XXI

Decision is the key to destiny.

“God, can you be merciful and send me off to hell and lock me in forever?”

“No, Pilgrim, I will not send you there, but if you chose to go there, I could never lock you out.”

The Hater cringed to hear the sound he feared above all else. The doorway of the worlds stood open. He felt the giant key that dangled from his belt. He wished to gloat a little longer in his victory but left the silent gallows where the Singer was as dead as the rotting beams of the machine.

He reached the threshold of eternity and found the doorway of the worlds not only open but clearly ripped away. He strained to hear the everlasting wail, the eternal dying which he loved. All was silent. Then he heard the Song.

“No,” he cried. “Give me back the door and key for this is my domain.” He felt again and found the great key at his waist had disappeared.

“Where is the key? Where is the key?” the Hater cried. But all the while the Hater knew. Each man on Terra had a key. And never could they come into the Canyon of the Damned unless they chose to do it. To live there, men would have to reject the Song. It was a song that only four on Terra knew, but it would grow until the world could sing it.

“Earthmaker, this day was not the victory I had thought,” the World Hater cried. “We both have lost. You have lost your Son and I have lost my kingdom.”

It was a hollow loss. Full well the Hater knew the Canyon of the Damned would never be as large as he had hoped.

He steeled himself for the battle out ahead.

He would have to fight the Song. He would fight with every weapon in his arsenal of hate.

But he knew that he would lose. And he knew that when the course of time was done, the door would be put back upon the Canyon of the Damned, and he would be locked in with all the discord of the universe. And he would suffer with all of those he had taught to hate the Song or consciously ignore it.

And he himself would be a prisoner of the hate he spread on Terra. And when the doorway of the worlds was locked the final time, he himself would be inside the Canyon of the Damned.

And only God would have the key.

XXII

WHEN GOD LOSES HIS BELOVED

habeas corpus is a weak and futile law. But Earthlings never seem to learn that it is futile to dredge the graveyards for messiahs. No matter how intently you may man the cables, the grappling hooks will always come up empty.

In the morning, the wreckage of the great machine lay in splintered beams beneath the wall. It had fallen in the night. The great iron pinions that held it to the ancient stones had given way.