Wall Around a Star

ELEVEN

I wake, and the waking is not easy this time. For I am afraid.

Something is moving inside the sacred structure of HIS being, shielded from my knowledge and my control. Some­one is prying into the forbidden secrets, seeking powers that belong to HIM alone. Someone is discovering the se­cret state of the matter that can exist as neither solid nor liquid, gas or plasma, but forms into atoms larger than stars. Someone is using the old weapons to violate HIS pre­cious fabric itself.

It is someone who does not belong to the chosen slaves. Someone has no right there, who can be there for no prop­er purpose.

I am deeply troubled.

I cannot penetrate the mind shields the blasphemers have invented, even to determine their race or their loca­tion or the extent of their unholy aims.

Shall I wake HIM to expunge them? Dare I?

I hesitate. As I rouse and survey the widening spheres of contact I see that there are others to follow, and others beyond them. A thousand times a thousand times I have been aroused from sleep to swat an annoying insect or fumi­gate an erring world. But never before has anyone been so deep in the forbidden places, never shielded so well from my senses.

I must not disturb HUM until HIS time shall come.

Yet now HIS time draws near. On the myriad worlds, my myriad servants are preparing for HIM. The world ma­chine HE dreamed and planned and built is reaching the fulfillment of HIS supernal purpose. HIS moment will be soon.

It will arrive in time, I decide, for HIM to defend HIM­SELF. For when HE wakes, all such would-be desecrators of HIS work will be consumed into HIM. No shield can hide them. No weapon can defend them. All beings every­where will be drunk into HIM.

That is what I fear.

For I myself, like all others, will be engulfed into HIS awful immensity.

Forever.