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the Church of the Second Chance. He announced to Collop his disillusionment in Mahomet and his
teachings, and so became Collop's first convert its this area.
'Then you must swear not to take arms against any man nor to defend yourself physically, my dear
friend,' Collop said.
Burton, outraged, said that he would allow no man to strike at him and go unharmed.
`Tis not unnatural,' Collop said gently. `Contrary to habit, yes. But a than may become something
other than he has been, something better - if he has the strength of will and the desire.' Burton
rapped out a violent no and stalked away. Collop shook his head sadly, but he continued to be as
friendly as ever. Not without a sense of humor, he sometimes addressed Burton as his `five-minute
convert,' not meaning the time it took to bring him into the fold but the time it took Burton to
leave the fold.
At this time, Collop got his second convert, Goring. The German had had nothing but sneers and
jibes for Collop. Then he began chewing dreamgum again, and the nightmares started.
For two nights he kept Collop and Burton awake with his groanings his tossings, his screams. On
the evening of the third day, he asked Collop if he would accept him into the Church. However he
had to make a confession. Collop must understand what sort of person he had been, both on Earth
and on this planet.
Collop heard out the mixture of self-abasement and self-aggrandizement. Then he said, `Friend, I
care not what you may have been. Only what you are and what you will be. I listened only because
confession is good for the soul I can see that you are deeply troubled, that you have suffered
sorrow and grief for what you have done, yet take some pleasure in what you once were, a mighty
figure among men. Much of what you told me I do not comprehend, because I know not much about your
era. Nor does it matter. Only today and tomorrow need to be our concern, each day will take care
of itself.'
It seemed to Burton not that Collop did not care what Goring had been but that he did not believe
his story of Earthly glory and infamy. There were so many phonies that genuine heroes, or
villains, had been depreciated.
Thus, Burton had met three Jesus Christs, two Abrahams, four King Richard the LionHearts, six
Attilas, a dozen Judases (only one of whom could speak Aramaic), a George Washington, two Lord
Byrons, three Jesse James's, any number of Napoleons, a General Custer (who spoke with a heavy
Yorkshire accent), a Finn MacCool (who did not know ancient Irish), a Tchaka (who spoke the wrong
Zulu dialect), and a number of others who might or might not have been what they claimed to be.
Whatever a man had been on Earth, he had to reestablish himself here. This was not easy, because
conditions were radically altered. The greats and the importants of Terra were constantly being
humiliated in their claims and denied a chance to prove their identities.
To Collop, the humiliation was a blessing. First, humiliation, then humility, he would have said.
And then comes humanity as a matter of course.
Goring had been trapped in the Great Design - as Burton termed it - because it was his nature to
overindulge, especially with drugs. Knowing that the dreamgum was uprooting the dark things in his
personal abyss, was spewing them up into the light, -that he was being tom apart, fragmented, he
still continued to chew as much as he could get. For a while, temporarily made healthful again
with a new resurrection, he had been able to deny the call of the drug. But a few weeks after his
arrival is this area, he had succumbed, and now the night was ripped apart with his shrieks of
'Hermann Goring I hate you!'
`If this continues,' Burton said to Collop, `he will go mad or he will kill himself again, or
force someone to kill him, so that he can get away from himself. But the suicide will be useless,
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and it's all to do over again. Tell me truly now, is this hell?'
`Purgatory, rather,' Collop said. `Purgatory is hell with hope.'
24
Two months passed. Burton marked the days off on a pine stick notched with a flint knife. This was
the fourteenth day of the seven month of 5 A.R., the fifth year After the Resurrection. Burton
tried to keep a calendar, for he was, among many other things; a chronicler. But it was difficult.
Time did not mean much, on The River. The planet had a polar axis that was always at ninety
degrees to the ecliptic. There was no change of seasons, and the stars seemed to jostle each other
and made identification of individual luminaries or of constellations impossible. So many and so
bright were they that even the noonday sun at its zenith could not entirely dim the greatest of
them. Like ghosts reluctant to retreat before daylight, they hovered in the burning air.
Nevertheless, man needs time as a fish needs water. If he does not have it, he will invent it; so
to Burton, it was July 14, 5 A.R.
But Collop, like many, reckoned time as having continued from the year of his Terrestrial death.
To him, it was A.D. 1667. He did not believe that his sweet Jesus had become sour. Rather, this
River was the River Jordan; this valley, the vale beyond the shadow of death. He admitted that the
afterlife was not that which he had expected. Yet it was evidence of the all-encompassing love of
God for His creation. He had given all men, altogether undeserving of such a gift, another chance.
If this world was not the New Jerusalem, it was a place prepared for its building. Here the
bricks, which were the love of God, and the mortar, love for man, must be fashioned in this kiln
and this mill: the planet of The River of The Valley. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]