His wig was auburn and wild and fell to the back of his waist. The end of his nose was painted blue; his lips, green. The waist-long beard was decorated with many small b.u.t.terflyshaped cutouts of various dazzling designs. Broad red circles enclosing blue six-pointed stars decorated his white anklelength robe. His ID disc-star bore a flattened figure eight lying on its side and slightly open at the end.

A big orange S was painted on his forehead.

His feet were, as every prophet's and holy man's should be, bare.

He carried no shoulderbag, an omission that made Manhattanites stare at him.

The door opened and gushed a light that very few other than he ever saw.

"G.o.d's good morning!" he shouted at the five adults in the hail. "Bless you, brothers and sisters! May your selves strive to overcome your selves! May you respect your mortal bodies and your immortal souls and each day take one more step upward to genuine humanhood and to G.o.dhood!"

Holding the staff with three fingers, he made a flattened oval of the thumb and first finger. With the other hand, he pa.s.sed his long finger three times through the oval. The oval was for eternity and immortality, hence, for G.o.d. The finger sliding three times through the oval represented the act of spiritual intercourse of humankind with The Eternal. The thumb and the two fingers stood for G.o.d, the human body, and the human soul. They also symbolized G.o.d, all creatures, and Mother Nature, G.o.d's consort. Thrice symbolic, they also stood for love, empathy, and knowledge of self and the universe.

Some of the loungers said, "G.o.d bless you, too, Father Tom!" Others grinned broadly or also made the sign of blessing, though not in the sense he intended.

He strode by them, his nose wrinkling, in spite of himself, at the odor of tobacco smoke, booze, and unwashed bodies. "Let them discover, G.o.d, what they are doing to themselves. Show these children the light so that they may follow it if they would!"

"Give it to them, Father!" a man shouted. "Scorch them with h.e.l.lfire and brimstone!" He laughed uproariously.

Father Tom stopped, turned, and said, "I don't preach h.e.l.lfire, my son. I preach love, peace, and harmony."

The man got to his knees and stretched out his arms in mock-repentance. "Forgive me, Father! I know not what I do!"

"A prophet is not without honor save in his own block building," Zurvan said. "I don't have the power to forgive you. You forgive yourself, and then G.o.d will forgive you."

He stepped out into Shinbone Alley under a cloudless sky and a steadily warming sun. The light of day was not as bright as that which came from everywhere in the world, from the distant stars invisible even to radio astronomers, from the trees and the gra.s.s, from the rocks in the garden, and from the center of the Earth. Brightest of all, though, was that which shone from the center of Father Tom Zurvan.

Thus the day pa.s.sed with Father Tom standing on the street corners and preaching to whomever would listen or standing outside the doors of block buildings or private residences and shouting that he had The Word and the tenants should come out and listen to It. At 1:00 P.M., he went to the door of a restaurant and rapped on the window until a waiter came. He gave his order for a light lunch and pa.s.sed his ID disc-star to the waiter. Presently, the waiter came with the star, which he had used to register the purchase, and he handed the platter of food and gla.s.s of water to the priest.

The organics watched him closely, ready to arrest him if he went into a restaurant with bare feet. Father Tom, grinning, usually went to them and asked if they cared to share his meal. They always refused. To accept would have made them open to a charge of bribe-taking. The priest could also have been arrested for offering a bribe, but the organics had orders just to observe and record. The only act so far that had upset them during the past subyear was his conversion of an organic who had been shadowing him. That had been entirely unexpected, had been done without coercion by Zurvan, and was not illegal. However, the convert had been discharged from the force on grounds of religiousness and adherence to superst.i.tion.

At 3:00 P.M., Father Tom was standing on a box in Washington Square. Around him were two hundred members of the Cosmic Church of Confession, about a hundred of the curious, and a hundred who had nothing better to do. There were other soapboxers scattered through the park, but they did not draw such large crowds.

Here Father Tom began preaching. His voice blared out deeply and richly. His timing and phraseology were suited to his message and appreciated by most of the hearers, even those who rejected The Word. Father Tom, having studied the great black preachers of the past who had also been on fire with The Word, knew how to deliver it.

"Bless you, citizens of Sunday. Whether or not you are here to hear a voice of G.o.d-not the voice, a voice-bless you. May your virtues swell and your weaknesses shrink. Bless you, my children, sons and daughters of G.o.d all!"

"Amen, Father!"

"You're telling the truth, Father!"

"G.o.d bless you and us, Father!"

"The hound of heaven is baying at your heels, Father!"

"Yes, brothers and sisters!" Zurvan cried. "The hound of heaven is barking! Ba-a-arking, I say!"

"Yeah, Father, barking!"

"It has been sent out by the great hunter to bring you in, my children!"

"Bring us in! Yeah, bring us in! You speak the truth, Father!"

Eyes wide and seeming to flash, his shepherd's staff held high, Father Tom thundered, "Barking, I say!"

"Barking, Father! We hear him!"

"But!"

Father Tom paused and glared at the crowd. "But . . . is the hound of heaven barking up the wrong tree?"

"What tree, Father?"

"The wrong tree, I say! Is the hound barking up the wrong tree?"

"Never!" a woman screamed out. "Never!"

"You said it, sister!" Father Tom said. "Never! G.o.d never makes mistakes, and His hound wouldn't ever lose the quarry! His hound . . . and our hound . . . is us."

"Us, Father!"

"When the hound of heaven has treed its quarry ... who is that creature up in the tree?"

"It's us, Father!"

"And them, too!" Zurvan cried, waving his staff to indicate the nonbelievers. "Everybody!"

"Everybody, Father!"

He was improvising, yet he spoke as if he had long rehea.r.s.ed his speech and his disciples responded as if they knew the exact timing and phrasing expected from him. He praised the government for all the many benefits it had ensured for the people, and he listed the great ills that had plagued the world and had made so many suffer in the past. These, he said, were gone. This was indeed the best government the world had ever had.

"Now children ... children, I say, who will someday be adults in G.o.d . .

"How abaut adulterers in G.o.d!" a man on the fringe of the crowd shouted.

"Bless you, brother, and bless your big mouth and hard heart, too! Saint Francis of a.s.sisi, a true saint, greeted whatever donkey he met on the road as Brother a.s.s! May I call you Brother a.s.s? May I address you as a fellow a.s.sisian?"

Zurvan paused, smiled, and looked around until the crowd's laughter had ceased. He shouted, "Yet the government is not perfect, my children! It could change many things for the betterment of its citizens. But has it changed now for, lo, five generations? Has it not ceased to seek change for the better because it claims that there is no need for change? Did it not cease? I ask you, did it not cease!"

"Yes, Father! It has ceased!"

"Thus! Thus! Thus! Thus, my children! The hound of heaven does not bark up the wrong tree! But, thus, my children, the hound of the government barks up the wrong tree! 0, how it barks! Day and night, from every side, it barks! We hear that it is perfect! The millennium has come, and all is right in this world! The government discourages any talk of change for the better! 'We are perfect!' the government says!

"Is it perfect? Is the government, like G.o.d, perfect?"

"No, no, no, Father!"

Zurvan stepped down from the box then. Shouting, continuing to speak, his disciples trooping after him, moaning, crying, and yelling, he walked to a place one hundred and sixty feet away. The other speakers were also moving. Zurvan occupied a spot just vacated, and he mounted the box again. The law had been observed, and the place of meeting had been moved within the legal time to a legal distance away.

"The government permits the practice of religion! Yet .

the government allows no believer in G.o.d to hold a government office! Is that the truth?"

"That's the truth, Father!"

"Who says that only those who believe in fact, in reality, in the truth.. .T. . . R... U... T.. .H.. .are fit to hold government office?"

"The government, Father!"

"And who defines fact, reality, and truth?"

"The government, Father!"

"Who defines religion as superst.i.tion?"

"The government, Father!"

"Who says there is no need for change, for betterment?"

"The government, Father!"

"Do not we deny that? Do not we know that there is a great, a crying, need for betterment?"

"Yes, Father!"

"Does not the government say that it has a contract with the people, a social contract?"

"It does, Father."

"Then tell me, children, what good is a contract if, of the two parties who agree to the contract, only one can enforce it?"

"None, Father!"

That was as far as he dared to go today on that subject. He was not yet ready for martyrdom. He now switched to his "cooling-off" stage. He asked for a few questions from nonmembers of the church, and, as always, he was asked why he daubed his nose, what the S on his forehead stood for, and what the b.u.t.terfly shapes on his beard symbolized.

Zurvan said that he and his disciples had been reviled and mocked as "bluenoses" because of their high moral standards. So, he had adopted the pejorative literally to show his pride in his belief and his indifference to the revilers and mockers. When he preached, he showed his "bluenose" to all who would see.

As for the b.u.t.terflies, they represented the last stage of becoming a believer. Just as b.u.t.terflies, once ugly caterpillars, wrapped themselves in a coc.o.o.n and burst forth in the metamorphosis of lovely creatures, just so the souls of himself and his followers had burst forth.

"The big S on my forehead," he thundered, "does not represent Saint or Sinner! Nor does it stand for Simpleton, as our enemies claim! It stands for Symbol! It is not a symbol, but the symbol! The S absorbs all symbols, all symbols of good, that is! Someday, so we hope, do we not, children, this S will be as instantly recognizable, and far more respected and valued, than the cross, hexagram, and crescent I spoke of earlier. Is that not our hope and trust, children?"

"Amen to that, Father!"

Zurvan then began the slow-paced approach to the calling for public confession. As the minutes went by, he sped up his delivery, his gestures, his intensity, his pa.s.sion. Before five o'clock, when all lecturers and preachers had to stop, he had heard the detailed confessions of twenty, one of them an onthe-spot convert. That this part of the program attracted many more from the park than his preaching did not dim his joy. He knew that nonmembers loved to hear the confessions because of the sometimes sordid, humiliating, and salacious details. Never mind. Sometimes, some who canie to be t.i.tillated were overcome-imploded with the light of G.o.d-and they converted and confessed.

The organics were taking all this in and might use the confessions against the confessors if they found reason to. Martyrdom, however, was the price paid for faith.

At five, Zurvan went home, tired but exuberant and exultant. He was riding high on the saddle of G.o.d's light. After a low-calorie supper, he prayed. Later, he listened in the privacy of his apartment to people who had not had time to finish their confessions. At nine, he held a short service for those who crowded into his apartment. It was against the law for people to stand in the hall and watch the ceremonies on the hall strips. But organics were not usually around at that time, and the other tenants did not object. Some of them liked to watch, too, though not to share in the light.

All of this had taken place on Day-Five, Week-One, last Sunday.

Today, Day-Six, Week-One of Sunday, Father Tom Zurvan had not appeared in Washington Square. His followers, after waiting for fifteen minutes, during which they failed to get him on the strip, had gone to the apartment building on Shinbone Alley. The block chief rightly refused to use his code-key to enter Father Tom's apartment until the organics had been notified. After another long delay, two organics showed up. These went in with the block chief, the throng of disciples, and some curious tenants.

A search revealed that Father Tom was not at home. His stoner was empty. His staff was leaning against a wall strip on which was a cryptic message: I HAVE GONE TO A HIGHER PLACE.

Tom Zurvan had not lied.

He was indeed in a higher place, the Tao Towers, in Tony Horn's sixth-floor apartment at the corner of West Eleventh Street and the Kropotkin Ca.n.a.l. He was not altogether himself nor altogether any of his selves.

Normally, he would have gone through the ritual of becoming Father Tom and then sleeping. The nightmare of Sat.u.r.day had, however, stopped the flow of customary events as an avalanche would dam up a river. It had goosed his soul and sent it screaming down paths that he did not wish to take. It had shotgunned the coc.o.o.n of Zurvan and was letting the voices and faces and even the hands of those others through the holes. They were mumbling at him, staring at him, groping him.

This had not started until he had got himself, much less smoothly than usual, through the mental mantra of metamorphosis. (Was that Bob Tingle speaking that thought, the Alley Oop of alliteration? Wyatt Repp who voiced the metaphors of "goosing" and "shotgunned"? Charlie Ohm who suggested they were "groping" him?) He was aware but did not want to be aware that the winds of the recent past were blowing through him as if he were a shredded sail, as if fragments of the others were coming through him like pepper from a shaker.

"Stop that! Stop that!" he screamed in his mind.

Though, possibly excepting Jeff Caird, he h2td the strongest personality of all, he could not fight back with all his powers. They had been let, as it were, to other tenants who were moving in with court orders. And he was being shorn, his strength drained out just as Samson's had drained when his hair was cut by Delilah, the delicious daughter of false-faced Philistines, the buxom barber of Beelzebub.

"Stop that!" he screamed. "This is serious!"

("d.a.m.n right, it's serious!" Caird said in a faraway voice that, however, was getting nearer. "Tingle, shut up! We're about to die, and you joke!") Aloud, his voice ringing in his apartment, Zurvan said, "By the light of G.o.d, I command you to go back into the darkness from which you came!"

("Bulls.h.i.t," Charlie Ohm said.) ("Smile when you say that," Wyatt Repp said. "Come on, men. Give him a break. The lynching party is coming. If we don't hang together, we'll be hung separately on sour apple trees. He's the ramrod today. Shut up and let him save our skin. Then we can have the big powwow, see who's the big mugwump. The only way . .

("Tony Horn's apartment," Caird said. "Go there! It's the only place we'll be safe! For a while, anyway!") "Tony Horn?" Zurvan said aloud.

("Yes. You remember. Don't you?") ("I remember," Jim Dunski said. "If I can, you can. Caird was given permission, remember. His . . . our . . . friend, Commissioner-General Anthony Horn. She said he could use it in case of emergency. And this is it!") ("She's an immer," Bob Tingle said. "Once an immer, always an immer, no pun intended even if you know German. She'll betray me . . . I mean, us.") ("She won't know anything until Tuesday," Caird said. "Come on, Zurvan, get going! Hightail it!") Only Will Isharashvili had not spoken. Was that because he did not know yet what was going on? Or because, being the last in line, if Tuesday was the beginning, he was the weakest? His voice would not be added until he was awakened tomorrow? If so, he would never speak. He was not going to be awakened. He would die in his sleep.

That roiled Zurvan even more. If he was not Isharashvili tomorrow, who would he be? Could he keep on being himself, Tom Zurvan? He had to. He, at least, would not perish.

"Oh, Lord, forgive me!" he cried. "I am thinking only of myself! I am abandoning my brothers! I am a coward, a Peter denying his Lord before the c.o.c.k has crowed three times!"

("Peter! c.o.c.k! You big p.r.i.c.k!" Charlie Ohm said. "Cut out the holy bulls.h.i.t, man! Get going! Save our a.s.ses!") ("I wouldn't say it that way," Jeff Caird said, "but the minnie is right. Hide out! Now! Get to Horn's place! For G.o.d's sake, man, the organics may be at the door now! Or the immers may be there! Get rid of everything that'll tie you in with us! Go! ") The voices had stilled, for the moment, anyway. As he stared at the traffic on the street and the ca.n.a.l, he felt a little stronger and more confident. He had no rational cause to be so, but confidence often welled not from long experience so much as from the inborn belief in one's self.

He had had to struggle hard to do what reason said he must do. Grief and a hard-quelled resistance had shaken him as he bustled about gathering up items to be compacted and stoned for the garbage collectors. The wig, beard, and robes had to go. With them went the dummy of himself. He considered destroying Ohm's also, but the chances were good that his dummy would not be discovered until next Sat.u.r.day. He did get into Ohm's PP closet with the ID star from Ohm's cylinder, and he dressed in Ohm's clothes. They would make him stand out because Sunday did not wear the neck-ruff on the blouse nor kilts. That, however, could not be helped.

It hurt him to deceive the followers. Part of his grief was caused by this, but it was better that he not shatter their faith. Yes, it was, he told himself again and again. Far better. But he could not help wondering how many leaders of the faithful in the past had been forced to practice such fraud.

"If I were only I, Father Tom," he muttered, "I would stay and take the consequences. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith. But I am not the only one involved. And if I were just Father Tom, I wouldn't be in this horrible mess."

Nevertheless, when he had propped his staff against the wall and the message was displayed, he weakened.

"It isn't right!" he cried. "I am betraying my people, my self, and my G.o.d!"

("Theokaka!" Charlie Ohm said.) ("You are just one of many," Jeff Caird said. Then, after a pause, "There may be a solution, a good way out.") "What is it?"

("Don't know just yet.") Turning at the door, Zurvan said, "Farewell, Father Tom!"

("This guy is just too much," Charlie Ohm said. "But really not enough.") ("A fine sense of the dramatic," Wyatt Repp said. "Or is it of the melodramatic? I'm not sure he knows the difference between pathos and bathos.") ("Were those two of the Three Musketeers?" Bob Tingle said.) "Shut up!" Zurvan shouted as he swung the door open, startling two loafers in the hall.