“I saw my dead,” I tell them. “She will not rise again. Nor yours, nor you. Not ever. SUM will not, cannot raise us. In Its house is death indeed. We must seek life and rebirth elsewhere, among the mysteries.”
She laughs aloud and points to my soul bracelet, glimmering faintly in the gray-blue thickening twilight. Need She say anything?
“Will someone give me a knife and an ax?” I ask.
The crowd stirs and mumbles. I smell their fear. Streethamps go on, as if they could scatter more than this corner of the night which is roiling upon us. I fold my arms and wait. The Dark Queen says something to me. I ignore Her.
The tools pass from hand to hand. He who brings them up the stairs conies like a flame. He kneels at my feet and lifts what I have desired. The tools are good ones, a broad-bladed hunting knife and a long double-bitted ax.
Before the world, I take the knife in my right hand and slash bemieath the bracelet on my left wrist. The connections to my inner body are cut. Blood flows, impossibly brilliant under the lamps. It does not hurt; I am too exalted.
The Dark Queen shrieks. “You meamit it! Harper, Harper!”
“There is no life in SUM,” I say. I pull my hand through the circle and cast the bracelet dowmi so it rings.
A voice of brass: “Arrest that maniac for correction. He is deadly dangerous.”
The monitors who have stood on the fringes of the crowd try to push through. They are resisted. Those who seek to help them encounter fists and fingernails.
I take the ax and smash downward. The bracelet crumples. The organic material within, starved of my secretions, exposed to the night air, withers.
I raise the tools, ax in right hand, knife in bleeding heft. “I seek eternity where it is to be found,” I call. “Who goes with me?”
A score or better break loose from the riot, which is already calling forth weapons and claiming hives. They surround me with their bodies. Their eyes are the eyes of prophets. We make haste to seek a hiding place, for one military robot has appeared and others will not be long in coming. The tall engine strides to stand guard over Our Lady, and this is my last glimpse of Her.
My followers do not reproach me for having cost them all they were. They are mine. Imi me is the godhead which can do no wrong.
Amid the war is opemi, between me and SUM. My friends are few, my enemies many and mighty. I go about the world as a fugitive. But always I sing. And always I find someone who will listen, will join us, embracing pain and death like a lover.
With the Knife and the Ax I take their souls. Afterward we hold for them the ritual of rebirth. Some go thence to become outlaw missionaries; most put on facsimile bracelets and return home, to whisper my word. It makes little difference to me. I have no haste, who own eternity.
For my word is of what lies beyond time. My enemies say I call forth ancient bestialities and lunacies; that I would bring civilization down in ruin; that it matters not a madman’s giggle to me whether war, famine, amid pestilence will again scour the earth. \Vith these accusations I am satisfied. The language of them shows me that here, too, I have reawakened anger. And that emotion belongs to us as much as any other. More than the others, maybe, in this autumn of mankind. We need a gale, to strike down SUM and everything It stands for. Afterward will come the winter of barbarism.
Amid after that the springtime of a new and (perhaps) more human civilization. My friends seem to believe this will come in their very lifetimes: peace, brotherhood, enlightenment, sanctity. I know otherwise. I have been in the depths. The wholeness of mankind, which I am bringing back, has its horrors.
When one day
the Eater of the Gods returns the Wolf breaks his chain
the I-lorsemnen ride forth
the Age ends
the Beast is reborn