Smoke and Mirrors

“‘Then he said he had to fetch the one whose function embraced events like this, and he left—to seek you, I imagine.

“‘As Carasel’s death was now being dealt with, and his fate was no real concern of mine, I returned to work, having gained a new—and, I suspect, quite valuable—perspective on the mechanics of Regret.

“‘I am considering taking Death away from the Carasel and Saraquael partnership. I may reassign it to Zephkiel, my senior partner, if he is willing to take it on. He excels on contemplative projects.’

“By now there was a line of angels waiting to talk to Phanuel. I felt I had almost all I was going to get from him.

“‘Who did Carasel work with? Who would have been the last to see him alive?’

“‘You could talk to Saraquael, I suppose—he was his partner, after all. Now, if you’ll excuse me. . .’

“He returned to his swarm of aides: advising, correcting, suggesting, forbidding.”

The man paused.

The street was quiet now; I remember the low whisper of his voice, the buzz of a cricket somewhere. A small animal—a cat perhaps, or something more exotic, a raccoon, or even a jackal—darted from shadow to shadow among the parked cars on the opposite side of the street.

“Saraquael was in the highest of the mezzanine galleries that ringed the Hall of Being. As I said, the universe was in the middle of the Hall, and it glinted and sparkled and shone. Went up quite a way, too . . .”

“The universe you mention, it was, what, a diagram?” I asked, interrupting for the first time.

“Not really. Kind of. Sorta. It was a blueprint; but it was full-sized, and it hung in the Hall, and all these angels went around and fiddled with it all the time. Doing stuff with Gravity and Music and Klar and whatever. It wasn’t really the universe, not yet. It would be, when it was finished, and it was time for it to be properly Named.”

“But . . .” I grasped for words to express my confusion. The man interrupted me.

“Don’t worry about it. Think of it as a model if that makes it easier for you. Or a map. Or a—what’s the word? Prototype. Yeah. A Model-T Ford universe.” He grinned. “You got to understand, a lot of the stuff I’m telling you, I’m translating already; putting it in a form you can understand. Otherwise I couldn’t tell the story at all. You want to hear it?”

“Yes.” I didn’t care if it was true or not; it was a story I needed to hear all the way through to the end.

“Good. So shut up and listen.

“So I met Saraquael in the topmost gallery. There was no one else about—just him, and some papers, and some small, glowing models.

“‘I’ve come about Carasel,’ I told him.

“He looked at me. ‘Carasel isn’t here at this time,’ he said. ‘I expect him to return shortly.’

“I shook my head.

“‘Carasel won’t be coming back. He’s stopped existing as a spiritual entity,’ I said.

“His light paled, and his eyes opened very wide. ‘ He’s dead?’

“‘That’s what I said. Do you have any ideas about how it happened?’

“‘I . . . this is so sudden. I mean, he’d been talking about . . . but I had no idea that he would . . . ’

“‘Take it slowly.’

“Saraquael nodded.

“He stood up and walked to the window. There was no view of the Silver City from his window—just a reflected glow from the City and the sky behind us, hanging in the air, and beyond that, the Dark. The wind from the Dark gently caressed Saraquael’s hair as he spoke. I stared at his back.

“‘Carasel is . . . no, was. That’s right, isn’t it? Was. He was always so involved. And so creative. But it was never enough for him. He always wanted to understand everything—to experience what he was working on. He was never content to just create it—to understand it intellectually. He wanted all of it.

“‘That wasn’t a problem before, when we were working on properties of matter. But when we began to design some of the Named emotions . . . he got too involved with his work.

“‘And our latest project was Death. It’s one of the hard ones—one of the big ones, too, I suspect. Possibly it may even become the attribute that’s going to define the Creation for the Created: If not for Death, they’d be content to simply exist, but with Death, well, their lives will have meaning—a boundary beyond which the living cannot cross . . .’

“‘So you think he killed himself?’

“‘I know he did,’ said Saraquael. I walked to the window and looked out. Far below, a long way, I could see a tiny white dot. That was Carasel’s body. I’d have to arrange for someone to take care of it. I wondered what we would do with it; but there would be someone who would know, whose function was the removal of unwanted things. It was not my function. I knew that.

“‘How?’

“He shrugged. ‘ I know. Recently he’d begun asking questions—questions about Death. How we could know whether or not it was right to make this thing, to set the rules, if we were not going to experience it ourselves. He kept talking about it.’

“‘Didn’t you wonder about this?’

“Saraquael turned, for the first time, to look at me. ‘No. That is our function—to discuss, to improvise, to aid the Creation and the Created. We sort it out now, so that when it all Begins, it’ll run like clockwork. Right now we’re working on Death. So obviously that’s what we look at. The physical aspect; the emotional aspect; the philosophical aspect . . .

“‘And the patterns. Carasel had the notion that what we do here in the Hall of Being creates patterns. That there are structures and shapes appropriate to beings and events that, once begun, must continue until they reach their end. For us, perhaps, as well as for them. Conceivably he felt this was one of his patterns.’

“‘Did you know Carasel well?’

“‘As well as any of us know each other. We saw each other here; we worked side by side. At certain times I would retire to my cell across the City. Sometimes he would do the same.’

“Tell me about Phanuel.’

“His mouth crooked into a smile. ‘He’s officious. Doesn’t do much—farms everything out and takes all the credit.’ He lowered his voice, although there was no other soul in the gallery. ‘To hear him talk, you’d think that Love was all his own work. But to his credit, he does make sure the work gets done. Zephkiel’s the real thinker of the two senior designers, but he doesn’t come here. He stays back in his cell in the City and contemplates; resolves problems from a distance. If you need to speak to Zephkiel, you go to Phanuel, and Phanuel relays your questions to Zephkiel . . . ’