The Jehovah Contract

I undid his helmet. The stench was nearly as bad as the Land of Never-Change. He looked up with sunken eyes set in an unshaven, worn face.

'Ammo...' he whispered. 'Water nozzle.'

I dragged him to where he pointed. We both took careful sips from the spigot.

'Where are they?' I asked as soon as my tongue had sponged up enough to make speech possible.

'You tell me,' he muttered. 'Someone sabotaged the outside controls. Same for the cockpit airlock. I've been out there for over a week. The supplies that feed through the lifeline ran out on the fourth day.'

I added it all together and snorted. 'Happy New Year,' I said, glancing at the hatch to the cockpit. It had been bent inward as if by an explosion and now hung open, the metal twisted and scarred.

I pulled my way over to the altar. The one lone candle that still burned had grown a long tail of wax that followed the path of the breeze from the ventilator. I blew it out. The smoke curled along the white wax stalactite for a few seconds, then ceased.

'I want to know where the women are,' I said.

'Well, they never left the ship.'

I nodded. It was beginning to sink into my clouded brain. 'Let's wash up and get set for reentry. We'll be leaving this payload section in orbit.'

'Fine by me,' Canfield said. 'But what happened to the women?'

'Maybe they never

were

,' I said, and it tasted like stale brine.

The two of us jury-rigged a hatch for the cockpit and cleaned up the interior where Zack had been. Scraping the sulfur off of everything that it had melted onto was a tough job. In a day or two, though, Canfield and I jettisoned the magical chamber, leaving it in orbit. We took the tug back to low earth orbit, detached from it, and dropped back planetside like a graceful brick.

We landed at Meadowlark Interplanetary, the L.A. offshore runway. No jets escorted us.

Things had changed.

But not much.

The first place I checked was Trismegistos. The windows and doors to the shop had been boarded up. There was a weathered sign stating that leasing information could be obtained from Bautista Corporation.

I spent the following weeks searching hotels throughout L.A. Auberge had been written off as a total loss. I figured the next Underground would be a little tougher to find.

Yes. I checked Auriga in Frisco. No sign of the kid.

Days passed spent in phone booths, calling Information for the numbers of all the Ann Perrines in the world. None of them matched.

One freezing February night, when a cold rain pounded against the sidewalks, I realized that I would never find her anywhere on earth.

The rain slashed like shrapnel against my face as I stared up at an abandoned church. Jehovah was gone. I had assassinated Him in the mind of every living human being. I hadn't actually pulled the trigger-maybe He would have done it eventually without me.

My trenchcoat was soaked through, but I didn't care. Zacharias had told the truth. I was alive and younger than I had been in years.

And I was alone, facing an eternity without my Goddess.

My feet splashed through the dark waters. On the corner of Sixth and Figueroa stood a tiny figure, huddled within a worn coat. I almost expected it to be Isadora. She turned around to face me. Jet black eyes stared glassily up from tangled raven curls.

'Spare a couple grams, mister?'

I gave her what gold I had in my pockets.