"Better save your sermons for the congregation," Frayne said.
Frayne put Naida Ainsley to work on a public-relations campaign. She hired a dozen college students who thought they were taking a public-opinion survey, but their questions were artfully designed to publicize Smith's church. "Have you heard about the new church in the Golden Glow Shopping Center, the Tabernacle of the Blessed? Its doctrine is that God will reward people in this life for the good they do in this life. What do you think of that? Do you know a really good person who's down on his luck and deserves to be rewarded now?" And so on, through a long list of questions.
While the students were publicizing the church, Naida screened the names of the unfortunates that they collected and had them discreetly investigated. At the proper time the most deserving of them could be enticed to church and rewarded.
"Things seem to be going well," Frayne told his staff. "As soon as the remodeling is finished, I think we can - as our new assistant minister likes to put it - get this show on the road."
Prockly overheard him. "And about time," he said.
Outside the converted theater, a special electric sign was in use for the first time. It flashed on and off, service tonight. Inside, the theater was three-quarters filled - a respectable attendance for the first night of a new religion and a tribute to Naida Ainsley's publicity efforts.
A massive, double-tiered altar had been constructed at the back of the theater's stage, where the motion-picture screen had been. Harvey Borne held forth on the lower level, flanked by choir and organ. On the upper level, Alton Smith performed his ritual, proclaimed his blessings, and inserted an occasional pronouncement that the amplifier caught with marvelous effect. Under the lower altar, at stage level, was a row of curtained compartments where the blessings of a Just God could be kept until their dramatic unveiling.
Harvey Borne's resonant twang filled the theater with the stirring sermon Harnon had written for him. The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish. And Love ye your enemies and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great. Smith, on his high rostrum, was a kindly, reverential figure, yet awesome in his striking robes, and he rose to underscore Borne's most telling points with murmured contrapuntal commentary.
Then came the climax: The Procession of the Blessed. A stairway unfolded at Smith's feet, and he slowly descended to the stage, proclaiming as he went, "Blessed are the deserving among you, for they shall be rewarded. Blessed are those of you who pray to be deserving, and doubly blessed are those whose prayers are answered. For the Time of the Just God is fulfilled, and He will reward good and punish evil."
The congregation bewilderedly allowed itself to be coaxed into the aisles, where each member was handed a lighted candle.
"For the light of the righteous rejoiceth," Smith proclaimed, "but the candle of the wicked shall be put out."
The members of the congregation, grappling awkwardly with their symbols of righteousness, filled the outer aisles and began to slowly circle the sanctuary, passing below the stage and the massive, sculptured cornucopia at its center that represented an unsubtle embodiment of the Just God's beneficence. Occasionally one of the righteous - a member of the Prockly and Brannot staff planted in the audience to help establish the new church's ritual - mounted to the stage and crossed it, and at the center knelt to receive Smith's blessing.
The balcony was closed to the public for this service, and Frayne and Prockly sat there with two of the Lottery Governors and a sprinkling of Lottery officials and Prockly and Brannot employees. With earphones they were able to monitor the instructions Harnon radioed to Smith. "The small boy with the crutch. He's coming up the outer aisle on your right. That's Timothy Allen. Start your prayer now."
Smith intoned, "O Just God, have you directed here tonight any whose goodness has gone unrewarded? I pray that you have, and that you will guide me to them to bestow on them the blessings that await them here, in the Tabernacle of the Blessed. Where are the unjustly persecuted? Where are the virtuous who have been slandered? Where are the honest who have been victimized? Where are those who labored to help others only to be abandoned in their own time of need? Guide my hand, O God of Justice, so that I can dispense a mite of this Earth's plenty to the unrewarded righteous."
He raised both hands. "Stop!"
The procession came to an uneasy halt. Smith made his way back along the line of curious but bewildered righteous, seemed to hesitate, to peer here and there, and then, under the Just God's guidance, he pounced. He took the candle from a small boy with a crutch and held it aloft.
"Timothy Allen," Smith proclaimed. "The hour of your reward is at hand. On your lame leg have you ran errands for those weaker than yourself, you have helped others whenever you could, you have suffered without complaint, you have cheerfully accepted cruel taunts of those more fortunate, you have brightened one small corner of this dark world with your own pure sunshine. The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich; he bringeth low, and lifteth up; to the righteous good shall be repaid; According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay; He shall reward every man according to his works. And to you, Timothy Allen, the most deserving of the righteous, here is the beginning of your good fortune."
Still carrying the candle aloft, Smith helped the crippled child up to the stage and led him to the row of curtained compartments. He paused dramatically, and then he gestured one of the curtains aside. An assistant was at his elbow to wheel out a gleaming autocycle with sidecar. In the future, Timothy Allen would perform his good deeds in style.
The congregation's first stunned reaction was silence. Then - many of those present were poor people from the neighborhood who knew Timothy - it burst into thunderous applause. Smith placed Timothy's candle on a ledge below the altar while two assistants lowered the autocycle from the stage. Wet-faced, tears flowing freely, Timothy started to limp away supported by the cycle, but Harvey Borne, bluff, grinning, was there with a microphone to congratulate him.
"How did he know me?" Timothy's high-pitched voice blurted, and he pointed at Smith, who smiled down on them benignly from the stage.
"A Just God knows you," Borne said, patting him on the head.
A moment later Smith, prompted by Harnon's radio signals, began another blessing.
As the row of candles left by the rewarded righteous lengthened, the congregation became increasingly excited. Some of the gifts were triviaclass="underline" An old man who scraped together what he could from his pension money to feed birds during cold weather received a fifty-gallon can of birdseed and a pair of binoculars so he could observe his feathered friends more closely, and he left the stage shedding tears of happiness. An elderly couple received hearing aids; another received a television set. A Mrs. Schobetz, who had kept her family of five children together after her husband deserted her and who always had time for a neighbor in need, received a freezer full of food. For a bright teen-aged girl whose hands were paralyzed, there was a voicewriter. A housewife with a large family and a solvent allergy received a portable dishwasher.
The end came on a climax that matched the beginning: Smith, guided by Harnon's radio signals, pounced on a man in a worn pink suit - a man with one arm missing. "Jefferson Calder," Smith murmured. But this time the magic curtain opened on an apparently empty compartment - empty except for a certificate entitling Calder to be fitted with an artificial limb. He left the stage to an avalanche of applause and embraced with his one arm a tearful wife and children. Like Timothy Allen, most of these people knew him: a good man who'd had a tough break but never whined; a man who helped others when he could.