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I nodded quietly with a trace of a siven up ine a small particle of what Memnoch had experienced I wasn't about to boast that I understood

"The process involved no pain," he said "Only subood reason, really, or I should say from simple Nature, to use God's favorite word, I sheathed s-did I leave out of the scheel, and as I walked to the water of a clear pool near me and looked down in it, I saw Memnoch for the first time in material form I saw exactly ifts God had given me in invisible form made manifest in flesh"I realized ie all over; I was blazing with the essence inside an to reshape and scale down the entire body until it resembled more myself the size of a man

"You'll kno to do all this once you're with me," he said, "if you choose to come, and die, and be my lieutenant But let me say for now that this is neither i the keys of a co the machine execute the commands one by one On the other hand, it is not cuelic knowledge, angelic patience, and angelic will

"Now a ht of eye, very sih perhaps ans of reasonable but not splendid size

"Now as ans, into the scrotu which had been utterly unknown to el Utterly unknown It was coender, I knew maleness; I knew a certain hu and sensing; and I was very surprised at hoerful I felt

"I had expected to be quaking with hunity at the mere smallness of s you felt when you swapped your vampire body for that of a man "

"I remember vividly "

"But I didn't feel this I had never beenit I had never, never even thought of wanting to see what I e froels I knew elic eyes

"But noas a man I felt the brain inside my skull I felt its wet, intricate, and near-chaoticas it does the earliest stages of evolution, and wedding theher cells in the cortex in a ical and yet totally natural¡ªnatural if you knehat I, as an angel, knew "

"Such as what?" I asked,it as polite as I could

"Such as that emotions stirred in the li first made themselves known to el Our emotions cannot slip by our conscious minds We cannot feel irrational terror At least I don't think so And whatever the case, I certainly didn't think so then when I stood on the earth, in the flesh of a man "

"Could you have been wounded, or killed, in this form?" I asked

"No I'll get to that in a minute, as a matter of fact But as I was in a wild, wooded area, as I was in this very valley which is Palestine, if you would know it, before it was ever called Palestine, as I was here, I are that this body was food for wild anielic essence, an extre shield It behaved electrically That is, when an animal approached me, which happened almost immediately, it was repulsed by this shield

"And thus shielded, I decided to start walking all through the nearby settle full well no one could hurtelse Yet I would not appear e the blows if any were dealt, and I would seek to behave in such a matter that nobody noticed me at all

"I waited for nightfall, and went to the nearest encarown so in strength that it now exacted tribute froathering place, full of individual huts in which men and women lived Fires burnt in each hut There was a central place where everyone gathered There were gates to be locked at night