“Seems funny you should since it’s just about the most famous of the texts.” But, though my ignorance continued to startle Butler, I could see that he was beginning to attribute it to senility rather than to laxity or potential idolatry.
“I was a close follower in the first few years,” I said, currying favor. “But I’ve been out of touch since and I suppose that, after Cave’s death, there was a whole mass of new doctrine with which I am unfamiliar, to my regret.”
“Doctrine!” Butler was shocked. “We have no doctrine. We are not one of those heathen churches with claims to 'divine’ guidance. We’re simply listeners to Cavesword. That’s all. He was the first to tell the plain truth and, naturally, we honor him but there is no doctrine even though he guides us the way a good father does his children.”
“I am very old,” I said in my best dying-fall voice. “You must remember that when you are with me you are in the company of a man who was brought up in the old ways, who uses Christian terms from time to time. I was thirty when Cave began his mission. I am, as a matter of fact, nearly the same age as Cave himself if he were still alive.”
This had its calculated effect. Butler looked at me with some awe. “Golly!” he said. “It doesn’t really seem possible, does it? Of course there’re still a few people around who were alive in those days but I don’t know of anybody who actually saw Cave. You did tell me you saw him?”
“Once only.”
“Was he like the telecasts?”
“Oh yes. Even more effective, I think.”
“He was big of course, six feet one inch tall.”
“No, he was only about five feet eight inches, a little shorter than I....”