He is looking for his gun… or even the knife… but can’t really move… and doesn’t see either weapon… anyway he doesn’t really think they would help… and this thought is supported by the dismissive look on the face of the Figure… who calmly selects a nearby rock and doesn’t so much sit on it as descend onto it.
—¿Why do you seek to arm yourself?
He cannot speak.
—¿Do you think if it mattered I would be this still?
He hates this kind of logical interplay. Now he can but won’t.
—¿Well?
— I’ll let you worry about it in your next life as I stand over your empty corpse.
—¿That’s you perfectly isn’t it? Your way of always assuming oppositional combat. ¿Who says I’m not here to help? And don’t say you don’t need help.
— I don’t need help.
— I asked you not to say that.
Was that anger that flashed as the Figure spoke or just a generalized malice? Even sitting in calm it is a menacing sight arrayed before him. He notices for the first time that it wears an all-black suit, cut like no garment he’s ever before seen. No shirt beneath, only hairless astral-white skin. The facial hair is somehow constantly evolving into varying levels of prominence but always consistent with the straight black rivulets of hair that seem to escape the hat atop its head to cover the face below.
— As things stand now, you are going to fail.
— Swallow your predictions whole before they exit your mouth, they’re good for nothing.
— Of course you can afford to talk like that. You can say whatever you wish. But soon even this rain will stop and they begin to move again. You are at most only one person. You will then want my help only I may not appear, I’m fickle that way.
— If you feel the urge to be helpful, go help them. They, not I, are in need of it. Because you’re right that the rain is going to stop and when it does there is nothing on Heaven or Earth can save them from what they did, can save them from me.
— You say I should go help them then in the next breath that nothing on Heaven or Earth can. ¿So where do you think I’m from? ¿Who am I? Do you think.
— I know who you are and you can have at me when I’m done but not an instant before.
—¿At you?
— Yes. I don’t fear death, I don’t fear you, except insofar as it might prevent me from doing what I have to do.
— Interesting. ¿But of what relevance is that to me?
—¿Who are you? You’re not human.
— True.
— Death then as I say, or Satan. ¿Who?
— It’s complicated. Best way to say it is I differ depending on the observer.
— I don’t care. I don’t want your help and if you try to hinder me it will be you in need of help.
—¿I think if you think about it a bit you’ll see that you’ve always had my help in this area, no?
These words have their intended effect because he understands immediately what they mean and he does think about it and, although it pains him to admit it, there is some truth there.
The rain won’t stop. Will it ever stop? He thinks no. This heaven-sent water will merge with our seas to overrun all the terrestrial and flood us out of being. Already it seems as if everything solid is only temporarily so and will soon return to its natural liquid state. Also a jungle contains many animals and they are unfeelingly savage but generally hidden from view by the profluence of natural pulchritude that creates the illusion of safety. Now though that’s been inverted. Everywhere he looks he sees only the animalistic savagery. Worse, the nature itself has become animalistic with fur and claws replacing leaves and branches. He closes his eyes in attempted remedy.
When he opens them there still sits the Figure, still immense, still serenely malevolent, still staring at him as if, for the Figure, time simply failed to elapse. This discourages him and only with great effort does he manage to speak:
—¿Okay, since you know everything, when is this rain going to stop so I can get back to it?
—¿Back to what?
— You know.
— I want you to say it.
— The… hunt. ¿When?
— I don’t know everything. In fact I don’t know anything that isn’t instinctively known to everyone, problem is you forget. Think of me like a map but to the village you grew up in so already know intimately.
—¡The rain!
— I don’t know. I can’t explain rain any more than you.
— I can explain it. Clouds get too heavy with condensation. I want to know when it will stop.
— Oh I see. I thought you were interested in getting at the true center of things, their central truth, not in shallow schoolboy lessons.
— I’ll stay on the surface. Too much to do and like all men a limited allotment of time in which to do it.
— Less true than you think but either way know that until you regain strength and more importantly this rain ceases there’s nothing to be done. ¿Why not use this enforced idleness to engage me in precisely those why questions your precious science can’t answer?
The severe pain, the horrific ambient sights, the utter hopelessness of his position; he does just that.
Now a perfectly accurate transcription of the ensuing conversation would show that in the beginning he couched his every submission with a preamble like my-wife-would-say (omitted here) but that as the dialogue grew and deepened this affectation disappeared. The reason for this was not only the pursuit of brevity by a man who, after all, was speaking through significant suffering but also a result of that man’s special personality. For this man was reactive in nature. If surrounded by great believers, as normally he was, he tended toward doubt. If nihilistic rebellion suffused the air, he found faith. This was not an intentional process, just an observation about one of the two minds involved. He closed his eyes and began:
—¿Why it rains? ¿Do I look like a child?
—¿Forget rain, why a physical world at all, and why this one of all things? But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. ¿Why do you think the men you pursue were allowed to do what they did?
—¿Allowed? What a word to use. ¿Who was there to stop it? ¿A church full of soft people? If I’d been there they’d all be dead.
— Probably.
— Nobody allowed anything. They exercised superior strength and the inferior were left to choose between obeisance and extinction. Surely you’re familiar with the process by now.
— True but let’s go back further to the creation of this world. ¿Did it have to be one where people can do things like that?
— You say «creation of this world». ¿By who? You must be assuming some sentient force as Creator otherwise the question is meaningless. If the world arose, so to speak, out of nothing then, yes, it had to be this way. ¿What would prevent it? If there’s nothing beyond what we see or touch and Man has the ability to walk, hold metal, squeeze a trigger, then this is precisely the world we had to get. Therefore, just as the unbelievers suspect, the fact that we live in precisely such a world strongly suggests the absence we’re talking around.
— Only if a markedly different one is viable but let’s put that aside for the moment as I see great pain etched on your face. ¿Does that vision hold great intuitive appeal for you? ¿Everything arising out of nothing spurred on by something that did the same? ¿Or something, an energy for example, that always existed but is not itself at least an aspect of God? Because whatever you ultimately reduce to can become godlike and is certainly more difficult to argue out of existence than your bearded old man in a robe. I swear you people do my best work for me sometimes. ¿Is that what you think?