Mr. Thomas lapped his gin again now that the danger had passed. “You’re having trouble with your nuns?”
Aimee glared at the goat as though he had no place to be asking her questions. Semple angrily intercepted the look. “Don’t treat Mr. Thomas like that. He’s a good friend.”
“But he came with him, with that . . . that . . . ” Aimee was at a loss for a suitably apt description.
Semple filled in for her. “Jesus?”
“He isn’t the real Christ.”
“We knew he wasn’t the genuine article. I told you that up front.”
“But you didn’t tell me what he really was.”
“What do you mean, what he really was?”
“Women have started vanishing.”
“Vanishing?”
“First it was three of the dancers on the headland. I didn’t really miss them, but now some of my nuns have disappeared . . . ”
Aimee was talking as though Jesus had already been in her Heaven for a number of days, but Semple didn’t comment on this. She was accustomed to time passing at different rates in the two neighboring environments. It always evened itself out in the end. “I don’t actually see what the problem is. So you’ve mislaid some nuns and dancing girls? Surely you can replace them.”
“That’s not the point.”
“So what is the point?”
“I think your phony Jesus has something to do with it.”
“I thought you and him were getting on like a house on fire.”
Aimee looked a little shamefaced, enough to make Semple wonder just how much of the house had been on fire. “We were getting along very well, but I couldn’t be with him every hour of the day. There were lengths of time that couldn’t be accounted for.”
“And you think he was creeping around disappearing your women?”
“That’s what the nuns think and they’re blaming me for it.”
While the two women had been talking, Mr. Thomas had started edging toward the door. Semple noticed this out of the corner of her eye and snapped at him, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
The goat did his best to present a picture of innocence. “I thought I’d go and talk to Igor. You two obviously have family business to discuss.”
“You stay exactly where you are. Don’t so much as move a hoof or I’ll turn my guards loose on you.”
Mr. Thomas looked decidedly unhappy. “I don’t see what use I can be.”
“You lived with him for fuck knows how long, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but . . . ”
“But what?”
“I mean, this is the Afterlife, isn’t it? What does it matter if he’s a serial . . . ”
Both Aimee and Semple were stunned. “He’s a serial killer?”
The goat was defensive. “Yes, but I mean, they don’t actually die, do they? They either go back to the pods, or else it hardly matters because you can just make another one. It’s really very minor compared to what happens in some places.”
Aimee could hardly believe what she was hearing, and Semple had to remind herself what a sheltered life her sibling lived. “That’s not the point. The nuns don’t like it, and if I don’t do something about him, I’m going to have a full-scale mutiny on my hands.”
Semple peered curiously at Mr. Thomas. “How long have you known he had these kinds of . . . tastes?”
Mr. Thomas hung his head. “I guess I always suspected. Some of the things he said and the porno he liked to watch. It wasn’t until the problems with the girls from Fat Ari that I knew for sure.”
“The girls from Fat Ari weren’t lost in transit?”
Mr. Thomas shamefully shook his head. “The truth became a little twisted in the telling.”
“So why the hell didn’t you warm me later, when you knew we were coming here?”
Now the goat felt that he was on firmer ground. “It wasn’t my place to drop a dime on him. And besides, we were boxed in. We had to get out of the Big Green’s brain.”
“I thought you were my friend.”
“I am your friend. I just didn’t think about it. I didn’t know you had a problem with serial . . . ”
Aimee butted in. “Why don’t you use the word ‘murderer’? That’s what he is, isn’t it? A damned murderer?”
Semple ignored Aimee’s outburst and thought carefully. So Jesus had turned out to be a highly unpleasant kind of pervert. If all things were equal, she really ought to leave her sister to deal with it as best she could. In the Nietzschean long run, solving the problem herself would only serve to make Aimee stronger. Unfortunately, things were never that equal; blood was blood and genes were genes, and Semple simply couldn’t just leave her only sister at the mercy of rebel nuns and a phony run-amok Jesus Christ. The question also remained unresolved as to what might happen to the other sibling if one went to the pods. “We’re going to have to sort this fool out, aren’t we?”
Aimee nodded. “We are.”
Semple sighed. The cliche “No peace for the wicked” seemed to be working overtime. “Let me put on something more suitable, and we’ll be on our way. Do you think I should bring some of my guards?”
Aimee frowned. “That seems a bit drastic, doesn’t it?”
Mr. Thomas now felt it was safe to make a helpful interjection. “Do the nuns have access to weapons?”
Aimee looked at him as if he were crazy. “What would nuns want with weapons?”
“You never can tell with nuns.”
Aimee was shaking her head. “Armed nuns? That’s absurd.”
Mr. Thomas nodded. “I’m glad it’s not my problem.”
Semple turned angrily on him. “Who says it’s not your problem?”
“You can’t hold me responsible for what that idiot Jesus gets up to.”
“I hold you responsible enough to take you with us.”
Mr. Thomas sighed. “Me? You’re taking me back to that ridiculous trailer-park Heaven?”
“That’s right, you.”
***
Jim took another drink. This time nothing happened. He turned back to Hypodermic. “Just what the fuck is with you? Why fucking pick on me? Or is it a thing you gods have, that you just like to mindfuck humans?”
“I suppose you think it makes us feel superior?”
“The idea did cross my mind.”
“Believe me, we don’t have to make any moves to feel superior. You humans can do it all by yourselves. Your kind can really surpass any species or culture in the field of aberrant self-destructive stupidity.”
Jim was growing very tired of the Doctor and his attitude. Only the knowledge of how the Mystere was able to hurt him stopped him from coming right out and saying so. “So what have we come back here for? Are you planning to give me back to the aliens?”
“I don’t believe the aliens want you.”
This finally pushed Jim over the line. He was on his feet facing Hypodermic, who sat, bent-legged, arms impossibly folded, with his back to a Crossroads sign written in a script that Jim didn’t recognize. Every so often, a blue spark would jump from his body. “What the fuck is your problem? I mean, okay, so I was a dope fiend at the end of my life on Earth, and according to you that makes my ass somehow belong to you. So you take me on this totally pointless trek from hallucination to hallucination, and I get hurt, then I get high, then I get frozen and scared and dumped down in Vietnam for five minutes, and at no point do you bother to explain to me what the fuck the purpose of all this is, except maybe to convince me that you’re a hundred times better than me, and all the time I’m wondering what the hell is in any of this for either of us? I mean, I hope you’re getting your kicks from all this, because I’m sure as hell not. All I know is that I’m back at the fucking Crossroads, and as far as I’m concerned, this is where I came in.”
“Have you quite finished?”
Jim shook his head. “No, but it’ll do for now.”
“You know that I could send you back to the Great Double Helix or even to Limbo?”
“Yeah, of course I know that. But you probably will anyway.”
“You’re getting exceedingly brave for a human.”
“You ever hear the expression ‘Thus far and no further’?”
“And if I said further and you said no?”