“But,” Tibor said, “I have no hands or knees.”
“It is mine to do,” the great lit-up face said. Tibor all at once found himself lifted upward, then set down hard, on the grass by the cart. Legs. He was kneeling. He saw the long mobile forms, two of them, supporting him. He saw, too, his arms and hands, on which the top portion of his frame rested. And his feet.
“You,” Tibor gasped, “are Carleton Lufteufel.” Only the God of Wrath could do what had just been achieved.
“Pray!” the face instructed.
Tibor said, mumbling his words, “I have never mocked the greatest entity in the universe. I beg not for forgiveness, but for understanding. If you knew me better—”
“I know you, Tibor,” the face declared.
“Not really. Not completely. I am a complex person, and theology itself is complex, these days. I have done no worse than anyone else; in fact much better than most. Do you understand that I am on a Pilg, searching for your physical identity, so that I can paint—”
“I know,” the God of Wrath interrupted. “I know what you know and a great many more things besides. I sent the bird. I caused you to travel close enough to the worm so that he would come out and try to gnaw on you. Do you understand that? It was I who made your right front wheel bearings go out. You have been in my power all this time. Throughout your Pilg.”
Tibor, using his new hands, reached into the storage compartment of the cart and whipped out an instant Color-Pack Polaroid Land camera; he took a quick shot of the moaning face above him, then waited impatiently for the ring to sound.
“You did what?” the mouth demanded. “You took a photograph of me?”
“Yes,” Tibor said. “To see if you’re real.” And for other very real reasons.
“I am real.” The mouth spat out its rebuttal.
“Why have you done all these things?” Tibor asked. “What is there so important about me?”
“You are not important. But your Pilg is. You intend to find me and kill me.”
“No!” Tibor shot back. “Just to photograph you!” He grabbed the edge of the print and dragged it out of the protesting camera.
The picture showed the wild, frenzied face absolutely clearly. Beyond any possibility of doubt.
It was Carleton Lufteufel. The man he had searched for. The man who lay at the far end of his god-knew-how-long Pilg.
The Pilg was over.
“You are going to use that?” the Deus Irae inquired. “That snapshot? No, I do not like it.” A quiver of his chin… and, in Tiber’s right hand, the print shriveled up, let loose a plume of smoke, and fell quietly to the ground in me form of ashes.
“And my arms and legs?” Tibor said, panting.
“Mine, too.” The God of Wrath studied him, and, as he did so, Tibor found himself rising like a rag doll. He landed on his ass in the driver’s seat of the cart. And, at the same moment, his legs, his feet, his arms, his hands—all vanished. Once again he was limbless; he sat there in his seat, panting in frenzy. For a few seconds he had been like everyone else. It was the ultimate moment for Tibor: restitution for an entire life led in this useless condition.
“God,” he managed to say, presently.
“Do you see?” the God of Wrath demanded. “Do you understand what I can do?”
Tibor grated, “Yes.”
“Will you terminate your Pilg?”
“I—” He hesitated. “No,” he said after a pause. “Not yet. The bird said—”
“I was that bird. I know what I said.” The God’s anger softened, momentarily anyhow. “The bird led you closer to me; close enough for me to greet you myself, as I wanted to. As I had to do. I have two bodies. One you are seeing now; it is eternal, uncorruptible, like the body Christ appeared in after the resurrection. When Timothy met him and pushed his hand into Christ’s wound.”
“Side,” Tibor said. “Into his side. And it was Thomas.”
The God of Wrath darkened, cloudily; his features began to become transparent. “You have seen this guise,” the God of Wrath declared. “This body. But there is also another body, a physical body which grows old and decays… a corruptible body, as Paul put it. You must not find that.”
“Do you think I’ll destroy it?” Tibor said.
“Yes.” The face disappeared, barely speaking its last word. The sky, once again blue, formed a hollow bowl vault erected by giants—or by gods. From some deep-seated, early period on the Earth, perhaps back in the Cambrian period.
After a moment Tibor let go of his derringer; sitting in his cart, he had held it out of sight. What would have happened, he conjectured, if I had tried to kill him? Nothing, he decided. The body I saw him in was, undoubtedly, what he claimed it to be: a manifestation of something incorruptible.
I never could have tried, he realized. It was a bluff. But the God of Wrath didn’t know that; unless of course he was omnipotent, as the Christians believe their God to be.
What in the name of god would it be if I had killed him? he asked himself. How the world would feel without him… there is so damn little to cling to, these days.
Anyhow, the bastard left, he said to himself. So I didn’t have to. At least not this time. I would kill him under certain circumstances, he realized suddenly. But what circumstances? He shut his eyes, rubbed them with his manual extensor, scratched his nose. If he were trying to destroy me? Not necessarily. It had to do more with the complexities of Lufteufel’s mind, rather than with outside circumstances. The God of Wrath had personality; he was not a force. Sometimes he labored for the good of man, and back in the war days, he had virtually annihilated mankind. He had to be propitiated.
That was the key. Sometimes the God of Wrath descended to do good; at other times, evil. I could kill him if he was acting out of malice… but if he was doing good, even if it cost me my life I’d do it.
Grandiose, he ruminated. The pride, hubris. The “all puffed up” syndrome. It’s not for me, he decided. I have always lain low. Somebody else, a Lee Harvey Oswald type, can go in for the big kills. The ones that really mattered.
He sighed. Well, so it went. But this was special. In all his years as a Servant of Wrath he had never possessed a mystical event, had never found God by any means, really. It’s like finding out that Haydn was a woman; it just isn’t possible to lay it aside, after it’s happened.
And also, true mystical experiences changed the beholder. As William James pointed out in another world at another time.
He gave me my missing parts, he thought. Legs, arms—and then he took them back. How can a deity do that? It was, put very simply, sadistic. To have arms, to look like everyone else. Not to be an upright trunk in a cow cart. I could run, he thought. Through sea water, at the ocean beaches. And with my hands I would fashion a variety of objects… think how well I could paint. Most of my, creative limitations come from the damn apparatus I have to use. I could be so much more, he told himself.
Will the chardin blue jay come back? he wondered. If it was a manifestation of the Deus Irae then probably it won’t.
In that case, he asked himself, what should I do?
Nothing. Well, he could shout in his bullhorn. Experimentally, he fished out the bullhorn, snapped the switch on, and said boomingly, “Now hear this! Now hear this! Tibor McMasters is caught in the hills and expects to die. Can you help me? Does anybody hear this?”
He clicked off the bullhorn, sat for a moment. Nothing else he could do. Nothing at all.
He sat slumped over in his cart, waiting.
Eleven
Pete Sands said to the children, “Think back. Did you see a partial person riding in a cart pulled by a cow? You’d remember that, wouldn’t you? Yesterday, late in the afternoon. Remember?” He scanned their faces, trying to learn something. Something which they did not want him to know about.