Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Illusions 1)

"For a while I thought it was going to be a long haul," he said. "It is going to be a long haul, but I think there's a slim out side chance that you might make it this time. Keep talking."

"For another thing, I don't have to keep talking, because you already know what things people know. But if I didn't say these things, you wouldn't know what I th

ink that I know, and without that I can't learn any of the things I want to learn." I put down my hay-stem. "What's in it for you, Don? Why do you bother with people like me ? Whenever some body is advanced as you are, he gets all these miracle-powers as byproducts. You don't need me, you don't need anything at all from this world."

I turned my head and looked at him. His eyes were closed. "Like gas in the Travel Air?" he said.

"Right," I said. "So all there is left in the world is boredom . . . there are no adventures when you know that you can't be troubled by any thing on this earth. Your only problem is that you don't have any problems!"

That, I thought, was a terrific piece of talking.

"You missed, there," he said. "Tell me why I quit my job... do you know why I quit the Messiah job.?"

"Crowds, you said. Everybody wanting you to do their miracles for them."

"Yeah. Not the first, the second. Crowdophobia is your cross, not mine. It's not crowds that wear me, its the kind of crowd that doesn't care at all about what I came to say. You can walk from New York to London on the ocean, you can pull gold coins out of forever and still not make them care, you know?"

When he said that, he looked lonelier than I had ever seen a man still alive. He didn't need food or shelter or money or fame. He was dying of his need to say what he knew, and nobody cared enough to listen.

I frowned at him, so as not to cry. "Well you asked for it," I said. "If your happiness depends on what somebody else, I guess you do have a problem."

He jerked his head up and his eyes blazed as though I had hit him with the wrench. I thought all at once that I would not be wise to get this guy mad at me. A man fries quick, struck by lightning.

Then he smiled that half-second smile. "You know what, Richard ?" he said slowly. "You . . . are . . . right!"

He was quiet again, tranced, almost, by what I had said. Not noticing, I went on talking to him for hours about how we had met and what there was to learn, all these ideas firing through my head like morning comets and daylight meteors. He lay very still in the grass, not moving, not saying a word. By noon I finished my version of the universe and all things that dwelled therein.

". . . and I feel I've barely begun, Don, there's so much to say. How do I know all this - How come is that?"

He didn't answer.

"If you expect me to answer my own question, I confess that I do not know. Why can I say all these things now, when I've never even tried, before? What has happened to me ?"

No answer.

"Don ? It's OK for you to talk now, please."

He didn't say a word. I had explained the panorama of life to him, and my messiah, as though he had heard all he needed in that one chance word about his happiness, had fallen fast asleep.

7

Wednesday morning, it's six o'clock, I'm not awake and WHOOM!! there's this enormous noise sudden and violent as some high explosive symphony; instant thousand voice choirs, words in Latin, violins and typani and trumpets to shatter glass. The ground shuddered, the Fleet rocked on her wheels and I came out from under the wing like a 400-volt cat, fur straight-out exclamation points.

The sky was cold-fire sunrise, the clouds alive in wild paint, but all of it blurred in the dynamite crescendo.

"STOP IT! STOP IT! OFF THE MUSIC, OFF IT!!"

Shimoda yelled so loud and so furious I could hear him over the din, and the sound stopped at once, echoes rolling off and away and away and away. Then it was a gentle holy song, quiet as the breeze, Beethoven in a dream.

He was unimpressed. "LOOK, I SAID OFF IT!!"

The music stopped.

"Whuf!" he said.

I just looked at him.

"There is a time and a place for everything, right ?" he said.