"A difference," Sebastian said, "only in time. A matter of days or hours, maybe minutes. You just don't like to think about it."
Lindy said brutally, "Do you spend much of your time, Seb, remembering the days when you were a corpse? Do you think about that?"
"There's nothing to think about," he answered. "I had no awareness after death; I went from the hospital to the coffin and I woke up in the coffin." He added, "I remember that; I think about that." After all he still had claustrophobia because of that. Many old-borners did; it constituted their shared pyschological ailment.
"I guess," Cheryl Vale, watching from a distance, said, "this disproves God and the Afterlife. What you said, Seb; about not having any awareness after you died."
"No more so," Sebastian said, "than the absence of preuterine memories disproves Buddhism."
"Sure," R.C. Buckley put in. "Just because the old-borners can't remember doesn't mean nothing happened; like a lot of times in the morning I know I've dreamed like hell all night but I can't remember a damn thing about them, not anything at all."
"Sometimes," Sebastian said, "I have dreams."
"About what?" Bob Lindy asked.
"A sort of forest."
"And that's all?" Lindy demanded.
"One other." He hesitated, then said it. "A pulsating black presence, beating like a huge heart. Enormous and loud, going thump, thump, rising and falling, in and out. And very angry. Burning out everything in me it disapproves of... and that seemed to be most of me."
"Dies Irae," Father Faine said. "The Day of Wrath." He did not seem surprised. Sebastian had talked with him about it before.
Sebastian said, "And a sense on my part of it being so alive. It was absolutely living. By comparison--we're a spark of life in a lump that isn't alive, that the spark makes move around and talk and act. But this was totally aware; not out of eyes or ears, just aware."
"Paranoia," Dr. Sign murmured. "The sense of being watched."
"What was it angry at you about?" Cheryl asked.
He pondered, then said, "I wasn't small enough."
"'Small enough,'" Bob Lindy echoed in disgust. "Feood."
"It was right," Sebastian said. "I was in reality much smaller than I realized. Or admitted; I liked to think I was larger, with large ambitions." Like seizing the Anarch's corpse, he thought wryly. And trying to cash in big; that was an example, a perfect one. He hadn't learned.
"Why," Cheryl persisted, "did it want you to be small?"
"Because it was true. A fact. I had to face the fact."
"Why?" Lindy demanded.
"That's what happens on the Day of Judgment," R.C. Buckley said philosophically. "That's the day you have to face all the reality you've been avoiding. I mean, we all lie to ourselves; we tell our own selves more lies than we ever do other people."
"Yes," Sebastian said; that expressed it. "It's hard to explain," he said. It would be interesting, if they could bring back the Anarch Peak, to talk to him about it; he might know a good deal. "He--God---can't help you until you understand that everything you do depends on Him."
"Religious victuals," Lindy said contemptuously.
"But think about it," Sebastian said. "Literally. I raise my hand." He raised his hand. "I think I do it, can do it. But it's done by a complex biochemical, physiological apparatus that I mherited, that I entered; I didn't construct it. A blood clot on one side of the brain, a clot no bigger than a pencil eraser, and I couldn't lift my hand again or move my leg or anything on that side for the rest of my life."
"So you grovel," Bob Lindy said, "before His majesty?"
Sebastian said, "He can help you if you face it. It's just so damn hard to face. Because when you do you--cease to exist, almost. You shrink down almost to nothing." But not quite; something real remained.
"'God is angry with the wicked every day,'" Father Faine quoted.
"I wasn't wicked," Sebastian said. "Just ignorant. It was necessary for me to be confronted, finally, with the truth. That way--" He hesitated. "I could go back to Him," he said finally. "Where I belonged. And understand that nine-tenths of everything I did in my life was really Him doing it; I was a bystander while He acted through me."
"You did all that good?" Lindy demanded.
"Everything. Good _and_ bad."
"A heresy," Father Faine said.
"So?" Sebastian said. "It was true. Remember, Father; _I've been there_. I'm not spouting my beliefs, my faith; I'm saying what is."
Dr. Sign said, "I am getting a cardiac fibrillation now. An arrhythmia. Auricular fibrillation; probably what finally killed him. He's successfully passed back to that stage. Normal cardiac rhythm will probably supervene, if we're lucky; if the process continues normally."
Still continuing the theological discussion, Cheryl Vale said, "I still don't see why God would want us to feel insignificant. Doesn't He _like_ us?"
"Be quiet," Dr. Sign said swiftly.
"We have to be little," Sebastian said, "so there can be so many of us. So billions upon billions of separate creatures can live; if one of us were big, the same size as God, then how many would there be? I see it as the only way by which every potential soul can--"
"He's alive," Dr. Sign said. And sagged visibly. "It worked out; it didn't kill him." He glanced at Sebastian, smiled slightly. "Your gamble paid off; we've got a live one, and the live one is the Anarch Thomas Peak."
"So now what?" Lindy said.
"So now," R.C. Buckley said, exulting, "we're rich. We've got an item in our catalog that'll bring prices we've never even heard of before." He grinned excitedly, his salesman's eyes darting and busy. "Okay," he said. "Here I go. That lead from Italy; that's just one, but they're bidding; that's what counts. And they'll keep bidding, up and up."
"Wow," Cheryl Vale said. "We ought to have a token pipeful of sogum together. To celebrate." This, she could understand; the theological discussion had baffled her, but not this. Like R.C., she had a good, common-sense, seasoned reasonability.
"Get out the sogum," Sebastian said. "It's sogum time."
"So now you've got him," Lindy said. "All you have to do is decide who to peddle him to." He grimaced mirthlessly.
"Maybe," Sebastian said, "we'll let him decide." It was an approach they had not discussed; the Anarch, while still a corpse, had seemed just that: an object, a commodity. But he was, now, appearing among them as a human being, although still technically the property of the vitarium... a commercial entity. "He was--is-a shrewd man," he pointed out. "He probably can tell us more about Ray Roberts than the Library can." And Lotta had not returned; this he noted, and sensed that something had gone wrong. He wondered what... and how seriously... and kept the thought alive, in the back of his mind. Despite the more pressing problem of the Anarch.
"Are we going to turn him over to a hospital?" R.C. asked.
"No," Sebastian decided. It was too risky; Dr. Sign, here on the premises, would have to provide the medical care.
Dr. Sign said, "Evidently he's going to become conscious. He seems to be passing through the rebirth process unusually rapidly; that indicates his death was originally rapid."
Bending over the Anarch, Sebastian studied him, studied the tiny, dark, wrinkled face. It was certainly a living face, now; the change struck him as enormous. To see what had been inert organic matter become active... this is the real miracle, he said to himself; the greatest of them all. Resurrection.