The Outpost (19 page)

“I got to,” answered Billy Karma. “After all, I’m God’s eyes and ears on this here temporal plane of existence.”

“He spent most of last night trying to convince me he was God’s hands, too,” said Silicon Carny

“You never heard of the laying on of hands?” said the Reverend in mock surprise.

“Not where
you
were trying to lay them,” replied Silicon Carny.

“How about talking in tongues?” asked Max.

“I give up,” said Billy Karma. “How
about
talking in tongues?”

“Can you do it?”

“Usually not until my fifth drink.”

“The more I hear about this man’s religion, the more I like it,” announced Baker.

“The more
I
hear about it,” said Max, “the more it sounds like I’ve been practicing it for the last twenty years without even knowing it.”

“Tell me some more,” said Baker. “You got any saints in your religion?”

“Not so’s you’d notice it,” answered the Reverend Billy Karma. “I thought I was pretty saintly this morning, just sitting there listening to Sinderella without pouncing on her.”

“Uh …” began Sinderella meaningfully.

“Without pouncing on her in earnest,” he amended.

“Hey, I was there!” she said.

“Okay, without pouncing on her in
deadly
earnest,” said Billy Karma. He turned back to Baker. “All right—no saints.”

“How about prophets?” asked O’Grady, who only seemed to get interested in the conversation when he could bring it around to odds and betting.

“We make more than our fair share, and we’re completely tax free,” replied the Reverend. “You thinking about taking to the cloth?”

“I meant prophets, not profits,” said O’Grady, enunciating carefully. “You know—the kind of men who make pronouncements and predict the future.”

“Men who make pronouncements and predict the future are hanging out in every brokerage house and bookie joint in the galaxy,” said Max. “And every last one of ’em dies broke.”

“We’ve had our share of prophets,” replied the Reverend. “Including maybe the two most interesting in the history of organized religion.”

“Organized religion’s been around eight or nine millennia,” noted Max dryly.

“Nonsense,” said Billy Karma. “Religion didn’t get really organized until I writ down all the rules for it maybe fifteen years ago. And since then there have been 53 amendments, as well as two evenings worth of apocrypha experienced at one of the sleazier whorehouses on Talarba VII, and a rejected canon courtesy of an alien lady who had three of everything worthwhile.” He winked at Silicon Carny. “There’s still time to become the 54th amendment.”

“There’s still time to be nailed to a cross,” she replied.

“What’s the matter with you, woman?” he demanded. “Religion’s supposed to be enjoyable, or why practice it at all?”

“
I’d
enjoy it,” said Silicon Carny.

“She’s got you there, Reverend,” said Max. “Fair is fair.”

“So what about these two prophets you were mentioning?” asked Baker.

“Don’t encourage him,” said Max. “He talks enough as it is.”

“But think of all the things he can’t do while he’s busy talking,” said Sinderella.

“He wouldn’t be doing ’em to me anyway,” said Max. He turned to Billy Karma. “Would you?”

“I got to be a lot more desperate than I am right now to work all the way up to
that
amendment,” said the Reverend devoutly. “Now, do you want to hear about these prophets or don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” said Max. “Maybe we ought to take a vote.”

“You didn’t vote for anyone else’s stories,” said Billy Karma.

“
They
didn’t waste three million words building up to ’em,” said Max. “All in favor of hearing the Reverend Billy Karma drone on about these here prophets say Aye.”

“Aye,” said Catastrophe Baker.

“All opposed?”

Everyone else in the Outpost hollered “Nay!”

Max looked at Baker, and saw a little something in his eyes that made him think twice.

“The ayes have it,” said Max.

The Prophet Who Was Never Wrong

When I was a young man (began the Reverend Billy Karma), and just starting out on the preaching trail, I came across a true quirk of Nature—a pair of brothers who were Siamese twins, joined at the hip. I did my best to uplift their spirits, but they felt abandoned by God, and one day they walked out during a thunderstorm and begged Him to strike them down with a bolt of lightning and end their misery.

And damned if the Good Lord didn’t do just that. His aim was a little off though, probably due to the poor visibility, and instead of killing them the lightning actually split them apart. The shock sent ’em both into a coma, and they lost a lot of blood, but somehow or other they were found and taken to a hospital before they could expire, and there they lay, day in and day out, tied in to dozens of tubes and wires.

And then one day one of ’em opened his eyes and asked where he was and what had happened to him, and the staff calmed him down and explained the situation to him, and the Lord granted another miracle and brought him back to perfect health within a week.

One afternoon, just before he was due to leave the hospital, he mentioned that he wished he didn’t have such an ugly scar on his left hip—and lo and behold, the scar vanished almost before the words were out of his mouth.

“I wish the sun would break through all the clouds,” he said, and a second later the sun did just that.

It was then he realized that he’d been doubly blessed by God, that anything he wished for would come true.

Now, he hadn’t ever prepared for a profession, since there ain’t a lot of jobs open to one-half of a Siamese twin team, but now he decided to set up shop as a prophet. On the surface of things, it would appear that he didn’t actually
need
a job, since he could just wish for a million credits or a castle with maid service … but he wanted to thank the Lord for the miracle, and he figured the best way to go about it was to make other people just as happy as God had made him.

First thing he needed was a name, so he called himself Isaiah the Right—Isaiah for the Old Testament prophet, and Right because he’d been the twin on the right when they were still attached. He took off just long enough to marry the prettiest girl around, and then he hung out his shingle and started prophesying in earnest.

Problem was, God, who can have a pretty mordant sense of humor when the mood strikes Him, put a little backspin on the ball.

For example, some poor unhappy soul would seek him out and ask for a prophecy, and Isaiah the Right would peer into his crystal ball (which actually held a hologram of Tassle-Twirling Tessie Twilight doing the act that was famed from one end of the galaxy to the other), and he would intone something like, “You shall have wealth beyond imagining.” And the man would thank him and go off to prepare for his windfall.

But it never came. Which makes a twisted kind of sense, when you come to think of it, because there ain’t nothing beyond a man’s imagining, and nothing is exactly what he got.

Still, if it was just the prophecies that were theoretically dead on but never actually came to pass, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But every now and then Isaiah would get something like a 400-pound girl with acne and crooked teeth who wanted to be beautiful, and he’d peer into that ball (thoughtfully hiding its contents from onlookers) and pronounce that “Tomorrow morning you shall be the most beautiful woman on the planet.”

And sure enough she would be—but only because every other woman on the planet woke up weighing 500 pounds with eczema and a mouthful of cavities.

I think maybe the worst was the politician who crossed his palm with the mandatory silver and some optional 12-carat diamonds. Isaiah told him that after the election he could climb the highest mountain in the world and he would be the master of all he could see. Sure enough, the poor bastard went blind on election night.

Well, things just went from bad to worse, and finally Isaiah the Right wished that he was back in the hospital right next to his brother, who was sleeping the sleep of the innocent.

That night Isaiah was mugged and robbed by three little old ladies with blackjacks, and sure enough he wound up one bed over from his brother.

Turns out his brother had woke up a couple of days earlier and been charged with seducing a couple of the nurses. He was taking a nap when Isaiah arrived, and he sure was sleeping the sleep of the innocent, because he later proved in court that he’d been in bed with Isaiah’s wife at the very moment he was supposed to be with the nurses.

When Isaiah heard that, he had a seizure and went right into another coma, and everyone decided that it was better all the way around to just let him stay asleep, and he remains there in the hospital to this very day, the prophet who was never wrong.

“So what happened to his brother?” asked Max.

“I thought you’d never ask,” replied Billy Karma.

The Prophet Who Was Never Right

Turns out that God has a better sense of humor than most people give Him credit for (continued the Reverend Billy Karma). Because just as Isaiah the Right was never wrong, his brother couldn’t win for losing. If he said it looked nice out, it’d snow five minutes later. If he thought the local murderball team was a lead-pipe cinch to win, they’d blow a 17-goal lead in the last three minutes. If he went to a restaurant and asked for steak, they’d give him salad—and when he decided not to make an issue of it and asked for some salad dressing, they’d bring him horseradish.

After awhile he decided that there might be a way to make a living in the prophet biz anyway, so he took the name of Isaiah the Left so everybody would know he wasn’t his brother, and set up shop. He needed an interpreter, of course, someone to tell the customers that when he said the only horse that couldn’t possibly win was the gray gelding that what he meant was to bet the farm on the gray.

He’d go to New Vegas as an advisor, and the second he advised you to stick on 18 you’d take a hit and pull a deuce or a trey. He’d be at the craps table, and some hot four-armed Delphinian would be rolling the dice, and when Isaiah would say that there was no way the purple bastard could come up seven six times in a row, you knew where to place your money.

In fact, before long he felt compelled to change his name. Oh, it was still the opposite of Isaiah the Right, but now instead of Isaiah the Left he was Isaiah the Wrong.

He achieved some remarkable results. I remember one freehand boxing match where he had so many stipulations that in order for him to lose all of them the referee had to get a hernia and the boxers had to be miraculously transported 37 light-years away where the fight was decided by a split decision.

He just kept on making wrong prophecies and raking in the money. It couldn’t last, of course. God doesn’t mind playing an occasional practical joke, but He ain’t so happy when someone plays it right back on Him.

One day Isaiah the Wrong prophesied that his client would be unlucky in love—and the next night the client got lucky indeed, and ran off with Isaiah's fiancé.

He promised his next client that fame and fortune would forever elude him. Two days later the Fame and Fortune Collection Agency ran his client to ground and nailed him for almost three million credits’ worth of unpaid debts.

The kicker came when, suddenly filled with self-doubts from his last two experiences, he looked at his unhappy image in the mirror and said, “I have confidence in you. Things will get better.”

The words had barely left his mouth when he realized what he’d done, but God hadn’t supplied him with a rulebook and he didn’t know how to take it back.

In short order four women sued him for child support, his banker embezzled his money, the mortgage company repossessed his house, his office was broken into and robbed, and a stray cat bit him on the great toe.

He finally decided that he couldn’t take any more, so he went to the hospital, lay down next to Isaiah the Right, and made one last prophecy: “I feel so good that I don’t think I’ll ever need to sleep again.”

That was more than twenty years ago. He’s still snoring.