And on the Eighth Day

by Queen, Ellery

Ellery raised his arms high and shouted, “This has gone far enough!” and strode over to where the old man lay with arms outstretched to the darkening skies; and Ellery dropped to one knee, and reached out his hand to shake the thin shoulder.

  But the hand remained in midair.

  Out of the jumble in Ellery’s head an orderly thought took shape: I have been following the wrong prompt-book, too. The laws of Quenan are not the laws of Rome. The drink was not the symbolic preliminary to carrying out the symbolic sentence; it was the sentence, and there was nothing symbolic about it.

  The Teacher had not been acting after all. His face was at peace still, but it was not the same peace; in the manner prescribed by the laws of Quenan ― as it was written that it must be, and as it was done, feet together, arms outstretched, in holy symmetry ― the Teacher lay dead.

  VII SATURDAY

  April 8

  And Ellery wept.

  VIII SUNDAY

  April 9

  THE DAY WAS WELL along when Ellery left the house he had occupied during his stay in Quenan. The day before, he had not left it at all. Now, standing on the doorsill and looking about, though the flowers still bloomed and the leaves hung green he felt even more strongly that this was a place of the dead. Not a soul was to be seen, not a sound to be heard. He stepped out into the lane.

  The public buildings, as he passed, seemed hollow ruins; the little houses, earth-stained artifacts of a long-crumbled past. It was just as well, he thought, that the people had crept into their holes. It meant that he didn’t have to say good-bye to anyone (and suppose one of them raised a hand in blessing and said, “The Wor’d go with you”? ― it would be too much to bear). No, it was time to go, and the sooner and more quietly the better. A week and a day “out of time, out of space” were enough for a mere mortal.

  Still, as Ellery strolled through the silent hamlet, he could not help remembering with pleasure the previous strolls, the open faces of the Quenanites, the brown-skinned children offering him flowers shyly…

  Here loomed a tree he had grown fond of, there shone a familiar splotch of ochre on a wall. Had it been a mere week or so that he had been here?

  It felt more as if in his own flesh he had made the trek across the burning sands with the founding fathers of Quenan.

  He came for the last time to the Holy Congregation House. There hung the bell, unmoved. He scanned the familiar legend on it: From Earth’s gross ores my Tongue’s set free To sound the Hours upon the Sea Yes, the hills walling Quenan, together with the Valley, might be likened to a ship, the surrounding desert the sea ― a ship forever becalmed under a cloudless sky, yet always with some creak of calamity impending.

  Should he go into the holy house? The Teacher was not there. Why bother? Yet the Teacher was there. He was in every crack and cranny.

  Why why not bid farewell to a ghost?

  Ellery went in.

  The holy house seemed empty, although the Successor must be in his chambers. The Successor? He had already succeeded! The Teacher was dead; long live the Teacher. What thoughts must be going through the boy’s mind? And what must he be feeling? Grief? Guilt? Remorse?

  Terror? Well, whatever they were, he would have to wrestle with them alone.

  Through the silent conventicle he went, and paused at the door of the forbidden room. He turned, not realizing at first that he was looking for the old man to ask permission to enter. Almost he sensed the prophet’s presence. But only almost. He turned back to the door. The sense of violation, of desecration, was still strong, and he had to force himself to try the door. It was unlocked ( O temporal O mores!), and he went in.

  Nothing was changed in the sanquetum. The eternal lamp still burned; how, being eternal, could it not? And the silence was here as always. The light thinned and thickened, thinned and thickened; but then the shadows which had been set to dancing by the opening of the door settled down; and all at once Ellery had the most absurd feeling that the old Teacher was with him in the little room, not merely in spirit but in body also… and the rich voice, blessing him…

  He shook himself back to reality (and now what was real?) and stared into the old glass-front china closet, the “arque” the old man had bought to house the mysterious “book which was lost.” On its top shelf still stood the two columns of coins, fifteen Carson City dollars in one, fifteen Carson City dollars in the other… thirty pieces of silver indeed. The old Teacher’s father could hardly have dreamed, when he accepted the store of silver dollars to become a treasure for Quenan, that he was ensuring a curse. A curse that would lie silently, “hidden in the urn,” for seventy years, and then unloose a passion that would doom his begotten son.

  Ellery almost reached out to steal those terrible coins and scatter them in the desert.

  But he could not bring himself to touch them.

  But the book, the open book on the lower shelf in its black-letter German type ― that was something else. About the book he would have to take action, fitting action, or he would never sleep soundly again.

  He opened the glass door of the arque and lifted the volume out as if it were alive. He could not run the risk of letting someone ― the Successor; no, the new Teacher ― see him taking it away; so he tucked it under one arm securely between his shirt and his jacket, and buttoned the jacket and felt the book burn his flesh. And he left the sanquetum forever.

  He was about to shut the sanquetum door when a great thought struck him. Why not leave it open? Fiat Lux… Mehr Licht! Let the shadows die.

  He left it open.

  For the last time he made the trip back to his house, packed the book in his grip, and closed his luggage. And so farewell. He had been received almost as a god. There was no reason to assume that he was now held in less reverence; probably he was held in more, since awe and terror had been added. The instrument of the fulfillment of a prophecy, he had helped destroy something tender and potent and unique. Quenan might still look up to him; but it could hardly be with love.

  His lips tightened as he snapped the lock on his suitcase and left.

  He looked around to get his bearings. There ― up that path, behind the vines. That was the way he had come down with an ageless ancient clasping a trumpet beneath his robe.

  Ellery climbed the hill slowly, from time to time glancing down the inner slope. No one was in sight. No, there was one. On the farther slope, among the stones that marked the peaceful place, a misshapen little figure crept. Ellery shuddered and went on.

  One last time he looked back. The grays and browns had now become a blur of dun, almost colorless.

  And then he reached the crest of the hill and passed over it. The Valley of Quenan (Canaan? Kenan? What? He would probably never know now), the whole incredible site, vanished from view.

  He had to laugh.

  He had gone down the rocky face of the hill, trudged through the sands to his car, tossed his bags in, got behind the wheel, turned on the ignition ― and nothing.

  The battery was dead.

  O Pioneers, ye knew not the blessings of the motorcar.

  The water in his radiator had evaporated, too. That was easily remedied (easily?): he had only to go back to the village. But the battery?

  Dead. He looked around. Everything was dead ― the desert, the hill.

  Nothing lived anywhere; no breath stirred; the air lay panting on the corpse, disconsolate.

  Otto Schmidt sold gas, so he possibly had a battery around, or at least a booster. But how to get to Schmidt’s store? It would be a long walk in the desert; too chancy. Have to borrow a donkey from the village…

  But first, the book.

  Ellery dug it out of his bag.

  He went off a little from the car and laid the book on the sand and began to scoop out a shallow hole with his naked fingers. The sand was powdery, and he had no trouble. Then he began tearing pages from the book, crumpling each one and tossing it into the hole. When the hollow was almost full he struck a match and dropped it in.

&nb
sp; In the beginning he knew the paper was on fire only from the magic spread of char. But then the flames came.

  Ellery watched them with a wholly new savagery of satisfaction. From time to time he crumpled more pages and flung them into the heart of the flames.

  At last nothing was left of the book but its cover.

  He stared at the words printed on it in black-letter German and in spite of the heat he shivered. In all the long history of written communication, had there ever been a sadder misreading than the old Teacher’s of this book? He had wanted so fervently to believe in the existence of the legendary “lost” book of Quenan. And then the patriarch had gone into the End-of-the-World Store one day for supplies, and there on the counter had lain a book, and on its cover he had seen three words in archaic-looking lettering, in a strange language that he could not read; but the three words lay one under another, so that their first letters were lined up vertically; and he had read the acrostic:

  How the old man’s heart must have pounded! It was a wonder that it had not stopped altogether. For the “lost” book was said to have been entitled Mk’n, or

  which was a difference of only one letter, and the difference was so small in appearance ― and who knew, he must have thought, but that the title as handed down, Mk’n, might not originally have been Mk’h, and corrupted somewhere along the route of time?

  He had wanted to believe that this was the sacred book of Quenan; and so he had believed.

  And how, Ellery thought, how could I have told him that he was selling his faith of peace and brotherhood for a mess of carnage?

  He gathered some twigs from a nearby bush, and he carefully ignited them, and when they were burning brightly he laid the cover on them. It caught fire; and the flames took on an evil look, as if the fire itself were corrupted by what it was consuming.

  The title seemed to have a demon life of its own. Even as the cover turned to ash, the title clung to its vile substance, standing out clearly, almost coldly in the flames:

  And then it, too, gave up its twisting form and died. And Ellery ground its ashes under his heel.

  He had taken only a few steps back toward the Valley when he heard a rumble in the sky that grew steadily to a roar. Queer! The Potter (had it been the Potter? ― it now seemed so long ago) had remarked on the increasing number of aircraft passing through Quenan’s skies, yet during his entire stay Ellery had not seen or heard one.

  He stopped to scan the sky, and ― yes! ― there it was. A small single-seater plane, not a fighter or any military plane he knew of, was coming toward him from the south. Ellery watched it with growing anxiety. The roar was becoming irregular, erratic… staccato… and then there was an explosion and a burst of fire and in an instant the little aircraft was one great flame and the flame was flashing and tumbling as it passed almost directly overhead.

  My God, the Valley, Ellery thought; if it should hit Quenan…! But he saw that it was going to crash on the slope of Crucible Hill facing the desert, falling just short of the village. And in the same thankful moment a parachute blossomed above him. Ellery began to run.

  He saw the parachutist hit the sands only a short way off. For an instant the man lay still, as if stunned; but by the time Ellery reached him he was on his feet, tugging at the silk, unbuckling himself.

  “Are you all right?” Ellery cried.

  The man looked up from his harness. He smiled and said, “Just fine, amigo.”

  Ellery blinked. The voice was deep and strong, and yet it had a gentle quality; it sounded familiar. But it was not so much the voice. The flyer was a young man, aquiline features, quite handsome in an odd way; although he had obviously shaved that morning, his gaunt cheeks showed the foreshadows of a heavy beard. I’ve seen this fellow somewhere, Ellery thought; he certainly looks as familiar as he sounds. And then he stood very still, in the wash of an icy wave. The young man looked like… looked like…

  Ellery shook his head, feeling foolish. Yet it was true. The young man looked as the Teacher must have looked when he was thirty years old.

  “Talk about luck,” the stranger said, stepping out of the harness.

  “Imagine conking out over the desert and coming down at the feet of a Good Samaritan with a car.”

  “Not such a Good Samaritan, I’m afraid,” Ellery said. “My battery’s dead.”

  The stranger smiled again. “We’ll make out,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “All right,” Ellery said, smiling back. “I won’t.” As they began to walk slowly toward the car, he asked, “Where were you heading?”

  “North ― up Pyramid Lake way,” the young man said. “Crop-dusting.

  I’m a C.O., you know.”

  “C.O.? The only thing that means to me is ‘Commanding Officer.’ ”

  “Hardly,” and the stranger laughed.

  “Oh,” Ellery said. “You mean a conscientious objector.”

  “Yes.” He said it quite calmly ― quite, Ellery thought, as the old Teacher might have said it; and smiled faintly at his fantasy. “I got an agricultural deferment. The funny part of it is, I learned to fly in the cadet program. I was on the wild side, I’m afraid. Rich father, plenty of money, out for thrills and kicks. Then one day a buddy of mine had the same thing happen to him that just happened to me. Only he didn’t get to bail out.”

  “I see.”

  “I saw, too. For the first time, I guess. And I began to think ― you know, man and God, man and fellow-man, man and his eternal soul, all that. Well, I hauled myself out of the cadet program and began to read and study. Found myself after a while. And knew one thing for sure ― no killing for me. I wrestled with that one for a long, long time. But that’s the way it is. I couldn’t do it. No matter how they tag me.”

  “It must be rough,” Ellery said.

  “Not so rough,” the young stranger said, “Not if you know why you’re doing it. You find yourself, and you live by what you find. That’s why I don’t think I’ll keep on with this job after the war is over. I’ve been thinking of social work of some kind. Well, we’ll see.” They had reached the car, and the stranger opened the hood and poked around. “Dead, all right. Any idea where the nearest town is? Say!” He had straightened up and was staring at the nearby hill. “Look at that.” Ellery looked. And he saw on the ridge of Crucible Hill, in a long line of black figures against the sky, like paper cutouts, the people of Quenan.

  And it suddenly came to him what had happened, and the icy wave washed over him once more. They had heard the coughing death of the plane, run out of their houses and seen it come down in a streak of flame from the sky. Like a burning chariot… like a chariot of fire…

  They had seen the man fall from the burning plane.

  No. They had seen the man descend from out the ineffable heavens.

  And they had come to him.

  “May I ask your name?” Ellery murmured.

  “What? Oh.” The young stranger kept staring at the people.

  “Manuel ― ”

  And they shall call his name Emmanuel… Ellery felt a quiver ripple through him. His knees actually began to tremble. I won’t fall down, he told himself fiercely, I won’t; it’s weakness, the awful fatigue I’ve been gripped by…

  “ ― Aquina,” the young man finished.

  It’s too much, the other Ellery insisted wildly in his head ― too much, too much, too much; it’s more than reason can bear. Aquina, Quenan. Too much, an infinite complexity beyond the grasp of man. Acknowledge.

  Acknowledge and depart.

  “Those people on the ridge,” Manuel Aquina said in a slow, not-quite-puzzled way. “Is there a town beyond that hill?” The setting sun touched the strange young eyes, and they began to blaze.

  “There is a new world beyond that hill,” Ellery heard a slow, not-quite-puzzled voice respond ― his own? “And I think… I think… its people wait for you.”

  The End

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Cop
yright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1964 by Ellery Queen

  cover design by Jim Tierney

  978-1-4532-8946-4

  This 2012 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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