“Get in front,” Tibor said, “and lift it up. All of you—take hold at the same time!” They did so, obediently but joyfully. He reclutched the cart in forward one—it shuddered and then passed over the first tree, to come to rest halfway up the second. A moment later he found himself bumping over the second tree and up against a third. The cart, raised up, jutting its nose into the sky, whined and groaned, and a wisp of blue smoke trickled up from the engine.

Now he could see better. Fanners, some robot, some alive, worked the fields on all sides. A thin layer of soil over slag; a few limp wheat stalks waved, thin and emaciated. The ground was terrible, the worst he had ever seen. He could feel the metal beneath the cart, almost at the surface. Bent men and women watered their sickly crops with tin cans, old metal containers picked from the ruins. An ox was pulling a crude car.

In another field, women weeded by hand; all moved slowly, stupidly, victims of hookworm from the soil. They were all barefoot. The children evidently hadn’t picked it up yet, but they soon would. He gazed up at the clouded sky and gave thanks to the God of Wrath for sparing him this; trials of exceptional vividness lay on every hand. These men and women were being tempered in a hot crucible; their souls were probably purified to an astonishing degree. A baby lay in the shade, beside a half-dozing mother. Flies crept over its eyes; the mother breathed heavily, hoarsely, her mouth open, an unhealthy flush discoloring the paperlike skin. Her belly bulged; she had already become pregnant again. Another eternal soul to be raised from a lower level. Her great breasts sagged and wobbled as she stirred in her sleep, spilling out over her dirty wraparound.

The boys, having pushed him and the Holstein past the logs, the remnants of former trees, trotted off.

“Wait,” Tibor said. “Come back. I will ask and you will answer. You know the basic catechisms?” He peered sharply around.

The children returned, eyes on the ground, and assembled in a silent circle around him. One hand went up, then another.

“First,” Tibor said. “Who are you? You are a minute fragment in the cosmic plan. Second—what are you? A mere speck in a system so vast as to be beyond comprehension. Third! What is the way of life? To fulfill what is required by the cosmic forces. Fourth! What—”

“Fifth,” one of the boys muttered. “Where have you been?” He answered his own question. “Through endless steps; each turn of the wheel advances or depresses you.”

“Sixth!” Tibor cried. “What determines your direction at the next turn? Your conduct in this manifestation.

“Seventh! What is right conduct? Submitting yourself to the eternal forces of the Deus Irae, that which makes up the divine plan.

“Eighth! What is the significance of suffering? To purify the soul.

“Ninth! What is the significance of death? To release the person from this manifestation, so he may rise to a new rung of the ladder.

“Tenth—” But at that moment Tibor broke off. An adult human shape approached his cart; instinctively, his Holstein lowered her head and pretended—or tried—to crop the bitter weeds growing around her.

“We got to go,” the black children piped. “Goodbye.” They scampered off; one paused, looked back at Tibor, and shouted, “Don’t talk to her! My momma say never to talk to her or you get sucked in. Watch out, y’hear?”

“I hear,” Tibor said, and shivered. The air had become dark and cool, as if awaiting the thrashing fury of a storm. He knew what this was; he recognized her.

He would go down the ruined streets, toward the sprawling mass of stone and columns that was its house. It had been described to him many times. Each stone was carefully listed on the big map back at Charlottesville. He knew by heart the street that led there, to the entrance. He knew how the great doors lay on their faces, broken and split. He knew how the dark, empty corridors would look inside. He would pass into the vast chamber, the dark room of bats and spiders and echoing sounds. And there it would be. The Great C. Waiting silently, waiting to hear the questions. The queries on which it thrived.

“Who is there?” the shape asked him, the female shape of the Great C’s peripatetic extension. The voice sounded again, a metallic voice, hard and penetrating, without warmth in it. An enormous voice that could not be stopped; it would never become still.

He was afraid, more afraid than ever before in his life. His body had begun to shake terribly. Awkwardly he thrashed about in his seat, squinting in the gloom to make out her features. He could not. She had a dished-in face, with almost vestigial features, almost without the courtesy of features at all. That chilled him, too.

“I’ve—” He swallowed noisily, revealing his fear. “I have come to pay my respects, Great C,” he breathed.

“You have prepared questions for me?”

“Yes,” he said, lying. He had hoped to sneak past the Great C, not disturbing it, not being disturbed by it either.

“You will ask me within the structure,” she said, putting her hand on the railing of his car. “Not out here.”

Tibor said, “I do not have to go into the structure. You can answer the questions here.” Huskily he cleared his throat, swallowed, pondered the first question; he had carried them with him, in written form, just in case. Thank god he had; thank god that Father Handy had prepared him. She would eventually drag him inside, but he intended to hold off as long as possible. “How did you come into existence?” he asked.

“Is that the first question?”

“No,” he said quickly; it certainly was not.

“I don’t recognize you,” the mobile extension of the giant computer said, her voice tinny and shrill. “Are you from another area?”

“Charlottesville,” Tibor said.

“And you came this way to question me?”

“Yes,” he lied. He reached into his coat pocket; one of his manual extensors checked that the derringer .22 pistol, single shot, which Father Handy had given him, was still there. “I have a gun,” he said.

“Do you?” Her tone was scathing, in an abstract sort of way.

“I’ve never fired a pistol before,” Tibor said. “We have bullets, but I don’t know if they still work.”

“What is your name?”

“Tibor McMasters. I’m an incomplete; I have no arms or legs.”

“A phocomelus,” the Great C said.

“Pardon?” he said, half stammering.

“You are a young man,” she said. “I can see you fairly well. Part of my equipment was destroyed in the Smash, but I can still see a little. Originally, I scanned mathematical questions visually. It saved time. I see you have military clothing. Where did you get it? Your tribe does not make such things, does it?”

“No, this is military garb. United Nations, by the color, I would say.” Tremblingly, he rasped, “Is it true that you come originally from the hand of the God of Wrath? That he manufactured you in order to put the world to fire? Made suddenly terrible—by atoms. And that you invented the atoms and delivered them to the world, corrupting God’s original plan? We know you did it,” he finished. “But we don’t know how.”

“That is your first question? I will never tell you. It is too terrible for you ever to know. Lufteufel was insane; he made me do insane things.”

“Men other than the Deus Irae came to visit you,” Tibor said, “They came and listened.”

“You know,” the Great C said, “I have existed a long time. I remember life before the Smash. I could tell you many things about it. Life was much different then. You wear a beard and hunt animals in the woods. Before the Smash there were no woods. Only cities and farms. And men were clean-shaven. Many of them wore white clothing, then. They were scientists. They were very fine. I was constructed by engineers; they were a form of scientist.” She paused. “Do you recognize the name Einstein? Albert Einstein?”