Victor Koman The Jehovah Contact

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"Trade secret." Let them sweat it.
The fellow in red fiddled with an ostentatious gold ring on his index finger.
A crucifix hung heavily around the thick folds of his neck, as tasteful and as
dainty as a solid gold hockey stick.
"Mr. Ammo, your effort to kill God will fail because God does not exist."
"Then why treat me any differently from any other Southern California nut? You
could have saved a lot in airfare."
He smiled and reached up to touch his scarlet beanie. "Mr. Ammo, it is one
thing to defy God, to set up a competing religion, or even to declare oneself
to be God. None of those actions robs God of His primal position in people's
minds." He peered at me straight in the eye with a gaze that emerged from two
narrowed, murderous slits. "To imply, on the other hand, that God is a being
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that can be killed is to unleash an anarchistic impulse not seen since the
time of the Corn Kings."
He stepped up to me closer than even most Europeans stand when talking to one
another. His breath smelled of fish and Binaca.
"The desire to murder God is an almost universal emotion in human beings. If
you succeed in destroying their God for them, if you show them it can be done,
you will create two disastrous consequences.
"First, you will destroy man's desire to achieve, which is his only
metaphorical means of killing God and maintaining his self-respect. Every man
wants to be God, and every man labors in his own way to unseat Him. Second,
you will eliminate guilt. More accurately, you will remove the means by which
we are able to instill guilt in manour only means to channel the God-killing
urge toward productive ends."
He concluded, dramatically ponderous: "Killing God would destroy
civilization."
I grunted unsympathetically. "Killing God would put you jokers out of
business. That's all."
"Quite so." The Cardinal smiled. "Where would man go to be absolved of his
sins if we weren't around to define what was sin? We would descend into
violence and corruption."
"I see. In other words, we wouldn't be in our current state of peace and
bliss."
"Things would be far worse, I assure you."
I rubbed an itch on my nose. "I'd like to see the results and judge for
myself. If things go from bad to worse, we can always resurrect Him, right?"
"Bah!" The Mahatma pounded a fist against the arm of the couch. "None of you
make a living absolving the sins of those who truly harm others, such as
murderers and thieves. There are too few of them." He looked at me with black
eyes buried in glossy olive-hued skin. "The religions you see represented by
the Ecclesia-"
"As you call it," The Cardinal took care to interject.
"-have succeeded in transforming the act of living into a sin!"
Ah, I thought, dissension in the ranks. Good.
The Rabbi smiled conspiratorially at The Ayatollah. "We tell them they are
evil for wanting too much. We tell them it is wrong to eat what they want, we
tell them it is wrong to make love to whom they wish when they wish. They
cannot question, for we say that the orders come from gee-dash-dee. Some of us
here"-he glanced at the guy in red-"have even accomplished the laudable feat
of damning everyone merely for being born."
The Cardinal smiled with pride.
I leaned over Isadora to whisper in her ear.
"Think you can handle the whole gang at once?"
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She looked at me as if I'd asked her to jump over the moon.
"All of them?" She thought about it. "The only time I tried more than one was
these Siamese twins who-"
"No details, kid. Did it work?"
She nodded. "Sort of. I don't know about this many."
The Cardinal cleared his throat. "We are prepared to be either generous or
brutal, Mr. Ammo. Please consider wisely, since, the event of a negative
answer, we cannot permit you to leave this room ali-"
Fatso's face went slack, his gaze focused on some distant realm. The others
mimicked him a second or so later.
Beathan fell back against the wall to slide down to the floor. They went as
limp as rag dolls all over.
Well, almost all over.
I retrieved Beathan's neural interruptor and pointed it at him. His glassy
eyes registered no emotion.
"Ann," I whispered loudly, "I think she's got them."
Ann emerged from the closet to gaze at Isadora. The kid sat on the edge of the
fireplace, staring equally as blankly as the men she held entranced.
"Might as well sit down," I said. "We can't leave without her, so we've got to
wait till she's finished."
"That could take hours."
"Time passes faster in her little world." I nodded toward the Ecclesia. "See?"
Several of the holy men began squirming about. Their dull, low moans were the
sounds you'd hear from the depths of any mental hospital. Their pelvic motions
increased in speed. The Mahatma and The Ayatollah slid jerkingly to the
carpet, their sight turned inward.
Isadora shook with fury or pain or terror. Tears started to run. She cried out
once and fell to the hearthstones, trembling. When I knelt at her side, she
reached up to grasp my neck.
"Let's get out. Please." Her words barely made it from her to me.
I picked her up. I had no experience in calming a wounded child, so I did the
only thing I knew how to do-I let her cry. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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