Deus Irae - By Philip K. Dick Page 0,3

got the manila folder, came back with it, opened it, brought out the color 3-D photo of the God of Wrath, and held it forth. Tibor’s right manual extensor seized it.

“That’s the God,” Father Handy said presently.

“Yes, you can see.” Tibor nodded. “Those black eyebrows. That interwoven black hair; the eyes … I see pain, but he’s smiling.” His extensor abruptly returned the photo. “I can’t paint him from that.”

“Why not?” But Father Handy knew why not. The photo did not really catch the god-quality; it was the photo of a man. The god-quality; it could not be recorded by celluloid coated with a silver nitrate. “He was,” he said, “at the time this photo was taken, having a luau in Hawaii. Eating young taro leaves with chicken and octopus. Enjoying himself. See the greed for the food, the lust creating an unnatural expression? He was relaxing on a Sunday afternoon before a speech before the faculty of some university; I forget which. Those happy days in the sixties.”

“If I can’t do my job,” Tibor said, “its your fault.”

“‘A poor workman always blames–’”

“You’re not a box of tools.” Both manual extensors slapped at the cart. “My tools are here. I don’t blame; I use them. But you— you’re my employer; you’re telling me what to do, but how can I, from that one color shot? Tell me—”

“A Pilg. The Eltern of the Church say that if the photograph is inadequate—and it is, and we know it, all of us—then you must go on a Pilg until you find the Deus Irae, and they’ve sent documents pertaining to that.”

Blinking in surprise, Tibor gaped, then protested, “But my metabattery! Suppose it gives out!”

Father Handy said, “So you do blame your tools.” His voice was carefully controlled, quietly resounding.

At the stove, Ely said, “Fire him.”

To her, Father Handy said, “I fire no one. A pun. Fire: their hell, the Christians. We don’t have that,” he reminded her. And then to Tibor he said the Great Verse of all the worlds, that which both men understood and yet did not grasp, could not, like Papagano with his net, entangle. He spoke it aloud as a bond holding them together in what they, the Christians, called agape, love. But this was higher than that; this was love and man and beautifulness, the three: a new trinity.

Ich sih die liehte heide

in gruner varwe stan.

Dar süln wir alle gehen,

die sumerzit enphahen.

After he said that, Tibor nodded, picked up his coffee cup once more, that difficult, elaborate motion and problem; sipped. The room became still and even Ely, the woman, did not chatter.

Outdoors, the cow which pulled Tibor’s cart groaned huskily, shifted; perhaps, Father Handy thought, it is looking for, hoping for, food. It needs food for the body, we for our mind. Or everyone dies. We must have the mural; he must travel over a thousand miles, and if his cow dies or his battery gives out, then we expire with him; he is not alone in this death.

He wondered if Tibor knew that. If it would help to know. Probably not. So he did not say it; in this world nothing helped.

TWO

Neither man knew who had written the old poem, the medieval German words which could not be found in their Cassell’s dictionary; they together, the two of them, had imagined out, summoned, found, the meaning of the words; they were certain they were right and understood. But not exactly. And Ely sneered.

But it was, I see the light-stricken thicket. In green—and then they did not quite know. It somehow stood in greenness. And we will all go there … was it soon? The summertime to—but to what? To reach? To find? Or was it—the summertime to leave?

They felt it, he and Tibor; a final truth, and yet it was, for them in their ignorance, without reference sources, both leaving and finding the summertime, the sun-struck woodland; it was life and the leaving of life fused, since they did not quite make it out rationally, and it frightened them, and yet they turned and returned to it, because—and perhaps exactly because they could not understand—it was a balm; it salved them.

Now, Father Handy and Tibor needed a power—mekkis, Father Handy thought to himself—to come from Above and aid them … on this, the Servants of Wrath agreed with the Christians: the good power lay Above, Ubrem Sternenzelt, as Schiller had once said: above the band of stars. Yes, beyond the stars; this they were clear on;