Naida Ainsley: “God. G-O-D. God. The creator of all things. The ruler of the universe. The supreme being. Most religions have at least one. Doesn’t your religion have one?”
Smith: “I—I guess so.”
Naida Ainsley (demonstrating magnificent patience): “What is the nature of your god?”
Smith (his squeaky voice throbbing with perplexity): “Nature?”
Naida Ainsley: “What sort of a being is he? What does he look like? He doesn’t have to have an appearance at all—he might be totally invisible—but you must have some definite ideas about him. He might have the form of an animal, though I’m afraid that’d be rather difficult to put across these days. He might have an abstract form, or he might be represented by an abstract symbol. Some religions have worshiped the sun. Some consider their god to be an exalted creature in human form. In other words, when their god wants to, he can look like a man. Many people in the Judaic and the Christian religions think of their god as an old man with a beard.”
Smith (light exploding through his perplexity): “Ah! An old man with a beard.”
Naida Ainsley: “Then you’re going to follow the Judaic and the Christian traditions?”
Smith (immensely pleased and enthused): “An old man with a beard.” There was a long pause. “A fat old man with a beard, and he wears a red suit. And at Christmas he brings everyone presents.”
Franklin touched off the pockette. His two co-conspirators were convulsed with laughter.
Naida’ Ainsley touched off her own pockette, and Walner Frayne sat with his face buried in his hands. “God!” he muttered. Then he looked at the others apologetically. “It could be worse, I suppose. It could have been the Easter bunny. Does this monstrosity of Smith’s have a name?”
“I didn’t think to ask him about that,” Naida said.
“What’s wrong with ‘god’?” Harnon demanded.
“Every Tom, Dick, and Harry of a religion has a god,” Frayne said. He reached for a synonym dictionary. “The Deity, the All Wise, the All Mighty, the All Holy, the All Merciful-“
“Why not just call him the All?” Harnon suggested.
“We could make up a name if we had to,” Naida said. “Just plain ‘god’ has a lot of things going for it, though. For one thing, everyone knows what it means.”
“Everyone knows what ‘cracker’ means,” Frayne said, “but manufacturers go right on calling them krispy krax or crackly crisps or some such stupidity. You’ve got to have a striking and distinctive name to sell the product.” He closed the synonym dictionary and pushed it aside. “I suppose I’ll have to put someone to work on a name for god.”
In the art studio, a staff artist named Al Koten was designing ecclesiastical costumes. As he worked, he glumly contemplated a photo of Alton Smith, and as he demonstrated to Frayne, no matter what he surrounded that head with, conventional vestments, or wild folds of costume, or unabashed frills, the head continued to look ridiculous.
“The only thing that’ll work is swimming trunks,” he announced. “Maybe it’s not an appropriate religious costume, but the way to keep this guy from looking silly is to put him in a tank of water with face mask and snorkel. That Adam’s apple—”
“Never mind,” Frayne said. “Put it aside until the makeup people have their crack at him. The right wig, for example—”
Koten shook his head despondently. “A wig isn’t enough. He needs a mask.”
Frayne returned to his office and forced himself to run, for the fourteenth time, a pathetic five-minute sound motion picture of Alton Smith. Smith was reading from the Bible, stammering his way through the simplest passages, mispronouncing words, losing his place, and making fumbling repetitions. Watching it, Frayne asked himself why he hadn’t tried to talk the little man into being something easy, like a professional football player.
The launching of a new religion was proving far more complicated than Frayne had expected. Smith would arrive at the end of the week, and nothing had been settled. Nothing at all.
Ron Hamon reluctantly accepted the designation as Smith’s official nurse. He got the little man settled in a modest hotel and delivered him at the Prockly and Brannot offices each morning. The makeup department was given first crack at him, and two days later he emerged in a splendid aura of dignity, his wig moderately long and touched distinguishedly with gray, his stylishly trimmed beard concealing his weak chin. Special shoes compensated somewhat for his diminutive stature. A new set of teeth did wonders for his mouth, but nothing at all seemed to help his squeaky voice.
Frayne took new courage, and Koten began to sketch costumes with some effect. “The mysticism of the East,” he announced, “blended with the medievalism of the West.” He produced a striking robe, with a high collar that concealed Smith’s bulging Adam’s apple.
While Harnon shepherded Smith from department to department, and—when he wasn’t needed—took him sightseeing to keep him out of their way, Frayne and Naida Ainsley grimly made a concerted attack on the doctrine problem. Frayne had posted a Buddhist motto on his wall: “From good must come good; from evil must come evil. This is the law of life.” The two of them studied it until they were bleary-eyed.
“He’s a wonderful old man,” Naida said suddenly.
“Smith?” Frayne asked, mildly surprised.
“He is. Actually, he’s never had the slightest interest in religion. He hasn’t attended any kind of a church in years. He’s a highly moral old guy—you should hear him go on about gambling!—but he certainly isn’t religious. Would you like to know why he said he wanted his own religion?”
Frayne was regarding her dumfoundedly.
“From our reactions, he sensed that we were in trouble because he didn’t want to be anything. So he said something he thought would please us. That’s the sort of old fellow he is. Whatever we decide will be all right with him—he wouldn’t know what to do with a religion if he had one.”
“Well—he’s going to have one,” Frayne said grimly. “And it doesn’t matter that he’ll accept anything we suggest. This project also has to be accepted by the boss and the Lottery Governors, and they won’t.”
“But Smith will agree with anything we say and do his best at anything we ask,” Naida persisted. “In the meantime, he’s having a nice vacation, so he’s getting something out of winning the Lottery. So let’s just plan on pleasing the boss and the Governors.”
“All right,” Frayne said. “Let’s just plan on that.”
The two of them stared at the motto.
For a week they struggled to evolve the perfect religious doctrine, accompanied by a profundity of ritual, all of it aimed at pleasing Prockly and the Lottery Governors, and everything they devised seemed fatuous. Finally Naida said, crumbling a stack of paper, “It’s no good. Let’s forget the boss and the Governors and try to please Smith.”
Frayne said irritably, “I thought you said anything at all would please him.”
“It would. And if he’s pleased, and insists it’s what he wants, the boss and the Governors will have to go along, won’t they?”
“I suppose they will, if it isn’t too outrageous.”
“Remember that interview I taped in St. Louis?” she asked. “The one where he described god as Santa Claus?”
“I’ve been trying to forget it.”
“I’ve been reviewing all of our tapes, and that one started me thinking. Do you know how many giveaway shows the networks are offering these days? I counted them last night. Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven shows each week where people play stupid games or supply stupid answers to stupid questions or let a stupid MC play stupid practical jokes on them. In return, they receive fabulous rewards. The shows have huge audiences. Surely it isn’t the games, or the questions, or the jokes that attract people. It’s the pleasure of watching someone get those fabulous prizes.”
“What’s that got to do with religion?” Frayne asked.
“The point is this: Those contestants don’t deserve priz
es. They deserve appropriately placed kicks for allowing the networks to make fools of them. What if we were to put on a show and reward people who actually deserve it—in the name of religion?”
Frayne was gazing at the sign on his wall: From good must come good; from evil must come evil. “Maybe you have something there,” he mused. “Santa Claus rewards good children with gifts and punishes bad children with no gifts. The Christian God rewards good people with heaven and punishes bad people with hell. A religion based on the Santa Claus mystique should be perfectly sound. It might even be popular, since Santa Claus gives gifts here and now instead of making his deserving followers die in order to be rewarded.”
“It’d be a hell of a popular religion as long as the gifts lasted. How long are we prepared to make them last?” “I’d have to ask the boss.”
“There is one problem,” Naida said thoughtfully. “We can use the Santa Claus mystique, but we can’t use Santa Claus, no matter what Smith wants. No one will accept a god with a belly that shivers and shakes like a bowl full of jelly. The image doesn’t command the respect a god has to have.”
“We’ll disguise him. He’ll be the all merciful and the all bountiful. The ultimate giver of all things because he is the creator of all things. And instead of rewards in an uncertain hereafter, very conveniently impossible of verification, this god returns good for good now.”
“As long as the gifts last, it’ll sweep the country,” Naida said. Frayne nodded. “But we’ll have to forget the evil for evil part. We’d be sued.”
“It’d spoil the show anyway. The TV way of dealing with a murderer would be to dump a pail of water on him and make the audience laugh. Then it’d give him a prize. No, this religion will accentuate the positive. It’ll concentrate on returning good for good.”
“We can threaten evil for evil,” Frayne said. “The bad people won’t complain if we don’t deliver. As for the TV show approach-do we actually give merchandise?”
“Certainly. That’s the appeal of the thing. The MC says, ‘Mrs. Homer Popalwitz, here is your reward for devoting twenty-seven years of your life to caring for your dying mother.’ And the curtain goes up dramatically on a three-day vacation in Rio.”
“I like it. We can give cash when appropriate, but we’ll concentrate on merchandise or package vacations or whatever reward seems most suitable. We’ll have to have Smith’s approval before we go any further.”
“He’ll love it,” Naida said. “He’s such a nice old man.”
Smith loved it. Frayne told him, “We’ve worked out a religion for you. You’re going to give people presents for being good—not just at Christmas, but all through the year. Is that what you want?”
Smith nodded happily.
Prockly was horrified. “It’ll cost a fortune!”
“No, sir, it won’t,” Frayne told him. “A TV giveaway show doesn’t pay off the entire studio audience—just three or four contestants. A giveaway religion wouldn’t have to reward the entire congregation—just a few meritorious members at each meeting. Also, some of the rewards can be quite minor—a new pair of eye lenses, a pair of orthopedic shoes—and such relatively inexpensive things can be splendid rewards to a deserving person genuinely in need of them. And we can select our recipients so the rewards won’t exceed a reasonable weekly budget.”
Prockly thought for a moment. “Well—he is the PR Board winner, and if this is what he wants—get up an estimate of the capital outlay required to get the thing started, plus a weekly budget, and I’ll ask the Governors how long they’re willing to keep it going.”
“We can count on a little income from the religion,” Frayne said.
“How?” Prockly demanded.
“An offering usually is taken at a religious service.”
“Well—maybe. But let’s not count on very much.”
Frayne went back to his office and brooded over his next problem, which was Alton Smith. With his revamped appearance, and in the robes Koten designed for him, Smith was a genuinely impressive religious figure—until he opened his mouth. Neither elocutionists nor a throat doctor had been able to do anything about his squeaky voice.
Frayne called in Harnon. “Smith has got to talk,” he told him. “This religion will be his personal property, and it would spoil all his fun if he had to stand around and watch someone else perform. We can hire an assistant minister to do the sermons and keep the service going, but at an absolute minimum Smith should hand out the gifts himself and bless the congregation personally. Take a throat mike, and have him whisper, or purr, or murmur, or speak softly, or anything else you can think of, until he comes up with something that can be amplified into a respectable voice.”
Charles Jaffner exclaimed, “They’re really going to base the religion on Santa Claus?” “Santa Claus and TV giveaway shows,” Benjamin Franklin said. “When do we blow the whistle?”
“Not until they get established and make suckers of a lot of people.”
Edmund Cahill nodded wisely. “It’s called, ‘giving them enough rope.’”
Frayne found a dilapidated, unused theater in a rundown, virtually abandoned shopping center—a victim of FHD, the Free Home Delivery craze.
He took Smith to see it. “The available churches are much too small,” he said. ‘“This can seat a thousand, which is too many, but at least you can grow without having to move. You won’t get any limousine traffic in this neighborhood. There isn’t even a landing area, though we could convert part of the parking lot if there was a need for one, but not many of your followers will be flying in. You’ll get them from that housing development across the way, and those apartments and condominiums—even the high-rises, which probably have a lot of welfare cases. Satisfactory?”
Smith said softly, “Oh, yes. Very satisfactory.” He spoke without squeaks. Harnon had taught him to speak softly into a microphone, and now he used his microphone voice all the time. When amplified it sounded odd but strangely impressive.
Prockly drew the line at buying the theater for Smith, but they were able to arrange a lease with very favorable options for long-term renewal or purchase. The owners knew that no one else was likely to want it.
“We’ll pay the lease out,” Prockly said. “That gives Smith’s religion a rent-free headquarters for a year, and you can include living quarters for him in the remodeling. In addition, we’ll furnish enough money for overhead, including a reasonable allowance for those gifts, for three months. After that he’s on his own. That’s the Governors’ final decision.”
“What about the choir?” Frayne asked. “And an organist? And an assistant minister to read the ritual and sermons?”
“They’re included in the overhead. Three months—but the allowance is for ordinary church singers, not imports from Old Lincoln Center. Any money that comes in as an offering is Smith’s. He can use it to run a fancier show, or for overhead beyond the three months, or he can call it his salary. Does this sound satisfactory?”
“I’m sure he’ll have an enjoyable three months,” Frayne said.
They hired an assistant minister, a middle-aged, out-of-work actor named Harvey Borne, who had a beautifully resonant speaking voice. With Smith looking on in his usual gentle, friendly fashion, the four of them—Frayne, Harnon, Naida Ainsley, and Borne—set about working out the practical application of the new religion’s doctrine. The first thing they did was throw out the survey on new names for god and tie their doctrine firmly to the Christian Bible.
“Why should we go to all the trouble of making up sermons,” Borne asked, “when the Bible has a million sermons ready to use?”
They seemed to be making progress at last, so Frayne returned to the problem of budget estimates. When next he looked in on them, he found them gathered about a massive photo of the old theater’s crumbling marquee. The sign, TABERNACLE OF THE BLESSED, had been painted into the photograph across the top of both faces of the marquee, and Harnon was fitting biblical texts into the remaining space. Come, ye bl
essed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
Frayne said distastefully, “A church with a marquee?”
“If a theater can have a marquee, a church can have a marquee,” Hamon said cheerfully. “They’re both offering an evening’s entertainment. And doesn’t the Bible say something about not hiding your light under a bushel?” He added another text, The righteous shall inherit the earth. And, below it, He shall reward every man according to his works.
“The architect’s plans call for tearing it off,” Frayne said. “It’ll be replaced with a Gothic-type entrance. Something with dignity.”
“There’s been a change,” Harnon said. “Smith likes it this way, so they’re going to repair it and leave it on. Anyway, with Santa Claus and TV shows for a model, we couldn’t be dignified if we wanted to. This religion’s going to be exuberant and happy, and the hell with dignity. Right, Altie?”
Smith beamed at him. “Right, Ronnie.” He proclaimed in his new, hushed voice, “Happy—that’s the way we want it. People enjoying getting presents.”
The new assistant minister gave Smith a grin and a wink. Borne was a hearty man, generously proportioned—Frayne suspected that he was out of work because of the limited availability of roles for fat men—and he possessed an infectious, booming laugh. “Right on, Altie. Make it a happy show with lots of action, and we’ll have a record run.”
“Audience-participation action,” Harnon put in.
“Right on,” Borne said. “This stuff sends me—takes me back to my childhood. Mother made me go to Sunday school, and I hated it. Now the stuff sends me.” He picked up a sheet of paper and read oracularly. ” I was hungry, and you gave me meat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in.’ Solid! I never thought of it that way when I was a kid, but it’s a promise. Churches been making that promise for centuries, and when anyone wonders why they don’t pay off, they make noises about what a wonderful thing death is. Well—life is much more wonderful, and a religion that rewards its followers in life has got to be a sensation.” He read again, “‘Whatsoever good things any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord.’ See? Nothing there about being dead. It says you do good, you have good done to you, period. A religion that won’t pay off until you die is like a policy in a life insurance company that may or may not be bankrupt—and you can’t find out which it is until your claim is filed.” He leaned over and patted Smith on the back. “You’ve got a great idea there, Altie, and we’ll make it a great show.” Smith beamed happily.
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