Chapter Twenty The Sermon #2
“As for my sister, she came at last to see the disgrace and the misfortune she had brought to her own life, and with the help of spiritual guidance, she began to make amends, to become the mother she should be.
She tried again and again to reach her child, to claim her from the shriveled and faithless society of the arrogant old scholars the law had appointed as her guardians.
Again and again she pleaded with the courts, with officialdom in all its forms, with the stony-hearted judges who listened to her anguished pleas in a cold and hostile silence, and dismissed her without a word. Again and again she was refused.
“And what of the child, this lost and lonely little girl, this child born of corruption and weakness, carrying as we all do the stain of original sin but in herself so far innocent?
“She was told all manner of lies about her birth, and of course, as children do, she believed them. When she reached the age of eleven, desperate and unhappy, she ran away from the college she had been placed in, was kidnapped by a band of boat-dwelling criminals, and destined for some unspeakable fate in a foreign land. Her mother, my sister Marisa, hearing of this—and imagine the toils of anguish in her heart!—hearing of this, Marisa set off in desperation to rescue her, and bring her home to a mother who could love her with a truly repentant heart, and bring her up in the safety and purity of an Authority-fearing home, and make amends for the sin she had committed.”
He paused a moment, and when he spoke his tone had changed a little: instead of the suffering brother, now he seemed to be standing back a little way, commenting on a common human problem with patient wisdom.
“In a way, of course, this is an old story. It is one of the first stories we learn. The desire to know more, to look closer and closer, to tear aside the veils of matter and see into the deepest mysteries—the human impulse to do that, this vile and impertinent curiosity, was fixed in the human soul as a photogram is fixed on paper, since the woman gave in to the serpent’s temptation in the garden of Paradise.
“And the results we see in our own lives, the tendency of things to decay, for clocks to run down, for fires to go out, for the bright and shining vigor of youth to fade into the distracted anxiety of the middle years and the exhausted loneliness of old age—these are part of the consequence of that first fall.
“Because what she did, that mother of us all, was to make a breach in the perfect surface of the world that the Authority gave us to live in.
Just a little scratch; just a tiny crack.
But it was enough. We all know how once the integrity of a structure is flawed, the crack in a mirror, the patch of dry rot in the cellar, the leak in a water pipe—how it grows and spreads, silently, invisibly, until the whole structure is compromised, until it all inevitably falls apart.
It happens in the physical world, it happens in the world of politics and business, it happens in the family and in the human heart.
“Now, my friends, I am going to tell you something very few people know.
In this world there exist a number of mysterious places, secret places, that are much like these cracks, these flaws in the structure, these leaks.
Because of that original sin, and because of the continuing and ineradicable wickedness of mankind, this beautiful world is vulnerable.
Vulnerable to invasion, to poisonous influences from outside, to alien presences and philosophies, to ideas that kill, to moral disease and intellectual corruption.
“This is not a metaphor, my friends. Some of you may have been present at the lecture given here in Geneva not long ago by the celebrated philosopher and author Professor Gottfried Brande, the lecture that ended in tragic circumstances with the professor’s sudden death.
The lecture, which we are publishing soon in its entirety, discusses with profound originality the dangers that lie in the careless and irresponsible use of language, and the need to police our speaking and writing with ceaseless vigilance.
“Professor Brande will be regarded by future ages as a prophet. He had much to teach us before his untimely death. So believe me, my friends, it’s in the spirit of Gottfried Brande that I stress this now: my words today are not a metaphor for something else.
They are exactly and literally true. There are places such as the ones I have referred to.
We are indebted to the pioneering work of the geographers who discovered several such places in various isolated corners of the earth, and to the skillful and dangerous work of the engineers of the Magisterial Guard for their continuing attempts to deal with them.
“But the problem is growing. More and more of these places are being discovered; more and more our world, our way of life, the things we love and take for granted, are being invaded and poisoned by alien ideas, wrongful beliefs, and a bestial morality unfitted for the sons and daughters of the Authority.
“And now, my friends, we have found the source of this spiritual evil. The original breach in the surface of the Authority’s world lies in a desert in Central Asia, and it is towards that spot that our armies are marching, with our allies and our truehearted friends at our side.
They will reach it; they will destroy it; they will heal the wound in the world forever.
“And…this is the hardest thing for me, my friends. The young girl I spoke to you about—the daughter of my dear sister. And really she is not a girl anymore; she is a young woman. Her name is Lyra Belacqua. And to my utmost sorrow, she has thrown in her lot with the enemy. She is working to prevent the great task we are all about to undertake. Like so many young people, unsure of their own minds, she has been persuaded that right is wrong and wickedness is right. Wherever she is now, I hope we can find her before it’s too late.
In any other circumstances, no doubt there would be a large reward offered for any knowledge of her; but I am not offering that.
I simply pray that she is found before…”
He shrugged as it were in helpless sorrow. Then he gathered himself again, and stood up tall, and let his voice ring passionately through the great space of the cathedral:
“May the Authority, in all his goodness and wisdom, guide our judgment as we strive to repair the damage done to his world. May he, in all his power and might, guide our arms as we strike a deadly blow at the invader. And finally, in all his love and justice, may the Authority strengthen us for the struggle ahead and bring us safely through to the calm and tranquility of a world restored.”
He reached out to where his owl daemon was sitting on the pulpit rail, and lifted her up to his shoulder as he walked steadily down the steps and out of the nave towards the vestry.
The congregation was perfectly still, as if no one wanted to breathe, or dared to.
No one looked around, but those whose seats allowed a view of the whole interior were struck by the stillness, the silence, the air of…
Was it fear? Was it awe? Whatever it was, it had thrown a pall of silence and apprehension over the entire crowd.
Even the representatives of the press, and the visiting politicians and diplomats, and the senior clergy, and the civic dignitaries of every kind were sitting still.
Their faces were solemn, or full of fear or pale determination; some of their daemons had crept up to their breasts and sought shelter in an embrace.
Professor Seidel leaned slightly towards Parmentier and whispered, “He is mad.”
It was a very quiet whisper. Parmentier whispered back: “But he has the congregation.”
He had. The atmosphere was like that of a theater held in the powerful spell of a great actor’s final speech.
After several seconds, gradually, people began to relax, to breathe deeply, to sit up and look around. The silence in the vast cathedral gave way to murmurs and coughs and the shuffling of chairs as people got to their feet and moved into the aisles.
Parmentier glanced at Professor Seidel. Her face was solemn. The man on his other side, the professor of classical ethics, stood up stiffly and fussed with his scarf. A faint smell of cloves came from his overcoat.
“What did you make of that?” Parmentier said quietly.
He stood up too so as to hear him more clearly.
More and more people were talking now; there was even a sort of bustle in the atmosphere.
Some of the journalists were hurrying towards the vestry, as if they could intercept the President before he left, and claim the first interview; but officials barred the way, and two members of the Magisterial Guard, armed with rifles, stood behind them.
The priest looked closely at the face of his fellow member of the High Council, and was surprised to see in it such doubt and anxiety.
He didn’t know the man at all well, and had thought him rigidly conventional in his attitudes; perhaps he’d been wrong.
The little priest suddenly remembered the man’s name: Duclos.
“Did you believe him?” Parmentier said.
“About the girl? It’s plausible. Even likely. Who can tell?”
“About the idea that evil comes from outside the world.”
“It’s a startling assertion to make, certainly. Something entirely new, this, how would one describe it—semi-Gnosticism?”
“I agree; it’s not something we’ve heard from this pulpit before.”
“Did it make sense to you?”
Duclos wasn’t making superficial conversation. He sounded as if he was asking about the truth.
“No,” said Parmentier carefully. “I don’t think the world is being invaded by the forces of evil.”