The Jehovah Contract

'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?'

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