Finally he got it deep enough. He set the body in, scooped the dirt over, and tamped it down. But the fresh grave would be too obvious by daylight. To conceal it, he had to uproot an adjacent bush, plant it directly over the grave, then scatter the surplus earth so that there was no giveaway mound. If anyone dug below the hollow where the bush had been, they would find nothing of course. Would this ruse be good enough to hide the body? Time would tell!
Again there was a noise. Someone was coming this time! It was not yet dawn; only a wan glow showed in the east. Brother Paul hurried from the grave and went to stand near the open tomb, trying to wipe the guilty dirt from his hands.
The person approached the tomb—and saw that it was open. There was a little scream. "Mary Magdalene!" Jesus exclaimed to Brother Paul. "She I would have married, if—" There was a mental image of a surgeon's scalpel, the blade that had destroyed Jesus' prospects for a normal life long before he had been aware of such things.
As the sun showed, Mary returned with two of the male Disciples. The men ran toward the tomb, exclaiming. They found the burial clothing Brother Paul had left, then hurried back to the city, excited. Only Mary remained, standing wistfully outside the tomb. She buried her face in her hands.
"To Hell with history!" Brother Paul said. "She must be consoled." He walked up to her. "Woman, why do you weep?" he asked.
She looked up, startled. She was a comely young woman, and he knew who played the role. She did not recognize him, grimed and disheveled as he was, despite his day at her house; he was now a stranger, but her grief excluded fear. Mary had been numbed by the immediacy of it, the day before, two days before; now she was trying to come to terms with it. "My lord, if you are the one who has taken him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will—"
Now Jesus spoke through Brother Paul's mouth.
"Mary!"
Mary's eyes widened. "My Teacher!" she cried, stepping toward him.
"Do not come near me," Jesus said, retreating. "For I have not yet ascended to my Father. Go to my brethren and tell them I am going to my Father and your Father, my God and your God."
Dumbly, she nodded, love and hope shining in her eyes. Then she turned and fled toward the city.
"But is it historical?" Brother Paul demanded when they were alone again.
"Have faith," Jesus said. "Even as a mustard seed."
In the course of the next few days, Jesus appeared similarly to a number of people, spreading the news of his Resurrection in the manner he thought fit, and Brother Paul had to trust him. Then they traveled to Jesus' homeland of Galilee, making more appearances. Finally Jesus returned to Jerusalem. "This is where we must part at last," he told Brother Paul. "It is time for me to give my spirit to the Disciples at the Pentecost so that they may continue my work on Earth."
But when that had been done, a small portion of that Holy Aura remained. "I do not understand," Jesus said. "I had thought I would at last be free."
Suddenly it came to Brother Paul: "Saint Paul!"
"Are you to be a saint, friend?"
"Not I! Paul of Tarsus, the Pharisee. You may know him as Saul."
"I do not know any Saul of Tarsus, and I doubt that I would want to give my last remaining Spirit to any Pharisee."
"Trust me," Brother Paul said. "We must journey to Damascus."
"Friend, I fear for your sanity," Jesus said. "But I see in your mind that this thing must be. I will meet this Pharisee of Tarsus."
IX
Change: 17
Man is born to die. Perhaps alone of all the animals on Earth, he is conscious of his own inevitable demise. This may indeed be taken as the curse of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The moment man's intellect lifted him above the level of the ignorant, complacent beast so that he could improve his lot by planning ahead, he was able to perceive the fate Nature had prepared for him.
Psychologists say that when a person is faced with untimely death, he typically goes through five stages. The first is DENIAL: he simply refuses to believe that this horrible thing is true. The second is ANGER: why should he be treated this way when others are spared? It simply isn't fair, and he is furious. The third is BARGAINING WITH GOD: he prays to God for relief from this sentence and promises to improve himself if his life is only reprieved. Sometimes it is reprieved, and sometimes he honors his bargain. But when this appeal fails, he comes to the fourth: DEPRESSION. What is the point of carrying on when the sentence is absolute and there is no escape? But at last he comes to the fifth: ACCEPTANCE. At peace with his situation, he wraps up his worldly affairs and comports himself for the termination.
It seems reasonable to assume that man's whole life is governed by similar stages of awareness, even when his death is not expected to be untimely. As a child, he denies death; it is beyond his comprehension. But as he matures, the deaths of relatives, friends, and strangers force awareness upon him, and he responds angrily by indulging in death-defying exploits of diverse kinds, "proving" he is immune. With further maturity he becomes more subtle; he becomes religious, accepting the thesis that physical death is not the end, but merely another change in his situation, a transformation to an "afterlife." Perhaps all religion derives from this urge to negate death; one cannot bargain with God unless God exists. Yet the fear of death is not entirely abated by religion; the services of assorted churches may be perceived as mere ritual, and his confidence erodes. The inexorable approach of death in the form of advancing age depresses man; he longs for his youth again. But in the end he resigns himself to his situation, makes out his will, arranges for the disposition of his remains, and departs with a certain grace. He has accepted the inevitable.
They stood on the road to Damascus, staring in the direction Paul of Tarsus had gone. The man, already lame and scarred by disease, had been blinded by his experience and was sadly out of sorts, but Brother Paul knew he would recover. Brother Paul found himself shaken by his contact with the man whose name and principles he had adopted. The name remained—but Brother Paul could no longer consider himself a follower of those principles.
"Still I am with you," Jesus remarked. "Why have I not dissipated? I long to rejoin my Father in Heaven."
"I don't know," Brother Paul admitted. "I'm not sure why I haven't returned to my own framework. These Animations seem to continue long after their purpose has been accomplished. Their immediate purpose. I thought return would be automatic once you—finished."
"But I haven't finished," Jesus said. "My life and death are only the beginning, showing the way. Now the rest of the world must follow to achieve Salvation."
"I—doubt that will happen immediately."
"But the Scriptures say—"
"Sometimes things take more time than anticipated. We really don't know how God measures time."
"Then I must remain to watch. I cannot let the people drift alone."
Brother Paul shook his head. "Jesus, I fear you would not like all of what you might see."
But Jesus had decided. "Come, friend Paul; you and I will watch it all. Return your body to its place, and we shall go together in Spirit."
Brother Paul tried to protest, but the will of Jesus prevailed. "All right—we'll watch it together. But I don't think we'll be able to participate directly because you are physically dead and I have not yet been born."
"Come," Jesus said.
Brother Paul's body shivered and dissolved. It had returned to its frame—but he and Jesus remained, standing side by side.
"Come," Jesus repeated, taking Brother Paul's ethereal hand. "We follow the lame Pharisee."
They flew through the air like the spirits they were, invisible to all others except each other. When that became tedious, they simply jumped through space and time, fading out in one location and fading in at another.
They followed Paul of Tarsus. Though physically unpretentious and a rather poor public speaker, the Apostle Paul turned out to have a fine if narrowly channeled mind. His logic was powerful an
d his written material eloquent. He also had a remarkable determination, a perverse courage that absolutely prevented him from deviating from his set course. In some cities he was ridiculed or even mobbed; he carried on. Many of the other Christian leaders distrusted him and plotted against him, but he made converts everywhere.
"But this is not my message!" Jesus protested. "I was not attempting to found a new Church, but to show the way—"
"I said you might not like it," Brother Paul reminded him. "Yet if it is necessary to start a new religion in order to show people the way to Salvation—"
Jesus sighed. "I suppose so," he said dubiously. "Since the world will soon end, it may not matter."
Brother Paul did not comment. It was obvious that the Christian Church was not the initiative or desire of either Jesus or the Disciples who had known him personally. Thus, it seemed, it was necessary that a man who had never known Jesus personally assume a leading role in the propagation of the new faith. As with a failing business: a professional organizer had been brought in from outside, and he was doing his job without catering unduly to the foibles of the existing order.
But the Apostle Paul, it became apparent, was shaping that faith into his own image—and that was an unfortunately narrow one. Jesus, sexually voided, had not made stipulations about sex. He had treated all people equally, gladly accepting women as well as men, regardless of their station or the prior state of their conscience. Rich men and prostitutes were welcome, provided each renounce his/her liabilities. The Apostle Paul was far more restrictive, almost anti-woman; he permitted them to join, but never to exercise responsibility.
Jesus shook his head sadly. "I had not supposed it would be like this," he murmured, as he watched the Apostle Paul quarreling with the other Apostles. Brother Paul had mixed emotions. How much better to see his namesake from the perspective of history, rather than as this sometimes small-minded person! "He has written some excellent Epistles," he said.
Then, looking ahead in history, they discovered that not all of the Epistles written by Paul the Apostle had been collected in the Bible and that not all the fourteen collected had been authored by Paul. Jesus watched the Epistle to the Hebrews being clothed with the Apostle's name so as to make it acceptable for publication, and suddenly he laughed. "Even as Paul credits me with attitudes I never held, so now he himself is being credited with letters he never wrote! Truly my Father is just!" But he soon sobered, for all of this only elaborated the distortions of Jesus' own message.
"Let's view some other aspect," Brother Paul suggested. He had liked to think that the fourteen cards of each Tarot suit reflected the fourteen Paulean Epistles in the Bible, but if some of these were invalid—"
"Perhaps they are doing better in America," Jesus said.
Brother Paul was startled. This was a gross anachronism; America would not be discovered by Europeans for some centuries yet! Lee had fluffed his line. "Did you say Rome?" Brother Paul inquired, giving him the cue.
"I said America. The opposite side of the globe—but we can get there in a moment."
Sometimes it happened: a mental short circuit that became established. What did the actors in a play do in such a case to correct the situation without alerting the watching audience? There was no audience here, but it seemed a fair analogy. They could not trace true history if they inserted discontinuities.
Brother Paul tried again: "I'm not sure I know that city."
Jesus glanced at him. "More than a city, friend Paul. A continent. Come—I will show you."
"Ah—yes," Brother Paul agreed weakly. At least he had tried.
They flew up high, a kilometer, three kilometers, and on up. "It seems you do not know of the Jaredite and Nephite Nations," Jesus said.
"I am afraid I don't." Was there any hope of putting this scene back together, or was precession simply too strong?
"I shall explain while we fly." They were now ten kilometers up, looking down at the drifting clouds; Brother Paul thought poignantly of his un-daughter Carolyn in the airplane, enjoying a similar view. "At the time of the confusion of tongues after the Tower of Babel, a man named Jared and his brother, who was a prophet, importuned the Lord my Father that they and their tribe be spared from the impending disruption. The Lord granted their prayer and directed them to the ocean, where they constructed eight great barges and set sail. Their only inside light was from luminous stones. After almost a year they landed on the shores of America about two thousand four hundred years before my birth."
"2400 B.C.," Brother Paul murmured, fascinated by this strange story from the mouth of the Phantom Jesus. He had never heard a parable like this! Now they were so high he could see the curve of the Earth below. They were flying east over the great land mass of Asia near the edge of the Indian Ocean. What was this Animation coming to?
"In America they multiplied and became a flourishing nation," Jesus continued. "But they fractured into warring factions until after eighteen hundred years they died out. But at just about this time, a second expedition set out from Jerusalem six hundred years before my birth. This was led by a Jewish prophet of the tribe of Manasseh named Lehi together with his family and some friends. They marched to the Arabian Sea and built and provisioned a ship, then sailed east across the South Pacific until they landed on the western coast of America. This was their promised land—but like the first colony, they split into two tribes, the Nephite and the Lamanite. The Nephite advanced in the arts of civilization and built prosperous cities while the Lamanites degenerated. They forgot the God of their fathers, became wild nomads, and became benighted in spirit and dark of skin like the accursed children of Cain."
"The children of Cain?" Brother Paul inquired. They were now over the middle of the Pacific, still bearing east.
"The evil ones. The black races," Jesus clarified.
Brother Paul was taken aback. "Do you mean the black races of Africa?"
"The same. They rejected the power of the Holy Priesthood and the Law of God. Thus they have been cursed with black skin to match their black hearts."
This was Jesus Christ talking? Far from it! It had to be Lee the Mormon. Brother Paul had not realized the Mormons viewed the Negro in such a light. "Surely there is some error. Since all people except Noah and his family perished in the Flood, no descendents of Cain would have survived—"
"It carried on through Noah's line, some of that foul blood," Lee insisted. "Ham, the son of Noah, fearing that there would be additional heirs to share the earth after the Flood, conspired with his two brothers Shem and Japhet to castrate their father. But they refused, for they were good sons. So he did it himself when Noah was drunk—"
"The Bible says Ham only saw his father's nakedness!" Brother Paul protested.
"The Bible has been expurgated," Lee said darkly. "But even so, it provides the punishment: the children of Ham became servants to the children of the good sons, races Thus the black races achieved their just deserts—"
"I am part black," Brother Paul said. "I had thought that was understood." But he realized now that Lee had played no part in the Dozens Animation where he had made an issue of his race, and the matter had not come up elsewhere. "Am I also cursed?"
Jesus paused in his flight, and from his eyes Lee looked out, shocked. "You have black blood?"
"About one-eighth, give or take a smidgen. Technically, I am a light-skinned Negro."
Jesus shook his head. "No, that can't be true. You are a good man!"
"I hope I am a good man, or can become one. But I am also a black man. I don't see the conflict—"
"No!" Jesus cried. "Corruption is not to be tolerated in the sacred places! I am to throw the moneylenders out of the Temple only to be affronted by such insinuations? You must not joke this way, Paul!"
Brother Paul spread his hands. "I prefer to be neither a joker nor a liar. I'm sorry if it bothers you, but I can not and will not deny my ancestry."
Jesus/Lee turned on him a strange look of disbelief phasing into wrath. "
We shall discuss it at another time!" Then he turned away, and Brother Paul sensed a kind of cold withdrawal in him, a rescinding of proffered friendship. Brother Paul had thought he was inured to this type of reaction, but he found it still hurt. Lee was such an intelligent, upstanding, clean-cut person; how could he be a conscious racist? How could he reconcile this with his portrayal of Jesus who preached Salvation for all men, no matter what their birth or their prior sins?
Then he recognized the pattern of reaction: this was similar to a person's response to the news that he must die. First disbelief, then anger. Lee's Mormon religion cursed the black races; the notion that someone close to him could have black ancestry, however small in proportion to the white ancestry—that was fundamentally intolerable.
It would take time for Lee's emotion to run its course, especially since it was not one that the role of Jesus Christ facilitated. But Brother Paul was very much afraid he had lost a friend.
Jesus angled down sharply, and Brother Paul corrected his flight to follow. Down they went toward the western coastline of the double continent of America. Faster and faster: ten thousand kilometers per hour, fifteen thousand, twenty thousand, and still accelerating. Jesus was really working off a head of steam! Twenty five thousand—"Hey, I think we're approaching orbital velocity!" Brother Paul warned. But still Jesus accelerated, passing thirty thousand KPH—and now they were slanting in toward the land only a hundred kilometers ahead. Ninety kilometers ahead. Eighty—each second knocked off more than ten kilos. Still Jesus drove on.
They skimmed the ocean, leveled out, and approached the coastal mountains. Suddenly the peaks loomed large—and there was no time to decelerate. Though these forms had little mass, Brother Paul had the crazy notion that their extreme velocity was magnifying that mass because acceleration toward the speed of light increases the mass of an object toward the infinite. Jesus shot straight in to them, unslowing, and Brother Paul had to follow. But what would happen when—Collision!