However, he had a personality as pleasing as a blind date’s.
He smiled and said “Welcome!” and he radiated good will and jolly fellowship.
“Doctor Mofeislop, I presume?” Simon said.
“Bless your little heart, no,” the man said. “I am the good doctor’s secretary and house servant. My name is Odiomzwak.”
His parents must really have hated him, Simon thought, and he warmed toward him. Simon knew what it was to have a father and a mother who couldn’t stand their child.
“Come in, come in!” Odiomzwak said. “All three of you.”
He reached out to pat Anubis, who lolled his tongue and shut his eyes as if very pleased to be petted. Simon decided that his apprehensions had been wrong. Dogs were known to be reliable readers of character.
Odiomzwak took a flaming torch from its stand by the door and led them down a narrow and long hall. They came out into a giant room with black granite walls and a tile mosaic floor. At its end was the great fireplace Simon had imagined. The roasting pig wasn’t there, but the kettle of steaming soup was. Near it stood a tall thin man, all forehead and nose, warming his hands and tail. He was dressed in furry slippers, bearskin trousers, and a long flowing robe printed with calipers, compasses, telescopes, microscopes, surgeon’s knives, test tubes, and question marks. The marks were not the same as those used on Earth, of course. The Dokalian mark was a symbol representing an arrow about to be launched from a bow.
“Welcome, welcome indeed!” the tall man said, hastening to Simon with his hand out, fingers spread. “You are as welcome as food to a hungry man!”
“Speaking of which, I am famished,” Simon said.
“Of course you are,” Mofeislop said. “I’ve been watching your rather slow progress up the mountain through my telescope. There were times when I thought you weren’t going to make it.”
Then why in hell didn’t you send out a rescue party? Simon thought. He did not say anything, however. Philosophers couldn’t be expected to behave like ordinary people.
Simon sat down at a long narrow pine table on a pine bench. Odiomzwak bustled around setting the table and two bowls on the floor for the pets. The food was simple, consisting of loaves of freshly baked bread, a strong goaty-smelling cheese, and the soup. This had some herbs, beans, and thick pieces of meat floating in it. The meat tasted somewhat like pork with an underlying flavor of tobacco.
Simon ate until his belly creaked. Odiomzwak brought in a bottle of onion vodka, a drink for which Simon did not care much. He tasted it to be polite and then, at the request of the curious sage, played a few songs on his banjo. Anubis and Athena retired to the end of the room, but Mofeislop and Odiomzwak seemed to enjoy his music very much.
“I particularly liked that last one,” Mofeislop said. “But I’m curious about the lyric itself. Could you translate it for me?”
“I was planning to do so,” Simon said. “It’s by an ancient named Bruga, my favorite poet. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, you Dokalians don’t have TV, so I’ll have to explain what TV and talk shows and commercials are. Also, the identity of the three guests on the show and their backgrounds.
“This Swiss noble, Baron Victor Frankenstein, made a man out of parts he dug up from the cemetery,” he said. “Nobody knows just how he vitalized the patchwork monster, though the movie showed him doing it with a lightning bolt. The monster went ape and killed a bunch of people. The baron tried to track him down, and at one time he was chasing the monster across the arctic ice, though they didn’t have the dog-and-sled sequence in the movie version either.
“Lazarus was a young man who died in ancient times in a country then called Palestine. He was resurrected by a man called Jesus Christ. Later, Jesus was killed, too, and he resurrected himself. Before he was killed, however, his judge, Pontius Pilate, asked him, ‘What is Truth?’ Jesus didn’t reply, either because he didn’t know the answer or because Pilate didn’t hang around to hear it. Jesus was deified after this and one of Earth’s important religions was named after him. He was supposed to know if man was immortal or not. At least, in Bruga’s poem, it is presumed that he does know.”
“You were trying to tell me something when you sang that,” the sage said. “You were hoping that my message to you would not be disturbed or marked by commercialism or trivialities, right?”
“Right.”
“You’ve come to the right place, the right man. I alone in all Dokal, perhaps all the universe, know the Truth. After you have learned it, your quest will be over.”
Simon put his banjo down and said, “I’m all ears.”
“You’re more than that,” the sage said. He and Odiomzwak looked at each other and burst out laughing. Simon reddened but said nothing. Sages were famous for laughing at things other people were too imperceptive to see.
“Not tonight, though,” Mofeislop said. “You are too tired and thin to take the Truth. You need to be strong and rested, to put some meat on your bones, before you can hear what I have to say. Be my guest for a few days, restrain your impatience, and I will answer the question which you say this Jesus could not answer.”
“Very well,” Simon said, and he went to bed. But it was not well. Though exhausted, he could not get to sleep for a long time. The sage had intimated that he would have to be strong to take the Truth, which apparently would be strong stuff. This made him apprehensive. Whatever the Truth, it would not be comforting.
At last, telling himself that he had asked for it, no matter what it was, he drifted off. But the rest of the night seemed nightmare-shot. And once again the images of his father and mother slid closer to him while behind them crowded thousands of people, imploring, threatening, weeping, laughing, snarling, smiling.