"When they asked if bad men and women—who did not obey their laws—were not thrown at death into fire forever—an idea very current amongst them and others—I was horrified, and told them that God would never allow such a thing. A wee newborn soul to be punished in fire forever? Atrocity, I told them. Once again, I said to them that they should venerate the souls of the Dead to ease their own pain and the pain of those Souls, and that when death came they should not be afraid but go easily in the gloom and keep their eyes on the brilliant light of Life on Earth.

  "I said most of these things because I simply didn't know what to say.

  "Oh, blasphemy. I had done it, I had really done it. And now what would be my fate? I would grow old and die, a venerated teacher, and before I did—or before some pestilence or wild beast cut off my life sooner—I would engrave into stone and clay everything I could. And then into Sheol I would go, and I would begin to draw the souls to me, and I would say: 'Cry, cry to Heaven!' I would teach them to look upwards. I would say the Light is there!"

  He took a breath, as if each word burnt him with pain.

  I spoke again softly from the Book of Enoch. " 'And now, behold the souls of those who have died are crying and making suit to the gates of heaven.' "

  "Yes, you know your scriptures like a good Devil," he said bitterly, but his face was so stricken with sadness and compassion, and this mockery was said with such feeling, that it had no sting. "And who knew what might happen?" he asked. "Who knew! Yes, yes, I would strengthen Sheol until those cries battered Heaven's gates and brought them down. If you have souls and your souls can grow, then you can be as angels! That was the only hope I had, to rule amongst the forgotten of God."

  "But God didn't let this happen, did he? He didn't let you die in that body."

  "No. And he didn't send the Flood either. And all that I had taught was not washed in a Deluge. What remained, what worked its way into myth and scripture was that I had been there, and that those things had been taught, and it was within the compass of a man to have done it; it was within logic, and not magic, and even the secrets of Heaven were what the souls would on their own perhaps have come to see. Sooner or later, the souls would have seen."

  "But how did you get out of it? What happened to Lilia?"

  "Lilia? Ah, Lilia. She died venerated, the wife of a god. Lilia." His whole face brightened and he laughed. "Lilia," he said again, memory lifting her out of the story and bringing her close, obviously. "My Lilia. Cast out, and casting her lot with a god."

  "God had taken you by that time?" I asked. "He had put a stop to what you were doing?"

  We gazed at each other for a moment. "Not quite so simple. I'd been there three months perhaps when I woke up and discovered Michael and Raphael had come for me, and said very distinctly: 'God wants you now.'

  "And I being Memnoch, the unredeemable, said, 'Oh? Why then doesn't He pick me up and take me out of here, or do what He wishes?'

  "At this point, Michael looked miserable on my behalf and he said, 'Memnoch, for the love of God, go willingly back into your proper form. Feel your body grow in stature; let your wings carry you to Heaven. He wants you only if you want to come! Now, Memnoch, think before you.. ..'

  " 'No, you don't have to caution me, beloved,' I said to Michael.

  'I'm coming, with tears in my eyes, I come.' I knelt down and kissed the sleeping Lilia. She looked up at me. 'This is farewell, my mate, my teacher,' I said. I kissed her, and then, turning, became the Angel, visible to her, letting the matter define me so that she, sitting up on her elbows and crying, would see this last vision and hold it to her heart perhaps when she needed it.

  "And then, invisible, I joined Michael and Raphael and went Home.

  "In the first moments I could scarce believe it; when I passed through Sheol, the souls screamed in agony and I threw my hands out in consolation. 'I will not forget you! I swear it. I take your suit to Heaven,' and then on and up I went, the light coming down to meet me and envelop me, and the warm love .of God—whether prelude to judgment or punishment or forgiveness, I did not know—surrounded me and upheld me. The cries of joy in Heaven were deafening even to my ears.

  "All the angels of the bene ha ehhim were gathered. The Light of God pulsed from the center.

  " 'Am I to be punished?' And all I could feel was thanks that I had seen this light, if only for moments, once again.

  "I couldn't look into the light. I had to put my hands up. And as always happens at a meeting of all of Heaven, the Seraphim and the Cherubim closed around God so that the light came in rays from behind them, glorious, and a brightness that we could bear.

  "The voice of God was immediate and total.

  " 'I have a word for you, my brave one, my arrogant one,' He said.

  'I have a concept for you to ponder in your angelic wisdom. It is the concept of Gehenna, of hell.' This word unfolded to me in all its implications. 'Fire and torment eternal,' said God, 'the inverse of Heaven. Tell me, Memnoch, from your heart. Would that be the appropriate punishment for you—the very opposite of the glory you forsook for the Daughters of Men? Would it be the appropriate sentence—suffering everlasting or until Time is no more?' "

  14

  IT DIDN'T take a second to answer," Memnoch said. He raised his eyebrows slightly as he looked at me. "I said, 'No, Lord, you wouldn't do that to anyone. We are all your creatures. That is a horror too terrible for anyone or anything that has been deliberately made. No, Lord. When the men and the women of earth told me they had dreamed of such torments for those who had been bad and caused them pain and misery, I assured them no such place existed or ever would.'

  "Laughter rang out in heaven. Laughter from one end of the skies to the other. Every single angel was laughing, and of course the laughing was melodic and filled with delight and wonder as always, but laughter it was, and not song.

  "Only one being wasn't laughing. Memnoch. 1.1 stood there, having spoken with perfect seriousness and utter amazement that they were laughing at what I had said.

  "But the strangest phenomenon had occurred. God, too, had laughed, and was laughing, softly, with them, in unison, or in a leading rhythm, and only as His laughter slowly died away, so did theirs.

  " 'So you told them that, Memnoch. That there would never be a Hell of Eternal Punishment of the Bad; never; that such a place would never exist.'

  " 'Yes, Lord, I did,' I said. 'I couldn't imagine why they had thought of it. Except they get so angry sometimes with their enemies. ... '

  "The laughter began again, but God silenced it.

  "God said, 'Memnoch, have you left all your mortal cells on earth? You are in possession of all your angelic faculties? You are not still acting the simpleton out of habit?'

  "I spoke loud over the continuing laughter. 'No, Lord. I dreamt of this moment. Separation from you was agony. I did what I did out of love, isn't it so? Surely you know better than I.'

  " 'I fear you did,' He answered. 'It was love, yes, that much is true.'

  " 'Lord, I dreamt you would let me come before you and explain the entire thing, make the case I had meant to make when I first saw a Daughter of Men and went to her. Is this to be granted?'

  "Silence.

  "I could hear nothing from the Divine Presence, but I realized suddenly that some among the bene ha elohim had drawn close to me.

  At first I thought no, they are merely shifting and spreading their wings in the light, but I realized now that close behind me stood a small legion or group of angels, and that they had been at the edges of the crowd all the time and were now being pushed towards me.

  "These angels I knew of course, some much more intimately through debate and argument than others, and they came from all ranks. I looked at them in confusion and then towards the Divine Presence.

  " 'Memnoch,' said the Lord suddenly. 'These behind you, your cohorts, are also asking that you be granted your wish, to make your case, in the hopes that you can make it for them too.'

  " 'I don't understand, Lord.' But in a twinkling I did. I saw now the sorrow on their faces, and the way they cleaved to me as if I were their protector. I knew in an instant what had happened, that ranging over the whole earth, these angels had done as I had done.

  " 'Not with such a flourish or with such invention,' said the Lord God. 'But they, too, saw the heat and mystery between the coupled man and woman; and they, too, found the Daughters of Men to be fair, and took them as wives.'

  "There came again a great uproar. Some were laughing still in that light gay manner as if all of this was splendid and novel entertainment and others were amazed, and those Watchers who clung to me, who seemed in comparison to the bene ha elohim a small number, looked to me desperately, and some even accusingly, and there came a whisper from their midst.

  " 'Memnoch, we saw you do it.'

  "Was God laughing? I couldn't hear it. The light poured out in its immense rays beyond the heads and shoulders and shaded forms of the Seraphim and Cherubim, and the wealth of love seemed eternal and constant as it had always been.

  " 'In tribes throughout the world, my Sons of Heaven have gone down to know the flesh as you would know it, Memnoch, though as I have already said, with far less flair and desire to stir the thick atmosphere of Nature and so deliberately disturb my Divine Plan.'

  " 'Lord, God, forgive me,' I whispered. And from the legion with me came the same hushed and respectful chorus.

  " 'But tell me, you who stand behind Memnoch, what do you have to say for yourselves as to why you did this and what you discovered, and what case would you put before the Heavenly Court?'

  "The answer was silence. These angels fell prostrate before the Lord, asking only forgiveness with such total abandon that no eloquence was required. I alone stood there.

  " 'Ah,' I said, 'it seems, Lord, that I stand alone.'

  " 'Haven't you always? My Son of Heaven, my angel who does not trust the Lord.'

  " 'Lord, God, I do trust you!" I said at once, angry suddenly. 'I do!

  But I don't understand these things, and I cannot still my mind or my personality, it's impossible for me. No, not impossible, but it does not... it does not seem right to be silent. It seems right to make the case. It seems that the greatest thing I can do is to make the case, and the greatest thing I can do is to please God.'

  "There seemed great divisions amongst the others—not the Watchers, who didn't dare to climb to their invisible feet, and had their wings folded over them as if they were birds afraid in the nest— but among the entire Court. There were murmurings, and little songs, and riffs of melody and laughter, and deep, soft questions, and many faces turned on me with eyes full of curiosity and even tinged with anger so that their eyebrows made a scowl.

  " 'Make your case!' said the Lord. 'But before you begin, remind yourself, for my sake and the sake of everyone present, that I know all things. I know humankind as you can never know it. I have seen its bloody altars, and its rain dances, and its reeking sacrifices, and I have heard the cries of the wounded, the afflicted, the slowly annihilated. I see Nature in Humankind as I see it in the savagery of the seas or the forests. Don't waste my Time, Memnoch.

  Or to put it more clearly so that you will understand it, don't waste the Time you have with me.'

  "So the moment had come. I stood quietly preparing myself.

  Never in all my existence had I felt the importance or significance of an event as I felt the meaning of this one now. It is what you would call excitement, perhaps, or exhilaration. I had my audience. And I did not know how to doubt myself! But I was already furious with all the legion behind me lying on their faces and saying nothing! And suddenly in my fury I realized that as long as they lay there, leaving me alone in the open before God and his court, I wasn't going to speak a word. I folded my arms and stood there.

  "God started to laugh, a slow, gentle rising laugh, and then all of Heaven joined in it irresistibly. And God said to the Fallen ones, the Watchers, 'Stand up, my sons, or we will all be here until the End of Time.'

  " 'Mockery, Lord, I deserve it,' I said. 'But I thank you.'

  "In a great shuffling of wings and gowns, I heard them rising behind me to stand at least as tall and as straight as brave humans could stand on the earth below.

  " 'Lord, my case is simple,' I said, 'but surely you cannot ignore it.

  And I shall state it as simply and as finely as I can.

  " 'Up until a point in his development, the primate below was part of Nature, and bound by all its laws. And with his larger brain, he grew ever more cunning, and his battles with other animals became as fierce and bloody as the Heavenly Court has ever seen. This is all true. And with this intelligence there came also an increase in the ways and means that Humankind could inflict upon its own great pain.

  " 'But never in all that I have Watched in war, and execution, and even the laying waste of whole settlements and villages have I seen anything to surpass the sheer violence of the insect Kingdom or the Kingdom of the Reptiles, or of the Lower Mammals, who blindly and senselessly struggle to do only two things—survive and make more of their own kind.'

  "I stopped, out of courtesy and also for effect. The Lord said nothing. I went on.

  " 'Then there came a point, however, when these primates, who had, by then, come to strongly resemble Your Own Image as we perceive it in Ourselves, diverged from the rest of Nature, in a marked way. And it was no mere moment of Self Awareness, Lord, when the logic of Life and Death became apparent to them. It was nothing as simple as that. On the contrary, the Self Awareness grew from a new and totally unnatural capacity to love.

  " 'And it was then that humankind broke itself into tight families and clans and tribes, bound together by intimate knowledge of the individuality of each other, rather than sheer recognition of species, and were held together, through suffering and happiness, by the bond of love.

  " 'Lord, the human family is beyond Nature. If you were to go down and—'

  " 'Memnoch, take care!' God whispered.

  " 'Yes, Lord,' I said, nodding, and clasped my hands behind me so as not to make ferocious gestures. 'What I should have said was that when I went down and I looked into the family, here and there and all over the World which you have Created, which you have allowed to unfold magnificently, I saw the family as a new and unprecedented flower, Lord, a blossom of emotion and intellect that in its tenderness was cut loose from the stems of Nature from which it had taken its nourishment, and was now at the mercy of the wind. Love, Lord, I saw it, I felt Love of Men and Women for one another and for their Children, and the willingness to sacrifice for one another, and to grieve for those who were dead, and to seek for their souls in the hereafter, and to think, Lord, of a hereafter where they might be reconciled with those souls again.

  " 'It was out of this love and the family, it was out of this rare and unprecedented bloom—so Creative, Lord, that it seemed in your Image of your Creations—that the souls of these beings remained alive after death! What else in Nature can do this, Lord? All gives back to the Earth what it has taken. Your Wisdom is Manifest throughout; and all those that suffer and die beneath the canopy of your heavens are mercifully bathed in brutal ignorance of the scheme which ultimately involved their own deaths.

  " 'Man, not so! Woman, not so! And in their hearts, loving one another as they do, mate with mate, and family with family, they have imagined Heaven, Lord. They have imagined it; the time of the reunion of souls when their kin will be restored to them and to each other, and all will sing in bliss! They have imagined eternity because their love demands it, Lord. They have conceived of these ideas as they conceive of fleshly children! This I, the Watcher, have seen.'

  "Another silence. All of heaven was so still that the only sounds came from the earth below, the purring of the wind, and the dim stirring of the seas, and the cries, the pale faraway cries of souls on earth as well as souls in Sheol.

  " 'Lord,' I said, 'they long for Heaven. And imagining eternity, or immortality, I know not which, they suffer injustice, separation, disease, and death, as no other animal could possibly suffer it. And their souls are great. And in Sheol they reach out beyond the love of self and the service of self in the name of Love. Love goes back and forth between Earth and Sheol eternally. Lord, they have made a lower tier of the invisible court! Lord, they seek to propitiate your wrath, be­cause they know You are Here! And Lord, they want to know everything about You. And about themselves. They know and they want to know!'

  "This was the heart of my case, and I knew it. But again, there came from God no response or interruption.

  " 'I couldn't see this,' I said, 'as anything less than Your greatest accomplishment, the self-aware human, conceiving of Time, with a brain vast enough already for learning that is coming so fast we Watchers could scarce keep track of all of it. But the suffering, the torment, the curiosity—it was a lamentation seemingly made for the ears of Angels, and of God, if I may dare to say.

  " 'The case I came to make was, Lord, can these souls, either in the flesh, or in Sheol, not be given some part of our light? Can they not be given Light as animals are given water when they thirst? And will not these souls, once taken into Divine Confidence, be worthy perhaps to take some small place in this Court which is without End?'

  "The quiet seemed dreamy and eternal, like the Time before Time.

  " 'Could it be tried, Lord? For if it is not tried, what is to be the fate of these invisible surviving souls except to grow stronger and more entangled with the flesh in ways that give rise not to revelations of the true Nature of things, but corrupted ideas based on fragmentary evidence and instinctive fear?'

  "This time, I gave up on the idea of a polite pause and immediately forged ahead.

  " 'Lord, when I went into the flesh; when I went with the woman, it was because she was fair, yes, and resembled us, and offered a species of pleasure in the flesh which to us is unknown. Granted, Lord, that pleasure is immeasurably small compared to your magnificence, but Lord, I tell you, in the moment when I lay with her, and she with me, and we knew that pleasure together, that small flame did roar with a sound very like the songs of the Most High!