“Elszabet,” he said. “What a beautiful name. And strange. Almost Elizabeth, but not quite.”
“Almost Hungarian,” she said. “But not quite. There was an actress, Hungarian, very big in the lasers in the mid-twenty-first century, Erzsebet Szabo. My mother was her biggest fan. Named me for her. Spelled it wrong.” Elszabet chuckled. “My mother was never much on spelling.” She had told Father Christie about her name at least thirty times before. But of course he forgot everything every morning, when the mindpick flushed him clean of short-term recollections and an unpredictable quantity of the long-term ones. After a bit she said, “What frightened you last night, Father?”
“Nothing.”
“But you’re ambivalent about undergoing pick today?”
“Yes.”
“Why is that?”
“You promise you won’t put this in my records?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure I can promise that.”
“Then I might not tell you.”
“Is it that embarrassing?”
“It might be, if it got back to the archdiocese.”
“Church stuff? Well, I can be discreet about that. Your bishop doesn’t have access to Center records, you know.”
“Is that true?”
“You know it is.”
He nodded. A little color came into his face. “What it is, Elszabet, is that I had a vision last night, and I’m not sure I want to surrender my memory of it to the pick.”
“A vision?”
“A very powerful vision. A wonderful and surprising vision.”
“The pick might take it from you,” she said. “Very probably will.”
“Yes.”
“But if you want to be healed, Father, you have to give yourself up totally to the pick. Yielding the good stuff along with the bad. Later on, you’ll integrate your spirit and you’ll be free of the pick. But for now—”
“I understand. Even so—”
“Do you want to tell me about the vision?”
He reddened and squirmed.
“You don’t have to. But it might help to tell me.”
“All right. All right.”
He was silent, working at it. Then in a desperate rush he blurted, “What it was, I saw God in His heavens, Elszabet!”
She smiled, trying to keep it sincere and unpatronizing. Gently she said, “How wonderful that must have been, Father.”
“More than you can imagine. More than anyone can.” He was trembling again. He was beginning to weep, and long wet tracks gleamed on his face. “Don’t you see, Elszabet, I have no faith. I have no faith. If I ever did, it went away from me long ago. Isn’t that pathetic? Isn’t it a joke? That classic clown, the priest who doesn’t believe. The Church is just my job, don’t you see? And I’m not even very good at that, but I do my diocesan duties, I make my calls, I practice my profession the way a lawyer or an accountant does, I—” He caught himself. “Anyway, for God to come to me—not to the pope, not to the cardinal, but to me, me without faith—!”
“What was it like, the vision? Can you say?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I can tell you. It was the most vivid thing possible. There was purple light in the sky, like a veil, a luminous veil hanging across the sky, and nine suns were shining at once, like jewels. An orange one, a blue one, a yellow one like ours, all kinds of colors crossing and mixing. The shadows were fantastic. Nine suns! And then He came into view. I saw Him on his throne, Elszabet. Gigantic. Majestic. Lord of Lords, who else could that have been, with nine suns for His footstools! His brow—His forehead—light streamed from it, grace, love. More than that: holiness, sanctity, the divine force. That’s what came from Him. A sense that I was seeing a being of the highest wisdom and power, a mighty and terrible god. I tell you, it was overwhelming. The sweat was pouring off me. I was sobbing, I was wailing, I thought I’d have a heart attack, it was so wondrous.” The priest paused and squinted at her quickly, a furtive worried glance. Then, without looking at her, he said in a low anguished voice full of shame, “Just one thing, though. You know, they say we’re made in His image? It isn’t so. He isn’t anything like us. I know that what I saw was God: I am as convinced of that as I am that Jesus is my Savior. But He doesn’t look anything like us.”
“What does he look like, then?”
“I can’t begin to say. That’s the part I don’t dare share, not even with you. But He looked—not—human. Splendid, magnificent, but—not—human.”
Elszabet had no idea how to respond to that. Again she gave him her professional smile, warm, encouraging.
He said, “I need to keep that vision, Elszabet. It’s the thing I’ve prayed for all my life. The presence of the divine, illuminating my spirit. How can I give that up now that I’ve experienced it?”
“You need to give yourself over to the pick, Father. The pick will heal you. You know that.”
“I know that, yes. But the vision—those nine suns—”
“Perhaps it’ll stay with you even after the pick.”
“And if not?” His brow darkened. “I think I want to withdraw from treatment.”
“You know that’s not possible.”
“The vision—”
“If you lose it, surely it’ll be granted you again. If God has revealed Himself to you this night, do you think He’ll abandon you afterward? Do you? He will return. What opened for you in this night just past will open for you again. The nine suns—the Father on His throne—”
“Oh, do you think so, Elszabet?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Trust me,” she said. “Trust God, Father.”
“Yes.”
“Come on, now. Shall we go back inside?”
The priest looked transfigured. “Yes. Certainly.”
“And I’ll send Lansford over to you?”
“Of course.” Tears were cascading down his cheeks. She had never seen him as animated as this, as vigorous, as alive.
Over in B Cabin, Lansford had the pick set up for Ed Ferguson, who seemed annoyed by the delay. “You go across to the Father,” Elszabet told Lansford. “I’ll take care of Mr. Ferguson.” The technician nodded. Ferguson, a chilly-faced man of about fifty who had been convicted of some vast and preposterous real-estate swindle before being sent to Nepenthe Center, began telling her about a trip to Mendocino that he wanted to take this weekend to meet a woman who’d be podding up from San Francisco to see him, but Elszabet listened with only half an ear. Her mind was full of Father Christie’s vision. How radiant the poor bedraggled incompetent priest had become while telling the tale. No wonder he feared going under the pick this morning. Losing the one bit of divine grace, weird and garbled though it might be, that had ever been vouchsafed him.
When Elszabet was done with Ferguson and had looked in on the third cabin, where Alleluia, the synthetic woman, was being treated, she hurried back to A Cabin. Father Christie was sitting up, smiling in the amiable muddled way characteristic of someone who has just had his mind swept clean of a host of memories. Donna, the morning recovery nurse, was with him, running him through his basic recall routines—making sure he still knew his own name, the year, where he was and why. The pick was supposed to remove just the short-term memories, but it could abrade more deeply, sometimes a lot more deeply. Elszabet nodded to the younger woman. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll take over, thanks.” She was surprised how hard her heart was pounding. When Donna had gone, Elszabet sat down beside the priest and put her hand lightly on his wrist. “Well, how’s the Father now?” she asked. “You look nice and relaxed.”