* * * *
When the sculptor awoke, lying face down amidst the marble chips and powder-fine dust of the statue, he saw the base first; and not having recalled even buying a chunk of stone that large, raised himself on his hands, and his knees, and his haunches, and sat there, and his eyes went up toward the summit, and seemed to go on forever, and when he finally saw what it was he had created—this thing of such incredible loveliness and meaning and wisdom—he began to sob. Softly, never very loud, but deeply, as though each whimper was drawn from the very core of him.
He had done it this once, but as he saw his hands still trembling, still murmuring to themselves in spasms, he knew it was the one time he would ever do it. There was no memory of how, or why, or even of when ... but it was his work, of that he was certain. The pain in his wrists told him it was.
The moment of truth stood high above him, resplendent in marble, but there would be no other moments.
This was Colin Marshack's life, in its totality, now.
The sound of sobbing was only broken periodically, as he began to drink.
* * * *
Waiting. The Ethos waited. Trente had known they would. It was inevitable. Foolish for him to conceive of a situation of which they would not have an awareness.
Away. From your post, away.
“I had to know. It has been growing in me, a live thing in me. I had to know. It was the only way. I went to a planet, and lived within what they call ‘men’ and knew. I think I understand now.”
Know. What is it you know?
“I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain there can be no pleasure. Without sadness there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.”
Adult. You have become adult.
“I know ... this is what became of the other Paingods before me. They grew into concern, into knowing, and then...”
Lost. They were lost to us.
“They could not take the step; they could not go to one of the ones to whom they had sent pain, and learn. So they were no use as Paingod. I understand. Now I know, and I am returned.”
Do. What will you do?
“I will send more pain than ever before. More and greater.”
More? You will send more?
“Much more. Because now I understand. It is a gray and a lonely place in which we live, all of us, swinging between desperation and emptiness, and all that makes it worthwhile is caring, is beauty. But if there were no opposite for beauty, or for pleasure, it would all turn to dust.”
Being. Now you know who you are.
“I am most blessed of the Ethos, and most humble. You have given me the highest, kindest position in the universes. For I am the God to all men, and to all creatures small and large, whether they call me by name or not. I am Paingod, and it is my life, however long it stretches, to treat them to the finest they will ever know. To give them pain, that they may know pleasure. Thank you.”
And the Ethos went away, secure that at last, after all the eons of Paingods who had broken under the strain, who had lacked the courage to take that nightwalk, they had found one who would last truly forever. Trente had come of age.
While back in the cubicle, hanging star-bright and translucent in space, high above it all, yet very much part of it all, the creature who would never die, the creature who had lived within the rotting body of Pieter Koslek and for a few moments in the soul and talent of Colin Marshack, that creature called Paingod, learned one more thing, as he stared at the tiny model of the planet Earth he had known.
Trente knew the feel of a tear formed in a duct and turned free from an eye globe—cool on his face.
Trente knew happiness.