I shouldn’t have said it, but I did. “So now it amuses you to let us live?”
“That’s one way to put it. Or you could say I’m leaving the experiment to cook on its own. I’ll walk forward a million years and see what happens.”
“But you already know the future,” Marygay said.
The thing inside Max rolled his eyes. “It isn’t a line. It’s a table. There are all kinds of futures. Else why bother to experiment?”
Sara spoke up. “Don’t leave!” He looked at her with an impatient expression. “We see things like a line, a line of cause and effect. But you see millions of lines on your table.”
“An infinity of lines.”
“Okay. Is there anything else in the universe besides your table?” He smiled. “Are there other tables? Is there a room?”
“There are other tables. If they’re in a room, I’ve never seen the walls.”
Then it spoke in exact unison with Sara: “So is there someone else in charge?” By herself: “In charge of all of you and your tables?”
“Sara,” it said, “in some of those many lines, you choose to be alive a million years from now, when I return. You may ask me then. Or you may not need to.”
“But if there isn’t anyone else; if you’re God–”
“What?” Max said. He rubbed the white cloth between his fingers. “What the hell is going on here?” He looked over at the fighting suit. “I felt this horrible pain, all over.”
“Me, too,” Cat said. She was sitting cross-legged on the spot where she had died, one hand in her lap and the other over her breasts. “And then I was suddenly here, back again. But you got clothes.” She looked at us with raised eyebrows. “What the hell is going on?”
“God knows,” I said.
——————————————————————————–
Chapter thirty-two
I worried for a few seconds about what to do with ten billion people and Taurans stranded naked in the middle of the desert. But the nameless had waved its wand one last time.
The air around us shimmered, and we were suddenly surrounded by a thick crowd of men, women, and children, all naked, many screaming.
A small cluster of people with clothes on does stand out in that situation. People began to approach us tentatively, and Marygay and I both braced for leadership.
Of course it didn’t happen. An older Man walked straight up to me and started asking loud, pointed questions.
But I couldn’t understand a word of it. I spoke a dead language that, on this planet, I shared with only a handful of scholars and immigration people.
The three Omni stepped up, tall enough to draw attention, arms up and shouting something in unison. The priest touched my shoulder. “We’ll see what we can do here. You help your own people.”
Marygay was standing with a protective arm around Cat. I took off my shirt and gave it to her; it was just big enough to cover the essentials.
In fact, it looked kind of sexy. A popular woman once told me that the way to attract attention at a party was to wear a long dress when you knew the others would be in jeans or shorts, and vice versa. So if you’re at a party where everyone is naked, any old thing will do.
We finally herded everyone together in Molly Malone’s. The cafeteria was jammed with hungry people, so we gathered in the “Social History of Prostitution” room, or however it translates. The exhibits were unambiguous.
Seven of us had been killed and reconstructed. We tried to explain to them what had happened. As if we could actually understand.
God killed a bunch of you, to get our attention. Then He announced He was leaving, and revived you and ten billion others on His way out.
I kept waiting to wake up. Like the old guy in A Christmas Carol, I was thinking this had to be something I ate. As it went on and on, of course, that possibility faded. Maybe everything before had been a dream.
The sheriff and Antres 906 got in touch with their Trees and let everybody know what apparently had happened. The Omni amiably revealed their existence and helped pull things together. There was a little more involved than just finding clothes for everybody.