Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife (79 page)

The white light became approximately spherical and touched down between the lake and the terrace, if “touched down” was the right phrase. Bit by bit it began to diminish until it was no longer so hard on the eyes, and a figure became visible at its center. Jim wondered if perhaps one of the Mystères had relented and decided to rescue them after all. Hypodermic, La Flambeau, and Tonnerre were still up on the screen, but the chance remained that some other Voodoo god had taken pity on them. If he was really lucky, maybe it was the beautiful Erzulie-Severine-Belle-Femme, or at least Ogou Baba or the venerable Marie-Louise.

The glare of the sphere not only diminished, but flattened to the ground, became two-dimensional, and spread rapidly outward, running across what had once been Aimee’s prize lawn, hugging the contours in a perfect geometric ring of bright energy. Many of the nuns fled as it came toward them, but since Doc was standing his ground, Jim did the same, and as the arc of energy went past and through him he felt nothing but a slight electric tingle. He looked to Doc for some kind of comment, but Doc was staring intently at the figure that stood in the epicenter of the power ring.

The figure was certainly not one of the Voodoo gods Jim had previously seen, and totally lacked any trace of their characteristic flamboyance. In many respects, it resembled a Carthusian monk, in its full-length gray robe. The cowl was pulled up and forward over the being’s face, so it was fully hidden from Jim. As the ring of light reached what seemed to be some outer perimeter and faded to nothing, the figure slowly turned and raised a hand in greeting to the three Mystères on the screen, who, in turn, bowed with infinite courtesy. The exchange was so mutually respectful that Jim could only assume the salutations were between entities who were acknowledged equals. With the niceties of formal protocol observed, the robed figure shifted its attention to what was going on around it,
and actually spoke. To Jim’s complete surprise, the figure’s voice had the carefully trained and modulated tones of an English Shakespearean actor. “Would someone like to explain what exactly is going on here?”

Jim looked at Doc and Doc looked at Jim, and all of the nuns looked at each other. Since the question had not been specifically directed at anyone in particular, everyone seemed to be wondering who ought to answer and waiting for someone else to step into the breach. For a moment it looked as though Doc was going to make the move. He drew himself up to his full height and coughed once, but before he could utter a word, Semple and Aimee appeared on the terrace. Semple looked more angry and distraught than Jim had ever seen her. She also had a gun in her hand, a small, light-caliber machine pistol that must have been dropped by one of the red nuns. At first sight of the robed figure, she didn’t hesitate. She lifted the pistol and fired a withering, full-auto burst straight at it.

When Semple saw Anubis’s onetime Dream Warden standing on the scorched earth between the terrace and the lake, all thought and reason left her. She lifted the gun and squeezed the trigger. She didn’t even know if the pistol would fire at all. It might even have been out of ammunition and completely useless. It actually came as a total surprise when the thing roared and bucked in her hand, spraying out the entire contents of the clip in what seemed like little more than a second. She was equally surprised when the burst of fire had no effect whatsoever on its target. With a move so leisurely it could only have been a time distortion, the Dream Warden raised a hand, and a curved, shimmering, bullet-stopping energy field appeared in front of his body. Furious at the ineffectual pointlessness of her reaction, Semple hurled the gun petulantly to the ground, anticipating hideous retribution at any moment. Her third surprise was when the Dream Warden, instead of blasting her to horrible perdition, merely sounded a little disappointed. “Now, is that any way for old acquaintances to greet each other?”

“Acquaintances ?”

“We were both at the court of Anubis.”

“You were the fucking heart of darkness, the evil behind the throne . . . ”

The Dream Warden sounded quite pleased with himself. “I can pull together rather a good show when I put my mind to it.”

“A
show . . . ?
”

“Couldn’t you tell I was feeding his madness? I like to think that you and I, with a little help from Gojiro, did a reasonably efficient job of getting rid of him and his wretched kingdom.”

Semple almost pleaded.
“Who
are you?”

The Dream Warden sighed. “Oh dear, I suppose it was a mistake to arrive in the Dream Warden drag, but I do rather like the way it stops people from wanting me to do things for them.”

The Dream Warden unbelted the robe and let it fall to the ground at his feet, and Semple found herself facing a cultivatedly distinguished middle-aged man who greatly resembled the actor Christopher Plummer. He was dressed in an immaculate double-breasted white linen Savile Row suit with every crease as sharp as a knife. An aquamarine shirt with a matching Windsor-knotted tie gave a roguish, almost mobster aspect to the ensemble, although this was offset by a slight femininity of posture. Semple wasn’t sure if he was actually homosexual or merely arrogantly English. A white Persian cat that must have been hidden in the sleeve of the Dream Warden robe scrambled up onto his shoulder and sat staring at Semple with blue eyes that nearly matched the shirt and tie.

Although this revelation was more than enough to convince Semple that she was in the presence of an entity of great importance and power, she was still without a clue as to who this might be. Jim was looking around curiously; even Aimee herself was totally mystified. The only one who appeared to suspect was Doc, who had an amused smile on his face. It took Mr. Thomas, emerging from where he’d been hiding behind a marble copy of Michelangelo’s David, to effect a less-than-conventional introduction.

“Don’t you gaggle of fucking idiots know who this is? It’s Him, isn’t it? Yahweh, the Lord God Jehovah, and all of the other Thousand Names. It’s bloody God himself, look you.”

The voice of a nun came from somewhere at the back of the crowd. “I told you it was God.”

God made a self-depreciating gesture. “I used to be Allah as well,
but we had to subdivide around the twelfth century. The crusades were making us schizophrenic.”

A number of nuns were already on their knees, and angels and cherubs were starting to gaze with all the adoration that was expected of them. Aimee, on the other hand, wasn’t buying so soon. “You’re really God? Not just another of Semple’s malicious pranks?”

God sighed. “What did you expect? George Burns?”

“There’s been a lot of unfortunate confusion here lately.”

“Surely you don’t want me to prove it to you? I don’t have to walk on the lake or anything, do I?” He noticed Doc Holliday at a distance and nodded with genteel courtesy. “How are you, Dr. Holliday?”

“I’m feeling pretty well, my Lord. How about your good self?”

“I fear I may be looking at a few problems here.”

Aimee stared at Doc. All the color had drained from her face. “He
is
God.”

Doc gestured in the affirmative. “The Lord of Hosts and none other.”

God looked amusedly resentful. “So, Aimee McPherson, you need Doc Holliday to confirm my identity?”

Not only did Aimee’s color return, but she was rapidly developing the expression of a near-psychotic. “Damn right, I need Doc Holliday to confirm your identity. The last one had a halo and called himself Jesus, but then he turned out to be Ted Bundy. How I am I supposed to tell? When did you ever make thyself beknown to me? When was I granted the revelation? When did I ever see even one of your faces? I’ve devoted my entire life and hereafter to lauding and magnifying your name, and what have you given me in return? Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Not a sign, not a rainbow that I didn’t have to make myself. Not so much as a phone call. You couldn’t even pick up a gold phone and tell me, ‘Keep up the good work, Sister Aimee’? Oh no. That would have been too much effort. And now you’re surprised I don’t immediately recognize you and fall on my face when you show up in your fancy handmade ice-cream suit and your four-hundred-dollar blow-dry haircut. Well, I’m sorry, my Lord, but adoration is supposed to be a two-way street.”

God gestured to Doc. “You see what I mean? They all expect something from me.”

Doc demurred. “Fortunately, I have such a bad reputation, few are disappointed at the way I treat them.”

The Persian cat smiled at Jim. “He’s very good at talking to everyone at once.”

“I don’t know how He does it.”

“Well, He’s God, isn’t He?”

“It all sounds like babble to me.”

“That’s because you have a poet’s sensibility. Mr. Thomas hears much the same thing. The others all think they’re having a one-on-one with their Creator.”

“What are they all talking about?”

“Most of the nuns are just behaving like fans, gushing compliments and making themselves ridiculous. A few want favors, dispensations, or forgiveness for their sins. The Aimee half of the McPherson sisters has totally lost it, and she’s berating him as though he were an unfaithful lover. The hooker called Trixie, who turned herself into Bernadette, is boasting about all the sinners she’s sent to the pods on his behalf, and he and Doc are discussing the finer points of single-malt scotch.”

“That’s a pretty neat trick.”

“I think he’d rather dispense with the rest and just be talking to Doc.”

“And what’s Semple doing?”

“She’s keeping quiet. She seems a little bemused.”

“I’m sorry, Aimee, but you have fallen for the same self-delusion as hundreds of thousands before you. You humans constantly operate under the assumption that I, God, give a rat’s ass about the petty comings and going of a species of big-brained, overdeveloped, and rather violent monkeys. It’s just plain absurd. Some of you start praying to me when you lose your bloody car keys. Okay, a prayer is a prayer, and I don’t mind fending off the odd holocaust or arranging a cancer remission if it’s in a good cause, but
car
keys? Football games? Lotto? The two-thirty at Aqueduct? Give me a break. It’s nothing more than theological junk mail. All it makes me do is
want to put as much distance between myself and humanity as I can. Yes, bad things do happen to good people. And no, Aimee, there is no Santa Claus. It’s a cruel and random universe, full of black holes and entropy, where all manner of terrible things happen, deserved or not. And contrary to popular opinion, I didn’t make it, either in a week or two billion years, so you can’t blame me when shit comes to pass. Poor little crippled children are a DNA freakout, not a result of any malice on my part. Ebola was a result of you morons cutting down the rainforest, not my divine bloody judgment. I only added a few of the finishing touches—orchids, woodpeckers, and, to my eternal shame, you nasty humans. Believe me, as far as the rest goes, the math is far too complicated. The universe was originally put together by a consortium of forces that I can only just understand and you couldn’t even begin to take my word for. Have you any idea what the numbers for the Theory of Everything look like? They make quantum mechanics look like two plus two.”