I watched the services over television while my chief editors visited me one by one unaware of what had happened, ignoring the presence of the guards. It was assumed that I was too shocked by grief to go to the office. Needless to say, I did not mention to any of them what had happened. At first I had thought it best to expose Paul as a murderer and a fraud but, on second thought (the second thought which followed all too swiftly upon the first, as Paul had no doubt assumed it would), I did not want to risk the ruin of our work. Instead, I decided to wait, to study Paul’s destruction, an event which I had grimly vowed would take place as soon as possible. He could not now get rid of either Iris or me in the near future and all we needed, I was sure, was but a week or two. I was convinced of this though I had no specific plan. Iris had more influence, more prestige in the Establishment than Paul, and I figured, correctly as later events corroborated, that Cave’s death would enhance her position. As for myself, I was not without influence.
I kept my lines of communication clear the next few days during what was, virtually, a house-arrest. The editors came to me regularly and I continued to compose editorials. The explanation for my confinement to my room was, according to a bulletin signed by Stokharin, a mild heart condition. Everyone was most kind. I was amused when I first heard of the diagnosis: one of Stokharin’s pellets in my food and death would be ascribed to coronary occlusion, the result of the strain attendant upon Cave’s death. I had less time than I thought. I made plans.
Paul’s funeral oration was competent though less than inspiring. The Chief Resident of Dallas, one of the great new figures of the Establishment, made an even finer speech over the corpse. I listened attentively, judging from what was said and what was not said the wind’s direction: it was quite obvious that Cavesway was to be the heart of the doctrine. Death was to be embraced with passion; life was the criminal; death the better reality; consciousness was an evil which, in death’s oblivion, met its true fate ... man’s one perfect virtuous act was the sacrifice of his own consciousness to the pure nothing from which, by grim accident, it had come, a malignancy in creation. The Chief Resident of Dallas was most eloquent, and chilling.
Even sequestered in my room, I caught some of the excitement which circled the globe like a lightning storm. Thirty-five hundred suicides were reported within forty-eight hours of Cave’s death. The statisticians lost count of the number of people who fought to get inside the building to see Cave in death. From my window, however, I could see that Park Avenue had been roped off for a dozen blocks. People, like ants, swarmed toward the gates of the tower.
I sent messages to Iris but received none, nor, for that matter, did I have any assurance that she had got mine. Paul’s adventures I followed on television and from the reports of my editors who visited me regularly, despite Stokharin’s orders.
On the third day, I was allowed to go to my office: Paul having decided that it would be thought odd if I were to die so soon after Cave and, too, he was no doubt relieved to discover that I had not revealed to my friends what actually had happened. Having established the fact of my weak heart, my death could be engineered most plausibly at any time.
I did not see him face to face until the fourth day, when John Cave’s ashes were to be distributed over the United States. Stokharin, Paul and I sat in the back seat of a limousine at the head of a motorcade which, beginning at the tower, terminated at the airport where the jet-plane which would sprinkle the ashes over New York, Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles was waiting, along with a vast crowd and the President of the United States, an official Christian but known to incline, as Presidents do, toward the majority.... Cavites were the majority and had been for almost two years.
I was startled to find Paul and Stokharin in the same automobile. It had been my understanding that we were to travel separately in the motorcade. They were most cordial.
“Sorry to hear you’ve been sick, Gene,” Paul grinned ingenuously. “⁗Mustn’t strain the old ticker.”
“I’m sure the good doctor will be able to cure me,” I said cheerfully.