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.
Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
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.
“She isn’t there,” Emmanuel reminded him. He ate slowly, somberly, bite after bite. As if, Herb thought, eating was for him a solemn ritual. A matter of consuming something sanctified.
“Can’t you bring her back?” he said to Emmanuel.
The boy did not respond. He continued to eat.
“No answer?” Herb said, with bitterness.
“I am not here for that,” Emmanuel said. “She understood. It is not important that you understand, but it was important that she know. And I caused her to know. You remember; you were there on that day, the day I told her what lay ahead.”
“Okay,” Herb said.
“She lives elsewhere now,” Emmanuel said. “You-”
“Okay,” he repeated, with anger, enormous anger.
To him, Emmanuel said, speaking slowly and quietly, his face calm, “You do not grasp the situation, Herbert. It is not a good universe that I strive for, nor a just one, nor a pretty one; the existence of the universe itself is at stake. Final victory for Belial does not mean imprisonment for the human race, continued slav- ery, but nonexistence; without me, there is nothing, not even Belial, whom I created.”
“Eat your dinner,” Zina said in a gentle voice.
“The power of evil,” Emmanuel continued, “is the ceasing of reality, the ceasing of existence itself. It is the slow slipping away of everything that is, until it becomes, like Linda Fox, a phantasm. That process has begun. It began with the primal fall. Part of the cosmos fell away. The Godhead itself suffered a crisis; can you fathom that, Herb Asher? A crisis in the Ground of Being? What does that convey to you? The possibility of the Godhead ceasing-does it convey that to you? Because the God- head is all that stands between-” He broke off. “You can’t even imagine it. No creature can imagine nonbeing, especially its own nonbeing. I must guarantee being, all being. Including yours. Herb Asher said nothing.
“A war is coming,” Emmanuel said. “We will choose our ground. It will be for us, the two of us, Belial and me, a table, on which we play. Over which we wager the universe, the being of being as such. I initiate this final part of the ages of war; I have advanced into Belial’s territory, his home. I have moved forward to meet him, not the other way around. Time will tell if it was a wise idea.”
“Can’t you foresee the results?” Herb said.
Emmanuel regarded him. Silently.
“You can,” Herb said. You know what the outcome will be, he realized. You know now; you knew when you entered Rybys’s womb. You knew from the beginning of creation-before crea- tion, in fact; before a universe existed.
“They will play by rules,” Zina said. “Rules agreed on.”
“Then,” Herb said, “that’s why Belial has not attacked you. That’s why you’ve been able to live here and grow up-for ten years. He knows you’re here-”
“Does he know?” Emmanuel said.
Silence.
“I haven’t told him,” Emmanuel said. “It is not my burden. He must find out for himself. I do not mean the government. I mean the power that truly rules, in comparison to which the government, all governments, are shadows.”
“He’ll tell him when he’s ready,” Zina said. “Good and ready.”
Herb said, “Are you good and ready, Emmanuel?”
The boy smiled. A child’s smile, a shift away from the stern countenance of a moment before. He said nothing. A game, Herb Asher realized. A child’s game!
Seeing this he trembled.
Zina said:
Time is a child at play, playing draughts; a child’s is the king- dom.
138 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
” What is that?” Elias said.
It is not from Judaism,” Zina said obscurely. She did not
amplify.
The part of him that derives from his mother, Herb Asher realized, is ten years old. And the part of him that is Yah has no age: it is infinity itself. A compound of the very young and the timeless: precisely what Zina in her arcane quote had stated.
Perhaps this was not unique. this mixture. Someone had noted it before: noted it and declared it in words.
“You venture into Belials realm,” Zina said to Emmanuel as she ate, “but would you have the courage to venture into my realm?”
What realm is that?” Emmanuel said. Elias Tate stared at the girl, and, equally puzzled, Herb Asher regarded her. But Emmanuel seemed to understand her; he showed no surprise. Despite his question, Herb Asher thought, he knows-knows already.
Zina said, Where I am not as you see me now.
An interval of silence passed, as Emmanuel pondered. He did not answer: he sat as if withdrawn, as if his mind had moved far away. Skimming countless worlds, Herb Asher thought. How strange this is. What are they talking about?
Emmanuel said slowly and carefully, I have a dreadful land to deal with, Zina. I have no time.’
A think you are apprehensive,” Zina said. She turned to her slice of apple pie and mound of ice cream.
Emmanuel said.
“Come, then,” she said, and, all at once, the color and fire,
the mischief and delight, showed in her dark eyes. ‘1 challenge you,” she said. Here.” She reached out her hand to the boy.
My psychopomp,” Emmanuel said somberly.
“Yes; I’ll be your guide.’
You would lead the Lord your God?”
“I would like to show you where the bells come from. The
land out of which their sounds come. What do you say?” He said, I will go.”
“What are you two talking about?” Elias said, with apprehen- sion. “Manny, what is this? What does she mean? She’s not taking you anywhere that I don’t know about.”