it to him and he tied my hands together. The dogs watched all this languidly. I was beginning to pass beyond fear into some sort of calmness. I had seen things of this sort on television, and I was beginning to feel that the situation was one that I was merely watching, as though there were no real danger to me. But my heart was pounding wildly and I could feel myself trembling. Yet somehow my mind had moved above this and I felt a calmness. I wondered what had become of But—and what would become of her.
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“I am going to fulfill the scripture,” he said. “He who blasphemes my holy place shall be cast into the lake of fire that burneth forever.”
“Jesus Christ!” I said. I don’t know why I said that. Possibly it was the Bible language that the man had used.
“What did you say?” the woman said.
“I said, ‘Jesus Christ.’”
“Who told you that name?”
“I learned it from the Bible,” I said. I did not mention Mary Lou, nor did I mention the man who, burning in immolation, had shouted the name of Jesus.
“What Bible?” she said.
“He’s lying,” the man said. And then to me, “Show me that Bible.”
“I don’t have it anymore,” I said. “I had to leave it…”
The man just stared at me.
Then they took me out into the grand hallway of the Mall where the fountain was, past stores and restaurants and meditation parlors and a place with a sign that said:
As we passed a large shop with a sign that read: DISPENSARY, the man slowed down and said, “The way you’re shaking, mister, I guess you could use some help.” He pushed open the door of the shop and we came into a place with rows and rows of large sealed jars filled with pills of all sizes and shapes. He walked up to one that said “SOPORS: Non-addictive. Fertility-inhibiting” on it, reached into his pants pocket and took out a handful of old and faded credit cards, selected a blue card from the pack, and slipped it into the mechanical slot at the bottom of the jar on the counter.
The glass jars were some kind of primitive dispenser—certainly not as sleek and quick as the store machinery I was accustomed to —such as in the place on Fifth Avenue where I had bought Mary Lou that yellow dress. It took it at least a minute of clicking over the card before returning it, and then a half minute before the metal door in the base opened and dispensed a handful of blue pills.
The man scooped them up and said, “How many sopors you want, mister?”
I shook my head. “I don’t use them,” I said.
“You don’t
“Nothing,” I said. “Not for a long time.”
The woman spoke up. “Mister, in about ten minutes you’re going into the lake of fire that burneth forever. I’d take ever damn one of them pills.”
I said nothing.
The man shrugged. He took one of the pills himself, handed one to the woman, and put the rest in his pocket.
We walked out of the shop, leaving its rows of hundreds of bottles and jars of pills, and as we left, the automatic lighting in the shop went off behind us.
We turned a corner and a new fountain came on, with lights and with new, softer music. It was, if anything, larger than the first.
On either side of us now were stainless-steel walls, with occasional doorways. Over each doorway was a sign that read:
or
“Who sleeps in those places?” I said.
“Nobody,” the woman said. “They was for the ancients. Those of old.”
“How ancient?” I said. “How old?”
The woman shook her head. “The ancient of days. When they was giants in the earth and they feared the wrath of the Lord.”
“They feared the rain of fire from Heaven,” the man said. “And they didn’t trust Jesus. The rain of fire never come, and the ancients died.”
We passed by more and more sleeping quarters, and by at least a half mile of stainless-steel walls merely marked STORAGE, and then, finally, we came to the dead end of the corridor, where there was a massive door with a sign in red: POWER SOURCE: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The man had taken a small metal plate from his pocket. He held it against a matching rectangle in the center of the door and said, “The key to the Kingdom.”
The door slid open and a soft light came on.
Inside was a smaller corridor, and the air in it was distinctly warm. The dogs were left outside and we walked down it, toward another door. It became warmer as we walked. I was beginning to perspire and would have liked to wipe my forehead but my hands were still tied behind me.
We came to the door. The sign on it was in large orange letters:
The man held a different card to this door and when it opened the heat was palpable and intense. There was another door just inside this one and the man this time put yet another card into a slot beside it and the door opened about two feet wide. There was a brilliant orange glow behind it that illuminated some kind of enormous room. A room without a floor. Or with a floor of orange light. The heat was overwhelming.
Then the man’s voice said, “Behold the eternal fire.” And I felt myself being pushed from behind, and my heart almost stopped beating and I could not speak. I looked down and was able to hold my eyes in a squint for only a split second, but long enough to see that a great circular pit was directly in front of my feet and that down, incalculably far down in that pit, was a fire like that of the sun.
And then I was pulled back, limp, and the man’s hands turned my body around to face his and he said, quietly, “Do you have any last words?”
I looked at his face. It was impassive, quiet, sweating. “I am the resurrection and the life,” I said. “He that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”
The woman shrieked, “My God, Edgar! My God!”
The man looked at me firmly. “Where did you learn those words?” he said.
I groped for something to say, and finally found only the truth— which I felt that he would not understand. But I said it anyway. “I have read the Bible.”
“
I felt that I would die from the heat at my back if I did not get away in less than a minute, I could see that the man’s face was showing pain from the heat, or doubt.
