“This is my last performance, I know. I feel it. The audience is sure to hold someone…” She yawned and stretched. It appeared so certain her straining bodice would be unable to contain her that I averted my eyes. When I looked again, she was sleeping.

A slender oar trailed behind the boat. I took it and found that despite the circularity of the hull above the water, there was a keel below. In the center of the river the current ran strongly enough that I needed only to steer our slow progress along a series of gracefully sweeping meanders. Just as the hooded servant and I had passed unseen through suites and alcoves and arcades when he had escorted me along the hidden ways of the Second House, so now the sleeping Jolenta and I passed without noise or effort, almost completely unobserved, through leagues of garden. Couples lay on the soft grass beneath the trees and in the more refined comfort of summerhouses and seemed to think our craft hardly more than a decoration sent idly downstream for their delectation, or if they saw my head above the curved petals assumed us intent upon our own affairs. Lone philosophers meditated on rustic seats, and parties, not invariably erotic, proceeded undisturbed in clerestories and arboriums.

Eventually I came to resent Jolenta’s sleep. I abandoned the oar and knelt beside her on the cushions. There was a purity in her sleeping face, however artificial, that I had never observed when she was awake. I kissed her, and her large eyes, hardly open, seemed almost Agia’s long eyes, as her red-gold hair appeared almost brown. I loosened her clothing. She seemed half drugged, whether by some soporific in the heaped cushions or merely by the fatigue induced by our walk in the open and the burden of so great a quantity of voluptuous flesh. I freed her breasts, each nearly as large as her own head, and those wide thighs, which seemed to hold a new-hatched chick between them.

When we returned, everyone knew where we had been, though I doubt that Baldanders cared. Dorcas wept in private, vanishing for a time only to emerge with inflamed eyes and a heroine’s smile. Dr. Talos, I think, was simultaneously enraged and delighted. I received the impression (which I hold to this day) that he had never enjoyed Jolenta, and that it was only to him, of all the men of Urth, that she would have given herself entirely willingly.

We spent the watches that remained before nightfall in listening to Dr. Talos chaffer with various officials of the House Absolute, and in rehearsal. Since I have already said something of what it was to act in Dr. Talos’s play, I propose to give an approximation of the text here — not as it existed on the fragments of soiled paper we passed from hand to hand that afternoon, which often contained no more than hints for improvisations, but as it might have been recorded by some diligent clerk in the audience; and as it was, in fact, recorded by the demonic witness who dwells behind my eyes.

But first you must visualize our theater. Urth’s laboring margin has climbed once more above the red disc; long-winged bats flit overhead, and a green quarter moon hangs low in the eastern sky. Imagine the slightest of valleys, a thousand paces or more from lip to lip, set among the gentlest turf-covered rolling hills. There are doors in these hills, some no wider than the entrance to an ordinary private room, some as wide as the doors of a basilica. These doors are open, and a mist-tinged light spills from them. Flagged paths wind down toward the tiny arch of our proscenium; they are dotted with men and women in the fantastic costumes of a masque — costumes drawn largely from remote ages, so that I, with no more than the smattering of history furnished me by Thecla and Master Palaemon, scarcely recognize one of them. Servants move among these masquers carrying trays loaded with cups and tumblers, heaped with delicious-smelling meats and pastries. Black seats of velvet and ebony, as delicate as crickets, face our stage, but many in the audience prefer to stand, and throughout our performance the spectators come and go without interruption, many remaining to hear no more than a dozen lines. Hylas sing in the trees, the nightingales trill, and atop the hills the walking statues move slowly through many poses. All the parts in the play are taken by Dr. Talos, Baldanders, Dorcas, Jolenta, or me.

Persons in the Play:

Gabriel

The Giant Nod

Meschia, the First Man

Meschiane, the First Woman

Jahi

The Autarch

The Contessa

Her Maid

Two Soldiers

A Statue

A Prophet

The Generalissimo

Two Demons (disguised)

The Inquisitor

His Familiar

Angelic Beings

The New Sun

The Old Sun

The Moon

The back of the stage is dark.

GABRIEL appears bathed in golden light and carrying a crystal clarion.

GABRIEL: Greetings. I have come to set the scene for you — after all, that is my function. It is the night of the last day, and the night before the first. The Old Sun has set. He will appear in the sky no more. Tomorrow the New Sun will rise, and my siblings and I will greet him. Tonight… tonight no one knows. Everyone sleeps.

Footsteps, heavy and slow. Enter NOD.

GABRIEL: Omniscience! Defend your servant!

NOD: Do you serve him? So do we Nephilim. I will not harm you, then, unless he suggests it.

GABRIEL: You are of his household? How does he communicate with you?

NOD: To tell the truth, he doesn’t. I’m forced to guess at what he wishes me to do.

GABRIEL: I was afraid of that.

NOD: Have you seen Meschia’s son?

GABRIEL: Have I seen him? Why, you great ninny, he isn’t even born yet. What do you want with him?

NOD: He is to come and dwell with me, in my land east of this garden. I will give him one of my daughters to wife.

GABRIEL: You have the wrong creation, my friend — you’re fifty million years too late.

NOD: (Nods slowly, not understanding.) If you should see him—

Enter MESCHIA and MESCHIANE, with JAHI following. All are naked, but JAHI wears jewelry.

MESCHIA: What a lovely place! Delightful! Flowers, fountains, and statues — isn’t it wonderful?

MESCHIANE: (Timidly.) I saw a tame tiger with fangs longer than my hand. What shall we call him?

MESCHIA: Whatever he wants. (To GABRIEL:) Who owns this beautiful spot?

GABRIEL: The Autarch.

MESCHIA: And he permits us to live here. That’s very gracious of him.

GABRIEL: Not exactly. There’s someone following you, my friend. Do you know it?

MESCHIA: (Not looking.) There’s something behind you too.

GABRIEL: (Flourishing the clarion that is his badge of office.) Yes, He is behind me!

MESCHIA: Close, too. If you’re going to blow that horn to call help, you’d better do it now.

GABRIEL: Why, how perceptive of you. But the time is not quite ripe. The golden light fades, and GABRIEL vanishes from the stage. NOD remains motionless, leaning on his club.

MESCHIANE: I’ll start a fire, and you had better begin to build us a house. It must rain often here — see how green the grass is.

MESCHIA: (Examining NOD.) Why, it’s only a statue. No wonder he wasn’t afraid of it.

MESCHIANE: It might come to life. I heard something once about raising sons from stones.

MESCHIA: Once! Why you were only born just now. Yesterday, I think.

MESCHIANE: Yesterday! I don’t remember it… I’m such a child, Meschia. I don’t remember anything until I walked out into the light and saw you talking to a sunbeam.