the basic reason for chaos, for blind violence and hatred.
We had attributed all the bad things of this world to
“divine tests” of man’s will and courage. But all of that
was a theological falsehood, for the force energizing the
universe was madness, not reason; insanity and not mer-
cy. The madness had reached even the smallest particle of
His being, aged like wine into the purest elements of
horror.
Here died Jesus.
And Mohammed.
Here died Buddha and Yahweh.
But it was not all a loss.
For here, at last, I was born in my new image, to
replace half a thousand false gods.
Burn the old altars and prepare new ones. Council your
children with different commandments and slaughter the
freshest of your lambs so that I may taste their blood in
the morning dew.
I bled His energy away just as I might have tapped a
dynamo or a battery, distributed it through my own psy-
chic power until He was no longer a separate entity but
merely another area of my own mind, as Child now was,
another rising bank of power cells to draw upon for the
creation of miracles. Not a shred of His personality or
self-awareness remained; for all purposes, He had died—
or had been transubstantiated, which was all the same
now. His memories had been evaporated, and only the
magnificent white brilliance of His power remained, con-
densed, purified, and made ready for use. For my use. It
was now, after all, my power.
I had killed God, quite simply, just as I had killed Child
some days before.
I felt no remorse.
Does one feel remorse when one shoots down a maniac
who is wielding a gun in a crowded department store?
Man as God. I retained the mortal form and the mortal
outlook, with the emotions and the prejudices of men. I did
not think that would be a weakness, but that it might
actually make me a more benevolent and stable deity
than the previous owner of my power had been. Man as
God…
I vaporized the glittering metal analogues held in the
fragments of mirror to my right. They disappeared with-
out sound or light. I spread my hands, as in addressing the
multitudes, and eliminated all the other pieces of that
“cosmic mirror.
There was total darkness drawing down about me like
an oiled curtain.
I made light.
With the light, I fashioned stairs leading upward into
further regions of darkness.
I walked out of there, erasing the stairs behind me.
Outside, the world awaited me, unknowing but soon to
learn….
II
When I returned to my own body, carrying the power
with me, the first thing I saw was Child’s mutant shell
convulsed with a series of hideous spasms that made it
look much like the flickering, shape-changing image in a
funhouse mirror. It sat straight up in bed, quivering like
the shaft of an arrow. Its eyes were wide for the first
time, the pulsing veins visible in the whites. Its slitted
mouth worked furiously, though no words issued from it,
no sounds at all. It scrabbled at its chest with two bony
hands, clawed at its horrible face so viciously and persis-
tently that blood seeped from the long red welts it carved
in the flesh there.
The doctor attending the mutant grabbed it and at-
tempted to force it backward onto the mattress, where
restraining straps could be applied. But it heaved the
white-smocked figure aside as if the man were so much
paper, in an exhibition of strength that no one could have
expected from such an emaciated body, from such skinny
arms and powerless hands.
A dry rasping-hacking sound emanated from the crea-
ture’s throat, but no words formed. It could have been
tissue ripping under some unimaginable inward pressure
rather than a conscious exercise of vocal cords.
“What’s going on here?” Morsfagen demanded, rising
from his chair with that slow, powerful, and somehow
contemptible grace of his, cutting air like a sail.
The soldier named Larry came across the room, looking
confused but determined. He dropped his rifle, and
reached for the mutant. The creature snapped at him,
sunk teeth into his wrist, and made blood fountain up