As the daughter crisscrossed the country that fall, she encountered a new tactic. By tracking her travels and questioning her followers, her enemies were sometimes able to anticipate her itinerary. She would suddenly find the road or steet blocked by a crowd and, as soon as she stopped, others would block the road behind her and surround her car. Then they would rock the car and, once, they tipped it over on the side. That time, they dared her to climb out, but she did climb out despite the awkwardness of her skirt, at which they sneered. No sooner had she reached the ground than they surrounded her shouting or screaming and making hostile gestures, without touching her nonetheless. I saw all of this on television along with millions of other viewers, since the anti-daughter press collaborated in the ambush. The cameraman zoomed in on her hoping to find a sign of distress, but the more he sought the less he found, for she was serene throughout the ordeal as if it were no ordeal. Eventually, a knife-faced woman in a red beret and camouflage fatigues cut through the mob, came up to her and slapped her on the cheek. The crowd gasped and shrank away. Without the slightest emotion, the daughter gazed into the knife woman's eyes. Suddenly, her hand struck her cheek so hard that she staggered backwards and nearly fell. Then she slithered away, followed by the dispersing mob in twos and threes. The cameraman was zooming back from the daughter, when a few cars arrived traveling in the opposite direction with some of her disciples, who asked her what had happened. At this point, the image faded from the television screen.
 

Weren't these facts enough to prove a miracle? Not for some obscure schemers born conveniently after the event. They describe the mob as armed militiamen in camouflage fatigues who ram the daughter's car with a big pickup rolling it into a ditch. Shouting and gesticulating along both sides of the ditch, they threaten to strip her, rape her, hang her by her smallest toes, use her for bayonet practice and drag her corpse around the city. Then the door opens as if by itself, she rises as if lifted by an invisible giant hand and her body shines so brightly that it blinds them. Shielding their eyes with their hands, they cringe from the severity of her gaze. "My father scorns no cowards," she scolds, "like those who rely on weapons to justify their arrogance." The weapons 

____________________________________________________________

drop from their hands clattering on the pavement. "On your knees!" They sink slowly, bowing their heads, but she lets them wait a painful minute. Then she spreads her arms and raises her head: "Oh Lord, let them live long enough to repent their sins, if they can. They know that you will decide, at your judgment, whether to send them to heaven or hell. Praise the Lord."

"Praise the Lord."

A few weeks later, the daughter received an invitation from a journalist who interviewed a celebrity on television every weekday evening. A tall, gaunt woman with a hawk-like countenance, she nonetheless put her guests at ease by her suave voice, her courtesy and her tolerance. A dictator who was murdering thousands of people appeared as innocent as a televangelist who was raising millions of dollars. A movie star who delighted in tormenting her lovers on screen was so nice and sweet that young viewers fell in love with her. A coach who avoided retribution for his arrogance and dishonesty only by the number of games he won enraptured young athletes by his idealism. Worried about the interview, the first fisherman offered to replace the daughter on the pretext of freeing her for more promising engagements. "You would scare millions of people who watch these interviews," she teased him. "Do you really think I can't handle it myself?" She gave him a look he had never been able to resist and he shrugged his shoulders with exasperation. No one who heard the interview would ever forget it. Having introduced the daughter, the interviewer asked: "Can you explain the extraordinary success of your ministry after only six months?"

The daughter chuckled: "Can you explain the success of your program after only seven years?"

"One is the same."

"Every weekday evening, on your program, someone people have heard of tells them what he wants them to believe."

____________________________________________________________

"True or false?"

"That's where the difference begins."

"And those who suspect me of sincerely defending an error?"

"God will not exclude people who suspect me of either from his community because of their suspicion. Suspicion is often sincere and disinterested. He will exclude people who deceive and exploit their fellow creatures and those who abuse his creation. How many of your interviewees will enter his community?"

"Nor mine."

"To urge them to anticipate God's judgment and deserve his approval. What is yours?"

"Resist that temptation."

"What you and I have in common are large audiences. The responsibility of a speaker is multiplied by the number of his listeners. His interest and his duty is to keep all of them constantly in mind, whatever their diversity."

"I had a little help."

____________________________________________________________

"Aren't you God's daughter?"

"Once upon a time, there was a large public university, which attracted most of its students from nearby, but many also from afar. Admission depended on proficiency in mathematics and the predominant national language, of which the curriculum required further study, as well as courses on science and the national culture. Nor did it neglect other cultures, those remote in space and time as well as those that were familiar to the students. While this curriculum offered a great variety of other subjects, it required students to build a foundation in the arts 

____________________________________________________________

and sciences before taking them. Policy forbade the introduction of disciplines that paralleled or undermined those already taught, promoted the interests of pressure groups or followed modes. The professional schools of medicine, law, business, engineering, agriculture, fine arts and music admitted only graduate students with a baccalaureate degree. The same rule applied to the professional departments of journalism, broadcasting, drama and education, which was not a school. Admissions officers adhered strictly to the published list of fees for tuition, room, board and other services, but they granted scholarships and fellowships to needy good students. Students who neglected their coursework or proved incapable of doing it well enough failed and failures never disappeared from their records. Those who failed three courses during a semester left at the end of it, while those caught cheating or committing a crime left immediately. Those who graduated usually found good jobs and even the majority who had mediocre grades.
 

"Professors' careers depended on the quality of what they taught and how well their students learned it. They were in class between nine and fifteen hours a week depending on the research they published and, if they didn't publish any, they lost their jobs when their contracts expired. There was no tenure. The dean limited all classes to twenty students so that teachers could answer questions and lead discussions. Administrators made their own decisions and shifted this responsibility to committees only when they were incompetent to make them. Limiting the number of committees, they rotated the members regularly and avoided the appointment of any professor to more than two. They appointed only those who had a reputation for integrity and disinterest to committees that evaluated candidates for grants, raises, contract renewals and promotions. Competition between applicants for a position from outside as well as inside the university determined appointments to openings. No politician or celebrity without teaching experience and demonstrated research ability received an appointment. The faculty elected a senate, whose consent was necessary for all major reforms and appointments, such as that of the president. One such reform prohibited professors from serving in the administration and administrators from serving on the faculty at the 

____________________________________________________________

same time. Nor could anyone who moved from one to the other return. Another reform required the submission of the budget to the senate for approval and an independent audit at the end of every fiscal year. If the budget increased, the percentage alloted to raises in salary applied to both administrators and professors. An annual review determined maximum and minimum salary limits, so that no employee had an unjustified advantage or disadvantage. Within these limits, however, individual salaries depended on demonstrated merit.
 

"The administration and the senate collaborated on the elimination of bureaucratic redundancy and programs useful only for the reputation of an administrator or a professor. The university discouraged the use of funds for lectures and conferences that merely served to render invitations by friends in other institutions without advancing knowledge. Although it competed in no intercollegiate sports of any kind, it provided students with a full range of recreational facilities and encouraged intramural competition. Art, music, dance and drama crowded the calendar with events at reasonable prices. The success of the alumni enhanced the university's reputation, so that it not only obtained financial support from them, but also from foundations and the government. The president had a talent for raising money, tact in persuading wealthy alumni to fund useful projects and the courage to refuse the stubborn ones who only wanted to erect a monument to themselves. All construction projects had to conform with esthetic standards, leave sufficient space between buildings and harmonize with the existing architecture. Subject to approval by the senate, the president appointed only men and women who had professional experience with higher education to the board of trustees. Thus the university prospered for a number of years, during which it compared with the best institutions of its kind.
 

"The president retired at sixty-five and, although everyone regretted him, some distinguished candidates applied for the opening. Yet the search committee chose a woman who had distinguished herself only by vaulting from an administrative position in one university to a higher one in another. Only by favors given months later to members of the 

____________________________________________________________

committee did she reveal the confidential promises she had made to them. Since they had made promises to others, a cascade of favors ensured support for her by the administration and the faculty. In view of her next upward leap, she appointed nine task forces to review certain aspects of the university and propose reforms to improve them. She appointed half of each and the senate, the other half, but, since she controlled the senate, few independents or critics sat on them. While the goals she set for these committees implied radical innovation, their reports, when they finally appeared, restated existing policies in trendy language interlaced with subtle adjustments opening loopholes.
 

"An exception to the limitation of class size allowed any number to benefit from lectures by unusually eloquent professors. Students who had received poor or failing grades could have them removed from their records by taking them again and improving their performance. Those expelled for failure or misbehavior could re-enter after a semester at another institution during which they demonstrated that they deserved it. Applicants for entrance, who, despite their potential, couldn't satisfy the admissions requirements because of a disadvantaged background, had the opportunity to overcome this handicap. Competition with other institutions for good students justified confidential negotiation with their parents to determine how much they would have to pay. The need for cultural diversity imposed alternatives to the requirements in mathematics and the predominant national language. Students who knew which profession they would follow should have the right to take courses that gave them a head start. The rule against disciplines based on trends or backed by pressure groups shouldn't apply to those that had real academic value. A few celebrities and politicians without teaching or research experience received appointments in the interest of enhancing the university's prestige and offering students the opportunity to learn from them. The competition to attract truly distinguished scholars obligated the university to make exceptions to the maximum salary level and the minimum courseload. Since the minimum salary level didn't apply to part-time professors, the university could employ as many of them as it needed and as long as it needed them. A courseload of six hours would allow distinguished 

____________________________________________________________

professors more time for research and one of nine hours would reward merit in teaching as well as research. The university shouldn't deprive teachers with considerable administrative ability the opportunity to serve in this capacity, so it should relax the rules against moving back and forth between the faculty and the administration. Increasing the number of faculty committees would encourage professors to take a greater interest in their university and provide administrators with valuable advice. The addition of certain administrative units by other universities showed how useful they could be. Intercollegiate sports made alumni feel more generous and the university could avoid the abuses that had plagued them, so it should introduce them.
 

"These proposals encountered opposition in the senate, but the president's friends made two essential replies to the objections: All of them would be exceptions to existing policy intended only for unusual circumstances. The administration would apply them only after consultation with everyone concerned. Nothing, the opponents objected, would prevent wholesale circumvention of existing policy, which had discouraged abuses. Vague promises by administrators would leave them free to interpret the measures as they wished. The president's friends responded with a display of confidence in her that implied the insincerity of her opponents. A few even insinuated that they were hurting their own cause. The president's majority of the senate approved the proposals and she appointed many of them to new committees to implement them. These committees interpreted the measures in a sense favorable to their interests, sapping the senate's power and removing the only obstacle to their ambitions.
 

"The president initiated intercollegiate basketball and football, to which most of the alumni shifted their support, giving more generously than ever for academic purposes. The teams didn't win any games at first, but the games attracted crowds and ticket sales paid for most of the expenses, including the coaches' salaries. Claiming that the publicity benefited the university, the president made up the deficit and subsidized athletic scholarships, steam for heat and other utilities. Faced with scandals involving players and coaches, she resorted to rhetoric and wrist slapping. When the basketball and football teams 

____________________________________________________________

finally won a few games, she proclaimed the success of the intercollegiate athletic program and expanded it to other sports. Meanwhile, she was finding a surprising number of professors with unusual administrative ability among those who had supported her. She appointed them to replace deans and other administrative officers, in whom she discovered previously unsuspected teaching ability. Only disgruntled professors disagreed. On the excuse of flexibility, her senate approved a budget limited to broad categories and each administrative level from hers down took more than its share of the amount reserved for raises. Once every administrator had gratified his friends on the faculty, the department heads threw the leftovers to ordinary professors to snitch and snap. Resentment between professors thwarted attempts to organize a faculty protest against this spoliation. The administrators appointed their friends to the committees on grants, raises, promotion and contract renewal, which rewarded cooperative faculty and punished the others. When an anonymous committee perpetrated an injustice by a confidential vote, the victim couldn't identify his adversaries. The dean who chaired it answered complaints by affirming his confidence in the expertise of his committee. Soon the president named a tenth task force to study the introduction of the tenure system. No one doubted who would receive this invitation to permanent mediocrity. She also encouraged the establishment of new programs that paralleled existing ones, flattered the ambitions of her favorites or allowed weak students to take easy courses on the excuse of disadvantaged backgrounds or ethnic particularities. These students belonged to minorities that had significant political influence. Her administrators supported their friends for election to the senate, where they in turn supported the administration. When satisfied with this support, she appointed them to administrative positions. Her exceptions to the rules had resulted in a continuous rotation bringing ambitious professors into the administration and returning friends of the administration to the faculty. Five years in the administration was enough to double a professor's salary. Former administrators formed a powerful constituency eager to cooperate with the president and her friends. She appointed the most assiduous of them to chairs, for which their lack of research ability would otherwise have disqualified them. She usually justified these appointments by alleging their excellence in teaching, which amounted to popularity with students.
 

____________________________________________________________

"Evaluation and testimony by students eclipsed all other evidence of teaching proficiency, so teachers saw their interest in pleasing their students by easy work, high grades, by substituting entertainment for instruction and appealing to appetite rather than intelligence. The immediate concerns of college students had greater appeal than those of all ages and classes; a journalistic treatment of current national affairs, than a critical study of a historical or foreign subject; trends, more than reforms or revolutions; technology more than science; practical and commercial training, more than philosophical, moral or esthetic instruction. Classes of well over twenty students proliferated because administrators found them profitable, professors found lecturing easier than teaching and students found that they could get higher grades with less work. Thus an increasing number of professors pretended to eloquence and an increasing number of students proved ignorant of subjects on which they had taken courses. B's irritated or discouraged them, while C's angered or distressed them, so professors gave them the grades they wanted. If they received an F, they took the course over again and only the new grade appeared on their transcript. Employers lost their trust in the university's transcripts and hence the university itself. Students complained of boredom when professors failed to amuse or titillate them or give them good grades. Dissatisfied, they took their revenge on evaluations or even complained to chairpeople. A new committee on student-faculty relations took action when these complaints concerned the president's opponents and discounted them when they concerned her friends. Another one on academic deficiency sought excuses for students who had failed three courses and, when they expelled one, they let him take a semester in a college with lower standards, re-enter the university and transfer the credits. As the average grade rose, proficiency fell, so that students and even good students had trouble finding jobs.
 

"The admissions office received more applications than before, but fewer good ones and admitted a surprising number of disadvantaged students it considered promising. Dissatisfied with graduates from the 

____________________________________________________________

school of arts and sciences, the professional schools initiated their own undergraduate programs, which required only a smattering of academic courses. Thus enrollments in the professional schools increased while those in the school of arts and sciences decreased. Despite the president's claims to the contrary, the university's reputation within the profession declined according to all the usual indicators, such as applications for admission from other states. Professsors and administrators who attended meetings at other institutions overheard contemptuous remarks about their university. Students and alumni saw that mentioning their university or answering questions about it caused embarrassment. The university and the faculty received fewer, less prestigious and less lucrative grants, while mostly mediocre candidates applied for openings. Yet the president, who spent an unusual amount of money on publicity, managed to sustain the university's previous reputation with the general public, until a national election enabled her to obtain an appointment as an undersecretary of education in the new administration."
 

In the discussion that followed, students and younger professors found similarities between their university and the one in decline, while the older professors and the administrators compared it with the one at its zenith. As speaker responded to speaker, however, another conflict emerged cutting across the line that divided the previously opposing sides. Advocates of democracy now opposed defenders of authority, with students and professors, young or old, on both sides, while all administrators defended authority. The authoritarians took satisfaction in the present state of their university, which, despite its faults, seemed nearly as effective to them as one could expect in view of human frailties. This illusion, the democrats objected, resulted from the very frailties that plagued the university. The representatives of students and professors, who did the learning and the teaching, would choose more competent and dedicated administrators than a pyramid of subordinates responsible only to their superiors. On the contrary, the authoritarians replied, superiors are in a better position to choose their subordinates and supervise them than representative bodies of students and teachers. How could their opponents question the competence and the dedication of the present administration of their

____________________________________________________________

university? As irony deteriorated to sarcasm, tempers flared, providing an opportunity for false reconcilers. Couldn't an administration prove its dedication to a university by its sensitivity to the wishes and needs of students and professors? Didn't cooperation by students and professors inspire an administration's confidence in them. Committees appointed by administrators, an authoritarian remarked, allowed students and professors to participate in administration. A democrat dismissed committees as opportunities for professors to cultivate administrators and for administrators to avoid responsibility. Meanwhile, the daughter was listening without a sign of boredom or annoyance.
 

When the debate came to a pause, she recognized a long-haired girl with a disdainful smile who had raised her hand:

"Will God's community put an end to debates in which the opponents try to confound each other rather than reach an agreement?"

"Will there be universities in the community?" asked a bald-headed man with thick glasses and big, prominent ears.

"I'm one of those people who were not even participating in the debate." Thus spoke one of those women who frighten men so much that they will do anything to keep them quiet. "Your parable seems irrelevant to me, irrelevant to this university and universities in general. What do you have to do with us? What does religion have to do with a university?"

____________________________________________________________

to make your own decisions."

"Will universities have football and basketball teams in God's community?" A young man who kept trying to smooth his cowlick down.

An old lady in a mini-skirt with toothpick legs: "Who will govern universities in God's community?"

A bohemian in his thirties: "Will administrators go to hell?"

The negotiations with the national government continued into November as the authorities resorted to the usual maneuvres to discourage, delay and restrict the assembly. Yet buck-passing between departments and agencies, warnings and allegations leaked to the press, legal and economic distractions and obstacles failed to discourage the daughter's negotiators. The government had to retreat from every stand they took under the pressure of millions who protested by all the means available to them, including telephone calls, letters, faxes and e-mail to their representatives in congress. Impatient with the stalling tactics at which the president excelled, congress finally urged him to set a date and he arranged a compromise designed to camouflage a backdown. Instead of a day, he set a week in December during which further negotiations would decide the exact day. After losing an election to a city council, he had won all the others from mayor to governor to senator to president by his skill in making such deals and a tone of voice that dripped with honesty and sincerity. From tan to tactics, he resembled the ski enthusiast he was by his ability to negotiate complicated slopes. An ice storm, which devastated a northern region of the country in early December, gave him the excuse he had been looking for. The assembly of a million people in the capital, he explained, would distract his administration from following through on the aid desperately needed by millions of others. Commentators smiled at both numbers which, however, accurate, hadn't convinced him when he first heard them. The holiday season at the end of December, they noted, gave him an excuse to delay the 

____________________________________________________________

daughter's assembly until January, when he expected the weather to discourage her followers. Exasperated, the manager and other disciples wanted to try and force the president to keep his original agreement. "Cunning is vulnerable to the intrinsic assumption that other people are dumb." she said. "Bad weather will be a blessing in disguise."
 

When the president and his people ate their breakfast on the appointed day, they looked through their kitchen windows and saw a bleak, frigid and windy dawn. The weather outside contrasted so starkly with the inside warmth, comfort and pleasure that they almost pitied the hundreds of thousands of victims who would suffer from the daughter's ambition and arrogance. They arrived at their offices in unusually good spirits and greeted their staffs with grins and joyful cries of "What terrible weather!" To their surprise, however, their employees reacted with embarrassment and insinuated that the terrible weather was not having its usual consequences. Reports announced twenty-mile traffic jams in the inbound lanes of the interstate and highway approaches to the capital. Streets and parking lots in the suburbs were already full of cars and busses left by people walking all the way downtown, where they crowded the sidewalks and overflowed into streets, thus causing endless congestion. An unprecedented number of chartered aircraft had arrived at the airport bringing crowds that overloaded ground transport. The arrival of the scheduled flights added to endless throngs of travelers waiting for taxis, busses and friends with cars. The number of airplanes circling overhead and waiting on the ground overburdened air traffic control to the point that controllers who had just gone to bed had to get up and go back to work. The modernization of the railroads and the restoration of passenger traffic over the last twenty-five years allowed hundreds of thousands of others to disembark a half mile from the mall between the capitol and the president's mansion where the assembly would take place. Accompanied by the colonel in a dark blue overcoat on one side with his radio in his hand, and the first fisherman in a tan parka on the other, the daughter descended the avenue from her hotel in black boots and a beige overcoat with a long light blue scarf around her neck. All three wore wollen bonnets and each walked with a gait that

____________________________________________________________

bystanders recognized before their features came into view: the daughter's graceful stride, the colonel's military step and the fisherman's wobbly roll. Eleven members of the security force followed them ready for trouble. An enthusiastic crowd lined both sides of the street cheering and waving. Some in back had bought cardboard and mirror periscopes to see over those in front. A frigid wind blowing fine snow didn't seem to bother anyone. I have never seen a happier smile on the daughter's face as she waved to the crowd.
 

In blatant violation of the agreement between the government and the daughter, the police had erected barricades in the streets leading to the mall, where they tried to discourage people by exaggerated identity checks and searches. With them, they had dogs who sniffed people conscientiously, which made them laugh and they patted them affectionately. With exaggerated good humor, the crowd swept over and under the barricades, reminding the policemen of the agreement as they stood helplessly in the middle of the advancing mass. Riot police had massed in front of the capitol at one end of the mall and the lawn behind the president's mansion at the other end. Five helicopters circled beating the air overhead. In addition to the usual services, the manager had contracted with vendors to sell hot food and drink, such as vegetable soup and hot chocolate, and rent blankets and folding chairs. He and his helpers made sure that the prices were reasonable. He had banned alcohol, souvenirs and religious propaganda. By ten o'clock, a sea of people had flooded the mall and the nearby streets, while the vapor of their breath rose above them. The police guessed a million, the press guessed a million and a half and the manager refused to guess. At the capitol end, an orchestra and a choir occupied a low platform, while a higher platform with a rostrum awaited the daughter. A carefully planned audio system ensured that everyone could hear even if he couldn't see and yet without splitting ears.
 

The daughter had invited me to join her and her principal collaborators on the higher platform. She started the program as usual by spreading her arms and raising her head, as the rest of us lowered ours: "Oh Lord, we have gathered in the capital of our nation to accomplish your 

____________________________________________________________

will. We have dedicated ourselves to you, we are preparing for your community, we are urging our fellow humans to join us and we await your next commandment at a decisive turn in our mission. Praise the Lord."

"Praise the Lord." roared the crowd and you could hear distant echoes.

Worse screaming and shouting. I scrambled to my feet and tried to help the people I had fallen on to theirs. Their clothing was torn, they had bloody wounds and broken bones. A girl with beautiful hair, which I had noticed before the daughter's prayer, raised her hands to restore it, yet nothing remained but a bloody scalp. As soon as she brought her wet hands down in front of her eyes, she fainted as limply as the coat she wore. The banker was sitting on the ground with her right knee raised and her left leg bent out to the side. Grunting with the effort and groaning with the pain, she kept trying to realign it, so I took her ankle and helped her. The bones cracked and she screamed. A young man with a beard, who was rocking back and forth, tried to cup an eye dangling from a bloody tendril in his palm. An old man who had lost his arm was wandering around asking: "Has anybody seen my arm? Anybody? My arm?" A little boy ran up with it and, after some

____________________________________________________________

hesitation, the old man took it, thanked him and carried it around looking for a surgeon. Although I had escaped with bruises and sprains, people with serious injuries were running, walking, sitting and lying all around me. Some were quarreling or wrestling with death, while others lay contorted from their last throe. In the pandemonium, an awareness of the riot police massed in front of the capitol crept into my consciousness. They formed a motionless dark blue blurr on the peripery of my vision. The helicopters seemed to beat the air even harder, yet turn in more hesitant circles. Why did no other sirens pierce the din? Where were the real rescue trucks and ambulances? Where were the doctors, the medics, the nurses? Glued to their TV sets?
 

The daughter was standing on the platform with the first fisherman and other companions. The blast had torn her bonnet off, messed her hair up and gashed her cheek, which was bleeding on her sweater, for the blast had torn her coat open. She was trying to use the amplifying system, but it didn't work. "They cut the power!" roared the first fisherman, his hair writhing like gray waves. The manager came running with a bullhorn and, taking it, the daughter organized the chaos as if she had done it several times before. An overtone of emotion quickened her calm, deep voice. She told the doctors, the medics and the nurses to converge on the crater, repeating "doctor!" "medic!" or "nurse!" so that the crowd could make way for them. She asked everyone near the crater, who was not giving first aid, to move away from it. Everyone who had a mobile phone, she urged, should jam the exchanges of the emergency services to shake them out of their apathy. Turning around to the riot police in front of the capitol, who, though still in their ranks, were fidgiting nervously, she scolded: "Would your father and mother have conceived you, if they had known that you would stand idly by at a time like this?"

"Shame on you!" roared the crowd spontaneously.

____________________________________________________________

left in the opposite direction, and the blue mass milled around in consternation. The troops paid no attention to their officers except for a major, whom a big trooper slugged in the stomach, knocking him down so hard that the back of his head hit the pavement. As he laid there unconscious, others spat on him.
 

The daughter's ability to break the discipline of an elite bataillon by shaming them alarmed her enemies. Her next reproach drove them to panic. "What do we think of an administration who cut the power to our amplifying system when a truck bomb had plowed into a legally authorized, nonviolent assembly, killing and injuring hundreds of people?"

"Shame on you!" Responded the crowd. Relayed by radio and television, the anger rang in the ears of millions of people.

____________________________________________________________

The sermon she gave afterwards has been available in sound and print ever since, so there is no need to reproduce it here. Her worst enemies admitted that it was one of the most effective ones she ever gave. God had informed her, she said, that his community would begin in months rather than years. Instead of intervening directly in his creation, however, he would enable his creatures to establish it themselves. They would have to wage a war against their enemies. God didn't sympathize with creatures who, facing implacable enemies, yielded to them in hopes of appeasing them. When passive resistance emboldened such enemies, people should defend themselves and, if necessary, carry the war to them. They shouldn't wage it for the vanity of winning or even not losing, but rather to discourage their enemies. Discouragement follows the conviction that one is losing more than one is gaining and will continue to do so. Who will have the courage to persist once he faces the certainty of defeat? A shrinking minority of fanatics perhaps. Only by steadfast dedication to God, therefore, will the growing majority prevail. They must establish his community themselves, because he will not do it for them.
 

The daughter urged most of her followers to go home and prepare for the forthcoming conflict. She kept several thousand in the captial to care for the wounded, investigate the truck bomb and defend the mission in court. Her enemies tried to make the wounded pay exorbitant prices for treatment, transfer some of them to prison hospitals and keep her representatives from visiting them; the police stopped her followers for jaywalking, checked their identity and found other excuses to waste their time and try their patience; congressional committees subpoenaed her disciples, asked them loaded questions and remonstrated to the cameras; the media observed them closely, peppered them with questions and invited experts to make comments. A few self-styled followers betrayed the daughter, complaining that her disciples had brainwashed them, compromised them with society and the government, subjected them to intellectual and economic slavery. Exaggerating the conflict between the hawks and the doves in the mission, they started the rumor that the hawks had organized the truck bombing. On the assumption that everyone would blame the government, the hawks had hoped the bomb would drive her to armed insurgency. But she dismissed the rumor with the contempt it 

____________________________________________________________

deserved, leaving the refutation to her disciples, who reminded the public that the rescue truck belonged to the capital fire department. They easily refuted claims that her followers had infiltrated the station from which it had come and stressed the control of the streets through which it had passed by the capital police. They identified some of the disgruntled followers as government agents, petty criminels and mercenary agitators. Attempts to accredit their testimony exposed them to scrutiny by the press that undermined confidence in their sincerity. The daughter urged her disciples not to let this diversion distract them from forcing the government to account for the truck bomb.
 

Burials of followers in many different places attracted large crowds, to whom she addressed sober but moving eulogies. The reporters asked no questions, the police kept their distance and politicians said what was expected of them. Opinion polls found that the truck bomb had enraged two thirds of the nation and scared a different two thirds, but it was merely the nation, as one observer remarked, of people who cooperated with pollsters. The polls also revealed a small minority who thought the daughter had got what she deserved, even after her experts had found pieces of a device used by the army to drive vehicles by remote control. The scandal inspired vows to find and punish the perpetrators, commissions to investigate and reform the army, dramatic but trivial measures to reassure people who accept them. Everywhere, for instance, fire departments were inviting children to visit their stations and ride around on their trucks with real firemen and firewomen. The children came home with baseball caps or t-shirts inscribed with the name and insignia of their fire department. A few editorialists noticed that rescue trucks were nowhere to be seen and, if asked for, in the garage for routine maintenance. One with a reputation for persistence finally learned that they were being modified so that they couldn't be converted into a robot. How was that possible? he wondered, but the details were secret. The riot police organized a GD day on which they invaded nearby communities to do good deeds, both public and private. They removed rubbish, cleaned attics and garages, plucked toilet paper from trees decorated by drunken youth. In one week, the crater was filled, the blast zone cleaned up, signs replaced and the area restored as it had been before, a record for the government. A few policemen stood guard to see that no graffiti spoiled the effect.
 

____________________________________________________________

The truck bomb had decided the weapons issue. The daughter asked the first fisherman to chair a committee to which she appointed the colonel as co-chairman and she urged them to invite leading experts on security, weapons, etc. to sit on it as well as a few outspoken critics of their use. The committee would plan and supervise the expansion of her security force to accommodate the option of using weapons and dealing with the various kinds of threats that required them. It would also consider unconventional arms such as chemical, biological or nuclear agents. While the force should have thorough training in the use of arms, it should keep them inconspicuous but available for rapid deployment. It would need many light arms, such as rifles that could fire rubber bullets as well as steel, and a few heavier ones, such as rocket launchers capable of destroying aircraft and vehicles, including armored ones. Couldn't a rocket have stopped the truck bomb before it reached the crowd? "Yes," replied the colonel, "but only if the aim and trajectory had been clear from the launcher to the target. We wouldn't have had enough time, for instance, to take the launcher and the missile out of a van, climb up on the roof and fire. That would have taken us a few minutes. If observers posted a few blocks away had warned us, we could have destroyed the truck halfway down that street."

"Wouldn't early warnings lessen the chance of making blunders?" asked the fisherman.

"We have to be ready for another attack of this kind, but aren't they more likely to try something else?"

"Then we have to be careful not to concentrate too much on unlikely threats at the expense of likely ones."

____________________________________________________________

"Security budgets are tricky."
 

The appointment of the fisherman to chair the committee had worried the colonel because of his apparent incompetence. When the committee met, however, the fisherman surprised him by his ability to lead the discussion, ask essential questions and understand the answers. His scowl kept most of the disagreements from degenerating into quarrels, which he settled with a formidable growl. He surprised everyone by appealing to the pride of advocates and coaxing them into cooperation with each other. Once the committee had considered all the threats they could imagine, a silence followed and then the fisherman supposed: "What if a cute little girl came running up to the daughter with a lilly and invited her to sniff it?"

A former detective with the federal police whistled: "There's just enough room in the stem of a lilly to hide a device that will fire a needle when triggered by a radio signal. The angle at which the little girl held the flower would aim the needle at the daughter's brain as she leaned over to sniff it."

"Both sexes," approved the colonel.

"Wouldn't they lose their jobs if they were caught giving us compromising information?" asked a member of the committee.

____________________________________________________________

"If they warned us of plans to abuse government power or break the law, government employees wouldn't be liable to prosecution for treason," said a retired government lawyer. "Their superiors would have to seek another excuse to discipline or fire them, but I think most of them will be eager to help us. The daughter appealed to most of us precisely because she condemns corruption."

The truck bomb didn't persuade many people to join the mission, but it did reinforce the determination of those who had already joined. The number and volume of contributions kept the banker and her helpers busy. The endowment had grown to the point where she could diversify the portfolio considerably, making it practically invulerable to market crises and maneuvers by the daughter's enemies. Followers skilled in investment provided her with all the research she needed to manage an intricate and dynamic position. She followed two principles recommended by the daughter: avoid companies that support predatory regimes or exploit vices such as smoking; invest for the long 

____________________________________________________________

term, in other words for God's community. The daughter also encouraged her to found a credit union that enabled her followers to save at a higher rate and borrow at a lower one than the banks were offering. The top management of the major banks gnashed their teeth. The prosperity of the mission also allowed the lawyer to extend the services of the daughter's legal team to followers threatened by predatory suits and unable to hire their own lawyers. Her enemies were trying to implicate them in litigation that cost more than any possible success could justify, thus hoping to undermine their enthusiasm for the mission. Soon the team expanded to accommodate the other legal needs of her followers, who paid more reasonable fees than those charged by other firms. The principals of the major firms gnashed their teeth. She asked the surgeon to convene followers who worked in health care or health insurance to devise a system that would provide for the needs of her followers at a cost they could all afford. Designed to pay for itself, the system empowered an elected body of professionals and patients to set policy and oversee management of an organization founded on the principle of mutual confidence between the patient and his general practitioner. Patients subscribed for a routine annual examination and paid for treatment if they could afford it. If they couldn't, they applied for a grant from a committee with a budget for that purpose. Another committee set and continuously revised prices to ensure that all professionals received fair compensation for their work, thus eliminating the exorbitant profits taken by their colleagues outside the system. The huge number of subscribers enabled the surgeon to negotiate reasonable contracts with highly specialized providers for cases the system couldn't handle. He encouraged cooperation and discouraged competition between his employees, whom he held accountable for the advice and treatment they gave their patients. The top management of the major health and health insurance companies gnashed their teeth. Dissatisfaction with the food industry inspired requests to organize a mission cooperative that would guarantee fair prices both to producers and consumers. The daughter recruited the owner of the heffer she had met at the fair, whom I will call the producer, to organize it along the same lines as the healthcare system. The representative body united producers, consumers, independent distributers, processors and truckers who organized and monitored a distribution system in which the vast 

____________________________________________________________

majority of the daughter's followers were soon happily participating. The producer negotiated with small companies ranging from dairies to pasta makers to supply his large customer base. The elimination of advertising, special packaging, additives intended to addict customers and, above all, ambitious profit margins saved enough to ensure fair prices for both producers and consumers. The top management of the major food companies gnashed their teeth. Likewise that of the oil majors when the distribution system began to market methane for internal combustion motors and sunflower seed oil for diesels. The daughter had already irritated them by her support of alternative energy and the ecology movement.
 

These initiatives had driven some of the most influential professionals and businessmen in the country to desperation. Despite their hostility, the daughter took another step, which started an economic and legal civil war. She approved the manager's proposal to contract with foreign automobile manufacturers to import vehicles and distribute them at cost. The contracts specified practical, economic and durable cars, vans, pickups, etc. with none of the exaggerated power, gratuitous luxury and extravagant styling packaged with nearly all of the domestic production. The catalogue offered no snob vehicles such as convertibles, which exposed the occupants to cold drafts in winter and infrared radiation in summer, sport vehicles that could negotiate rugged terrain most of them would never cross and those with so much power that they endangered the driver, his passengers and everyone else along the route they traveled. The absence of expensive, uneconomical, high-pollution vehicles from the catalogue started a trend that undermined the most lucrative segment of the automobile market, thus reconciling management and labor in a common outrage. The trend featured simplicity of design and the convenience of engineering free of competitive calculations. The top management of the automobile manufacturers didn't just gnash their teeth; they also launched a crusade against the infidels of free-enterprise. In the controversy that arose, condemnation of the daughter dominated the treatment by the media and the debates in congress, which threatened much and voted little. Accused of turning a deaf ear, the daughter 

____________________________________________________________

appointed followers to other committees to investigate other industries dominated by a small number of powerful companies such as construction, energy, power, telecommunications, television, film, processors, software, computers, publishing, the airlines, aircraft manufacture, defence, etc. In none of these sectors did she consider alternative organizations managed by her followers, but rather means of combatting monopolistic practices and ensuring quality goods and services at reasonable prices. She asked the airline committee, for instance, to consider the lottery of constantly manipulated rates, the absurdity of spending as much time on the ground as in the air and the injustice of forcing passengers to conform with the airlines' convenience. She wanted them to seek answers for a number of questions: At what distance does travel by air justify the cost as well as the bustle, noise and discomfort on the ground and the cramped space and contaminated ventilation in the air? How does the cost of expanding air travel compare with that of developing a high-speed rail network to complement it and compete with it? How could the mission negotiate acceptable conditions and rates for its members? Hardly had this committee begun to deliberate than the airlines filed a lawsuit against the daughter for conspiring to organize a travel monopoly.
 

Schools, colleges and universities preoccupied the daughter too. She accused them of wasting youth, the time in every life when the mind learns fastest and best. Weren't schools of education and teachers' unions as well politicians and business leaders padding curriculums with subject matter intended to prejudice the youthful mind in favor of their interests rather than cultivate its independence? Tendentious indoctrination crowded subjects of permanent value like literature and math, which suffered by comparison because children saw less relevance with current preoccupations in them. A course on algebra bored them when one on computer skills followed. Some teachers of civic responsibilities began to take aim at the mission, which they described, without naming it, as a sect that brainwashed and enslaved its members. Protests against abuse of authority and misuse of tax revenues only brought denials, so the daughter appointed a committee of teachers, parents and experts to organize an alternative school system. Except for ten minutes a week on God's community, the 

____________________________________________________________

curriculum presented academic subjects almost exclusively. The schools turned no students away except those found incapable of discipline. The parents paid the tuition if they could afford it and, when they couldn't, their children received scholarships on condition that they do part-time work in the afternoon. In recruiting teachers, the principals paid more attention to their knowledge of the subjects they would teach than the diplomas they had earned and their competence in teaching methodology. As the schools multiplied, attracting ever more students, the daughter's followers began to ask for colleges without the usual amenities and distractions. Soon each region had a communitarian college organized along the lines exposed by the daughter's university parable. The resentment of educationists who clung to the traditional system drove them into the anti-daughter camp.
 

A think tank dedicated to the study of relations between men and women, and reproduction in contemporary society organized a conference attended by sociologists, psychologists, anthropoligists, historians, philosophers, journalists, politicians, writers and even a few poets and artists. The daughter accepted an invitation to expose her ideas on this subject in a plenary session at eleven o'clock one morning. The most learned and distinguished audience she had addressed so far assembled in a large auditorium, where she dispensed with prayers, hymns and other events typical of her appearances. Since this lecture has also appeared in print, I will merely summarize it for the needs of my narrative. The daughter wondered how so many learned evolutionists could spare the time to listen to a creationist housewife. Laughter and applause. Perhaps it was because her creationism harmonized with scientific study rather than faith in ancient myths. The will behind the world around us was as evident in the evolution of living species as in the original explosion.
 

The differentiation between the male and the female enabled couples to combine a diversity of genes that ensured a healthy variation and development of the species. The traditional predominance of permanent monogamy in humans didn't outlaw temporary monogamy, polygamy and even surrogate or occasional fecundation, provided at least one parent and preferably a genetic one devoted himself to 

____________________________________________________________

raising the children. Without this commitment, the production of children by any of these methods was a sin, for which God would exclude people from his community. Although human instinct apparently favored the predominance of permanent monogamy, the daughter condemned any attempt to legislate and enforce this or any of the other methods, and particularly on a religious pretext. As for the casual seducer who abandoned a woman when he learned that he had impregnated her, she demanded a legal obligation for him to pay his share of the child's expenses and prosecution for failure to comply based on DNA evidence. She rejected the parental selection of partners without the explicit consent of both and marriages that subordinated or humiliated the woman as relics of an unjust past. She denounced the hypocrisy of men and male priests who enforced religious or traditional laws and customs that favored their interests. Also she attacked adversaries of contraception and abortion for trying to impose their will on others, over whom they had no legitimate authority despite their moral and religious pretentions. Every woman had exclusive jurisdiction over her own body and hence the right to avoid or abort pregnancy if she wished. The persecution of doctors who performed abortions, their employees and their patients on an accusation of murder usurped a judicial authority independent of the writings they cited. Hairsplitting over the status of an embryo was irrelevant, since the latter couldn't survive without its mother's body, which belonged exclusively to her. Free of interference and constraint, most young women would be eager to realize their potential as mothers, so the most enlightened reproductive policy would guarantee this freedom. Indeed, it would be the policy of God's community.
 

The differentiation between the sexes may have been the creator's most wonderful and valuable gift to his human species. The specialization of each enabled it to complement the other, not only in reproduction, but also in raising, nurturing and sheltering a family. The ancient tyranny of men over women, which had ended in some countries recently, resulted merely from their greater physical strength and the vulnerability of pregnancy. Yet emancipation incited some women to compete with men, even in their worst vices such as violence, and either to forsake pregnancy or reassign it to surrogates. There were even some who wanted to avenge their feminine

____________________________________________________________

ancestors by dominating or enslaving men. They had no better chance of entering God's community than the men who had the opposite ambition. The sexes wouldn't compete in the community, but rather collaborate with each playing the role that suited it best. Most men made their contribution by working to support their family, which did not exempt them from devoting most of their leisure to it. Most women excelled at raising children, cooking and keeping house, yet none of these talents should ever prevent them from pursuing a career. Although a woman who wanted to compete with men had the right to do so, she should either not marry and not have children or find a partner willing to do for the children what she couldn't. The same principles applied to homosexual couples, provided they refrained from trying to make homosexuals of their children. Whether homosexual or bisexual, couples could commit no worse sin than trying to propagate their passions in their offspring. God would forbid it in his community.
 

During the question and answer period, a little bald man in a brown suit with a vest, round, gold glasses and a toothy smile stood in the aisle and took the microphone. In a sizzling voice, he complimented the daughter on the comprehensive character of her teaching on human reproduction. Yet he was a little surprized to hear nothing very radical, except a few stands on current issues that would provoke the usual protests, such as her refutation of the pro-life argumentation. Perhaps she didn't agree, however, perhaps she felt that some of her ideas clashed with current assumptions. She had two answers, she replied. In the first place, God's will didn't necessarily astonish or confound us as false prophets would have us believe. If one of them told us, for instance, that God wanted us to love our enemies, wouldn't this nonsense be masquerading as divine wisdom? We should mistake fascination with irrational contradictions for true faith no more than miracles for acts of God. In the second place, people tend to greater enlightenment in their thought and speech than in their acts. The number of women who delegated their motherhood to househusbands was approaching the number of men who delegated their fatherhood to housewives. Yet both decorated their offices with photos of their children and bragged of them on golf courses, at cocktail parties and at other events. "Hypocrisy," concluded the daughter, "is no entrance ticket to God's community."

____________________________________________________________

A robust woman in her thirties who had a deep voice and wore a tweedy suit took the microphone and stood towards the middle of a back row:

"Do you categorically reject the inviolability of life before birth?"

"And you reject all authority other than the mother's wish?"

"How will you respond to pro-life activists, if they accuse you of usurping the right to decide between life and death?"

"How can you do that? Hundreds of embryos are dying as we speak."

"How about the trillions of sperm?"

"You approved of families consisting of several different combinations of parents and children, but you didn't mention communes."

____________________________________________________________

if for encouragement, said:

"I'm doing a dissertation on wife-swapping and I wonder... unh!... whether you had an opinion on that."

A man old enough to direct the dissertation grabbed a microphone and asked: "Will wife-swappers make it to God's community?"

The daughter's opposition to religious authority over all aspects of human reproduction divided most of the sects and religions in the country into mutually hostile factions. This issue overshadowed her tolerance of practices condemned by many of them, which also raised a noisy controversy. She paid little attention, however, and the mission suffered no loss of followers or support.
 

 Homepage