“That won’t be necessary,” replied Ransom. “You have our thanks for the ride.”
With a parting bow, the gondolier shoved off.
There was no shore at the foot of the dock, only a daunting doorway set in the wall of the thunderhead. Torchlight flickered darkly on its burnished bronze panels, silhouetting scenes of daring hunts and kingly feasts.
“In a place where no one is foolish enough to fall for lies, there can be no sin, for behind every sin is a lie.” Ransom tensed his arms and pushed open the double doors. “At the root of all evil is deception.”
From Corwin’s agile memory, a Bible verse bubbled to mind.
“I thought that the love of money was the root of all evil?”
“And what does money represent?”
The groaning doors swung wide to unveil a sea of glittering gold. Bountiful riches were piled high, heaps of coins shining, speckled with sparkling gemstones. There were diamonds and pearls, emeralds and sapphires, and rubies as large as Corwin’s fist. Gilded crowns and elegant jewelry littered the cavernous chamber, guarded by suits of armor that silently stood watch. It was a treasure trove fit for a pirate king or a miserly dragon.
“Money means different things to different people,” spoke Corwin as he entered the room. “Power, prestige, freedom . . .”
“That’s true in a sense, but we both know that power is not always bought, nor is prestige. And freedom? What has money to do with freedom? Recall how you felt in the winter of your eleventh year when you donated that collection of childhood toys.”
It might have started because his mother had threatened to throw his things out, but when Corwin laid down that big cardboard box full of treasures at the charity drive, he couldn’t help but feel relieved. They would bring joy to someone else now, and letting go of that box lifted a burden off more than just his shoulders.
“I felt lighter.”
“Treasure can weigh a person down,” said Ransom. “The freest among you are often those with the fewest possessions.”
“But to be free from worrying about how to pay the bills! To be free from the anxiety of not knowing where your next meal might come from!”
“You’re getting closer, but what you speak of is not freedom. Slaves don’t fret over paying the bills.”
“Then what is it?” Corwin asked in frustration.
“Think! What drives kings to hide behind castle walls, investors to diversify in case the market falls, and pharaohs to be buried with their riches? What is only sought harder the more men gain, but is always sought in vain?”
Voices moaned from tombs and bluish spectres materialized before Corwin’s eyes. Their transparent bodies were garbed in royal vestments, worn ragged by the passage of eons. Some wandered the chamber while others sat atop thrones that jutted from the spoils. Bony hands scooped up coins, but could hold them for only an instant before the gold fell through their ghostly fingers.
“It’s security!”
“Security,” repeated Ransom. “An obsessive desire to control future uncertainties. Nothing poisons man’s heart more than fear of the future, and for most of you, money is seen as the surest guard against that fear. Thus you hoard the wealth of the present world, when you should be seeking the treasures of the next.”
“Another case of bad priorities,” Corwin concluded.
A canal cut through the immense cavern, which they crossed by way of a footbridge. Stray coins glinted under the water, the stream’s winding course vanishing behind the bars of a sewer tunnel.
“By the way,” said Corwin, “if we happen across a magic lamp with a genie inside, I call dibs on the first wish.”
“What would you wish for?”
“To go to a heaven of my choosing. Personally, I’m leaning towards Pie Heaven at the moment.”
Ransom rubbed his stomach.
“Mmmm . . . Pie . . .”
“Also, if the way you describe sin is correct, then it seems to me that your god is rather unfair about it.”
“How so?”
“According to you, it’s not a lack of free will, but a lack of stupidity that prevents sin from occurring in Heaven. But whose fault is that? If mortal man is too dumb to know what’s good for him, isn’t god to blame for making us that way?”
“You see through a clouded lens, but it is not so clouded that you can’t tell light from dark,” said Ransom.
“Why not just give us perfect vision from the start?”
“You ask why man should need faith. I think you already know the answer to that.”
Though it pained him to admit it, Corwin found that the angel was right. A certain phrase about heroes and pragmatists came to mind.
“Because being pragmatic isn’t enough.”
“Faith makes doing the right thing heroic, and Heaven is a place for heroes.”
“Even atheist heroes?” pressed Corwin with a smirk.
“I wouldn’t know,” Ransom glibly replied. “I’ve never met one.”
“What about heroic Buddhists or Muslims or Hindus? Jesus claimed that no one goes to the father except through him.”
“Indeed. Without the Redeemer’s sacrifice, none would enter Heaven. What’s your point?”
Ransom’s succinct response took the wind out of Corwin’s sails. He could handily recite a hundred Bible verses word-for-word, but interpreting them was another matter.
“Okay,” he gathered his thoughts, “but by that token, if Heaven can be earned by anyone, what’s the use of Christianity?”
“Does a lover ask what the use is of knowing his beloved better?” posed Ransom. “And understand that Heaven is not ‘earned.’ A prize so extraordinary as that can never be deserved. It comes always as a gift.”
A gold ring caught Corwin’s eye and he stooped to pick it up. Its band was thick and masculine, set with a square-cut amethyst and engraved with crooked runes.
“With the way some preachers harp on about tithing, I’d assumed that you could buy your way in,” he muttered, admiring the ring as he slipped it on his finger.
Upon noticing the trinket, Ransom’s expression stiffened.
“It’s a little late to warn you, but you really shouldn’t touch any of the treasure here.”
“Why?”
A malevolent shriek stood Corwin’s hair on end. One of the wraiths had halted behind them, its arm raised, a knobby finger pointing, accusing.
“Thieves!” it rasped. “Plunderers!”
“That’s why,” said Ransom.
Spirits animated the suits of armor, their limbs jerking mechanically into motion as Corwin tugged at the ring.
“It’s not coming off!”
He stepped back and tripped over something protruding from the heaped coins and gems. It was the arm of a golden sculpture, an eyeless effigy so lifelike that Corwin could almost hear the tormented scream forever frozen on its lips. A fresh look at the chamber revealed others like it, their poses bespeaking horror and despair.
From his place atop the uppermost throne, the high king of the wraiths thumped his ethereal scepter.
“Give our intruders the baptism of gold!”
21
A Heart-Shaped Cage
White-blue eyes burned like hot coals beneath the visors of the possessed suits of armor. Two were nearly upon them, advancing from either side, their plate mail clinking as they descended the heaps of hoarded treasure. The first raised his halberd. Swiftly, Ransom stepped inside the swing, caving the armor’s helm with a blow and disarming it. He drove the halberd’s point through the second armor, lifted it and brought it crashing down on the first.
“Succumb!” shrieked the wraith beyond, unsheathing its phantom blade.
Ransom freed the halberd and threw it, but like a sword through smoke, it only disturbed the apparition briefly. The wraith reformed as the weapon speared a ruined pillar behind it.
“That’s a problem.”
Grabbing Corwin, Ransom kicked up coins as he bolted away. Wraiths
wailed and armors clanged at their backs.
“You’re an angel!” shouted Corwin. “Can’t you handle a few ghosts?”
“Spirits can’t be stopped by physical force. Even severing body from soul with a soulrender won’t help if your foe doesn’t have a body to begin with!”
“How can they be stopped?”
“Normally a prayer or two would do the trick, but ever since I broke my oath, the Father has been putting my prayers on his back burner.”
“Then warp us out of here!”
“There’s nowhere they won’t follow so long as you’re wearing that ring.”
Corwin pulled and twisted, but the ring wouldn’t budge.
“Got any Vaseline in that suit of yours?” he asked as they clambered up another glittering hill.
“Afraid not,” replied Ransom, “but I’ve got a pair of scissors! Compared to the ‘baptism of gold,’ losing a finger might not be so bad.”
“Yeah,” spat Corwin, “and I’ll be hailed as a hero when I return to the Shire!”
They had just passed the hill’s crest when the ground shifted beneath them. There was a jingling rumble as thousands of coins spilled, golden waves breaking against a stony shore. Corwin caught his foot on a crown and half-slipped.
“Holy Mother of–”
Ransom’s fist rattled his skull and Corwin tumbled down the slope in a wild roll.
“What was that for?” he complained at the bottom.
“Blasphemy,” said Ransom. “We could use the Mediatrix on our side about now!”
The mound was coming apart, a long shape rising out of it. A tail.
Corwin paled.
“About those scissors . . . I may just be starting to come around.”
Like a wet dog, the scaly beast shook itself, flinging gems and medallions. Corwin couldn’t see the rest of its body, but he heard a loud stomp, and then the tail swung out over their heads, smashing through one of the cavern’s thick columns.
“Try to keep up!” yelled Ransom.
Again they were running. Corwin spotted a yellow glow between the hills ahead. Another river divided the chamber, broader than the canal that they had crossed before. It was a river not of water, but of liquid gold. An arching strip of stone connected their side of the treasury to a cave in the chamber wall. Above it were carved two crowned skulls, waterfalls pouring from their mouths, giving rise to pillars of steam as they met the simmering current below.
A booming roar shivered the walls. Dust sprinkled down from the ceiling and steam shrouded Corwin as he dashed for the cave. He glimpsed a giant shadow rearing over his shoulder and dove.
With an earth-shaking crash, the cave’s entrance collapsed. Falling rubble threatened to bury him alive, and would have if not for the flooding. Submerged in bottle-green murkiness, he swam hard as boulders splashed and sank all around him. At last he reached the shallows and came up beside Ransom.
Crawling onto the shore, Corwin noticed a change.
The ring! It came loose!
He saw where it had slipped off beneath the water’s edge and stepped away, glad to be rid of the blasted thing.
Twenty tons of rock sealed the passage to the treasury. Through it came a wraith, its voice a wretched moan, icy breath trembling the torches. It hovered before them with a bluish saber in hand. Ages-old hatred burned in its eyes, but the wraith’s lust for treasure was greater than its lust for blood. Swooping low, it seized the jeweled ring, and like a mist vanquished by the sun, both wraith and ring evaporated.
“Guess we won’t be needing these,” said Ransom, stowing his pair of barber shop scissors.
Wet and weary, Corwin trudged towards the rear of the cave, where a short flight of stairs led to a second bronze doorway.
“Can we please go to Pie Heaven now?”
“As tempting as that sounds, I intend to see that you end up someplace even better.”
“There’s a saying about things that sound too good to be true.”
“Oh, but it’s more true, more real than all the splendor of the mortal world!”
“I rather like the splendor of the mortal world!” retorted Corwin. “I like junk food and violent movies and rock & roll and sex! A heaven without those things doesn’t sound like a place I want to be.”
Ransom eased one of the doors open.
“Perhaps you would prefer a paradise like this one?”
Sweeping balconies let in the sun, its heraldic light gleaming on marble tiles and florid pillars so tall and slender that Corwin doubted whether they really supported any weight. Tasseled cushions and richly embroidered rugs were strewn with abandon. Roses were in bloom, their vines clinging to sculptures, and cool water sluiced from fountains into wading pools.
The palace held many sights, but none more striking than its occupants. Wearing lacey garments of scarlet and spun gold, the voluptuous beauties of the harem were enough to make Corwin’s lungs forget how to breathe. One of them sauntered over, balancing a saucer of fresh fruit.
“You know, I used to make fun of people who believed in this sort of thing,” Corwin said to his attorney as he plucked a few choice grapes from the arrangement, “but it’s actually kind of awesome.”
The attendant whisked the fruit away and it took every ounce of Corwin’s willpower to wrench his gaze from the sway of her red sarong.
“To be sure, a paradise like this is a little crude, not to mention totally pointless if biological reproduction is a thing of the past, but at least I can see the appeal.”
“The Father is a creator, not a destroyer,” said Ransom. “Nothing good in the mortal world is undone in Heaven.”
“So there is sex in Heaven?”
Fetching a long-stemmed glass off a passing tray, Ransom sampled the fizzy vintage.
“The question isn’t whether or not you can have sex in Heaven. The question is whether you’ll care.”
“How could I not?”
They came upon a young boy with straw-colored hair at play on one of the rugs. A mountain of sweets topped the saucer next to him. Gourmet chocolates and gooey caramels and frosted cakes tempted the eye, a cocoa smear staining the boy’s cheek, but presently his attention was focused on his toy truck. The shiny red and blue semi had a gray trailer and long, chrome exhaust pipes. He made a vroom sound as he excitedly pushed it back and forth.
“That’s me!” exclaimed Corwin, studying the child in amazement.
His younger self, however, seemed totally uninterested in the two adult visitors.
“That toy truck once meant the world to you,” spoke Ransom.
“That’s not just some toy truck,” objected Corwin. “That’s Optimus Prime, fearless leader of the Autobots!”
As they watched, young Corwin detached the trailer and transformed the semi truck into a formidable robot warrior. What had been vrooms became the pew-pew of a laser rifle.
“To a five-year-old, toys and candy are the height of pleasure,” said Ransom, “but when one becomes an adult, new pleasures present themselves. Given the choice between a night of passionate sex and a Snickers bar, which would the adult Corwin choose?”
“Well I do like Snickers.”
Ransom cast his client a withering glance.
“Maybe not that much,” blurted Corwin.
“In the journey from childhood to adulthood, man’s desires evolve. How much more will they evolve when you come into the fullness of the next life? Once you’ve tasted the pleasures of Heaven, I highly doubt that the act of wedging your bodies together like sweaty Tetris blocks will still hold the same allure.”
The analogy made sense enough to Corwin, but there was something about it that rang hollow. Christianity didn’t paint a pretty picture of Heaven, because it didn’t paint any picture at all.
“If Heaven is really so great, why all the secrecy? Christians are more than happy to talk about Hell, but on the subject of Heaven ‘eye has not seen, ear has not heard’ and so on. One might think that hope takes a back seat t
o fear.”
“Explaining Heaven to mortals is like explaining color to a man born blind,” replied Ransom. “It’s like explaining the world to an unborn child that knows only the womb! Hell is a simpler thing, for it is less than Earth, but Heaven is more.”
“Can nothing be said of it then?”
“I didn’t say that.”
They roamed out onto the rearmost balcony and Corwin had to double-check the view. Sure enough, sunlight still poured through the other porticos, but this last one inexplicably looked out upon a starry night. He could see that their palace resided atop a mountain that rose high above the moonlit clouds. What’s more, it wasn’t the only one. Other palaces crowned the far-off peaks, their lofty towers capped with golden, onion-shaped domes.
Leaning against the banister, Ransom stared up at the stars.
“The Father is infinite. Our finite minds will never fully grasp him, not even in Heaven. But in our smallness is our joy, for to learn of the Father—to discover his ways and the glorious works of his hands—is an adventure without end.”
He turned to Corwin.
“You said once that you dreamed of being captain of the starship Enterprise. In a way, your dream wasn’t too far off the mark. Heaven, you see, is infinite discovery.”
For a time Corwin said nothing. The thrill of scientific discovery was a joy that he had always associated with atheism, but what if that very same joy was another clue, another foretaste of the divine?
“And that’s only the beginning,” continued Ransom. “Just as your mind has an endless appetite for discovery, so too does your heart have an endless appetite for love. God alone can sate it.”
“But how can love be perfectly satisfied in a heaven that only some people go to?” The thought had been percolating in Corwin’s head, and now it came fiercely to a boil. “Can a mother be blissfully happy, knowing that her children are burning in a lake of fire? Could I be at peace if I knew that my father was being tortured eternally?”
“Her children? Your father? Listen to yourself!” snapped Ransom. “That sort of childish passion is not love. It is a selfish desire that seeks to possess the other like a piece of property!”
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