The professor placed an arm around his shoulders. “Since you can’t help her, why not calm down? Besides, you have no reason to believe that she is in any danger.
Why borrow trouble? Let’s go out to the kitchen and open a bottle of beer while we wait for them.” He gently urged him toward the door.
After a couple of beers and a few cigarettes, Jenkins was somewhat calmed down.
The professor made conversation.
“How did you happen to sign up for this course, Howard?”
“It was the only course I could take with Estelle.”
“I thought so. I let you take it for reasons of my own. I knew you weren’t interested in speculative philosophy, but I thought that your hard-headed materialism would hold down some of the loose thinking that is likely to go on in such a class. You’ve been a help to me. Take Helen Fisher for example. She is prone to reason brilliantly from insufficient data. You help to keep her down to earth.”
“To be frank. Doctor Frost, I could never see the need for all this high-falutin discussion. I like facts.”
“But you engineers are as bad as metaphysicians — you ignore any fact that you can’t weigh in scales. If you can’t bite it, it’s not real. You believe in a mechanistic, deterministic universe, and ignore the facts of human consciousness, human will, and human freedom of choice-facts that you have directly experienced.”
‘But those things can be explained in terms of reflexes.”
The professor spread his Rands. “You sound just like Martha Ross-she can explain anything in terms of Bible-belt fundamentalism. Why don’t both of you admit that there a few things you don’t understand?” He paused and cocked his head. “Did you hear something?”
“I think I did.”
“Let’s check. It’s early, but perhaps one of them is back.”
They hurried to the study, where they were confronted by an incredible and awe-inspiring sight.
Floating in the air near the fireplace was a figure robed in white and shining with a soft mother-of — pearl radiance. While they stood hesitant at the door, the figure turned its face to them and they saw that it had the face of Martha Ross, cleansed and purified to an unhuman majesty. Then it spoke.
“Peace be unto you, my brothers.” A wave of peace and lovingldndness flowed over them like a mother’s blessing. The figure approached them, and they saw, curving from its shoulders, the long, white, sweeping wings of a classical angel. Frost cursed under his breath in a dispassionate monotone.
“Do not be afraid, I have come back, as you asked me to. To explain and to help you.”
The Doctor found his voice. “Are you Martha Ross?”
“I answer to that name.”
“What happened after you put on the ear-phones?”
“Nothing. I slept for a while. When I woke, I went home.”
“Nothing else? How do you explain your appearance?”
“My appearance is what you earthly children expect of the Lord’s Redeemed. In the course of time I served as a missionary in South America. There it was required of me that I give up my mortal me in the service of the Lord. And so I entered the Eternal City.”
“You went to Heaven?”
“These many eons I have sat at the foot of the Golden Throne and sung hosannas to His name.”
Jenkins interrupted them. “Tell me, Martha-or Saint Martha-Where is Estelle?
Have you seen her?”
The figure turned slowly and faced him. “Fear not.”
“But tell me where she is!”
“It is not needful.”
“That’s no help,” he answered bitterly.
“I will help you. Listen to me; Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and Love thy neighbor as thyself. That is all you need to know.”
Howard remained silent, at a loss for an answer, but unsatisfied. Presently the figure spoke again. “I must go. God’s blessing on you.” It flickered and was gone.
The professor touched the young man’s arm. “Let’s get some fresh air.” He led Jenkins, mute and unresisting, out into the garden. They walked for some minutes in silence. Finally Howard asked a question,
“Did we see an angel in there?”