So at last, when he'd wept himself out, he returned to the sight of the tragedy. The beasts had already done their disfiguring work, for which he was grateful. He could not distinguish one corpse from another; they were all simply meat for this devouring world.
He climbed the slope and slipped between the rocks, up to the place where the door that had led on to the shores of Quiddity had burned. It was gone, of course; sealed up. Nor could he expect it to be opened again any time soon-if at all-given that most all of the people who had known about the ceremony were on this side of the divide, and dead. Blessedm'n Filigree, who had opened the crack in the first place, was a notable exception (was he a conspirator in this, perhaps?), but given that his opening of the door was a crime punishable by servitude and confinement, he was likely to have fled to the Ephemeris since the tragedy and found a place to lie low until the investigations were over. But as Noah stood on the spot where the threshold between Cosm and Metacosm had been laid, he saw something flickenng close to the ground. He went down on his haunches and peered at it more closely. The door, it seemed, had not entirely closed. A narrow gap, perhaps four or five inches long, remained in place. He touched it, and it wavered, as though it might at any moment flicker out. Then, moving very cautiously, he went down on his belly and put his eye close to the gap.
He could see the beach, and the sea, but there were no ships. Apparently their captains had sensed disaster and sailed away to some harbor where they could count their profits and swear their crews to silence.
All was lost.
He got to his feet, and stared up at the snow-laden sky. What now? Should he leave the mountain, and make his way in the world of Sapas Humana? What purpose was there in that? It was a place of fictions and delusions. Better to stay here, where at least he could smell the air of Quiddity, and watch the light shifting on the shore. He would find some way to protect the flame, so that it wasn't extinguished. And then he would wait, and pray that somebody ventured along the beach one day, and saw the crack, and came to it. He'd tell them the whole sorry story; persuade them to find a Blessedm'n who'd come and open the way afresh. Then he'd return to his world. That was the theory, at least. There was a tiny chance that it could ever be more than that, he The shore had been chosen for its remoteness; he could expect many bewhcombers there. But patience was easy if it was all you had; and it was. He would wait, and while he waited, name the smm in this new heaven after the dead, so he would have someone to confide in as time went bN/
As things went, there was more to see below than above, for after a little while people began visiting the vallev that lay in the shadow of the peak. Noah knew their lives were trivial things, but he studied them nevertheless, his gaze so sharp he could pick out the color of a woman's eyes from his lookout on the mountain. There were many women in the valley in those early days, all of them robust and well-made, a few even beautiful. And seeing that this stretch of earth was as good a place a.,; any other to settle, their admirers built houses, and courted, and mwficd and raised families. And in time there grew and prospered in the valley a proud little city called Everville.
PART Two CONGREGATION ONE
'Forgive me, Evervffle." The words were written in fading sepia ink on paper the color of unwashed bed sheets, but Erwin had read texts far less legible in the sixteen years h6'd been dealing with the will and testaments of Everville's citizens. Evelyn Morris's final instructions for instance ('Put the dogs to sleep, and bury them with me'), written in iodine on a table lamp beside her deathbed; or Dwight Hanson's codicil, scrawled in the margin of a book on duck decoys.
Erwin had read somewhere that Oregon had a larger percentage of heretical thinkers per capita than any other state. More activists, more flat sts, more survivalists; all happy to have three thousand miles between them and the seat of govennnent. Out of sight, in a state that was still comparatively empty, they went their own sweet way; and what better place to leave a statement about their individuality than their last words to the world?
But even by the high standard of eccentricity he'd encountered in his time as an attorney, the testament he was now studying was a benchmark. It was not so much a will as a confession; a confession which had gone unread in the @ or so years since it had been written in March of 1965. Its author was one Lyle McPherson, whose goods and chattels had apparently been so negligible upon his passing that nobody had cared to look for any indication as to how he had wanted them divided. Either that, or his only son, Frank, whose sudden demise had brought the confession into in's hands, had discovered it, read it, and decided that it as best kept hidden. Why he had not destroyed it completely ly the dead man knew for certain, but perhaps somewhere in his soul McPherson the Younger had been perversely proud of the claims his father made in this document, and had toyed with the possibility of one day making it public.
True or not, the contents would have certainly claimed the cover of the Evel-i,ille Tribune for a couple of weeks and perhaps brought McPherson-who had lived a blameless but dull life running the city's only Drain Rooter and Septic Service-a welcome touch of notoriety.
If that had indeed been his plan, death had foiled it. McPherson the Younger had passed from the world with only a seven-line obituary in the Tribune (five lines of which bemoaned the lack of a replacement Drain Rooter and Septic Service now that good ol' Frank was gone) to mark his exit. The life and crimes of McPherson the Elder, however, were waiting to be discovered, and now, sitting by the window in the heat of the late August sun, their discoverer pondered how best to show them to the world.
It was certainly a good time to find himself an audience. Every year, at the last weekend of August, Everville had a festival, and for three days its otherwise quiet streets became thronged, its population (which had stood at 7403 at the previous November's census) swelling to half that size again. Every hotel, inn, motel, and lodging house in that region of the Willamette Valley, from Aurora and Molina in the north to Sublimity and Aumsville in the south was occupied, and there was scarcely a store in town that didn't do more business over Festival Weekend than it did in the three months preceding it. The actual substance of the festival was of variable quality. The town band, which in fact drew players from as far afield as Wilsonville, was very capable, and Saturday's parade, featuring the band, floats, and a troupe of drum majorettes, was usually counted the highlight of the weekend. At the other end of the scale were the pig races and the frisbee-throwing contests, which were ineptly organized, and had several years ended in fistfights.
But the crowds who came to Everville in their hundreds every August didn't come for the music, or the pig racing. 'I hey came because it was a fine excuse to drink, dance, and enjoy the last of summer before the leaves started to turn. Only once in the years Erwin had been a resident of the town had it rained on Festival Weekend. This year, if the weather reports were to be trusted, the entire week ahead would be balmy, with temperatures climbing to the low eighties by Friday. Perfect Festival weather. Dorothy Bullard, who ran the offices of the Chamber of Commerce when she wasn't accepting cash for water bills, fronting the Tourist Board, or flirting with Jed Gilholly, the city's police captain, had announced in last week's Tribune that the Chamber of Commerce expected this year's Festival to be the most popular yet. If a man wanted to drop a bombshell, there could scarcely be a better time to do it.