Here was a Secret that made Gutenberg's Press a footnote. I was watching the power at work behind the face of the world. What I had always assumed to be a calamitous unseen war, waged in sky and rock and on occasion invading your human world, was not a bloody battle, with legions slaughtering one another; it was this endless fish-market bartering. And why? Because it was the profit that came of these newfound forms that fueled the negotiations. The Angel Hannah was utterly indifferent to the way all this "printed matter," as she dubbed it, might poison or impoverish the spiritual lives of Humankind. Nor were the Demon Archbishop and his advisors concerned that they possess ways the Word might be used to corrupt innocents. It was the pursuit of word power gained from word wealth that moved both sides, inspiring maneuvers of such complexity that the due performance of every tiny portion of this knot of agreements and arrangements was dependent upon the performance of every other part. Far from behaving like enemies, the two sides were making what was doubtless just another marriage contract between their opposing factions, occasioned by the creation of Gutenberg's press. It would make money, this press. And it would control minds at the same time. At least that was as much as I understood of their convoluted talk.
My weary eyes strayed to Quitoon, and they came upon him at the very moment that his wandering gaze found me.
From the expression of shock on his face it was obvious he'd assumed I was long since dead. But the fact that I wasn't pleased him, I could see, the realization of which gave me hope. Quite what of, I can't truly tell you.
No. I can try. Perhaps I hoped that our both getting here, to the end of the world as it had been, and to the beginning of what it was to become, courtesy of Johannes Gutenberg, tied us together, for better or worse, for richer, for —
I never finished reciting these silent vows of devotion because one of Hannah's advisors, sitting next to her on the other side of the table to Quitoon, had seen the look on his face and realized there was a suspicious trace of happiness flickering through his features.
The angel began to rise from its seat in order to better see whatever Quitoon was staring at with such pleasure.
Quitoon was looking at me, of course, looking at me and smiling, the way I was now allowing myself to smile as I looked at him.
Then the angel screamed.
In the beginning was the Word, says John the Christ-lover, and the Word was not only with God, it was God. So why isn't there a word, or a sentence ten thousand words long, that would come anywhere even near to describe the sound of an angel screaming?
You'll just have to take it from me that the angel did indeed scream, and that the sound that emanated from it was such that every scintilla of matter in that room convulsed, hearing the cry. Eyes that had been devoted to an obsessive study of the Principals were suddenly jolted free by the violence of the convulsion. And inevitably several of those in the room saw me.
I had no time to retreat. The entities that filled the room (most likely even the matter of the room itself) were infinitely more sophisticated creatures than I. When their gazes were turned on me, I felt their scrutiny like a bruising blow delivered to every single part of my body at the same time, even the soles of my feet. Their brutal gazes ceased as suddenly as they had begun. The removal should have been a relief but, consistent with the paradoxical nature of the entire room, the aversion of their gazes brought its own strange order of pain, that which comes when the hurt induced by a higher being ceases, and all connection with that being is removed.
But my presence here was not as inconsequential as the removal of their scrutiny might have implied. A quarrel now arose around the table as to whether my presence here was proof of some conspiracy against Gutenberg or his invention, and if so, by which side. There was no attempt to ask my own account of events. They were only concerned that I had witnessed Heaven and Hell's complicity. Whether I had simply seen the Secret in progress, as they knew I had, or whether I was part of a grand Conspiracy against the safety of the Secret was irrelevant to them. I had to be silenced. The only point of contention, apparently was what to do with me.
I knew that I was the problem under debate, because every now and again I heard a fragment of dialogue relating to me and my dispatch.
"No blood should be spilt in here," the Angel Hannah decreed.
Later, I heard someone — was it the Demon I'd known as Peter? — opine that:
"There's no justice in an execution. He's done nothing."
Then, from all sides, counterarguments that had the same two words: The Press! The Press! The Press! And as the words were repeated, and feelings ran higher and higher, so the way they expressed themselves grew steadily more unnatural. The din in the room began cacophonous, loud enough to make my mind shake against my skull.
Audible above the roar was one human contribution to the debate, clearer than all the mightier voices simply because it was human: raw and defenseless. It was Gutenberg who spoke. Only later would I realize what he was saying: that he was voicing his protest at the purpose to which his Press, built to spread the news of salvation, was about to be put.
But nothing he said hushed the vociferous exchanges from around the table. They continued to rise in surges of intensity, until they suddenly quieted. Somebody had made a suggestion that apparently found favor with the assembled company, a decision had been reached. My fate had been decided.
It was no use my attempting to ask for some leniency from this court, if court indeed it was. I was being judged by entities that had no interest in me or my point of view. They just wanted me bloodlessly, guiltlessly silenced.
There was a raveling motion at the heart of the intertwined negotiations: a gathering up, a brightening. I had no reason for thinking it, but think I did, that this was perhaps the final fire of my life, about to be —
no, being —
unleashed.
I caught sight of Quitoon as the blaze grew; his face was no longer touched by that fragment of pleasure at my deliverance, that little smile that was so sweet a reward I would gladly have endured ten wounds like the one I carried to have it bestowed on me again.
But it was too late for smiles now, too late for forgiveness. The knotted exchanges of the negotiators had almost solved themselves, and the flame at their heart was steadily growing stronger, drawing in motes of heat from the other angels and demons in the chamber.
Then it burst free and came at me.
In that same instant the door behind which I had been hiding, along with its frame and several of the flawless blocks of stone that surrounded it, all these were dissolved by a fire of their own, leaving me without any protection whatsoever from the blaze of judgment coming from the negotiators' midst.
It fell about me in blazing veils, preventing me from attempting escape in any direction, even assuming I'd possessed the strength or the will to try. Instead I simply waited, resigned to my death, as the verdict closed around me. In that same moment I heard someone shouting — Johannes Gutenberg again, his voice thick with fury — protesting still, and still unheard.
I had time to think, as the flames rose up around me.
Haven't I been punished enough?
I ask you now, the same question.
Haven't I been punished enough?
Can you see me in your mind's eye. You can, can't you? Surrounded by fires both demonic and divine, dancing coils of heat that climbed up through the trench of my wound to invade my throat and face, their advance relentless, transforming the nature of my meat and blood and bone.