Chapter Fourteen
“Brethren, I speak to you today from the Temple of Light!” The television screen framed Billie Joe Jacks nicely and the lighting technicians had done him justice. Strange detected the makeup, but that was hardly unusual for anyone on the tube these days.
“Brethren, this hour, this minute, this second is the first moment of the Crusade for Change! This world changes on the surface every day. The world we knew as a child is as distant today as Jupiter is from the Sun! The world of our parents has vanished! Technologically, we are changing as swiftly as some speeded-up movie. The minds of men are delving into everything: the radio waves coming from distant stars and galaxies which are unimaginably far away, the planets, the structure of metals, and the nature of time itself. There are far too many who know how to explode the heart of the atom!”
Billie Joe’s face was stern, earnest, and commanding. Strange saw what there was in this man that had brought him from a small church in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, to the worldwide network of stations and satellites that was making this broadcast one of the ten most watched programs of all time.
“Our lives are changing, rocketing into the future at speeds we cannot possibly hope to comprehend. This morning’s world is not tonight’s world and tomorrow’s world is beyond understanding or believing. Man is in danger of being made obsolete by his own headlong progress.”
Strange nodded. Jacks was taking the usual anti-technology line. If he had been a caveman he would have resisted fire—probably as a tool of the devil.
“Progress,” sneered Jacks. “Each hour that passes brings this planet, this system of planets, this galaxy forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in the constellation of Hercules . . . and yet there are misfits and malcontents who insist that there is no such thing as progress.
“Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, ‘The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.’ And by that test, has our ‘progress’ been progress?”
Jacks leaned forward into the camera lens. “Has it?” he insisted. He flung a hand into the sky. “I insist that it has not! Anything that makes the world more humane and more rational is progress, I say. That’s the only measuring stick we can apply to it.” He settled back and spoke in calm, even tones. “In a world where the two greatest powers—not even counting the others—can each destroy totally the lands and populations of the other, fifty or a hundred times over with atomic fire, I say we have not made the world more humane or rational.”
Stephen Strange found he agreed, but he kept his caution up.
“Speed is frequently confused with progress, but it is not progress. Some say progress is the substitution of a complicated nuisance for a simple nuisance. Well, my friends, I am here today to make a very progressive suggestion: let us not have any more progress!”
Jacks beamed out at his worldwide audience. “Let us instead have change. Change is not progress. Change is not our enemy. What single ability do we all have? What solitary ability do we all possess? Change.”
He took a deep breath. “The world is changing faster than people are. Our problem is that we hate change and we hate progress, and we love them at the same time. Change keeps things from becoming static and boring. But what we really want is for things to remain the same . . . but to get better.
“We have only two things to dread: changing . . . and not changing. But you don’t change the world—you change yourself. You don’t change the men who are learning about microbes or stars. You don’t change the men and women who are building machines or discovering processes. You don’t stop those who are searching our genes and chromosomes for better people. No, you change yourself.”
Jacks looked straight into the lens. “And that is the most frightening thing of all. You are the only you you know. Without that you, you do not exist. To change that you is to not be.”
Again he leaned forward. “But you must change. You cannot help it. You were once young and foolish and naïve. Today you are older, wiser and not so naïve. You know the world is complex, not simple. You have changed. The toughest sort of mountain climbing is getting out of a rut. Today, we start making those first steps . . . out of the rut!”
“Make your point,” muttered Clea.
“Each new plateau reached by the human race has been the result of some change, some maladjustment, some twisting of the silver cord of life. It is no accident that it has been the so-called ‘maladjusted’ individuals who have been responsible for the ascent of man to higher and still higher levels of comprehension and ability. And I come to you today as one of those maladjusted individuals.” Jacks’s smile took the sting from his words. He spoke on, confidentially and person to person.
“Progress is merciless. It has no purpose; it just happens. It chews up everyone in its path—and we are all in its path—then spits us out and spits out things and events we cannot understand. The only value it seems to have is to make a few people rich. Progress is manufacturing beer cans that last forever, and expensive cars that rust out in three years. Progress is getting you across the country or across an ocean faster than ever before and then losing your luggage. Progress is inventing television, the greatest teaching tool in history, and boring you to death with it. Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backward faster.
“Changing is applying your own God-given intelligence to your life and your world. Being changed is what happens to you and me when outside forces force us to be different. But only you can change yourself!
“Why should you do it? For the Lord? For me? For society? No! But we shall not survive without changing—not you, not me, not your nation nor mine, not our world! To change with change is the changeless state. All things change. This species gives way to that, to one better equipped to survive. But—!” His finger pointed again at the heavens.
“To become a different you, you must find someone you’d rather be! And there is nothing in our society that does not need changing on one level or another!”
Stephen Strange was watching with careful eyes, evaluating both method and thought, both meaning and attitude. This was an inspired Jacks, a magnetic personality, one that was certain to gather about him many people. Not just the eternal malcontents who attach themselves to any sort of possibility for change, hoping that when everything is uprooted and turned over they will be on top. No, he would attract the more stable, those who were altruistic, those who sincerely wanted justice for the oppressed and to right the wrongs of society.
“Today! Tonight! This marks the beginning of the change! The world will be different tomorrow from what it is right now! Why? Because you have listened. Some of you will turn me off, close your minds, and forget my words. But some of you will understand, some of you know that a better world lies ahead, if we work together. We are doing the Lord’s work, we are doing man’s work! Together, hand in hand, and mind in mind, we will change the future! New let us pray.”
The camera pulled back, showing the crowded Temple of Light and dissolved to the spire over it as the prayers of the faithful rose. Strange leaned forward and pressed the button; the image collapsed in upon itself, became a dot and disappeared.
“He’s magnetic,” Clea commented. “You do listen.”
Strange nodded. He had sensed something more than just the personality of the evangelist. He was not certain just what. He stared at the blank gray screen.
Gray.
The color of clouds—gray.
Nightmare was somewhere behind this, Strange knew, but at just what point did he plan to appear? If he thought to make everyone listening to Billie Joe Jacks fall asleep from boredom and invade on a broad front in that manner, he was doomed. Billie Joe seemed to electrify, not bore.
In fact, Billie Joe Jacks was far more electrifying and commanding than he had ever been—curiously powerful. Strange leaned forward and turned on the television set again, getting a curious look from Clea.
There was a newsman with a hand mike, holding it in the face of a famous Protestant minister, an evangelist who had adopted the charismatic image of a television evangelist early, and had risen to international fame. “—and I applaud the Reverend Jacks for his challenging statement. I want to say, here and now, that I support his Crusade for Change. It is time that—”
Clea spoke over the minister. “Everyone is getting on the bandwagon. They see his effect. Remarkable.”
“Indeed,” Strange added.
The network had shifted across the country to interview another famed minister. “Carl Eisenberg here with the Reverend Curtis Smith, of the United Protestant Reformed Church. Doctor Smith, what are your thoughts on the first speech in the Reverend Jacks’s Crusade for Change?”
“Well, Carl, it is a clarion call for unification, there’s no doubt about that. We here at the UPRC have long hoped and prayed for a force to unite all the Christian factions.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Now to Paul Wright, with Richard Cardinal Buttner, in Philadelphia.”
Stephen Strange snapped off the set. The silence deepened for a long moment. “They are getting on the bandwagon fast,” Clea said.
“Aided by the technology he seems to want to destroy,” Strange said softly. But what exactly was the plan?
“Doctor Strange, this is Alicia Jacks.”
“Yes, Mrs. Jacks, what can I do for you?”
“I hate to be calling you; I know you must have important things to do, but . . .”
“Go on, please,” he said into the telephone.
“It’s Billie Joe. He’s . . . he’s not well.”
“Is the crusade taking that much of his energy?” Strange asked. The well-televised crusade had been taking up much of the airwaves for ten days.
“He’s . . . weak, Doctor Strange. I’ve been giving him the vitamins, seeing he gets rest and all, but . . . he’s so weak in the daytime. He’s . . . he’s aged five years. I don’t know what to do.”
“Would you like me to see him again?”
“Oh, I . . . to be frank, Doctor, I don’t think he’d see you. After . . . after our visit he was, well, very much against you. He called you—no, I shouldn’t.”
“Go on, Mrs. Jacks, it’s all right.”
“Well . . . uh . . . he called you a devil, an acolyte of Satan, things like that.”
“And a charlatan, no doubt.” Strange smiled faintly. “But what can I do for you. I do not practice medicine any longer, you know, Alicia.”
“No, it isn’t . . .” She seemed very hesitant. “It’s . . . it’s not really medical. I think . . . it’s . . . oh, I don’t know how to put it.”
“Psychic?”
“Well, I . . . I just don’t know. He should be well. He’s always been very healthy. We’ve done crusades before, several of them, that were just as demanding, or almost so, anyway. It’s . . . something else, Doctor Strange.”
“I’ll come see him tonight. You are appearing at Madison Square Garden, are you not?”
“Yes. I’ll . . . I’ll have tickets for you at the box office. Or would you prefer to come backstage first?”
“I’d like to get as close as possible, yes.”
“I’ll arrange it. We are scheduled to start at five o’clock, you know? That gives the engineers time to do a bit of videotape editing before we go on the air at eight.”
“I understand. Clea and I shall be there.”
“Thank you, Doctor Strange. I just know you can help.”
Strange hung up the telephone and stood silent for a minute, thinking. Then he went into his library, hunted through the shelves, and found two thick, dusty volumes. He sat down and started searching through their thick parchment pages.
The streets were clogged with cars, taxis and charter buses for blocks in every direction. It was obvious that the Garden would be filled many times over. As Strange and Clea got closer, they could see huge projection screens had been set up beside the marquee and three more had been erected on temporary platforms down the street.
The crowd parted for Strange and his white-haired companion. No one called out in the usual rude New York manner. Their voices fell and they stared, moving aside without jostling, making a path before Strange. The Sorcerer Supreme walked confidently, in full cape and tunic, the horns of his unusual cloak rising above his head in crimson points. The crowd closed behind them and after a few moments their conversation continued. Not one person mentioned the pair that had just passed.
The doorman waved them on, an expression of silent awe on his face, an unusual attitude for someone who had seen costumed rock stars, the world’s champions, politicians, and kings come through his door.
“The Reverend Jacks is that way, sir,” the guard said.
Strange nodded and continued through the passage formed by the outgoing equipment and scenery of the rock group, The Marvelous Madmen, and the incoming movable ring of the championship fight. There was a line of dressing rooms and only one was lighted. The entire backstage was quite empty, except for a few lounging stage technicians and several quiet television cameramen. There was a muted rumble from the direction of the vast main floor, where thousands of the faithful were filing in. Strange saw in the corner a row of card tables set up, with middle-aged men and women behind them, each with a ledger, an adding machine, and a metal box.
“Doctor Strange? Oh, I’m so glad you are here!” Alicia Jacks hurried across the room. She glanced upward, at the filling auditorium. “We’re going on soon. Oh, excuse me; I’ve been with Billie Joe so long, we’ve done so much together, I still say ‘we.’ ” She twisted nervously at her wedding band. “Lately, I’m afraid it hasn’t been ‘we’ at all.”
“Is he ready to see us?” Clea asked softly.
“Well, uh . . .” Alicia glanced at the dressing room. “He’s taking a nap now. He always takes one just before, uh . . . he needs the rest, you know? He hasn’t been lookin’ well. Guess I told you that, I’m sorry.” She looked at her watch. “I better wake him. Come along.”
Strange and Clea followed Mrs. Jacks to the dressing room, where she briskly knocked twice and opened the door. Strange had a quick glimpse of Jacks lying on the single bed, his body arched with tension, his fists knotted at his side, his face contorted in an expression of terror and fear, his eyes bulging. Alicia gave a gasp and instantly Jacks collapsed. His body thumped down into the bed limply, his eyes closed, and his limbs relaxed completely. He looked asleep.
Alicia gave Strange a pleading look and went into the dressing room. “Billie Joe? Honey, it’s me, Alicia?”
The man on the cot stirred and his eyes opened, one at a time. “Oh, hello, my dear. Is it time?”
She gulped and glanced over her shoulder at Strange and Clea. “Uh, yes, it is, dear. Billie Joe, there’s someone here to see you . . .”
Jacks sat up, yawning, a hand over his mouth. “Now, Alicia, you know I don’t like to see anyone before, not even the media people, not even Barbara or Walter. After, dear, after.”
Alicia moved aside and Jacks glanced out the door and froze. “What’s he doing here?” He glared at his wife. “Alicia, I told you this man is a fake. Worse than that, he’s liable to attract the television people. Look at him! It’s a wonder he isn’t on the six o’clock news every night! Or locked away in some funny farm!”
Jacks stood up and stepped quickly to the door, reached out and grabbed it, then slammed it shut in Strange’s face. He turned to castigate his wife when he realized the door hadn’t latched and was swinging open again. Angrily, he turned and did it again, this time carefully latching the door. Again the door swung wide and Billie Joe Jacks was face to face with Dr. Stephen Strange.
“Strange—if that’s your name—I don’t want to have anything to do with you. You are the very opposite of everything I represent! I don’t like you. I don’t mean to be unChristian, you understand, but it is in us all to hate the Devil!”
“Have you been sleeping well?” Strange asked mildly.
“No, but what business is that of yours? I expect to make sacrifices for the cause! I’ll go on making sacrifices until we have triumphed! Until the Crusade for Change does something about this world we live in!”
“Oh, I’m sure the world will not be the same if you succeed,” Strange said. An expression crossed the sorcerer’s face that Clea could not define. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you before a performance,” Strange apologized.
Jacks glared at him with an icy expression. “It is not a performance—though perhaps you would not know the difference!” He glared at his wife. “Get my suit ready, I’ll change now. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure,” he said with heavy sarcasm and reentered the dressing room. This time the door stayed shut.
Strange turned away and Clea matched his pace. She looked up at him, frowning. “Stephen? You sensed something?”
“Yes, I did, Clea. There are strong forces at work here. But I cannot fully comprehend their direction. Jacks is a focal point; that much I know.”
There was a flurry of activity at the backstage door and a big Negro entered, striding like a black king, with a number of people asking for his autograph and calling out his name. The big man walked on without paying them any attention at all. Strange pulled Clea into the shadows. The black giant strode purposefully to Jacks’s dressing room and knocked, then entered without waiting.
“I know him,” Clea said. “That’s Joe Peerson, the heavyweight contender.”
Strange nodded. “And the one I saw in Billie Joe’s dream.” Clea glanced at him in concern. Strange looked around. “The other? The dark, nameless one? Where might he be?”
at
Seduction of the Innocent
No comments:
Post a Comment