The subject of conversation happened to be very congenial to Cheenbuk’s cast of mind. He remained thinking and gazing upwards for a minute or two, then he said meditatively, as if he were trying to work out some mental problem—
“Did you ever make a sledge, or a spear, and then destroy it utterly while it was yet good and new?”
“Never. I have been bad, it may be, but I am not a fool.”
“Is the great Maker of all a fool? He has made you, and if He lets you die now, utterly, He destroys you in your best days. Is it not more likely that He is calling you to some other land where there is work for you to do?”
“I don’t understand. I do not know,” replied Gartok, somewhat doggedly.
“But you do understand, and you do know, that He would be foolish to kill you now, unless He had some work and some pleasure for you in the unknown land from which no sound ever comes back. When a father gives his son a work to do, he does not destroy his son when the work is done. He gives him another piece of work; perhaps sends him on a long journey to another place. When the Maker of all sees that we have finished our work here, I ask again, is it not likely that He will send us to work elsewhere, or is it more likely that He will utterly destroy us—and so prove Himself to be more foolish than we are?”
“I do not know,” repeated Gartok, “but I do know that if the Maker of all is good, as I have heard say, then I have not done His work here—for you know, everybody knows, I have been bad!”
Cheenbuk was much perplexed, for he knew not “how to minister to a mind diseased.”
“I have often wondered,” he said at last, “why it is that some things are wrong and some right. The Maker of all, being good and all-powerful, could have made things as He pleased—all right, nothing wrong. Perhaps men, like children, will understand things better when they are older—when they have reached the land from which no sound comes back. But I am not much troubled. The Maker of all must be all-good and all-wise. If He were not, He could not be the Maker of all. I can trust Him. He will throw light into our minds when the time comes. He has already thrown some light, for do we not know right from wrong?”
“True, but although I have known right I have always done wrong,” returned Gartok moodily. “I am sorry now. If you had not been kind to me, your enemy, Cheenbuk, I should never have been sorry. Ever since I was hurt by the Fire-spouters you have been kind to me, and now you would save my life if you could. But it is too late. You have known right, and done it.”