The J'Argon

All families descended from those in the theocracy established by the United States civil war of 2045 maintained histories of the times leading up to the take-over by the fundamentalist Religious Right. For those opposed to the dismantling of the 300-year-old North American experiment in Democracy, the stories became an oral tradition that kept the dream alive.

In a classic reenactment of forgotten history, the U.S. election of 2032 put a charismatic, authoritarian, fanatic Christian purist in the White House. The Christian Coalition Party danced in the streets at the inauguration-some called it the anointing-of the Coalition founder’s grandson. It was the last free election. In 2040, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was repealed, allowing the president a third term. On election day in 2044, martial law was declared when it became clear that the opposition "liberal" candidate had a good chance of winning the Electoral College despite government intimidation throughout the election campaign. California, Nevada, Washington State, and Oregon declared themselves break-away republics; The Dakotas, Minnesota, and Northern Michigan did the same. Millions of people poured across the borders into Canada and Mexico. Millions more died in the attempt, as the borders were brutally closed-not by the U.S. military, but by militia privately funded by th e Rev. Luke Abrahamson, Secretary of the new Cabinet-level Department of Church/State Relations.

At the Winter Solstice 2046, on Abrahamson’s order, eleven organizers of the fledgling Liberation Underground were publicly summarily executed without trial in Rockefeller Center Plaza in a ghastly recreation of a 15th Century Auto-da-fé. The group included the best minds in U.S. political and religious life. Among them were the President of the Bishops’ Council of the Catholic Church in America; the Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Science Monitor; the Moderator of the Baptist Joint Committee; the Executive Director of People for the American Way; and as an example to the younger generation of would-be counter-revolutionaries, 25-year-old Michael Morgan Benedict, Campus Student Minister at Villanova. The eleven were brought to the plaza in oxcarts, tied to seasoned oak stakes, doused with gasoline, and set afire. Screams from the victims and the horrified, rioting crowd were dubbed out in the delayed telecast and replaced with the Metropolitan Opera’s virtuoso basso profundo Grayson Thomas, singing Handel’s aria from The Messiah: "For he is like a refiner’s fire." The whole world watched American Democracy and human rationality go up in flames. After seeing the evening news, Thomas threw himself from the 22nd floor balcony of his apartment across the street from Lincoln Center.

At the Summer Solstice of 2047, a late 20th Century attempt at a global "religious United Nations" was reframed and the Covenant of the Word was born. The Covenant became a powerful political Voice for spiritual truth in contrast to the so-called "Christian" terrorists exporting their "Revolution" from the New Confederate States of the Americas. To emphasize the universality of mystic experience, albeit couched in sometimes esoteric language, the leader of the Covenant of the Word was ordained J’Argon.

I

The smoke flap on the tepee slapped once as the wind shifted in its travel around the tree-lined clearing, but the pyramid structure barely trembled. Snow crystals pounded against the layers of poly-enforced animal skins, making a constant grating noise. A small pot of water steamed on the central heat source, softly glowing in the fire pit in the middle of the tepee. The J’Argon paused at the end of the paragraph she was typing into the autonotebook, and listened for a moment. The mooring lines and flexible pine poles were holding. Beyond the gritty sound of the driven snow, and the big wind singing through the ancient white pine, all was primeval stillness. The J’Argon would have heard a field mouse approaching the entrance hole because she knew how to listen under and beyond the immediate and the distracting.

She returned to her message. "I think I’ll be snowed in for a while, but I’m perfectly safe. Now if the communication chip works, you’ll be reading this very soon. Happy New Year! I love you."

The J’Argon did not sign her name. If the transmission were intercepted, Michael could always plead bafflement. So far none of their communications had been detected - a major miracle given the length of time of their partnership. But they were discrete as well as bold. They seldom sent anything through the official Web channels, and there was just too much world wide traffic on the sub-Web net for even the most anal of the Guardians to monitor.

She activated the Web Access Modificator. The communication chip glowed red briefly. Done.

The J’Argon was ready for a long night of vision travel, but some perverse instinct whispered to her to go and just look outside for a moment - to feel the strength of the wind, and the icy bite of the driven snow. She grabbed a deerskin from a pile and wrapped it around her body, then released the bindings, folded the door covering back, and looked outside.

The tepee faced east, so the westerly wind sailed the snow right by, piling it into a curving drift a yard or so from the opening. She would be buried by morning, but the opening should remain free. Heat streamed out around her, so she had no sense of the minus-40-degree Celsius wind-chill outside. She saw nothing but swirling blackness beyond the pool of light divided by her shadow on the snow before the door. She drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes.

"Sixth Night of the New Moon-high magic night, Bless the Work as our Souls take flight" she thought. A gust of wind blew around the tepee, sprinkling snow in through the door. "Thank you, Grandmother."

The J’Argon closed the door covering, replaced the deer hide on the pile, and turned to the small pot steaming in the fire pit. She took a handful of flash-fresh mugwort from a stasis bag, put it into a small bowl, and poured hot water over the leaves. Then she removed her deerskin leggings and tunic, and sat naked on the edge of the bed, holding the bowl in both hands, breathing in the steam, and sipped the mugwort infusion. Half-tranced at the steam, she wrapped herself snugly in a soft, light-weight fox fur, then finished the potion and sank down into vision sleep.

This Solstice quest was the 15th she had made since becoming the Fourth J’Argon of the Covenant of the Word in 2142 of the Common Era. She was neither young nor old. In normal world time reckoning she was 50, but there was no silver yet in her black hair, and only a few lines around startling dark blue eyes and a mouth that was accustomed to smiling or tasting, or kissing, or singing, or speaking the old words of English or French or the new ones of the Dakota Federation or the Confederacy.

Three others had worn the mantle of J’Argon in the 110 years since the formation of the political entity known as the Dakota Federation and the global spiritual community called the Covenant of the Word. All had been shamans or holy elders in the various traditions that comprised the Covenant: a Native American, a Kabbalist Jew, and a Tibetan Lama. As High Priestess of the Old Religion, a direct descendant of the Faery Folk of prehistoric Caledonia, she was the first woman -- still a significant fact 200 years after the great resurgence of feminism in the 20th Century.