“What the hell are you doing here?”
The goat looked up, but didn’t stop chewing. “I’ve taken up residence here, haven’t I?”
Semple had never heard the goat speak before and was surprised by its lilting Welsh accent. “I didn’t know you could speak.”
“I never spoke around Moses and his bunch. In fact, look you, the only time I said anything was when Moses took it into his head that I’d be a handsome item on the sacrificial altar, and then I had to put him straight. I never did approve of going willingly into that dark night, you know?”
Semple cut him off, suspecting that once he got started, he might go on chatting ad infinitum. “So Gojiro didn’t get you?”
The goat regarded her with its mismatched eyes. “Gojiro? No, he didn’t ‘get’ me, as you put it. The Big Green and I are chums.”
“So you’re the him the tiny women were talking about?”
The goat look surprised. “What on earth makes you think I’m him?”
“You’re the only one here.”
The goat nodded in the direction of the pool. “He’s there. It’s his meditation time.”
Semple found herself at something of a loss. “He’s in the pool?”
“Lying on the bottom, contemplating the infinite cosmos. You can take a look if you like. He won’t mind.”
Semple moved toward the pool. On the screen, hundreds of Spanish extras costumed for the Napoleonic Wars were hauling the huge siege cannon up a mountain while Sinatra and Grant watched with worried expressions. She reached the edge and peered down. A young man lay on the white-tiled bottom of the geometric pool, eyes closed, arms outstretched, mirroring the shape of the cross. He was white and handsome, with a soft blond beard that had never felt a razor. His long and equally blond hair waved slightly with the motion of the water. Semple glanced back at the goat. “This is him?”
“That’s him.”
“Does he know I’m here?”
“Who knows what he knows?”
Semple tried tentatively to get his attention. “Excuse me, but the three tiny women told me I should-”
The goat interrupted. “There isn’t much point in talking to him when he’s like that.”
“How long does he stay like that?”
“It’s hard to say. Usually not that long. He has a lot of movies to watch.”
No sooner had the goat spoken than the figure in the pool opened its eyes and rose rapidly to the surface. Semple took a surprised step back. “Jesus Christ!”
His face broke the surface and he spoke. “You have it in one.”
Semple couldn’t bring herself to believe that this was the onetime Messiah. Although his eyes were deep-set and he did work them in a way that seemed to lend him a certain mystic significance, he lacked the aura she’d expect in anyone claiming to be God’s own offspring. For the moment, however, she thought it best to go along with the charade. “Does that mean I have to revise ‘he’ to ‘He’ with a capital ‘H’?”
The self-proclaimed Jesus was now treading water like any normal man. He might be able to lie on the bottom of the pool with his eyes closed, but it seemed as though he wasn’t much at walking on the surface. He pushed his wet hair out of his eyes and grinned at Semple. “That might be nice.”
He paddled to the edge of the pool and started to climb out. “You’re very good-looking for one of Moses’ bunch.”
Semple was outraged. “I am not one of ‘Moses’ bunch.’ I sincerely hope you don’t imagine I have any connection to that inbred trash except by force of circumstances.”
Jesus apparently failed to notice that he’d caused the least offense. “That’s where Gojiro found you, wasn’t it?”
“I was unwillingly passing through.”
Jesus was now out of the pool and standing naked in front of her without a trace of self-consciousness. “Passing through, huh? So why don’t you pass me a towel?”
As she stiffly handed him the towel, she noticed that this Jesus was a near-perfect physical specimen, but the same could have been said for Anubis or Moses, and Semple resolved to treat it as nothing more than a skin-deep phenomenon. Jesus paused in his vigorous toweling off and waved a hand in the direction of the couch. “Could you switch channels? I don’t think I can take much more of The Pride and the Passion.”
Semple was a little surprised. Not standing on formality was one thing, but this was offhand to the point of rudeness. “You mean me?”
The goat snorted. “He doesn’t mean me. You can’t work a remote with hooves.”
Semple was about to snap back at the goat with a crushing retort, but decided that maybe it was a little early in the game to be throwing her weight around. Instead, she went looking in the vast depths of the central couch for the remote. Sure enough, in one of its bottomless corners lay something black with color-coded buttons, only slightly smaller than a laptop computer. Semple decided this had to be the Remote of Jesus. She picked it up and glanced at the goat. “Which button do I push?”
The ram had moved from his pile of straw and was now grazing on a cardboard packing case. He spoke with his mouth full. “It doesn’t really matter. He’s almost completely unselective in his viewing.”
Semple hit a button at random, and The Pride and the Passion was replaced by a segment of Zombies of the Stratosphere in which a young Leonard Nimoy appeared as a zombie. As she adjusted the remote, Jesus flipped the towel over his shoulder and walked, still naked, to the fridge. “Brew?”
Semple shook her head. “Not right now.”
The goat looked up from his destruction of the packing case. “You could bring me one while you’re up.”
Jesus handed Semple a ring-pull can of Rattlesnake beer, chilled from the fridge, and Semple opened it and passed it to the goat. Jesus gestured in his direction. “You’ve met Mr. Thomas, I see.”
“I didn’t know that was his name.”
“He was once a famous poet, but after he drank himself to death, in a bar called the White Horse in Greenwich Village, he was so racked with guilt that he came to the Afterlife as a ram.” This Jesus seemed freely to indulge an oblivious and gratuitous petty cruelty that Semple hardly found becoming in even a wannabe Messiah. Mr. Thomas stopped lapping and stared balefully at Jesus. “I’ll have you know I enjoy being a goat. We goats can eat just about everything and we also get to fuck a great deal. As you well know.”
This last remark caused Semple to look covertly from Jesus to Mr. Thomas and back again. Were these two an item? And if they were, why had she been invited here? Before she could say anything, though, Jesus glanced at the screen and shook his head. It seemed that Zombies of the Stratosphere didn’t meet with his approval. “Try something else, would you?”
Semple hit another key on the huge remote. Zombies of the Stratosphere was replaced by Eva Bartok in The Gamma People. Jesus shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Semple tried again. What the fuck was going on here? She hadn’t come here to change the channels for him. The Gamma People were history. Now they had Journey to the Seventh Planet. Jesus didn’t seem to like this any better.
“No.”
Semple punched buttons, surfing a whole selection of drive-in fodder, while Jesus stood unselfconciously naked, beer in hand, staring critically at the screen. She whispered a low aside to the goat. “I though you said he was unselective.”
“Except when he’s just come up from the bottom of the pool.”
Next up, The Curse of the Doll People?
“No.”
A trailer for Invasion of the Star Creatures?
Jesus merely shuddered.
Atom Age Vampire?
“No.”
The Town That Feared Sundown?
“No.”
Track of the Moonbeast?