“Three solid hours,” the librarian completed his sentence. “You need a break.”
The scion stood up and followed his friend to the elevator.
While they waited for it to arrive, Chris gave Daniel an amused glance. “We should start calling the library the ‘University of Daniel.’”
The scion smiled self-consciously. “I suppose I am being rather intense, but there’s so much knowledge to be found here. I have to make up for lost time.”
The elevator doors opened, and they entered. Chris pressed the button for the lobby. “You’re like a kid in a candy store if the candy was made of alphabet letters. I don’t imagine your father is big on learning.”
“He is when it comes to the scriptures or Biblical languages or the sermons of dead diviners but not much else.”
“That’s probably why he didn’t want you talking to me.” Chris chuckled. “I’m a bad influence.”
“You? Oh, no. You’ve taught me so much about the outside world.”
“Exactly my point,” the librarian countered. “I’ve taught you things your father doesn’t want you to know. I mean, the fact that I work in a library opens the door to all kinds of forbidden knowledge. Oh, the horror!” He raised his hand to his brow in a theatrical gesture.
Daniel looked at him askance. “Is that another cultural reference that I don’t understand?”
“One of oh so many,” Chris murmured at the elevator doors opened.
They crossed the lobby, spun through the revolving doors and joined the crowds of mid-day pedestrians in downtown Chicago.
Daniel had become used to the activity of the city after so many months. The bustle, the noise, the traffic, and pollution. He liked the energy of it all. It bristled with life compared to the compound of the Blessed Nephilim. The silent corridors of his home did their best to mimic the absolute stillness of death.
“I’m going to expand your education in a different direction today,” Chris said mysteriously. “We’re trying a new place for lunch.”
Daniel silently tagged along as the librarian took an unfamiliar street leading west. They paused at a stop light.
“If you got as far as Buddhism this morning, that must mean you’ve just about wrapped up all the big religions,” Chris speculated.
The light turned green.
“Yes, I’ve covered Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and the various sects of Christianity. But it doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t?” Chris paused, looking up at a street sign to get his bearings.
“All those religions essentially believe in one great power that created everything, but they’ve been fighting wars for millennia because they can’t agree on how to worship Him.”
“Ah yes, how best to worship the Great Whatsit.” Chris nodded his head sagely as they continued walking. “By the way, your choice of pronoun is provocative all by itself.”
Daniel peered at his friend, uncomprehending. “It is?”
They paused at another red light.
Chris turned to face him. “Absolutely. All the big religions nowadays use ‘He’ to refer to the Whatsit, but that wasn’t always the case. Lots of older religions think of that power as ‘It’ or even as, gasp, ‘She.’ Funny that the religions favoring ‘He’ always want to stomp on the It-Worshippers and the She-Worshippers.”
Daniel had never considered that the divinity who had created the world could be anything other than a He. The scion pondered the notion for the first time. “I’m aware that some of the pagan religions had female fertility goddesses,” he ventured.
Chris nudged him to move as the light changed. “That’s nothing. You need to check out some of the books on folk religions and neo-pagan philosophy. Most of them believe that the supreme power of the universe is female. Frankly, when I think of a deity who’s in the business of creating life, I have an easier time believing that it’s female. Just makes more sense from a biological standpoint.”
“Do you follow a religion yourself?” Daniel asked, curious for the first time about Chris’s beliefs.
“I’m an agnostic.” Chris’s arm shot out, pointing to the right. “Down this street.” They raced across as the light turned yellow.
“Is that like an atheist?” Daniel hurried to keep up.
“Sort of,” Chris agreed. “An atheist doesn’t believe in anything. An agnostic believes in something but isn’t sure what.”
Daniel frowned in puzzlement. “It must make it hard for you to pray if you don’t know what you’re praying to.”
“Agnostics don’t pray,” Chris countered. “We just shut our eyes and hope for the best.”
The librarian darted under the archway of a high-rise office building. “It’s in here,” he said.
They passed through a revolving door into a darkly-lit restaurant. Dim pendant lights hung over the bar and over the rustic trestle tables set into the opposite wall. Seating consisted of high-backed barstools.
Chris made for the back of the establishment, away from other customers. Over his shoulder, he said, “This place was just written up in Chicago Magazine. It’s supposed to have a fantastic microbrew selection.”
“Microbrew?” Daniel repeated.
“It’s a small-scale brewery that turns out designer beers.” Chris claimed a seat at the farthest table in the back corner. “No lemonade for you today, Danny Boy.”
For some unknown reason, Chris had decided to call him that. Daniel liked having a nickname. He thought it brought the two of them closer. He took the barstool across the table from his friend. “No lemonade?” The scion was mystified by Chris’s insistence on his choice of beverage. “But I always drink lemonade.”
Chris handed him one of the plastic menus that was standing on the table top. “Has anybody ever told you that you’re kind of uptight?”
“Uptight?”
“Tense. It means you’re tense all the time.”
“Oh, that.” Daniel nodded. “I suppose I am.”
“Well, I have just the cure for your malady.” Chris flipped open Daniel’s copy of the menu. One side of the page consisted of nothing but beverages with strange names. He pointed to an item halfway down the list.
Daniel felt shocked. “Ale? You want me to drink some kind of beer?”
“It’s pale ale,” Chris retorted, unmoved by his distress. “The alcohol content is so low that even a teetotaler
