"But I can't hurt it if I touch, can I?" It seemed unthinkable suddenly that anyone could bruise anything here, from the walls of quartz and crystal with their ever-rising spires and belfries, to the sweet, soft vines twining upwards in the branches of trees dripping with magnificent fruits and flowers. "No, no, I wouldn't want to hurt it!" I said.
My own voice was distinct to me, though the voices of all those around me seemed to overpower it.
"Look!" said Memnoch. "Look at them. Look!" And he turned my head as if to force me not to cower against his chest but to stare right into the multitudes. And I perceived that these were alliances I was witnessing, clans that were gathering, families, groups of kindred, or true friends, beings whose knowledge of each other was profound, creatures who shared similar physical and material manifestations! And for one brave moment, one brave instant, I saw that all these beings from one end of this limitless place to the other were connected, by hand or fingertip or arm or the touch of a foot. That, indeed, clan slipped within the womb of clan, and tribe spread out to intersperse amongst countless families, and families joined to form nations, and that the entire congregation was in fact a palpable and visible and interconnected configuration! Everyone impinged upon everyone else. Everyone drew, in his or her separateness, upon the separateness of everyone else!
I blinked, dizzy, near to collapsing. Memnoch held me.
"Look again!" he whispered, holding me up.
But I covered my eyes; because I knew that if I saw the interconnections again, I would collapse! I would perish inside my own sense of separateness! Yet each and every being I saw was separate.
"They are all themselves!" I cried. My hands were clapped on my eyes. I could hear the raging and soaring songs more intensely; the long riffs and cascades of voices. And beneath all there came such a sequence of flowing rhythms, lapping one over the other, that I began to sing.
I sang with everyone! I stood still, free of Memnoch for a moment, opened my eyes, and heard my voice come out of me and rise as if into the universe itself.
I sang and I sang; but my song was full of longing and immense curiosity and frustration as well as celebration. And it came home to me, thudded into me, that nowhere around me was there anyone who was unsafe or unsatisfied, was there anything approximating stasis or boredom; yet the word "frenzy" was in no way applicable to the constant movement and shifting of faces and forms that I saw.
My song was the only sad note in Heaven, and yet the sadness was transfigured immediately into harmony, into a form of psalm or canticle, into a hymn of praise and wonder and gratitude.
I cried out. I think I cried the single word "God." This was not a prayer or an admission, or a plea, but simply a great exclamation.
We stood in a doorway. Beyond appeared vista upon vista, and I was vaguely sensible suddenly that over the nearby balustrade there lay below the world.
The world as I had never seen it in all its ages, with all its secrets of the past revealed. I had only to rush to the railing and I could peer down into the time of Eden or Ancient Mesopotamia, or a moment when Roman legions had marched through the woods of my earthly home. I would see the great eruption of Vesuvius spill its horrid , deadly ash down upon the ancient living city of Pompeii.
Everything there to be known and finally comprehended, all questions settled, the smell of another time, the taste of it—
I ran towards the balustrade, which seemed to be farther and farther away. Faster and faster I headed towards it. Yet still the distance was impossible, and suddenly I became intensely aware that this vision of Earth would be mingled with smoke and fire and suffering, and that it might utterly demolish in me the overflowing sense of joy. I had to see, however. I was not dead. I was not here to stay.
Memnoch reached out for me. But I ran faster than he could.
An immense light rose suddenly, a direct source infinitely hotter and more illuminating than the splendid light that already fell without prejudice on everything I could see. This great gathering magnetic light grew larger and larger until the world down below, the great dim landscape of smoke and horror and suffering, was turned white by this light, and rendered like an abstraction of itself, on the verge of combusting.
Memnoch pulled me back, throwing up his arms to cover my eyes.
I did the same. I realized he had bowed his head and was hiding his own eyes behind me.
I heard him sigh, or was it a moan? I couldn't tell. For one second the sound filled the universe; all the cries and laughter and singing; and something mournful from the depths of Earth—all this sound- was caught in Memnoch's sigh.
Suddenly I felt his strong arms relaxed and releasing me.
I looked up, and in the midst of the flood of light I saw again the balustrade, and against it stood a single form.
It was a tall figure who stood with his hands on the railing, looking over it and down. This appeared to be a man. He turned around and looked at me and reached out to receive me.
His hair and eyes were dark, brownish, his face perfectly symmetrical and flawless, his gaze intense; and the grasp of his fingers very tight.
I drew in my breath. I felt my body in all its solidity and fragility as his fingers clung to me. I was on the verge of death. I might have ceased to breathe at that moment, or ceased to move with the commitment to life and might have died!
The being drew me towards himself, a light flooding from him that mingled with the light behind him and all around him, so his face grew brighter yet more distinct and more detailed. I saw the pores of his darkening golden skin, I saw the cracks in his lips, the shadow of the hair that had been shaved from his face.
And then he spoke loudly, pleadingly to me, in a heartbroken voice, a voice strong and masculine and perhaps even young.
"You would never be my adversary, would you? You wouldn't, would you? Not you, Lestat, no, not you!"
My God.
In utter agony, I was torn out of His grip, out of His midst, and out of His milieu.
The whirlwind once again surrounded us. I sobbed and beat on Memnoch's chest. Heaven was gone!
"Memnoch, let go of me! God, it was God!"
Memnoch tightened his grip, straining with all his force to carry me downwards, to make me submit, to force me to begin the descent.
We plummeted, that awful falling, which struck such fear in me that I couldn't protest or cling to Memnoch or do anything except watch the swift currents of souls all around us ascending, watching, descending, the darkness coming again, everything growing dark, until suddenly we traveled through moist air, full of familiar and natural scents, and then came to a soft and soundless pause.
It was a garden again. It was still and beautiful. But it was Earth. I knew it. My earth; and it was no disappointment in its intricacy or scents or substance. On the contrary, I fell on the grass and let my fingers dig into the earth itself. I felt it soft and gritted under my fingernails. I sobbed. I could taste the mud.
The sun was shining down on us, both of us. Memnoch sat looking at me, his wings immense and then slowly fading, until we became two manlike figures; one prone and crying like a child, and the other a great Angel, musing and waiting, his hair a mane of gradually settling light.
"You heard what He said to me!" I cried. I sat up. My voice should have been deafening. But it seemed only loud enough to be perfectly understood. "He said, 'You wouldn't ever be my adversary!' You heard Him! He called me by name."
Memnoch was completely calm, and of course infinitely more seductive and enchanting in this pale angelic shape than ever he could have been as the Ordinary Man.
"Of course he called you by name," he said, his eyes widening with emphasis. "He doesn't want you to help me. I told you. I'm winning."
"But what were we doing there! How could we get into Heaven and yet be his adversaries!"
"Come with me, Lestat, and be my lieutenant, and you can come and go there whenever you like."