Jessup smiled. “Intuition, I’m afraid. A terrible admission from one who has been trained in the logic of Cavesword. It seemed exactly right. You’re the right age, the right nationality ... in any case, I telephoned Dallas about you.”
I took this calmly. “You talked to the Chief Resident himself?”
“Of course not.” Jessup was surprised at my suggestion. “One just doesn’t call the Chief Resident like that. Only the senior Residents ever talk to him personally. No, I talked to an old friend of mine who is one or the five principal assistants to the Historian General. We were in school together and his specialty is the deviationists of the early days.”
“And what did you learn from this scholar?”
Jessup gave me a most charming smile. “Nothing at all. There was no such person as I thought existed, as a number of people thought existed. It was all a legend ... a perfectly natural one for gossip to invent. There was a good deal of trouble at the beginning, especially over Cavesway. There was even a minority at Dallas which refused to accept the principle of Cavesway without which of course there could be no Establishment. According to the stories one heard as recently as my university days, ten years ago, the original lutherist had led the opposition to Iris, in the Council and out. For a time it looked as though the Establishment might be broken in two (this, you must remember since you were contemporary to it; fortunately, our Historical Office has tended more and more to view it in the long perspective and popular works on Cave now make no reference to it); in any case, there was an open break and the minority was soon absorbed by the majority.”
“Painlessly?” I mocked him. Could he be telling the truth? or was this a trap?
Jessup shrugged. “These things are never without pain. It is said that an attempt was made on our mother Iris’s life during the ceremony of Cave’s ashes. We still continue it, you know.”
“Continue what?”
“The symbolic gathering of the ashes. But of course you know the origin of all that. There was a grave misinterpretation of Cave’s last wishes. His ashes were scattered over the United States when it was his wish to be embalmed and preserved. Iris, each year, traveled to the four cities over which the ashes had been distributed and she collected a bit of dust in each city to symbolize her obedience to Cavesword in all things. At Seattle, during this annual ceremony, a group of lutherists tried to assassinate her.”
“I remember,” I said. I had had no hand in that dark episode but it provided the Establishment with the excuse they needed. My partisans were thrown in prison all over the country. The government, which by then was entirely Cavite, handed several thousand over to the Centers where they were indoctrinated, ending the heresy for good. Iris herself had secretly arranged for my escape ... but Jessup could know nothing of this.