“Not the rocket metaphor,” sighed Milo.
“Every life you live should take you higher, learning more, becoming wiser, growing in every way. Eventually you reach orbit, living higher and higher lives, circling the planet, until one day, at last, with one final push, you reach escape velocity and fly away into the stars. Remember the fire? That flying away is your destiny, Milo. It’s every soul’s destiny. Weightless and free.”
“Right, right,” said Milo. “Escape velocity. Perfection. Do you know how not-easy that is?”
“Yes,” said Nan. “That’s why you get thousands of lives to do it.”
“I’ve heard this a million times,” Milo fumed.
“Then maybe you need to hear it a million and one!” bellowed Mama, patience gone, swelling like a mighty, psychotic cow. “If you’d try and understand it, maybe we wouldn’t still be here, having the same stupid argument we’ve had over and over, and maybe you wouldn’t be on the verge—”
She stopped.
“On the verge of what?” asked Milo.
“Tell ’im,” rasped Nan. “Hurry up. I’m missing my shows.”
“The thing is,” said Mama, drawing up closer, facing him, “you don’t get to keep trying forever.”
Here it comes, thought Milo.
“A soul gets ten thousand lives,” said Nan. “Ten thousand tries. After that, it becomes Nothingness.”
Milo froze.
Huh?
“That leaves you,” said Mama, “with five more lives to get it right. If you do, you will go through the Sun Door in a flash of golden light and become part of the Great Reality.”
“The Oversoul,” added Nan. “Everything.”
“The universal boa,” barked Milo. “I get it.”
“I hope so,” said Nan. “Because if you don’t, we’ll bring you here and push you off the end of the sidewalk, and you’ll vanish forever from time and space. Your soul will be canceled like a dumb TV show.”
Milo almost threw up. He dropped to his knees to keep from reeling into space.
“I have grown!” he yelled. “Every time I’ve lived a life! When I’m down there, I’m the wisest guy on the planet. I could be president, except I know power is a crutch! I could be rich, but I know money is a siren song. I live by the governing dynamics behind all the traps and illusions—”
“Wisdom,” said Nan, “is not the same as Perfection.”
Frustration.
“Do they give extensions?” Milo asked. “Maybe I can convince them to let—”
“Them?” said Mama. “There’s no ‘them.’ The universe doesn’t have a judge or a landlord. It’s like a river. It flows and changes and does what it has to do to stay in balance.”
“Two plus two equals four,” said Nan. “It’s not personal. And it doesn’t matter how you feel about it.”
Over thousands of years, Milo had gotten used to the glow that Mama and Nan—and Suzie, and all universals—wore. The skin of superreality that enfolded them. Now he noticed it anew and, for the first time, found it frightening rather than motherly or protective.
“Enough,” said Ma, sounding tired. “Listen. We have sort of a plan, if you’re interested. What you should do, for your next life, to set yourself up.”
“Okay,” said Milo.
“Your next life should be all about self-denial,” said Nan. “Like the great hermits, back in the old days.”
“You live in a cave and starve yourself,” added Mama, “and speak to no one, and ignore everything but all that wisdom packed up in your soul. No distractions. No family, no great food or great journeys or girlfriends or achievements. You sit, and you understand.”
Milo considered this.
There were, he knew, many ways a soul could reach Perfection. After eight thousand years, he had tried them all. You could love, you could become some kind of savior, you could achieve a great peace or teach something new and powerful. But one of the most successful, if your soul was old and wise enough, was the hermit thing. You tortured your inner self with isolation until—pow!—one day it turned into some kind of sun or soul diamond, and—poof!—off into Perfection you dissolved. Trouble was, it was enormously unpleasant and hardly anyone could pull it off. Sooner or later, most souls crawled to the nearest village and started wolfing down baloney and pinching college girls, and that was the end of that.
“No,” said one of Nan’s cats. A black cat with a fluffy tail, staring up at them with huge, familiar eyes.
“Eavesdropper!” hissed Nan.
The cat stretched and changed and became Suzie, who stood on the sidewalk with her arms crossed.
“You’re setting him up for failure,” she said. “People are Milo’s talent and skill. It’s how his soul is shaped. Two plus two.”
Mama reached out and pulled Suzie away from the edge. “You’re giving me fits, honey,” she whispered. “That’s better.”
“Well,” rasped Nan, “he had better do something extraordinary. The usual horse poop isn’t going to get it.”
Milo rose to his feet. They all spent a minute examining the sidewalk.
The temperature dropped again. The sky advanced into twilight.
“It doesn’t make it any easier,” said Nan, “the two of you boinking around behind our backs like a couple of teenage jackrabbits.”
Suzie’s head whipped around.
“That was tactful,” remarked Mama.
“I’m sorry,” said Nan. “You didn’t imagine it was a secret, after eight thousand years? Well, how cute.”
“Jackrabbits?” repeated Suzie.
“Sorry for the reality, sweetheart, but it’s just one more way our boy here is out of balance. People-souls don’t do the Hokey Pokey with universal-souls. He’s a person. She’s Death, for crying out loud. You think that’s been a big fat help, all this time?”
“Um,” said Milo, “I rather thought it might be an advantage. I thought it meant I was really, really advanced.”
“It should be an advantage!” spat Suzie. “You are advanced!”
“Balance!” growled Mama, eyes closed, trying not to lose her temper. “Listen: This isn’t the first time that someone like her has been in love with someone like him. Ages ago, Spring—the season of spring, you understand—fell in love with a woman. At first, this was wonderful. The woman reveled in this giant spirit that loved her, this Perfection of warmth and rebirth and new growth, plus I suppose he made himself just awfully handsome, bursting out all over with health and goodness and freshness. And he got to be alive and living in an everyday way he’d never known. He learned to pick out new carpet, and sleep, and eat breakfast, and make love. She called him ‘George.’ And when he held her, he showered her with young leaves and dandelions and dogwood petals. Sometimes, when they held each other, he was a man. Other times, maybe he was rain or a fabulous tree. And, naturally, she became pregnant.
“At first, that was fine news. The woman’s belly became great and firm, like the ripe Earth itself. Then it became too great and firm, until it seemed she must burst. And then she did burst. She exploded with meadows and cowslips and warm breezes. Miraculous, except, of course, she was dead.”