The Jehovah Contract

'People like large round numbers.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'Especially on pieces of engraved paper. And that's just what all the professional prophets and doomsayers have been getting in exchange for undelivered goods.'

'Wouldn't it be nice to change that?'

We'd reached the bottom of the offramp. I turned right at Figueroa.

'Killing God wouldn't change that,' I said. 'If He even exists at all, He hasn't done much to prevent people from exploiting His name. Removing Him won't stop the con game.'

'It might,' she said, 'if the victims saw through the sham.'

The day was still clear, the sky about as brown as it usually is in fall. Most of the derelicts were somewhere else. A beautiful day. Not a drop of blood in the sky. Old Downtown lay quiet and still, the late afternoon shadows long and cool.

Ann stopped to point in shock at what was left of the sign advertising the underground Arco Plaza shops. The shops had been abandoned after the blast, of course, and the below-street mall sealed up.

'Dell-' She dropped her arm down and turned to me. 'You know the traditional image of the Devil's tail, don't you?'

'Long. Black. A heart or spade shape on the end.'

'Like an arrow.'

I nodded. She nodded. We looked at the Plaza sign. A fat black arrow described a three-quarter circle to point downward.

'`The tail of the Dark One points to the out and down, running near full-circle,'' she recited. '

He's down there!

'

It was as if someone had thrown a switch.

I tried to ask, 'Who?' but the word froze in my throat as I stared at the sky. Without a cloud anywhere, the sky suddenly darkened. A wind whipped up behind us, icy and insistent. My ears rang from growing pressure, like an inaudible vibration that blanked out all sound. Above us, the jagged remains of the tower were transformed into a gleaming black dagger poised over the earth.

'We can't get down there,' I said over the deafening silence. 'The Plaza's been a ruin ever since the bombing. Abandoned. Most of the radioactive debris was washed into it during the decontamination.'

Ann stared in horror at the phantasmal ebony blade suspended above us. Blood formed along its cutting edge, running down to fall in impossibly huge droplets to the rubble in the street.

Laughter echoed up from somewhere. A mocking, derisive obscenity that sounded uneasily familiar, like the voices that shout in nightmares.

We both stood our ground. Shadows reached down from the lightless sky to flit about us. They snaked and twisted about, always at the edge of perception, just at the far corner of sight.

'How dangerous is it down there?' Ann asked.

'You have to ask?' I swatted at the spooks even as the wind pushed us closer. 'I lived two hundred feet above it for twelve years and got cancer for my trouble.'

'If he's down there,' she said, not even hearing my answer, 'we've got to stop him.' She glared unblinking at the dagger aimed at the heart of the world.

'If he's down there-whomever you mean-I need to get into my office. The church tithed my Colt when they sapped me.'

'You want to go inside

that?

' The glittering, bloody image transfixed her.

I grabbed her arm. 'Sure.' I pulled her toward the mirage. 'It's just like the blood before-an illusion. Fake. You