Blameless in Abaddon (33 page)

“Walk east for three miles. You'll come to the Joppa Gate. It will be slightly ajar. Squeeze through. You'll find yourself at the terminus of the left optic nerve. Follow the shaft, and in an hour you'll see the chiasma.”

“You mean . . . we'd have gotten here immediately if we'd followed the
left
nerve instead?” asked Ockham.

“No. Whichever nerve my visitors start out following, they always end up at the dinosaurs' gazebo. Illogical? You bet. As Dostoyevsky put it, ‘If everything on Earth were rational—'”

“How are the spirochetes attached?” wailed Saperstein, eyes flashing like Leviathan's. “You know the answer! Tell me! Did God exert any free will in fashioning the universe? Please! Out with it!”

“Each time I die, it's harder than the time before.”

“What's the correct value of Hubble's constant? You know it, Yeshua! I
know
you know it! Hubble, Yeshua! Hubble! Hubble!”

“Toil and trouble.”

“Please! I must find out! Why turbulence? Did Fermat prove Fermat? Spill it! How many spirochetes can dance on the head of a pin? Does hydrogen have free will? Was it the chicken? The egg? Work with me, Yeshua! Stay the distance! Hang in there!”

“Happy Easter,” rasped Yeshua, drawing his last breath.

The rabbi's eyes rolled into his skull, his body went limp, and his head flopped sidewards as if mounted on a discarded puppet.

A melatonin drizzle descended.

“It is finished,” said Ockham softly.

“Two whole weeks in the brain of God, and not a damn thing to show for it,” said Saperstein.

“My department head won't be pleased,” said Beauchamp.

“At least you three can go home now,” said Martin. “I've still got a war to win.”

 

 

 

 

BOOK THREE

A
SIA GAVE US DOWRY DEATHS
and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute planet Earth's terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.

I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say
charm
—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their
satan
; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence
of
destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel. And so it was that when the
Carpco New Orleans
, the
Arco Fairbanks
, and the
Exxon Galveston
steamed within view of the Dutch coastline, my eyes welled up with tears, and soothing waves of Weltschmerz rolled through me. Schonspigel, Funkeldune, Belphegor, and I were sitting before my little Zenith at the time, eating Hostess Twinkies as we watched the arrival of the great flotilla on CNN. When a long-shot of Scheveningen Harbor filled the screen, I aimed the remote control, shut off the TV, and wept.

Europe, by God—Europe. I was home.

Netherlandian light never fails to move me. I love that substance, light. Lucifer, light bearer. When it comes to light, the Dutch are a particularly canny people: Rembrandt, Steen, Hals, Vermeer—and, of course, it was the Dutch who throughout the seventeenth century permitted the Light of Reason to shine upon Western civilization with unprecedented intensity; the Dutch who opened their arms not only to René Descartes (of pineal gland fame) but also to John Locke and Baruch Spinoza. Where would I be, after all, without the rise and fall of Reason? Where would I be if the clerics, mystics, and nonsense-mongers couldn't point to seventeenth-century Holland and say, “Look, ladies and gentlemen, we
tried
rationality, we
tried
skepticism, and nobody really cared for the stuff.”

Captain Anthony Van Horne, by contrast, was not pleased to behold Scheveningen Harbor. Docking God threatened to be an out-and-out ordeal, his severest tribulation since towing the Corpus Dei from the Gulf of Guinea to the Arctic Circle. The problem wasn't so much the harbor per se (though its rogue tides and quixotic currents were conspiring to create treacherous landing conditions) as the other vessels crowding its waters—the dozens of commercial trawlers, private yachts, and Turner Broadcasting cutters, not to mention fourteen gunboats belonging to the Sword of Jehovah Strike Force.

At 1615 hours the captain strode into the wheelhouse of the
Carpco New Orleans
, slipped on his mirrorshades, and got to work. The task proved even more daunting than he'd expected. One hour into the operation his tanker nearly rammed a Belgian trawler; twenty minutes later she almost tore a thirty-meter wharf off its pylons. But then, at last—success. Glimmering in the setting sun, the General Dynamics cooling chamber and its concomitant Lockheed 7000 heart-lung machine lay jammed against six adjacent piers, moored by an intricate web of cables and lines.

At 1845 hours Van Horne removed his mirrorshades, raised his binoculars, and looked toward shore. He cringed. Ordinarily after performing such a tricky set of maneuvers he got to reward himself with a visit to a waterfront tavern, but the mobs of newspaper reporters, TV crews, trial aficionados, and ideological lunatics crawling across the quays clearly precluded this possibility.

He spent the night in his cabin, a prisoner on his own ship, swearing that he would never again transport the body of God anywhere, no matter what they paid him.

The next morning, just as he was about to raise anchor and start leading the tanker fleet back to America, a ground force appeared: four thousand UN paratroopers who'd been flown in from Belgium the night before and dropped into the Leiden bulb fields. Like Van Horne, the peacekeepers knew their business, and by dusk the wharves were free of civilians—not one journalist or Jehovan remained. And so it was that our captain finally attained his tavern, a fake English pub on Gevers Deijnootplein called the King's Arms.

Although covetousness is not my only flaw, it seems to cause me more pain than all my other sins combined. As Van Horne sat in the King's Arms nursing a ceramic-topped Grolsch beer and thinking about his wife and child back in New York City, I suffered an attack of jealousy so acute my heart turned as green as Lovett's jade chess queen. The steady
thok-thok-thok
of the Lockheed 7000 throbbed across the harbor—a disquieting sound, at once mechanical and organic, aggravating the captain's longing for hearth and home. My jealousy grew intolerable. Van Horne took a final swallow.

Dutch beer: we simply can't get the stuff anymore. Thanks to the coma, He's forgotten the formula. And so I sit here nursing my pathetic bottle of Budweiser, reeling with envy and dreaming of Grolsch.

 

Martin's first glimpses of The Hague, like his last of Philadelphia, occurred from within the cramped confines of a United Nations armored car. Staring out the observation port—a horizontal slot that turned the world into a Cinemascope movie—he watched the passing shops, apartments, and churches, their windows arrayed in painted shutters and blooming geraniums. UN peacekeepers appeared everywhere, erecting roadblocks, constructing ramparts from sandbags, stringing barbed wire between street signs. By the time Martin reached the Huize Bellevue, he understood why
International 227
required such a substantial budget. The soldiers alone were probably costing Lovett fifty thousand dollars a day.

Although nearly two months had passed since Martin had last received a death threat, he was still traveling incognito. The daily doses of Feminone had left him unable to grow facial hair, so instead he'd attached a crepe mustache to his upper lip with spirit gum, supplementing the deception with dark glasses and a slouch hat. This time around his bodyguards were Scandinavians: Olaf, a Swede, and Gunnar, a Norwegian, each wearing a shoulder holster crammed with an automatic pistol. As the two lean, muscular men grabbed Martin's luggage and guided him into the hotel, he sensed that in the weeks to come the three of them would be inseparable—Siamese triplets.

The lobby of the Huize Bellevue was abuzz: UN soldiers bustling about, messengers scurrying everywhere, minions trundling towers of computer printouts—activities that all seemed somehow connected to
International 227.
He started across the shiny marble floor, Olaf on his left, Gunnar on his right. As he reached the front desk, a terrible truth took hold of him. The crab had enlarged its empire, expanding into his shoulder joints and backbone. Jagged pains radiated up and down his spine, as if Jonathan Sarkos were using his vertebrae as a marimba. He popped a pair of Roxanols, chewed rapidly, and waited for relief.

Three nattily attired men approached and identified themselves in English as, respectively, Albregt Van Randwijk, mayor of The Hague, Hans De Groot, captain of police, and Pierre Ferrand, registrar of the International Court of Justice. “On behalf of our city and its inhabitants, I bid you welcome,” said Van Randwijk. The mayor was round and sprightly, a Dutch Fiorello La Guardia, his trollish form encased in a black silk suit.

“My pleasure,” said Martin as the blessed opium caressed his brain.

“We've put you in Suite 300,” said Pierre Ferrand, a small, nervous, chipper man who failed utterly to conform to the morose, gazellelike person Martin had constructed in his mind during the course of their correspondence. “Sauna, wet bar, parlor”—he handed a key to Martin, another to Olaf—“plus two bedrooms, each
mit douche.
”

“Assuming your papers are in order, why not go upstairs and treat yourself to a hot shower?” asked Hans De Groot in a gravelly voice. Encircling his girth was a Moroccan leather belt from which hung a fully equipped key ring the size of a quoit. Evidently not a single door in Holland was closed to this man.

“Swell idea,” said Martin, showing De Groot his passport and wincing at how crude his American locution sounded in this elegant Old World city.

De Groot's countless keys clanked together as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “No hard drugs in your luggage, I presume.” A miniature gold cross gleamed from the lapel of his pinstriped suit. His attitude toward
International 227
, Martin guessed, was probably not far from the Jehovans'. De Groot would rather be jailing God's enemies than inviting them to take showers. “No assault rifles or dead bodies.”

“Nothing but six changes of underwear, two linen suits, and Saint Augustine's
Opus imperfectum”
said Martin.
Along with Isaac's bindings, Mrs. Lot's right ear, and Noah's ax
, he was tempted to add, but he feared such a revelation might provoke an unpleasant confrontation with the customs agent.

“If there's anything my office can do to assist you, please give us a call,” said Van Randwijk.

“I'm afraid I've brought a major disruption to your city,” said Martin apologetically. “All those soldiers . . .”

“Actually, we're delighted with the whole arrangement. Every hotel, bar, and
bruin kroeg
is packed. Before
International 227
has run its course, we expect it to pump six million guilders into our little economy. This trial of yours is the best thing to hit The Hague since the North Sea Jazz Festival.”

 

Only after he had boarded the elevator, ascended to Suite 300, and stumbled into the parlor did Martin fully appreciate the intensity of his exhaustion. As the bodyguards wandered off in search of their quarters, he collapsed on the couch and fell asleep with his dark glasses and crepe mustache still in place.

Awakening an hour later, he removed his disguise and, seizing the remote control, activated the TV set. A soccer game popped onto the screen, instantly dissolving into a commercial for Oranjeboom beer. He surfed the channels, soon happening upon a Technicolor long-shot of two nineteenth-century Russians deep in conversation: the universally despised Hollywood adaptation of
The Brothers Karamazov
, he realized, captioned with Dutch subtitles.

“And if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible,” said Richard Basehart as Ivan to William Shatner as Alyosha. “It's not God I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.”

“That's rebellion,” replied Shatner.

Were the optic neuron not dead, Martin would have assumed it had arranged for this eerily pertinent broadcast. Instead he was forced to ascribe the event to coincidence.

He ate a painkiller and changed channels. A live news conference appeared: Saperstein, Ockham, and Beauchamp stood at a lectern, speaking into a bouquet of microphones. Overlaid by a Dutch translation, their voices were inaudible, so Martin had no idea what sort of spin they were according their recent expedition. All three seemed strangely cheerful, as if the journey had actually nailed down Hubble's constant or unmasked the method by which spirochetes adhere to
Myxotricha paradoxa.
Perhaps Saperstein and company were just as happy
not
to have learned these things. If nothing else, their adventure had proved that God was not about to put science out of business.

He looked out the window. The steeple of a Dutch Reformed church rose into the twilight, skewering an orange sun. He lowered his gaze. A wicker basket jammed with succulent fruits occupied the sill. Rising, he limped across the parlor, reached between two pomegranates, and retrieved a piece of elegant rice paper bearing a simple message.