Elias said, "She helps him. She teaches him. More than the school does. More than I do."
Looking toward the girl Herb Asher saw a beautiful pale heart-shaped face with eyes that danced with light. What a pretty child, he thought, and turned back to Rybys's son. But then, struck by something, he looked once more at the girl.
Mischief showed on her face. Especially in her eyes. Yes, he thought; there is something in her eyes. A kind of knowledge.
"They've been together four years now," Elias said. "She gave him a high-technology slate. It's some kind of advanced computer terminal. It asks him questions-poses questions to him and gives him hints. Right, Manny?"
Emmanuel said, "Hello, Herb Asher." He seemed solemn and subdued, in contrast to the girl.
"Hello," he said to Emmanuel. "How much you look like your mother."
"In that crucible we grow," Emmanuel said, cryptically. He did not amplify.
"Are-" Herb did not know what to say. "Is everything all right?"
"Yes." The boy nodded.
"You have a heavy burden on you," Herb said.
"The slate plays tricks," Emmanuel said.
There was silence.
"What's wrong?" Herb said to Elias.
To the boy, Elias said, "Something is wrong, isn't it?"
"While my mother died," Emmanuel said, gazing fixedly at Herb Asher, "you listened to an illusion. She does not exist, that image. Your Fox is a phantasm, nothing else."
"That was a long time ago," Herb said.
"The phantasm is with us in the world," Emmanuel said.
"That's not my problem," Herb said.
Emmanuel said, "But it is mine. I mean to solve it. Not now but at the proper time. You fell asleep, Herb Asher, because a voice told you to fall asleep. This world here, this planet, all of it, all its people-everything here sleeps. I have watched it for ten years and there is nothing good I can say about it. What you did it does; what you were it is. Maybe you still sleep. Do you sleep, Herb Asher? You dreamed about my mother while you lay in cryonic suspension. I tapped your dreams. From them I learned a lot about her. I am as much her as I am myself. As I told her, she lives on in me and as me; I have made her deathless-your wife is here, not back in that littered dome. Do you realize that? Look at me and you see Rybys whom you ignored."
Herb Asher said, "I-"
"There is nothing for you to tell me," Emmanuel said. "I read your heart, not your words. I knew you then and I know you now. Herbert, Herbert,' I called to you. I summoned you back to life, for your sake and for hers, and, because it was for her sake, it was for my sake. When you helped her you helped me. And when you ignored her you ignored me. Thus says your God."
Reaching out, Elias put his arm around Herb Asher, to reas- sure him.
"I will always speak the truth to you, Herb Asher," the boy continued. "There is no deceit in God. I want you to live. I made you live once before, when you lay in psychological death. God does not desire any living thing's death; God takes no delight in nonexistence. Do you know what God is, Herb Asher? God is He Who causes to be. Put another way, if you seek the basis of being that underlies everything you will surely find God. You can work back to God from the phenomenal universe, or you can move from the Creator to the phenomenal universe. Each implies the other. The Creator would not be the Creator if there were no universe, and the universe would cease to be if the Creator did not sustain it. The Creator does not exist prior to the universe in time; he does not exist in time at all. God creates the universe constantly; he is with it, not above or behind it. This is im- possible to understand for you because you are a created thing and exist in time. But eventually you will return to your Creator and then you will again no longer exist in time. You are the breath of your Creator, and as he breathes in and out, you live. Remember that, for that sums up everything that you need to know about your God. There is first an exhalation from God, on the part of all creation; and then, at a certain point, it starts its journey back, its inhalation. This cycle never ceases. You leave me; you are away from me; you start back; you rejoin me. You and everything else. It is a process, an event. It is an activity- my activity. It is the rhythm of my own being, and it sustains you all."
Amazing, Herb Asher thought. A ten-year-old boy. Her son speaking this.
"Emmanuel," the girl Zina said, "you are ponderous."
Smiling at her the boy said, "Games, then? Would that be better? There are events ahead that I must shape. I must arouse fire that burns, that sears. Scripture says:
For He is like a refiner's fire.
And Scripture also says:
And who can abide the day of His coming?
I say, however, that it will be more than this; I say:
The day comes, glowing like a furnace; all the arrogant and the evil-doers shall be chaff, and that day when it comes shall set them ablaze; it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
What do you say to that, Herb Asher?" Emmanuel gazed at him intently, awaiting his response.
Zina said:
But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings.
"That is true," Emmanuel said. In a low voice Elias said:
And you shall break loose like calves released from the stall.
"Yes," Emmanuel said. He nodded.
Herb Asher, returning the boy's gaze, said, "I am afraid. I really am." He was glad of the arm around him, the reassuring arm of Elias.
In a reasonable tone of voice, a mild tone, Zina said, "He won't do all those terrible things. That's to scare people."
"Zina!" Elias said.
Laughing, she said, "It's true. Ask him."
"You will not put the Lord your God to the test," Emmanuel said.
"I'm not afraid," Zina said quietly.
Emmanuel, to her, said:
I will break you, like a rod of iron.
I shall dash you, in pieces,
Like a potter's vessel.
"No," Zina said. To Herb Asher she said, "There is nothing to fear. It's a manner of talking, no more. Come to me if you get scared and I will converse with you."
"That is true," Emmanuel said. "If you are seized and taken down into the prison she will go with you. She will never leave you." An unhappy expression crossed his face; suddenly he was, again, a ten-year-old boy. "But-"
"What is it?" Elias said.
"I will not say now," Emmanuel said, speaking with diffi- culty. Herb Asher, to his disbelief, saw tears in the boy's eyes. "Perhaps I will never say it. She knows what I mean."
"Yes," Zina said, and she smiled. Mischief lay in her smile, or so it seemed to Herb Asher. It puzzled him. He did not under- stand the invisible transaction taking place between Rybys's son and the girl. It troubled him, and his fear became greater. His sense of deep unease.
--------------------
The four of them had dinner together that night.
"Where do you live?" Herb Asher asked the girl. "Do you have a family? Parents?"
"Technically I'm a ward of the government school we go to," Zina said. "But for all intents and purposes I'm in Elias's custody now. He's in the process of becoming my guardian."
Elias, eating, paying attention to his plate of food, said, "We are a family, the three of us. And now you also, Herb."
"I may go back to my dome," Herb said. "In the CY3O- CY3OB system."
Staring at him, Elias halted in his eating, forkful of food raised. "Why?"
"I'm uncomfortable here," Herb said. He had not worked it out; his feelings remained vague. But they were intense feelings. "It's oppressive here. There's more of a sense of freedom out there."
"Freedom to lie in your bunk listening to Linda Fox?" Elias said.
"No." He shook his head.
Zina said, "Emmanuel, you scare nim with your talk about afflicting the Earth with fire. He remembers the plagues in the Bible. What happened with Egypt."
"I want to go home," Herb said, simply.
Emmanuel said, "You miss Rybys."
"Yes." That was true.