A moment later it is done: Building 32 has collapsed in upon itself, and dust billows outward from the ruin.
PEA, says God with pleasure, and Pea whoops and hops up and down, wide-eyed, girlish, and inside of her mind God laughs, a warm grandfatherly laugh.
She wheels around. In an island in the center of the road, across from where Building 32 had stood, is a statue that Pea remembers from her visits with Arno, a statue she never loved: a mother and child, holding hands and looking up searchingly at the empty sky. Pea makes a kind of snorting noise and concentrates her mind on the statue for a second or two until it smokes and then bursts, first the woman and then the girl, like popping kernels of corn. The pieces of burning metal leap up into the air and then tumble down but do not hurt her. A flock of small birds, startled by the noise, wheel off and scatter into the sky.
Pea’s eyes widen with pleasure. Just down the road is Building 34, its yellowed paint peeling around the corners of the front door. Pea focuses her eyes upon it and raises her hands.
And so it goes, all of the first day and into the night — and into the second day and into second night, this is how it goes. Pea working unceasing, never tiring, never slowing. God is always with her, never issuing instructions, only gentle praise. She simply walks about, from the downtown area outward through the winding streets, building by building, tree by tree, working her will on the ugly old world. She works according to her own instincts, leaving certain buildings alone, razing whole blocks when the mood strikes.
And then, by the end of the second day Pea is no longer destroying, but creating.
Still using only her mind and her spirit, still never stooping, never breaking a sweat, she clears the ruins of the buildings she has brought down, and begins to bring up new structures in their stead. She goes back to the site of Building 32 to start, when the idea hits her, and where the worn ugly old glass tower had stood she imagines a twisting glass palace with exactly one hundred rooms, each one a different color, and no sooner does she think of it than it is so.
She returns to all of the rubble fields she has made and fills them with new constructions. Each one is a marvelous structure, architected from her merriest imagining. Here a gingerbread house; here a stately mansion; here a child’s dollhouse scaled up to human size. Where thick and squat Building 19 had stood there rises a great climbing tree of a building, with rooms tucked away inside of it like squirrel-holes in tree knots.
Pea claps her hands with delight. She spins. The world, the new world rises up around her.
YOU ARE DOING WELL, says God, and Pea beams. YOU ARE MY POWERFUL CHILD.
His voice is rich and calm. It is a vast starry horizon, stretching out silver before her glittering eyes.
And on the third day, at last, Pea comes to The Center, a massive circular cathedral with many glass windows and many doors. She sighs and crosses her arms, feeling somewhat uneasy. It is hard to believe that Pea spent her childhood, spent her whole life, in thrall of this lousy glass-eyed building. And why? Because it was this building and the people inside of it that her parents were always so fearful of, because if the Center workers were to have discovered that Pea was deaf — that she could not hear the Word of God — they might have taken her away. They might have insisted to Pea’s parents that they leave her behind.
Well everyone is gone now. The Center workers, Pea’s parents, everyone is gone. Only Pea is left. Pea smiles a crooked smile. She tilts her head and raises a finger, and the Center bursts open from the inside, and when the dust clears she rebuilds it in the shape of a birthday cake, with no doors, a form to be admired but never entered.
She stands then, trembling, fearful for the first time that God will be displeased at what she has done to His church.
PERFECT, he says. BEAUTIFUL.
Pea unclenches. She closes her eyes. “Thank you,” she says.
She carries on. Third day into the fourth. Building by building, site by site, she makes the ugly old world better than it was.
The world had always looked like this. As long as Pea had been alive. She had never seen it, but it had always looked like this. Ever since it was settled, by the grandfathers’ grandfathers’ grandfathers’ generation. They who had been left behind by the others, the ones who had journeyed on, in search of a habitable planet. This group, Pea’s ancestor’s group, they were to wait here, to make do, until the others returned.
But the others had never returned. Year after year, decade after decade, the founders had done as instructed. They had waited here, they had made do.
And just when despair might have begun, the voice of God started coming. Jennifer Miller in Building 14 first heard the voice of God, and then others did, and then everyone did. There was never any reason to struggle, to make the world beautiful and habitable, because God had told them the future, and the future was short. Soon they would all go through. This was something Robert had always been pointing out; something that had saddened and angered him about the God-days — how after Jennifer Miller, after the voices started, everyone became so enamored of the death to come that they forgot to be alive. Everyone was so busy waiting for heaven to come down, they stopped seeing the world, and the world had thus been slowly falling to bits.
It had made Robert so frustrated. Pea smiles now to think of him, sputtering and sighing and adjusting his glasses on his nose.
It really was a shame that he hadn’t lived for this, to see how Pea was taking their old world and making it shine. Making it glorious after all.
Pea notices a hideous vehicle dock at the end of a row of towers, and the structure disintegrates, all at once, into a cloud of dust, and when the dust clears there is a field of grass, just as Pea had pictured it in her head, dotted with great green trees dripping with bright yellow flowers.
This is all that Robert had wanted, after all, she thinks sadly. To make things look nice. To make their world a beautiful world.
And now, as Pea surveys her newest creation, a shadow falls across her heart.
It is almost sundown now — sundown on the third day. Pea has not heard God for hours.
Along with that small and frightening realization comes a new voice. Soft, soft. She almost can’t hear it.
be careful
Pea’s body tightens. She hunches forward, cocks her head to one side, as if to hear better, even though the voice is inside of her, even though she hopes it won’t speak again. But it does speak —
be smart
It’s a gruff whisper, a rusted knife-edge, jagged and cold.
be warned
Pea doesn’t like it. Unease roils her stomach, in part because she can’t tell who or what this voice is. The voice of God had been so obvious, so self-evident. She had been waiting for it all her life, and then suddenly there it had been. But this voice, this voice is unfamiliar; it has a raspy quality, a darkness that hovers about it like a deep red mist.
do not trust it says. do not —
And then nothing.
Pea breathes in the deserted street, surveying what she has done thus far. She waits to hear God, hoping he will fill the silence, but there is nothing now — only silence in the lonely world.