by Victor Koman
"Keep the money. I'll even give you a termination bonus."
"Sorry," I said. "If I cancel the contract, I die."
"I guarantee that you won't."
"How do I know that isn't a Princely lie?"
He stiffened. "Cancel it, Ammo. Save yourself a lot of heartache."
"I'm no stranger to heartache, Zacharias." I eyed him from behind my glass of bourbon. "I take it you can't cancel the contract unilaterally." It was a wild guess, but from the way he tightened his jaw, I knew I'd hit home. "You can't even break your own promises. What a laugh!"
"The contract must be dissolved by mutual agreement, of course. You have nothing to gain by continuing this pointless endeavor."
"I'll have to think it over."
"There are powerful forces combining to stop you, Mr. Ammo. Do not add me to their legion."
I said nothing. For a long moment we stared at each other. He slowly moved a hand from behind his head.
"I sent a warning to you via an old man. Your lady left it behind." He quickly pulled something from behind the pillow and tossed it on the bed. He stood.
"I don't know how you two located each other," he said. "Suffice it to say that such treachery is unforgivable."
"I'll worry about forgiveness from the other guy, Zack." I glanced at the thing on the bed. It looked exactly like the flame dagger Ann had pulled out of the mutant. The hilt was still intact. The blade, though, had corroded as if it had lain underwater for a century. Rust flakes sprinkled the bedcovers in an oval around where it landed.
Zacharias opened the door.
"As I said once before, I do not tolerate betrayal."
The door slammed.
I picked up the dagger and looked it over for a few moments. Something had done a number on it. The blade very nearly crumbled in my hand. I filed it in the wastebasket.
So my client suddenly wants me off the case and needs my consent to do so. That put me in a predicament. I was moving on my own momentum now. I'd been sapped, drugged, kidnapped, and generally mishandled in the last few days, all in the name of God.
If He was anything like His followers, it wouldn't be murder. It would be pesticide. As far as I was concerned, this contract terminated with God.
Or me.
I withdrew what revalued money I had out of my various bank accounts and relocated to an office in the old Union Bank Building. It stood northwest of Arco Tower and had been protected from the bomb blast in South Tower by the bulk of North Tower's mass. I snuck back into my old office at night to remove everything I needed.
The next couple of days were spent in the new office overlooking the decaying ruin of Old Downtown. I sat by the window, thinking.
There had to be a way to kill God even if there was no
corpus Domini
before or after the act. If God didn't exist in some real, tangible way, then what was I up against? An idea, as Golding and Corbin both implied? Could an idea be so powerful as to rule the minds of men for a hundred centuries?
I shrugged. If people can believe in "just wars" and "honest politicians," they can believe in an all-powerful, all-seeing, totally benevolent God who permits suffering and evil to exist. When you begin with false premises, you can get any conclusion you want. True or false.
If God did exist, regardless of how He was perceived, perhaps He could be flushed out into the open by the same sort of tactics I'd use if He were only an idea. Maybe God isn't dead-but He's not at all well. How powerful is a God who-in spite of Biblical warnings-is mocked, and mocked repeatedly with every disaster that's labeled an Act of God, our supposed protector?
How alive is a God that everyone laughs at? Or ignores? Or forgets?
This was giving me a headache. I switched on the TV plaque and flipped through the channels with the remote.
Channel 3 was running the fourteenth chapter of
Nixon: A Giant Betrayed.
I'd seen it. Channel 4 had a commercial for a licorice-flavored cereal called Krunchy Molas. Kids stuck black-stained tongues at the screen while a chorus sang the jingle.
I switched before I lost
my
breakfast cereal.
I flipped right past a rerun episode of
The Bold Bureaucrats
without stopping. Channel 7 was screening a double feature in its Appropriate Billing series. They were running this duo under their combined titles:
Conduct Unbecoming... An Officer and a Gentleman.
That was better than last week's coupling:
On the Beach... Where the Boys Are.
I flipped to UHF. On Channel 23, piped in from Disney County, was one of the most odious talk shows on the air. It was also one of the most popular.
"Ladies and gentlemen," snarled a vicious announcer, "and all you welfare bums and draft-dodging slimeballs-it's time for"-a drum rolled, a flank of bugles sounded-"the most moral show on television,
Ad Hominem Attack!
With your host-a paragon of virtue who never lets a guest escape unscathed-`Beaver' Lenny!"
The audience cheered as if it were Superbowl Sunday. "Beaver" Lenny strode onscreen like a president on inauguration day. The camera angle was such that he looked taller than any mortal. He had silver hair, even though he was only thirty-five. The suit he wore was Wall Street Traditional. He smiled like a college kid and spoke with as much animated enthusiasm.
"All right!" he shouted, his dark eyes glaring at the camera with feral glee. "How do you feel tonight?"
"Morally outraged!" the studio audience cheered.
I was ready to find another station when he yelled back at them.
"Great! Stoke that rage, because tonight on
Ad Hominem Attack
we've got a real scumbucket for you. His name's Thomas Russell, and he's from a gang of degenerates called the St. Judas Church of Holy Tribulation and Tax Evasion."
My brain went numb with an odd panic. Was this another coincidence? Another
meaningful
coincidence? All my thoughts evaporated. This show might prove interesting.
"Beaver" Lenny stepped toward his audience, the camera pulling back to give a wide angle shot.
"St. Judas," he hollered. "I can understand the tax evasion partthat's as American as unregistered handguns. But
blasphemy?
" He grinned. "Well, fellow righteously indignant, how many bodyguards do I want for
this
creep?"
"Eight!" someone from the audience shouted.
"Come on," Lenny hollered. "You can do better than that!"
"Five!" a dozen or so shot back.
The host bounded around the stage like a teenager in heat. "C'mon, c'mon. He's a threat to our American values. He's trying to undermine our faith, our morals, and our
philosophical underpinnings!
"
"Three!" screamed half the audience.
"Two!" responded the other half.
"One!" they all cried.
"
None!
" The roar was unanimous.
"
All right!
" Lenny shouted back amidst the applause. "I face him alone! Man to worm! Let's welcome Thomas Russell!"
Tom wandered onstage, as smiling and as beautiful on TV as in real life. He stepped through a metal detector to reach his seat.
Lenny shook his hand and sat behind his desk. He looked delightfully ready to spill blood.
"Russell-you unmitigated scuzzpit-I understand you've written a book entitled
The God State.
I'll skip the obvious question of how one as morally bankrupt as you can even compose a coherent sentence. I'll even contain my amazement that Taylor and Siegal published itthough it's typical of those corrupt East Coast culture-distorters."
The audience cheered.
"Let me start by asking you who in hell gave you the right to spout this drivel about the two greatest aspects of Western civilizationGod and G
overnment?"
The sardonic expression on Tom's face never even quavered. He seemed to be taking this about as seriously as his host.
"Well, Beaver,
The God State
is actually a sequel to my first book. In the first book-
My God, My Self
-I explained that God is an idea perpetuated as a means for the few to control the many. Initially, there was the priest class, who decided that all conversation with the forces of nature should be channeled through them. At a price, of course. In
The God State
, I deal with the rise of the Judeo-Christian cult of guilt worship and how religious ruling classes have-from the very startbeen in control of every government in the history of mankind."
The audience booed. The microphones picked up someone hollering, "Sweeping generalization!"
"Many theocratic groups," Tom continued, "have been quite flagrant about their clandestine involvement, leaving their signs and symbols openly displayed as if daring someone to expose them."
"Come off it, you smirking heap of atheistic garbage." Lenny leaned forward at his desk. "Are you accusing the United States of violating its constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state?"
The audience cheered Beaver on.
Tom smiled even more broadly. "The Constitution isn't worth the parchment it's written on." Over the hissing, he added, "We're dealing with deeds, not words. Nearly every President of the United States has been a member of the Ancient and Accepted Order of Freemasons-a secret religious society-"
"That's old news. Disney County
perfected
conspiracy paranoia."
Tom leaned back in his chair. "Nearly everything in my book is old news. I display it from a new perspective. By the time you've finished reading it, you'll be more suspicious of the chaplains that roam the corridors of Congress, setting up prayer meetings. You'll notice the mystical symbols and sentiments expressed on our currency. Blatant theistic sentiments such as `In God We Trust.'"
Lenny leaned on his fists. "I can't believe it! On my show, this pansy-haired wimp is attacking a tradition as old as our nation!"
"Not really, Beaver." Tom spread his arms out across the empty chairs flanking him. "The statement has only been on this government's money since 1864, when it was used as a rallying slogan for one side of a brutal, divisive war. It didn't even appear on all the coins until the twentieth century, when the five-cent piece finally received the Mark. And it wasn't until as late as 1954 that the slogan became the legal and official motto of the United States-during a flareup of patriotic witch-hunting."
Lenny turned to the audience with outstretched arms. "The phlegmbrained cretin is undercutting his own thesis!" he said with feigned amazement. "He's admitting that for nearly a century there was no religious control of government."
Tom waved his hand in dismissal. "They weren't as overt in their symbols primarily because most Americans still remembered the excesses of the God State back in England. The cults grew bolder, though. The Great Seal of the United States contains many mystical symbols. Significantly, they are all on the
reverse
side, which is never used to authenticate official documents. This is an astonishingly blatant depiction of the power of religion behind the throne of state."
"So what? If they're in control of every government, then the power is in balance and unimportant."
"
Yeah!
" screamed the crowd in unison. "
So what!
"
"The power is
not
in balance. That's why we have wars. The God State is
not
monolithic. Even in the United States there is evidence of an internal battle for control of this continent by at least two factionsa productive, isolationist sect of woman-worshipping pagans and atheists versus a brutal, interventionist patriarchic cult that worships the Hebrew and Christian god Yahweh."
"That's a pretty baldfaced mixture of blasphemy and treason, you feeble-minded, Bible-burning Satanist!" The color of Lenny's face verged on ultraviolet. He turned to the audience. "Do I throw this miserable sleazebag Antichrist out?"
"
Yeah!
" the studio thundered.
"You're getting close, gutterbrain," he said to Tom. "One more bit of sacrilege, and you're finished."
Tom smiled, addressing the camera. "Consider this. At the outset, this country's coinage depicted symbols of liberty-goddesses offering gifts of bounty, eagles flying majestically free, native Indians still noble and unbowed." He put an ankle up on his knee and leaned comfortably back.
"Then in 1909, Victor Brenner designed the Lincoln cent. It was the first depiction on official U.S. coinage of a dead U.S. statist. It was a clear victory for the patriarchists, who'd had the generic term for a masculine deity on several coins for half a century-sometimes right next to Lady Liberty herself." Russell looked straight at Lenny. "I don't have to remind you that World War One began five years later, or that the United States was dragged in three years after that. Both five and three are numbers sacred to the Goddess."
"You're not only a syphilitic little jerkoff," Lenny shouted, "you're a shitbrained
mystic!
" He whipped his head about to stare into the camera. "Do I throw this godless son of a bitch
out?
"
"
Yeah!
" The audience was eating it up.
"I suppose this anti-American mystical babble will end with you describing how communism is a superior form of government because it's free of religious taint."
Russell smiled that beautiful smile. "Actually, Beaver, despite their professed and official atheism, the Communist bloc nations were seized and are still controlled by an ancient hierarchy of renegade druids. Holy men who betrayed their Goddess to seek power and conquest through magick."
"Druids?" Lenny didn't even try to contain his shock. "Tree-worshippers? A bunch of looney-toons with leaves in their hair in control of the most brutal and powerful nations on earth?"
Tom looked as pleased as a first year chemistry student showing off the smoking ruins of his lab.
"Look at the flag of the Soviet Union. The symbols are right there."
"Beaver" Lenny buried his face in his hands, shaking his head from side to side.
"It consists of a golden sickle and hammer surmounted by a star, all on a field of red. The standard explanation of its proletarian, revolutionary derivation is nothing more than a smokescreen-much the same as the explanation of the Great Seal of the United States. There is a second, hidden derivation."
Russell looked toward the camera and raised fingers to count his points.
"One-the golden sickle was used by druids to lop mistletoe off oak trees in a symbolic recreation of the castration of Cronos by his son Zeus. Mistletoe is a phallic symbol, so watch out next Christmas-or Yule. Two-the hammer is suggestively phallic and crossing the blade of the sickle as if about to be cut."
He held up a third finger. "Three-red is the druidic color of death and life; it is the color of the food offered up to the dead during Hallowmas. And four-above it all is the five-pointed star-the pentagram, symbol of the Goddess, whom they still feel required to acknowledge. It is the single universal symbol of all magic, good or evil. You see it on scores of flags, even that of the U.S. And by the way, Beaver-red, white, and blue are the traditional colors of the Triple Goddess."
Before he could begin to use the fingers on his other hand, Lenny rose up to holler, "Are you implying that the Cold War has been nothing but a power struggle between bricklayers and tree-trimmers?"
"Not at all." Tom's smile remained just as broad. "While there have been minor skirmishes in which the leaders of one God State threw their slaves into battle against the slaves of another God State,
all the governments of the world are partners in crime.
They are allied to maintain
their power and privilege. They're part of the same club. Have you ever seen the leader of one government personally jump for the throat of the leader of an `enemy' government?"
"That's not how affairs of state are handled." Lenny sat again. He hadn't incited the audience enough.
"Indeed not," Tom replied. "Affairs of the God State are handled by forcing some eighteen-year-old to kill another eighteen-year-old while those who planned the slaughter call each other on hotlines to talk about the weather."
"
That does it!
" Lenny jumped up from his desk, advancing on Russell. "This is
my
show, and
nobody
says the U.S. of A. is in cahoots with the Commies!" He seized Tom's shirt and pulled him up to shout, "
Get off my show!
"
The audience went wild. They cheered, hooted, stomped. Someone threw confetti. They started to chant.
"
Beaver, Beaver, Beaver, Beaver...
"
Tom smiled, flashed his fingers in an "okay" sign.
The cameras barely registered the friendly grin that appeared and vanished from Lenny's face in the course of an instant. There was nothing "Beaver" Lenny enjoyed more than someone who understood the joke.
I switched the screen off to think for a bit.
I'd heard all the conspiracy theories before, probably even caused a few of them by the nature of my activities. I knew enough to figure out that any particular conspiracy must allocate its resources and confine its activities to areas that present either the greatest opportunity or the greatest threat.
If the "God States" were on my trail, I might have a difficult time surviving one breath to the next.
I needed a drink. Something to numb my mind. Reaching toward the desk drawer, I hesitated.
I had someone to drink with! I punched up the number of Ann's room over at Auberge.
"Sure," she said. "Give me ten minutes."
I poured two drinks. Getting drunk together was better than getting drunk alone. Even though the alcohol blocked the world out, it permitted me to concentrate more closely, however fuzzily, on my own thoughts and on my partner's.
