Robert Heinlein - JOB - A Comedy of Justice

'Me? No, no! There's been a mistake.'

`So it appears. Daughter, you may go.'

'Now you just wait! Having come all this way, I have things I've been planning to tell you. Perfectly scandalous goings-on I have seen around here. Why, without the slightest sense of decency -

`Daughter, I dismissed you. Will you walk out on your own feet? Or shall I send for two stalwart angels and have you thrown out?'

'Why, the very idea! I was just going to say -´

'You are not going to say!'

'Well, I certainly have as much right to speak my mind as anyone!'

'Not in this office. Sister Marie Charles!'

'Yes, sir!'

'Do you still remember the judo they taught you when you were working with the Detroit police?'

'I do!'

'Get this yenta out of here.'

The tall nun grinned and dusted her hands together. What happened next happened so fast that I can't describe it. But Abigail left very suddenly.

Saint Peter sat back down, sighed, and picked up his Coke. 'That woman would try the patience of Job. How long were you married to her?´

'Uh, slightly over a thousand years.'

'I understand you. Why did you send for her?'

'I didn't. Well, I didn't intend to.' I started to try to explain.

He stopped me. 'Of course! Why didn't you say that you were searching for your concubine? You misled Mary Rose. Yes, I know whom you mean: the zaftig shiksa who runs all through the latter part of your dossier. Very nice girl, she seemed to me. You are looking for her?'

'Yes, surely. The day of the Trump and the Shout we were snatched up together. But that whirlwind, a real Kansas twister, was so violent that we were separated.'

'You inquired about her before. An inquiry relayed from the information booth by the River.'

'That´s right.'

'Alexander, that inquiry is the last entry in your file. I can order the search repeated... but I can tell you ahead of time that it will be useful only to assure you. The answer, will be the same: She is not here.'

He stood up and came around to put a hand on my shoulder. 'This is a tragedy that I have seen repeated endlessly. A loving couple, confident of eternity together: One comes here, the other does not. What can I do? I wish I could do something. I can't.'

'Saint Peter, there has been a mistake!'

He did not answer.

'Listen to me! I know! She and I were side by side, kneeling at the chancel rail, praying... and just before the Trump and the Shout the Holy Ghost descended on us and we were in a perfect state of grace and were snatched up together. Ask Him! Ask Him! He will listen to you.'

Peter sighed again. 'He will listen to anyone, in any of His Aspects. But I will inquire.' He picked up a telephone instrument so old-fashioned that Alexander Graham Bell could have assembled it. 'Charlie, give me the Spook. Okay, I'll wait. Hi! This is Pete, down at the main gate. Heard any new ones? No? Neither have I Listen, I got a problem. Please run Yourself back to the day of the Shout and the Trump, when You, in Your aspect as Junior, caught up alive all those incarnate souls who were at that moment in a state of grace. Place Yourself outside a wide place in the road called Lowell, Kansas - that's in North America - and at a tent meeting, a revival under canvas. Are You there? Now, at least a few femtoseconds before the Trump, it is alleged by one Alexander Hergensheimer, now canonized, that You descended on him and is beloved concubine Margrethe. She is described as about three and a half cubits tall, blonde, freckled, eighty mina - Oh, You do? Oh. Too late, huh? I was afraid of that. I'll tell him.'

I interrupted, whispering urgently, 'Ask Him where she is!´

'Boss, Saint Alexander is in agony. He wants to know where she is. Yes, I'll tell him.' Saint Peter hung up. 'Not in Heaven, not on earth. You can figure out the answer yourself And I'm sorry.-

I, must state that Saint Peter was endlessly patient with me. He assured me that I could talk with any One of the Trinity... but reminded me that, in consulting the Holy Ghost we had consulted all of Them. Peter had fresh searches made of the Rapture list, the graves-opened list, and of the running list of all arrivals since then - while telling me that no computer search could conceivably deny the infallible answers of God Himself speaking as the Holy Ghost... which I understood and agreed with, while welcoming new searches.

I said, 'But how about on earth? Could she be alive somewhere there? Maybe in Copenhagen?'

Peter answered, 'Alexander, He is as omniscient on earth as He is in Heaven. Can't you see that?'

I gave a deep sigh. 'I see that. I've been dodging the obvious. All right, how do I get from here to Hell?'

'Alec! Don't talk that way!'

'The hell I won't talk that way! Peter, an eternity here without her is not an eternity of bliss; it is an eternity of boredom and loneliness and grief. You think this damned gaudy halo means anything to me when I know - yes, you´ve convinced me! - that my beloved is burning in the Pit? I didn't ask much. Just to be allowed to live with her. I was willing to wash dishes forever if only I could see her smile, hear her voice, touch her hand! She's been shipped on a technicality and you know it! Snobbish, bad-tempered angels get to live here without ever doing one, lick to deserve it. But my Marga, who is a real angel if one ever lived, gets turned down and sent to Hell to everlasting torture on a childish twist in the rules. You can tell the Father and His sweet-talking Son and that sneaky Ghost, that they can take their gaudy Holy City and shove it! If Margrethe has to be in Hell, that's where I want to be!'

Peter, was saying, 'Forgive him, Father; he's feverish, with grief - he doesn't know what he is saying.'

I quieted down a little. 'Saint Peter, I know exactly what I am saying. I don't want to stay here. My beloved is in Hell, so that is where I want to be. Where I must be.'

'Alec, you'll get over this.'

'What you don't see is that I don't want to get over this. I want to be with my love and share her fate. You tell me she's in Hell -´

'No, I told you that it is certain that she is not in Heaven and not on earth.'

'Is there a fourth place? Limbo, or some such?'

'Limbo is a myth. I know of no fourth place.'

'Then I want to leave here at once and look all over Hell for her. How?'

Peter shrugged.

'Damn it, don't give me a run-around! That's all I've been handed since the day I walked through the fire - one run-around after another. Am I a prisoner?.

'No.

'Then tell me how to go to Hell.'

'Very well. You can't wear that halo to Hell. They wouldn't let you in.´

'I never wanted it. Let's go!´

'Not long after that I stood on the threshold of Judah Gate, escorted there by two angels. Peter did not say good-bye to me; I guess he was disgusted. I was sorry about that; I liked him very much. But I could not make him understand that Heaven was not Heaven to me without Margrethe.

I paused at the brink. 'I want you to take one message back to Saint Peter -´

They ignored me, grabbed me from both sides, and tossed me over.

I fell.

And fell.

Oh that I knew where I might find him!

that I might come even to his seat!

I would order my cause before him,

and fill my mouth with arguments.

Job 23:3-4

AND STILL I fell.

For modern man one of the most troubling aspects of eternity lies in getting used to the slippery quality of time. With no clocks and no calendars and lacking even the alternation of day and night, or the phases of the moon, or the pageant of seasons, duration becomes subjective and 'What time is it?' is a matter of opinion, not of fact.

I think I fell longer than twenty minutes; I do not think that I fell as long as twenty years.