Something About Eve

    And Gerald’s bewilderment was rather more profound than theirs. He could surmise only that the dreadful being to whom he had given Kalki had held to its plan, as voiced by the lips of a child, and had loosed elemental fires of a nature incomprehensible to Gerald, since they were drawn from beyond Earth’s orbit. Yet that seemed to Gerald no real reason for marring a fine attitude or for failing to preserve his self-respect before the woman and the Adversary. Tricked he might have been: that was a wholly different thing from ever admitting that he had been tricked. Gerald knew at least that the illusion which had appeared to be his son had entered the perhaps equally illusory place where Gerald now might never enter; and that, whatever had befallen the best loved but one of his illusions, the rider upon the silver stallion had destroyed Antan. And it seemed obvious, too, that Abdel-Hareth had returned homeward….

    Therefore Gerald claimed with a clear conscience the miracle which Gerald had, in fact, actually performed, at one remove. And Gerald kept his long chin, resolutely, well up....

    “So that,” observed the brown man, quietly, “that is the end of Antan. I do not complain.”

    “I had forgotten,” then said the wrinkled old woman who had been Maya of the Fair Breasts, “I had forgotten how willful is that Abdel-Hareth who got his being upon Earth from me. Something of this sort was to be looked for, the first moment that the headstrong wretch was freed from my control. Still, Jahveh has gained less than we have gained through Jahveh’s meddling. Abdel-Hareth has served me even at the last by removing Antan from the horizon. Earth will be quieter now; and my daughters will not be so hard put to it to keep men in reasonable order.”

    “I forget nothing,” the brown man remarked, drily. “And so I did not await the coming of your first-born in the likeness of a child whose fearless innocence surmounts all evil. For it was the seeming of a little child who rode up against Antan, you conceive, with every appearance of that faith against which the snares of no sorcerer and of hardly nine women in ten can prevail. Such innocence is a quite dangerous counterfeit. For one, I do not meddle with it nor with any other unearthly phenomenon. I have my realm. It suffices me.”

    The woman asked, “But what, what, Janicot, do you suppose has happened?”

    “How shall we ever know, dear Havvah, when manifestly there are no survivors of that happening? Antan, in any case, is no loss to us.”

    Here Gerald broke in upon their talking; and Gerald shook at them his red head lordlily.

    “You little creatures guess in vain at the means which I have employed. And equally in vain will you supplicate me to reveal those means. For I shall tell you nothing. It is sufficient that the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones has accomplished the mission of his tenth incarnation with a thoroughness not customary in interrogative pronouns. I came to redeem my appointed kingdom from the rule of usurpers. I came as the Lord of that Third Truth which is unknown to those who teach only that we copulate and die. That Third Truth has been loosed. No, I shall tell you nothing of its nature, for you are not fit to comprehend the Third Truth. But the mightiness of it your own eyes have witnessed. So Antan is now redeemed—”

    His voice broke here. But Gerald presently continued:

    “Antan is now redeemed at a great price. That woman and that child to whom my heart was given have perished. I remain. I know that these two were illusions. Nevertheless, I remain. There is no bond upon the Lord of the Third Truth to be happy: there is a strong bond upon every Helper and Preserver not to evade the full discharge of his mission. What, you may ask of me, is the mission of the Lord of the Third Truth? And I will reply to you out of my divine wisdom. It is the mission of the Lord of the Third Truth, howsoever he may palter or struggle against his doom, to destroy that which he most loves.”

44. Economics of Common-Sense

    NOW Gerald sat with his head bowed. He heard a talking between the old woman who had been his Maya and the brown man who was the Adversary of all the gods of men.

    “What is it men desire?” said the woman. “My daughters prepare for them fine food and drink, my daughters see to it that their homes are snug, and at the end of each day my daughters love them dutifully. All things that men can ask for, my daughters furnish them. Why need men cherish strange desires which do not know their aims? For how can any of my daughters content such desires?”