If another bag of raisins, or a pair of gloves, or a package of cigarettes, with that label on it, were offered to him, he could buy it.
He could eat the raisins, smoke the cigarettes, wear the gloves…
Well, an insistent voice in his mind kept repeating, what are you going to do about it?
Unfortunately, the question had only one obvious answer—he would have to go back down the hill to the Guard station, and give himself up.
He had known that from the beginning, but he hadn’t done it. Even now, he could imagine himself walking into ate Guard station, saying to the black-masked desk sergeant, “Arrest me. I have a demon.” But the instant he prepared to get up, his legs refused to obey him; the whole idea became incredible. All his life he had been afraid of those silent men, whose faces were masked because they were too frightful to be seen: they were the faces of half-souled men, men whose angels permitted them to do violence, even to kill.
Miserably, he fell back an another question:
Why?
Why had it happened to him? What monstrous thing could he possibly have done without knowing it, to deserve the worst thing that could happen to a human being?
Perhaps if he understood that, then it would be easier; he could resign himself … and at the worst, it would be less painful to turn himself over to a friend than to a Guardsman.
It would be no use going to his aunt and uncle; they were fine people, but Consumers, with no more grasp of the finer points of theology than Consumers generally had. There would be nobody at the Store with time to advise him, not on a Sunday, but there was Dean Horrock, a fine scholar, who was always ready to listen to anybody’s troubles, and who, besides, could make the knottiest doctrines clearer than many a Salesman.
As he walked up the hill, a thin trickle of hope began to rise in him. It was pure self-deception, he knew perfectly well; but it was better than nothing.
III
FROM the next room came the heady smell of boiling cabbage and pork and the clattering of cookery, punctuated by the voices of Dean Horrock’s wife and daughters. The Dean himself was dressed in his best, pinkly clean and reeking of Sunday cologne, but his manner was as unhurried and courteous as always.
“Take your time,” he said comfortably. He filled the pipe whose stench a campus tradition, tamped it with care, puffed it alight. His gray eyes, alert behind their bulwark of pouches and wrinkles, looked at Bass candidly.
Everyone liked and respected the Dean. It was not easy to maintain the appearance his rank demanded on a pedagogue’s salary; most of the University staff were a little shabby, and no one thought the worse of them for it, but the Dean was always immaculate. He had eight children, too; and over twenty grandchildren: a good man.
“Whatever it is,” he added, “if I can help you—um, um—you know I’d like nothing better. But if you decided you’d rather not tell me—um— after all, why, I’ll understand that too.”
Bass began haltingly, “In Store today I saw a possessed man, Dean. He cursed Salesman Leggett. The Guard came and took him away.”
Horrock nodded. “An upsetting experience,” he suggested quietly.
“Yes. Dean—”
Horrock waited attentively.
“Can you tell me why the Infinite lets people be possessed’?”
Horrock’s face writhed and twisted. A sudden spurt of meaningless syllables came out between his clenched teeth; then it cut off short. His features smoothed out; he stared upward past Bass’s shoulder, listening to an angelic voice. In a moment the fit was over, and Horrock was blinking calmly at his pipe-stem.
“That’s a question,” he said slowly, “that has, tormented men pf compassion for centuries, Arthur. Why does infinite good permit the existence of evil? Mm. I’m not surprised that you feel so strongly about it. At your—um—at your age, if one has any sensitivity at all, one does … um … and even beyond your age, for the matter of that. Some very great and good men—um, um—have spent their lives in the study of that question, and without reaching any answer, um, that will satisfy everyone. In a sense, it’s the core of the religious problem… .
“Let me put it this way,” he continued. “Can either of us say that, if it weren’t for the few men—um, um—and women whom the Infinite allows to be possessed, human vanity—um—and willfulness might not grow so strong, um, that we’d all cast out our angels?”
Bass was silent:
“A little evil, um, prevents a greater,” Horrock said. The tic in his left cheek pulsed slowly, regularly. “That’s only a suggestion, Arthur, a speculation. Mm., The only final answer, I’m afraid, um, is that we can’t know the answer. The ways of the Infinite are not our ways. How can we judge, who are judged?” His pipe had gone out; he lit it again with tremulous fingers.
“Yes, I see that,” Bass said stiffly, “I mean, it isn’t the general problem that bothers me so much as—that man Store today, for instance. What did he do to deserve what happened to him?”
“Well—” Horrock smiled a lopsided smile. “Who can say? A sin of omission here, um, another there—perhaps, um, um, over the course of years, they added up—um, um—on the Infinite’s balance-sheet, to—” He shrugged.
Bass said thoughtfully, “Yes, that’s’ right, he was a miser.” But not me, he thought unhappily; I never grudged the Store a credit, or even had an unorthodox thought, until this happened. What about me?
“Dean,” he said suddenly, “there are people who want to do worse things than that, but their angels stop them—they aren’t punished.” He stopped a moment, wrestling to express the unfamiliar thought. “What I mean is, why can’t the angels make people do the things they should, not only stop them from doing the things they shouldn’t?”
HORROCK smiled gently. “Well I can answer that in two ways, Arthur. Taking it on the—um—mundane level, there are certain purely technical difficulties in the way of it. The Mysteries are, um, beyond my sphere, of course, but my understanding is that the sacred machines can only give us a certain limited capacity for perceiving our angels, which — um — would be burned out, so to speak, if our contact with them were too frequent, um, um, or prolonged. On the spiritual level, where the true answer is generally to be found—um, you remember your nursery prayers, Arthur.
“We’re prevented from committing, um, positive sins—first because they tend to be so final—killing a man, for example—um—and second, paradoxically enough, because they’re relatively unimportant. If I want to cut someone’s throat every evening—um, I do, by the way—that’s a trivial matter, really, because the impulse has no duration and therefore no—ahem—no effect on my character. But if I want to buy less than I should, that’s a serious thing. It affects not one person a day, but all of us every day: through me, um, it strikes at the very foundations of society.
“The point is, Arthur, that the Infinite is not—ahem—profoundly interested in our, our transient passions. Um, our angels stand ‘twixt us and sin, just as a mother might stand between her child and—a pot that was about to fall off a shelf. The pot has nothing to do, um, with the child’s development, as long as it doesn’t hit him on the head. Moreover, the child—can’t be expected to guard himself against the danger; he’s too young.