Blameless in Abaddon (32 page)

“Corinne!”

He took off, hobbling forward on the canoe paddle, his hiking boots splatting through the mud. Within seconds she was gone, swallowed by a field of cattails. His femurs throbbed. His pubic bones burned. He stopped and studied the cylindrical flowers. Whip handles, he decided, fixed to the lashes with which a thousand angry angels would one day flay him alive.

“Corinne!”

Again the crab attacked. Martin's pelvis flared beyond endurance. His brain shut down, seeking refuge from itself. Fainting, he fell forward into the warm silt, and as his consciousness melted away, he realized that his lips and tongue were moving, beseeching Heaven. He prayed for his father's forgiveness. He prayed for his wife's soul. And he prayed that he was about to die in his sleep—peacefully, painlessly, like a spiritually fulfilled client of the Kennel of Joy.

 

“Wake up.”

A deep voice, male and malevolent.

“Wake up,” the man said again. “Rise and shine, Mr. Candle. Your journey isn't over.”

Martin pinched himself, noting with mixed emotions that he wasn't dead. The flatulence of Abaddon Marsh filled his nostrils. A pair of huge, mutant fireflies hovered before him, flashing on and off, bright red. He blinked. The fireflies froze in midair, transmuting into the eyes of Jonathan Sarkos.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Dawn is upon us,” Sarkos replied, his face and shoulders lit by the crimson beams streaming from his pupils. “Your fellow pilgrims are within a hundred kilometers of the gland.”

“A hundred kilometers—that's about fifty miles, right?”

“More like sixty. Aren't you Americans on the metric system yet?”

“No.”

“God is. You really ought to convert.”

With the aid of the canoe paddle Martin regained his feet. He fixed on Sarkos, watching him solidify in the light of the incipient sun. The tailor was seated on a horse and dressed for riding: hand-tooled cowhide boots, black vinyl slicker, spurs equipped with razor-sharp rowels. Covered with Jobian sores, his mount uncannily resembled the animals who'd drawn the hearse during the
Crabs
production back in the Valley of Dry Bones.

“Not exactly the paragon of her species, but I love her all the same,” said Sarkos, patting his horse on her withers. “Ah, you should have seen the very first
Equus caballus
to roll off the assembly line—what a beast! If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, Mr. Candle, then a horse is a camel designed by God. Climb on up and hang on tight.”

Martin did not move.

“
Now
, pilgrim. Get on board. Don't you trust me?”

“No,” replied Martin, eating a painkiller. “I don't.”

“There's no telling what you might find in the gland. An answer to the ontological defense . . .”

Grasping the cantle of the saddle, Martin hoisted himself onto the steed's bony rump.

“Forward, Mai de Mare!” cried Sarkos, stabbing his rowels into innocent horseflesh.

And so the journey began—an excruciating ride out of Abaddon Marsh, across a grassy savannah, and into the fiery core of an archetypal desert. To the east rose a line of natural obelisks, sculpted by the wind into forms suggesting a gigantic edition of Lovett's jade chess set. To the west lay a range of dunes, rolling and swelling like the waves of some vast ocean on an undiscovered planet. By gripping the saddle firmly and bathing his brain in Roxanol, Martin managed to stay on Mai de Mare, hour after hour, morning till noon till evening.

Sarkos reined up before a radiant metropolis, its watchtowers encrusted with gemstones, its walls punctuated by marble towers and golden gates. As far as Martin could tell, the city's luminosity did not trace to a public lighting system but resided, rather, in the building materials themselves. A gleaming moat encircled the ramparts, spanned by a bridge of polished obsidian and filled with a liquid suggesting molten anthracite.

“It's a city,” Martin observed, slipping down from Mai de Mare.

“A city,” Sarkos corroborated. “Most people's pineal glands look like lima beans. God's looks like a city.” His sweeping gesture encompassed the entire southern rampart. “Behold the Idea of Jerusalem. A glorious place even today, so you can imagine how brightly it shone in ages gone by.”

From his saddlebag Sarkos produced a rolled sheet of yellow parchment. He unfurled it. The intricacy of the map astonished Martin: it seemed not so much the diagram of a city as the cell-by-cell plan for a creature so complex even God in His day would've experienced difficulty assembling it.

“Your task is to get from this side of Jerusalem to the other,” said Sarkos.

“You aren't coming?”

“Too busy. Big order to fill. The Idea of Joseph Smith has just invented a new variation on Christianity, weirder even than his last one, and he needs a large supply of temple garments.” Sarkos wheeled his horse around. “Find Rabbi Yeshua!” he called, galloping away. “X marks the spot!”

 

As it turned out, Sarkos's map was far more lucid than Martin's initial impression allowed, and despite the city's many maddening features—its cul-de-sacs, switchbacks, and street signs written in Hebrew—he found himself limping efficiently toward the northern gate. The Idea of Jerusalem was clean, in good repair, and curiously deserted, as if all the Defendant's remaining strength were going into its maintenance, with no energy left for conjuring up inhabitants. Negotiating the gold-paved alleys and ruby-studded lanes, Martin did not meet a single person, dog, cat, or pigeon.

The spot the X marked was a hill of mud located a half mile beyond the gate. Sarkos's map called the hill Golgotha, and its distinguishing feature was a collection of ten thousand human skulls embedded in its sides like raisins in a fruitcake. As Martin approached Golgotha's southern slope, Saperstein, Ockham, and Beauchamp came toward him from the west, their backpacks bulging with Corpus Dei specimens. Noah's ax sat balanced atop Ockham's shoulder, adding to the wan priest's persona a dissonant note of ruggedness. The scientists' bone-deep weariness failed to mask their joy. Each bore the eager expression of a well-born Episcopalian child rushing down the stairs on Christmas morning.

“We've made it!” shouted Beauchamp. “All the way to the gland!”

“Augustine told us to hunt out a great and brilliant teacher,” said Saperstein, leading the four of them up the gooey slopes. “The Idea of Rabbi Yeshua.”

“How was Abaddon?” asked Ockham.

“Unpleasant,” Martin replied. “Rain and graves and dead people. I never found my firehouse.”

Reaching the top of Golgotha, the neuronauts happened upon a curious sight. A muscular young man wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe, a ponytail, and a crown of thorns lay spread-eagled on his back, busily pursuing the uncommon ambition of attempting to crucify himself. He had the proper tools—mallet, spikes, wooden cross featuring a plaque reading
INRI
—but it was nevertheless a hopeless task. Every time he managed to secure his right wrist to the wood, he had to tear it free so he could nail down the left.

“Excuse me,” said Saperstein.

“Yes?” the young man replied in a peculiarly cheerful voice.

“I'm sorry to interrupt. Rabbi Yeshua?”

“Correct,” said the young man. With his swarthy skin, sparkling turquoise eyes, and neatly trimmed beard, he looked like Jeffrey Hunter in
King of Kings
, Walter Candle's favorite movie after
Ben-Hur.
“Irving Saperstein, right? Plus Thomas Ockham, Jocelyn Beauchamp, and Martin Candle. Your arrival is well timed. In the old days, I had centurions to assist me . . . and, oh, such crowds—scores of mourners lining the Via Dolorosa, hundreds of lepers gathered beneath my perforated feet, eager to catch a drop of holy blood on their tongues.” He stretched out fully along his torture rack, ankles together, arms apart. “Help me, Mr. Candle, would you, please?”

With monumental reluctance Martin picked up the mallet. It had the general shape and heft of Torvald's gavel. “Are you
sure
. . .?”

“Three quick hammer blows will be sufficient. I'll hardly feel a thing.”

Martin dropped to his knees, positioning a bloody spike between Yeshua's exposed wristbones. He raised the mallet.

He froze.

“Look, everybody: the man who would kill God, and he can't hammer one lousy spike into one crummy rabbi,” said Yeshua. “Do it, sir. Strike while the irony is hot.”

“I can't.”

“Why?”

“You're innocent.”

“Oh,
that.
All right, very well—pass the tools to Dr. Saperstein over there. But mark my words, Martin Candle. Before your life is done, you'll get another chance at this, and the second time around you won't lose heart.”

“I would never execute an innocent man.”

“I might as well give it a try.” Saperstein seized the mallet. “My people are going to get blamed anyway.”

“Too true,” sighed Yeshua.

“Irving, you don't really want to do this,” said Beauchamp.

“You'll hate yourself in the morning,” said Ockham, pulling the camcorder from his backpack.

Tools in hand, Saperstein bent over the rabbi. “Isn't it in our collective interest to make him happy?”

“It certainly is,” said Yeshua. “Do it!”

“I'm steeling myself.”

“Do it!”

“God forgive me!” shouted Saperstein, connecting mallet to spike.

The neurophysiologist struck again—and again.

As the steel moved through his flesh, spraying blood in all directions, Yeshua loosed screams as piercing as those of Gordon the ram succumbing to Abraham's knife.

“I'm sorry.” Saperstein wiped blood from his windbreaker.

“He's sorry,” said Beauchamp.

“Remorse past understanding,” said Ockham.

The blood kept coming, welling up around the spike like tidewater lapping at a pylon. “I f-forgive you,” said Yeshua, gritting his teeth and shivering with pain. “Really. Now, p-please . . . other wrist.”

“As I understand the claims of Christianity,” said Saperstein, positioning spike number two, “you aren't simply a subdeity, not merely the ‘Son of God.' You are the Creator Himself.”

“You've hit the nail on the head.”

“Can you tell me how the spirochetes adhere to
Myxotricha paradoxa
?”

“Just drive in the spike, okay?”

“How does one embryonic cell commit to becoming a brain?”

“The spike, Professor.”

“As you wish,” said Saperstein, wielding the mallet.

“Aaaiiihhh!”

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Saperstein handed the mallet to Beauchamp. “I've had enough,” he said.

“Sweet Yeshua, did Fermat actually prove his famous last theorem”—Beauchamp knelt beside the rabbi's feet, positioning a spike above his overlapping ankles—“or must we settle for Andrew Wiles's solution?”

“Jocelyn, don't!” shouted Ockham.

“Go ahead!” commanded Yeshua. “Drive that sucker in!”

Beauchamp struck the spike three times, securing the rabbi's feet to the post.

Yeshua screamed and writhed.

“How might I overcome the ontological defense of ostensible divine injustice?” asked Martin.

“Which would you rather have: an answer to your question or a cure for your disease?” asked Yeshua, speaking between clenched teeth.

“A cure for my disease.”

“An honest man, I like that. Sadly, I can supply you with neither.”

“I thought you performed miracles as a matter of Christian routine,” said Ockham, pointing his camcorder at the crucified Savior.

“Not miracles, faith healings,” said Yeshua. “The first requirement for a faith healing is faith.”

“I
do
have faith,” said Martin.

“Nonsense. Even
I
don't have faith anymore. Elevate me, please. All my weight must rest on the spikes. Before long, I won't be able to lift myself high enough to breathe.”

“If you can't help me with the ontological solution, what about the free will argument?”

“I'm not a theologian. Elevate me.”

“We'd better do as he wishes,” said Saperstein.

The neuronauts channeled their collective energy into the task, raising Yeshua's cross upright and pushing it deep into the mud. They secured the post by hedging it with jawbones pried from Golgotha's vast array of skulls.

“I'm thirsty,” said the Savior.

Uncapping his canteen, Ockham stood on tiptoes and held the spout to Yeshua's lips. “Have some wine.”

“Much obliged,” said Yeshua, gulping.

“Would you like a Roxanol?” asked Martin.

“Please.”

As the rabbi opened his mouth, Martin obtained a Roxanol tablet and, taking aim, tossed it skyward. The painkiller landed on Yeshua's tongue.

“Thank you.”

“Mr. Sarkos led us to believe that, here in the gland, we'd learn the answers to certain scientific riddles,” said Ockham.

“Mr. Sarkos is a liar.”

Saperstein stuffed a stray jawbone into a Ziploc bag. “He said we'd learn the answers!”

“Life is full of disappointments.”

“Here's a question you
can
answer.” Beauchamp pointed to the
INRI
plaque. “That sign above your head—it's in all the crucifixion paintings. I've always wondered, what does it mean?”

“‘I'm Not Returning Immediately.'”

“Why is the proton in a hydrogen atom eighteen hundred and thirty-six times as heavy as the electron?” demanded Saperstein.

“Given the imminence of my death, I should tell you how to get home,” said Yeshua. “Which optic nerve brought you here, the right or the left?”

“The right,” said Ockham.