The Divine Invasion

"And he does this for everyone? Every guilty person?"

  "For every guilty person who accepts his offer of advocacy and help."

  "But then you'd have an endless procession of exceptions. Because no guilty person in his right mind would reject such an offer; every single guilty person would wish to be judged as an exception, as a case involving mitigating circumstances."

  Zina said, "But the person would have to accept the fact that he was, on his own, guilty. He could of course wager that he was innocent, in which case he would not need the advocacy of the Beside-Helper."

  After a moment of pondering. Emmanuel said, "That would be a foolish choice. He might be wrong. And he loses nothing by accepting the assistance of the Beside-Helper."

  "In practice, however," Zina said, most souls about to be judged reject the offer of advocacy by the Beside-Helper."

  "On what basis?" He could not fathom their reasoning.

  Zina said, "On the basis that they are sure they are innocent. To receive this help the person must go with the pessimistic assumption that he is guilty, even though his own assessment of himself is one of innocence. The truly innocent need no Beside-Helper, just as the physically healthy need no physician. In a situation of this kind the optimistic assumption is perilous. It's the bail-out theorem that little creatures employ when they construct a burrow. If they are wise they build a second exit to their burrow, operating on the pessimistic assumption that the first one will be found by a predator. All creatures who did not use their theorem are no longer with us."

  Emmanuel said, "It is degrading to a man that he must consider himself sinful."

  "It's degrading to a gopher to have to admit that his burrow may not be perfectly built, that a predator may find it."

  "You are talking about an adversary situation. Is divine justice an adversary situation? Is there a prosecutor?"

  "Yes, there is a prosecutor of man in the divine court: it is Satan. There is the Advocate who defends the accused human. and Satan who impugns and indicts him. The Advocate, standing beside the man, defends him and speaks for him: Satan, confronting the man, accuses him. Would you wish man to have an accuser and not a defender? Would that seem just?"

  "But innocence must be presumed."

  The girl's eyes gleamed. "Precisely the point made by the Advocate in each trial that takes place. Hence he substitutes his own blameless record for that of his client, and justifies the man by surrogation."

  "Are you this Beside-Helper?" Emmanuel asked.

  "No," she said. "He is a far more puzzling figure than I. If you are having difficulty with me, in determining-"

  "I am," Emmanuel said.

  "He is a latecomer into this world," Zina said. "Not found in earlier aeons. He represents an evolution in the divine strategy. One by which the primordial damage is repaired. One of many, but a main one."

  "Will I ever encounter him?"

  "You will not be judged," Zina said. "So perhaps not. But all humans will see him standing by the busy road, offering his help. Offering it in time-before the person starts across the sifting bridge and is judged. The Beside-Helper's intervention always comes in time. It is part of his nature to be there soon enough." Emmanuel said, "I would like to meet him."

  "Follow the travel pattern of any human," Zina said, "and you will arrive at the point where that human encounters him. That is how I know about him. I, too, am not judged." She pointed to the slate that she had given him. "Ask it for more information about the Beside-Helper."

  The slate read:

  TO CALL

  "Is that all you can tell me?" Emmanuel asked it.

  A new word formed, a Greek word:

  PARAKALEIN

  He wondered about this, wondered greatly, at this new entity who had come into the world . . . who could be called on by those in need, those who stood in danger of negative judgment. It was one more of the mysteries presented to him by Zina. There had been so many, now. He enjoyed them. But he was puzzled.

  To call to aid: parakalein. Strange, he thought. The world evolves even as it falls more and more. There are two distinct movements: the falling, and then, at the same time, the upward-rising work of repair. Antithetical movements, in the form of a dialectic of all creation and the powers contending behind it.

  Suppose Zina beckoned to the parts that fell? Beckoned them, seductively, to fall farther. About this he could not yet tell.

  CHAPTER 11

  Reaching out, Herb Asher took the boy in his arms. He hugged him tight.

  "And this is Zina," Elias Tate said. "Emmanuel's friend." He took the girl by the hand and led her to Herb Asher. "She's a little older than Manny."

  "Hello," Herb Asher said. But he did not care about her; he wanted to look at Rybys's son.

  Ten years, he thought. This child has grown while I dreamed and dreamed, thinking I was alive when in fact I was not.

  Elias said, "She helps him. She teaches him. More than the school does. More than I do."

  Looking toward the girl Herb Asher saw a beautiful pale heart-shaped face with eyes that danced with light. What a pretty child, he thought, and turned back to Rybys's son. But then, struck by something, he looked once more at the girl.

  Mischief showed on her face. Especially in her eyes. Yes, he thought; there is something in her eyes. A kind of knowledge.

  "They've been together four years now," Elias said. "She gave him a high-technology slate. It's some kind of advanced computer terminal. It asks him questions-poses questions to him and gives him hints. Right, Manny?"

  Emmanuel said, "Hello, Herb Asher." He seemed solemn and subdued, in contrast to the girl.

  "Hello," he said to Emmanuel. "How much you look like your mother."

  "In that crucible we grow," Emmanuel said, cryptically. He did not amplify.

  "Are-" Herb did not know what to say. "Is everything all right?"

  "Yes." The boy nodded.

  "You have a heavy burden on you," Herb said.

  "The slate plays tricks," Emmanuel said.

  There was silence.

  "What's wrong?" Herb said to Elias.

  To the boy, Elias said, "Something is wrong, isn't it?"

  "While my mother died," Emmanuel said, gazing fixedly at Herb Asher, "you listened to an illusion. She does not exist, that image. Your Fox is a phantasm, nothing else."

  "That was a long time ago," Herb said.

  "The phantasm is with us in the world," Emmanuel said.

  "That's not my problem," Herb said.

  Emmanuel said, "But it is mine. I mean to solve it. Not now but at the proper time. You fell asleep, Herb Asher, because a voice told you to fall asleep. This world here, this planet, all of it, all its people-everything here sleeps. I have watched it for ten years and there is nothing good I can say about it. What you did it does; what you were it is. Maybe you still sleep. Do you sleep, Herb Asher? You dreamed about my mother while you lay in cryonic suspension. I tapped your dreams. From them I learned a lot about her. I am as much her as I am myself. As I told her, she lives on in me and as me; I have made her deathless-your wife is here, not back in that littered dome. Do you realize that? Look at me and you see Rybys whom you ignored."

  Herb Asher said, "I-"

  "There is nothing for you to tell me," Emmanuel said. "I read your heart, not your words. I knew you then and I know you now. 'Herbert, Herbert,' I called to you. I summoned you back to life, for your sake and for hers, and, because it was for her sake, it was for my sake. When you helped her you helped me. And when you ignored her you ignored me. Thus says your God."

  Reaching out, Elias put his arm around Herb Asher, to reassure him.

  "I will always speak the truth to you, Herb Asher," the boy continued. "There is no deceit in God. I want you to live. I made you live once before, when you lay in psychological death. God does not desire any living thing's death; God takes no delight in nonexistence. Do you know what God is, Herb Asher? God is He Who causes to be. Put another way, if you seek the basis of
being that underlies everything you will surely find God. You can work back to God from the phenomenal universe, or you can move from the Creator to the phenomenal universe. Each implies the other. The Creator would not be the Creator if there were no universe, and the universe would cease to be if the Creator did not sustain it. The Creator does not exist prior to the universe in time; he does not exist in time at all. God creates the universe constantly; he is with it, not above or behind it. This is impossible to understand for you because you are a created thing and exist in time. But eventually you will return to your Creator and then you will again no longer exist in time. You are the breath of your Creator, and as he breathes in and out, you live. Remember that, for that sums up everything that you need to know about your God. There is first an exhalation from God, on the part of all creation; and then, at a certain point, it starts its journey back, its inhalation. This cycle never ceases. You leave me; you are away from me; you start back; you rejoin me. You and everything else. It is a process, an event. It is an activity-my activity. It is the rhythm of my own being, and it sustains you all."

  Amazing, Herb Asher thought. A ten-year-old boy. Her son speaking this.

  "Emmanuel," the girl Zina said, "you are ponderous."

  Smiling at her the boy said, "Games, then? Would that be better? There are events ahead that I must shape. I must arouse fire that burns, that sears. Scripture says:

  For He is like a refiner's fire.

  And Scripture also says:

  And who can abide the day of His coming?

  I say, however, that it will be more than this; I say:

  The day comes, glowing like a furnace; all the arrogant and the evil-doers shall be chaff, and that day when it comes shall set them ablaze; it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

  What do you say to that, Herb Asher?" Emmanuel gazed at him intently, awaiting his response.

  Zina said:

  But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings.

  "That is true," Emmanuel said. In a low voice Elias said:

  And you shall break loose like calves released from the stall.

  "Yes," Emmanuel said. He nodded.

  Herb Asher, returning the boy's gaze, said, "I am afraid. I really am." He was glad of the arm around him, the reassuring arm of Elias.

  In a reasonable tone of voice, a mild tone, Zina said, "He won't do all those terrible things. That's to scare people."

  "Zina!" Elias said.

  Laughing, she said, "It's true. Ask him."

  "You will not put the Lord your God to the test," Emmanuel said.

  "I'm not afraid," Zina said quietly.

  Emmanuel, to her, said:

  I will break you, like a rod of iron.

  I shall dash you, in pieces,

  Like a potter's vessel.

  "No," Zina said. To Herb Asher she said, "There is nothing to fear. It's a manner of talking, no more. Come to me if you get scared and I will converse with you."

  "That is true," Emmanuel said. "If you are seized and taken down into the prison she will go with you. She will never leave you." An unhappy expression crossed his face; suddenly he was, again, a ten-year-old boy. "But-"

  "What is it?" Elias said.

  "I will not say now," Emmanuel said, speaking with difficulty. Herb Asher, to his disbelief, saw tears in the boy's eyes. "Perhaps I will never say it. She knows what I mean."

  "Yes," Zina said, and she smiled. Mischief lay in her smile, or so it seemed to Herb Asher. It puzzled him. He did not understand the invisible transaction taking place between Rybys's son and the girl. It troubled him, and his fear became greater. His sense of deep unease.

  --------------------

  The four of them had dinner together that night.

  "Where do you live?" Herb Asher asked the girl. "Do you have a family? Parents?"

  "Technically I'm a ward of the government school we go to," Zina said. "But for all intents and purposes I'm in Elias's custody now. He's in the process of becoming my guardian."

  Elias, eating, paying attention to his plate of food, said, "We are a family, the three of us. And now you also, Herb."

  "I may go back to my dome," Herb said. "In the CY3O-CY3OB system."

  Staring at him, Elias halted in his eating, forkful of food raised. "Why?"

  "I'm uncomfortable here," Herb said. He had not worked it out; his feelings remained vague. But they were intense feelings. "It's oppressive here. There's more of a sense of freedom out there."

  "Freedom to lie in your bunk listening to Linda Fox?" Elias said.

  "No." He shook his head.

  Zina said, "Emmanuel, you scare nim with your talk about afflicting the Earth with fire. He remembers the plagues in the Bible. What happened with Egypt."

  "I want to go home," Herb said, simply.

  Emmanuel said, "You miss Rybys."

  "Yes." That was true.

  "She isn't there," Emmanuel reminded him. He ate slowly, somberly, bite after bite. As if, Herb thought, eating was for him a solemn ritual. A matter of consuming something sanctified.

  "Can't you bring her back?" he said to Emmanuel.

  The boy did not respond. He continued to eat.

  "No answer?" Herb said, with bitterness.

  "I am not here for that," Emmanuel said. "She understood. It is not important that you understand, but it was important that she know. And I caused her to know. You remember; you were there on that day, the day I told her what lay ahead."

  "Okay," Herb said.

  "She lives elsewhere now," Emmanuel said. "You-"

  "Okay," he repeated, with anger, enormous anger.

  To him, Emmanuel said, speaking slowly and quietly, his face calm, "You do not grasp the situation, Herbert. It is not a good universe that I strive for, nor a just one, nor a pretty one; the existence of the universe itself is at stake. Final victory for Belial does not mean imprisonment for the human race, continued slavery, but nonexistence; without me, there is nothing, not even Belial, whom I created."

  "Eat your dinner," Zina said in a gentle voice.

  "The power of evil," Emmanuel continued, "is the ceasing of reality, the ceasing of existence itself. It is the slow slipping away of everything that is, until it becomes, like Linda Fox, a phantasm. That process has begun. It began with the primal fall. Part of the cosmos fell away. The Godhead itself suffered a crisis; can you fathom that, Herb Asher? A crisis in the Ground of Being? What does that convey to you? The possibility of the Godhead ceasing-does it convey that to you? Because the God-head is all that stands between-" He broke off. "You can't even imagine it. No creature can imagine nonbeing, especially its own nonbeing. I must guarantee being, all being. Including yours." Herb Asher said nothing.

  "A war is coming," Emmanuel said. "We will choose our ground. It will be for us, the two of us, Belial and me, a table, on which we play. Over which we wager the universe, the being of being as such. I initiate this final part of the ages of war; I have advanced into Belial's territory, his home. I have moved forward to meet him, not the other way around. Time will tell if it was a wise idea."

  "Can't you foresee the results?" Herb said.

  Emmanuel regarded him. Silently.

  "You can," Herb said. You know what the outcome will be, he realized. You know now; you knew when you entered Rybys's womb. You knew from the beginning of creation-before creation, in fact; before a universe existed.

  "They will play by rules," Zina said. "Rules agreed on."

  "Then," Herb said, "that's why Belial has not attacked you. That's why you've been able to live here and grow up-for ten years. He knows you're here-"

  "Does he know?" Emmanuel said.

  Silence.

  "I haven't told him," Emmanuel said. "It is not my burden. He must find out for himself. I do not mean the government. I mean the power that truly rules, in comparison to which the government, all governments, are shadows."

  "He'll tell him when he's ready," Zin
a said. "Good and ready."

  Herb said, "Are you good and ready, Emmanuel?"

  The boy smiled. A child's smile, a shift away from the stern countenance of a moment before. He said nothing. A game, Herb Asher realized. A child's game!

  Seeing this he trembled.

  Zina said:

  Time is a child at play, playing draughts; a child's is the kingdom.

  "What is that?" Elias said.

  "It is not from Judaism," Zina said obscurely. She did not amplify.

  The part of him that derives from his mother, Herb Asher realized, is ten years old. And the part of him that is Yah has no age: it is infinity itself. A compound of the very young and the timeless: precisely what Zina in her arcane quote had stated.

  Perhaps this was not unique, this mixture. Someone had noted it before: noted it and declared it in words.

  "You venture into Belials realm," Zina said to Emmanuel as she ate, "but would you have the courage to venture into my realm?"

  "What realm is that?" Emmanuel said. Elias Tate stared at the girl, and, equally puzzled, Herb Asher regarded her. But Emmanuel seemed to understand her; he showed no surprise. Despite his question, Herb Asher thought, he knows-knows already.

  Zina said, "Where I am not as you see me now."

  An interval of silence passed, as Emmanuel pondered. He did not answer: he sat as if withdrawn, as if his mind had moved far away. Skimming countless worlds, Herb Asher thought. How strange this is. What are they talking about?

  Emmanuel said slowly and carefully, "I have a dreadful land to deal with, Zina. I have no time."

  "I think you are apprehensive," Zina said. She turned to her slice of apple pie and mound of ice cream.

  Emmanuel said.

  "Come, then," she said, and, all at once, the color and fire, the mischief and delight, showed in her dark eyes. "I challenge you," she said. "Here." She reached out her hand to the boy.

  "My psychopomp," Emmanuel said somberly.

  "Yes; I'll be your guide."

  "You would lead the Lord your God?"

  "I would like to show you where the bells come from. The land out of which their sounds come. What do you say?"

  He said, "I will go."

  "What are you two talking about?" Elias said, with apprehension. "Manny, what is this? What does she mean? She's not taking you anywhere that I don't know about."

  Emmanuel glanced at him.

  "You have much to do," Elias said.

  "There is no realm," Emmanuel said, "where I am not. If it is a genuine place and not fancy. Is your realm fancy, Zina?" "No," she said. "It is real." "Where is it?" Elias said. Zina said, "It is here."

  "Here'?" Elias said. "What do you mean? I see what's here; here is here."

  "She is right," Emmanuel said. "The soul of God," he said to Zina, "follows you."

  "And trusts me?"

  "This is a game," Emmanuel said. "Everything is a game for you. I will play the game. I can do that. I will play and come back. Back to this realm."

  Zina said, "Do you find this realm so valuable to you?"

  "It is a dreadful place," Emmanuel said. "But it is here that I must act on that great and terrible day."