She took a grateful drag on the cigarette and looked around the tent. “You live pretty well here.”
Moses eased himself up on one elbow and surveyed the tent and its contents and furnishings with a look of smug proprietary pride. “Believe me, it’s not all gravy being a prophet of the Lord. I figure I deserve a few home comforts.”
“Doesn’t that cause a problem with the flock? Don’t they ever come in here and start to wonder what’s wrong with this picture? You’ve got more than enough creature comforts stacked up in here to start a major mutiny among even those lamebrains.”
Moses laughed. “They don’t come in here.”
Semple looked at him in surprise. “They don’t come in here.”
“They all think I keep the Ark of the Covenant in here and they’ll go blind if they so much as peek inside.”
“So you’ve got them snowed.”
Moses winked. “In drifts up to their dirty necks. When they have to pack the shit to carry it, I insist they keep their eyes tightly closed.”
Semple again peered around the tent. “And do you have the Ark of the Covenant in here?”
“I used to. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a freakout at the last Golden Calf orgy and the Ten Commandments got broken.”
“What happened?”
“That drunken tubercular son of a bitch Doc Holliday took a shot at me. I’m lucky he didn’t nail me; he used a gold bullet and the Gun That Belonged to Elvis, and he could have done me some real damage.”
“So what did you do?”
“I let loose the plasma on them. Probably blasted the pair of them all the way back to the Great Double Helix.”
“The pair of them? Who’s the other one?”
Moses scowled. “Holliday and that Morrison.”
Synchronicity booted Semple hard. “Morrison?”
“Jim Morrison, that drunk singer from the sixties. Why do you ask?”
Semple covered her surprise as best she could. “No reason. The name just came up recently.”
“Of course, this asshole probably wasn’t the original Jim Morrison, the real Morrison. There’s plenty of them running around pretending to be Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, or Jerry Garcia, trying to pick up women.”
Moses’ hand was now cupping her breast, and she could feel a second-time excitement building in him. She would have liked to point out that he wasn’t doing so badly in the celeb impersonation department himself, but she restrained herself. Arch observations at this stage might place too much of a strain on her already pretty threadbare luck. Moses was now licking her ear. The first time had been fun, a relief after all the tension that had gone before. She was reluctant to humor him a second time, but she knew she’d have to go along. She slid a hand down to his already stiffening cock and began to stroke it gently. Maybe she could excuse herself with just some creative masturbation. She put her mouth close to his ear. “It feels like you haven’t done this for a while.”
“It’s been some time.”
“The tribe doesn’t have the odd good-looking Daisy Mae among its number that you can bring in here for your amusement? You ever think of blindfolding them, so they supposedly couldn’t see the Ark?”
Moses rapidly stiffened under her hands and his words were punctuated by short gasps of pleasure. “That’s what I used to do, but afterwards they had to go. I couldn’t have them talking to the others.”
Semple’s hand halted in midcaress. What the hell did that mean? He “couldn’t have them talking to the others”? Was he implying that . . . ? The thought made a sickening kind of sense: patriarch doubling as pseudo, netherworld serial killer.
Moses sounded aggrieved. “Why did you stop? I was enjoying that.”
This time Semple didn’t hold back. She said exactly what was on her mind. If she was going to the Great Double Helix, it might be the best thing. In this incarnation, she seemed to be cursed to encounter nothing but barbarous psychopaths. “Will you be getting rid of me once you’re done with me?”
***
“A submarine boat. I guess it couldn’t have been anything else.”
Jim half smiled at Doc’s antiquated turn of phrase. “In our time we just called them submarines, or even subs.”
Doc shrugged. “So I’m stuck in Jules Verne. The fact remains, it must have been something of the kind that took out those things on Jet Skis.”
Jim frowned. He had slowed the launch to a cruising speed once the danger of pursuit had passed, and now he stared thoughtfully at the debris and smoke still visible astern. “If it was a submarine that took out those things chasing us, it must have been blockading Gehenna.”
Doc didn’t seem to buy this idea. “Why in hell should anyone be blockading Gehenna?”
“How should I know? That’s what I’m saying. It doesn’t make any sense. The only other alternative is that someone down there likes us and is cruising around under the surface to make absolutely sure we get where we’re going. And since I don’t have a clear idea myself where we’re going and I can’t remember having any friends, lovers, or benefactors who own submarines, I find myself left at something of a loss. You know what I’m saying? This is one of those conundrums that can invite a mess o’ speculation.”
Doc picked up the bottle that had been set aside during the emergency. He seemed considerably less concerned than Jim. “The one thing I’ve learned during my long sojourn in these places is that speculation rarely yields a profit. Or a prophet, for that matter.”
Jim wasn’t sure what to make of Doc’s attitude. Either he’d been dead so long that possible futures didn’t worry him, or he knew something Jim didn’t know and wasn’t about to tell. “You’re not confused or disturbed?”
Doc hesitated for a few moments before answering. “I try never to get disturbed, but I will admit that I’ll be a whole lot happier when we make it up to the tunnel.”
***
Moses got up from the bed, went to the wet bar on the other side of the tent, and slowly prepared two rum and Cokes. He seemed amused at Semple’s concern. “Of course I won’t get rid of you. You’re not like those cretins outside. You’re not one of them. I can do what I like with those hicks. I mean, they belong to me. Either I made them or they came here from the pods of their own free will, and only remain on the understanding that they’re mine, body and soul, chattels to do with as I please. The difference between them and the sheep and goats is so marginal it hardly signifies. Sometimes I sacrifice a sheep and sometimes I sacrifice a young woman. Why do you have a problem with that?”
Even though the subject under discussion was her own immediate fate, Semple couldn’t help but be amused by the rum and Coke being poured into the two rapidly frosting sapphire-blue glasses. It was a detail so far from the Old Testament desert outside the tent that its absurdity was almost charming. She also couldn’t help but admire the magnificence of the body Moses had created for himself. Naked, the face was considerably enhanced by a muscular symmetry straight out of Michelangelo. “I’m still wondering if I’m going to be tomorrow’s sacrifice.”
Moses handed Semple her drink and continued his stream of self-justification. “And what’s so wrong with a human sacrifice? Didn’t God instruct Abraham to kill him a son?”
If Semple hadn’t been so aware of the potential jeopardy she could be in, she might almost have laughed at the prophetic gravity with which Moses spouted his nonsense. “Don’t bullshit me, Prophet of the Lord. The bit about ‘killing God a son’ is from Bob Dylan, not the Bible. And, anyway, God called off the sacrifice. It was only a loyalty test. Read Genesis 22. It takes up most of the chapter.”
“You know your Bible.”
Now Semple was starting to grow angry despite her fear. “Of course I know my fucking Bible. I’m one-half of Aimee Semple McPherson, aren’t I?”