Over the next few days I studied the specialist press with interest. Most of the accounts of the conference were straightforwardly factual, but the additional information also sparked another series of speculative pieces. Some of them were fascinatingly ingenious, but none gave me any feeling of insight into what had happened to me. Disappointed, I turned to the broadsheets to see what kind of coverage they provided. One item caught my eye; a reference to a strong religious reaction from the USA.
I switched on the one luxury in my room – a high-end computer with a broadband internet connection – and searched for sites containing the words ‘Cade’ and ‘religion’. A torrent of hits flowed down the screen. I clicked on an American one at random. The headline hit me between the eyes:
At last! The scaly monster pretending to be a human has finally revealed his true colours!! I have warned ever since he first appeared that we should not be taken in by his soft words and deceitful attempts to fool us by so-called miracles – and now he is condemned from his own mouth!!!
‘Do you believe in God?’ He was asked. ‘No!’ came the reply!!! Now we know the truth! He is an unbeliever, the spawn of Satan, here on Earth to try to destroy our belief in the Almighty God with his clever words!
Has it not always been obvious? His scaly skin shows him to be the Devil’s get! He is evil beyond imagining, and his existence cannot be tolerated!!!
I scanned several more such sites, and discovered that the first was one of the milder ones. Many of them were calling for my total annihilation, some enthusiastically demanding a nuclear missile strike against the small town close to my hospital.
I tried some more sensible American news sites, and found mixed reviews. Most just reported the outburst of religious fervour, but many added their own critical commentary. A protest march on the British Embassy in Washington was being organised to persuade them to do something about this monster in their midst.
A knock on the door disturbed my bleak thoughts. Zara popped her cheerful face around the corner. ‘Someone to see you!’
She opened the door to show a shyly smiling Sally, standing for the first time with the aid of crutches. Several weeks of treatment had completed the new links in her spinal cord, and she would soon be back to normal. Her parents hovered rather nervously behind her. ‘We’re leaving soon’, the father said, ‘but we couldn’t go without thanking you for all that you’ve done. You’ve given our Sally her life back, and ours too.’
The mother stepped forward and impulsively hugged me. ‘I don’t care what they say about you, you’ll always be an angel to us!’
Zara gave me a puzzled look as the door closed behind them. ‘What did she mean by that?’
I showed her the American websites and she gasped. ‘But that’s horrible!’
‘Maybe, but that’s what they’re thinking. I’ve always found it bizarre that the most scientifically advanced nation on Earth should have so many religious fundamentalists; you’d think they’d suffer from some sort of collective national schizophrenia.’
She turned away from the screen shaking her head in disgust, then looked at me worriedly. ‘Doesn’t this bother you?’
I grimaced. ‘Sometimes I lie awake at night, wondering what kind of monster I have become. There are times when I wish it were all a nightmare that I could wake up from. But then my days are filled with helping people like Sally, and that makes it all feel worthwhile. But no, these sites don’t particularly bother me; I just find them rather sad.’
Zara turned and headed for the door. ‘Janet was saying that there’s an article in a paper about different countries’ attitudes to you. I’ll go and find it.’
She returned in a few minutes brandishing a page from the review section of one of the more serious broadsheets. We sat together on the sofa and read through it. The writer had been tapping into polls carried out world-wide, with interesting results.
Most North Europeans were unconcerned about the religious issue. I expected this, as they are in my experience a pleasantly heathen lot whatever faith they technically profess. They regarded me with interest and generally speaking without hostility, despite the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger criticism from the established churches.
Further east, views changed. The fundamentalist mullahs and imams of Islam were predictably opposed – I pondered briefly whether they had ever welcomed anything new since medieval times, but soon gave up – with the more extreme ones pronouncing fatwas against me. The Hindis, however, were surprisingly positive, at least in part because of my involuntary vegetarianism. Some even wanted to add me to the pantheon of their colourful gods.
More remarkable to me was the Far Eastern reaction, especially from the Chinese – or at least, those living outside the People’s Republic. I should have remembered that dragons retained a special place in their mythology, and the advent of “Dragon Man”, as they called me, had stimulated all sorts of new cults, with “Dragon Preachers” gathering disciples by purporting to be in some kind of rapport with me. Some of them encouraged decidedly peculiar practices in my name (the common factor being, of course, that the fact that I had no material goods meant that their followers should hand over all of their belongings – to them) and I decided that I would have to do something about that.
Saddest of all was the response from central Africa, in much of which I was regarded with fear and used as an icon of terror, especially to frighten children. I resolved to do something about that, too.
In light relief, those groups in the USA which weren’t condemning me as the devil incarnate apparently regarded me as an alien visitor from another planet. Some of the more paranoid warned that I was on a reconnaissance mission to plan an invasion, but most pleaded for me to be welcomed with honour, and were extremely concerned that I would be insulted by the reaction of their more belligerent countrymen.
Zara produced one of her giggles, together with another article from a rather less intellectual publication. ‘This one might amuse you!’
It was from a women’s magazine, and devoted to the possibilities for pleasure which my control of nervous systems promised. They had found a doctor able to pontificate in a mildly salacious way on the advantages of direct sensory stimulation in comparison with conventional lovemaking or various drugs. Somewhat surprisingly, the hackette who had been the sole recipient of such treatment had proved reticent about her experience, but despite this I was voted ‘best buy’. It was even suggested, half seriously, that the NHS should authorise sessions with me for women suffering from frigidity.
‘’I’ve been summoning up the nerve to ask – why haven’t you been interested in any of these women who have been trying to attract your attention? Haven’t you seen the intense looks you get whenever you walk around the hospital?’
‘Well, yes, but I always suspect they’re thinking my skin would make a wicked pair of shoes with a matching handbag.’
Zara laughed. ‘Oh no, it’s much more basic than that.’
‘More basic than shoes and handbags? Is there any such thing?’ I thought about it for a moment. Despite my joke, it had been something that I had wondered about myself; I would not in my previous life have turned down such opportunities. ‘This may sound odd coming from a man, but I don’t like the idea of being regarded as some kind of trophy, or a diverting novelty for jaded women who have tried everything else. Also, I have to admit that the nervous energy I burn up in healing people doesn’t leave me with much for any other purpose!’