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 were allowed to kiss the hands of some 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 pilgrimage.
While Jonathan was in the company of these potentates he asked to attend as an observer one of the meetings of the General Council. 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 all time ended.
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 and blue skies again and integrate this obvious presence into its system of beliefs. Murmurs and groans went up as these suggestions were voiced. 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 just starting 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."
His most valuable deposit, he thought, was the first one he made behind his old home near White Oaks at the start of the revolution. But he knew that area had been razed and the landscape so changed that he’d never be able to find it. It was now part of a featureless, white margin that surrounded the city. The other caches, along the highway, he was confident of finding. He spent the rest of the day leaning back with his eyes closed, trying hard to remember every detail of their whereabouts and exactly what he had put in them.
He distinctly remembered several notebooks and pens in one of them. All three locations were to the north of the road, along one of its most desolate stretches. To smooth the way for this plan he began to berate his companions for enjoying their lazy mode of conveyance. They’d be passing through some of the most interesting scenery in America, and he was loath to have them experience it from a window. After they passed the Great Lakes he’d procure them horses and they would learn to ride them and live off the land, as he’d done when he was young.
"You've already ridden burros," he told them. "We'll pack up saddle bags and travel through the forests, sleeping in tents. Think of what you'll learn."
His followers looked somewhat puzzled but seemed to agree that it was the right thing to do.
"Nothing easier than to detour a bunch of empty-headed youngsters," he thought. "I could have steered them to the North Pole and back without them uttering a complaint."
But the fact was that these youths, with Jonathan's help, were approaching an adult independence. Almost the whole length of the trip Jonathan noticed that Paul was paying an inordinate degree of attention to the slightest variables of Mary's comfort and convenience. If one bunk or seat was a little softer than another, she had it, while he seemed overjoyed to take the worst. If a meal needed to be fetched or an errand run, she sat while Paul ran. Her tea was poured, her pillow fluffed, in a way that Paul acted out towards all his fellow travellers, but intended, all too obviously, for her alone.
Jonathan watched this interesting drama without interference. It also didn't meet with any meddling on Simon's part, who only wanted to corner Jonathan's attention. On the journey west he’d sit beside his master hour after hour and plague him with questions. In the midst of these, Jonathan dreamed of pairing off and marrying off all three sets of his disciples so long as it didn't interfere with their training and harmony. Mary was at least two years younger than Paul and the others, perhaps sixteen. But she was old enough to notice his attentions with girlish smiles.
The more Jonathan thought on it, Paul would make a fine match for Mary. He was a sensitive and fine-hearted youth and though Jonathan felt a protective and even fatherly emotion towards Mary, he could readily see expanding that care to include the both of them. He remembered that both Sarah and Eve had visibly flirted with Peter back at the camp, Peter being the tallest and most handsome of the group. No telling what they were up to now in his absence. That half-blind and half-deaf old priest was hardly one to catch them at their games.
Simon was the problematic one. He was always full of talk and hardly minded the others. He was of middle stature, thin, but with finely chiselled features. Jonathan had just spent the last remaining days in White York taking him to one of the few existing eye doctors and had him fitted with a set of spectacles, which not one in a thousand people owned these days though one in three needed them.
But the hard question was whom to choose for him. Both Sarah and Eve towered over him physically and neither showed any tendency to appreciate his sharp intellect. The only reason he’d been chosen at the sporting event was for his performance and unmistakable luck in the pole vault competition. The others were selected from harder contests that showed real stamina. Simon was an oddball. Perhaps he’d give both the girls to Peter to keep happy. Simon could live on ideas, just as he’d done all his life.
The next day Jonathan decided to let nature take its course, whatever the outcome. To be the arbitrator of marriages, he thought, was far beyond human powers.
"They can do as they choose and be unhappy without my involvement." But later on he thought: "no, I'll even make Eve wed Simon, despite the both of them. I'll order it and if they bicker at least I'll be free of Simon's questions for awhile. I wish I had an Eve when I was young. Whatever the result, it’s got to be better than a life like mine."
