HERMANN GORING WOKE UP SWEATING AND GROANING. “JA, mein Fiihrer! Ja, mein Fiihrer! Ja, mein Ftihrer! Ja, ja, ja!”
The screaming face faded. The black gunsmoke pouring in through the shattered windows and broken walls vanished. The windows and walls disappeared. The bass Russian artillery which had been counterpointing der Fiihrer’s alto soprano became muted, then withdrew, roaring sullenly. The droning which had been a counter-counterpoint to the madman’s screech dwindled and died. That noise, he was vaguely aware, had been from the motors of the American and British bombers.
The darkness of the nightmare was succeeded by the Riverworld’s night.
It was comforting and peaceful, though. Hermann lay on his back on the bamboo bed and touched the warm arm of Kren. She stirred and muttered something. Perhaps she was talking to someone in her dreams. She would not be distressed or bewildered or horrified. Her dreams were always pleasant. She was a Riverchild, dead on Earth at or around the age of six. She remembered nothing of her native planet. Her earliest memory, and that was vague, was waking in this valley, her parents gone, everything she’d known gone.
Hermann warmed himself with the touch and with pleasant memories of their years together. Then he got up, dressed in the body-covering early-morning outfit, and stepped outside. He was on a platform of bamboo. Ahead and behind on the same level as his hut were many others. Above was another level of dwellings, and there was another above that. Below were three levels. All were continuous bridges stretching for as far as he could see to the south and terminating far to the north. The supports were usually tall thin spires of rock or irontrees; each length of bridge was seldom less than one hundred and fifty feet or more than three hundred. Where extra support was needed, pylons of oak or mortared stone had been placed.
The Valley here was thirty miles wide. The River widened to form a lake ten miles broad and forty miles long. The mountains were no higher than six thousand feet, fortunately for the inhabitants, since The Valley here was far up in the northern hemisphere and they needed all the daylight possible. At the west end of the lake, the mountains curved into The River itself. Here the waters boiled through a high narrow passage. In the warmer hours of the afternoon, the easterly wind pushed through the strait at an estimated fifteen miles an hour. It then lost some of its force, but it was carried up by the peculiar topography, causing updrafts of which the inhabitants took advantage.
Everywhere on the land, towers of rock, tall columns bearing many carved figures, rose. Between many of these were multilevels spans. These were of wood: bamboo, pine, oak, yew. At intervals, depending upon the weight the spans could bear, were huts. Gliders and folded balloon envelopes were stored on top of many of the broader spires.
Drums were beating; fishbone horns, wailing. People began appearing in the doorways of the huts, stretching, yawning. The day was officially beginning. The sun had just shown its top. The temperature would rise to 60° F in the heavens, 30° F short of the zenith of the tropics. At the end of fifteen hours, the sun plunged below the mountains, and in nine hours would rise again. The length of its sojourn in the skies almost made up for the weakness of its oblique rays.
With two grails in the net attached to his back, Hermann climbed down the fifty feet to the ground. Kren had no duties today and so would sleep in. Later she would come down, pick up her grail from the storage shed near the stone, and eat a belated breakfast.
As he walked along he greeted those he knew, and in the population of 248,000, he could call ten thousand by their first names. The scarcity of paper in The Valley had forced a reliance on, and development of, memory, though on Earth his own memory had been phenomenal. The greetings were in the truncated, collapsed Esperanto dialect of Vivolando.
“Ban ten, eskop.” (“Good morning, Bishop.”)
“Tre ban ten a vi, Fenikso. Pass ess via.” (“A very good morning to you, Phoenix. Peace be yours.”)
He was formal and stately then, but a few seconds later he stopped a group to tell them a joke.
Hermann Goring at this time was happy. Yet he had not always been so. His tale was long, shot with gaiety and peace here and there but in general sad and stormy and by no means always edifying.
His Terrestrial biography went thus:
Born at Rosenheim, Bavaria, Germany, on January 12, 1893. His father was a colonial official, in fact, the first governor of German Southwest Africa. At the age of three months, Goring was parted from his parents, who went to Haiti for three years, where his father was the German consul general. This long separation from his mother at such a tender age had a very bad effect on Hermann. The pain and loneliness of this period never entirely left him. Moreover, when he became aware at an early age that his mother was having an affair with his godfather, he felt great contempt, mingled with rage, for her. He managed, however, to restrain any overt manifestations of his feelings. His father he treated with a silent contempt, though he was seldom openly insulting to him. But when his father was buried, Hermann wept.
At the age of ten he became very sick with a glandular disease. In 1915, a month after his father’s death, he became a lieutenant in the 112th Prinz Wilhelm Infantry Regiment. At this time the blue-eyed, blond, slender, and passably good-looking officer was a very popular person. He loved to dance and drink and in general was much fun. His godfather, a Jew converted to Christianity, gave him money to help him financially.
Shortly after World War I starred, a painful arthritis in his knees hospitalized him. Eager to get into action, he left the hospital and became an observer in the plane of a friend, Lorzer. For three weeks he was unofficially absent without leave from the army. Though he was judged unfit to serve in the infantry because of his physical incapacity, Goring joined the Luftwaffe. His vigorous and unorthodox language amused the Crown Prince, who was commanding the 25th Field Air Detachment of the Fifth Army. In the autumn of 1915 he went through the Freiburg Aviation School, easily qualifying as a pilot. In November 1916 he was shot down, badly hurt, and was .out of action for six months. Despite this, he flew again. His rise was rapid since he was not only an excellent officer and flier but an outstanding organizer.
In 1917 Hermann received the Ordre Pour le Merite (the German equivalent of the Victoria Cross) in acknowledgment of his leadership qualities and for having shot down fifteen enemy planes. He was also given the Golden Airman’s Medal. On July 7, 1918, he was made commander of Geschwader 1, its commander Richthofen having been killed after eighty victories. Goring’s great interest in technical details and problems of equipment made him a natural for his position as commander. His deep knowledge of all aspects of aerial warfare was to stand him in good stead in later years.
By the time Germany surrendered, he had thirty enemy planes to his credit. But this did not do him any good during the period immediately following the end of the war. Aces were a drug on the market.
In 1920, after some time barnstorming in Denmark and Sweden, he became flight chief of the Svenska Lufttrafik in Stockholm, Sweden. Here he met Karin von Kantznow, sister-in-law of the Swedish explorer Count von Rosen. He married her, though she was a divorcee and mother of an eight-year-old boy. He was a good husband to her until she died. Despite his later career in an organization distinguished for gross immorality, he was faithful to her and to his second wife. Sexually, he was a puritan. He was also a political puritan. Once having given his loyalty, he did not withdraw it.
It was a wonder that he ever amounted to anything. Though he dreamed much of advancement to high positions and wealth, he drifted. Without any guiding light, he allowed chance people and events to carry him along.
It was his fortune, or misfortune, that he met Adolf Hitler.
During the abortive Putsch of 1923, in Munich, Goring was wounded. He escaped the police for a while by taking refuge in the home of Frau Use Ballin, wife of a Jewish merchant. Goring did not forget this debt. He aided her during the persecution of the Jews after Hitler became head of the German state, and he arranged for her and her family to flee to England.
Breaking his word of honor that he would not escape after his arrest, he fled to Austria. Here the badly infected wound hospitalized him, forcing him to take morphine for the pain. Sick and penniless, his virility affected by various operations, he became mentally depressed. At the same time, his wife’s health, never good, was getting worse.
Now a drug addict, he went to Sweden, where he spent six months in a sanitorium. Discharged as cured, he returned to his wife. All seemed hopeless, yet, having hit the bottom, his spirits rose, and he began to fight. This was typical of him. Somehow, from somewhere, he gathered his energy to fight when all seemed lost.
On returning to Germany, he rejoined Hitler, whom he believed to be the only man who could make Germany great again. Karin died in Sweden in October 1931. He was with Hitler in Berlin then, meeting Hindenburg, who had decided that Hitler would become his successor as head of the state. Goring always felt guilty because he had chosen to be with Hitler instead of with Karin when she was dying. Her death drove him back to morphine for a while. Then he met Emmy Sonnemann, an actress, and married her.
Though he had great talents as an organizer, Goring was inclined to be sentimental. He also had a hot temper which allowed his tongue to run away with him. During the trial of the men charged with burning the Reichstag building, Goring made wild accusations. Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist, coolly exposed the illegal methods and illogicality of the charges against him. Goring’s failure to control the trials spoiled their propagandists effect and demolished the false facade of the Nazis’ propaganda machine.
Despite this, Goring was given the job of forming the Reich’s new air force. He was no longer the slender ace, having put on much weight. But his double personality had won him two new titles, Der Dicke (The Fatty) and Der Eiserne (The Man of Iron). His rheumatism was giving him pains in the legs and making him take drugs (chiefly paracodeine).
He was not a scholar or a writer, but he did dictate, a book, Germany Reborn, which was published in London. He had a passion for the works of George Bernard Shaw and could quote long passages from them. He also was familiar with the German classics, Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, et al. His love of paintings was well known. He had a fondness for detective stories and for mechanical toys and gadgets.
By now he dreamed of a Goring dynasty, one which would last a thousand years and forever impress his name in history. It was highly probable that Hitler would have no child, and he had named Goring as his successor. This dream was shattered when his only child, a girl, Edda, was born. Emmy was not going to have any more children, and it was unthinkable to him to divorce her and take a wife who might produce sons. Though he must have been intensely disappointed, he did not reveal it. He loved Edda, and she loved him to the end of her life.
Another aspect of his puzzling persona was demonstrated when he visited Italy on a diplomatic mission. The King and the Crown Prince took him on a deer hunt. The three stood on a high platform while hundreds of deer were herded past them. The royalty slaughtered them, the King killing one hundred and thirteen. Goring was so disgusted that he refused to shoot at all.
Nor did he want to invade Czechoslovakia and Austria, and he especially objected to the invasion of Poland. Thought of war depressed him; he had been in low spirits at the idea just before both World War I and II. Nevertheless, he went along with his beloved leader in this matter, just as he had not protested publicly against the persecution of the Jews. But at his wife’s request, he saved dozens of Jews from imprisonment.
In 1939 Hitler promoted Hermann to Field Marshal and made him Economic Minister of the Reich. As Air Minister of the Luftwaffe he was also its commander-in-chief. He tried to get a stratobomber built which would attain a twenty-mile altitude and fly to America, but he did not succeed.
Despite his high positions, he had a tendency to turn away from realities. In 1939 he told the German public, “If any enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Hermann Goring. You can call me Meier.” (“Meier” was a folk-joke name, indicating a mythical character who bumbled and numb-skulled his way through life.)
After a while, Goring was often called Meier by the Nazi Party bigwigs and by the public. But the affectionate feeling implicit in Der Dicke was missing in Meier. The British and American bombers were making a shambles of Germany. The Luftwaffe had failed to soften England for invasion, and now it was failing to turn back the hordes of metal birds dropping deadly eggs onto the Reich. Hitler blamed Goring for both, though it was Hitler’s decision to bomb the English cities instead of first wiping out the Royal Air Force bases that was responsible for the Germans’ plight. Just as Hitler’s decision to attack neutral Russia before England was laid low was ultimately the cause of Germany’s downfall.
As it was, Hitler had wanted to invade Sweden, too, when Norway was taken. But, Goring, loving Sweden, had threatened to resign if Sweden was attacked. He had also pleaded the advantages of a neutral Sweden to Hitler.
His health had been getting worse before the war. During the great conflicts, his sicknesses and his lessening prestige made him turn to drugs. He was anxious, nervous, and given to melancholia, on the skids, out of control, and no way to stop the descent. And his beloved country was heading toward the Gotterdammerung which horrified him but which, in a strange way, gratified Hitler.
With the Allies advancing across Germany on all fronts, Goring thought that it was time for him to take over the government. Der Fiihrer, instead, stripped him of all his titles and positions and expelled him from the Nazi Party. His worst enemy, Martin Hermann, ordered his arrest.
Near the end of the war, while trying to flee the Russians, he was taken into custody by an Army lieutenant, ironically, a Jew. During his trial at Nuremberg, he defended himself but with a lack of conviction. Despite what Hitler had done, he defended him, too, loyal to the end.
The verdict was inevitable. He was sentenced to be hanged. The day before his execution, October 15, 1946, he swallowed one of the cyanide capsules he had hidden in his cell and died. He was cremated, and the ashes were, according to one story, flung onto a refuse heap in Dachau. Another, with more authority, says that the ashes were dropped onto a muddy country road outside Munich.
That should have been the end. Goring was glad to die, glad to be rid of his sicknesses of body and soul, of the consciousness of his great failure, and of the stigma as a Nazi war criminal. The only thing he regretted about dying was that his Emma and little Edda would be left unprotected.
BUT IT WAS NOT THE END. LlKE IT OR NOT, HE HAD BEEN RESurrected on this planet. He was young in body again, a slender youth. How or why, he did not know. He was rid of his rheumatism, his swollen lymph glands, and the dependency on paracodeine.
He resolved to set out to look for Emma and Edda. Also, to find Karin. How he would be able to have both his wives was something he did not care to contemplate. The search would be long enough for thinking about this.
He never found them.
The old Hermann Goring, the highly ambitious and unscrupulous opportunist, still lived in him. He did many things of which he became deeply ashamed and remorseful when, after many adventures and much wandering,* he was converted to the Church of the Second Chance. This happened suddenly and dramatically, much like the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, and it took place in the small and sovereign state of Tamoancan. This was composed chiefly of tenth-century Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans and twentieth-century Navahos. Hermann lived in the newcomers’ hall until he was thoroughly grounded in the tenets and disciplines of the Church.
He moved out then into a recently abandoned hut. After a while, a woman named Chopilotl was living with him. She, too, was a Chancer, but she insisted that they keep in their hut a soapstone idol. It was a hideous figure about thirty centimeters high, addressed as Xochiquetzal, the divine patroness *See To Your Scattered Bodies Go for the details. of sexual love and childbirth. Chopilotl’s adoration of the goddess signified her passion for passion. She demanded that Hermann and she make love in front of the idol in the light of torches flanking it. Hermann did not mind that, but he did tire of the frequency of her insistence.
Also, it seemed to him that she shouldn’t be allowed to worship a pagan divinity. He went to his bishop, a Navaho who had been a Mormon on Earth.
“Yes, I know she has that statue,” Bishop Ch’agii said. “The Church doesn’t countenance idolatry or polytheism, Hermann. You know that. But it does permit its members to keep idols, provided that the owner fully realizes that it is only a symbol. Admittedly, this is dangerous, since the worshiper too easily takes the symbol for the reality. This failing wasn’t confined to the primitives, you know. Even the so-called civilized peoples were sucked into this psychological trap.
“Chopilotl is rather literal-minded, but she’s a good person. If we got too stubborn about her idiosyncracy and demanded that she cast the idol out, she might backslide into a genuine polytheism. What we are doing might be called theological weaning. You have seen how many idols there are around here, haven’t you? Most of them at one time had a multitude of worshipers. But we have gradually detached the religionists from them, achieving this through a patient and gentle instruction. Now the stone gods have become only objects d’art to most of their former worshipers.
“In time, Chopilotl will come to regard her goddess as such. I’m banking on you to assist her to get over her present regrettable attitude.”
“You mean, give her a theological goose?” Hermann said.
The bishop looked surprised, then he laughed. “I had my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago,” he said. “I do sound stuffy, don’t I? Have a drink, my son, and tell me more about yourself.”
At the end of a year, Hermann was baptised with many other naked shivering teeth-chattering neophytes. Afterward, he toweled off a woman while she dried him. Then all donned body-covering cloths, and the bishop hung around the neck of each a cord from which was suspended the spiral vertebra bone of a hornfish. They were not titled priests; each was simply called Instruisto, Teacher.
Hermann felt as if he were a fraud. Who was he to be instructing others, and acting, in effect, as a priest? He was not even sure that his belief in God or in the Church was sincere. No, that was not right. He was sincere—most of the time.
“The doubts are about yourself,” the bishop said. “You think you can’t live up to the ideals. You think you aren’t worthy. You have to get over that, Hermann. Everybody has the potentiality of being worthy, which leads to salvation. You have it; I have it; all God’s children have it,” and he laughed.
“Watch two tendencies in yourself, son. Sometimes you are arrogant, thinking you are better than others. More often you are humble. Too humble. I might even say, sickeningly humble. That is another form of arrogance. True humility is knowing your true place in the cosmic scale.
“I’m still learning. And I pray that I may live long enough to be rid of all self-deceit. Meanwhile, you and I can’t spend all our time in exploring ourselves. We must also work among the people. Monasticism, retreat from the world, reclusivism, that’s a lot of crap. So where would you like to go? Up-River or down?”
“I really hate to leave this place,” Hermann said. “I’ve been happy here. For the first time in a long time, I feel as if I’m part of a family.”
“Your family lives from one end of The River to the other,” Ch’agii said. “It contains many unpleasant relatives, true. But what family doesn’t? It’s your job to aid them to become right-thinking. And that is the second stage. The first is getting people to admit that they are wrong-thinking.”
“That’s the trouble,” Hermann said. “I don’t think I’m beyond the first stage myself.”
“If I believed that, I would not have permitted you to graduate. Which is it? Up or down?”
“Down,” Hermann said.
Ch’agii raised his eyebrows. “Good. But the neophyte usually chooses to go up-River. They’ve heard that La Viro is somewhere in that direction. And they thirst to visit him, to walk and talk with him.”
“That is why I choose the other direction,” Hermann said. “I am not worthy.”
The bishop sighed, and he said, “Sometimes I regret we are forbidden any violence whatsoever. Right now, I would like to kick you in the ass.
“Very well, go down, my pale Moses. But I charge that you give a message to the bishop of whatever area you settle down in. Tell him or her that Bishop Ch’agii sends his love. And also tell the bishop this. Some birds think they are worms.”
“What does that mean?”
“I hope you find out some day,” Ch’agii said. He waved his right hand, three fingers extended, blessing. Then he hugged Hermann and kissed him on the lips. “Go, my son, and may your ka become an akh.”
“May our akhs fly side by side,” Hermann said formally. He left the hut with tears running down his cheeks. He had always been a sentimentalist. But he told himself that he was weeping because he loved the little dark sententious man. The distinction between sentiment and love had been drilled into him in the seminary. So, this was love he felt. Or was it?
As the bishop had said in a lecture, his students would not really know the difference between the two until they had much practice dealing with them. Even then, if they didn’t have intelligence, they wouldn’t be able to separate one from the other.
The raft on which he was to travel had been built by himself and the seven who were to accompany him. One of these was Chopilotl. Hermann stopped at the hut to pick up her and his few belongings. She was outside with two neighbor women, hoisting the idol onto a wooden sled.
“You’re not thinking about taking that thing along?” he said to her.
“Of course I am,” she said. “It would be like leaving my ka behind if I did not take her. And she is not just a thing. She is Xochiquetal.”
“She’s just a symbol, need I remind you for the hundredth time,” he said, scowling.
“Then I need my symbol. It would be bad luck to abandon her. She would be very angry.
He was frustrated and anxious. This was the first day of his mission, and he was confronted with a situation he wasn’t sure he could handle properly. ‘
“Consider thy latter end, my son, and be wise,” the bishop had said in a lecture, quoting Ecclesiastes.
He had to act so that the final result of this particular event would be the right one.
“It’s this way, Chopilotl,” he said. “It’s all right, at least, not bad, keeping this idol in this country. The people here understand. But people elsewhere won’t. We’re missionaries, dedicated to converting others to what we believe to be the true religion. We have authority behind us, the teachings of La Viro, who received his revelations from one of the makers of this world.
“But how can we convince anybody if one of us is an idolater? A worshiper of a stone statue? Not a very pretty one, I might add, though that is really irrelevant.
“People will mock us. They’ll say we’re ignorant heathen, superstitious. And we’d be sinning grievously because we’d give people an entirely wrong picture of the Church.”
“Tell them that she is just a symbol,” Chopilotl said, sullenly. His voice rose. “I told you they wouldn’t understand! Besides, it’d be a lie. It’s obvious that this thing is much more to you than just a symbol.”
“Would you throw away your spiral bone?”
“That’s different. It’s a sign of my belief, a badge of my membership. I don’t worship it.”
She flashed white teeth in a sardonic dark face.
“You throw it away, and I’ll abandon my beloved.”
“Nonsense!” he said. “You know I can’t do that! You’re being unreasonable, you bitch.”
“Your face is getting red,” she said. “Where is your loving understanding?”
He breathed deeply and said, “Very well. Bring that thing along.”
He walked away.
She said, “Aren’t you going to help me drag it?”
He stopped and turned. “And be an accessory to blasphemy?”
“If you’ve agreed that it can come with us, then you’re already an accessory.”
She wasn’t stupid—except in that one respect and that was emotional stupidity. Smiling a little, he resumed walking away. On reaching the raft, he told the others what to expect.
“Why do you allow this, brother?” Fleiskaz said. He was a huge red-haired man whose native language was primitive Germanic. This was one of the tongues of central Europe of the second millennium B.C. From it had originated twentieth-century Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, German, Dutch, and English. His nickname had been Wulfaz, meaning Wolf, because he was such a fear-inspiring warrior.
But on the Riverworld, when he’d converted to the Church, he’d renamed himself Fleiskaz. This, in his natal language, meant “a piece of torn flesh.” No one knew why he’d adopted that, but it might have been because he thought of himself as a piece of the good flesh living in an evil body. This piece, torn from the old body, had the potentiality to grow into a complete new body, spiritually speaking, a thoroughly good body.
“Just bear with me,” Hermann said to Fleiskaz. “The whole matter will be settled before we have put fifty meters, between us and the shore.”
They sat around, smoking and talking, watching Chopilotl pull the sled with its stone burden. By the time she had crossed the wide plain, she was scarlet-faced, sweating, and panting. She swore at Hermann, finished by telling him that he would be sleeping by himself for a long time.
“This woman doesn’t set a good example, brother,” Fleiskaz said.
“Be patient, brother,” Hermann said quietly.
The raft was butting into the bank, held from drifting by an anchor, a small boulder at the end of a fish-leather cable. Chopilotl asked those aboard the raft to help her haul the sled onto it. They smiled but did not move. Cursing under her breath, she got it onto the raft. Hermann surprised everybody by helping her scoot it off and rolling it to the middle of the raft.
They up-anchored and shoved off then, waving at the crowd assembled on the bank to wish them bon voyage. A single mast was set forward. The square sail was hoisted, and the braces slanted to drive them toward the middle of The River. Here the current and the wind speeded them, and they set the sail to get the full benefit of the breeze. Brother Fleiskaz was at the rudder.
Chopilotl retired to the tent close to the mast to sulk.
Hermann gently rolled the idol to the starboard edge of the raft. The others looked at him questioningly. Grinning, he held his finger to his lips. Chopilotl was not aware of what was going on, but when the idol was at the edge, its weight tipped the raft slightly. Feeling the tilt, she looked out from the tent. And she screamed.
By then Hermann had the statue upright.
“I am doing this for your good and for the good of the Church!” he shouted at her.
He pushed on the monstrous head as Chopilotl, shrieking, ran toward him. The idol toppled over into the water and sank beneath the surface.
Later, his companions told him that she had hit him on the side of the head with her grail.
He did regain enough of his senses to see her, buoyed by her grail, swimming toward the shore. Bessa, Fleiska’s woman, was swimming after Hermann’s grail, which Chopilotl had tossed overboard.
“Violence begets violence,” Bessa said as she handed him the cylinder.
“Thanks for rescuing it,” he said. He sat down again to nurse a painful head and aching conscience. It was obvious what her remark implied. By dumping the idol, he had committed violence. He had no right to deprive Chopilotl of it. Even if he had had the right, he should not have exercised it.
She had to be shown her error and then the example had to ferment in her mind until it boiled over onto her spirit. All he had done was to anger her so much that she became violent. And she would probably get somebody to carve another idol for her.
He certainly had not started out well.
That led to other thoughts of her. Why had he wooed her? She was pretty; she exuded sexuality. But she was an Indian, and he had felt a certain repugnance about coupling with a colored woman. Had he made her his woman because he wanted to prove to himself that he was not prejudiced against coloreds? Was it this unworthy motive that had compelled him?
If she had been a black, a kinky-haired blubber-lipped African, would he have even considered mating? To be truthful, no. And now that he remembered it, he had looked for a Jewish woman. But there were only two in the area that he knew of, and these were already taken. Besides, they had lived in the times of Ahab and Augustus and were as dark as Yemenite Arabs, squat, big-nosed, superstitious, and violence-prone. Anyway, they had not been Chancers. But, come to think of it, Chopilotl was also superstitious and violence-prone.
However, being a Church-member indicated that she had potentiality for spiritual advancement.
He steered his mind back to something which it wanted to avoid.
He had searched for a Jewish woman and had taken the Indian woman in order to salve his conscience. To demonstrate to himself that he had progressed spiritually.
Had he advanced? Well, he had not loved her but he had been fond of her. Once the initial dislike of physical contact with her had been overcome, he had not experienced anything but passion during their lovemaking.
However, during their infrequent but stormy quarrels, he had wanted to hurl racial insults at her.
True advancement, true love, would come when he did not have to restrain himself from voicing such pejoratives. There would be no inhibitions about such because he would not think of them.
You have a long way to go, Hermann, he told himself.
And if he did, then why had the bishop accepted him as a missionary? Surely Ch’agii must have seen that he was far from ready.
BY THE TIME, MANY YEARS LATER, THAT GORING WAS NEAR the state of Parolando, none of the original crew of people he’d set out with were with him. They’d been killed or had stopped at various areas to carry out their missionary activities there. When Goring was several thousand miles from Parolando, he began hearing rumors of the great falling star, the meteorite, that had struck down-River. It was said that its impact had killed hundreds of thousands directly or indirectly, and wrecked the valley for over sixty miles each way. As soon as the area had been safe to enter, however, many groups had moved in, eager to get the nickel-steel of the meteorite. After a savage struggle, two bands had been triumphant. These had then allied and now held the site.
Among other rumors was that the meteorite had been mined and was being used to build a giant boat and that two famous men were directing the operations. One was the American writer, Sam Clemens. The other was King John of England, the brother of Richard the Lion-Hearted.
Hermann did not know why, but the gossip made his heart jump. It seemed to him that the land which held the fallen star was his goal and had been all along, though he hadn’t known it until now.
At the end of a long voyage, he arrived at Parolando. The rumors were true. Sam Clemens and King John, nicknamed “Lackland,” were co-rulers of the land which sat above the treasure of the meteorite. By this time, large amounts of the metal had been mined, and the area looked like a mini-Ruhr. In it were many steel furnaces, rolling mills, and nitric-acid factories, and bauxite and cryolite were being processed to make aluminum. The ores from which aluminum was made, however, were to be found in another state. And there was trouble over that.
Soul City was a state twenty-six miles down-River from Parolando. It sat on large deposits of cryolite, bauxite, and cinnabar, and small deposits of platinum. Clemens and John needed these, but the two rulers of Soul City, Elwood Hacking and Milton Firebrass, were driving hard bargains. Moreover, it was evident that they would like to get their hands on the nickel and steel of the meteorite.
Hermann paid little attention to the local politics. His primary mission was to convert people to the doctrines of the Church of Second Chance. His secondary mission, he decided after a while, was to stop the building of the great metal paddlewheeler. Clemens and John had become obsessed with the vessel. To build it, they were willing to turn Parolando into an industrial desolation, to strip the land of all vegetation except the invulnerable irontrees. They were polluting the air with the smoke and stink from the factories.
Worse, they were polluting their kas, and that made their business Hermann Goring’s. The Church maintained that humanity had been resurrected so that it could have another opportunity to save its kas. It had also been given youth and freedom from disease and want so that it could concentrate on salvation.
About a week after his arrival at Parolando, Hermann and some other missionaries held a large meeting. This was in the evening just after dusk. Scores of great bonfires were arranged around a platform lit by torches. Hermann and the local bishop were on the platform with a dozen of the more distinguished members of their organization. There was a crowd of about three thousand, composed of a small minority of converts and a majority who came to be entertained. The latter brought their bottles of alcohol and a tendency to heckle.
After the band finished playing a hymn, said to have been composed by La Viro himself, the bishop gave a short prayer. He then introduced Hermann. Boos here and there followed the mention of his name. Evidently some in the crowd had lived during his time, though it was possible they just didn’t like Chancers.
Hermann held up his hands until silence had fallen, and then he spoke in Esperanto.
“Brothers and sisters! Hear me out with the same love with which I speak to you. The Hermann Goring before you is not the man of the same name who lived on Earth. He abhors that man, that evil being.
“Yet, that I stand here before you today, a new man, reborn, testifies that evil can be overcome. A person can change for the better. I have paid for what I did. Paid in the only coin worth anything. Paid with guilt and shame and self-hate. Paid with a vow to kill off the old self, bury it, and go forth as a new man.
“But I’m not here to impress you with what a wretch I was. I’m here to tell you about the Church of the Second Chance. How it came into being, what its credo is, what its tenets.
“Now, I know that those of you who were raised in Judaeo-Christian and Moslem countries, afid those Orientals who encountered Christian or Moslem visitors or occupiers of their country, are expecting an appeal to faith.
“No! By the Lord among us, I will not do that! The Church doesn’t ask you to believe on faith only. The Church brings— not faith—but knowledge! Not faith, I say. Knowledge!
“The Church does not ask you to believe in things as they should be or perhaps will be some day. The Church asks you to consider facts and then to act as the facts require. It asks you to believe only in the believable.
“Consider this. Beyond any dispute, we were all born on Earth and we died there. Is there anyone among you who would contradict that?
“No? Then consider this. Man is born to sorrow and evil as the sparks fly upward. Can any of you, remembering your life on Earth and here deny that?
“Whatever the religion on Earth, it promised something that just was not true. The evidence of that is that we are not in Hell or Heaven. Nor are we going through reincarnations, except in a limited sense that we are given new bodies and new life if we die.
“The first resurrection was a tremendous, an almost shattering, shock. No one, religionist, agnostic, or atheist, was in the state he believed he’d be in after the end of Terrestrial existence.
“Yet, here we are, like it or not. Nor is escape from this world possible, as it was on Earth. If you are killed or kill yourself, you rise the next day. Can anyone deny this?”
“No, but I sure as hell don’t like it!” a man shouted. There was a general laugh, and Hermann looked at the man who had made the remark. He was Sam Clemens himself, standing in the middle of the crowd on a chair on a platform erected for this occasion.
“Please, brother Clemens, do me the courtesy of not interrupting,” Hermann said. “Very well. So far, facts only. Now, can anyone deny that this world is not a natural one? I do not mean by that that this planet itself, the sun, the stars, are artificial. This planet was created by God. But The River and The Valley are not natural. Nor is the resurrection a supernatural event.”
“How do you know that?” a woman yelled. “Now you’re getting away from facts. You’re slipping into surmise.”
“That isn’t all he’s slipping into!” a man shouted.
Hermann waited for the laughter to subside.
“Sister, I can prove to you that the resurrection is not something worked directly by God. It was and is performed by people like us. They may not be Terrestrials. They undoubtedly are superior in wisdom and science. But they look much like us. And some of us have talked face to face with them!”
Uproar. Not because the crowd had not heard this before, though not in just these terms. The unbelievers just wanted to have some fun, to relieve tension.
Hermann took a drink of water and by the time he’d put the cup down, he had comparative silence.
“This world and these resurrections, if not made with human hands, have been brought about by hands that are human in appearance. There are two men who can testify to this. For all I know, there may be many others. One of these is an Englishman named Richard Francis Burton. He was not unknown on Earth during his time, in fact, he was famous. He lived from 1821 to 1890, and he was an explorer, anthropologist, innovator, author, and linguist extraordinaire. Perhaps some of you have heard of him? If so, please raise your hands.
“Ah, I count at least forty, among them your consul, Samuel Clemens.”
Clemens did not seem to like what he was hearing. He was scowling and chewing frantically on the end of his cigar.
Goring proceeded to recount his experiences with Burton, stressing what Burton had told him. The crowd was caught; there was scarcely a sound. This was something new, something no Chancer missionary had ever spoken of.
“Burton called this mysterious being the Ethical. Now, according to Burton, the Ethical who talked to him did not agree with his fellows. Apparently, there is dissension even among beings whom we could account as gods. Dispute or discord in Olympus, if I may draw such a parallel. Though I do not think that the so-called Ethicals are gods, angels, or demons. They are human beings like us but advanced to a higher ethical plane. What their disagreement is, I frankly do not know. Perhaps it is about the means used to achieve a goal.
“But! The goal is the same! Have no doubt of that. And what is that goal? First, let me tell you of the other witness.
“Again, to be frank...”
“I thought you were Hermann!” a man shouted.
“Call me Meier,” Goring said, but he did not pause to explain the joke.
“About a year after Resurrection Day, he, the witness, was sitting in a hut on a ledge on a very high foothill in a land far to the north of here. He has a natal name, Jacques Gillot, but we of the Church usually refer to him as La Viro. The Man, in English. We also call him La Fondinto, the Founder. He had been a very religious man on Earth during all his long life. But now his faith was smashed, totally discredited. He was bewildered, very troubled.
“This man had always tried to lead a virtuous life according to the teachings of his church, which spoke for God. He did not think that he was a good man. After all, Jesus Himself had said that no man was good, including Himself.
“But, relatively speaking, Jacques Gillot was good. He was not perfect; he had lied but only so he would not hurt another’s feelings, never to escape the consequences of his own deeds. He had never said anything behind a person’s back he wouldn’t say to his face. He had never been unfaithful to his wife. He had given his wife and children an intense interest and love without spoiling them. He had never turned a person away from his table because of social position, political preference, race, or religion. He had been unjust a number of times, but that was from hastiness and ignorance, and he had always apologized and determined to repair these faults. He had been robbed and betrayed but had left vengeance up to God. However, he wouldn’t let anyone walk over him without a fight.
“And he had died with his sins forgiven and the rites administered.
“So what was he doing here, rubbing elbows with politicians, back-stabbers, child-beaters, dishonest businessmen, unethical lawyers, rapacious doctors, adulterers, rapists, thieves, murderers, torturers, terrorists, hypocrites, cheaters, word-breakers, parasites, the mean, the grasping, the vicious, the unfeeling?
“As he sat in that hut just below the mountain, as the rain beat and the wind howled and the lightning exploded and the thunder boomed like the footsteps of an angry god, he pondered on the seeming injustice. And he reluctantly came to this conclusion. In the eyes of Someone, capital S, he was not much better than those others.
“It didn’t make him feel any better to reflect that everybody else was in his state. When a man’s sinking in a boat, knowing that everybody else aboard is going to drown doesn’t bring much joy.
“But what could he do about it? He didn’t even know what he was supposed to do.
“At this moment, as he stared into the small fire, he heard a knock on the door. He stood up and seized his spear. Then, as now, evil men roamed, looking for easy prey. He had nothing worth stealing, but there were men who liked to kill for the twisted pleasure it gave them.
“He called out in his native tongue, ‘Who is it?’
“’No one you know,’ a man said. He spoke in Quebecan French but with a foreign accent. ‘No one who means you harm either. You won’t need that spear.’
“This astonished La Viro. The door and windows were closed. No one could see within.
“He unbarred the door. A lightning flash glowed behind the stranger, revealing a cloaked and hooded man of medium stature. La Viro stepped back; the stranger entered; La Viro closed the door. The man threw back his hood. Now the fire showed a white man with red hair, blue eyes, and handsome features. Under the cloak he wore a tight-fitting seamless suit of silvery material. From a silver cord around his neck hung a gold helix.
“The clothes were enough to tell La Viro that this was no Riverdweller. The man looked like an angel and might be one. After all, the Bible said that angels looked just like men. At least, that was what the priests had told him. The angels who had visited the daughters of men in the days of the patriarchs, the angels who rescued Lot, and the angel who wrestled with Jacob, passed for men.
“But the Bible and the priests who had read it to him had been wrong about many things.
“Looking at the stranger, La Viro was in awe. At the same time, he felt delighted. Why would an angel honor him, of all people, with a visit?
“Then he realized that Satan was also an angel, that the demons were all fallen angels.
“Which was he?
“Or was he neither? After all, La Viro, despite his lack of formal education and his humble station, was not unintelligent. It seemed to him that a third alternative existed. At that, he felt easier though still far from comfortable.
“After asking permission, the/stranger sat down. La Viro hesitated, then he, too, sat down on a chair. They looked at each other for a moment. The stranger church-steepled his fingers and frowned as if trying to think how best to start. This was strange, since he knew what he wanted and should have had time to prepare for this visit.
“La Viro offered him a drink of alcohol. The stranger said he would take tea instead. La Viro busied himself with pouring the powder into the water and stirring it. The stranger was silent until he thanked La Viro for the tea. After taking a sip, he said, ‘Jacques Gillot, who I am and where I come from and why I am here would take all night and all day if I told all in detail.
‘”What little I can tell you will be the truth—in a form which you can understand at this stage. I am one of a group which has prepared this planet for you whom we resurrected. There are other planets re-formed for other Terrestrials, but that is not at present your concern. Some are being used now. Some are waiting to be used.
“’This world is for those who need a second chance. What is the second chance? What was the first chance? By now you must have accepted the fact that your religion, in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the afterlife would be. All made guesses and then established these as articles of faith. Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their revelations as symbolic.’
“And then the visitor said that his kind called themselves the Ethicals, though they had other names for themselves. They were on a higher plane of ethical development than most Earth-lings. Notice that he said most. This indicates that there have been some of us who have achieved the same level as the Ethicals.
“The visitor said that his people were not the first Ethicals, not by any means. The first were an ancient species, nonhumans, who originated on a planet older than Earth.
“These were individuals who had deliberately retarded themselves, kept themselves in the flesh, as it were, instead of Going On. And when they saw that there was one species, also nonhuman, which was capable of carrying on The Work, they showed this species how to do it. And they passed on.
“The visitor called this species the Ancients. Yet, in comparison with those who had been their mentors, they were very young.
“Now, this is what the visitor said the Ethicals had learned from the Ancients. The Creator, God, the One Spirit, call it what you will, forms all. It is the universe; the universe is it. But its body is formed of two essences. One is matter; the other, for lack of a better word, is nonmatter.
“We all know what matter is. Philosophers and scientists have tried to define it exactly but have failed. Yet everyone knows what matter is. We directly experience it.
“But what about this nonmatter? What is it?”
“A VACUUM!” A WAG SHOUTED. “THE INSIDE OF YOUR HEAD!”
Clemens stood up and bellowed, “Quiet, there! Let the man speak his piece.” And then with a grin, “Even if he makes no sense!”
“Thank you, Mr. Clemens,” Goring said. “A perfect vacuum is the absolute absence of matter. A learned man once told me that there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum. It does not exist except as a concept. Even a vacuum is matter.
“Nonmatter is what the old religions of Earth spoke of as the soul. But the definitions of the soul were always vague, very abstract. The peoples of ancient and classical times, and their unliterate ancestors, thought of it as a shadowy thing, a ghostly entity reflecting palely the matter to which it had been attached before death.
“Later, more sophisticated peoples thought of it as an invisible entity, also attached to the body. But it could be re-fleshed after death, given a new and immortal body. Some Oriental religions thought of it/as something which would be reabsorbed into the Godhead after numerous trials on Earth, after a good karma had been achieved.
“All these had some truth in them; they saw parts of the total truth.
“But we are not concerned with such philosophical probings. What we need are facts. The fact is that every living creature, from the simplest to the most complex, has its non-matter twin. Even an amoeba has its nonmatter twin.
“But I don’t want to get into confusing issues or too much detail. Not at this time.
“The visitor said, ‘Nonmatter is indestructible. That means that your body on Earth had its indestructible nonmatter twin.’
“At this point, La Viro, who had said nothing before, interrupted.
“ ‘How many twins does a living creature have? I mean, a man changes in appearance. He gets older, he loses an eye or a leg. He gets a diseased liver. Is this nonmatter image like a series of photographs made of a man? If so, how often is the photograph made? Every second, once a month? What happens to the old photographs, the old images?’
“The visitor smiled, and he said, ‘The image, as you call it, is indestructible. But it records the changes in the physical body it’s attached to.’
“’Then what happens?’ La Viro said. ‘Wouldn’t images of the rotting corpse be produced?’
“As I told you,” Goring said, “La Viro was illiterate and he had never been to a big city. But he was not stupid.
“’No,’ the visitor said. ‘Forget for the moment about all matter and nonmatter except that composing humankind. The rest is irrelevant for our purposes. First, though, let’s give this entity which you call a soul another name. Soul has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal reverberations, too many contradictory definitions.
“Speak the word soul, and unbelievers will automatically become deaf to what follows. Those who believe in souls will always hear you through the mental constructs which they formed on Earth. Let us call this nonmatter twin the... ah... ka. That is an old Egyptian word for one of the several souls in their religion. Except for the Egyptians, it will have no special connotation or denotation. And they can adapt to it.’
“From which,” Goring said, “we know that the visitor knows something about Terrestrial history. Also, he could speak Canadian French, which means that he had studied much to prepare himself for this interview. Just as that Ethical who talked to Burton had learned English.
“’Now,’ the visitor said, ‘we have the ka. As far as we know, it forms at the moment of conception, the union of sperm and egg. The ka changes in correspondence with the change in the body.
“ ‘The difference in the body and the ka at the moment of the body’s death is this. During life, the body projects an aura. This is invisible to the naked eye—except in the case of a favored few—and floats above the head of the living person. It can be detected through an instrument. Seen through this device, the aura seems to be a globe of many colors and hues, whirling, swelling, contracting, shifting colors, extending arms, collapsing them. A wild and wonderful thing the beauty of which has to be seen to be appreciated. We call it the wathan.
“’A person loses the wathan or ka at the moment of death, which is when the body is beyond revivification. Where does the ka go? As seen through our device, let’s call it a kascope, it usually drifts off at once, carried by what etheric wind we don’t know. Sometimes it remains attached to a locality, why we can’t guess. But eventually it cuts loose and drifts off.
‘”The universe is filled with these, yet they can never increase enough to occupy all of space. They can intersect, pass through each other, an unlimited number can occupy the same space.
“ ‘We assume that the ka is unconscious though it contains the intelligence and memory of the dead person. So the ka wanders through eternity and infinity, a vessel for the mental potentiality of the living person. A frozen soul, if you will.
‘”When a dead person’s body is duplicated, the ka reattaches itself to that body. No matter how far away it might be from the body in spatial terms, it flashes back at the first second of life of that duplicated body. There is an affinity between the two that knows no bounds. But when the reunion takes place, the ka has no memory of the interval between the moment of death of the first body and the first moment of consciousness of the second duplicate body.
‘”However, some have said that it is possible that the ka is fully conscious during its bodiless periods. Evidence for this theory was lent by a certain phenomenon of afterlife which was well documented, I understand, in the 1970’s. As I remember the accounts a significant number of men and women who were legally dead were revivified. They testified that while dead they had experienced out-of-body flights, had watched relatives grieve and had been yanked back into life. Whether or not the ka does have a memory during these times, we are concerned only with its incarnations, its enfleshed states.’
“La Viro was both stunned and ecstatic. But he interrupted again, it seeming to be a human function, a built-in compulsion, to interrupt.”
Goring paused, then said, “As I know only too well.”
There was some laughter.
‘”Pardon me,’ La Viro said. ‘How do you make this duplicate body?’
“He looked down at his own body and thought of how it had been dust and now was whole again.
“’We have instruments which can detect and scan the ka,’ the visitor said. ‘These can determine the nature of and location of each nonmatter molecule. From then on, it is a matter of energy-matter conversion.’
“’Can you duplicate any ka at any stage?’ La Viro said. ‘I mean, what if a man died at eighty? Could you duplicate his ka at the age of twenty?’
“ ‘No. The ka of the eighty-year-old is the only one existing. Then, while the mind is unconscious, the body made from the records is regenerated to the twenty-year-old state. All defects are corrected. A recording of that body is made and destroyed. For the first resurrection on the surface of this planet, another energy-matter conversion is made. During this process, the bodies are unconscious.’
“’What if you made two duplicates?’ La Viro asked. ‘At the same time? To which would the ka be attached?’
‘”Presumably, to the first that was revivified,’ the visitor said. ‘No matter how synchronized the new resurrections, there would still be at least a microsecond difference. Our machines cannot cut it so close that there is an absolutely simultaneous revivifying. Besides, that experiment would not be done. It would be evil. Unethical.’
“’Yes,’ La Viro said, ‘but what if it were done?’
“’The body without a ka would develop its own, I suppose. And though the second body is the duplicate of the first in the beginning, it would soon become another person. Its different environment, different experiences, would differentiate it from the first. In time, though it would always look like the first, it would become another person.
“’But we are getting into minutiae. The important thing is this. Most disembodied kas go forever without consciousness.
At least, we hope so. It would be hell to be imprisoned in an intangible body, without control of it, without communication with others, yet aware of it all. The inevitable result would be the torments of the damned. It is too horrible to contemplate.
“’Anyway, nobody who’s been resurrected remembers the interval between death and the second life.’
“And so,” Goring said, “La Viro was told that out of the billions who died on Earth, only a minute fraction was not part of that wandering horde of kas. A few went out. Disappeared. The visitor did not know where and why. The Ancients had only told the Ethicals that these few had gone on. They had united with the Creator or were at least keeping company with It.
“The visitor said that he could see that La Viro had many questions. He would answer a few, but they would be confined to the center of this subject. How did the Ethicals know that a few kas had gone on? How could every one of the billions of kas be numbered, be kept track of?
“ ‘You must have some awareness of the vast powers of our science and technology,’ the visitor said. ‘Even the forces that shaped this world and brought you back to life are beyond your imagination. But what you experience here is only a small part of what is available to us. I tell you that we have counted every ka that came into being on Earth. It took over a hundred years to do it, but it was done.
“’You see, it is science that has brought about what was thought to be possible only to the supernatural. The mind of humankind has done what the Creator did not intend to do Itself. Because, I suppose, the Creator knew that sentient beings would do it. Indeed, it is possible that sentiency is the ka of God.
‘”Let me detour a little myself, though it is not really an irrelevancy. You seem to regard me as, if not a god, at least a cousin to one. I can hear you breathing hard, smell the fright in your sweat, see the awe in your face. Be not afraid. It is true that I am ethically advanced beyond you. But I am not proud because of that. You could catch up with me. Even, perhaps, overtake and pass me.’
‘”I have powers at my fingertips which make the science of your day look like an ape’s. But I am no more intelligent than the most intelligent of Riverdwellers. I can make mistakes and errors.
‘”Also, keep this in mind. When—or if—you go out to preach, stress this always. He who climbs up may slip back. In other words, beware of regression. You do not know the word? Then, beware of backsliding. Not until the ka has winged its way outward forever is it safe from regression. Who lives in flesh lives in danger.
‘”That advice applies to me as well as to you.’
“At this point, La Viro reached toward his visitor. He felt an urge to touch the man, to assure himself that he was indeed flesh and blood.
“The visitor recoiled and cried, ‘Do not do that!’
“La Viro withdrew his hand, but his injured feelings showed. His visitor said, ‘I am sorry, sorrier than you can imagine, but please do not touch me. I will say no more of this. But when you have gotten to the point where I may embrace you, then you will understand.’
“And so, my brothers and sisters,” Goring said, “the visitor proceeded to tell La Viro why he should found this new religion. The name of our organization was La Viro’s idea, nor did the visitor compel La Viro to found it. He merely asked that he should do so. But he must have known his man, for La Viro said he would do as his visitor asked.
“The principles of the Church of the Second Chance and the techniques for enfleshing them are not tonight’s subject. It will take too long to propound and defend them. That is for tomorrow night’s meeting.
“At the end, La Viro asked the Ethical why he had chosen him, of all people, to become the founder of the Church.
“’I am an ignorant half-breed,’ La Viro said. ‘I was raised in the deep Canadian forest. My father was a white trapper, and my mother was an Indian. Both were looked down upon by the British who ruled our land. My mother was almost an outcast in her own tribe because she married a white man. My father was scorned as a squawman, a dirty Frenchie, by the English he worked for.
“’When I was fourteen, very large for my age, I became a lumberjack. At twenty an accident lamed me, and I spent the rest of my life cooking for the lumber camps. My wife was also half-Indian, and she brought in money by washing clothes. We had seven children, four of whom died young, and the others were ashamed of their parents. Yet we sacrificed for them and gave them love and a devout upbringing. My two sons went to Montreal to work and then were killed in France fighting for the English, who despised them. My daughter became a whore and died of a disease—or so I heard. My wife died of a broken heart.
‘”I don’t tell you this because I ask for sympathy. I just want you to know who and what I am. How can you ask me to go out and preach when I could not convince my own children that my beliefs were right? And when my own wife died cursing God? How can I go out and talk to men who were scholars and statesmen and priests?’
“The visitor smiled and said, ‘Your wathan tells me that you can.’
“The visitor stood up. He lifted the silver cord from around his neck and past his head, and he placed it around La Viro’s neck. The golden helix now lay on La Viro’s chest.
‘”This is yours, Jacques Gillot. Do not dishonor it. Farewell. I may or may not see you again on this world.’
“La Viro said, ‘No! Wait! I have so many questions!’
“’You know enough,’ the visitor said. ‘God bless you.”
“He was gone. The rain and thunder and lightning were still making a tumult. Gillot went out a moment later. He could see no sign of the visitor, and after searching the stormy skies he returned to his hut. There he sat until dawn came up with the thunder of the grailstones. Then he went down to the plains to tell his story. As he had expected, those to whom he told his story thought he was crazy. But in time there were those who came to believe him.”