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The cherub said, "But what will an interview with the Chief accomplish? The document authorizing the Last Trump was countersigned by the Chief,
and you know that it is irrevocable for that reason. The Chief would never limit his own omnipotence by canceling a word he had spoken in his official capacity."
"Is that final? You will not arrange an appointment?"
"I ca
Etheriel said, "In that case, 1 shall seek out the Chief without one. I will invade the Primum Mobile. If it means my destruction, so be it." He gathered his energies. . . .
The cherub murmured in horror, "Sacrilege!" and there was a faint gathering of thunder as Etheriel sprang upward and was gone.
R. E. Ma
A girl, who looked about twelve, leaned over an iron gate, one foot on a crossbar, swinging it to and fro, and said as he passed, "Hello, mister."
"Hello," said R.E. The girl was dressed. She was not one of the-uh- returnees.
The girl said, "We got a new baby in our house. She's a sister I once had. Mommy is crying and they sent me here."
R.E. said, "Well, well," passed through the gate and up the paved walk to the house, one with modest pretensions to middle-class gentility. He rang the bell, obtained no answer, opened the door and walked in.
He followed the sound of sobbing and knocked at an i
"Who are you?"
R.E. removed his hat. "I thought I might be able to help. Your little girl outside-"
A woman looked up at him hopelessly from a chair by a double bed. Her hair was begi
"This is my baby," said the woman. "She was born twenty-three years ago in this house and she died when she was ten days old in this house. I wanted her back so much."
"And now you have her," said R.E.
"But it's too late," cried the woman vehemently. "I've had three other children. My oldest girl is married; my son is in the army. I'm too old to have a baby now. And even if-even if-"
Her features worked in a heroic effort to keep back the tears and failed.
Her husband said with flat tonelessness, "It's not a real baby. It doesn't
cry. It doesn't soil itself. It won't take milk. What will we do? It'll never grow. It'll always be a baby."
R.E. shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I'm afraid I can do nothing to help."
Quietly he left. Quietly he thought of the hospitals. Thousands of babies must be appearing at each one.
Place them in racks, he thought, sardonically. Stack them like cordwood. They need no care. Their little bodies are merely each the custodian of an indestructible spark of life.
He passed two little boys of apparently equal chronological age, perhaps ten. Their voices were shrill. The body of one glistened white in the sunless light so he was a returnee. The other was not. R.E. paused to listen.
The bare one said, "I had scarlet fever."
A spark of envy at the other's claim to notoriety seemed to enter the clothed one's voice. "Gee."
"That's why I died."
"Gee. Did they use pensillun or auromysim?"
"What?"
"They're medicines."
"I never heard of them."
"Boy, you never heard of much."
"I know as much as you."
"Yeah? Who's President of the United States?"
"Warren Harding, that's who."
"You're crazy. It's Eisenhower."
"Who's he?"
"Ever see television?"
"What's that?"
The clothed boy hooted earsplittingly. "It's something you turn on and see comedians, movies, cowboys, rocket rangers, anything you want."
"Let's see it."
There was a pause and the boy from the present said, "It ain't working."
The other boy shrieked his scorn. "You mean it ain't never worked. You made it all up." f. R.E. shrugged and passed on.
The crowds thi
A man stopped him; a cheerful man with pinkish skin and white hair who had the marks of pince-nez on either side of the bridge of his nose, but no glasses to go with them.
"Greetings, friend."
"Hello," said R.E.
"You're the first man with clothing that I've seen. You were alive when the trumpet blew, I suppose."
"Yes, I was."
"Well, isn't this great? Isn't this joyous and delightful? Come rejoice with me."
"You like this, do you?" said R.E.
"Like it? A pure and radiant joy fills me. We are surrounded by the light of the first day; the light that glowed softly and serenely before sun, moon and stars were made. (You know your Genesis, of course.) There is the comfortable warmth that must have been one of the highest blisses of Eden; not enervating heat or assaulting cold. Men and women walk the streets unclothed and are not ashamed. All is well, my friend, all is well."
R.E. said, "Well, it's a fact that I haven't seemed to mind the feminine display all about."
"Naturally not," said the other. "Lust and sin as we remember it in our earthly existence no longer exists. Let me introduce myself, friend, as I was in earthly times. My name on Earth was Winthrop Hester. I was bom in 1812 and died in 1884 as we counted time then. Through the last forty years of my life I labored to bring my little flock to the Kingdom and I go now to count the ones I have won."
R.E. regarded the ex-minister solemnly, "Surely there has been no Judgment yet."
"Why not? The Lord sees within a man and in the same instant that all things of the world ceased, all men were judged and we are the saved."
"There must be a great many saved."
"On the contrary, my son, those saved are but as a remnant."
"A pretty large remnant. As near as 1 can make out, everyone's coming back to life. I've seen some pretty unsavory characters back in town as alive as you are."
"Last-minute repentance-"
"/ never repented."
"Of what, my son?"
"Of the fact that I never attended church."
Winthrop Hester stepped back hastily. "Were you ever baptized?"
"Not to my knowledge."
Winthrop Hester trembled. "Surely you believe in God?"
"Well," said R.E., "I believed a lot of things about Him that would probably startle you."
Winthrop Hester turned and hurried off in great agitation.
In what remained of his walk to the cemetery (R.E. had no way of estimating time, nor did it occur to him to try) no one else stopped him. He found the cemetery itself all but empty, its trees and grass gone (it occurred to him that there was nothing green in the world; the ground everywhere was a hard, featureless, grainless gray; the sky a luminous white), but its headstones still standing.
On one of these sat a lean and furrowed man with long, black hair on his
head and a mat of it, shorter, though more impressive, on his chest and upper arms.
He called out in a deep voice, "Hey, there, you!"
R.E. sat down on a neighboring headstone. "Hello."
Black-hair said, "Your clothes don't look right. What year was it when it happened?"
"1957."
"1 died in 1807. Fu
"Aren't you coming along to town?" asked R.E.
"My name's Zeb," said the ancient. "That's short for Zebulon, but Zeb's good enough. What's the town like? Changed some, I reckon?"
"It's got nearly a hundred thousand people in it."