" 'Make your case!' said the Lord. 'But before you begin, remind yourself, for my sake and the sake of everyone present, that I know all things. I know humankind as you can never know it. I have seen its bloody altars, and its rain dances, and its reeking sacrifices, and I have heard the cries of the wounded, the afflicted, the slowly annihilated. I see Nature in Humankind as I see it in the savagery of the seas or the forests. Don't waste my Time, Memnoch. Or to put it more clearly so that you will understand it, don't waste the Time you have with me.'

"So the moment had come. I stood quietly preparing myself. Never in all my existence had I felt the importance or significance of an event as I felt the meaning of this one now. It is what you would call excitement, perhaps, or exhilaration. I had my audience. And I did not know how to doubt myself! But I was already furious with all the legion behind me lying on their faces and saying nothing! And suddenly in my fury I realized that as long as they lay there, leaving me alone in the open before God and his court, I wasn't going to speak a word. I folded my arms and stood there.

"God started to laugh, a slow, gentle rising laugh, and then all of Heaven joined in it irresistibly. And God said to the Fallen ones, the Watchers, 'Stand up, my sons, or we will all be here until the End of Time.'

" 'Mockery, Lord, I deserve it,' I said. 'But I thank you.'

"In a great shuffling of wings and gowns, I heard them rising behind me to stand at least as tall and as straight as brave humans could stand on the earth below.

" 'Lord, my case is simple,' I said, 'but surely you cannot ignore it. And I shall state it as simply and as finely as I can.

" 'Up until a point in his development, the primate below was part of Nature, and bound by all its laws. And with his larger brain, he grew ever more cunning, and his battles with other animals became as fierce and bloody as the Heavenly Court has ever seen. This is all true. And with this intelligence there came also an increase in the ways and means that Humankind could inflict upon its own great pain.

" 'But never in all that I have Watched in war, and execution, and even the laying waste of whole settlements and villages have I seen anything to surpass the sheer violence of the insect Kingdom or the Kingdom of the Reptiles, or of the Lower Mammals, who blindly and senselessly struggle to do only two things—survive and make more of their own kind.'

"I stopped, out of courtesy and also for effect. The Lord said nothing. I went on.