winds and skies and hills forever after that, neither prideful nor arrogant, neither rich nor poor, passionate nor cold. We have lived apart from those we left behind, those other men of this world, and how we came to be has been forgotten, the process lost; but we shall never die, nor do harm. We have put away the sins of the body and live in God’s grace. We covet no other property; we have no property. We do not steal, nor kill, nor lust, nor hate. We live in happiness. We cannot reproduce; we do not eat or drink or make war. All the sensualities and childishnesses and sins of the body were stripped away when our bodies were put aside. We have left sin behind. Father Peregrine, and it is burned like the leaves in the autumn, and it is gone like the soiled snow of an evil winter, and it is gone like the sexual flowers of a red-and-yellow spring, and it is gone like the panting nights of hottest summer, and our season is temperate and our clime is rich in thought.’
Father Peregrine was standing now, for the voice touched him at such a pitch that it almost shook him from his senses. It was an ecstasy and a fire washing through him.
‘We wish to tell you that we appreciate your building this place for us, but we have no need of it, for each of us is a temple unto himself and needs no place wherein to cleanse himself. Forgive us for not coming to you sooner, but we are separate and apart and have talked to no one for ten thousand years, nor have we interfered in any way with the life of this planet. It has come into your mind now that we are the lilies of the field; we toil not, neither do we spin. You are right. And so we suggest that you take the parts of this temple into your own new cities and there cleanse others. For, rest assured, we are happy and at peace.’
The Fathers were on their knees in the vast blue light, and Father Peregrine was down, too, and they were weeping, and it did not matter that their time had been wasted; it did not matter to them at all.
The blue spheres murmured and began to rise once more, on a breath of cool air.
‘May I’ – cried Father Peregrine, not daring to ask, eyes closed – ‘may I come again, someday, that I may learn from you?’
The blue fires blazed. The air trembled.
Yes, Someday he might come again. Someday.
And then the Fire Balloons blew away and were gone, and he was like a child, on his knees, tears streaming from his eyes, crying to himself, ‘Come back, come back!’ And at any moment Grandfather might lift him and carry him upstairs to his bedroom in a long-gone Illinois town …
They filed down out of the hills at sunset. Looking back, Father Peregrine saw the blue fires burning. No, he thought, we couldn’t build a church for the likes of you. You’re beauty itself. What church could compete with the fireworks of the pure soul?
Father Stone moved in silence beside him. And at last he spoke:
‘The way I see it is there’s a Truth on every planet. All parts of the Big Truth. On a certain day they’ll all fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw. This has been a shaking experience. I’ll never doubt again, Father Peregrine. For this Truth here is as true as Earth’s Truth, and they lie side by side. And we’ll go on to other worlds, adding the sum of the parts of the Truth until one day the whole Total will stand before us like the light of a new day.’
‘That’s a lot, coming from you, Father Stone.’
‘I’m sorry now, in a way, we’re going down to the town to handle our own kind. Those blue lights now. When they settled about us, and that voice …’ Father Stone shivered.
Father Peregrine reached out to take the other’s arm. They walked together.
‘And you know,’ said Father Stone finally, fixing his eyes on Brother Mathias, who strode ahead with the glass sphere tenderly carried in his arms, that glass sphere with the blue phosphorous light glowing forever inside it, ‘you know, Father Peregrine, that globe there—’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Him. It is Him, after all.’
Father Peregrine smiled, and they walked down out of the hills toward the new town.
‘What would you do if you knew that this was the last night of the world?’
‘What would I do? You mean seriously?’
‘Yes, seriously.’
‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.’
He poured some coffee. In the background the two girls were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps. There was an easy, clean aroma of the brewed coffee in the evening air.
‘Well, better start thinking about it,’ he said.
‘You don’t mean it!’
He nodded.
‘A war?’
He shook his head.
‘Not the hydrogen or atom bomb?’
‘No.’
‘Or germ warfare?’
‘None of those at all,’ he said, stirring his coffee slowly. ‘But just, let’s say, the closing of a book.’
‘I don’t think I understand.’
‘No, nor do I, really; it’s just a feeling. Sometimes it frightens me, sometimes I’m not frightened at all but at peace.’ He glanced in at the girls and their yellow hair shining in the lamplight. ‘I didn’t say anything to you. It first happened about four nights ago.’
‘What?’
‘A dream I had. I dreamed that it was all going to be over, and a voice said it was; not any kind of voice I can remember, but a voice anyway, and it said things would stop here on Earth. I didn’t think too much about it the next day, but then I went to the office and caught Stan Willis looking out the window in the middle of the afternoon, and I said, A penny for your thoughts, Stan, and he said, I had a dream last night, and before he even told me the dream I knew what it was. I could have told him, but he told me and I listened to him.’
‘It was the same dream?’
‘The same. I told Stan I had dreamed it too. He didn’t seem surprised. He relaxed, in fact. Then we started walking through the office, for the hell of it. It wasn’t planned. We didn’t say, Let’s walk around. We just walked on our own, and everywhere we saw people looking at their desks or their hands or out windows. I talked to a few. So did Stan.’
‘And they all had dreamed?’
‘All of them. The same dream, with no difference.’
‘Do you believe in it?’
‘Yes. I’ve never been more certain.’
‘And when will it stop? The world, I mean.’
‘Sometime during the night for us, and then as the night goes on around the world, that’ll go too. It’ll take twenty-four hours for it all to go.’
They sat awhile not touching their coffee. Then they lifted it slowly and drank, looking at each other.
‘Do we deserve this?’ she said.
‘It’s not a matter of deserving; it’s just that things didn’t work out. I notice you didn’t even argue about this. Why not?’
‘I guess I’ve a reason,’ she said.
‘The same one everyone at the office had?’
She nodded slowly. ‘I didn’t want to say anything. It happened last night. And the women on the block talked about it, among themselves, today. They dreamed. I thought it was only a coincidence.’ She picked up the evening paper. ‘There’s nothing in the