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Suddenly, God Incarnate smiled.
"Either way I triumph, don't I?" God asked.
"I curse you!" said Memnoch.
"No, you don't," said God sadly and gently. He reached out andHe touched Memnoch's face and the imprint of His angry handvanished off the angelic skin. God Incarnate leant forward and kissedMemnoch on the mouth.
"I love you, my brave adversary!" He said. "It is good that I madeyou, as good as all else I've made. Bring souls to me. You are onlypart of the cycle, part of Nature, as wondrous as a bolt of lightning orthe eruption of a great volcano, as a star exploding suddenly, milesand miles out in the galaxies so that thousands of years pass beforethose on earth see its light.""You're a merciless God," Memnoch said, refusing to give aninch. "I shall teach them to forgive you what you are桵ajestic,Infinitely Creative, and Imperfect."God Incarnate laughed softly and kissed Memnoch again on theforehead.
"I am a wise God and a patient God," He said. "I am the One whomade you."The images vanished. They did not even fade. They simplydisappeared.
I lay on the battlefield alone.
The stench was a layer of gases hanging over me, poisoning everybreath I drew.
For as far as I could see were dead men.
A noise startled me. The thin, panting figure of a wolf drew nearto me, bearing down on me with its lowered head. I stiffened. I saw itsnarrow uptilted eyes as it pushed its snout arrogantly at me. I smeltits hot, rank breath. I turned my face away. I heard it sniff at my ear,my hair. I heard a deep growl come out of it. I just shut my eyes andwith my right hand in my coat, I felt the veil.
Its teeth grazed my neck. Instantly, I turned, rose and knocked thewolf backwards, and sent it tumbling and yelping and finally scuttlingaway from me. Off it ran over the bodies of the dead.
I took a deep breath. I realized the sky overhead was the daytimesky of Earth and I looked at the white clouds, the simple white cloudsand the dim faraway horizon beneath them, and I listened to thestorm of the insects梩he gnats and the flies rising and swirling hereand there over the bodies梐nd the big humpish ugly vultures,tiptoeing through the feast.
From far away came the sound of human weeping.
But the sky was magnificently clear. The clouds moved so thatthey released the sun in all its power, and down came the warmth onmy hands and face, on the gaseous and exploding bodies around me.
I think I must have lost consciousness. I wanted to. I wanted to fallbackwards again on the earth and roll over and lie with my foreheadagainst it, and slip my hand into my coat and feel that the veil wasthere.
2OTHE GARDEN of Waiting. The tranquil and radiant placebefore the Heavenly Gates. A place from which souls returnfrom time to time, when death brings them into it, and theyare then told that it is not the moment, and they can go home again.
In the distance, beneath the shining cobalt sky, I saw the NewlyDead greet the Older Dead. Gathering after gathering. I saw theembraces, heard the exclamations. Out of the corner of my eyes, I sawthe dizzyingly high walls of Heaven, and Heaven's gates. This time Isaw the angels, less solid than all the rest, chorus after chorus, rnov-ing through the skies, unbound and dipping down at will into thelittle crowds of mortals crossing the bridge. Shifting betweenvisibility and invisibility, the angels moved, watched, drifted upwards tofade into the inexhaustible blue of the sky.
The sounds of Heaven were faint and achingly seductive as theycame from beyond the walls. I could close my eyes and almost see thesapphirine colors! All songs sang the same refrain: "Come in, comehere, come inside, be with us. Chaos is no more. This is Heaven."But I was far from all this, in a little valley. I sat amid wildflowers,tiny white and yellow wildflowers, on the grass bank of the streamwhich all souls cross to get into Heaven, only here it seemed no morethan any magnificent rushing stream. Or rather, it sang a song thatsaid梐fter smoke and war, after soot and blood, after stench andpain桝ll streams are as magnificent as this stream.
Water sings in multiple voices as it slides over rocks and downthrough tiny gullies and rushes abruptly over rises in the earth so thatit may again tumble in a mingling of fugue and canon. While thegrass bends its head to watch.
I rested against the trunk of a tree, what the peach tree might be ifshe bloomed forever, both blossoms and fruit, so that she was neverbare of either, and her limbs hung down not in submission, but withthis richness, this fragrance, this offering, this fusion of two cyclesinto one eternal abundance. Above, amid fluttering petals, the supplyof which seemed inexhaustible and never alarming, I saw the fleetingmovement of tiny birds. And beyond that, angels, and angels, andangels, as if they were made of air, the light luminous glitteringspirits so faint as to vanish at times in one brilliant breath of the sky.
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