Long After Midnight (11 page)

 
          
The
Priest ground his teeth to keep the cries of woe from exploding forth.
"Bless me, and go."

 
          
"Like
this?" said the voice.

 
          
And
the hand came out to touch him ever so quietly.

 
          
"Quick!"
cried the Priest, eyes shut, clenching his fists hard against his ribs to
prevent his reaching out to seize. "Go before I keep you forever. Run.
Run!"

 
          
The
pale hand touched him a last time upon his brow. There was a soft run of naked
feet.

 
          
A
door opened upon stars; the door slammed.

 
          
There
was a long moment when the echo of the slam made its way through the church, to
every altar, into every alcove and up like a blind flight of some single bird
seeking and finding release in the apse. The church stopped trembling at last,
and the Priest laid his hands on himself as if to tell himself how to behave,
how to breathe again; be still, be calm, stand tall. . . .

 
          
Finally,
he stumbled to the door and held to it, wanting to throw it wide, look out at
the road which must be empty now, with perhaps a figure in white, far fleeing.
He did not open the door.

 
          
He
went about the church, glad for things to do, finishing out the ritual of
locking up. It was a long way around to all the doors. It was a long way to
next Easter.

 
          
He
paused at the font and saw the clear water with no trace of red. He dipped his
hand and cooled his brow and temples and cheeks and eyelids.

 
          
Then
he went slowly up the aisle and laid himself out before the altar and let
himself burst forth and really weep. He heard the sound of his sadness go up
and come back in agonies from the tower where the bell hung silent.

 
          
And
he wept for many reasons.

 
          
For
himself.

 
          
For
the Man who had been here a moment ago.

 
          
For
the long time until the rock was rolled back and the tomb found empty again.

 
          
Until
Simon-Called-Peter once more saw the Ghost upon the Martian shore, and himself
Simon-Peter.

 
          
And
most of all he wept because, oh, because, because . . . never in his life could
he speak of this night to anyone. ...

 
          
"Charlie!
Where you going?"

 
          
Members
of the rocket crew, passing, called.

 
          
Charles
Willis did not answer.

 
          
He
took the vacuum tube down through the friendly humming bowels of the spaceship.
He fell, thinking: This is the grand hour.

 
          
"Chuck!
Where traveling?" someone called.

 
          
To
meet someone dead but alive, cold but warm, forever untouchable but reaching
out somehow to touch.

 
          
"Idiot!
Fool!"

 
          
The
voice echoed. He smiled.

 
          
Then
he saw Clive, his best friend, drifting up in the opposite chute. He averted
his gaze, but Clive sang out through his sea shell ear-pack radio:

 
          
"I
want to see you!"

 
          
"Later!"
Willis said.

 
          
"I
know
where you're going.
Stupid!"

 
          
And
Clive was gone up away while Willis fell softly down, his hands trembling.

 
          
His
boots touched surface. On the instant he suffered renewed delight.

 
          
He
walked down through the hidden machineries of the rocket. Lord, he thought,
crazy. Here we are one hundred days gone away from the Earth in Space, and,
this very hour, most of the crew, in fever, dialing their aphrodisiac
animatronic
devices that touched and hummed to them in
their shut clamshell beds. While, what do I do? he thought.
This.

 
          
He
moved to peer into a small storage pit.

 
          
There,
in an eternal dusk, sat the old man.

 
          
"Sir,"
he said, and waited.

 
          
"Shaw,"
he whispered. "Oh, Mr. George Bernard Shaw."

 
          
The
old man's eyes sprang wide as if he had swallowed an Idea.

 
          
He
seized his bony knees and gave a sharp cry of laughter.

 
          
"By
God, I
do
accept it
all!”

 
          
"Accept
what,
Mr. Shaw?"

 
          
Mr.
Shaw flashed his bright blue gaze upon Charles Willis.

 
          
"The
Universe!
It
thinks, therefore I
am!
So I had
best
accept, eh? Sit."

 
          
Willis
sat in the shadowed areaway, clasping his knees and his own warm delight with
being here again.

 
          
"Shall
I read your mind, young Willis, and tell you what you've been up to since last
we conversed?"

 
          
"Can
you read minds, Mr.
Shaw?" .

 
          
"No,
thank God. Wouldn't it be awful if I were not only the cuneiform-tablet robot
of George Bernard Shaw, but could also scan your head-bumps and spell your
dreams? Unbearable."

 
          
"You
already
are,
Mr. Shaw."

 
          
"
Touche
!
Well,
now." The old man raked his reddish beard with his thin fingers, then
poked Willis gently in the ribs. "How is it you are the only one aboard
this starship who ever visits me?"

 
          
"Well,
sir, you see—"

 
          
The
young man's cheeks burnt themselves to full blossom.

 
          
"Ah,
yes, I do see," said Shaw. "Up through the honeycomb of the ship, all
the happy male bees in their hives with their syrupy wind-up soft-singing
nimble-nibbling toys, their bright female puppets."

 
          
"Mostly
dumb."

 
          
"Ah,
well. It was not always thus. On my last trip the Captain wished to play
Scrabble using only names of characters, concepts and ideas from my plays. Now,
strange boy, why do
you
squat here
with this hideous old ego? Have you no need for that soft and gentle company
abovestairs
?"

 
          
"It's
a long journey, Mr. Shaw, two years out beyond Pluto and back. Plenty of time
for
abovestairs
company. Never enough for this. I
have the dreams of a goat but the genetics of a saint."

 
          
"Well
said!" The old man sprang lightly to his feet and paced about, pointing
his beard now toward Alpha Centauri, now toward the nebula in Orion.

 
          
"How
runs our menu today, Willis? Shall I preface Saint Joan for you? Or ... ?"

 
          
"Chuck
. .. ?"

 
          
Willis's
head jerked. His seashell radio whispered in his ear. "Willis! Clive
calling. You're late for dinner. I know where you are. I'm coming down. Chuck—"

 
          
Willis
thumped his ear. The voice cut off.

 
          
"Quick,
Mr. Shaw! Can you—well—run?"

 
          
"Can
Icarus
fall from the sun? Jump! I shall pace you with
these spindly cricket legs!"

 
          
They
ran.

 
          
Taking
the corkscrew staircase instead of the air-tube,
 
they looked back from the top platform
in time to see
 
Clive's shadow dart into that tomb where
Shaw had
 
died but to wake again.

 
          
"Willis!"
cried his voice.

 
          
"To
hell with him," said Willis.

 
          
Shaw
beamed. "Hell? I know it well. Come. I'll show you around!"

 
          
Laughing,
they jumped into the feather-tube and fell
up.

 
          
This
was the place of stars.

 
          
Which
is to say the one place in all the ship where, if one wished, one could come
and truly look at the Universe and the billion
billion
stars which poured across it and never stopped pouring, cream from the mad
dairies of the gods. Delicious frights or outcrops, on the other hand, if you
thought it so, from the sickness of Lord God Jehovah turned in his sleep, upset
with Creation, and birthing dinosaur worlds spun about Satanic suns.

 
          
"It's
all in the thinking," observed Mr. Shaw, sidling his eyes at his young
consort.

 
          
"Mr.
Shaw! You
can
read minds?"

 
          
"Poppycock.
I merely read faces. Yours is clear glass. I glanced just now and saw Job
afflicted, Moses and the Burning Bush. Come. Let us look at the Deeps and see
what God has been up to in the ten billion years since He collided with Himself
and procreated Vast-ness."

 
          
They
stood now, surveying the Universe, counting the stars to a billion and beyond.

 
          
"Oh,"
moaned the young man, suddenly, and tears fell from his eyes. "How I wish
I had been alive when you were alive, sir. How I wish I had
truly
known you."

 
          
"This
Shaw is best," retorted
the old man, "all of the mincemeat and none of the tin. The coattails are
better than the man. Hang to them and survive."

 
          
Space
lay all about, as vast as God's first thought, as deep as His primal breathing.

 
          
They
stood, one of them tall, one short, by the scanning window, with a fine view of
the great Andromeda Nebula whenever they wished to focus it near with a touch
of the button which made the Eye magnify and suck things close.

 
          
After
a long moment of drinking stars, the young man let out his breath.

 
          
"Mr.
Shaw . . . ?
Say
it. You know what I
like to hear."

 
          
"Do
I, my boy?" Mr. Shaw's eyes twinkled.

 
          
All
of Space was around them, all of the Universe, all of the night of the
celestial Being, all the stars and all the places between the stars, and the
ship moving on its silent course, and the crew of the ship busy at work or
games or touching their amorous toys, so these two were alone with their talk,
these two stood viewing the Mystery and saying what must be said.

 
          
"Say
it, Mr. Shaw."

 
          
"Well,
now..."

 
          
Mr.
Shaw fixed his eyes on a star some twenty light-years away.

 
          
"What
are
we?" he asked. "Why, we
are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and
will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for
another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.
Creation turns in its abyss. We have bothered it, dreaming ourselves to shapes.
The void is filled with slumbers; ten billion on a billion on a billion
bombardments of light and material that know not themselves, that sleep moving
and move but finally to make an eye and waken on themselves. Among so much that
is flight and ignorance, we are the blind force that gropes like Lazarus from a
billion-light-year tomb. We summon ourselves. We say, O Lazarus Life Force,
truly come ye forth. So the Universe, a motion of deaths, fumbles to reach
across Time to feel its own flesh and know it to be ours. We touch both ways
and find each other miraculous because we are One."

 
          
Mr.
Shaw turned to glance at his young friend.

 
          
"There
you have it. Satisfied?"

 
          
"Oh,
yes! I-"

 
          
The
young man stopped.

 
          
Behind
them, in the viewing-cabin door, stood Clive. Beyond him, they could hear music
pulsing from the far cubicles where crewmen and their huge toys played at
amorous games.

 
          
"Well,"
said Clive, "what goes on-?"

 
          
"Here?"
interjected Shaw, lightly. "Why, only the confounding of two energies
making do with puzzlements. This contraption—" he touched his own breast,
"speaks from computerized elations. That genetic conglomeration—" he
nodded at his young friend, "responds with raw, beloved, and true
emotions. The sum of us? Pandemonium spread on biscuits and devoured at high
tea."

 
          
Clive
swiveled his gaze to Willis.

 
          
"Damn,
you're nuts. At dinner you should have
heard
the laughter! You and this old man, and just talk! they said. Just talk,
talk! Look, idiot, it's your stand-watch in ten minutes. Be there! God!"

 
          
And
the door was empty. Clive was gone.

 
          
Silently,
Willis and Mr. Shaw floated down the drop-tube to the storage pit beneath the
vast machineries.