"Let's begin," said Gene. "Anything earthshaking today?"
Lisa Finn, the public relations director, showed them a religious magazine, poorly printed on coarse paper. On the cover was a drawing of a Gene's Dollar which had been altered to give him a Satanic appearance. The headline was "The Mark of the Beast."
"This kind of thing isn't too important -- these people are always calling for a crusade against somebody. Here's something that worries me a little more, though." She held up a newspaper, opened to a syndicated column. The headline was "Against America."
"Let me read you a little of this. 'Gene Anderson is telling us to give up competitiveness, reduce our population, reduce consumption, disarm ourselves -- in other words, to give up all the things that make this country strong. The rosy future he paints for us is one of villagers baking their own bread, milking their own cows, and patching their own pants, probably under the eye of a commissar appointed by the Kremlin. Is Gene Anderson the Anti-Christ? Maybe. Is he Anti-American? No doubt about it.'"
"Piffle," said Brian Altman.
"Maybe so, but it's the kind of piffle they seem to like in Washington. You know that Senator Monroe has introduced a bill making it a criminal offense to promulgate the doctrines of a cult."
"How can they do that?" asked Cliff Guthrie. "I thought there was something in the Constitution against any law about religion."
"The bill isn't directed against religions, only against cults."
"Well, how do you tell the difference?"
"The bill sets up a Federal Commission on Cults. So a cult is anything declared to be a cult by the commission -- meaning anything the Moral Majority doesn't like."
"Brian, how serious is this?" Gene asked.
"Not very. In my opinion, the bill won't pass, and if it should, it will be struck down by the courts -- this cult commission is a transparent device to evade the Constitution. In any event, they're obviously out to get the Moonies and Hare Krishnas, Church of Scientology, people like that; I don't see how it affects us."
"Lisa?"
"I think we ought to oppose it on principle, just the same. I could get together with a couple of lobbyists and work something out."
"How much?" Gene asked.
"Oh -- sixty, seventy thousand. Maybe a little more."
"Okay, let's do it. Next item?"
From Art Buchwald's column:
The other day my friend Garfinkel handed me a pink dollar bill. "What's this?" I said.
"A Gene's Dollar. I gave it to you because you did something nice. You were starting to light your cigar, but when you saw me coming you put the match out."
I examined the dollar; sure enough, it said: "YOU WERE NICE TO ME."
"What can I do with this?" I asked.
"You can give it to somebody who's nice to you."
"Suppose everybody is nasty to me?"
"Then you get to keep the dollar."
I lit my cigar and puffed smoke at him. "If I put this out again, do I get another dollar?"
"No, because I've only got one more and I'm saving it for my girlfriend."
I puffed steadily; he coughed and turned a little green. Finally, as he got up to go, he handed me another bilclass="underline" on the top it said "Garfinkel's Dollar," and on the bottom, "YOU WERE LOUSY TO ME."
They were in Roanoke a month later when news came that the Anti-Cult Bill had been passed by the Senate and the House on the same day. On the following day it was signed into law by the President, who appointed a five-man commission. At the end of the week the commission announced its preliminary list of organizations proscribed as cults. There were thirty-six; among them was the Anderson Movement.
"They really railroaded it through," said Brian Altman. "Under the statute, anybody who promulgates a proscribed doctrine or induces anyone to join a proscribed organization can be brought up on criminal charges. I hate to say this, but I think we'd better cancel the rest of the tour."
"There will be ten thousand people waiting to get into the civic center tomorrow night. The network crews are here; we've got three people lined up to be healed."
"How can this be happening?" Margaret asked. "You know the Moral Majority is a minority."
"Yes, but it's the kind of minority that runs a lynch mob," said Lisa Finn. "I saw this happen thirty years ago -- a lot of good people were afraid not to quack when everybody else was quacking."
"How's the hate mail running?" Gene asked.
"Pretty high. Worse the last month or so. Some death threats."
"I can't believe this country will throw away its greatest traditions overnight," said Cliff Guthrie.
"Let me tell you about those traditions." Lisa Finn tapped with a pencil on the table for emphasis. "Most of the civil rights we take for granted are recent. Women didn't even get the vote until nineteen twenty. In the forties, thousands of Japanese-Americans were rounded up into concentration camps. The traditions you're talking about say that couldn't happen -- so does the Constitution -- but in fact it was very easy. The President said do it. That's all it took. Don't think it can't happen again."
"Do you agree with Brian, then?"
"I agree it's serious. About going on tonight, I think that's your decision."
Gene looked around the table. The others were nodding. "All right," he said; "we'll go on."
In the focus of the lights and the ten thousand faces, hearing the echoes of his words come back like the sound of handballs bouncing from a court, he said, "The Bible tells you that you must worship God, but I tell you that God doesn't care if you worship him or not. The Bible tells you that you must follow God's commandments, but I tell you that there are no commandments, except the ones built into your bodies, and you haven't got much choice about those -- when you are hungry, you eat, and when you are sleepy you sleep. The Bible tells you that you will be rewarded in heaven if you are good, but I tell you that there is no heaven or hell except in the minds of human beings. This is our life, right here, right now, and it's the only one we've got. The Bible tells you that God is all-knowing, but I tell you that if he knew everything, he would be bored for all eternity. God made us, not because he knew what we would do, but to find out what we would do.
"Remember I didn't say that God doesn't care about us. He does care, because we give him joy and delight, but he won't step in to save us from starving, or getting sick, or falling out a window. He might like to, but that would spoil his great experiment -- to see what will happen if he brings us into the world and then leaves us alone. That's what the world is all about, and that's why he takes delight in us, along with all his other creatures -- because we do things he never expected us to do. What would be the point of an experiment if you knew how it was going to turn out? Or what would be the point of it if you stopped it in the middle and made it turn out the way you thought it would? How would you ever learn anything that way?
"God doesn't care if the human race survives or not. We are not his chosen people. If we become extinct, he's got millions of other species -- species that we're killing off right now at the rate of about one a day. He's got the leopards and the deer and the elephants and the fish in the ocean and the spiders with their wonderful webs. Everything in God's world reflects his beauty, and he can get along without us. We depend on him, not the other -- "
The flat crack of an explosion echoed from the rear of the hall. A little gray smoke was drifting above the distant balcony, and there was a confusion there -- people standing, moving like ants; there were shouts and screams. Ushers and security people were converging on the spot. Just below the podium, the head of the security detail was speaking into his walkie-talkie. "What is it?" Gene said.