Dead & Godless (10 page)

“I’ll
have you know that that article shot straight to the top of Reddit,” boasted
Corwin, recalling fondly how well his writing had performed on the popular
social news website.

“Impressive.”
Ransom thumbed through a few pertinent pages. “It says here that you highlight
five principal paradoxes: the Paradox of Omnipotence, the Paradox of
Omniscience, the Paradox of Evil, the Paradox of Hell and the Paradox of Heaven.”

Corwin
acknowledged each paradox with a sagely nod, looking altogether pleased with
himself.

“And
that’s just the big stuff! Anyone with the faintest care for critical thinking
will find that your god is–”

“Hold
that thought,” Ransom broke in. “Blue, it’s time to leave!”

“Coming,
Mr. Apples!”

She released
the kite’s string and skipped back towards the porch, her eyes tracking the red
and white diamond as heavenly winds carried it away.

“You
were saying,” Ransom prompted his client.

“I
was about to mention how your god is logically flawed on almost every level.”

“Then
why don’t we put him to the test?”

“Are
you sure that’s prudent?” Lowering the pitch of his voice, Corwin gave his best
impression of an Old Testament prophet. “Thou shall not put the lord thy god to
the test,” he solemnly quoted. “I recall reading that somewhere.”

“We
won’t be demanding any miraculous signs. In fact, we’re not really putting the
Father to the test at all. Just the idea of him.”

“There
you go again, weaseling out of your sacred scriptures,” huffed Corwin as his
attorney snapped a turn towards Harold’s front door. “You people always have an
excuse.”

The Lunatic’s Labyrinth

A
ka-thunk
sounded as the door sealed, leaving Corwin to gaze in wonder at his peculiar
surroundings. This most definitely was not Harold’s foyer.

“I
suppose this is what happens when you hire M. C. Escher to do your architecture.”

Stone
stairways climbed and twisted at dizzying angles with no regard for gravity.
Connecting them were spans of bricks, hallways without walls like the crossroads
where they presently stood. The whole place was suspended in a starry void,
cold and still, a faraway wind wailing softly.

Above
their heads, moths fluttered about the panes of an antique streetlamp. Its incandescent
glow illuminated a most unhelpful signpost, busy with arrows pointing every
which way, one of them directing would-be travelers straight into the floor.

A
plethora of doors dotted the labyrinth, their frames sprouting from the edges
of the brick platforms. Banded slats of hand-carved oak, planks of
particleboard and steel portals rimmed in rivets, no two were the same. They appeared
to lead nowhere, but then, so did the doorway from which Corwin had just come.

“Didn’t
you say to be wary of doors? If there are demons looking to ambush us, this
sure seems like the perfect place.”

“Relax,”
said Ransom. “These doors cannot be opened from the outside, not without a
Dream Key, and demons don’t dream.” Keys jangled on an iron ring as he lifted
it, then twirled it on his finger. “Even if they found a way in, they’d just
end up getting hopelessly lost. The usual laws of logic don’t apply in this
realm. In that way, it’s rather like your article.”

“Or
like your self-contradicting god,” Corwin shot back.

A
thin smile shone on his face. He was eager to get this stage of their debate
rolling, confident that his cocksure attorney wouldn’t be having so easy a time
answering the challenges to come. Up until now, Ransom had offered reasonable
arguments, but the god he’d been defending was Christian only in the most basic
of terms. A god like that was too distant to compel worship, too innocuous to
even bother refuting.

“I
can understand keeping one’s mind open to the possibility of the divine,” he
said. “Plenty of scientists have been deists. They believed in the idea of a
creator, but doubted how much we could know about him, and were justifiably skeptical
that such a being would give a damn about human affairs.

“There’s
also no shortage of agnostics. I used to be one myself; sitting on the fence, playing
it safe.”

“You
can live as an agnostic, but you can’t die as one,” said Ransom. “The question
of God is like a marriage proposal. You can say yes or no or maybe, but if you
keep saying maybe until you’re dead, then your maybe might as well have been a
no.”

Corwin
had always suspected that most agnostics just needed the right intellectual
push to land them on the side of atheism. Even so, seldom had he engaged them
in debate. Arguing with devout believers was just more fun.

In his
eyes, Ransom was wading into dangerous waters now. It was one thing to claim
that god existed. It was quite another thing to claim intimate knowledge of
god’s nature and designs. Every major monotheistic religion did just that. As
ideas go, a vague god might be simple and elegant. But religion was complex.
Centuries of theology bogged down Christianity, and the bigger and more
detailed the tapestry, the more opportunities there were to find loose threads.

“I
remember it now!” proclaimed Blue, seemingly out of the blue. “When my husband
and I were married, there was a great festival! All were invited. They came
from across the land, bringing blessings and gifts. The dryads grew me a dress
with a skirt of milk-white tulip petals. The mer presented me with earrings of
orhalicon shell. And even the zol came down from their cloud lands. Theirs was
the rarest gift: a tiara afire with moon tears!

“For
seven days and seven nights we feasted, sang and danced, and my husband
bestowed upon each guest a title, new names to honor their deeds. I can still
hear the satyrs’ songs . . .”

She
pranced on ahead, humming a whimsical tune as bits and pieces of the past came
together in her mind.

“After
this is all over,” Corwin spoke in a low voice to Ransom, “assuming that I’m
not hallucinating this whole thing, are you really going to let them take her
back?”

“Elsie
wasn’t lying. Sooner or later Blue will have to return to her native realm.”

“But
that place is a death sentence!”

“Was
the place where we found her really her realm of origin?” Ransom gave the girl
a look as she danced merrily, not a care in the world. “There’s much that makes
me doubt that.”

“But
then how–”

“I
don’t know, but there are people who slip through the seams, find themselves in
worlds where they don’t belong.” The angel called “This way!” to Blue as he
mounted a curving flight of stairs. “We’ve got paradoxes to unravel. Why don’t
we start with your first?”

“Perhaps
you’ve heard the question: ‘Can god create a boulder so heavy that even he
cannot lift it?’” posed Corwin. “The Paradox of Omnipotence is kind of like
that. If god is all-powerful, then that is to say that he can do anything, and
therefore he should be able to create an unmovable object. If he can, then there
is limit to what he can move. If he cannot, then there is a limit to what he
can create. Either way, his power is limited.”

“And
so an omnipotent God is a logical impossibility.”

“It’s
paradoxical—a contradiction, just like so many tenants of your nonsensical
faith.”

“Another
deep insight by Corwin Holiday,” Ransom sardonically intoned.

“Sarcasm?
From you?” Corwin feigned surprise. “I’m shocked! Do you always resort to
insults when sound arguments fail you?”

“Of
course not! Sometimes I resort to
violence.”

It
was probably meant as a joke, but the angel’s evil grin told Corwin not to push
his luck.

Upon
achieving the top of the stairs, Ransom took a second to scan the branching
pathways before striking off to his right. The platform sloped upwards, the
floor gently bending into a perpendicular wall, but its steep incline didn’t
even slow him down. He casually walked up the side of the wall as if Newton’s law of gravity was actually just a suggestion.

“What
are you waiting for?”

The
sight of his attorney standing at a right angle above him was odd to say the
least, but it wasn’t the strangest thing that Corwin had seen since leaving the
mortal world. Raising her arms like a tightrope walker, Blue capered after
Ransom on her tip toes.

“Here
goes,” said Corwin.

He
stepped warily onto the sloping bricks. The feeling was at once reassuring and
disorienting. His footing was secure, the gravity shifting so that there was no
risk of a backwards fall. Wherever the soles of his boots were planted, that was
the new
down
. However, as he stared into the maze, at the sideways
staircases and the floor that was now the wall, he couldn’t help but feel a
little bewildered. Maybe his subconscious mind had conjured up this place from
the stages of some puzzle video game that he’d once played. It looked nigh
impossible to find your way anywhere, that is, unless you happened to be
Ransom.

With
intrepid strides, the angel marched for the ascending stairway on their left. He
seemed to know exactly where he was going.

“You
humans have a saying: ‘There are no dumb questions, only dumb answers.’ Well
I’m sorry to break this to you, but there
are
dumb questions, and the
crux of that paradox is a glaring example of one.”

The
staircase turned ninety degrees, a short span of level ground marking the
corner. On and on it continued in like fashion, as if hugging the interior of a
fortress tower, only this tower had no walls. One wrong step might send Corwin
over the edge to be dashed against the bricks below, or worse, to fall forever
through a dark abyss.

“Like
a lunatic’s ravings, your argument isn’t so much a profound question as it is an
abuse of the English language,” Ransom went on. “While you’re at it, why not
ask: ‘What caused the uncaused cause?’ Or how about: ‘Can God create a triangle
with four corners?’”

His
melodramatic tone emphasized the absurdity of the argument, and Corwin almost
felt embarrassed for bringing it up. He had hoped to lay a trap, but the logic
that underpinned his snares was coming undone.

Logic,
thought Corwin.
That’s
it!

“So
what if the question is illogical? If god is omnipotent, why should he be bound
by the laws of logic? Can your god not define truth as he sees fit?”

“Your
mistake lies in thinking of truth as if it were an outside force to which the
Father aligns himself. God does not obey truth, nor does he decree it. God
is
truth. It is intrinsic to his being. Truth, wisdom, power, love . . . These
forces find their source, their very definition, in the nature of the Divine.”

“Then
answer me this,” insisted Corwin. “Must god remain always as he is now? Can god
change?”

A
scraping rumble filled the labyrinth and the ground shuddered beneath their
feet. Corwin lifted his arms to steady his balance. The whole place was
shifting, stone grinding against stone as the stairs bent and revolved.

“Does
perfection change?” asked Ransom when the noise at last died down.

“I wouldn’t
know,” Corwin replied, climbing to join the others on a corner platform. “From
what I’ve seen, perfection is about as illusive as your heavenly father.” His
gaze narrowed as he looked out across the newly rearranged landscape. “Wait, am
I standing on a flight of Penrose Stairs?”

The
bizarre maze made even less sense than before, as now the stairway on which they
stood appeared to form an endless loop, rising and folding back in upon itself.
It was a trick of perspective, a shape that shouldn’t exist in the real world.

“Separating
God from his nature is not your only mistake,” spoke Ransom. “Your reasoning
was flawed from the moment that you used the word ‘can.’”

“What’s
that supposed to mean?”

“Can
God do this? Can God do that? You speak of the Father as though he is some
time-bound being that deals in potentialities. God transcends time. He is pure
actuality.”

“Not
the eternity copout,” groaned Corwin. “Christians always fall back on their
god’s magical time-traveling antics when an argument isn’t going their way.”

“I
assure you, the point is relevant,” promised Ransom with a chuckle. “God’s
relation to time makes a difference in the words we choose. The Father has no
potential, because he is the realization of all potential. For him, there is no
can or cannot. Rather, God does or does not. He is or is not.”

“It all
sounds like semantics to me.”

“Don’t
be so quick to disregard language. Words have power.”

“And
what about the potential for evil?”

“Any
act of evil would constitute an unrealized potential for good.”

“So
god cannot do evil.”

“He
does
not,”
the angel pointedly corrected.

“Hey,
don’t look at me!” Corwin raised his palms defensively. “Christians were
spouting off about what their god can do well before I came along.”

“True,”
Ransom admitted, continuing up the stairs. “It’s unavoidable to a degree. Human
language is sorely inadequate for describing the fullness of time.”

“How
delightful,” spat Corwin. “Another concept that’s beyond my mortal mind! Religions
love their mysteries, but what use is an idea that can’t even be comprehended?”

“Mysteries
don’t exist simply to be mysterious. If there was nothing to gain from the
concept, the Father would never have revealed it to you in the first place.”

“And
what have we gained?”

Another
tremor shook the ground and the stairway divided between them.

“Perspective!”
shouted Ransom as the stretch of stairs on which he and Blue stood pulled up
and away.

“Don't
just leave me here!”

“I
won’t leave you, Mr. Corwin!”

Blue
took one look and nimbly leapt down, right over Corwin’s head, landing with
cat-like reflexes behind him.

“Meet
me at the top of the stairs,” yelled Ransom.

“This
place is a damn maze! How are we supposed to get there?”

“Stick
with Blue. She knows the way.”

As the
upper half of the staircase rose, Corwin and Blue’s half lowered, the stairs
leveling out to form a walkway that met flush with two other paths. Picking a direction,
Blue hummed along, a spring in her step, her threadbare dress fanning like a
ballroom gown with each graceful twirl.

“Of
course Blue knows the way,” muttered Corwin under his breath. “Why wouldn’t
she?”

He
followed his unlikely guide up staircases and around bends, past lamp posts and
over sloping walls until he couldn’t tell which way was up.