A new continental highway   

    Spring was here with its milder weather.  My duties were light and varied, my health returned, and I enjoyed a pleasant renaissance of intellectual life.  My curiosity revived.  Around the huge, shadowy whales of problems that haunted me, whole schools of flashing, minnow-like questions swam about in the ocean of my thoughts.  I had the health to escape again and the time was ripe, but I stayed on, intrigued by this strange society I lived in.  It was bristling with life and energy.  Yet it was entirely built and finished.  I was fascinated by the mystery of where it would turn next.

     I was being seduced, or else evolving, out of my own tiny shell of concerns, of my own personal survival.  I began to view my flight to the woods as an escape from by far the largest portion of humanity.  My first years in the city were spent in shock and almost total numbness.  It was in the wilderness that I came to life again. I regained my self-confidence and the will to live.  But now I was back among the whole family of man, watching this odd evolution.  Each day I stayed on I felt more strongly that my years as a sort of noble savage in the woods were hardly more than an interlude.

     I didn't forget my old friends, but now I felt like a player in the game, with choices at hand.  I was eager to learn how this system worked.  I wanted to know more about the temples and the real forces that ruled the state.  If the doors were closed and I found myself excluded from such knowledge, I could withdraw at any time, and forever, to my sylvan retreat.

     What most engaged me was the coming announcement.  A great council had been gathered in the east that winter to map out a new course for the faithful and draw up an agenda for the next decade.  It’d taken half a year to send out envoys and collect delegates for a general session from around the world.  All this was done by ship, the only form of transportation and communication still used over great distances.

     The reason was that the great waterways were empty and safe, and never decayed as the roads did.  Though it had destroyed nearly everything else the Church maintained a fleet of tankers and ships, along with a few small refineries, to carry out its missions around the globe.  The capitol of the World Church was at White York and from that vicinity issued all the holy paint that purified mankind.  Shipping was the only way to convey the huge volumes of liquid.  But it meant that the whole empire of the Church was limited to coastal regions or wide rivers.

     But the vast, deserted interiors of the continents still loomed in the minds of our leaders.  They remembered the forced depopulation of these areas in the first years.  They remembered the fine cities where temples had been started and then abandoned in hasty and sad migrations when they were found to be untenable, impossible to supply or defend against the hordes of outcasts that roamed the land in those first years.

     But now their cause was victorious.  The plague and the rebels were gone.  So the council adopted the grand scheme of building a highway to span the continent, from White Seat to White York, linking the coasts, and at the same time opening up the interior to colonization.  The catchword for this year was ‘unification’.

     Indeed they had been sharpening their skills for this undertaking already, by constructing short spans between the coastal towns to improve local communications.  Each city had its own contingent of road builders.  Now they only needed to collect and organize these crews, glorify the project to give it momentum and set it on its long run.

     A delegation was expected to arrive by ship any day.  We were forewarned by couriers from White Seat and told to prepare a grand reception.  There were to be three dignitaries from the council, of a rank and authority higher than that of our own head priest, on a level with bishops. Such was the importance of the commissions they brought.

     In a society without entertainment any civic event is dressed up in a great deal of pomp and circumstance.  Ours were like circuses.  On the day before the arrival of the boat our barracks were visited by the head priest himself, leading in a crew of barbers.  After the usual apologies for disturbing our ears, he proceeded to tell us that we were going to be given an honor and an opportunity such as we used to know.

     The great council in its winter-long debates had decided that it was high time to do something about the ‘Order of Lickers’  and wisely proposed that the new ‘Department of Highway Construction’ would be just the place to refit us for a better role in society.  We were now told that we would have a prominent part in the parade the next day and receive this good news in the town square.  To prepare for this we were going to receive new outfits and gear and also have our hair trimmed for the occasion.

     I doubt if anyone of lower rank than the head priest could have broached this topic with any hope of success.  We were seated at our table and twenty barbers began clipping.  While they worked the thought struck me that this was just what we needed.  If there was anything left in the city that was still an eyesore, it was us.  Now the city was not just cleaning us up, it was getting rid of us.  But it was also giving us a bit of pride, or at least the chance for it.  The project to which they were sending us, so they said, would contain all the best and brightest talents that the city could supply.

     From the low groans around me I could tell that most of my brothers thought otherwise.  To cut such long, tangled and flea-infested locks went hard against tradition.  The head priest harangued us the whole while and promised better meals and shiny, new camp equipment for our journey.

     I wasn’t one to pass up an opportunity to make an impression on so high a superior, so while the barber was trimming my beard, I motioned him to take the razor dangling from his belt and shave it off.  The priest was informed of this request, came over to my side and mused upon it a minute, looking down at me and stroking his own naked chin in the process.

     Then he nodded his assent, patted me on the back and announced to us that "radical changes require radical sacrifices."  A whole chorus of groans rang out from around the table as the barbers sharpened their knives.

            For the rest of the day we were confined to our quarters.  Our new clothes were brought in and we were made to give up our old ones, which were taken away and burned.  Most of my companions lay in their bunks almost naked, scowling and scratching their white faces, while I paced back and forth in my new outfit, excited by the changes soon to come.

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