The Divine Invasion (16 page)

He wondered if she heard it, too.

But they were still friends. Zina told Emmanuel about an early identity that she had once had. Thousands of years ago, she said, she had been Ma'at, the Egyptian goddess who represented the cosmic order and justice. When someone died his heart was weighed against Ma'at's ostrich feather. By this the person's burden of sins was determined.

The principle by which the sinfulness of the person was determined consisted of the degree of his truthfulness. To the extent that he was truthful the judgment went in his favor. This judgment was presided over by Osiris, but since Ma'at was the goddess of truthfulness, then it followed that the determination was hers to make.

"After that," Zina said, "the idea of the judgment of human souls passed over into Persia." In the ancient Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, a sifting bridge had to be crossed by the newly dead person. If he was evil the bridge got narrower and narrower until he toppled off and plunged into the fiery pit of hell. Judaism in its later stages and Christianity had gotten their ideas of the Final Days from this.

The good person, who managed to cross the sifting bridge, was met by the spirit of his religion: a beautiful young woman with superb, large breasts. However, if the person was evil the spirit of his religion consisted of a dried-up old hag with sagging paps. You could tell at a glance, therefore, which category you belonged to.

"Were you the spirit of religion for the good persons?" Emmanuel asked.

Zina did not answer the question; she passed on to another matter which she was more anxious to communicate to him.

In these judgments of the dead, stemming from Egypt and Persia, the scrutiny was pitiless and the sinful soul was de facto doomed. Upon your death the books listing your good deeds and bad deeds closed, and no one, even the gods, could alter the tabulation. In a sense the procedure of judgment was mechanical. A bill of particulars, in essence, had been drawn up against you, compiled during your lifetime, and now this bill of particulars was fed into a mechanism of retribution. Once the mechanism received the list, it was all over for you. The mechanism ground you to shreds, and the gods merely watched, impassively.

But one day (Zina said) a new figure made its appearance at the path leading to the sifting bridge. This was an enigmatic figure who seemed to consist of a shifting succession of aspects or roles. Sometimes he was called Comforter. Sometimes Advocate. Sometimes Beside-Helper. Sometimes Support. Sometimes Advisor. No one knew where he had come from. For thousands of years he had not been there, and then one day he had appeared. He stood at the edge of the busy path, and as the souls made their way to the sifting bridge this complex figure—who sometimes, but rarely, seemed to be a woman—signaled to the persons, each in turn, to attract their attention. It was essential that the Beside-Helper got their attention before they stepped onto the sifting bridge, because after that it was too late.

"Too late for what?" Emmanuel said.

Zina said, "The Beside-Helper upon stopping a person approaching the sifting bridge asked him if he wished to be represented in the testing which was to come.

"By the Beside-Helper?"

The Beside-Helper, she explained, assumed his role of Advocate; he offered to speak on the person's behalf. But the Beside-Helper offered something more. He offered to present his own bill of particulars to the retribution mechanism in place of the bill of particulars of the person. If the person were innocent this would make no difference, but, for the guilty, it would yield up a sentence of exculpation rather than guilt.

"That's not fair," Emmanuel said. "The guilty should be punished."

"Why?" Zina said.

"Because it is the law," Emmanuel said.

"Then there is no hope for the guilty."

Emmanuel said, "They deserve no hope."

"What if everyone is guilty?"

He had not thought of that. 'What does the Beside-Helper's bill of particulars list?" he asked.

"It is blank," Zina said. "A perfectly white piece of paper. A document on which nothing is inscribed."

"The retributive machinery could not process that."

Zina said, "It would process it. It would imagine that it had received a compilation of a totally spotless person.

"But it couldn't act. It would have no input data."

"That's the whole point."

"Then the machinery of justice has been bilked."

"Bilked out of a victim," Zina said.' 'Is that not to be desired? Should there be victims? What is gained if there is an unending procession of victims? Does that right the wrongs they have committed?"

"No," he said.

"The idea," Zina said, "is to feed mercy into the circuit. The Beside-Helper is an amicus curiae, a friend of the court. He advises the court, by its permission, that the case before it constitutes an exception. The general rule of punishment does not apply."

"And he does this for everyone? Every guilty person?"

"For every guilty person who accepts his offer of advocacy and help."

"But then you'd have an endless procession of exceptions. Because no guilty person in his right mind would reject such an offer; every single guilty person would wish to be judged as an exception, as a case involving mitigating circumstances."

Zina said, 'But the person would have to accept the fact that he was, on his own, guilty. He could of course wager that he was innocent, in which case he would not need the advocacy of the Beside-Helper."

After a moment of pondering. Emmanuel said, 'That would be a foolish choice. He might be wrong. And he loses nothing by accepting the assistance of the Beside-Helper."

In practice, however,' Zina said, most souls about to be judged reject the offer of advocacy by the Beside-Helper."

"On what basis?" He could not fathom their reasoning.

Zina said, 'On the basis that they are sure they are innocent. To receive this help the person must go with the pessimistic assumption that he is guilty, even though his own assessment of himself is one of innocence. The truly innocent need no Beside-Helper, just as the physically healthy need no physician. In a situation of this kind the optimistic assumption is perilous. It's the bail-out theorem that little creatures employ when they construct a burrow. If they are wise they build a second exit to their burrow, operating on the pessimistic assumption that the first one will be found by a predator. All creatures who did not use their theorem are no longer with us."

Emmanuel said, It is degrading to a man that he must consider himself sinful."

"It's degrading to a gopher to have to admit that his burrow may not be perfectly built, that a predator may find it."

"You are talking about an adversary situation. Is divine justice an adversary situation'? Is there a prosecutor?"

"Yes, there is a prosecutor of man in the divine court: it is Satan. There is the Advocate who defends the accused human. and Satan who impugns and indicts him. The Advocate, standing beside the man, defends him and speaks for him: Satan, confronting the man, accuses him. Would you wish man to have an accuser and not a defender? Would that seem just'?"

"But innocence must be presumed."

The girl's eyes gleamed. "Precisely the point made by the Advocate in each trial that takes place. Hence he substitutes his own blameless record for that of his client, and justifies the man by surrogation."

"Are you this Beside-Helper'?" Emmanuel asked.

"No," she said. "He is a far more puzzling figure than I. If you are having difficulty with me, in determining—"

"I am," Emmanuel said.

"He is a latecomer into this world," Zina said. "Not found in earlier aeons. He represents an evolution in the divine strategy. One by which the primordial damage is repaired. One of many, but a main one."

"Will I ever encounter him?"

"You will not be judged," Zina said. "So perhaps not. But all humans will see him standing by the busy road, offering his help. Offering it in time-before the person starts across the sifting bridge and is judged. The Beside-Helper's intervention always comes in time. It is part of his nature to be there soon enough."

Emmanuel said, "I would like to meet him."

Follow the travel pattern of any human," Zina said, "and you will arrive at the point where that human encounters him. That is how I know about him. I, too, am not judged." She pointed to the slate that she had given him. "Ask it for more information about the Beside-Helper."

The slate read:

TO CALL

"Is that all you can tell me?" Emmanuel asked it.

A new word formed, a Greek word:

PARAKALEIN

He wondered about this, wondered greatly, at this new entity who had come into the world … who could be called on by those in need, those who stood in danger of negative judgment. It was one more of the mysteries presented to him by Zina. There had been so many, now. He enjoyed them. But he was puzzled.

To call to aid: parakalein
. Strange, he thought. The world evolves even as it falls more and more. There are two distinct movements: the falling, and then, at the same time, the upward-rising work of repair. Antithetical movements, in the form of a dialectic of all creation and the powers contending behind it.

Suppose Zina beckoned to the parts that fell? Beckoned them, seductively, to fall farther. About this he could not yet tell.

R
eaching out, Herb Asher took the boy in his arms. He hugged him tight.

"And this is Zina," Elias Tate said. "Emmanuel's friend." He took the girl by the hand and led her to Herb Asher. "She's a little older than Manny."'

"Hello," Herb Asher said. But he did not care about her; he wanted to look at Rybys's son.

Ten years, he thought. This child has grown while I dreamed and dreamed, thinking I was alive when in fact I was not.

Elias said, "She helps him. She teaches him. More than the school does. More than I do."

Looking toward the girl Herb Asher saw a beautiful pale heart-shaped face with eyes that danced with light. What a pretty child, he thought, and turned back to Rybys's son. But then, struck by something, he looked once more at the girl.

Mischief showed on her face. Especially in her eyes. Yes, he thought; there is something in her eyes. A kind of knowledge.

"They've been together four years now," Elias said. "She gave him a high-technology slate. It's some kind of advanced computer terminal. It asks him questions—poses questions to him and gives him hints. Right, Manny?"

Emmanuel said, "Hello, Herb Asher." He seemed solemn and subdued, in contrast to the girl.

"Hello," he said to Emmanuel. "How much you look like your mother."

"In that crucible we grow," Emmanuel said, cryptically. He did not amplify.

"Are—" Herb did not know what to say. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes." The boy nodded.

"You have a heavy burden on you," Herb said.

"The slate plays tricks," Emmanuel said.

There was silence.

"What's wrong?" Herb said to Elias.

To the boy, Elias said, "Something is wrong, isn't it?"

"While my mother died," Emmanuel said, gazing fixedly at Herb Asher, "you listened to an illusion. She does not exist, that image. Your Fox is a phantasm, nothing else."

"That was a long time ago," Herb said.

"The phantasm is with us in the world," Emmanuel said.

"That's not my problem," Herb said.

Emmanuel said, "But it is mine. I mean to solve it. Not now but at the proper time. You fell asleep, Herb Asher, because a voice told you to fall asleep. This world here, this planet, all of it, all its people—everything here sleeps. I have watched it for ten years and there is nothing good I can say about it. What you did it does; what you were it is. Maybe you still sleep. Do you sleep, Herb Asher? You dreamed about my mother while you lay in cryonic suspension. I tapped your dreams. From them I learned a lot about her. I am as much her as I am myself. As I told her, she lives on in me and
as
me; I have made her deathless—your wife is here, not back in that littered dome. Do you realize that? Look at me and you see Rybys whom you ignored."

Herb Asher said, "I—"

"There is nothing for you to tell me," Emmanuel said. "I read your heart, not your words. I knew you then and I know you now. Herbert, Herbert,' I called to you. I summoned you back to life, for your sake and for hers, and, because it was for her sake, it was for my sake. When you helped her you helped me. And when you ignored her you ignored me. Thus says your God."

Reaching out, Elias put his arm around Herb Asher, to reassure him.

"I will always speak the truth to you, Herb Asher," the boy continued. "There is no deceit in God.
I want you to live
. I made you live once before, when you lay in psychological death. God does not desire any living thing's death; God takes no delight in nonexistence. Do you know what God is, Herb Asher? God is He Who causes to be. Put another way, if you seek the basis of being that underlies everything you will surely find God. You can work back to God from the phenomenal universe, or you can move from the Creator to the phenomenal universe. Each implies the other. The Creator would not be the Creator if there were no universe, and the universe would cease to be if the Creator did not sustain it. The Creator does not exist prior to the universe in time; he does not exist in time at all. God creates the universe constantly; he is
with
it, not above or behind it. This is impossible to understand for you because you are a created thing and exist in time. But eventually you will return to your Creator and then you will again no longer exist in time. You are the breath of your Creator, and as he breathes in and out, you live. Remember that, for that sums up everything that you need to know about your God. There is first an exhalation from God, on the part of all creation; and then, at a certain point, it starts its journey back, its inhalation. This cycle never ceases. You leave me; you are away from me; you start back; you rejoin me. You and everything else. It is a process, an event. It is an activity—
my
activity. It is the rhythm of my own being, and it sustains you all."