“For that reason, what?” he asked.
The man he knew and did not know smiled gently. “For that reason you must know the rest, so that you will know nothing at all. For everything will add to nothing. The truth will drive you mad.”
“That I do not believe.”
“Of course you don’t. If the truth were conceivable to you, it would not drive you mad. But you cannot remotely conceive the truth.”
A powerful anger surged up within him. He stared at the familiar face that he knew and did not know, and he stared down at himself; at the torn and bloody gray uniform, at his torn and bloody hands. The hands hooked like claws with the desire to kill—someone, the someone, whoever it was, who stood before him.
He asked, “What arc you?”
“I am an instrument of The Brightly Shining.”
“The same which led me here, or another?”
“One is all, all is one. Within the whole and its parts, there is no difference. One instrument is another and the red is the black and the black is the white and there is no difference. The Brightly Shining is the soul of Earth. I use soul as the nearest word in your vocabulary.”
Hatred was almost a bright light. It was almost something that he could lean into, lean his weight against.