"Thy race ceases. Its continuance depended upon thy power to serve our
purposes. Thou hast lost all power. What art thou but a charnel-house,
a mortuary-pit? Freedom we needed, and space: here we have been
compacted together, a billion to a pin-point! Doorless our chambers and
blind;--and the passages are blocked and broken;--and the stairways lead
to nothing. Also there are Haunters here, not of our kind,--Things never
to be named."
For a little time the Man thought gratefully of death and dust. But
suddenly there came into his memory a vision of his enemy's face, with a
wicked smile upon it. And then he wished for longer life,--a hundred
years of life and pain,--only to see the grass grow tall above the
grave of that enemy. And the Souls mocked his desire:--
"Thine enemy will not waste much thought upon thee. He is no
half-man,--thine enemy! The ghosts in that body have room and great
light. High are the ceilings of their habitation; wide and clear the
passageways; luminous the courts and pure. Like a fortress excellently
garrisoned is the brain of thine enemy;--and to any point thereof the
defending hosts can be gathered for battle in a moment together. _His_
generation will not cease--nay! that face of his will multiply
throughout the centuries! Because thine enemy in every time provided for
the needs of his higher ghosts: he gave heed to their warnings; he
pleasured them in all just ways; he did not fail in reverence to them.
Wherefore they now have power to help him at his need.... How hast thou
reverenced or pleasured us?"
* * * * *
The Man remained silent for a space. Then, as in horror of doubting, he
questioned:--
"Wherefore should ye fear--if nothingness be the end?"
"What is nothingness?" the Souls responded. "Only in the language of
delusion is there an end. That which thou callest the end is in truth
but the very beginning. The essence of us cannot cease. In the burning
of worlds it cannot be consumed. It will shudder in the cores of great
stars;--it will quiver in the light of other suns. And once more, in
some future cosmos, it will reconquer knowledge--but only after
evolutions unthinkable for multitude. Even out of the nameless
beginnings of form, and thence through every cycle of vanished
being,--through all successions of exhausted pain,--through all the
Abyss of the Past,--it must climb again."