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. I'll 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¡ªnot 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¡ªbut 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¡ªsurvive 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¡ª'

"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¡ªso Creative, Lord, that it seemed in your Image of your Creations¡ªthat 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¡ªit 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!

"Our hearts stopped together, Lord. We knew in the flesh eternity, the man in me knew that the woman knew it. We knew something  that rises above all earthly expectations, something that is purely Divine.'

"I fell silent. What more could I say? I would be embroidering my case with examples, for Someone Who knew all things. I folded my arms and looked down, respectfully, musing and listening to the souls in Sheol, and for one second their faint faraway cries distracted me, drew me right out of the heavenly presence for an instant of realization that they were calling on me and reminding me of my promise and hoping for my return.

"Lord God, forgive me,' I said. 'Your wonders have snared me. And I am wrong if that was not your plan.'

"Once again the silence was thunderous and soft and utterly empty. It was an emptiness of which those on Earth cannot conceive.

I stood my ground because I could do nothing but what I had done, and I felt in my heart that every word I'd spoken had been true and untainted by fear. It occurred to me very clearly that if the Lord threw me out of Heaven, that whatever He did, really, I would deserve it. I was His Created Angel, and His to Command. And His to destroy if He wished it. And once again, I heard the cries of Sheol in my memory, and I wondered, as a human might, if He would send me there soon or do something far more fearful, for in Nature there were countless examples of excruciating destruction and catastrophe, and I as an Angel could be made by God to suffer whatever He wanted me to suffer, I knew.

"I trust in you, Lord,' I said suddenly, thinking and speaking simultaneously. 'Or else I would have fallen on my face as have the other Watchers. And that is not to say that they do not trust. But only to say that I believe you want me to understand Goodness, that your essence is Goodness, and you will not suffer these souls to cry in gloom and ignorance. You will not suffer the ingenious Humankind to continue without any inkling of the Divine.'

"For the first time, he spoke very softly and offhandedly.

"Memnoch, you've given them more than an inkling.'

"Yes, Lord, it is so. But Lord, the souls of the dead have given them much inspiration, and encouragement, and those souls are out of Nature, as we have beheld it, and growing stronger by the day. If there is a species of energy, Lord, natural and complicated beyond my understanding, then I am totally taken by surprise. For it seems they are made of what we are made of, Lord, the invisible, and each is individual and has its own will.'

"Silence again. Then the Lord spoke:

"Very well. I have heard your case. Now I have for you a question.

For all that you gave Humankind, Memnoch, what precisely did they give you?'

"I was startled by the question.

"And don't speak to me of love now, Memnoch,' He added. 'Of their capacity to love one another. On this the Heavenly Court is well informed and totally agreed. But what did they give you, Memnoch?  What did you get in return for the risks you took by entering into their realm?'

"Confirmation, Lord,' I said hastily, reaching for the deepest truth without distortion. 'They knew an Angel when they saw one.  Just as I supposed they would.'

"Ah!' A great roar of laughter came from the Heavenly Throne and once again it swept up Heaven, so loud I'm sure that it must have reached the weak and struggling ears of Sheol. The Whole Heavens were rocking with laughing and singing.

"At first I didn't dare to speak or do anything, and then suddenly, angrily perhaps, or should I say, willfully, I raised my hand. 'But I mean this in all seriousness, Lord! I was not some being beyond their dreams! Lord, did you plant the seed for this when you Created the Universe, that these beings would raise their voices to you? Will you tell me? One way or the other, can I know?'

"The angels quieted down in little groups and pockets at first and then the laughter tapered off altogether, and something else replaced it, a soft singing of tribute to God in his patience, a soft acknowledgment of his patience with me.

"I didn't join in this song. I looked to the great outer stretches of the rays of Light that came from God, and the mystery of my own stubbornness and my own anger and my own curiosity subdued me somewhat, but did not throw me for one second into despair.

"I trust in you, Lord. You know what you're doing. You have to. Otherwise we are .. . lost.'

"I broke off, stunned at what I had just said. It far exceeded any challenge I'd thrown at God so far, it far exceeded any suggestion that I had made. And in horror, I looked at the Light, and thought, What if He doesn't know what He's doing and never has!

"My hands went to my face to stop my lips from saying something rash and thereby tell my brain to stop with its rash and blasphemous thoughts. I knew God! God was There. And I stood before Him.  How dare I think such a thing, and yet He had said, 'You do not trust me,' and that was exactly what He had meant.

"It seemed the Light of God grew infinitely brighter; it expanded; the shapes of the Seraphim and Cherubim grew small and utterly transparent, and the light filled me and filled the recesses of all angels, and I felt in communion with them that all of us were so totally loved by God that we could never long for or imagine anything more.

"Then the Lord spoke, the words wholly different now, for they competed with this effulgence of Love which overpowered the thinking mind. Nevertheless, I heard them and they penetrated to my heart.

"And everyone else heard them too.

"Memnoch, go into Sheol,' He said, 'and find there but ten souls who are worthy, of all those millions, to join us in Heaven. Say what you will to them as you examine them; but find Ten whom you believe are worthy to live with us. Then bring those souls back to me, and we will continue from there on.'

"I was ecstatic. 'Lord, I can do it, I know I can!' I cried out.

"And suddenly I saw the faces of Michael and Raphael and Uriel, who had been almost obscured by the light of God, which was now receding within more endurable bounds. Michael looked frightened for me and Raphael was weeping. Uriel seemed merely to watch, without emotion, neither on my side or for me, or for the souls, or for anyone. It was the face that Angels used to have before Time began.

"I can go now?' I said. 'And when must I return?'

"When you will,' said the Lord, 'and when you can.'

"Ah, I understood it. If I didn't find those ten souls I wasn't coming back.

"I nodded, lovely logic. I understood it. I accepted it.

"Years pass on Earth as we speak, Memnoch. Your settlement and those visited by others have grown into cities; the world spins in the Light of Heaven. What can I say to you, my beloved one, except that you should go now to Sheol and return with those Ten Souls as soon as you possibly can.'

"I was about to speak, to ask, What of the Watchers, this little legion of meek, flesh-educated angels behind me, when the Lord answered.

"They will wait in the proper place in Heaven for your return.  They will not know my decision, nor their fate, until you bring these souls to me, Memnoch, souls that I shall find worthy to be in my Heavenly Home.'

"I understand, Lord, I'm leaving with your permission!'

"And asking nothing further, broaching no questions as to restrictions or limitations, I, Memnoch, the Archangel and the Accuser of God, left Heaven immediately and descended into the great airy mists of Sheol."

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