boat.'
He leaned toward me. 'And you've got them worried, Ammo. Why?'
I smiled. Easing back in the chair, I pulled out another coffin nail and tapped it against the pack. Silently.
'They're sure as hell not concerned about me,' Corbin said. 'And look what I'm preaching.' His arm swept about to encompass the room. 'The Word of the Beast. The heretical absurdity that a true Christian should labor to bring the Antichrist to power so that God's prophecies can-finally-come to pass.'
He frowned. 'No one's ever so much as dropped me a nasty note. A couple of decades ago, when some researchers proved that Jesus had been rescued from the cross and lived to sire a child with Mary Magdalene, did the religious establishment even sniff? The book was a best-seller. Did the faith of millions come crashing?'
'Let me guess,' I said. 'No?'
'No. Even the revelation that the Death and Resurrection never happened bothered no one. Yet
-you they kill for.' His fist pounded against the altar. 'What's your angle, mister?'
I smiled. 'Jovial old Jehovah is at the top of a hit list and I'm the torpedo.'
Tom burst out laughing. Corbin stared at me. His chin was growing purplish. He didn't laugh.
'Don't get funny, Ammo.'
'You seem to think I'm having a less than humorous effect.'
'God's just one of a lot of ideas, Ammo. It's a metaphor for conscience-for the all-seeing eye that watches your actions and won't let you escape their consequences. God doesn't exist where you can track Him down and kill Him. You'd have to kill an
'
'I'm hearing echoes,' I said. 'Deja vu. I've heard all this before. Yet someone must think it's possible or I wouldn't be drawing a paycheck.'
Corbin shook his head. Tom smiled again, saying, 'Ghostbusters make a lot of money ridding homes of entities that don't exist. Someone wants you to exorcise the Holy Spirit. Better check your client's psychiatric record.'
I didn't have to. I already knew it was pretty wobbly.
'Look, Ammo.' Corbin spoke softly. 'God is a concept deep within most all of us that exists for a lot of reasons- fear, guilt, hatred. Sometimes even genuine worship and joy. It's other-directed, it's aimed outward from the self. When one is compelled to appease an all-powerful
whose purpose is beyond human understanding, the stress causes severe psychological damage. In fact, the degree to which one achieves the good is the degree to which he or she
the dictates of God. Or, I should say, what some
say are the dictates of God.' He waved a hand about. 'It's all just a way to keep people enslaved. To keep them from thinking, daring, or rebelling.'
'Bravo,' I muttered around my cigarette. 'A brilliant new hypothesis.'
'Not much of what I say is new,' Corbin admitted, his face as pleasant as flat beer. 'It just isn't repeated enough.' The idea that one can live without God, or that He's a cruel hoax, or an age-old political tool is so alien to most people that they consider it a sin even to think about it.'
'Perhaps,' Tom cut in, 'if you started grabbing people on the street, dragging them into alleys and hypnotizing them, you could get into their subconscious minds to pluck out the concept.'
'Deprogramming?' It sounded like hard work.
Tom shrugged his suitably well-formed shoulders. 'Well, not the sort that some church kidnappers practice. They simply reprogram in a traditional God to replace a socially unacceptable God. You'd have to leave them without
