"What tree, Father?"
"The wrong tree, I say! Is the hound barking up the wrong tree?"
"Never!" a woman screamed out. "Never!"
"You said it, sister!" Father Tom said. "Never! God never makes mistakes, and His hound wouldn't ever lose the quarry! His hound ... and our hound ... is us."
"Us, Father!"
"When the hound of heaven has treed its quarry ... who is that creature up in the tree?"
"It's us, Father!"
"And them, too!" Zurvan cried, waving his staff to indicate the nonbelievers. "Everybody!"
"Everybody, Father!"
He was improvising, yet he spoke as if he had long rehearsed his speech and his disciples responded as if they knew the exact timing and phrasing expected from him. He praised the government for all the many benefits it had ensured for the people, and he listed the great ills that had plagued the world and had made so many suffer in the past. These, he said, were gone. This was indeed the best government the world had ever had.
"Now children ... children, I say, who will someday be adults in God ..
"How abaut adulterers in God!" a man on the fringe of the crowd shouted.
"Bless you, brother, and bless your big mouth and hard heart, too! Saint Francis of Assisi, a true saint, greeted whatever donkey he met on the road as Brother Ass! May I call you Brother Ass? May I address you as a fellow Assisian?"
Zurvan paused, smiled, and looked around until the crowd's laughter had ceased. He shouted, "Yet the government is not perfect, my children! It could change many things for the betterment of its citizens. But has it changed now for, lo, five generations? Has it not ceased to seek change for the better because it claims that there is no need for change? Did it not cease? I ask you, did it not cease!"
"Yes, Father! It has ceased!"
"Thus! Thus! Thus! Thus, my children! The hound of heaven does not bark up the wrong tree! But, thus, my children, the hound of the government barks up the wrong tree! 0, how it barks! Day and night, from every side, it barks! We hear that it is perfect! The millennium has come, and all is right in this world! The government discourages any talk of change for the better! 'We are perfect!' the government says!
"Is it perfect? Is the government, like God, perfect?"
"No, no, no, Father!"
Zurvan stepped down from the box then. Shouting, continuing to speak, his disciples trooping after him, moaning, crying, and yelling, he walked to a place one hundred and sixty feet away. The other speakers were also moving. Zurvan occupied a spot just vacated, and he mounted the box again. The law had been observed, and the place of meeting had been moved within the legal time to a legal distance away.
"The government permits the practice of religion! Yet . the government allows no believer in God to hold a government office! Is that the truth?"
"That's the truth, Father!"
"Who says that only those who believe in fact, in reality, in the truth ... T ... R ... U ... T ... H ... are fit to hold government office?"
"The government, Father!"
"And who defines fact, reality, and truth?"
"The government, Father!"
"Who defines religion as superstition?"
"The government, Father!"
"Who says there is no need for change, for betterment?"
"The government, Father!"
"Do not we deny that? Do not we know that there is a great, a crying, need for betterment?"
"Yes, Father!"
"Does not the government say that it has a contract with the people, a social contract?"
"It does, Father."
"Then tell me, children, what good is a contract if, of the two parties who agree to the contract, only one can enforce it?"
"None, Father!"
That was as far as he dared to go today on that subject. He was not yet ready for martyrdom. He now switched to his "cooling-off" stage. He asked for a few questions from non-members of the church, and, as always, he was asked why he daubed his nose, what the S on his forehead stood for, and what the butterfly shapes on his beard symbolized.
Zurvan said that he and his disciples had been reviled and mocked as "bluenoses" because of their high moral standards. So, he had adopted the pejorative literally to show his pride in his belief and his indifference to the revilers and mockers. When he preached, he showed his "bluenose" to all who would see.
As for the butterflies, they represented the last stage of becoming a believer. Just as butterflies, once ugly caterpillars, wrapped themselves in a cocoon and burst forth in the metamorphosis of lovely creatures, just so the souls of himself and his followers had burst forth.
"The big S on my forehead," he thundered, "does not represent Saint or Sinner! Nor does it stand for Simpleton, as our enemies claim! It stands for Symbol! It is not a symbol, but the symbol! The S absorbs all symbols, all symbols of good, that is! Someday, so we hope, do we not, children, this S will be as instantly recognizable, and far more respected and valued, than the cross, hexagram, and crescent I spoke of earlier. Is that not our hope and trust, children?"
"Amen to that, Father!"
Zurvan then began the slow-paced approach to the calling for public confession. As the minutes went by, he sped up his delivery, his gestures, his intensity, his passion. Before five o'clock, when all lecturers and preachers had to stop, he had heard the detailed confessions of twenty, one of them an onthe-spot convert. That this part of the program attracted many more from the park than his preaching did not dim his joy. He knew that nonmembers loved to hear the confessions because of the sometimes sordid, humiliating, and salacious details. Never mind. Sometimes, some who canie to be titillated were overcome-imploded with the light of God-and they converted and confessed.
The organics were taking all this in and might use the confessions against the confessors if they found reason to. Martyrdom, however, was the price paid for faith.
At five, Zurvan went home, tired but exuberant and exultant. He was riding high on the saddle of God's light. After a low-calorie supper, he prayed. Later, he listened in the privacy of his apartment to people who had not had time to finish their confessions. At nine, he held a short service for those who crowded into his apartment. It was against the law for people to stand in the hall and watch the ceremonies on the hall strips. But organics were not usually around at that time, and the other tenants did not object. Some of them liked to watch, too, though not to share in the light.
All of this had taken place on Day-Five, Week-One, last Sunday.
Today, Day-Six, Week-One of Sunday, Father Tom Zurvan had not appeared in Washington Square. His followers, after waiting for fifteen minutes, during which they failed to get him on the strip, had gone to the apartment building on Shinbone Alley. The block chief rightly refused to use his code-key to enter Father Tom's apartment until the organics had been notified. After another long delay, two organics showed up. These went in with the block chief, the throng of disciples, and some curious tenants.
A search revealed that Father Tom was not at home. His stoner was empty. His staff was leaning against a wall strip on which was a cryptic message:
I HAVE GONE TO A HIGHER PLACE.
Chapter 28
Tom Zurvan had not lied.
He was indeed in a higher place, the Tao Towers, in Tony Horn's sixth-floor apartment at the corner of West Eleventh Street and the Kropotkin Canal. He was not altogether himself nor altogether any of his selves.
Normally, he would have gone through the ritual of becoming Father Tom and then sleeping. The nightmare of Saturday had, however, stopped the flow of customary events as an avalanche would dam up a river. It had goosed his soul and sent it screaming down paths that he did not wish to take. It had shotgunned the cocoon of Zurvan and was letting the voices and faces and even the hands of those others through the holes. They were mumbling at him, staring at him, groping him.