"They're running out of paint."

          It didn’t take but a second for Jonathan to realize the profound implications of this statement.  He wouldn’t let go of his friend's shoulder until he heard the full details of this crisis.  It was still a secret, which only the highest administrators of White York knew of.  But the fact was that the millions and millions of gallons of white paint that the Church had laid up in fields of reservoirs in the early days were now very nearly gone.

          In fact a strange thing was going on, precipitating this trouble.  Paint had been stored all along the Eastern seaboard, in the very same depots that once housed oil.  But the huge, metal reservoirs that were still full of paint were now leaking at an alarming rate, bursting at their seams, spilling their precious loads and whitening whole rivers.  The Church suspected sabotage but knew that the natural decay of iron might also be the cause.  And all the technology to repair these vessels was gone.

          The Church had long ago dismantled the plants that produced their paint, vainly thinking they had an inexhaustible supply.  Now they were hastily trying to collect all the living relics of workers once involved in this industry, old engineers and chemists, to construct another plant from the scattered pieces of machinery that had been crated up.  But it had been twenty-five long years since then, and their hopes from these dotards were hardly sanguine.

          They still had a few years of a supply at the current rate of consumption and had transferred some of this stock to smaller and more solid containers.  But it was interesting to Jonathan to contemplate this meltdown; the subcutaneous panic of the Church Fathers, the trickle down anxiety through whole departments of functionaries, and finally, the inescapable horror of the error of the Church, that its very fabric and structure must soon deliquesce and dribble away as sure as the puddles of its own spilt paint.

          But despite this intravenous crisis, the wheels of bureaucracy still ground and groaned, trying hard to maintain a semblance of normality and order.  Early the next morning Jonathan was again summoned before the board and without further question was handed a diploma praising him for his work.  A grand public ceremony was set for the next day, where he’d present his gift before the Fathers of the Church, in the great Hall of Light, a public distraction at a time very much in need of such a thing.

          The parade and the honors that took place that afternoon dizzied Jonathan's disciples.  While he was handed the charter, with a great, silver seal that approved his school, his awestruck students kissed the hands of the Church Fathers themselves.  Then Jonathan and his crew were led to more regal apartments in the central temple.  They were treated at the Father’s board, a table of two hundred priests and shown the sights of the town by carriage, for the next three days.  Then they were sent on their way back west, on an equally fine carriage, with new uniforms with silver stripes as mementos of their successful journey.

          While Jonathan was in the company of these potentates he asked to attend one of the meetings of the General Council as an observer.  His hosts assented to this trifle and even included his entourage.  On the day before they left they witnessed the convocation.

          In a grand, vaulted hall, illuminated by hanging lamps and decorated with plush carpets and finely sculpted tiers of seats, the representatives of the nations of the world assembled and talked, or rather argued on the current issues.  Foremost to many was the disturbing omen of recent atmospheric conditions, revealing across wide portions of the continents the old, blue sky.  The council of Fathers, who sat on a platform in Byzantine splendor, tried to hush these complaints, saying they were only freak occurrences and tests to the faithful.  White was the color, and would be the color, of the clouds and the earth, until the end.

          The debate raged through the morning and afternoon with a general nervousness in the air.  The delegates from South America, where this happened most, were for altering certain doctrines of the Church.  They said they couldn’t condemn the skies to their people.  The Church would have to acknowledge the sun again, and blue skies, and integrate this obvious presence into its system of beliefs.  Murmurs and groans went up when these suggestions were made.  Nothing was resolved because the Fathers and most of the chamber members stood firmly against any change.  But such a debate, by itself, represented a real change from former days and a crisis in affairs.

          Afterwards, Jonathan and his three wards took one last stroll through the streets of the Capitol.  It was dusk, and the avenues were nearly empty.  Most of the workers of this district had gone home.  The rows of five-story buildings had an immaculately clean, almost sterile appearance.  There were no trees or distractions along the way, but now and then a horse-drawn carriage would race by, the hooves and wheels making a loud clatter on the once-again cobblestone roadways.

          Jonathan walked ahead silently, in a brooding mood.  But Simon was too full of questions to leave him alone.  For the first time the young man guessed that the Church might not be the rock that he’d assumed it to be.  The arguments of the senate had left him uneasy.  It was not at all the serene dispenser of perfect wisdom that he’d expected.

          "Jonathan," he began, "do our leaders always debate with such emotion when they decide our course?"

          Jonathan heard what he said but chose to answer a broader question playing in his own mind.  "No government yet devised was ever perfect," he began, looking down and as if talking to himself.  "It seems like all our systems collapse sooner or later by changes from without and things we don’t foresee.  I think we’re in for some of these changes soon.  We must stick close together and try to preserve ourselves and do what good we can if violence breaks out.  This is all a thinking person can do."

          Such a speech hardly eased their doubts and fears.  But it did quiet further talk, while Jonathan pursued his own meditations.  "Strange," he thought, "I see this whole order about to fall for the simplest and most obvious reason.  Yet I never suspected such a cause in all my dreams.  But then it seems not to have occurred to them either.  Now a rumor sends dissensions through the chambers, and the city crumbles in our imaginations, long before the slightest crack appears in the painted pavement."

          The next morning a carriage was brought to their residence.  After a night of troubled thoughts all four were glad to climb into the small compartment for their journey west.  The three youths were full of chat and excitement, talking gaily of their mission's success and the stir it would create back home.  Jonathan was still remote.  He’d hardly a thought for his success.  It had almost no meaning now.  He was thinking about life, about the need to live each day to the fullest while it was still here to enjoy.

          And now, as if the Church was already a thing of the past, he considered his sanctuary in a new light.  "I'll need to make the place self-sufficient," he thought, "able to weather the storms, a world unto itself."

          He remembered the books and supplies he’d buried many years before, on the same route they were on.  "I'll just make a few stops along the way and gather up what we need," he thought.  "I'll have a better library, and ink, and my old pistol again.  These are the things that make for independence."

last post ...

next post ...