Blinking, Corwin glanced down at his boots. They were still there, and so were his companions, but the rest of the world was gone. A sheer white void stretched infinitely in every direction. Ransom was on the phone.
“Elsie, what is it? . . . Yes, we ran into a slight complication . . . What? No, I didn’t get carried away . . . Okay, okay, so maybe it is my fault, but everything’s fine now . . . No, that’s really not necessary . . . Elsie? Elsie?”
With a sour expression, he slipped the phone back into his pocket.
“I never knew you had a heavenly hotline,” Corwin remarked.
“We used to take calls from the mortal world, but your solicitors are more persistent than the hounds of Hell.”
Hovering near Ransom’s side, the girl fiddled with a loose thread on her worn and faded rags. Corwin wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“That was a pretty brave thing you did, pushing me out of the way. So what’s your name?”
“I don’t have a name,” she said, her voice like a bell, “not a real one, but the other kids at the House of Colored Glass called me Blue Eyes, or just Blue, for short.”
The nickname was well-earned. Deep as the ocean and strikingly clear, her royal blue eyes put jewels to shame. Breaking their magnetic pull was no easy task.
“They had never seen anyone with blue eyes before, except for some of the metal walkers.”
“Where are your parents?” asked Ransom.
“I haven’t any. I don’t think I ever did. But there was a boy . . .” She scrunched up her face, straining to remember. “My husband.”
“Your husband?” blurted Corwin. He hoped that it was only a child’s play on words.
“From the place before. He was older than me, just by a little, only it seemed like a lot, because there were many years in his eyes. He was as brave as an eagle and as gentle as a lioness with her cubs . . .” Again she paused in quiet sorrow. “But I can’t remember his name.”
“What do you remember,” Ransom prodded her, “from before the House of Colored Glass?”
“I remember a garden. I see it sometimes in my dreams. The Starlight Garden. There were green trees and lakes and stars like bright pearls in the sky. It was always warm and never snowy, and there were no metal walkers.”
“That sounds like a good place. I’m Corwin, and I promise not to let the metal walkers hurt you anymore.”
“Are you and Mr. Apples going to be my masters now?”
“Let’s not get carried away,” said Ransom. Pulling off his top hat, he gave it a twirl and hung it on her head. “The truth is that you’re not technically supposed to be here, but as long as you don’t tell anybody, I won’t either.”
The angel winked and Blue smiled, pushing up the brim of the over-large hat as it threatened to sink below her ears.
“So where is here?” inquired Corwin.
The great white emptiness felt a lot like nowhere, yet in its simple and unsullied perfection, it also felt like a beginning.
“You worry too much about where you are,” Ransom replied. “It’s where you’re going that matters.”
He pointed into the distance and snapped. Low, dark columns reared from a remote point on the horizon, extending towards them like a line of speeding trains—an image that Corwin could have done without. Taking an involuntary step back, he narrowed his eyes and focused. The objects weren’t trains, but shelving units. They stretched and divided, sliding swiftly into position along the floor until the whole space was neatly sectioned into department store aisles.
Marble sculptures crowded the shelves, life-size men and women and animals both real and mythical. They struck gallant poses and bore eyes full of wisdom and fury and compassion. Beige tiles multiplied underfoot, replacing the stark whiteness, and seconds later the store was complete. Part cathedral and part shopping center, it was quite unlike any market that Corwin had ever seen. Sweeping arches crisscrossed the ceiling and sunbeams lanced through the marvelous walls of stained glass that served for the storefront windows. Chiseled cherubs spat rivulets of water into a grand fountain beside the checkout lanes where busy shoppers were already queuing up.
Ransom swept a hand over the scene with salesman-like swagger.
“Welcome,” he proclaimed, “to the Divine Supermarket!”
Corwin had to step aside as a little old lady barreled past, her shopping cart laden with the statue of a nude, bearded fellow on a circular pedestal. Wherever he looked, customers bustled about in search of their favored gods. A few weren’t content with just one, lugging multiple carts full of idols, wheels squeaking as they rolled cumbrously towards the registers. There were people of every race and creed, spanning the ages from antiquity to the modern era. They wore Greek togas and medieval tunics, tribal feathers and Japanese kimonos.
“Here you’ll find every god that’s ever entered the mind of man,” said Ransom.
“It’s quite a selection,” noted Corwin.
“That it is, but you wouldn’t like the customer service. There are no refunds, much of the merchandize is rife with hidden costs, and even the popular brands are likely to gain you more enemies than admirers.”
A woman in red cut a determined path through the myriad shoppers. Her high heels clicked with efficient strides, a tablet computer tucked professionally under one arm.
“Why, if it isn’t Elsie, my diligent and devoted secretary!” Ransom flamboyantly declared.
Ignoring his greeting, she pushed up her glasses and coolly inspected their young companion.
“This girl is mortal. You do realize that abducting her from her native universe is completely against company policy?”
“She’s a bit underage for an intern, but I was thinking that she could tag along with us for a while.”
“She’s mortal,” Elsie repeated.
“A minor detail. I’m sure we can work something out.”
“You know that I can’t let you do that. I’m taking her back where she belongs.”
As she reached for the girl’s hand, Blue locked her arms around Ransom’s waist.
“I don’t want to go back!” she pleaded, tilting her head with a puppy dog stare. “I want to stay with Mr. Apples!”
“Mr. Apples is going to lose his job,” threatened Elsie.
“Maybe,” Ransom lifted Blue’s chin, “but how could I part with a face like this?”
His secretary sighed in resignation. There was no talking sense into her incorrigible boss once he had made up his mind.
“I can’t keep covering for you indefinitely. Sooner or later she’ll have to return.”
“Do me a favor,” requested Ransom. “When you get back, visit the Archives and see if you can find anything on a place called the Starlight Garden.”
“What’s this about?”
“It’s just a hunch I have.”
Elsie eyed him dubiously.
“When this case is over, you and I are going to have another long talk.”
“I’d be lost without you, Elsie!” called Ransom as his secretary strutted away toward the lengthy checkout lines.
Corwin was leaning against a shelf with his arms folded, an amused look stamped on his face.
“Another long talk? It doesn’t sound like your methods are condoned by the management.”
“Rules and regulations have their place,” said Ransom. “But I find that many problems are best solved with a more direct solution. If the managing partners don’t like it, let them issue a reprimand.”
“That’s not the way to get ahead in your career, you know.”
“I wasn’t always a paper-pushing attorney. This state of affairs is but a temporary arrangement.”
“I thought you’ve been at it for eight hundred years?”
“A temporary arrangement,” Ransom reiterated.
There was an edge to his voice, a rawness that hinted at some old and bitter memory. Corwin was more than a little curious as to just what sort of career his attorney had left behind,
but he prudently decided to let it go for now.
As they strolled past rows of shelves, Corwin’s gaze combed the aisles. Above each one hung a sign.
Aisle 14: Gods of Days, Months, Years and Seasons
Aisle 15: Gods of Planets, Moons, Stars and Constellations
Aisle 16: Gods of the Elements
Aisle 17: Kings, Emperors and Assorted Divine Rulers
He threw up his hands in exasperation.
“Surely you can see how ridiculous this is! Even if I were to assume that somewhere amongst all these deities is the one true god, how is anyone supposed to find him?”
“The first step to finding something is defining what it is that you’re looking for,” said Ransom. “God is, among other things, the answer to a question.”
They turned down one of the aisles.
“Take Helios, here.” Raising his hand, Ransom indicated a bold figure crowned in a laurel wreath, clutching the reigns of a fiery chariot. “He’s the answer to the question: ‘What is that scorching disk of light that crosses the sky every day?’ But that’s not the question that Corwin Holiday asks when he speaks of God. No, you’re too clever for that. An atheist of your caliber needs a worthy opponent.”
“Look, it’s Hierax!” exclaimed Blue.
Tugging Ransom’s sleeve, she dragged them over to one of the neighboring gods: a fearsome lion with three eyes and griffon-like wings.
“My husband used to tell stories of him! Hierax is the god of the high mountains, seer of secrets and patron of warriors that die in battle.”
“It looks like Blue didn’t worship at the right temple,” murmured Corwin. “I guess you’ll have to cast her into Hell.”
“Fragments of truth can be found in almost every religion,” said Ransom. “Blue, in the stories you were told, was there a first god, one who was older than the rest?”
“Teos, father of all,” she answered. “The stars are the windows of his palace.”
Blue scurried ahead in search of other gods she might recognize.
“Even in polytheistic traditions, there’s usually an eldest. This girl is closer to grasping reality than most atheists, though I think you understand more than you let on.”
“I don’t discriminate,” said Corwin. “All gods are equally fictional to me.”
“But not equally worthy of refuting.”
While they were talking, Blue had climbed onto the lap of a bare-breasted, six-armed goddess, and was hard at work balancing her hat atop the deity’s head. She succeeded in hanging it, only to slip backwards. With the routine motions of a professional babysitter, Ransom caught her and swung her feet to the ground.
“Notice that Nietzsche didn’t say ‘gods are dead.’ He said ‘God is dead.’ He had a specific vision in mind, as do you. So tell me, for a man such as yourself, what is the unspoken question behind the word God?”
“The ultimate question,” Corwin replied. “Why am I here?”
“Good. That narrows our search considerably. You’d be surprised how many gods haven’t a thing to do with the origin of man.”
Ransom snapped. As quickly as they had appeared, the vast majority of the shelves pulled away, leaving but a single row.
“But I think we can get even more specific than that. After all, ‘Why am I here?’ is only part of the bigger question: ‘Why is anything here?’”
Again the selection thinned. Shelves slid free, most of them racing into the distance while the truncated row folded in on itself until it became a mere kiosk. Only a handful of deities remained.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!”
“You’ve dismissed quite a few gods,” observed Corwin.
“They were answers to the wrong questions,” Ransom said simply. “You broaden your definition of God when it suits you, but there’s a reason why you never devoted much energy to disproving polytheism or pantheism.”
“Maybe because those weren’t the dominant religious views in the place and time where I happened to be born?”
“While true, that’s only part of the story.”
“If there is another part, it’s because the pagan gods have no teeth. Most of them are little more than humans with superpowers. You’re right in saying that they don’t answer life’s deepest questions. However, I don’t see what’s so flawed about pantheism.”
“The god-force of pantheism isn’t totally flawed. God is a force, as Christians affirm when they say ‘God is love.’”
“But you insist that he’s also a person.”
“An impersonal god who is one with the universe might as well be the universe. Such a deity wills nothing, asks nothing of man, and is no more deserving of worship or ridicule than the ocean tides.”
“That god doesn’t sound too bad! Though I must confess, when New Agers used to tell me that god was ‘inside you and me,’ I couldn’t help but ask them ‘where?’ Perhaps the lord was hiding out in a body cavity that I happened to miss.”
He managed to elicit a snicker from Ransom as they approached the lone kiosk. Most of these gods were familiar to Corwin. There was the ever-popular bearded old geezer in a flowing robe. Next in line, iridescent flames licked the leaves of a burning bush. He saw Christ crucified on the cross, and beside him, a dove descending on a ray of light. One vision of God was represented by nothing more than a clear pane of glass framed in marble. In the center of the glass was printed the message: “No pictures, please.”
“As you can see, the search isn’t nearly as daunting once you give a little thought to your terms,” said Ransom. “The God you seek, or rather, seek to refute, is really quite distinct. He is an uncaused cause, a supreme being, a creator who calls forth existence from nothingness by a sheer act of will.”
“Yet several gods remain,” replied Corwin. “Were I to choose but one of them, the odds would still be against me.”
Ransom sauntered in a slow circle around the kiosk.
“You assume that each one of these is a different god, but what if that’s not the case? What if these that remain are actually just different visions depicting the same God, some more correct in their details than others, but none altogether false.”
“Even if these gods are all one, the religions that worship them are most definitely not. Some of them are liable to chop your head off for even implying that they pray to the same god as the people in the church or mosque or temple across the street.”
“Our task here was not to find a religion. Matters of religion have much to do with what a god says and who he says it to. If one is to weigh the truth of such things, one must first know what God is.”
“And this god alone is, as you would put it, the answer to the right question?”
“He’s the answer to all the big questions, from ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ to ‘Why do flowers bloom in the spring?’”
“I thought we agreed that science was the answer to that latter question.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Do you want the long answer or the short one?”
11
Supernatural Flying Space Geezer
Corwin perused the kiosk as though taking in a museum exhibit, admiring the finely sculpted gods (or visions of a singular god, if his attorney was to be believed).
The statues were so exquisitely crafted that he would hardly have been surprised if their marble eyes had blinked. Billions had sworn allegiance to this god. Millions had died in his name. He had left an indelible mark upon history, unlike any deity before, but that didn’t make him real.
Even if this was the most logical conception of God (a notion that Corwin wasn’t yet convinced of), was not the cost too high? And didn’t the fact that he seemed such an ideal fit for the puzzle of life simply mean that wiser theologians had dreamt him up?
“As far as gods go, yours is awfully convenient,” he said in a tone that meant too convenient. “If I wanted to be difficult, I could bring up the fact that you have yet to
prove all those other gods are false.”
“Unnecessary,” replied Ransom. “I need only prove that the Father is uniquely suited to his title. He is not just another god. Or do you plan to persist in the trite notion that all gods are equivalent? For someone who prides himself on being an analytical thinker, that sort of pluralism reeks of intellectual laziness.”
“I’ll not beat a dead horse, but I do have a question.”
“You usually do.”
“Why?”
“Why?” echoed Ransom with a blank look.
“Why the mystery? Why force man to endure this confusing search in the first place? Does your reclusive god enjoy playing hide-and-seek?”
“If he does, he’s apparently not very good at it. Seek and you shall find; knock and the door shall be opened to you, or so it’s said.”
“But where is the logic in that?” pressed Corwin. “If a reasonable god wanted us to know and love him, he wouldn’t hide amidst all these pretenders. A reasonable god would openly reveal himself. I’d have dropped atheism in a second flat if the lord almighty had shown up at the foot of my bed and just given me a stern look.”
“Believe me, I do wish he’d do that sometimes,” muttered Ransom. “It certainly would make my job a lot easier. But have you ever imagined the consequences? Has it crossed your mind how the world might be if belief in God didn’t require faith?”
A consummate darkness enfolded them, slowly lifting to reveal a tidy bedroom. Blades of pale light slanted through the shuttered windows. A middle-aged man lay sound asleep, tucked snugly beneath his quilted comforter. On the end table, the alarm clock’s glowing red digits read 6:29, then 6:30. An incessant beeping announced the new day. Silencing the machine with a groping swing of his arm, the waking man tossed back his sheets and climbed reluctantly out of bed, scratching the leg of his pajamas as he trudged towards the bathroom.
“This is Harold,” said Ransom. “His life is fairly ordinary. Five days a week he wakes up at dawn and heads into the office.”
Harold flicked on the bathroom lights and rummaged about for a fresh razor and a tube of toothpaste. The rhythmic scratch of teeth being brushed followed Corwin and company down the hall as they made for the small nook of tiles and granite that was the kitchen.
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