THE DIVINE INVASION

Going to the stove-the kitchen was neat and clean, with everything in its place-Linda Fox pressed buttons, then brought out food from the refrigerator. "I'll fix breakfast," she said.

"I was going to do that," Herb Asher said, chagrined.

"You rest," she said. "You've gone through a lot in the last twenty-four hours. Being stopped by the police, having Belial take control of you ... She turned to smile at him. Even with her hair tousled she was-well, he could not say; what she was for him could not be put into words. At least not by him. Not at this moment. Seeing her and Emmanuel together overwhelmed him. He could not speak; he could only nod.

"He loves you very much," Emmanuel said to her.

"Yes," she said, somberly.

"Seifr~ihlich," Emmanuel said to her.

Linda said to Herb Asher, "He's telling me to be happy. I am happy. Are you?"

"I-" He hesitated. She asked ii'hen the darkness vi'ould dis- appear, he remembered. The darkness has not disappeared. The poisonous snake is overcome but the darkness remains.

"Always be joyful," Emmanuel said.

"OK," Herb Asher said. "I will."

At the stove Linda Fox fixed breakfast and he thought he heard her sing. It was hard for him to tell, because he carried in his mind the beauty of her tunes. It was always there. "She is singing," Emmanuel said. "You are right." Singing, she put on coffee. The day had begun.

"That thing on the roof," Herb Asher said. But Emmanuel had disappeared, now; only he himself and Linda Fox remained.

"I'll call the city," Linda Fox said. "They'll haul it away. They have a machine that does that. Hauls away the poisonous snake. From the lives of people and the roofs of houses. Turn on the radio and get the news. There will be wars and rumors of wars. There will be great upheavals. The world-we've seen only a little part of it. And then let's call Elijah about the radio sta- tion."

"No more string versions of South Pacific," he said.

"In a little while," Linda Fox said, "things will be all right. It came out of its cage and it is going back."

He said, "What if we lose?"

"I can see ahead," Linda said. "We will win. We have al- ready won. We have always already won, from the begi

Later, he and Linda Fox went back up on the roof to view the remains of Belial. But to his surprise he saw not the carcass of a wizened goat-thing~ instead he saw what looked like the remains of a great luminous kite that had crashed and lay in ruins all across the roof.

Somberly, he and Linda gazed at it as it lay broken every- where, vast and lovely and destroyed. In pieces, like damaged light.

"This is how he was once," Linda said. "Originally. Before he fell. This was his original shape. We called him the Moth. The Motl1 that fell slowly, over thousands of years, intersecting the Earth, like a geometrical shape descending stage by stage until nothing remained of its shape."

Herb Asher said, "He was very beautiful."

He was the morning star," Linda said. "The brightest star in the heavens. And now nothing remains of him but this."

"How he has fallen," Herb Asher said.

"And everything else with him," she said.

Together they went back downstairs to call the city. To have the machine come along to haul the remains away.

"Will he ever be again as he once was?" Herb Asher said.

"Perhaps," she said. "Perhaps we all may be." And then she sang for Herb Asher one of the Dowland songs. It was the song the Fox traditionally sang on Christmas day, for all the planets. The most tender, the most haunting song that she had adapted from John Dowland's lute books.

When the poor cripple by the pool did lie

Full many years in misery and pain,

No sooner he on Christ had set his eye,

But he was well, and comfort came again.

"Thank you," Herb Asher said.

Above them the city machine worked, gathering up the re- mains of Belial. Gathering together the broken fragments of what had once been light.