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's continuous.
"Now, the important thing is that the Guardian Angels of Earth, the Watchers, those who became intent upon the Creation, came from all these ranks! Even from the very Seraphim there have come Guardians who have spent millions of years on Earth and then gone Home. Going and coming is common. The disposition I describe is innate but not fixed.
"Angels aren't perfect. You can see that already. They are Created Beings. They don't know everything God knows, that's obvious to you and everyone else. But they know a great deal; they know all that can be known in Time if they wish to know it; and that is where angels differ, you see. Some wish to know everything in Time, and some care only for God and God's reflection in those of His most devoted souls. "
"I see, then. What you're saying is everybody's right about it, and everybody's sort of wrong. "
"More right than wrong. Angels are individuals, that is the key. We Who Fell are no single species, unless being the brightest, the most clever, and the most comprehending makes us a species, which I don't think it does. "
"Go on. "
He laughed. "You think I'm going to stop now?"
"I don't know," I said. "Where do I fit in? I don't mean me, Lestat de Lioncourt, I mean what I am . . . the vampire I am. "
"You're an earthbound phenomenon, just like a ghost. We'll get to that in a moment. When God sent us down to Earth to Watch, specifically to observe all Mankind, we were as curious about the dead as the living¡ªthis wreath of souls we could see and hear, gathered about the world, and which we called Sheol immediately because it seemed to us that the realm of these weeping souls was the realm of pure gloom. 'Sheol' means gloom. "
"And the spirit that made the vampires¡ª"
"Wait. It's very simple. Let me present it, however, as it came to me. If I don't do that, how can you understand my position? What I ask of you¡ªto be my lieutenant¡ªis so personal and so total that you can't fully grasp it unless you listen. "
"Please go on. "
"All right. A gathering of Angels decided to go with me, to draw as close as possible to Matter in order to pull together for ourselves our entire knowledge, to better comprehend, as God had asked us to do. Michael came with me. And so did a host of other archangels.
There were a few Seraphim. There were a few Ophanim. And some of the lower orders which are the least intelligent angels, but nevertheless angels, and much in love with Creation and curious as to what was making me so angry with God.
"I can't give you the number of how many we were. But when we reached the earth, we went our separate ways to perceive things, and came together often and instantly and agreed upon what we had seen.
"What united us was our interest in the statement of God that Humankind was part of Nature. We just couldn't see how this was true. We went exploring.
"Very quickly, I learnt that men and women lived now in large groups, very unlike the other primates, that they built shelters for themselves, that they painted their bodies with various colors, that the women often lived separate from the men, and that they believed in something invisible. Now what was that? Was it the souls of the ancestors, the dearly departed who were still locked in the air of Earth, disembodied and confused?
"Yes, it was the souls of ancestors, but the humans worshipped other entities as well. They imagined a God who had made the Wild Beasts and to him they made blood sacrifice on Altars, thinking this aspect of Almighty God to be a personality of very distinct limits and rather easy to please or displease.
"Now, I can't say all this was a big surprise to me. I'd seen the early signs of it. After all, I telescoped millions of years for you in my Revelations. But when I drew near to these altars, when I heard the specific prayer to the God of the Wild Animals; when I began to see the care and deliberation of the sacrifice¡ªthe slaying of a ram or a deer¡ªI was much struck by the fact that not only had these humans come to look like Angels, but they had guessed at the truth.
"They had come upon it instinctively! There was a God. They knew. They didn't know what He was like but they knew. And this instinctive knowledge seemed to spring from the same essence as did their surviving spiritual souls. Let me be even clearer.
"Self-consciousness, and the awareness of one's own death¡ªthis had created a sense of distinct individuality in humans, and this individuality feared death; feared annihilation! Saw it, knew what it was, saw it happening. And prayed for a God that He would not let such a thing have no meaning in the world.
"And it was this very same tenacity¡ªthe tenacity of this individuality¡ªthat made the human soul stay alive after it left the body, imitating the shape of the body, holding itself together, so to speak, clinging to life, as it were, perpetuating itself, by shaping itself according to the only world it knew. "
I didn't speak. I was wound up in the story and only wanted for him to continue. But naturally I thought of Roger. I thought very distinctly of Roger because Roger was the only ghost I'd ever known. And what Memnoch had just described was a highly organized and very willful version of Roger.
"Oh, yes, precisely," said Memnoch, "which is probably why it is just as well that he came to you, though at the time I regarded it as one of the greatest annoyances in the world. "
"You didn't want Roger to come to me?"
"I watched. I listened. I was amazed, as you were, but I have been amazed by other ghosts before him. It wasn't that extraordinary, but no, it certainly wasn't something orchestrated by me, if that's what you mean. "
"But it happened so close to your coming! It seems connected. "
"Does it? What's the connection? Look for it inside yourself. Don't you think the dead have tried to speak before? Don't you think the ghosts of your victims have come howling after you? Admittedly, the ghosts of your victims usually pass in total bliss and confusion, unaware of you as the instrument of their death. But that's not always the case. Maybe what has changed is you! And as we know, you loved this mortal man, Roger, you admired him, you understood his vanity and love of the sacred and the mysterious and the costly, because you have these traits within yourself. "
"Yes, all of that's true, without doubt," I said. "I still think you had something to do with his coming. "
He was shocked. He looked at me for a long moment as if he were going to become angry, and then he laughed.
