Anderson, Poul Operation Chaos

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've smashed the bottom out of this tumbler."
"Finish mine," I said. "I'm on my way."
We rose together. "How about a weapon?" he offered.
I shook my head. "Let's not compound the felony. Whatever I meet, probably a gun won't handle." It
seemed needless to add that I carried a hunting knife under my civvies and, in wolf-shape, a whole
mouthful of armament. "Uh, we'll fix it so you're in the clear. I visited you; that can no doubt be proven if
they try hard. But I sneaked back after I left and boosted your broom."
He nodded. "I suggest you take the Plymouth," he said "It's not as fast as either sports job, but it runs
quieter and the besom was tuned only the other day." He stood for a bit, thinking. Stillness and
black-ness pressed on the windowpanes. "Meanwhile I'll start research on the matter. Bill Hardy...Janice
Wenzel from our library staff...hm, we could co-opt your Dr. Ashman, and how about Prof Griswold
from the University?...and more, able close-mouthed people, who'll be glad to help and hang any
consequences. If nothing else, we can assemble all unclassified data regarding the Low Continuum, and
maybe some that aren't. We can set up equations delimiting various conceivable approaches to the
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rescue problem, and crank 'em through the computator, and eliminate unworkable ideas. Yeah, I'll get
busy right off."
What can you say to a guy like that except thanks'
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 plac-ing symbolized and emphasized the Gnostic rejection of this world as evil, the
idea of salvation through secret rites and occult knowledge. Unlike Petrine Chris-tianity, this kind didn't
come to you; aside from dismal little chapels here and there, scarcely more than re-cruiting 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 de-nied 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 understand-ing. 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 differ-ences 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 pas-sage 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
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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 en-tirely in this century. But the claim it trumpeted had been whispered for two thousand years.
The association of such a claim with otherworldli-ness was almost inevitable. Under many labels,
Gnos-ticism 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 Ma-gus who appears in the eighth chapter of Acts, whose memory was accordingly held in
horror by the ortho-dox. 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 actu-ally 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
emo-tions, 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,
priest-esses, 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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