Blameless in Abaddon (28 page)

“Lily pads can do that?”

“It's all in the programming.”

“And you really need two different versions of the prototype?”

“My first draft had five.”

“Know what, Mr. Sarkos? Before I visit Him tomorrow, I'm going to slip your plan in between Hamiel's and Chamuel's. I think He'll be quite amused. Let me make a suggestion, though.”

“Sure.”

“Take out the lily pads. They aren't nearly as funny as the rest of it.”

 

Not only did the female hominid survive the birthing process, she was up and about within an hour of expelling and eating the placenta, making jasmine tea for Martin and his associates as they lounged on the straw mats that crisscrossed the floor of her hut. Her name was Evangeline, and for a first-time mother she was remarkably confident, as if she'd been founding the human race all her life. Clarence, the new arrival, lay prone on a comforter stuffed with cockatoo feathers, babbling to himself in a manner so sweet as to constitute, Martin felt, a prima facie case against Augustine's theory of original sin.

“I hesitate to contradict anyone as learned as you,” said Evangeline, filling the bishop's ceramic tea mug from a red earthenware pot. The ape sat down. “But much of what you say in
Opus imperfectum contra Julianum
doesn't go over well with us.”

“Oh?” said Augustine warily.

“When you indict my husband's seed as the ultimate source of humanity's woes, I find myself moved to defend him.”

“I would assume His Grace was speaking metaphorically,” said Ockham. “Weren't you?” he asked the bishop.

“Don't I wish,” Augustine replied, directing his Svengali gaze toward the male hominid. “A person's depravity is every bit as genetic as the color of his eyes. When you so flagrantly abused your free will, sir, disobeying a direct order from your Creator, you polluted not only your own semen but also the semen of your progeny, the semen of your progeny's progeny, the semen of your progeny's progeny's progeny, and so on. The Fall of Man touches everyone conceived from that foul fluid—a population embracing all persons except, of course, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Every time a child is born with spina bifida, every time a maniac with a machine gun opens fire in a crowded restaurant, the tragedy bespeaks the fatal events that occurred upriver from this homestead.”

Saperstein snickered unapologetically, then turned toward Martin and said, “If I were you, I wouldn't lose too much sleep over this free will defense. Evidently it derives from some sort of weird-ass Lamarckian biology.”

Hope coursed through Martin's heart as he flipped open his laptop and typed,
Free will defense
=
Lamarckian biology.

“It doesn't derive from
any
sort of biology,” snapped Augustine. “It derives from sound reasoning and the Book of Genesis. ‘In Adam's Fall, we sinned all.'”

“Through Adam's
shlong
, our race went wrong,” replied Saperstein, jeering. “I'm sorry, Your Grace, but it just won't wash, either scientifically or theologically.”

“My name's Adrian, not Adam,” said the male hominid, untying his baby's diaper. “You folks could at least get
that
right.” In the middle of the absorbent fig leaf lay a blob of excrement reminiscent of French's mustard. Adrian wrapped the soiled diaper around itself as if making a burrito and pointed it toward Saperstein. “Don't be so quick to dismiss the free will argument. By focusing on my gonads, Augustine did the solution a great disservice.”

“In
your
opinion,” grunted Augustine.

“Properly formulated, the
liberum arbitrium
defense emerges as one of the most potent theodicies ever devised,” Adrian persisted.

Evangeline turned toward Martin, her beetle brow arching sympathetically. “Sadly for you, the defense comes in two versions: a weak form derived from Augustine's bizarre Lamarckian notions of inherited depravity, and a strong form perfected over the years by Augustine's intellectual descendents, among them Gregory the Great and Thomas Aquinas. If I were you, I wouldn't count on Lovett using the weak form.”

Morosely, Martin deleted
Free will defense
=
Lamarckian biology.

“I want to ask you a favor,” said Evangeline, resting her callused palm on his knee. “I'd like you to make an honest woman of me.”

“A tall order,” said Augustine.

“Shut up,” said Adrian.

“Nothing fancy,” said Evangeline. “Adrian and I merely want to formalize our commitment to each other.”

“I lost the election,” said Martin. “I'm no longer a justice of the peace. Such a ceremony wouldn't be legal.”

“If it doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother us.”

“I'd be happy to help you out, sure.”

“Wonderful.”

“Tell me more about free will.”

Evangeline raised the baby to her breast. “Although Adrian and I are often cited in connection with this solution, we're actually quite tangential to it. Forget the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge, and my husband's supposed descent into depravity.”

“I'm sick of being the fall guy,” said Adrian, nodding.

“Go on,” said Martin grimly.

“You should understand that the
liberum arbitrium
solution cannot account for so-called natural evil: earthquakes, tornadoes, sickle-cell anemia.” Evangeline cast a sardonic eye on Augustine. “All right,
some
people would say our transgression reverberated throughout nature. Before we ate the apple, pathogenic microbes didn't exist and the world was one big Elysian Field. In general, though, if you want to explain volcanoes and such, stick with your basic ontological defense. It's a powerful theodicy.”

“So I hear,” said Martin wearily. “Do you happen to know any rebuttals to that argument?”

“Funny you should ask,” said Evangeline. “We've been working on one for . . . how long has it been now, Adrian?”

“Four million years.”

“Our hobby, you might say. If we ever find ontology's underbelly, Mr. Candle, you'll be the first to hear about it.”

Adrian kissed his son on the fontanel. “Beyond natural evil, of course, lies existential evil—plane crashes, hotel fires, mining accidents—as well as moral evil, notably war, murder, rape, torture, terrorism, and slavery. To clear God's name in
those
arenas, you can't do better than the free will defense. It begins with a question. What is our most precious gift from the Almighty? Answer: our freedom. Even before the coma came, a person could be reasonably sure that, once he'd selected a course of action—simple or complex, virtuous or wicked—no divine emissary would appear and compel him to do otherwise. Now that God is non compos mentis, we can be even
more
certain of our autonomy. Whatever your other problems, Mr. Candle, you aren't a puppet. Never forget that fact.”

“But there's a catch,” said Evangeline. “If freedom is an absolute, no strings attached, then the unprincipled dictator in South America must enjoy the same quality of volition as the soup-kitchen saint on the Lower East Side. The autonomy of the world's most ruthless assassin must equal the autonomy of its noblest storefront lawyer. In such a universe, I have the mundane option of lifting Clarence to my breast and feeding him, and I also have the horrendous option of wrapping my fingers around his neck and strangling him.”

“Pain and suffering, to wit, are the price we pay for having real choices in life,” said Adrian. “Evil is, as it were, the lesser of two evils. A hard bargain, but I don't see how God could've arranged things differently.”

“Oh.” Martin's stomach seemed to turn itself inside out. He shivered with nausea and despair.

“But if God in His day was both omnipotent and good, wasn't He obligated to intervene on behalf of the innocent?” asked Ockham. “Wasn't He bound to soften the Dachau commandant's heart, cool the child molester's lust—”

“Consider what you're saying,” interrupted Evangeline. “You're saying our free will shouldn't be
truly
free. You're saying our moral choices shouldn't be
authentic
moral choices. You're saying we should be
robots.
That way lies madness.”

“I have a question concerning your baby,” said Saperstein. “Can you specify the mechanism by which one cell committed to becoming little Clarence's brain stem?”

“Huh?” said Evangeline.

Martin took a swallow of tea. The nausea persisted, wave after wave wrought by the free will defense. “Excuse me,” he said, closing his computer and gaining his feet. “I need some fresh air.”

“It's a fundamental biological riddle,” said Saperstein. “How does an unspecialized cell—”

“All I do is gestate the things,” said Evangeline.

Hobbling out of the hut, Martin stumbled through the forlorn vegetable patch and headed for the river. He paused atop the levee, studying the sanguine currents. He groaned. The beasts were upon him, the Behemoth of ontology, the Leviathan of
liberum arbitrium
, Behemoth's feet crushing his skull, Leviathan's teeth shredding his flesh.

“‘Perish the day when I was born'!” he cried, quoting his hero.

He clutched his belly, leaned over the levee, and regurgitated his breakfast into the rush of donated blood.

 

Later that morning Martin kept his promise, returning to the hut and marrying Evangeline and Adrian in a simple, nondenominational ceremony of the sort he'd performed many times throughout his career. Saperstein served as best man. Beauchamp was the maid of honor. Ockham videotaped the whole affair with his camcorder.

Annoyed by the apes' critique of
Opus imperfectum contra Julianum
, Bishop Augustine boycotted their wedding. At one point Martin glanced out the window and saw him pacing anxiously back and forth along the riverbank, wrestling with some terrible but unspecified temptation. If anyone as tormented as Augustine had ever walked into my little courtroom, Martin mused, I would've maneuvered him into psychotherapy posthaste.

The noon hour found the
Good Intentions
's passengers gathered atop the forecastle, chatting among themselves as the pilot plied them with margaritas. Belphegor's recipe differed only slightly from Lot's. There were no limes aboard the steamer, so he'd used lemon juice instead.

“I saw a great movie the other day,” said Belphegor, filling Martin's salted glass from the cocktail shaker.
“Hollywood Chain-saw Hookers.
It was on the Vomit Channel.”

“Moral evil,” muttered Martin bitterly. “An unavoidable phenomenon. If you want authentic freedom, you have to accept chain-saw hookers in the bargain.”

“Whatever. Did any of you happen to catch it?”

“My father used to own the poster.” Martin plugged his modem into his laptop. “He was a Sunday school teacher.”

“I fail to see the connection,” said Belphegor.

“You had to be there.”

“Speaking of
liberum arbitrium
, I realize there's something
else
we should ask Him when we reach the gland,” said Beauchamp. “Namely, did God have any choice in making the universe the way it is? Did He exert any free will in the matter?”

“That's good, Jocelyn,” said Saperstein.

“The question, I must admit, is not original with me. I'm borrowing it from Einstein.”

“No choice?” Martin fired up his computer. “That doesn't sound like God.”

“Think again.” Ockham imbibed his margarita. “As G. W. Leibniz noted over three hundred years ago, if God is the best of all possible deities, then He logically equipped Creation with the best of all possible physical laws. A Perfect Being would never knowingly make an imperfect world.”

Saperstein tapped on Martin's modem. “Which brings us to
your
agenda. Maybe the world is ideal mathematically, but it hardly seems utopian in any other sense.”

“If the opportunity arises,” said Martin, retrieving his e-mail, “I intend to ask Him about His own personal theodicy.”

 

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: Thur, May 25, 02:47 PM EDT

 

Your hunch was right. It turns out PBS spent $6,848,500 on
Havoc,
and when I offered them a nice, round $7,000,000, they started waving a purchase agreement in my face. As for their old fears that Court TV and CNN would broadcast the series en passant, the subject never even came up.

 

On Tuesday afternoon, per your orders, I sicced our hungry grad students on the ontological solution, but I don't imagine they'll bring it to bay before next week. Meanwhile, the dossiers on Lovett's “theological witnesses” get fatter by the hour. Yes, the defense's Bernard Kaplan is the same one who wrote
When You Walk Through a Storm.

 

Patricia and I had a dreadful fight last night, and the upshot is that we're going to stop seeing each other. I'm just as glad. Her lack of faith in
International 227
was getting increasingly hard to stomach.

 

The end of the Randall-Patricia affair filled Martin with profound disquiet. He wondered who'd instigated the breakup. The thought of Randall unceremoniously dumping Patricia angered him (the poor woman had suffered enough loss lately), but the alternative—Patricia jilting Randall—was equally troubling if it meant she was still carrying a torch for the ex-JP of Abaddon. Patricia deserved better than a dying man in love with his dead wife.

 

From: [email protected]