Destroyer 019 - Holy Terror

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Holy Terror
Warren Murphy
CHAPTER ONE
Many things are holy, but few of them holy men.
—HOUSE OF SINANJU.
When the Reverend Titus Powell saw the bodies being loaded on ox carts in the outskirts
of Calcutta, he asked himself if he were willing to die.
More specifically, was he willing to give up his life for a white girl?
Even more specifically, was he willing to give up his life for a rich white girl whose
father, just two decades ago, had made Reverend Powell ask himself the identical
question over the value of a cup of coffee. He remembered it clearly. You don't forget
facing death.
"Ain't no one stopping y'all from drinking that cup of coffee, Reverend. But they ain't
gonna be no one stopping them from hanging y'all from the big elm at Withers Creek
neither."
Those had been the words of Elton Snowy, owner of Snowy's Pharmacy, Snowy's Mill,
Snowy's Drive-in, and Snowy's Farm, in Jason, Georgia. Mr. Snowy, who was a Jason on his
mother's side, had stood with the Silex still bubbling at the lunch counter in his
pharmacy, with the young Reverend Mr. Powell sitting in front of an empty coffee cup and
a crowd of jeering white youths behind him.
"I'll take cream and sugar," Reverend Powell had said, and he saw the two dark barrels
of a shotgun stuck in his face. On the triggers down the barrels was one fat pink
finger. The nail was grimy. The nail, the finger, the hand, and the gun belonged to the
saw mill foreman who, everyone in Jason knew, was the leader of the local Ku Klux Klan.
"One barrel or two with your coffee, nigger?" asked the foreman.
Reverend Powell heard the laughter behind him, saw Snowy hold the pot over the cup,
smelled the aroma of fresh-ground coffee, and knew if he lived he would never drink
coffee again.
"I said one barrel or two, nigger?" repeated the saw mill foreman.
"Get that outa here," yelled Snowy. "There'll be no shooting in this pharmacy."
"You gonna serve a nigger?"
"You ain't messing up this place with that double barrel."
"And you ain't gonna serve no nigger."
"Hey, Mr. Snowy," came an out-of-breath voice from the door of the drugstore. "It's a
girl."
"If you think I'm gonna allow bloodshed in here the day my wife gives me a daughter,
you're out of your cotton-pickin' head there," said Snowy. "Put that double barrel away,
and let's all go to my place for a little real refreshment. I'm closing the pharmacy."
"All" of course did not include Reverend Powell. But in the general joy, he did get his
cup of coffee, with no barrels.
"Just for this occasion," said the saw mill foreman, pointing the shotgun at the cup.
"It ain't gonna be no regular thing."
But the South was changing all over, and it did become a regular thing for the blacks in
Jason to eat at the same counters and to go to the same movie theaters and to drink from
the same fountains, and twenty years later, if anyone asked whether a black, least of
all the Reverend Mr. Powell of Mt. Hope Baptist Church, could get a cup of coffee at
Snowy's, a resident of Jason would have looked at the questioner as if he should be
committed to an insane asylum.
Now, as the ox cart creaked by him on a foreign road in India, Reverend Powell
remembered that long-ago day in Jason. He could see bodies dangling limbs from the cart
in a looseness no living person could duplicate. Bellies swelled forward but ribs
protruded, cheeks sunk beneath vacant eyes staring out into eternity, never to blink
again.
The road smelled of human excrement, and the morning had no coolness to it, just a
smothering heat that would become unbearable when the sun rose to its full powers.
Reverend Powell felt his seersucker suit sticking to him as it had even yesterday, but
so filthy had been the hotel the night before that he had not dared change it. He leaned
against the gray 1947 Packard with the new coat of paint, a car that would have been
junked back in Jason, and looked at the driver, a brown-skinned man with Caucasian
features. The driver had stopped for a large gray cow with a dangling, fleshy throat.
Just minutes before he had refused to stop for a baby crying in the street, because it
was what he called "an untouchable." Cows were sacred in India. Bugs were sacred in
India. Everything was sacred in India, thought Reverend Powell—everything but
human life.
Instead of waiting in the car's greasy back seat for the cow to pass, Reverend Powell
had gotten out, and when he saw the ox cart of bodies go by, he knew he had to make a
decision: go on, to what he felt now would be his death, or go back to Jason.
He still had several hundred miles along roads like these to reach Patna at the foot of
the Vindhya Mountain Range, Patna on the Ganges up from Calcutta. Famine was upon the
land despite gifts of American grain that rotted in warehouses of Calcutta and Bombay
and Sholapur, despite even more grain that reached the people. Despite the most aid
America ever gave any country it had not been at war with, India was still collecting
its starved dead in ox carts while its sanctimonious ministers in New, Delhi, who
presumed to preach morality to the world, lavished money on atomic bombs.
Reverend Powell said a little prayer and steadied himself. The cow had to move soon, and
he must decide whether to go on up the road to Patna or go back to the airport and
return to where he could breathe the fresh air of the piny woods or share a mess of
catfish with his family or cry out his love of God before his congregation in the neat
white church set off on the grassy slope by the old Snowy Mill.
He felt that his life hinged on the decision he made, but just last week, it had not
seemed all that terminal. Difficult, yes; terminal, no. He had regarded it all as an
exercise in turning the other cheek.
"Reverend," Elton Snowy had said back in Jason exactly seven days before, "you gotta
help me. I think maybe you're the only one who can. I got a letter here from Joleen. I
think she's been, well, sort of kidnapped. Sort of."
"Joleen. Little Joleen. Why, she's such a lovely girl. A real Christian, if I may say
so, Mr. Snowy."
"Yes sirree, a lovely girl, a lovely girl," said Snowy. Reverend Powell could see red
rings around Snowy's eyes, as if the richest man in Jason had been crying.
"I need your help, Reverend. I know Joleen used to sneak down to your section of town
and do social work and all. And I know you and your people liked her."
"She is a lovely girl, Mr. Snowy. Can I offer you a cup of coffee? Myself, I haven't
drunk any for twenty years."
"No, thank you kindly," said Snowy and pushed a worn letter at Reverend Powell. "Read
this please. It's from Joleen to her ma."
Reverend Powell read the letter, and he was confused. It seemed like a pleasant enough
message from a girl who had found happiness and communion with a divine force. What
confused Powell was the reference to her father's good civil rights work, but that it
was nothing compared to the work of the Blissful Master she had found there in Patna,
India.
"If only your very close friend, Reverend Powell, could see the complete happiness of
the Divine Bliss Mission here in Patna," the letter read, "I would be eternally
grateful. For the sake of Jason, he should see it right away."
The printing on the letter said, "The Divine Bliss Mission," and according to its
letterhead, it had offices in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, and London. Its home was
Patna, India. A picture of a fat-faced teenage boy was engraved at the top of the
letter. A fuchsia halo surrounded his head.
"I see your daughter has done what the Lord hath failed to wrought," said Mr. Powell
pleasantly. "She has made me your close friend."
"It's a code, Reverend. She's in trouble. I'm not sure what kind of trouble, but she's
in trouble. She thinks you're the only man who can save her. I don't know why. Maybe
it's because those Indias are colored folk too. She's a good girl, Reverend. I know
she's not your flock, but… but…" Elton Snowy turned away. "Please don't
visit the sins of the father on the daughter."
"Why don't you go to one of these Divine Bliss Missions and ask about her yourself?"
"I did. I hired people. I hired lots of people. Two went to India. They never came back.
They joined that little… that little Blissful Master."
"I see," said Reverend Powell. "Well, I remember the day Joleen was born. I was having a
cup of coffee at the time."
"I'm not asking for myself. And if anything should happen, your family will be well
provided for. You have my word on that."
"A passable nice offer, Mr. Snowy. But I know my family will be taken care of. Because
if I go to find Joleen, you're going to deposit $50,000 in my lawyer's escrow account."
"I'll give it to you now, Reverend. Cash. I can get you that in cash."
"I don't want your money. I want security for my family if I should not be here to
provide for them."
"Perhaps insurance. I could arrange a hundred thousand dollar policy, Reverend,
and…"
"My lawyer's escrow account. If I should die, my family will be provided for. I'd rather
not have to repeat myself, if you please, Mr. Snowy."
"Certainly. Certainly. You're a real Christian."
So now he was looking for Mr. Snowy's Joleen, and if it were a good deed, then certainly
he should be able to trust in the Lord. If he had faith, both he and Mr. Snowy's
daughter would be back in Jason by month's end. He would return Mr. Snowy's money, and
perhaps it would give that acquisitive man a chance for the glory of charity. The church
sure could use a fine new air conditioning system.
If he had faith. But it was so hard to have faith in the face of death.
The cow looked around condescendingly, then plodded off along the dusty road, following
the cart, which, if the cow had been hamburger the day before, would not now be full on
its way to the body dumps.
"To Patna. On to Patna," said Reverend Titus Powell of Jason's Mt. Hope Baptist Church.
"I thought you might go back, you know," said the driver in a clipped British accent.
"Most do when they see the carts."
"I thought about it."
"I hope you won't think less of India because of it. Really, almost all of them are
untouchables and make no real contribution to the true grandeur that is India, don't you
think?"
"I see men who died for want of food."
"Patna is a strange place for an African American," said the driver. "Are you going to
see a holy man?"
"Perhaps."
"Patna is the home of holy men, ha-ha-ha," said the driver. "They know the government
won't touch them there because of the prophecy. They're as important as the sacred cow
there."
"What prophecy?" asked Reverend Mr. Powell.
"Oh, it's an old one. We have more prophecies than there is mud in the Ganges. This one,
however, is believed by more than would care to admit, ha-ha-ha."
"You were talking about the prophecy."
"Ah, yes. Of course. Indeed. If a holy man, a true holy man, is harmed in Patna, then
there will be the rumbling of the ground, and thunder from the east. Even the British
believed it. In their reign there was an earthquake in Patna, and they looked high and
low for a holy man. But all the wealthy, powerful holy men were well and in fine
spirits. Then they found that the lowliest fakir, who lived at the foot of the
mountains, had been robbed of one meal. His last meal. And soon after, the Japanese
invaded. Then, again, a holy man had been doused in sweet oils and set aflame because
the concubine of a maharajah had said he had a beautiful spirit. And the Mongols invaded
after that. Ever since, every enterprising holy order has had at least one home in
Patna. The government respects them, yes, indeed."
"Do you know anything about the Divine Bliss Mission, Incorporated?"
"Oh, one of those American ones. Yes, very successful."
"Have you heard of the Blissful Master?"
"Blissful Master?"
Reverend Powell pulled Joleen's letter from his jacket. "His Indian name is Maharaji
Gupta Mahesh Dor."
"The Dor lad, of course. Of course. If you can read and write English well, there is
always work with him. And if you can…" The driver did not finish, and no matter
how Powell pressed him, he would not answer what other sort of person could always find
employment with the Dor lad.
Patna, like the rest of the famine areas of India, cleared away its dead in carts. An
impatient Rolls-Royce dashed by them, and Powell's driver commented that it was a
government minister on his way to Calcutta for an important conference on imperialist
American atrocities, such as its failure to refinance a liberation library in Berkeley,
California.
"It will be a good speech," said the driver. "I read where he is going to label the
library closing for what it is—a genocidal racist repressive atrocity." The 1947
Packard took a little bump, and Reverend Powell's heart sank. The driver had not missed
the little brown-skinned baby. Perhaps the child was better off.
"Well, here you are," said the driver, pulling up to a heavy wooden gate reinforced with
large steel bolts, rising almost two stories into the air and flanked by white cement
walls. It looked like a prison.
"Is this the Divine Bliss Mission? It looks like a fortress."
"To the Western mind, that which it does not understand is foreboding," said the driver.
"It sees its own evil behind every obscurity. We do not have men with spears like your
Pope."
Reverend Powell tried to explain that he was a Baptist, and therefore the Pope was not
his spiritual leader, and anyway the Swiss Guards in the Vatican were only ornamental
attractions with no intention of using any weapon. The driver seemed to understand all
this until he was tipped, and, then, with a cheerio and a tally ho, he was off with a
cry that the Papacy was a tool of the Central Intelligence Agency and all that rot.
Reverend Powell cried out after him that he wanted the driver to wait for the return
trip, but he thought he heard only laughter from the coughing, sputtering 1947 Packard.
When Powell turned back to the door of the mission, he saw it had been opened. A pink-
robed Indian priest, standing in the doorway, smiled. He had a silver streak painted
down his forehead.
"Welcome, Reverend Powell. We have been expecting you, lo these many days."
Reverend Powell entered. He could not see people closing the high heavy wood and metal
door, yet it moved slowly shut with a moan of its mass.
A splendid pink palace rose from the center of the courtyard, the Vindhya range looming
snow-capped behind it in the distance. Shimmering reflections of colored glass played
upon the pink, and at the center point of the palace, a crowning dome of golden
brilliance forced the reverend to turn away his eyes.
"Uncle Titus, Uncle Titus. You're here. Wowee." It was a young woman's voice. It sounded
like Joleen, but it came from a running maiden with very dark eyes and the cloppy run of
sandaled feet. Her face was wrapped in pink linen, and a silver streak bisected her
forehead. As she drew near, she said, "I guess I shouldn't say wowee anymore."
"Joleen. Is that you?"
"You didn't recognize me, I've changed so much, right?"
"Your eyes."
"Oh, the bliss perception." She took the strong, tired hands of Reverend Powell,
maneuvered the worn wicker suitcase out of his grip, and with a short clap got the robed
priest to run to them and pick up the valise.
"It looks like some sort of charcoal makeup over the eyelids," said Reverend Powell. He
felt her nails play on his palm and instinctively withdrew his hand. She laughed.
"The eye makeup is only the external. You see the makeup with your eyes. But you do not
see what goes on beneath my eyes, the eyes that swim under lakes of pure tingle."
"Tingle?" asked Powell. Was she trying to communicate in code? Was the eye makeup a
narcotic? Was she bugged? This was all strange to Reverend Powell.
"The feeling behind my eyes. We were created to enjoy our bodies, not suffer with them.
The Blissful Master, all praise be his name, has taught us to free ourselves. Tingle is
part of the freedom."
"Yes, we got your letter—your father, my good friend, and I."
"Oh, that. All praise be the name of the Blissful Master. Praise be his infinite name
and infinite being. He is wondrous in his life, and his life is our proof. Praise the
blissful masterful life."
"Joleen, child, is there some place where we can talk in privacy?"
"Nothing is private from him who knows everything."
"I see. Then perhaps you would care to return with me tonight or as soon as possible, to
spread the good word to Jason," said Reverend Powell, scanning the walls. Standing along
them were robed, turbaned men with unholy machine guns and bandoliers. The courtyard
floor was delicate inlaid gold and red tile. Reverend Powell could hear the clod of his
rough leather shoes as he walked with the girl who had been Joleen Snowy into the
building under the golden dome. Inside, the Oriental splendor disappeared with a gust of
cold air. He was walking on linoleum, with hidden air conditioning chilling him, and
indirect lighting proving restful, if strange, to his eyes. It was good to be cold and
dry, away from the hot, dusty death of the roads of India, away from the brown mud of
the Ganges and the reek of human waste in body and in discharge.
Clear water bubbled from a clean chrome fountain. Set against a clear white formica wall
was a red man-high soda machine.
"The Blissful Master believes that is holy which is made holy," said Joleen. "He
believes we are here to be happy and when we are not, it is because we have poisoned
ourselves in our minds. Don't be shocked by the modern heart of this palace. It is
another proof of the Blissful Master's truth. Do you want a soda?"
"With all my heart, child, I would dearly love a soda. Do you have orange soda here in
Patna?"
"No. Just Tab. The Blissful Master prefers Tab. If you want orange, go to Calcutta or
Paris. Here we have Tab."
"I see the Blissful Master has a problem with calories."
"It is not a problem. A diet drink is a solution." Reverend Powell saw a flush creep up
her soft pale cheeks. For the first time, he saw a strand of her golden yellow hair peek
out from under her pink hood.
"We can leave to spread his word tonight, if you wish, child."
"You think I've been kidnapped, don't you? Don't you?"
Reverend Powell glanced around the large expanse of the cool, white-walled room, like a
horizontal snow pop set in a hot pink and brown dish that was India. Modern luxury in a
continent of rancid death. If it were modern, it could have electronic listening
devices. Suddenly he noticed cleanliness in the air. He was no longer smelling human
excrement.
"Of course, I don't think you've been kidnapped. As I was telling your father, my close
friend, I just want to come and see our little Joleen."
"Rubbish. Daddy isn't your friend. The day I was born it almost cost you your life to
get coffee at his pharmacy. Daddy's a reactionary racist. Always has been. Always will
be."
"But the letter, Joleen?" asked Reverend Powell, his mouth open in astonishment.
"Brilliant, wasn't it? Another proof of the perfection of our Blissful Master. He said
you would come. He said Daddy would go to you and you would come here for me. He said
you would do this at the request of a man who would have watched you die for a cup of
coffee twenty years ago. Doesn't this prove his brilliance? Oh, perfection, perfection,
perfection is my Blissful Master," shrieked Joleen, and she jumped up and down, clapping
her hands in ecstasy. "A perfection. A perfection. A perfection. Another perfection."
From doors he had not seen, from drapes he had not noticed until they rustled, from
stairways that had blended into the walls until he saw sandals coming down them, came
young men and women, almost all of them white, a few black. None looked Indian except
one girl who was more likely Jewish or Italian, thought Powell.
"Let me tell you another proof of our Blissful Master's perfection," Joleen announced to
the throng and told about Jason, Georgia, and the history of the races, black and white,
how distance had always been between them, but the Blissful Master had said his
perfection transcended races.
"And to prove it," shrieked Joleen, "here is a black man who has come at the bidding of
my father, a white man and a hated segregationist. Lo, perfection we behold."
"Lo, perfection we behold," chanted the group. "Lo, perfection we behold." And Joleen
Snowy led the Reverend Mr. Powell through the group of young people to two white doors
that slid apart, revealing an elevator.
When the door shut them off from the crowd, Powell said, "I don't think deceit is a form
of perfection. You lied, Joleen."
"It's not a lie. If you are here, isn't that a stronger reality, a stronger truth than a
piece of paper? Therefore, a greater truth overcomes a lesser one."
"You sent a letter with deception in it, child. This deception is still a deception,
still a lie. You never used to lie, child. What have they done to you here? Do you want
to go home?"
"I want to achieve perfect bliss through the Master of Bliss."
"Look at me, child," said the Reverend Titus Powell. "I have come a long way and I am
tired. Your father is worried about you. Your mother is worried about you. I was worried
about you. I came because I thought you had been kidnapped. I came because your letter
read like a code calling me to come. Now, do you want to go home with me, back to
Jason?" He saw her head tilt and her eyes fix on his chest as her mind put together the
intricacies of her answer.
"I am home, Reverend. And besides, you don't understand. You think it was what you call
your Christian virtue that brought you here. It wasn't. It was the perfection of the
Blissful Master, and I feel so happy for you, because now you will enter bliss with us.
And you almost missed it because of your age."
The elevator doors opened to a room furnished in chrome and black leather, deep chairs
and long sofas, round glass tables and lighting that looked to Reverend Powell as if it
had come from the pages of that fancy magazine he had once bought by mistake. He and
Mrs. Powell had read it, laughing at the prices. You could buy a house for the cost of
some of those furnishings.
He heard a mechanical "pong" from a far corner of the room, which smelled like lemon-
scented Airwick.
"We're here," said Joleen. "The inner sanctum of the Divine Bliss Mission. Hail
perfection, full of grace."
"Pong," came the noise again. Reverend Powell peered into the large, low room. The noise
came from a machine. Two pudgy light brown hands twitched nervously at the sides of the
cabinet.
"Pong," went the machine again.
"Shit," said a voice from behind the cabinet.
"Reverend Powell is here, O Blissful Master," chanted Joleen in a squeaky sing-song.
"What?" came the voice from behind the cabinet.
"Pong," went the machine.
"Reverend Powell is here as you predicted, O Perfection, O Enlightment."
"Who?"
"The one whom you perceived would come. The Christian. The Baptist whom we will show as
a convert to our true enlightenment."
"What? What are you talking about?"
"Remember the letter, O Perfect One?"
"Oh, yeah. The nigger. Bring him in."
Joleen squeezed Powell's hand and with a beaming grin nodded to him to come along with
her.
"I don't like that word. The last time it was used on me, young lady, was by rowdies in
your father's pharmacy."
"You don't understand. 'Nigger' in the mouth of the Blissful Master takes the sting and
prejudice from the word. What is the word but two insignificant sounds anyway? Nig and
er. Nothing."
"It is not for you to decide. Nor for your master."
When Reverend Powell saw the Blissful Master, he nodded curtly and said, "uh huh," as if
in confirmation. He was beyond shocks in this building. The Blissful Master wore a pair
of too-tight white shorts and nothing else on a pudgy light brown body.
He looked like a knockwurst with a tight white Band-Aid around the middle. A youthful
mustache struggled over precisely outlined lips. A lock of greasy black hair hung over
his face. He stood before a television-type screen, watching a bouncing white blip and
manipulating levers on both sides.
"Pong," went the machine, and the blip batted crazily from one side of the machine to
the other.
"Just one second," said the youth, whom Powell judged to be fifteen or sixteen. The
lad's lips twitched nervously. His English had only a trace of an accent, sort of
English, like the white kids who had come down south in the summer to work for civil
rights so long ago.
"Pong. Pong. Pong," went the machine and the Blissful Master grinned.
"All right, you're the nigger. Let's get to work. I'm Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor.
Blissful Master to you."
Reverend Powell sighed, a tired sigh, hundreds of miles of dusty Indian roads, he
sighed. Nights sleeping in the back of a car, he sighed. Watching the human monuments to
famine being carried away, he sighed. The worry about the white girl who had once been
so kind and so friendly to everyone. All these things he sighed and felt very tired when
he spoke.
"Turkey, work your hustle on some other street. My soul belongs to Jesus. And you,
Joleen, I'm sorry for you. This is no spiritual man."
"Good," said Maharaji Dor. "We can dispense with the bullshit. The deal is this. You and
I could jaw for a hundred years on St. Paul versus the Vedantic scriptures or whatever
shit goes down nowadays. My deal is this. I know the way you should live to make you
happy. That's it. Your tongue is designed to taste. Your eyes to see. Your legs to move.
And when they don't do all these things, then something is wrong, right?"
Reverend Powell shrugged.
"Right?" said Maharaji Dor.
"Eyes see and legs move when God wills it."
"Good enough. Now ask yourself about the whole package. Are you supposed to walk around
with the feeling that you're unhappy? That something's wrong? Unfulfilled? Nothing is
ever as good as you thought it would be, right? Right?"
"Jesus is as good as I thought he would be."
"Sure, because you never met him. If that Jewboy were around nowadays, he'd be here if I
got hold of him. Not hanging with nails in his hands. I mean, baby, what kind of deal is
that? I'd never give you that deal."
"Praised be the Blissful Master," said Joleen clapping.
"Quiet, child," said Reverend Powell sternly.
"What I'm laying down is that I make you feel like you ought to feel. Your body is going
to tell you I'm right. Your senses will tell you I'm right. Just don't try to turn 'em
off. But if you do, I'll win anyhow, because I am the way. Dig?"
"Blissful Master," cried Joleen and threw her pink linen head wrapping at the two pudgy
brown feet. Her blond hair settled over the pinkness of her sari. Reverend Powell saw
her young breasts quiver under the dress.
Maharaji Dor snapped his fingers, and Joleen ripped the sari from her body. She stood
pale and nude, smiling proudly. Like showing a tomato for sale, Maharaji Dor squeezed
the left breast.
"Good stuff," he said.
Reverend Powell saw the pink crest of her breast harden between brown thumb and
forefinger.
"You think she doesn't like this?" said the boy. "She loves it. So what's wrong? Right."
Squeeze.
Reverend Powell turned away. He was not going to be put upon by arguing with these
heathens.
"Want this stuff? Take it."
"Good night, sir, I'm leaving," said the Reverend Mr. Powell, and the Dor lad smiled. As
Powell turned, he felt two hands at his elbows, and as he struggled, he felt a collar
being placed around his neck and locked, and his hands were shoved into shackles and
pulled down behind him. His head fell backward, and his feet were being tugged. He
braced his body for the cracking fall, but he landed on softness. Even the hand shackles
were soft as they tugged at his wrists. He tried to get his legs under himself, but they
went out in soft bindings to the right and left. Hands worked at his clothes, unbuttoned
the jacket and shirt, and in a way he could not fathom, they got his clothes off his
wrists and ankles without removing the shackles. He saw the lights from the ceiling and
the soundproofing mosaic set around the strips of light.
He saw Joleen's face right above him. He saw her tongue dart out and felt it in the
center of his head. Her firm breasts brushed his chest, and her tongue moved down his
nose to his lips. They parted his lips briefly. He turned his head away and felt the wet
tongue on his neck.
"Some things you can turn, nigger, and some things you can't," said Maharaji Dor.
The tongue tickled the reverend's belly button, and by the time it reached his loins, he
knew he was out of control.
"I see your body is telling you something, nigger. What do you think it's telling you?
You know what it's telling you? You think it's wrong. You think you know better than the
body God gave you, you say. When you need air, you need air. When you need water, you
need water. When you need food, you need food. Right?"
Reverend Powell felt the moist hot lips closing on him now. He did not want it to be
nice. He did not want it to excite him, to grab him, to move him, to bring him to the
trembling edge of exquisite tension. And then the mouth was gone, and he was still
wanting. Quivering out there, his body begging.
"More, please," said Reverend Powell.
"Finish him," said Maharaji Dor.
As the exquisite, surging, pounding relief consumed him, Reverend Powell began to feel
his own wrath upon himself. He had failed himself, his God, and the girl he had come to
save.
"Hey, baby, don't sweat it," said Maharaji Dor. "Your body's healthier than you are. You
feel bad, not because of your body, but because of your big, big pride. Pride,
Christian. You put your head on the block for a cup of coffee, but it wasn't for civil
rights. What sort of man looks down the barrel of a gun and says, "Shoot"? A man who
feels inferior? Bullshit. You knew damned well you were the best sonofabitch in that
drugstore. Big hero. Same reason, hero, you came here for the blond twiff, what's her
name? You were being the great Christian. Turning the other cheek to the richest white
man in that town, what's its name? Right? Big man.
"When the young loudmouths started calling you Uncle Tom, you didn't mind. You knew they
didn't have the balls to do what you did. Look down the barrel of a shotgun and order
coffee, big man. They had the beads and the clothes and the raised fists, but you had
God. Wonderful Titus Powell. I'll tell you what you're doing here. You came here to
prove you're just the most wonderful nigger in God's kingdom. Well, you black bastard,
you ain't getting your pride massaged with any shotgun here. You ain't gonna get
martyrdom here. No lynch mob. You're getting what you've run away from all your life. So
first, we get rid of the damned guilt."
A pricking sensation in his right arm and then a rushing surge of everything being all
right filled Reverend Powell. His fingertips felt a tingle and his knuckles felt a
tingle and his wrists were alive and calm as were his forearms. His shoulders that had
known so much lifting in his life eased into beautiful floating joints, and his chest
became like bubbles beneath the ice of a frozen, smooth lake. His legs melted into the
floor, and he felt cool fingers apply ointment to his eyelids, and then there were
stars, tingling beautiful stars. It was heaven he was in, and there was a voice. A hard,
rasping voice, but if you said yes to that voice, everything was all right again. And
the voice was saying he should do whatever the Blissful Master said he should do. The
bliss continued for "yes" and ended with "no." Reverend Powell thought it might be
minutes or it might be days. The faces above him changed, and once he thought he saw
night through a very close window. In it all, he tried to tell God he was sorry for his
pride and that he loved Him and that he was sorry for what his body was doing.
Every time this happened, Reverend Powell felt the bliss leave, and when he cried out
Jesus' name, there was downright pain. His palms felt crushed with heavy needles, and he
cried the name again. And his legs felt a snapping of bone and the crushing through of
iron, and with the total breath of his lungs, Reverend Titus Powell cried out the love
of his lifelong friend. "Jesus, be with me now."
And then there was a sharp piercing in his right side, and before the dark eternity of
nothing, he thought he heard his very best friend welcome him home.
Maharaji Dor was at his electronic game, winning, when one of his priests told him of
the failure.
"What do you mean, he's dead? He just got here."
"A week he's been here, Blissful Master," said the priest, bowing a shaved but sweating
head.
"A week, huh? What did you do wrong?"
"We did as you prescribed, Blissful Master."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
"What do you know? Huh? Well? Huh? Does the government know about this? Any word from
Delhi?"
"We have no word, but they will know. The passport office will know. The foreign office
will know. The Third World representative will know."
"All right. That's 300 rupees right there. Anyone else?"
"The Third World representative will want more. While the Reverend Powell might have
been a United States citizen, by virtue of his blackness he was also a member of the
Third World."
"Tell the Third World representative that he's only getting the hundred rupees to keep
quiet because what's his name had an American passport. Tell him if he had been African,
there wouldn't even be a pack of cigarettes for him in this, dig?"
"As you command."
"How'd the twirl take it?"
"Sister Joleen?"
"Yeah, her, Jo whatever."
"She cried because she said she truly loved Reverend Powell and now he had lost his
chance at bliss."
"Good. Get lost."
"I am still worried about the government."
"Don't be. There isn't anything 300 rupees won't buy in Delhi, and besides, we got the
prophecy. They're worried about China. They're not going to hassle us. We're holy men,
dig? And they can't pester a holy man in Patna. You'll see. The bread is just to keep
things smooth. They really believe that bullshit legend."
"PONG, PONG, PONG." The machine suddenly moved without a lever being pulled. The blip
circled crazily, and the glass of the screen rattled, and overhead the indirect lighting
cracked out of the wall. There was sudden darkness and then flying glass, and the priest
and Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor were tumbled like apples down a ramp toward the far wall,
where they lay for hours until hands lifted them up.
The Maharaji heard how lucky he had been. Not everyone had survived the earthquake in
Patna, and the next day, government officials arrived to examine the bodies of the holy
men who had been killed. All of them who had died, however, had died in the earthquake.
No holy man's death had been the cause of it.
No government official, no policeman or soldier or representative of the prime minister
herself, bothered to check the ox carts as they squeaked out of town to the dumping
pits. So they did not see the one much-darker body at the bottom of the pile of
摘要：

HolyTerrorWarrenMurphyCHAPTERONEManythingsareholy,butfewofthemholymen.—HOUSEOFSINANJU.WhentheReverendTitusPowellsawthebodiesbeingloadedonoxcartsintheoutskirtsofCalcutta,heaskedhimselfifhewerewillingtodie.Morespecifically,washewillingtogiveuphislifeforawhitegirl?Evenmorespecifically,washewillin...

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