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My own voice was distinct to me, though the voices of all thosearound me seemed to overpower it.
"Look!" said Memnoch. "Look at them. Look!" And he turnedmy head as if to force me not to cower against his chest but to stareright into the multitudes. And I perceived that these were alliances Iwas witnessing, clans that were gathering, families, groups of kindred,or true friends, beings whose knowledge of each other wasprofound, creatures who shared similar physical and materialmanifestations! And for one brave moment, one brave instant, I saw thatall these beings from one end of this limitless place to the other wereconnected, by hand or fingertip or arm or the touch of a foot. That,indeed, clan slipped within the womb of clan, and tribe spread out tointersperse amongst countless families, and families joined to formnations, and that the entire congregation was in fact a palpable andvisible and interconnected configuration! Everyone impinged uponeveryone else. Everyone drew, in his or her separateness, upon theseparateness of everyone else!
I blinked, dizzy, near to collapsing. Memnoch held me.
"Look again!" he whispered, holding me up.
But I covered my eyes; because I knew that if I saw theinterconnections again, I would collapse! I would perish inside my own senseof separateness! Yet each and every being I saw was separate.
"They are all themselves!" I cried. My hands were clapped on myeyes. I could hear the raging and soaring songs more intensely; thelong riffs and cascades of voices. And beneath all there came such asequence of flowing rhythms, lapping one over the other, that Ibegan to sing.
I sang with everyone! I stood still, free of Memnoch for a moment,opened my eyes, and heard my voice come out of me and riseas if into the universe itself.
I sang and I sang; but my song was full of longing and immensecuriosity and frustration as well as celebration. And it came home tome, thudded into me, that nowhere around me was there anyone whowas unsafe or unsatisfied, was there anything approximating stasis orboredom; yet the word "frenzy" was in no way applicable to theconstant movement and shifting of faces and forms that I saw.
My song was the only sad note in Heaven, and yet the sadness wastransfigured immediately into harmony, into a form of psalm orcanticle, into a hymn of praise and wonder and gratitude.
I cried out. I think I cried the single word "God." This was not aprayer or an admission, or a plea, but simply a great exclamation.
We stood in a doorway. Beyond appeared vista upon vista, and Iwas vaguely sensible suddenly that over the nearby balustrade therelay below the world.
The world as I had never seen it in all its ages, with all its secretsof the past revealed. I had only to rush to the railing and I could peerdown into the time of Eden or Ancient Mesopotamia, or a momentwhen Roman legions had marched through the woods of my earthlyhome. I would see the great eruption of Vesuvius spill its horrid, deadly ash down upon the ancient living city of Pompeii.
Everything there to be known and finally comprehended, allquestions settled, the smell of another time, the taste of it?
I ran towards the balustrade, which seemed to be farther andfarther away. Faster and faster I headed towards it. Yet still the distancewas impossible, and suddenly I became intensely aware that thisvision of Earth would be mingled with smoke and fire and suffering,and that it might utterly demolish in me the overflowing sense of joy.
I had to see, however. I was not dead. I was not here to stay.
Memnoch reached out for me. But I ran faster than he could.
An immense light rose suddenly, a direct source infinitely hotterand more illuminating than the splendid light that already fellwithout prejudice on everything I could see. This great gatheringmagnetic light grew larger and larger until the world down below, thegreat dim landscape of smoke and horror and suffering, was turnedwhite by this light, and rendered like an abstraction of itself, on theverge of combusting.
Memnoch pulled me back, throwing up his arms to cover my eyes.
I did the same. I realized he had bowed his head and was hiding hisown eyes behind me.
I heard him sigh, or was it a moan? I couldn't tell. For one secondthe sound filled the universe; all the cries and laughter and singing;and something mournful from the depths of Earth梐ll this sound-was caught in Memnoch's sigh.
Suddenly I felt his strong arms relaxed and releasing me.
I looked up, and in the midst of the flood of light I saw again thebalustrade, and against it stood a single form.
It was a tall figure who stood with his hands on the railing, lookingover it and down. This appeared to be a man. He turned around andlooked at me and reached out to receive me.
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