Project Pope

Twenty-four

It was as it had been before — the broad and singing road of light that reached deep into the distance, arrowing straight into the burst of glory that lay far and far and far. She was well above the road in a void that ached with emptiness; she was moving through the void toward the singing road, but not fast enough. She strained every nerve and fiber to speed her to that road of glory.

This time, she told herself, I will look the better. I will impress upon myself certain landmarks and certain signs and I will know where I am so I can tell them where I was, so I can offer proof of Heaven. For they did not believe me — and this time they must all believe. There must be no doubt or quibble. Coordinates, Ecuyer said, and what are coordinates? How do I find the coordinates that will convince them? For there might be none except those of faith, and in these they must believe. This time I must bring to them the faith that will force unquestioning belief, so that they may know I am the one who found Heaven for them.

I know what they want, she told herself. They want me to bring back a roadmap so they can crank up their ridiculous machines and follow me to Heaven. The fools, she thought, at once enraged and sad at their foolishness — the fools believe they can go physically to Heaven, not knowing that for mortals Heaven is — what had that moron of a doctor called it? — a state of mind. And he was wrong, she thought, he with his professionally kind face, his mincing devotion to his science. For Heaven is not a state of mind; it is a state of grace. And I alone, of all of them, am the only one who has attained the state of grace required to seek out Heaven.

The state of grace so laboriously attained, and yet, perhaps, not laboriously, for there had been no labor in it, no labor, but a striving — a striving toward that deep sense of holiness, the selfless submission of one's self to a sweet authority. And at times, with all the striving, managing to touch the hem of holiness, but never grasping it; at times stripping away all thought of self, and then a stray, feebly wriggling, impossible-to-suppress thought of self creeping back again to cuddle against the emptiness to which it had been condemned. She never had attained her goal, she reminded herself — but enough, it seemed, to tread this road of glory that now lay just before her.

She came out of the void and her feet seemed to touch the road, although it did not feel like any road she had walked before. It was smooth and shining and it stretched straight before her, with the burst of glory far away. Perhaps, she thought, too far for her to walk. And what would she do, what could she do, if out of sheer exhaustion, out of lack of strength, she should collapse upon the road before she came in sight of the shining, lofty towers?

But there seemed to be no problem, for she did not have to walk. Somehow or other, she was being wafted down the road with never a step to take. The music and the singing welled all around her and she wondered for a moment if it was the singing, the strength of sonorous song, that carried her along.

She seemed to hang in a strange lassitude, with a mist closing all around her so that she saw only the road and the glory burst at the end of it, although the lassitude was tinged with a consuming joy and she moved along the road through no effort of her own, as if a gentle tide had caught her and was carrying her toward a far-off shore. The music became more glorious and the light seemed to grow the brighter: She closed her eyes against the brightness of the light and a holiness (a holiness?) caught her up and held her.

Then, without warning, the music went away and a silence fell and she came down upon her feet, no longer carried, no longer held, with her soles pressing hard against the road. Startled, she opened her eyes. Much of the brightness, she saw, had gone from the light. There now was a glow rather than a brightness, and in the glow the mighty towers stood up against the high, blue sky. The towers, and there were many of them, rose white against the blue. Pure white against pure blue and from far away, from among the towers, came the hint of music that had the sound of falling water, with each falling drop striking a distinctive note that blended with the others.

She looked for the angels, but there were no angels flying. Perhaps, she thought, they were flying so far away, so high, that no mortal eye could see them.

Beginning just a short distance from where she stood was the staircase, wide and steep, and of the purest gold, climbing toward the towers, narrowed by distance as it climbed so that at the very top, it seemed a thin pencil-streak of gold.

It was far to climb, she told herself, yet she must — step by step, until she reached the towers. There at the top there would be trumpeters to greet her with a celestial flourish.

As she prepared to take the first step of the climb, the mists that before had closed her in began to clear away and, beyond the road, the ground spread out before her and she saw the rabble that camped there on either side of the road. There were tents and huts and ramshackle buildings, and here and there great temples rising above the squalor, and crowded among all these, the rabble — a great concourse of beings such as she had never seen before. For some reason that she could not understand, she could not see them clearly, but she got the impression of horrendous shapes and hues, of a surge of terrifying life entangled in a loathsome mass.

She fled in senseless terror up the great staircase, running with a desperation that left her weak and gulping. Finally stumbling, she fell and lay huddled on the stairs, clutching at the smooth stone in the fear that she might go sliding back into that pit of horrors.

Gradually she regained the even rhythm of her breath and the trembling of her body quieted. She lifted herself cautiously to look back down the stairs. The mists had closed in again; the rabble at the foot of the stairway again was blotted out.

Pulling herself erect, Mary started up the stairs again. Now the music was somewhat louder, although it still seemed far away. The towers gleamed white against the blue and a peace came down upon her, wiping out the terror that had engulfed her when she had seen the rabble.

The towers seemed as far away as ever. All the climbing she had done, all the running up the stairs, seemingly had gotten her no closer to the towers. And now, far up the stairs, she saw a dot that wavered in the golden light. For a moment she stopped her climb to watch, trying to make out what it might be. At first she thought it no more than bad eyesight. But the dot remained, dancing in the light reflected from the golden stairs.

Someone is coming to meet me, she thought. Someone is walking down the golden stairs to welcome me to Heaven!

She began to hurry — hurrying to meet that one who came to welcome her. The dot grew larger and ceased its wavering and she saw that it was man-shaped, that it walked upon two legs. But there was no sign of wings. And that was faintly disappointing, although she reminded herself that not everyone in Heaven necessarily would have wings. When she thought about that, she was astonished to realize how little she actually knew of the residents of Heaven. She had always thought of Heaven in terms of angels, and this manlike creature coming down the stairs was surely not an angel.

Nor, as he came closer and she saw him more clearly, could she be sure he was a man. Manlike, yes, but not entirely human and not heavenly. For one thing, he was black.

Disturbed, she slowed her climb and finally stopped, standing on the stairs and staring up at the one who was descending towards her. His ears were high and pointed and his face was narrow, like a fox's. The lips were thin and the mouth was wide. His eyes were slanted and they were yellow, like a cat's eyes, with no white showing in them. He was so black that he shone like a polished shoe.

What his body might be like or what he wore, she never even noticed. She was so fascinated, so hypnotized, so repelled by the face that she noticed nothing else.

He stood two steps above her. He raised a hand and shook a finger at her, as a parent or a teacher might shake a finger in rebuke. His voice thundered.

'Naughty! he shouted at her. 'Naughty! Naughty! Naughty!

She turned about and fled, running down the stairs, with that single word hammering in her brain. She tripped and fell and rolled. She tried to stop herself, to recover her balance, but there was no way to recover from the fall. She kept rolling, bouncing on the steps, end-over-end and spinning.

And then she was no longer falling and she sat up dazedly. She had reached the bottom and was sitting on the road that came up to the stairs. The mist had cleared and she saw the rabble, packed tight on either side of the road, but not encroaching on it, as if there might be an invisible fence that held them off. They were jam-packed on either side of the road and they were laughing at her, hooting at her, jeering at her, making obscene gestures at her.

She scrambled to her feet and turned to face the stairs. The one who had come to meet her was standing on the bottom step. He still was shaking a finger at her and shouting.

'Naughty! Naughty! Naughty!