guns,” Colonel Fox noted.

  “We have more guns,” countered General Snow.

  “We have the high ground,” Colonel Fox asserted.

  “We have the howitzers,” General Snow said.

  “We have the wisdom of experience.”

  “We have the lethality of innocence.”

  “We have esprit de corps.”

  “We have nothing to lose.”

  A second silence came, during which I contemplated General John Snow 4099. Beyond his programmed frown, lazy eye, and immaculoid pocks, I caught glimpses of the handsome face he might have owned had his godfather been Charnock and not some incompetent CHALICE technician. His heritage, I deci
ded, was heterogeneous. Several months earlier, a comely Asian soul had connected with an attractive human of Caucasian descent. I imagined that the two of them truly loved each other and might eventually bring forth several splendid children who would all make a sincere effort to forgive their late pyromaniacal semibrother.

  “We suggest that between now and sunrise you gather together any possessions of sentimental value,” said Captain Snow.

  “Unlike our curette-happy parents, we are not heartless,” said Major Snow. “We shall permit you to retain whatever photographs, tchotchkes, and liberal-intellectual spider plants you keep on your desks.”

  “No weapons, of course”—General Snow threw Colonel Fox a gloating glance—“no pistols, no rifles, those all stay behind, likewise your laptops, cell phones, PDAs, iPods, hard drives, and storage media. You’ll be strip-searched and X-rayed, so there’s no point trying to smuggle any computer chips past our guard.”

  Londa went after her hangnail with a vengeance, peeling away a quarter-inch scroll of skin. She was trembling now, and not from the cold.

  “If you won’t allow us any CD-Rs,” Colonel Fox said, training her laser gaze on General Snow, “then shut off your electromagnetic pulse for a couple of hours so we can send our files over the Web.”

  “You don’t seem to understand,” the immaculoid commander replied. “When the city burns down, all of your unscriptural initiatives must burn down with it.”

  “Unscriptural initiatives?” Dagmar gestured wildly in the direction of Themisopolis. “Do you have any idea what sort of data we’ve got back there?”

  For the next several minutes, she expounded upon two enterprises Londa had mentioned during my first visit to the city, Project Xelcepin, aimed at producing an ovarian-cancer treatment of unprecedented efficacy, and Operation Velvet Fist, a full-bore assault on the international sexual-slavery trade. Both of these breakthroughs were girded by digital information. Apropos of Xelcepin: the complex protocols for administering the drug and the recent results of a double-blind trial. Concerning the prostitution rings: the secret identities and hidden lairs of more than one hundred slave traffickers, plus the locations of several dozen churches and private homes where the exploited women could seek sanctuary right before the U.N. made its move. Precious data, priceless facts, all of them still awaiting exportation beyond the walls of Themisopolis.