Operation Chaos

XXV

It seemed in character for the Johannine Church to put its cathedral for the whole Upper Midwest not in Chicago, Milwaukee, or any other city, but off alone, a hundred miles even from our modest town. The placing symbolized and emphasized the Gnostic rejection of this world as evil, the idea of salvation through secret rites and occult knowledge. Unlike Petrine Christianity, this kind didn’t come to you; aside from dismal little chapels here and there, scarcely more than recruiting stations, you came to it.

Obvious, yes. And therefore, I thought, probably false. Nothing about Gnosticism was ever quite what it seemed. That lay in its very nature.

Perhaps its enigmas, veils behind veils and mazes within mazes, were one thing that drew so many people these days. The regular churches made their theologies plain. They clearly described and delimited the mysteries as such, with the common-sense remark that we mortals aren’t able to understand every aspect of the Highest. They declared that this world was given us to live in by the Creator, and hence must be fundamentally good; a lot of the imperfections are due to human bollixing, and it’s our job to improve matters.

Was that overly unromantic? Did the Johannines appeal to the daydream, childish but always alive in j us, of becoming omnipotent by learning a sec denied the common herd? I’d made that scornful assumption, and still believed it held a lot of truth. But the more I thought, the less it felt like the whole explanation.

I had plenty of time and chance and need for thought, flitting above the night land, where scattered farms and villages looked nearly as remote as the stars overhead. The air that slid around the windfield was turning cold. Its breath went through and through me, disrupting cobwebs in my head until I saw how little I’d really studied, how much I’d lazily taken for granted. But I saw, too, facts I’d forgotten, and how they might be fitted together in a larger understanding. Grimly, as I traveled, I set myself to review what I could about the Johannine Church, from the ground up.

Was it merely a thing of the past two or three generations, a nut cult that happened to appeal to something buried deep in Western man? Or was it in truth as old as it maintained-founded by Christ himself?

The other churches said No. Doubtless Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant should not be lumped together as Petrine. But the popular word made a rough kind of sense. They did have a mutual interpretation of Jesus’ charge to his disciples. They agreed on the_ special importance of Peter. No matter what differences bad arisen since, including the question of apostolic succession, they all derive from the Twelve in a perfectly straightforward way.

And yet . . . and yet . . . there is that strange passage at the close of the Gospel According to St. John:

“Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee’? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.”

I don’t understand it, and I’m not sure Biblical scholars do either, regardless of what they say. Certainly it gave rise to a fugitive tradition that here Our Lord was creating something more than any of them but John ever knew—some unproclaimed other Church, within or parallel to the Church of Peter, which would at the end manifest itself and guide man to a new dispensation. Today’s cult might have originated entirely in this century. But the claim it trumpeted had been whispered for two thousand years.

The association of such a claim with otherworldliness was almost inevitable. Under many labels, Gnosticism has been a recurring heresy. The original form, or rather forms, were an attempt to fuse Christianity with a mishmash of Oriental mystery cults, Neoplatonism, and sorcery. Legend traced it back to the Simon Magus who appears in the eighth chapter of Acts, whose memory was accordingly held in horror by the orthodox. Modern Johanninism was doubly bold in reviving that dawn-age movement by name, in proclaiming it not error but a higher truth and Simon Magus not a corrupter but a prophet.

Could that possibly be right? Might the world actually be at the morning of the Reign of Love? I didn’t know; how could I? But by using my brains, as the Petrine tradition held we should, rather than my emotions, I’d decided the Johannine dogma was false. Its spreading acceptance I found due to plain human irrationality.

So you got communities of Truth Seekers, settling down to practice their rites and meditations where nobody would interfere. They drew pilgrims, who needed housing, food, services. The priests, priestesses, acolytes, and lay associates did too. A temple (more accurate than cathedral, but the Johnnies insisted on the latter word to emphasize at they were Christians) needed income; and as a rule it had a substantial endowment, shrewdly managed. Thus a town often grew up around the original foundation—like Siloam, where I was headed.

Simple. Banal. Why did I bother marshaling information that any reader of the daily papers had? Merely to escape thinking about Valeria? No. To get as much as possible straight in my head, when most was tangled and ghostly.

The Something Else, the Thing Beyond . . . was it no illusion, but a deeper insight? And if so, an insight—into what? I thought of the Johannines’ intolerance and troublemaking. I thought of the frank assertion, that their adepts held powers no one else imagined and that more was revealed to them every year. I thought of stories told by certain apostates, who hadn’t advanced far in their degrees when they experienced that which scared them off: nothing illegal, immoral, or otherwise titillating; merely ugly, hateful, sorrowful, and hence not very newsworthy; deniable or ignorable by those who didn’t want to believe them. I thought of the Gnostic theology, what part of it wash made public: terrible amidst every twist of revelation and logic, the identification of their Demiurge with the God of the Old Testament with Satan.

I thought of Antichrist.

But there I shied off, being agnostic about such matters, as I’ve said. I took my stand on the simple feeling that it didn’t make sense the Almighty would operate in any such fashion.

Light glimmered into view, far off across the prairie. I was glad of journey’s end, no matter what happened next. I didn’t care to ride further with those reflections of mine.

Siloam was ordinary frame houses in ordinary yards along ordinary streets. A sign beneath the main airlane, as you neared, said Pop. 5240; another announced that the Lions Club met every Thursday at the Kobold Kettle Restaurant. There were a couple of small manufacturing enterprises, a city hall, an elementary school, a high school, a firehouse, a bedraggled park, a hotel, more service stations than needed. The business district held stores, a cafe or two, a bank, chirurgeon’s and dentist’s offices above a Rexall apothecary . . . the American works.

That homeliness made the rest freezingly alien. Though the hour lacked of midnight, downtown was a tomb. The residential streets were nearly as deserted nobody out for a stroll, no teenagers holding hands, scarcely a stick or a wagon moving, beneath the rare lamps-once in a while a robed and hooded figure slowly pacing. Each home lay drawn into itself, behind drawn shades. Where the inhabitants weren’t asleep, they were probably not watching crystal or playing cards or having a drink or making love, they were most likely at the devotions and studies they hoped would qualify them for a higher religious degree, more knowledge and power and surety of salvation.

And everything centered on the cathedral. It soared above the complex of boxlike ancillary buildings that surrounded it, above town and plain. The pictures I’d seen of it had not conveyed the enormity. Those flat, bone-white walls went up and up and up, till the roof climbed farther yet to make the vast central cupola. From afar, the windows looked like nailheads, one row to a story; but then I saw the stained glass air, each filling half the facade it occupied with murky colors and bewildering patterns, Mandala at the west end and Eye of God at the east. From the west, also, rose the single tower, which in a photograph only looked austere, but now became one leap into the stars.

Light played across the outside of the cathedral and shone dimly from its glass. I heard a chant, men’s voices marching deep beneath the wild icy sweepings and soarings of women who sang on no scale I could identify, in no language of earth.

The music was so amplified as to be audible to the very outskirts of town. And it never ended. This was a perpetual choir. Priests, acolytes, pilgrims were always on hand to step in when any of the six hundred and, one wearied. I failed to imagine how it must be to live in that day—and-night haze of canticle. If you were a dweller in Siloam, perhaps not even a Johnny, you’d soon stop noticing on a conscious level. But wouldn’t the sound weave into your thoughts, dreams, bones, finally into your soul?

I couldn’t interpret the extrasensation I felt, either, more powerful for every yard I approached. Wrongness—or rightness of a kind that I was simply unable to fathom?

After all, the attendant at the gate was a pleasant young man, his tow hair and blue eyes right out of folk who’d been hereabouts for more than a hundred years, his friendliness out of Walt Whitman’s own America. When I had parked my broom in the lot that stretched wide and bare into the dark, approached him, and asked, “Okay to go in?” he regarded me for a moment before answering lightly, “You’re not a communicant, are you?”

“N-no,” I said, a bit taken aback.

He chuckled. “Wanna know how I can tell? They’ve got to the Elphue. We’d wait till Mary’s invocation was finished before we entered.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“S Okay. Nobody minds, longs you’re quiet. In theory, you’re damned anyway. I don’t buy that myself, know what I mean? My girl’s a Methodist. I’ll go along with the red tape the priests want before they let me marry her, but I can’t believe she’ll burn.” He realized he might have spoken too freely and added in haste: “How come you’re this late? The tourists arrive in the daytime.”

I decided he wasn’t a lay brother, just an employee, and no more fanatical than the average Christian of any type-in short, one of the decent majority you find in all organizations, all countries. I was prepared for his question. “I travel in ankhs,” I said. “Got an appointment in town early tomorrow morning before moving on. Got hung up today and didn’t reach here till now. Your choir is so famous I didn’t want to miss it.”

“Thanks.” He handed me a leaflet. “You know the rules? Use the main door. Take a seat in the Heath-uh, the Spectators’ Corner. No noise, no picture-taking. When you, want to leave, do it quietly, same way as you came.”

I nodded and walked through the gate. The auxiliary buildings formed a square around a paved yard centered on the cathedral. Where they did not butt directly on each other, walls had been raised between, making the only entrances three portals closable by wire gates. The offices, storerooms, living quarters were plain, in fact drab. A few cenobites move about, male scarcely distinguishable from female in their robes , and overshadowing cowls. I remembered a complete absence of any scandals, anywhere in the world, though the Johannines mingled the sexes in celibacy. Well, of course their monks and nuns weren’t simply consecrated; they were initiates. They had gone beyond baptism, beyond the elementary mystery rites and name-changing (with the old public name retained for secular use) that corresponded to a Petrine confirmation. For years they had mortified the flesh, disciplined the soul, bent the mind to mastering what their holy books called divine revelation, and unbelievers called pretentious nonsense, and some believers in a different faith called unrecognized diabolism . . .

Blast it, I thought, I’ve got to concentrate on my. job. Never mind those silent sad figures rustling past. Ignore, if you can, the overwhelmingness of the cathedral you are nearing and the chant that now swells from it to fill the whole night. Deny that your werewolf heritage senses things it fears to a degree that is making you ill. Sweat prickles forth on your skin, tuna cold down our ribs and reeks in your nostrils. You see the word through a haze of dream and relentless’ music. But Valeria is in hell.

I stopped where the vague shifty light was and read the leaflet. It bade me a courteous welcome and listed the same regulations as the gatekeeper had. On the flip side was a floor plan of the basilica section of the main building. The rest was left blank. Everybody realized that an abundance of rooms existed on the levels of the north and south sides, the tower, and even the cupola. It was no secret that great crypts lay beneath. They were used for certain ceremonies, some of them, anyhow. Beyond this information: nothing.

The higher in degree you advanced, the more you were shown. Only adepts might enter the final sanctums, and only they knew what went on there.

I mounted the cathedral steps. A couple of husky monks stood on either side of the immense, open door. They didn’t move, but their eyes frisked me. The vestibule was long, low-ceilinged, whitewashed, bare except for a holy water font. Here was no cheerful clutter of bulletin board, parish newsletter, crayon drawings from the Sunday school. A nun standing at the middle pointed me to a left entrance. Another one at that position looked from me to a box marked Offerings and back until I had to stuff in a couple of dollars. It might have been funny except for the singing, the incense, the gazes, the awareness of impalpable forces which drew my belly muscles taut.

I entered an aisle and found myself alone in a roped-off section of pews, obviously for outsiders. It took me a minute to get over the impact of the stupendous interior and sit down. Then I spent several more minutes trying to comprehend it, and failing.

The effect went beyond size. When everything was undecorated, naked white geometry of walls and pillars and vaulting, you had nothing to scale by; you were in a cavern that reached endlessly on. God’s Eye above the altar, Mandala above the choir loft, dominated a thick dusk. But they were unreal too, more remote than the moon, just as the candles glimmering from place to place could have been stars. Proportions, curves, intersections, all helped create the illusion of illimitable labyrinthine spaces. Half a dozen worshipers, scattered along the edge of the nave, were lost. But so would any possible congregation be. This church was meant to diminish its people.

A priest stood at the altar with two attendants. I recognized them by their white robes as initiates. At their distance they were dwarfed nearly to nothing. Somehow the priest was not. In the midnight-blue drapery and white beard of an adept, he stood tall, arms outspread, and I feared him. Yet he wasn’t moving, praying, anything . . . Smoke from the hanging censers drugged my lungs. The choir droned and shrilled above me. I had never felt more daunted.

Hauling my glance away, I forced myself to study the layout as if this were an enemy fortress to be penetrated: which it was, for me tonight, whether or not it bore any guilt for what had happened to my little girl. The thought of her started a rage brewing that soon got strong enough to serve for courage. My witch-sit didn’t operate here; counterspells against such things must have been laid. Normal night vision was adapting, though, stretched to the same ultimate as every other faculty I had.

The noncommunicants’ section was as far as could be from the altar, at the end of the extreme left side aisle. So on my right hand were pews reaching to the nave, on my left a passage along the north wall. The choir loft hung over me like a thundercloud. Directly ahead, at the end of a field of empty benches, rose one of the screens that cut off most of the transept from view, ornamented with a black crux ansata.

This isn’t helping me figure out how to burgle the joint, I thought.

A monk went past me on soft-sandaled feet. Over his robe he wore a long surplice embroidered with cabalistic symbols. Halfway to the transept halted before a many-branched sconce, lit a candle, and prostrated himself for minutes. Rising, bowing, and backing off seven steps, he returned in my direction.

From pictures, I recognized his outer garment the one donned by choristers. Evidently he’d be been relieved and, instead of taking straight off to shuck his uniform, had acquired a bit of merit first. When he had gone by, I twisted around to follow his course. The pews did not extend the whole way back to the vestibule wall. They left some clear space at the rear end. The choral balcony threw it into such gloom that I could barely see the monk pass through a door in the corner nearest me.

The idea burst forth like a pistol from the holster. I sat outwardly still, inwardly crouched, and probed from side to side of the basilica. Nobody was paying attention to me. Probably I wasn’t even visible to celebrants or worshipers; this placement was designed to minimize the obtrusiveness of infidels. My ears, which beneath the clamant song picked out the monk’s footfalls had detected no snick of key in lock. I could follow him.

Then what? I didn’t know and didn’t greatly care. If they nailed me at once, I’d be a Nosy Parker. They’d scold me and kick me out, and I’d try some different approach. If I got caught deeper in the building: well, that was the risk I’d come courting.

I waited another three hundred million microseconds, feeling each one. The monk needed ample time to get out of this area. During the interval I knelt, gradually hunching lower and lower until I’d sunk out of sight. It drew no stares or inquiries. Finally I was on all fours.

Now! I scuttled, not too fast across to that shadowy corner. Risen, I looked behind me. The adept stood like a gaunt eidolon, the initiates handled the four sacred objects in complicated ways, the choir sang, a man signed himself and left via the south aisle. I waited till he had exited before gripping the doorknob. It felt odd. I turned it most slowly and drew the door open a crack. Nothing happened. Peering in, I saw dim blue lights.

I went through.

Beyond was an anteroom. A drapery separated it from a larger chamber, which was also deserted. That condition wouldn’t last long. The second of the three curtained openings gave on a spiral staircase down which the hymn came pouring. The third led to a corridor. Most of the space was occupied by racks on which hung surplices. Obviously you bowed one after receiving your instructions elsewhere, and proceeded to the choir loft. At the end of your period, you came back this way. Given six hundred and one singers, reliefs must show quite often. Maybe they weren’t so frequent at night, when the personnel were mostly clergy with more training and endurance than eager-beaver laymen. But I’d best not stick around.

I could ditch my outer garments, that’d hamper a wolf, under one of those pullovers. However, somebody who happened to spy me barefoot, in skin-tight briefs, would be hard to convince of my bona fides. I settled for unsnapping the sheath from my inner belt and stuffing my knife in a jacket pocket before I stepped into the hall.