It was cloudy the next morning. Wearing a yellow cotton dress, the daughter left her hotel after breakfast and took a side street across town. The first fisherman and I, who had become friends, accompanied her. As people recognized her, she spoke with them and answered their questions before continuing. With a growing crowd following her, she detoured through modest residential and commercial zones on a route that took her eventually to a central park. As we approached the park, we saw blue busses on the opposite side and riot police standing in front of them. On the right side, other busses with various color schemes had parked along the street, where unfriendly looking people were milling around. The daughter led her audience to the left side of the park, mounted a band stand and started preaching. Individuals from the crowd beside the multicolored busses drifted over to mingle with her audience, which increased in size as other people arrived. One with black hair braided in a queue behind his head kept glancing at his watch. Having glanced at it for the last time, he shouted:

"Hey! What are you doing here?"
"We don't need you," added a fat one, swinging herself back and forth.
"Why don't you go home and take care of your family?" chirped a witch. She wore a raincoak streaked with odd colors and spike heels.
Other intruders added similar objections.
A man with huge biceps who wore mirror sunglasses and a black leather vest studded with metal stars guffawed like a donkey: "Hee-haw-hee-haw-hee-haw..."
The other intruders laughed as loudly as they could, but no one joined them.

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Meanwhile, the riot police had lined up along their side of the park. The daughter told her audience: "Everyone between fifteen and forty who is healthy, is not pregnant and doesn't have little children with him please move over to that side [pointing towards the policemen] or to that side [pointing towards the agitators]." A phalanx promptly formed on those sides. Followers continued to arrive and, as soon as those to whom she had appealed heard what she had asked, they reinforced the ranks facing the two sides of the park. She turned the megaphone up so that the policemen and the agitators could hear: "My father condemns both aggression and submission to aggressors, both defence and tolerance of a selfish cause, both abusers of power and subordinates who obey them, both the wicked and the indulgent, both you [pointing at the policemen] and you [pointing at the agitators]. How many of you will enter God's community?" She raised her hand, then let it drop and her audience roared: "Shame on you!" It now spread to the streets on the side from which we had come and numbered ten times the strength of the policemen and the agitators combined. By the way they stood, listened and watched, the latter betrayed the hesitation of their leaders.
 

First sirenes and then flashing lights announced the arrival of three big blue cars on the policemen's side. A little man with a square jaw and broad shoulders emerged from the rear seat of the second car and donned a hat with braid on the brim. He had stars on his shoulders and the officers who had come with him hovered around him. Then one of them handed him a megaphone, which he raised in the daughter's direction: "I'm afraid your assembly is illegal, M'am. You have no permit to stage a demonstration. Please ask your audience to disperse. We don't want anyone hurt."

"No permits are required for assembly in a park," she replied. "Ours is overflowing into the street only because this other assembly [she pointed], which you allowed to gather in a street before we arrived, now occupies part of the park as well. Where is their permit?"

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her audience grew even faster. God's enemies, she said, would resort to violence in their desperation to forestall his community. Yet their violence would backfire, destroying them and precipitating the very event they dreaded. The daughter's voice, which usually intoned kindness, rang this time with severity. The agitators raised several choruses of jeers, but she squelched each of them with the roar of tens of thousands of voices: "Shame on you!" After one of these roars, the beating sound of rotors reached our ears and two helicopters began to circle over us while a third hovered higher and further away. The chief, who held a microphone, was apparently in contact with them. They drowned the daughter's voice without intimidating her audience, which continued to grow and now began to lose their patience. Several times, the phalanx started to advance and, each time, she turned her amplifier up and told them to stop, and they obeyed.
 

Some overstretched limousines arrived on the policemen's side and a delegation in dark suits and bright ties joined the chief and his staff. After ordering the helicopters to move away, the chief raised his megaphone to the daughter and transmitted an invitation by the mayor to come over and talk to him and a delegation of city councilmen, business, religious and cultural leaders.

"Citizens who elected the mayor are all around me. Let him come over here."

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over the daughter's indifference to his charm. He had never met a woman like her. Their courteous and patient negotiation lasted at least ten minutes, as if the rain weren't falling thicker and faster. He tried every trick in his bag to persuade her to send her followers home, except the rain which he forgot. Every time he requested it, she asked him why he hadn't sent the agitators and the policemen home. Hadn't the agitators tried to disrupt her assembly? Her audience had done nothing worse to them than laugh at them. Who had recruited and financed them? What were the police doing there? Why had they lined up beside her audience and not the crowd of agitators? She and her audience had broken no law and she had no intention of sending them home until they had sung hymns together. More fearful of failure than hopeful for success, the mayor finally proposed:

"I could order the police to withdraw a block and I could ask those other demonstrators to withdraw a block too. I should think they would comply."

The first hymn the daughter sang with her audience forgave their enemies, urged them to repent and wished them eligibility for God's community. She had them face the police as they sang. The blue ranks stirred with embarrassment and the misery of the rain, although her audience seemed to enjoy it. Returning, the three helicopters circled low enough to challenge the singing by their noise and blow the rain 

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down on the singers with their rotors, yet the latter took pride in raising their voices above the whine of the turbines and the thumping in the air. The police would estimate them at 300 000 and the press, unable to get an estimate from the daughter or her disciples, at 400 000, but, of course, no one could tell exactly. After a few more hymns, we heard the rumble of heavy vehicles and a column of camouflaged armored cars and trucks full of troops approached the park on the side opposite the agitators' busses. The armored cars parked along the street on that side, while soldiers with weapons descended from the trucks, lined up along the edge of the park and pushed the daughter's followers off of the street. The daughter, who had all the volunteers she needed, extended the phalanx around to that side. After several blasts of "Shame on you!" she applied her doctrine of sin to the situation. Asking her audience to face the army, she observed that officers who abused their power sinned more than troops who obeyed them, but the troops also sinned and sin barred entry to God's community. Then she drew their attention to the corner between the ranks of the police and those of the army, where a general was standing next to the chief under umbrellas held by their aides. She raised and dropped her hand: "Shame on you!" roared her audience, while the two officers affected a stony indifference. Finally, she asked her followers to face the police. Police chiefs, who had the responsibility of enforcing the law, faced the temptation of confusing it with their own interests and those of the politicians who commanded them. The policemen under their command faced the temptation of unquestioning obedience in the interest of raises and promotions. Weren't the police supporting a minority of agitators bussed in to intimidate a majority who were exersizing their right of peaceful assembly? Weren't their helicopters harrassing them? The daughter raised her arm and dropped it: "Shame on you!" She turned her audience back to the general: "Generals have the duty to command their troops in defence of their country from aggression by foreign powers or rebellion by their fellow citizens. What excuse do you have for deploying yours here? Why haven't you deployed them over there as well?" She pointed at the agitators. "Why are you threatening a peaceful assembly by your fellow citizens?" She waved her arm over them. "These are not only your fellow citizens, but also taxpayers who fund your salary and your army. You are abusing fellow creatures and, 

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unless you repent, you will not enter God's community." She raised and dropped her arm: "Shame on you!" Finally, she drew her audience's attention to the soldiers, who were standing more proudly than the policemen. "Nor will you enter God's community either if you continue to obey orders depriving your fellow citizens of their civil rights. Your job is to defend us, not to attack us. Not one of us is armed. Not one has raised his arm against you or anyone else. Not one has broken the law." As her audience stared in silence, the soldiers began to feel miserable in the rain and some of them stirred or shivered. The daughter raised her arm and dropped it: "Shame on you!"
 

The rain kept falling, more hymns resounded in the soldiers' and policemen's ears, people heard the singing miles away. Before the final prayer, the daughter warned her listeners to stay together as much and as long as possible on the way home and avoid contact with any unfriendly people they might meet on the way. Despite this precaution, gangs of agitators attacked them, throwing rocks and swinging bottles. In every case, however, they encountered stiffer resistance than they had expected and ran away. They had inflicted more cuts and bruises than they had suffered, but they complained loudly to the police, according to their instructions, and claimed that they had been attacked. Humiliated, the mayor and the police chief exaggerated the danger they saw in the daughter's unannounced assembly and warned, more truculently than sincerely, that they would not let her disturb the peace again. Refusing to make any comments, the general snapped at reporters who kept asking him about rumors of his anger over playing the role of a scapegoat. On the other hand, so many people joined the daughter's ministry during the next few days that the administration she had established struggled for an entire month to assimilate them. As usual, the press applauded success.
 

The daughter was visiting a public housing complex one morning, when a crowd gathered around her. While speaking with them, she suddenly turned around: "Who tugged my skirt?" she asked eagerly looking for a child. There were some standing there, but their mothers had them by the hand or the shoulders. Then a woman with straggly 

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hair, feverish eyes, a long, tear-streaked face, worn and faded clothing, and little more than skin on her bones came up and fell on her knees:

"I'm sorry, M'am! I didn't mean any harm. I thought maybe you could help. Nobody else can."

Hagiography had a different story: The daughter asked who had touched her more sternly and added: "I felt power flowing from my body." When the woman fell on her knees and explained, she added:

"I had been bleeding for fifteen years and no doctor had ever been able to stop it or even tell me what it was. And now you have healed me. I can feel that the bleeding has stopped."

The daughter visited a modest middle-class suburb of the same city. The surprising diversity of the inhabitants suggested that they had 

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little more in common than the desire to live in a nice place and enough money to pay for it. The rectangular monotony of streets lined with trees, sidewalks, lawns and houses which, although you had seen smiliar ones many times before, were mostly different from each other, seemed pleasant and reassuring. Almost everyone had a garden in back and, when the daughter led us down a side street, we found a man in coveralls looking at a figtree and scratching his white head. After an exchange of greetings, the daughter observed: "You should have fruit on your figtree by now."

"Yes," he said. "I usually do and I can't figure out why there aren't any this year."

"Wasn't your garage painted recently?" asked the manager.

"Yes. My wife kept telling me she was tired of white. She said this red reminded her of Sweden."

The manager stepped behind the figtree and ran his fingers over the boards. "Maybe she wouldn't mind if you painted a trompe-l'oeil window here with plenty of white space to represent the glass."

"So that's what trompe-l'oeil means! It sounds like a great idea, but I'm no artist."

"You buy the paint, the brushes and the masking tape, and I will help you do it. How about right now?"

"Dear, wouldn't it be nice to have a real window there? You could see your way around inside."

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so the tree has no excuse for its sterility. Disappointed, the daughter prays: "Oh Lord, punish this tree. Praise God." When she returns that afternoon, the leaves have withered and they are falling to the ground. I have always wondered why our miracle mongers thought the tree should be punished. Since nothing is impossible for God, wouldn't he have preferred to restore its fertility instead of killing it? Punishing an inanimate being for its inability to perform its natural function seems worse than vindictive to me; in fact, it seems idiotic. Never did I witness any word or deed that would tend to implicate the daughter in such an attitude.
 

She had called a meeting with her disciples in the suburb to plan the expansion of her mission to the entire country. The number of her followers outside the region on which she had been concentrating was already increasing at an accelerating rate. While the number of her opponents was increasing more slowly, the influence, wealth and power they wielded necessitated a national response. In many of the places where she and her disciples planned to travel, the local authorities had recourse to every excuse they could find to inhibit their visit, such as delaying issuance of permits to assemble. Sometimes the police would stop their vehicles at the city limits, search them and check their identity as if they suspected them of violent intentions. Hostile propaganda often greeted them everywhere from road signs to television screens. Excited by sermons and talk shows, certain elements of every population were looking for trouble and usually found it. They mingled with admiring crowds and formed groups who tried to ambush the visitors with jeers and threats, if not shoves and blows. Since the daughter's followers always outnumbered them, however, they always had to retreat. Policemen appeared along the followers' routes and around their assemblies with orders to contain them and keep them from harming others, which some of them interpreted as an invitation to collaborate with their enemies. Several times, they tried to stop a procession by a roadblock in violation of an agreement between city officials and the mission. Yet the crowds always swept around the barricade, using parallel streets if necessary and drowning the policemen in friendly smiles and words. On the rare occasions when the army reinforced the police, soldiers proved even less effective than policemen against peaceful crowds surrounding 

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them and their vehicles. The courtesy and sympathy of the crowds sapped their morale and undermined their obedience. Shouting at the crowds only displayed their officers' frustration, thus weakening respect for them and hence discipline itself. The troops obeyed their orders ever less promptly and energetically, sometimes resorting to a mere pretence, such as gripping their rifle or baton as if they meant to use it. When no act followed such a gesture, the crowd saw it for what it was and made even more pressing overtures. The profound motive for these self-defeating attempts to disrupt the daughter's ministry wasn't fear of aggression, but rather loss of influence. Panic was seizing political, professional, business, religious, intellectual, artistic and even sports leaders who owed their authority to publicity. Most of those who rendered genuine services supported the daughter despite angry accusations of betrayal. The disqualified leaders protested against what they called a division of society. Secretly, they resented the implication of exclusion from God's community. The daughter's association with pariahs such as criminals, prostitutes, addicts, drunkards, beggars, tax collectors, etc. struck them as an insult. How could God admit such people to his community and exclude them?
 

The daughter answered these critics by a parable which she told in one of the cities on her itinerary. "A poor immigrant from a backward country sought asylum from persecution for his opinion in a modern country which took democracy for granted. He eagerly accepted several jobs that citizens of his new country disdained: cleaning public restrooms, shoveling at a landfill and scouring storage tanks. Risking his health, he worked so hard and ate so little that he was able to send a third of his meager pay to his family in the old country, who depended on him for survival. Five years after his arrival, he began to find jobs that paid more and endangered his health less: unskilled labor on a construction site, packing and unpacking containers at a port facility, loading and unloading baggage on airplanes. During this period, which lasted about five more years, he sent a third of his pay to his family, lived on a third and saved a third. Then a recession cost him his airline job, so he had to wash pots and pans in a restaurant run by a fellow countryman at the airport. This was a blessing in disguise, however, for his new boss discovered that he could learn how to cook. 

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After cutting raisons into four pieces, shaving carrots as fine as hair and carving ham in slices so thin that customers held them up to the light, he graduated to salads that made them forget the subject of conversation, soups that brought tears to their eyes and a vegetable dish that filled the tables from noon until two and from six until eight. The boss made him his chef and raised his pay to discourage other restaurants from trying to hire him away. Befriending him, he gave him the opportunity to earn a share of the business.
 

"During a seasonal lull, he even encouraged him to realize his fifteen-year old dream of a few weeks vacation in the old country, a visit with his family and marriage to a young woman whom he had never forgotten. Although his family had managed on the money he sent them, poverty, caused in part by friendship with him, had forced the young woman to resort to prostitution. Convinced that she hadn't had any choice, however, he married her and brought her back with him. The new hostess charmed the customers, who brought their friends, so that the other restaurants at the airport lost customers. Getting on, the boss retired and sold his share to the chef, but the business continued to prosper. Soon the new owner and his wife had little twins whom the customers adored almost as much as the parents. The usual turnover had given him the opportunity to hire a cousin and an old friend to wait on tables, which they did to everyone's satisfaction despite initial problems with the language. He knew that the cousin had taken drugs, dealt in drugs and even been involved in a drug-dealing syndicate. He also knew that the friend had participated in an urban resistance movement, had been imprisoned, tortured, etc., and had finally joined a guerilla band who occasionally kidnapped a few foreigners to pay their expenses. The junta who were sucking the orange dry for pleasure and vanity had driven others to worse. Moved by his trust in them, his two new waiters handled cash and credit cards as scrupulously as he did himself. How long could this bliss last?
 

"A stylish young couple, who looked like they belonged to the same race, yet belonged to one entirely different, checked into a fancy hotel in a big city at the other end of the country. They took the express 

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elevator up to a luxury suite on the next to the last floor with a bellhop, who was dreaming of another dollar with every floor they passed. He had two suitcases and three trunks on his cart. Disappointed with exactly what others gave him, he dispensed with offers of further service and shut the door behind him. Instead of unpacking their baggage, the gentleman made a brief call in their language, while the lady admired the view. She looked down on other towers trying to outreach each other, the civic and cultural centers with their classic pretentions, the churches in gothic imitation, the tree-filled parks, the port with its praying mantises and toy ships, the great suspension bridge, the tree-lined suburbs, fruitfly airplanes moving up, down and around at the airport on the horizon. Down below, tiny people and vehicles were creeping around as if they really thought they had somewhere to go. A knock on the door announced the first of five companions, who arrived in ones or twos at well-spaced intervals. Less interested in each other than what they were going to do together, they greeted each other with a quick bow over pressed palms. Well coordinated, they unpacked the baggage, which contained few clothes and many weapons. An hour later, a young man from a delicatessen specializing in food from their region made a delivery big enough to fill the same kind of cart as the one used by the bellhop. As soon as he had left, the team unpacked the food, stored most of it in the kitchen, warmed the rest up and served it. Preoccupied, they indulged in little talk and no humor. 
 

"The board of the chain that owned the hotel was meeting the next morning in a room on the top floor, built and furnished specifically for this purpose. Masked and armed, four people wearing exersize suits in the same gray as the steel building burst into the room, two at one end and two at the other. Training their weapons on them, they ordered them to stretch their arms across the table and be quiet. A fifth, whose muscles bulged under his suit, followed pushing a hostess backwards, whose neck he held in one hand at arm's length. Trim, young and scared, she submitted limply. Her pink suit with a mini-skirt, deep-cut white blouse and spiked heels contrasted grotesquely with the solid gray mass of her executioner. Once he had pushed her halfway down the side of the long table, he tightened his grip. Her head jerked, her arms flayed and her legs kicked so that one of her shoes flew off, but

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the violence of her struggle gradually diminished until she suddenly flopped hanging from his fist. Grabbing her thigh with the other hand, he threw her on the table, where the thump of her body made the members of the board jump. There she lay sprawled on her back with her limbs askew, her eyes bulging and her mouth torn open.
 

"On the ground floor, the first sign of trouble was the digital display indicating that the express elevator had stuck at the top floor. A few minutes later, clothes fell on the plaza outside, both over and undergarments, both men's and women's, but all of them elegant. A crowd assembled gawking upwards. Two employees climbing the stairs to check the elevator heard an explosion at the top, which shook the building, then debris and dust fell down. Once the dust had settled, they cautiously continued their climb until they found that the first of the two flights down from the next to the last floor had fallen down in parallel with the second one. Suddenly a shot rang out, a bullet ricocheted on the landing beside them and they ran back downstairs, nearly stumbling and falling. The reception organized an evacuation of the hotel, beginning with the customers on the next to the next to the top floor and working downwards. Sirenes screamed as the police surrounded the building and a police helicopter approached, then retreated after a warning burst from a machine gun on the roof terrace. Loudspeakers, radios and television broadcasts warned people to leave all areas visible from the top of the hotel and all rooms in other buildings with windows on that side within a radius of a mile. The mayor convened his crisis team.
 

"A television station ran a clip of the clothes falling on the plaza and the crowd gazing up at the tower, which an amateur had taken with his video recorder. When the commentator reappeared at the end, another image superimposed itself over him showing seventeen naked, middle-aged men and women dancing on a long table, if dancing can describe twisting and shaking in frantic imitation of their grandsons and granddaughters. Although they barely had enough room for this recreation, they avoided something lying on the table that closer inspection identified as the body of a young woman. The music to which they were dancing sounded like a diabolical noise to ears unaccustomed to the exotic scale, rhythm and timbre of the instruments

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as well as the apparent shrieking, wailing and groaning of the voices. The scene might have been hilarious without the corpse. But then the music stopped and the camera focused on various individuals who, as they writhed with shame and fear, recited parts of a message each had learned by heart.

A pathetic little man whose skin resembled parchment: 'I confess that our company and our country are hopelessly corrupt and depraved.' Even close friends hesitated before they recognized the once dapper president of the hotel chain.
A woman who had had several children: 'I confess that we have collaborated with the cruel and brutal dictator of a poor country by building a hotel in his capital and bribing him with a share of our earnings.' The once elegant vice president for overseas expansion.
An athlete whose muscles were beginning to sag: 'I confess that our crimes, both those of our company and those of our country, deserve extermination and destruction.' A once handsome and dynamic lady killer, the vice president for public relations.
A golfer who might have been on the way to the shower of his locker room: 'As we wallow in luxury like pigs in their filth, our government supports the ferocious repression of a movement dedicated to the democratic liberation of a nation as virtuous as we are vicious.' The once insignificant-looking and much-heeded representative of a contolling interest in the company.
A grandmother who clung to a little more dignity than the others: 'I confess that, if the demands of our kind and worthy visitors are not met immediately, we deserve to die, one by one, an exemplary and shameful death, until they are met.' The chairlady of the board, as sweet as candy and as hard as nails.

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"Once the terrorists in the tower had stopped substituting their signal for the one sent from the television station to the antenna above them, the station explained what they had done and identified the country they had came from. A journalist began to comment on the political and economic situation there, but a voice, which the bellhop and the clerk at the reception recognized as that of the young lady, intervened with angry contradictions and remarks whenever he deviated from the terrorists' ideology. She even scolded him with insults such as 'leaping flea,' 'vulture neck,' 'buffalo turd,' 'monkey screech' and 'minnow fart.' A guffaw that got away from him may have brought the first body down screaming and flailing to a loud and messy splotch on the flagstones of the plaza. Although deliberate misses by a sniper kept the police away, binoculars enabled friends and associates to identify the president. The young lady also answered the phone when it rang, but only after it had rung eleven times. The compatriot on the line, who owned a local import-export business, got nothing out of her except that another hostage would fall without tangible evidence that their demands were being met. The mayor told him to say that they were being met. Ten minutes later, three armored cars approached and parked in front of the hotel where the terrorists could see them, yet the naked hostages standing on the table reappeared on television. Millions of people saw the muscular guerilla approach the vice president for overseas development, jerk her down and throw her on the floor. As she scrambled to her hands and knees, he chopped her head off and then dismembered her body, which he also cut in two. Her body parts fell around the president's body on the plaza. No one answered the phone when it rang this time, but, after ten minutes of colorful streaks, the chairlady appeared on television and read from a paper: 'Just because they come from a country poorer than ours, our teachers are not so foolish as to believe that parking three armored cars near the hotel means that you are going to pay their debts. They know that you are sneaking a reaction team in by the subway and planning an assault on the liberated floors of the hotel. If you don't transfer the funds and if the president of our country doesn't commit himself to the reforms requested, they will punish me as I deserve and my colleagues as well until you meet these just conditions. When you are ready for an immediate electronic transfer of the funds, our teacher will give you

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the numbers of the bank and the account. You will have little time to complete the transaction and none at all to follow it up.' Despite their anxiety, millions admired her calm and composure, noticing nothing more than a slight pursing of her lips. She might have been reading, fully dressed, a bad report to her board.
 

"A frantic call came from the compatriot, who pleaded for time, but the chairlady fell streaking flames and smoke. The increasing hiss of the fire preceded the thud of the impact. Ten minutes later, the reaction team came running up the stairs with ladders and, covered by fire from the landing below, scaled the gap to the next to the last floor. At the same time, helicopter gunships circled the antenna firing everywhere a gunman might be hiding, while a transport helicopter landed on the terrace and troops hit the ground running. Then the top of the tower disintegrated in an explosion heard and seen for miles in every direction and by millions on television. Black smoke mushroomed from the jagged upper extremity of the building. Since it had been evacuated, only the board and the two reaction teams had died with the terrorists, but that was enough to make widows, widowers, orphans and mourners of many unsuspecting people. A hugh crowd with tears streaking their cheeks and consternation in their faces assembled behind the ribbons that cordoned the building off. In addition to them, the networks showed the helicopter assault, the explosion, the mushroom and the jagged top of the building over and over again. Experts explained how and why the catastrophe had occurred, and recommended a variety of countermeasures, most of them against foreigners who either helped the terrorists in the tower or wanted to follow their example. The presumed spy or spies who had tipped them off about the arrival of the reaction team received much attention. The president of the country exploited the opportunity to commiserate with the victims, deplore the damage, vow retaliation and promote measures that he had undertaken months before, some of which would inhibit the civil rights of aliens and others that would develop weapons of no use against terrorist attacks. He loved his country so much, he said, that he couldn't understand why anyone would want to do what these terrorists had done. They must have been evil, yet good always triumphs over evil in the end. 

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'God is with us. He is on our side. We love our country, we are united and we will prevail,' he concluded. The success of this speech resulted in frequent rebroadcasts and quotations. People hung the national flag from their front porches, stuck it on their vehicles, wore it on their lapels. They sang the national anthem and other patriotic songs with great enthusiasm at all assemblies and especially sports events. Entertainers organized variety shows to raise money for the victims. A strange optimism encouraged by politicians suggested that the country was already triumphing over evil. Wary of questioning this fervor, critics kept their skepticism to themselves, except one who confirmed that the company had bribed the dictator and that the government was subsidizing his regime. Why spend so much to counter effects when elimination of the cause would save money? This question incited an angry reaction attacking the asker's patriotism instead of answering him.
 

"The number of diners at the ethnic restaurant declined dramatically after the terrorist attack, far more than the decline in airline passengers would explain, since the other restaurants at the airport lost fewer customers. Those who did come were less friendly, less confident and less generous. Then two agents of the federal police appeared one afternoon, inspected passports and questioned the owner, his wife, his cousin and his friend. They arrested the friend, took the cousin with them for further questioning and warned the couple not to leave town. They had shown all four a photo of the young lady, whom a customer had testified having seen in the restaurant. None of them remembered her, yet all had to admit that, with hundreds of customers every day, they might have forgotten. The owner asked the agents to find out whether the witness had any connection with one of the other restaurants at the airport, but he never heard the answer to this question. A week later, the immigration service arrested his wife for failing to reveal her former career and would have deported her, if her husband hadn't hired a lawyer to try and overturn the decision. After holding the cousin as a material witness for a month, the federal police turned him over to the immigration service, who did deport him because of his involvement in the drug trade. Poverty drove him to reinvolve himself in it. After three months of trying to link the 

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friend to the guerilla movement responsible for the attack, the federal police turned him over to the immigration service for deportation too. The junta arrested, imprisoned and executed him. Resentment against people from the region, backbiting by rival restaurants, and the friend's, the cousin's and the wife's problems with the law ruined our restaurant owner's business. He had to sell out at a disastrous loss and return with his wife to the old country, where they eked out a marginal living by a fast-food stand. Most of his former customers began to regret his restaurant and complain of the others at the airport."
 

Eager and anxious speakers rushed to microphones awaiting them in various places in the outdoor ampitheatre where the daughter had told this parable. Their questions and comments developed and animated a discussion that lasted nearly an hour. Shouldn't hotels with a certain number of rooms and other buildings that attract a large number of people check the contents of customers' baggage? Yes, some said, but the owners or leasees should pay for it since it was the cost of doing business. Others objected that the government should pay for it because terrorism placed an unfair burden on business. The amount of food stored by the terrorists showed that they were ready for a protracted standoff: perhaps, despite the prompt executions, the negotiators could have limited the loss of life by phased downpayments on the ransoms and preliminary steps towards meeting the other demands. Some argued that drawing the confrontation out held the best promise of a resolution, while others replied that the first execution should have prompted as rapid an intervention as possible. Opinions varied over the relations that a wealthy democratic nation should have with a poor autocratic one. Most agreed that competition with other developed nations didn't justify economic and military concessions that supported an autocracy. The government in the parable shouldn't have given aide to such a regime and it should have discouraged the company from bribing the dictator. Both policies detracted from the democracy's reputation. While no one defended the president for using the attack as an excuse to develop unsuited weapons, a dispute erupted over the limitation of aliens' civil rights, in which some saw a pernicious injustice and others a necessary evil. The former protested against sacrificing an overwhelming majority of innocent aliens to eliminate the danger of a few terrorists lurking among them.
 

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"I agree," said the daughter. "God will exclude anyone who perpetrates such an injustice from his community. We are approaching the moral of the story. Who would like to expose it?"

A scruffy baritone with a wedge-shaped face and wild gray hair: "Attempts to rank according to merit the convenient categories in which we classify different kinds of people necessarily result in injustice. Merit varies extensively within every category."
A meager soprano in a gray dress and a straw hat: "The ethnic identity of the five individuals in the restaurant embraces two who have always led honorable lives and three, who, forced by adversity to lead dishonorable lives, undergo throrough reform as soon as they have the opportunity."

"Not counting the twins. Who could have been more innocent?"
A fat young tenor in a dark suit with a flame and smoke tie: "Will God admit the two misfortunate backsliders?"

A little boy soprano: "I hope he decides against demagogues."
A chorus: "So do I."

"How about all true terrorists still alive?"

Although hecklers were infiltrating almost every assembly held by the daughter, even the cleverest of them succeeded only in provoking a rebuke by an overwhelming majority of the audience. Almost everywhere she went, agitators tried to intimidate her and her followers, but nothing scared her, so little scared them. The assailants got their share of bruised lips, black eyes and bloody noses. Resorting to sticks and stones, they paid the price of broken noses, cracked collar bones and worse. A few from both sides went to emergency rooms where interns set their limbs 

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and sewed them back up with little danger of disability or death. Then a bomb exploded in the auditorium of a museum during the night before an assembly. Although no one was hurt, the damage scared administrators of other meeting places into canceling engagements with the daughter. She was speaking to a hundred and fifty thousand people in a city square when a bullet whined over her head and a bang reverberated between the walls. Her listeners screamed or shouted, flinched, ducked or started to run, but she stood like a statue, so they became quiet and calm again. "No one will shoot her way into God's community. Cowards who hide and shoot forsake it as irrevocably as those who incite or pay them for fear of exposing themselves. Aim right here," she dared the sniper with her hand over her heart. Seeing that the police did little slowly, several followers ran to the building from which the shot had come, caught the sniper running down the fire escape in back and hustled her to the nearest police station with her rifle, which they had found in a room on the top floor. She was a dark little beauty with razor sharp fingernails whose jade eyes glowed with hatred: "Next time, I will give her what she asks for." They refused to leave the station until the police had charged and jailed her. One stayed on to make sure they didn't release her, while another contacted a lawyer. The press reported the astonisment of many observers over the daughter's knowledge of the sniper's sex and some, whom she contradicted, called it a miracle. Towards the end of their commentary, some journalists even remembered her courage and determination.
 

The men and women who had caught the sniper belonged to the security force organized by the first fisherman. To lead it, he had appointed a specialist in unconventional warfare, who had retired from the army when higher-ups connived with conservatives in congress to sabotage his promotion to brigadier general. He had led the reaction to the shot by the sniper. "Sticks and stones are one thing," he warned the first fisherman; "bombs and firearms are another." Neither did he ask for firearms yet, however, nor did the fisherman propose them. He took pride in the courage, the discipline and the skill of the force dedicated to the protection of the daughter and her followers. Although they carried no weapons, they had learned how to locate, isolate, neutralize and disarm opponents who did. Some of them also had 

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experience in the even more dangerous skill of defusing bombs and booby traps. They taught the others how to detect them and help with the investigation of explosions. Allegiance to the daughter and dedication to God's community built a more effective force than the money and other incentives lavished on policemen and agitators to oppose them. The cooperation of the daughter's followers enabled her force to anticipate some threats before they materialized and counter others as soon as they did. Encouraged by their success, the colonel and his people persistently embarrassed her enemies, whose far more numerous hirelings kept asking for more money and, occasionally disgruntled, betrayed them to the press. Outrage over the enemies' tactics brought others into the fold by the thousands every day. This success challenged the manager and his associates to integrate the new members and expand the organization without weakening the daughter's control.
 

The frequency and violence of attempts to intimidate her and her followers were nonetheless increasing. Though unsuccessful, they inflicted injury on people and damage on property that dissuaded owners and managers from renting auditoriums to her. The destruction of vehicles discouraged some of her followers from providing transportation. Threats drove some to withdraw their support, but incited others to increase theirs. Injuries from bombs, molotov cocktails and rubber bullets increased in number and gravity, until a bomb exploded by a radio signal maimed one of her followers who was trying to defuse it. Then masked men hijacked a bus full of children on the way to a school where the daughter was meeting children. As soon as she heard what had happened, she left the other children with the first fisherman, whom children adored, and met the parents of the kidnapped ones in another room. Some were resentful, others, hysterical and still others, distraught, so that every time she tried to speak, someone interrupted her. Finally, she managed to tell them: "Your children are my children too. The hirelings of people who are afraid of you and me have kidnapped them. Fear for their privileges has driven them to this crime. If you display your own fear, you will reward them and they will keep your children as long as it serves their purpose. Every tear and whimper will encourage them, especially if 

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seen or heard on television. Refuse all interviews with journalists and tell them to interview the people who commissioned the crime. They will say they don't know who they are, but don't believe them. Meanwhile, I will make the perpetrators pay a price they can't afford."
 

In a few hours, crowds of followers assembled everywhere a known enemy of the daughter lived, worked or frequented. Most of them were unknown only to legal identification. Wherever they drove or were driven, wherever they shopped, played cards, golf or tennis, visited, spoke, conversed, dined, worshipped or slept, crowds prayed for them, sang hymns to them and heard sermons by the daughter or one of her collaborators on the exclusion of kidnappers from God's community. On television, unkidnapped children expressed their horror of grownups who would stoop to such a crime. How would they like it if their children or grandchildren were kidnapped? The media feasted on these manifestations and even more on the reactions of the accused. Reporters kept pestering them about the kidnapping, asking them whether they had ordered it, and, if they hadn't (skeptical face), who had. In any case, why weren't they moving to put an end to the outrage? A cynic whom the press loved to hate insinuated that the daughter and her disciples had organized the hijacking and the kidnapping themselves in order to embarrass him and his friends. "Are you capable of embarrassment, Sir?" a journalist asked.

Flushed, the cynic snapped: "Wipe that smile off of your face!"

Doorbells rang at all of the residences of the kidnapped children in the middle of the night. Rushing to the door, the parents discovered their children and both wept as much as they laughed. The hugging almost suffocated the children who, however sweetly and gently the parents tucked them in, slept not one wink. When the press discovered the event early the next morning, they amplified the relief of the reunited 

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families and their gratitude towards the daughter. Calls from tens of thousands of people who wanted to join the mission jammed the telephone network. The kidnapped children had observed their masked captors with surprizing acuity, for they could describe their voices, their builds, their smell and especially their habits. A big one with a rough voice strutted around scuffing his shoes as if he wanted to scrape mud off of them. A skinny one with a squeaky voice and a jerky walk pretended to be nice. Instead of talking, a fat one sighed, grunted and shrugged his sloping shoulders. A flat one who had stuffed her bosom smelled sweet like a bathroom. Why did she toss her hair like that? It looked frizzly and had a funny color. Journalists reported these remarks because they knew the public would find them cute, which they did, but some recognized the kidnappers, who ranged from petty policemen to petty criminels and included a few employees of the daughter's enemies. 
 

Among her followers were judges, lawyers, law professors and public officials who prodded the police to investigate. A lawyer whom the daughter had chosen as a disciple coordinated their efforts. Over six feet, she had a muscular build and a man's voice. Although her opponents privately compared her to the horses she rode, they showed her the public respect she had earned by defending famous innocents. They especially feared her irony, which cut deeply enough to give juries fits of laughter and prosecutors fits of rage. The police pursued their investigation as slowly as they dared, until the public, alerted by her, lost its patience and demanded that the chief of police be fired. The investigation came to a hurried and negligent end, so that she had to supplement it by hiring a private detective. In court, the prosecutor dragged his feet on the excuse that the witnesses were minors. Taking his cue, a defender whom the accused could never have afforded argued that the daughter and her followers had coached the witnesses. He twisted the ease with which they had recognized the defendants into evidence of their prejudice against the socially disadvantaged. They had conspired to incriminate associates and employees of respectable citizens who dared to oppose them. Though convicted, the hirelings got off with a half-suspended sentence of several years in prison. Persistent efforts to bring the instigator to justice resulted in litigation that lasted until after the daughter's death.
 

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The mutilation of one of her followers by a remotely ignited explosion had announced a change in her enemies' strategy. They no longer planted bombs to scare her and her followers, but rather to maim or kill them. Her followers were finding more bombs and, while taking precautions against radio-signals, her bomb squad encountered other cunning devices. They had to buy more sophisticated equipment, such as robots, and train new volunteers to cope with the number of bombs and booby traps. The mutilated bomb expert helped with the training. He had lost an eye, an arm below the elbow and two legs below the knees. It had taken a dozen operations to mend his internal injuries, to the extent that they could be mended. When he understood what had happened to him, he exclaimed: "I almost missed God's community." With tears in her eyes, the daughter kissed his cheek and urged the surgeon, whom she had chosen as a disciple, to make sure that he receive the attention he deserved.

The surgeon smiled slightly: "For medical attention, count on me. He doesn't need me for the other kind."

The daughter's followers caught people trying to plant bombs and turned them over to the police, who found excuses to let them go. Twice they caught a woman trying to attach a bomb to the bottom of a van used by some of the daughter's disciples. She finally killed a disciple with a bomb that exploded when he started his car. The police laughed at a witness who had seen her the night before with an overnight bag near the car: what was wrong with carrying an overnight bag around at night? Amplified by the press, the remark reverberated across the country. The police examined the body, the wreckage and the site so meticulously that they found no evidence of the woman's guilt. They did find a wrench in what was left of the trunk with the second fisherman's fingerprints on it. When he explained that he had forgotten it while changing a wheel with a slit tire, they frowned their skepticism. Again, the lawyer confronted the prosecutor with evidence collected by the daughter's bomb squad and forced him to prosecute 

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the woman. Getting her into prison and keeping her there took persistence.
 

The daughter and her disciples had been receiving threats by telephone, fax, e-mail and notes scribbled on paper and slipped under doors or sprayed on vehicles or walls. These threats often implicated their families and especially their children. Tires were slit, rocks thrown through windows, children bullied, girls molested, cars set on fire, insurance rates raised and policies canceled. Two disciples were fired by companies for whom they had worked for years on the excuse that their presence endangered the other employees. Police were stopping disciples' cars because they had crossed the center line by ten centimeters for a second or failed to signal a turn for fifty meters before making it. One disciple got a ticket for parking thirty centimeters from the curb and another, for letting her dog urinate on a tree visited by countless others. Attempts to overcharge them for purchases or services forced them to scrutinize all bills, an unpleasant precaution that often hurt honest feelings. Scowlers elbowed them in crowds, jostled past them on escalators, broke into lines ahead of them, served others first who had come after them. Followers met with unprovoked sarcasm or contempt in many of the trivial encounters involved in living their lives. They knew that only a small minority of their fellow creatures were stooping to such behavior, but they couldn't tell which ones would do it until they had done it. Minor insults began to humiliate them and torment them long after they had occurred. They treated strangers with a timidity or assertiveness that affected the relations between them adversely. I reported these incidents and, while other journalists did likewise, some belittled them or blamed them on the daughter and her disciples, alleging a chip on their shoulders.
 

Both the favorable and the unfavorable publicity continued to persuade large numbers of people to join the mission, but now the rate began to decelerate. While the minority against the daughter increased at the same slow rate, a neutral segment of the population emerged and grew more rapidly than the other two. Although indifference to the daughter's message motivated them less than fear of retaliation, they dressed their monday up in a sunday suit. Her warning that tolerance of sin was also sin didn't worry them as much as her enemies. After 

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expanding her organization to cover the entire country, she and her collaborators consolidated their administration and examined their options. Noting a pause in her ascendancy, commentators found that she would have to prophesy the exact time when God would establish his community to avoid losing her momentum. Cries of "when exactly?" echoed them with increasing intensity and frequency. They not only came from foes, but also from friends driven by every emotion from doubt to impatience. Hadn't the daughter instilled a yearning in them? How long would they put up with uncertainty? How much delay would they tolerate? Soon her enemies wouldn't be the only ones to suspect that God's community was only a mirage luring thirsty people into a trackless desert. Might the preponderance of opinion not shift against her, reversing the momentum of her ministry and crushing all but a remnant of her mission? Wasn't the community just the routine of all sects? Wouldn't she suffer the fate of many fanatics who had convinced themselves that they were leading their fellows into a better world? And others who knew very well that they were doing nothing of the kind, but hoped that fraud would bring them prestige, power and wealth? The fence sitters were waiting to see which way to jump. Disinterested critics were tempted to join enemies who had been predicting the return of the swarm to the hole in the tree.
 

The daughter invited me to attend an assembly of her disciples on condition that I limit my coverage to generalities for a week. I could say, for instance, that she held the assembly to discuss progress and plan for the future. That a few hundred disciples attended, including the four fishermen, while only eight were absent. That the assembly took place in a state capital, where the government, unlike others, sympathized with the daughter and her followers, protected them from their enemies and punished the enemies when they broke the law. That she proposed to assemble as many of her followers as possible in the nation's capital, for which she won unanimous and enthusiastic support. On the other hand, she asked me to delay mention of the unease expressed over the growing external skepticism about God's community and internal impatience with the lack of evidence that it would materialize. She reassured the assembly that she was asking her father for answers to these questions in her prayers. Although he 

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hadn't answered her yet, she expected an answer before the assembly in the nation's capital. She also asked me specifically to withhold news of a dispute that divided her collaborators. A small minority led by the first fisherman, the colonel and the security force took alarm over the aggression by their enemies, the level of violence and the connivence of the police. They advocated arming and expanding the force, anticipating and neutralizing attacks, organization of an intelligence service. A larger minority disagreed, and regretted the nonviolence and passive resistance that had characterized the mission when it first encountered opposition. An even larger minority objected to abandonment of the nonprovocation currently in force. Twice, emotions sharpened the debate to the point that the daughter had to intervene. "Of course you feel strongly," she admonished the first time. "The issue is critical." The second time: "Please, let's concentrate on the issue." They did concentrate on it and until they reached a silent stalemate, which prompted her to give her opinion: "My father has authorized self-defence without provocation. He has not commanded further escalation, but he has mandated a national assembly which, I believe, will be decisive. We must make sure that everyone who attends is aware of the danger. No one will enter God's community without risk or sacrifice."
 

While the second fisherman, the manager, the lawyer and other disciples negotiated with the federal government, the ministry continued and the daughter visited the home town of a friend she had met in college. When she knocked at her door, however, her husband and teenage children opened it with grief and tears that kept them from speaking coherently. The daughter finally understood that her friend had been suffering from terminal cancer and had just died of an overdose of painkilling drugs. She immediately called one of her disciples to take her place at a speaking engagement that evening. Then she took the two teenagers by the hand, asked the father to come with them and took them to a picture of their mother on a table in the living room. "Let's pray. Dear God, our wife, mother and friend suffered so acutely that she took her own life. We respect her decision and admire her courage, because she had reached the point where death was kinder to all of us than life. We will all love and honor her

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memory for the rest of our lives. We also take consolation in the knowledge that she will survive in the genes of her children and perhaps in those of their offspring. Praise the Lord."

"Praise the Lord."

The story I have just told is the fruit of extensive interviews I did with each of the survivors and the daughter herself. Imagine my astonishment when, many years later, I discovered an oral tradition that completely distorted the facts. As soon as the daughter hears of her friend's death, in this version, tears stream from her eyes and she climbs the stairs followed by the family. Not only do they find the eyes and the mouth wide open, but the body smells so badly that the boy gasps, the man raises the window and the girl runs for the bathroom. The daughter, who has stopped weeping, extends her arm over the corpse and commands in a voice overheard by the neighbors: "Wake up!" The dead eyes close and the mouth forms a pleasant smile. Then living eyes open and gaze around the room, focusing on her husband, her son, her daughter who has just returned and finally God's daughter, whom she recognizes with a contented sigh. "Get up," commands the latter as loudly and sternly as before. Her friend stirs

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as if to test her strength, then rolls on her side, pushes herself up with her hand, swings her legs out of the bed and, holding on to the front post, stands. "Come to me." Unsteadily at first but ever more steadily, she advances with a charming smile. She has the body of a woman only a few years older than her daughter, who with her son and husband glow with rapture. All four of them embrace her, each in turn, and all five weep with happiness. The daughter urges the family to visit their neighbors, their friends and their doctor so that all may rejoice in God's mercy. This miracle foreshadows the daughter's resurrection (after the fact) and proves that all of his human creatures will rise from the dead. Curiously, however, the tradition stops there. It alleges nothing about the life of the daughter's friend after her resurrection, nor services she rendered to her ministry, as one of her disciples for instance, and not even her presumed eligibility for God's community. Study of other such traditions suggests that miracle mongers have enough imagination to convert ordinary incidents into miracles, but not enough to create the follow-up implied by their fraud. Fascination with supernatural allegations apparently exhausts their creative energy.
 

It was late summer when the daughter arrived in a city which, although she hadn't visited it before, received her with open arms. She met with so little opposition that the parable she told eclipsed the rest of the visit. Since it really concerned the nation as a whole, however, it stimulated much debate and particularly in the nation's capital, where the government continued to resist her request to organize a national assembly. She told it in a stadium swept by a warm wind on a cloudy afternoon. Despite this unpleasant weather, the attendance outnumbered by far the seats available, listeners were standing everywhere they could hear and no one left before she said her final prayer.
 

"A beautiful and intelligent seventeen year old girl, who had never been in a film, won the competition for a minor role and, apparently without intending to, upstaged the star who played the heroine. The film earned tens of millions, the star was furious and the girl received offers to play leading roles in other films. Yet she accepted only two, the two that would particularly enhance her reputation because of the 

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directors, the scenarios and the other stars who played in them. In negotiating the contracts, she traded some of the money offered her for the right to participate in the important decisions involved in making the films. Discreetly but persistently, she learned every lesson she could from the director, the other actors and the technicians who worked on the set. To their own surprise, they began to appreciate her diligence and even accept an occasional suggestion they hadn't thought of themselves. These films were even more successful than the first one, but, rather than accept any of the enticing new offers, she now demanded to co-direct one in which she would also star. By now, she was on the cover of a dozen magazines and appearing on television almost every day. The potential earnings overcame the reticence of a few directors and producers, so she co-directed two films in which she starred. Although they didn't earn as much as her previous films, the proceeds were substantial enough to attract offers to co-direct other films and star in them. This time, however, she demanded a contract to choose a scenario, hire actors, direct the film and star in it. The producers refused for a whole week, but then one agreed on the condition that he approve the scenario. The one she chose won his approval and, despite a few mistakes, the film earned enough money to enable her to continue her dual career. With each film, her success increased and the critics, who had found her popularity suspect, began to acknowledge her talent both as an actress and a directress.
 

"Meanwhile, she had been thrifty with her income, disdaining the usual extravagances and investing all that she didn't need for a merely comfortable life. She learned how to invest as quickly as she had learned how to act and direct a film. Everyone was amazed: how could anyone that young and beautiful master skills that usually took many years? By the age of twenty-one -- yes, twenty-one -- she was wealthy enough to participate in the production of films and, at twenty-five, she organized her own studio. The other studios tried to discourage her and buy her out, but their tactics backfired. Her company grew so fast that she bought them out one by one. After an investigation, the anti-trust commission accepted her lawyers' argument that the film industry needed vertical concentration to meet foreign competition. Except for minor studios and independent producers, she controlled 

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the industry at thirty and everyone seemed pleased. Then she began to buy television stations and, since she was not buying networks, the commission found horizontal concentration competitive in this industry. Thus she controlled that one as well by the age of thirty-five and ruled over an audio-visual empire. As beautiful and charming as ever, she decided who and what the public would hear and see. Except for a few grouches, the public loved her.
 

"The higher you climb, however, the faster things can change. Since the public saw and heard her more often than anyone else, she became a standard by which they judged others. Thus politicians joined businessmen and professionals in imitating and cultivating her. Although her fellow citizens admired her achievements, some began to worry over the power she wielded. The conservative majority supported her and the liberal minority opposed her, but the conflict between them kept the government from taking any significant precautions. I am calling the majority party conservative and the minority, liberal only for convenience. If I tell the parable again, I will reverse these designations and make the necessary adjustments. Anxious to resolve the conflict over her in her own favor, she ran for the senate, exploiting her media and spending her money on the campaign. She won by a landslide, of course, and everyone seemed delighted. For several years, her chauffeur drove her back and forth between the capitol and her skyscraper. While telephoning from one to the other, she would look up at her office on the top floor of her tower and down at the one in the senate office building, as she coordinated her business with her politics. By delaying tactics, she frustrated the liberal attempt to pass legislation that would have confronted her with a choice between divestiture of her media or loss of her seat. At the same time, however, she was urging her management team to acquire major banks. That industry she controlled by forty.
 

"The slightest glimpse of her smile or sound of her voice thrilled two thirds of the electorate, as the conservatives noticed. Yet the frequency and duration of her appearances also angered and alarmed the other third, who tended to vote for the liberals. After losing the 

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presidency for several terms, the conservatives found a candidacy by her irresistible, so they gave her every encouragement they could. During the campaign, she practically eclipsed her opponent, who had to rely on liberal radio stations and newspapers. Wary of a backlash, however, the conservatives persuaded her to offer him a debate over her networks and take credit for her generosity. With her charm and experience, how could she lose? Well, she didn't lose, but the liberal candidate, who proved tougher than anyone had expected, exploited her advantages. He warned against a candidate who, though attractive and capable, had never hesitated to coordinate her economic and political influence to increase her power. Ignoring this warning, she sweetly seduced her two thirds with reassurances that what was good for the media -- she forgot the banks -- was good for everyone. Her leitmotif was unity, which she claimed to have achieved in business and politics. 'We have to keep this great virtue, which distinguishes us from all the other nations,' and even, although she never mentioned it, at the expense of justice. It came as no surprise that her two thirds succumbed to the illusion that she was the only credible candidate.
 

"Pretending to have forgotten who her opponent had been became a fad encouraged by the sitcoms and talk shows on her networks. Winning a majority in congress a few years later, however, confronted her with a more difficult problem. She had to adapt her support of each of her candidates to suit the interests of his supporters in his district or state without sacrificing the overriding imperative of unity. In trying to show how each candidate furthered this cause, she encountered conflicting and extreme opinions, the dilemma of all parties. Some she described as devoted to unity were trying to outlaw abortion, euthanasia, artificial insemination and genetic manipulation on the grounds that they offended God. Others interpreted the right to bear arms in the defence of their country as a licence to collect automatic rifles, machine guns, mortars, small canon and rocket launchers. They protected constitutents who used such weapons to intimidate neighbors they didn't like and discourage government intervention in their area. A few even equated contributions to campaigns with votes, as if the amount of money contributed by a single constituent bought the same influence as a commensurate number of voters, although 

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they didn't try to set any ratio. The liberals persistently caught the president in contradictions between tolerance of these opinions and promotion of unity. Despite the loss of these conservative radicals, her party won a slender majority in both houses.
 

"With the support of a few liberals, whom she bribed with pork-barrel favors, the conservative majorities in congress passed a bill ostensibly intended to strengthen the economy and really, to facilitate her takeover of the banking industry, which she accomplished before the end of her term. She also replaced the highest ranking officers of the armed services and the security agences by younger people than usual, who therefore depended on her for raises, promotions and further appointments. She reassured their troops and employees by a pay raise, career development and modernization. She used employment and the economy to excuse arms sales to repressive and aggressive regimes in countries with influential minorities in hers. Independence and sufficiency of energy supply justified prospection and extraction in wilderness areas with fragile eco-systems. She relaxed the regulation of energy production and pollution on the grounds that the liberals had exaggerated it. Public outcry against these policies ended in frustration for lack of access to the networks, which ignored it except for occasional mockery applauded by recorded laughter. In fact, the networks ignored conservative scandals and publicized liberal ones. In preparing for the next election, the conservatives targeted the liberals in congress most likely to lose and the two or three capable of the most serious challenge to the president's re-election. In an attempt to achieve a two-thirds majority in both houses and a second term for herself, the president traded secret promises for public endorsements, exerted her influence to the legal limits and persecuted her opponents with all of the means at her disposal. Never had the country seen such a campaign. Her studio even produced movies that, on the pretext of showing politics as they really were, presented characters and situations that reminded viewers of the liberals in ways that invited laughter, disgust or fear. She approached election day with a crescendo of propaganda exalting the virtue of unity and the evils of discord. Everyone knew which was whose. A majority of the electorate didn't vote in the election because both campaigns had revolted them, the conservatives' by their 

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bullying and the liberals' by their cringing. Yet an overwhelming majority of those who did vote voted conservative, hence the mandate sought by the president.
 

"This victory enabled her to undertake two new initiatives, one to gain control of the armament and energy industries, the other to force schools, colleges and universities to indoctrinate students with her conservatism. Having targeted the weakest company in both industries, her broker quietly began to buy modest quantities of their stocks for her holding company. Her vice president in charge of public relations had the secret responsibility of running a media campaign to exaggerate the reputation of liberal teachers and professors for intolerance of conservatism. Her banks undermined the target companies by charging them high interest rates on loans until they faced bankruptcy. Then her holding company made them a buy-out offer that relieved both management and stockholders. Although inducements to board members amounted to bribes, the federal commission, to which she had appointed the majority, found them in conformity with the law. Meanwhile, her vice president had involved several teachers and professors in scandals over sex with students, drug taking and dealing with students, hiring students to work in gambling houses and even as prostitutes. No sooner had her commentators forced the administrations to fire the culprits than they demanded that they restrict hiring to candidates with irreproachable morals. Fearful of losing federal grants, administrators restricted hiring to conservative candidates. Influence over education as well as control of the armament and energy industries acquired by the president enabled her to exert subtle public and private pressure on both, so that she reached her goals by the end of her second term.
 

"By then, she had married the same vice president in a grandiose wedding that had fascinated the nation and much of the world. No one dared to say publicly that she had chosen a straw man to succeed her in the presidency because the constitution prohibited a third term. She had sollicited and signed a law that defined slander as affirming anything detrimental about someone's private life without proof so conclusive that only a very wealthy individual, a powerful company or the government could afford the lawyers necessary to establish it. 

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After the wedding, the campaign to elect her husband began in earnest and, in her speeches, she praised him as the only person who could sustain her policy of unity. The liberal candidate, who had lost his senate seat in the last election, kept saying in his: 'I would never accuse our president of marrying a straw man to succeed her in the presidency. That would be against her law and I wouldn't think of breaking it.' His listeners would roar with laughter, even those who had already heard him say it. But then he would add: 'I wouldn't accuse her of enslaving her nation to a political and economic unity that ensures extraordinary privileges for her and her friends. That wouldn't be nice.'

Again the roar.

'Democrats!'

'Yes!' they yelled.

'Yes!'

'No!'

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overwhelm his lawyers with demands of proof and ruin his candidacy all backfired. Eclipsing her husband, she attacked the opponent so aggressively on television that her face and voice betrayed her age. A worse blunder, she overruled her husband and advisors by insisting that the trial take place before the election. The more proof the prosecutor demanded, the more witnesses appeared to give it and the noisier the laughter echoing through the courtroom, the halls of the courthouse and everywhere else.
 

"A committee representing various liberal groups obtained a permit to demonstrate in favor of national unity. Tens of thousands assembled in the city center, marched to the courthouse and then to the presidential mansion where they had grown to hundreds of thousands. Cadenced shouts of "unity!" followed by laughter kept them in step along the route, and thundered in the courtroom and the mansion. They treated the rows of policemen on both sides of the street with ironical courtesy and, when anyone in the crowd saw a policeman he knew, he greeted him with a familiarity that jerked his chief's head. Determined to charm the dragon, the president emerged from her mansion with perfect composure and, observed by carefully positioned TV cameras, advanced to a rostrum on the balcony. As soon as her beautiful lips parted, however, the crowd thundered "unity!" and roared with laughter heard miles away. With an unperturbed smile, she claimed solidarity with them by inserting the word in a sentence of her own, but they immediately repeated "unity!" and laughed even more loudly. Further attempts to get her word back encountered the same rebuff, so she tried the synonyms concord, harmony, solidarity, agreement and congruence. Prompted by one of their leaders, who was watching a portable TV, the crowd repeated each synonym and laughed as loudly as ever. He noticed that the president's smile had begun to tense. 
 

"The particularly loud rebuff of 'congruence' wrenched it into an ugly scowl and it disappeared from the screen, which began to display natural beauty to the tune of patriotic hymns. With a fury recalled by witnesses in their memoirs, she ordered her police chief to arrest the leaders and disperse the crowd. She would judge his performance by 

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the numbers in jails and hospitals. Yet he held his position because of his skill in sparing public officials the temptation to resort to such extremes. The crowd had a permit to demonstrate, he reminded her, and had broken no laws. Throwing another tantrum, she threatened to fire him, but he immediately resigned. The crowd dispersed, the court acquitted the liberal, the conservatives deserted her and her husband suffered a humiliating loss in the election. She retired both from politics and business, but she kept her husband whom she found useful, and she managed her portfolio, produced films about herself, participated in forums on television and gave lectures. She never tired of demonstrating how the electorate had misjudged her and made a tragic mistake, a thesis supported by three or four outspoken conservative critics. Historians who fascinated dilettantes by reminding them of events they had witnessed agreed that, with a little luck, she would have been the first dictator ever to have united a nation by seduction rather than force."
 

In the discussion that followed this parable, the daughter agreed with one of her followers, who observed that these historians painted a convenient picture. In reality, he said, the woman had used her charm to acquire power and power to amplify her charm. The unity she sought combined seduction with coercion to overcome opposition to her will. The massive demonstration that rebuked her conception of unity revealed a democratic unity opposed to her rule. Under the cover of attacks on divisiveness, she had divided her nation into abusers and abused. This surprising commentary came from a tall, thin old man who needed a shave. He spoke and looked like a professor who had retired to his family farm. A short, robust young woman with a sandpaper voice, whom others called "Reverend," asked the daughter whether God would exclude the woman in the parable from his community. "That's God's decision," she replied. "The woman was only in her fifties when she retired. She still had many years to use her intelligence and wealth for the benefit of her fellow creatures and the creation." When the farmer-professor expressed his scepticism, however, the daughter made no comment.
 

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