Even through his earplugs, the roar was deafening. Neil could feel his hair rising from his skin as the electric charge built up around him. He kept glancing in his rearview mirror, trying to ascertain where the angel was while wondering how close he ought to get.
His vision grew so crowded with afterimages that it became difficult to distinguish actual bolts of lightning among them. Squinting at the dazzle in his mirror, he realized he was looking at a continuous bolt of lightning, undulating but uninterrupted. He tilted the driver’s-side mirror upward to get a better look, and saw the source of the lightning bolt, a seething, writhing mass of flames, silver against the dusky clouds: the angel Barakiel.
It was then, while Neil was transfixed and paralyzed by what he saw, that his pickup truck crested a sharp outcropping of rock and became airborne. The truck smashed into a boulder, the entire force of the impact concentrated on the vehicle’s left front end, crumpling it like foil. The intrusion into the driver’s compartment fractured both of Neil’s legs and nicked his left femoral artery. Neil began, slowly but surely, bleeding to death.
He didn’t try to move; he wasn’t in physical pain at the moment, but he somehow knew that the slightest movement would be excruciating. It was obvious that he was pinned in the truck, and there was no way he could pursue Barakiel even if he weren’t. Helplessly, he watched the lightning storm move further and further away.
As he watched it, Neil began crying. He was filled with a mixture of regret and self-contempt, cursing himself for ever thinking that such a scheme could succeed. He would have begged for the opportunity to do it over again, promised to spend the rest of his days learning to love God, if only he could live, but he knew that no bargaining was possible and he had only himself to blame. He apologized to Sarah for losing his chance at being reunited with her, for throwing his life away on a gamble instead of playing it safe. He prayed that she understood that he’d been motivated by his love for her, and that she would forgive him.
Through his tears he saw a woman running toward him, and recognized her as Janice Reilly. He realized his truck had crashed no more than a hundred yards from her and Ethan’s campsite. There was nothing she could do, though; he could feel the blood draining out of him, and knew that he wouldn’t live long enough for a rescue vehicle to arrive. He thought Janice was calling to him, but his ears were ringing too badly for him to hear anything. He could see Ethan Mead behind her, also starting to run toward him.
Then there was a flash of light and Janice was knocked off her feet as if she’d been struck by a sledgehammer. At first he thought she’d been hit by lightning, but then he realized that the lightning had already ceased. It was when she stood up again that he saw her face, steam rising from newly featureless skin, and he realized that Janice had been struck by Heaven’s light.
Neil looked up, but all he saw were clouds; the shaft of light was gone. It seemed as if God were taunting him, not only by showing him the prize he’d lost his life trying to acquire while still holding it out of reach, but also by giving it to someone who didn’t need it or even want it. God had already wasted a miracle on Janice, and now He was doing it again.
It was at that moment that another beam of Heaven’s light penetrated the cloud cover and struck Neil, trapped in his vehicle.
Like a thousand hypodermic needles the light punctured his flesh and scraped across his bones. The light unmade his eyes, turning him into not a formerly sighted being, but a being never intended to possess vision. And in doing so the light revealed to Neil all the reasons he should love God.
He loved Him with an utterness beyond what humans can experience for one another. To say it was unconditional was inadequate, because even the word “unconditional” required the concept of a condition and such an idea was no longer comprehensible to him: every phenomenon in the universe was nothing less than an explicit reason to love Him. No circumstance could be an obstacle or even an irrelevancy, but only another reason to be grateful, a further inducement to love. Neil thought of the grief that had driven him to suicidal recklessness, and the pain and terror that Sarah had experienced before she died, and still he loved God, not in spite of their suffering, but because of it.
He renounced all his previous anger and ambivalence and desire for answers. He was grateful for all the pain he’d endured, contrite for not previously recognizing it as the gift it was, euphoric that he was now being granted this insight into his true purpose. He understood how life was an undeserved bounty, how even the most virtuous were not worthy of the glories of the mortal plane.
For him the mystery was solved, because he understood that everything in life is love, even pain, especially pain.
So minutes later, when Neil finally bled to death, he was truly worthy of salvation.
And God sent him to Hell anyway.
* * *
Ethan saw all of this. He saw Neil and Janice remade by Heaven’s light, and he saw the pious love on their eyeless faces. He saw the skies become clear and the sunlight return. He was holding Neil’s hand, waiting for the paramedics, when Neil died, and he saw Neil’s soul leave his body and rise toward Heaven, only to descend into Hell.
Janice didn’t see it, for by then her eyes were already gone. Ethan was the sole witness, and he realized that this was God’s purpose for him: to follow Janice Reilly to this point and to see what she could not.
When statistics were compiled for Barakiel’s visitation, it turned out that there had been a total of ten casualties, six among light-seekers and four among ordinary pilgrims. Nine pilgrims received miracle cures; the only individuals to see Heaven’s light were Janice and Neil. There were no statistics regarding how many pilgrims had felt their lives changed by the visitation, but Ethan counted himself among them.
Upon returning home, Janice resumed her evangelism, but the topic of her speeches has changed. She no longer speaks about how the physically handicapped have the resources to overcome their limitations; instead she, like the other eyeless, speaks about the unbearable beauty of God’s creation. Many who used to draw inspiration from her are disappointed, feeling they’ve lost a spiritual leader. When Janice had spoken of the strength she had as an afflicted person, her message was rare, but now that she’s eyeless, her message is commonplace. She doesn’t worry about the reduction in her audience, though, because she has complete conviction in what she evangelizes.
Ethan quit his job and became a preacher so that he too could speak about his experiences. His wife Claire couldn’t accept his new mission and ultimately left him, taking their children with her, but Ethan was willing to continue alone. He’s developed a substantial following by telling people what happened to Neil Fisk. He tells people that they can no more expect justice in the afterlife than in the mortal plane, but he doesn’t do this to dissuade them from worshipping God; on the contrary, he encourages them to do so. What he insists on is that they not love God under a misapprehension, that if they wish to love God, they be prepared to do so no matter what His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.
As for Neil, although he is unaware of any of Ethan’s sermons, he would understand their message perfectly. His lost soul is the embodiment of Ethan’s teachings.
For most of its inhabitants, Hell is not that different from Earth; its principal punishment is the regret of not having loved God enough when alive, and for many that’s easily endured. For Neil, however, Hell bears no resemblance whatsoever to the mortal plane. His eternal body has well-formed legs, but he’s scarcely aware of them; his eyes have been restored, but he can’t bear to open them. Just as seeing Heaven’s light gave him an awareness of God’s presence in all things in the mortal plane, so it has made him aware of God’s absence in all things in Hell. Everything Neil sees, hears, or touches causes him distress, and unlike in the mortal plane this pain is not a form of God’s love, but a consequence of His absence. Neil is experiencing more anguish than was possi
ble when he was alive, but his only response is to love God.
Neil still loves Sarah, and misses her as much as he ever did, and the knowledge that he came so close to rejoining her only makes it worse. He knows his being sent to Hell was not a result of anything he did; he knows there was no reason for it, no higher purpose being served. None of this diminishes his love for God. If there were a possibility that he could be admitted to Heaven and his suffering would end, he would not hope for it; such desires no longer occur to him.
Neil even knows that by being beyond God’s awareness, he is not loved by God in return. This doesn’t affect his feelings either, because unconditional love asks nothing, not even that it be returned.
And though it’s been many years that he has been in Hell, beyond the awareness of God, he loves Him still. That is the nature of true devotion.
REMEMBERING DAMON KNIGHT
DAMON KNIGHT
Frederik Pohl
Frederik Pohl has been writing and editing science fiction for more than half a century. His novels are classics in the field. A Nebula winner, Hugo winner, and Grand Master himself in 1992, he edits the Grand Master series of anthologies for SFWA. Fred’s bibliography can be found on the Web at http://isfdb.tamu.edu/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Frederik%20Pohl.
When Damon Knight came to New York City, somewhere around 1940, he was a science fiction fan who wanted very much to become a science fiction professional. Naturally he at once fell in with that bunch of other fans who were yearning to be pros, the Futurian Society of New York. However, Damon—or, as he preferred to be known in those days, damon—was different from the rest of the Futurians in one crucial respect. What he wanted to do professionally wasn’t to write. It was to illustrate.
That didn’t last, though. Surrounded by such hard-writing Futurians as Isaac Asimov, C. M. Kornbluth, James Blish, Donald A. Wollheim, and others damon quickly fell into line. His first professionally published story, “Resilience,” appeared in Stirring Science Stories, one of Don Wollheim’s low-paying—in fact, very low-paying—magazines. The story concerned a race of rubbery aliens visiting the Earth. To tease the reader damon held back all information about the rubberiness of the aliens until late in the story. Then he disclosed it only by having the aliens refer to the humans as “the brittle people.” Alas, Don Wollheim’s printers may not have been paid much better than the writers, and that crucial piece of information didn’t survive their mishaps. One of the printers dropped a tray of type. When they tried to reconstruct it from memory the concept of “the brittle people” had become “the little people,” and the story no longer had any point at all.
That didn’t stop young damon. He kept trying—with stories, even with an occasional drawing now and then—and accordingly lived the life appropriate for a striving pro in those early days of Word War II. That is, a pretty impoverished one. Damon lived in what is called a “cold-water flat,” a New Yorkese term which means an apartment (in damon’s case, not much more than a single room) which may or may not have running hot water but definitely hasn’t much else. It especially doesn’t have heat, which, in a New York winter, can be critical. In order to keep his living space, if not warm, at least somewhat less than hopelessly frigid in January weather damon had installed a battery of electric heaters. The building hadn’t been constructed for such lavish use of electrical power, though. When the heaters were going the wiring in the walls was going, too, and accordingly damon’s walls were the only ones I have ever felt that were seriously hot to the touch.
But luck was on damon’s side. The building didn’t catch fire from the overloaded wiring and burn down around him, at least not while he was living in it.
Damon was lucky, more or less, in another respect as well: young men were being gobbled up by the Selective Service right and left, but damon was spared.
Which is, in a way, almost a pity. When damon was first being examined by the draft doctors he, like everyone else, had to give his complete life history to an overworked and disinterested corporal seated at the registration desk. One of the things the corporal wanted to know was damon’s religious preference. “I’m an agnostic,” said damon. “You’re a what?” the corporal asked. “An agnostic. That’s spelled A-G-N-O-S-T-I-C,” damon told him, and the corporal wrote down what he thought he heard. His hearing had been imperfect, though, and if damon had reached the point of induction he would have been the only soldier in American history whose dogtags described him as a “HENOSTIC.”
All this time I had been living somewhat, but not an awful lot, more comfortably as the boy editor of a couple of science fiction magazines (later the assistant editor on eight or ten pulps of all sorts) for the giant pulp-magazine publishing company of Popular Publications. For some time I had been trying to get inducted into the Army like everybody else, an event held up because my draft board’s territory also took in New York’s Chinatown and thus was greatly oversubscribed by young Chinese men who wanted very much to get into uniform and fight the Japanese. Finally they relented and took me. When I was sworn in (on April Fool’s Day of 1943) that created an immediate editorial vacancy at Popular, and I offered it to damon.
He agreed instantly, but saw a problem. He said he didn’t have any suitably business-like clothing to wear. I solved that easily enough by loaning him a civilian shirt that I would no longer need and took him in to meet my boss, Alden H. Norton. Damon aced the interview, and so took his first step in beginning what turned out to be a brilliant editorial career.
* * *
Of course that wasn’t the only career damon, now Damon, pursued.
His earliest fame came not as an editor but as a critic, and that began with a fanzine review he wrote of A. E. Van Vogt’s serial, The World of Ā (pronounced “Null-A”). I say Damon reviewed the story. More accurately, he trashed it, to the extent, it is said, that after van Vogt came across a copy of the review he had to make serious changes in his story before it was published as a book. (A circumstance which made a serious problem for me when I was putting together the volume of The Grand Masters which included Grand Master Knight. It was my custom, when possible, to include an occasional nonfiction piece written by the Grand Masters along with their stories, and the one of Damon’s that I would most have liked to use was the review which had given such pain to Van Vogt. An unfortunate conjunction interfered with that plan. Immediately adjacent to Grand Master Knight’s section in the volume was the section that belonged to Grand Master Van Vogt himself. Van Vogt wasn’t well, and in any case it did not seem appropriate to renew an old pain in a volume which was meant to celebrate him, among the rest of his cohort. So compassion overcame editorial desires, and reluctantly I abandoned the idea of reprinting Damon’s ancient review.)
In the early 1950s Fletcher Pratt, who was perhaps more distinguished (for such works as his Civil War history, Ordeal by Fire) outside of the science fiction field than in it, was trying to arrange for some science fiction writers to be invited to attend the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers Conference. The idea of such a conference struck Damon as worth pursuing and so, with James Blish and Judith Merril, he organized the Milford Science Fiction Writers Workshop, the model for all the many which have followed. Which led immediately to his plan to organize science fiction writers into some sort of professional society/union/social club, which ultimately became the Science Fiction Writers of America. . . .
But all that’s another story.
DAMON
Carol Emshwiller
Carol Emshwiller first met Damon Knight in 1956. Her Web site is http://www.sfwa.org/members/emshwiller/.
I met Damon at the first Milford workshop, given by Jim Blish, Judy Merril, and Damon. My husband had been invited but not me. I think at that time I had sold two or three stories. I asked if I could sit in, and they let me. I was so awed by all the big science fiction writers there I can’t remember much about it. Besides, I had our kids with me. (Maybe I only had one back then.)
After that first time I did get invi
ted to attend in my own right. I probably learned more about writing and also teaching from Damon at those Milfords than from anybody else ever. I’ve taken several classes before and since but none taught me as much as Damon did.
I’ve always thought Damon was one of the smartest and kindest people I know. And I loved his sense of humor. I know some people thought his humor cruel but I never thought so. I guess it just wasn’t their kind of humor. Once I saw him throw a manuscript out the window. That sounds bad, but it was the way he did it. Sort of like his water pistols and food throwing fights. (He was known for those. I always felt privileged whenever I got a chunk of bread thrown at me by Damon.) I thought his humor always had a pixie quality about it and couldn’t hurt anybody. Wherever he was, there was the action and the fun.
He was amazing at reading fast and understanding everything about a story on first reading. I once saw him reading and talking to a group of people at the same time. I was sitting there trying to do the same but failing. In the end, he read the story in half the time that I took. Not only that, but he understood it better than I did. And all the time he was talking to people.
These last years I didn’t see him very often. Even so his death was a shock. Though I never called, I always knew he was there in case I needed him. I don’t like a world without him in it. He was one of my favorite people.
I REMEMBER DAMON
James Gunn
James Gunn began a four-year freelance career in 1948, then combined his later writing with an academic career at the University of Kansas. He has served at different times as president of both the SFWA and of SFRA. His best known works are The Joy Makers, The Immortals, The Listeners, Kampus, and The Dreamers; among his academic books are Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction; and Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction for which he won a Hugo; and the six-volume Road to Science Fiction. He is now emeritus professor of English and continues to write both fiction and nonfiction. He can be found on the Web at http://www.ku.edu/~sfcenter/bio.htm.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2004 Page 11
