THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

Nor did he want to invade Czechoslovakia and Austria, and he especially objected to the invasion of Poland. Thought of war depressed him; he had been in low spirits at the idea just before both World War I and II. Nevertheless, he went along with his beloved leader in this matter, just as he had not protested publicly against the persecution of the Jews. But at his wife's request, he saved dozens of Jews from imprisonment.

In 1939 Hitler promoted Herma

Despite his high positions, he had a tendency to turn away from realities. In 1939 he told the German public, "If any enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Herma

After a while, Goring was often called Meier by the Nazi Party bigwigs and by the public. But the affectionate feeling implicit in Der Dicke was missing in Meier. The British and American bombers were making a shambles of Germany. The Luftwaffe had failed to soften England for invasion, and now it was failing to turn back the hordes of metal birds dropping deadly eggs onto the Reich. Hitler blamed Goring for both, though it was Hitler's decision to bomb the English cities instead of first wiping out the Royal Air Force bases that was responsible for the Germans' plight. Just as Hitler's decision to attack neutral Russia before England was laid low was ultimately the cause of Germany's downfall.

As it was, Hitler had wanted to invade Sweden, too, when Norway was taken. But, Goring, loving Sweden, had threatened to resign if Sweden was attacked. He had also pleaded the advantages of a neutral Sweden to Hitler.

His health had been getting worse before the war. During the great conflicts, his sicknesses and his lessening prestige made him turn to drugs. He was anxious, nervous, and given to melancholia, on the skids, out of control, and no way to stop the descent. And his beloved country was heading toward the Gotterdammerung which horrified him but which, in a strange way, gratified Hitler.

With the Allies advancing across Germany on all fronts, Goring thought that it was time for him to take over the government. Der Fiihrer, instead, stripped him of all his titles and positions and expelled him from the Nazi Party. His worst enemy, Martin Herma

Near the end of the war, while trying to flee the Russians, he was taken into custody by an Army lieutenant, ironically, a Jew. During his trial at Nuremberg, he defended himself but with a lack of conviction. Despite what Hitler had done, he defended him, too, loyal to the end.

The verdict was inevitable. He was sentenced to be hanged. The day before his execution, October 15, 1946, he swallowed one of the cyanide capsules he had hidden in his cell and died. He was cremated, and the ashes were, according to one story, flung onto a refuse heap in Dachau. Another, with more authority, says that the ashes were dropped onto a muddy country road outside Munich.

That should have been the end. Goring was glad to die, glad to be rid of his sicknesses of body and soul, of the consciousness of his great failure, and of the stigma as a Nazi war criminal. The only thing he regretted about dying was that his Emma and little Edda would be left unprotected.

18

BUT IT WAS NOT THE END. LlKE IT OR NOT, HE HAD BEEN RESurrected on this planet. He was young in body again, a slender youth. How or why, he did not know. He was rid of his rheumatism, his swollen lymph glands, and the dependency on paracodeine.

He resolved to set out to look for Emma and Edda. Also, to find Karin. How he would be able to have both his wives was something he did not care to contemplate. The search would be long enough for thinking about this.

He never found them.

The old Herma

He moved out then into a recently abandoned hut. After a while, a woman named Chopilotl was living with him. She, too, was a Chancer, but she insisted that they keep in their hut a soapstone idol. It was a hideous figure about thirty centimeters high, addressed as Xochiquetzal, the divine patroness *See To Your Scattered Bodies Go for the details. of sexual love and childbirth. Chopilotl's adoration of the goddess signified her passion for passion. She demanded that Herma

Also, it seemed to him that she shouldn't be allowed to worship a pagan divinity. He went to his bishop, a Navaho who had been a Mormon on Earth.

"Yes, I know she has that statue," Bishop Ch'agii said. "The Church doesn't countenance idolatry or polytheism, Herma

"Chopilotl is rather literal-minded, but she's a good person. If we got too stubborn about her idiosyncracy and demanded that she cast the idol out, she might backslide into a genuine polytheism. What we are doing might be called theological weaning. You have seen how many idols there are around here, haven't you? Most of them at one time had a multitude of worshipers. But we have gradually detached the religionists from them, achieving this through a patient and gentle instruction. Now the stone gods have become only objects d'art to most of their former worshipers.

"In time, Chopilotl will come to regard her goddess as such. I'm banking on you to assist her to get over her present regrettable attitude."

"You mean, give her a theological goose?" Herma

The bishop looked surprised, then he laughed. "I had my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago," he said. "I do sound stuffy, don't I? Have a drink, my son, and tell me more about yourself."

At the end of a year, Herma

Herma

"The doubts are about yourself," the bishop said. "You think you can't live up to the ideals. You think you aren't worthy. You have to get over that, Herma