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"SISTER," it shouted, "HAVE YOU BEEN SAVED?!!"
IV
When the Reverend Harry Powell, sole owner of the Word of the Lord
Broadcasting System, was informed that the aches and pains his faith healing
guest stars had been unable to ease were, in fact, inoperable and extensive
cancers of the bone marrow, he found himself faced with a choice. As a Good
Christian of long-standing who had raised, over his twenty-seven years as a
leading televangelist, over three hundred billion dollars for the Lord, he
could kill the pain with morph-plus shots and wait his Just Reward in Heaven.
On the other hand, as a sin-loving decadent who had used the greater portion
of over three hundred billion dollars to indulge himself in luxurious excesses
undreamed of by Caligula, he could expend the remainder of his considerable
resources staving off the inevitable.
He took some time to assess the health of his business ventures. WLBS was
still the top-rated televangelical crusade, beaming the Word of the Lord into
perhaps seven hundred million homes worldwide. Royalties were still coming in
for his best-selling testaments How to Get Through the Eye of the Needle,
Checking Into Motel Heaven, and My Pal, Jesus, not to mention the popular
gospel hits he had had ghost-written for him in the '60s by a talented but
otherwise unsuccessful young man called Paul Simon, "Little Bitty Orphans in
Africa," "Jesus in Blue Jeans" and "I'm Not Ashamed to be a Christian."
He had diversified into the stock market, foods, theme parks, computer
software, motion pictures, armaments manufacture, law enforcement,
pharmaceuticals, energy resources, marital aids and souvenirs. He was in the
Top Forty of the World's Richest Men, and climbing...
Still, there was nothing that could be done for his body. He had been able to
pay for a half-hour of Dr Zarathustra's time at GenTech BioDiv, and the Doc
had assured him that no amount of bio-implant and replacement doodads would do
anything to help. Muscles, nerves, individual organs, limbs, eyes and skin,
you could do something about. And you could replace individual bonesmdasheven
your skull if you so wishedmdashwith durium robo-bits. But you couldn't
dispense with your whole skeleton and still survive. It had something to do
with blood. Powell didn't understand, but Zarathustra had patiently explained
it all to him as if guesting on a kid vid teevee show before returning,
substantially wealther, to his important research.
Powell's body was out of the business. But he still had a brain.
Zarathustra had referred Powell to W.D. Donovan, BioDiv's top brain-man, and,
eager to be divested of his deadweight walking corpse, he had submitted to the
Donovan Treatment. He had joined the other disembodied brains in their tanks,
thinking their deep droughts, sinking into their pools of biofluid.
Unfortunately, while Donovan could take your brain out and keep it alive, he
hadn't yet perfected the technique for putting it back into another body so it
worked. That, presumably, was what all the other multi-billionaire prisoners
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on GenTech's Cerebellum RowmdashNelson Rockefeller, Howard Hughes, Charles
Foster Kane, Walt Disney, Ken Dodd, Don Michael Corleonemdashwere waiting for.
And that was what Powell was expecting, a few years of contemplative thought
and resurrection in a young, fresh, ready-to-wear body.
However, his lawyers had not considered the legalities of the Donovan
Treatment. Once his brain was slipped from its cranial cradle, the Reverend
Harry Powell found himself declared legally dead, and his assets devolved to
the Word of the Lord Mission for Christ, parent corporation of the Word of the
Lord Broadcasting System, and also of the Word of the Lord Electronic
Information Service, the Word of the Lord Chain of Christian Health Food
Restaurants, the Word of the Lord Summer Camps, the Word of the Lord Law
Enforcement Agency ('Let Christ Be Your Cop!'), the Word of the Lord
Publishing Consortium, the Word of the Lord Moral Reassertiveness Centres and
the Word of the Lord Graveyard Redevelopment Conglomeration. The board of
directors found themselves rather embarassed to have on their hands not only
the worldy wealth and temporal holdings of Harry Powell, but his
still-functional brain as well.
It might not have gone so badly for the late Reverend if he hadn't made the
cardinal error of appointing Genuine Christians to executive offices within
his organization. Anyone else might not have been quite so upset to discover
that the Word of the Lord Drug Rehabilitation Program was actually a highly
successful franchised operation peddling narcotics, hallucinogens,
psychoactives, and other forms of ju-ju to teenagers, or that the popular Word
of the Lord Crusade for Morals Drop-In Centres Powell had set up in the NoGos
surrounding several major PZs were actually omnisexual brothels staffed by
runaway youngsters Powell had, in many cases, personally welcomed into the
fold.
Once Powell's yakuza-trained accountants had been eased out of the boardroom,
only the Genuine Christiansmdashthe Honest-to-God Suckers, as he had been wont
to call them in lifemdashremained. They had sat around the oval table, looking
at the preacher bubbling away in his Self-Contained Environment, and had
pondered the ethics of pulling the plug and burying the gray matter along with
his literally rotten bones in the gaudily ostentatious cenotaph Powell had
designed for himself.
But there was always a use in the church for brains.
V
"... SAVED BY JEEEY-ZUSS! SAVED BY THE LOWWW-UD! SAVED, SAVED, SAVED.''
Chantal braked to avoid slamming into the tanklike vehicle blocking the road.
She'd have swerved off into the sand to get round the obstacle, but she didn't
want to gum up Federico's wheels without checking the terrain. It didn't
matter what kind of hot machine you had, if you tried to drive on soft sand
you'd bog down. The desert was full of abandoned vehicles slowly sinking in
alkali pits.
"HAVE YOU SINNED? HAVE YOU BEE-YUN SINFUL? HAVE YOU TAKEN CARNAL LUST, BODILY
FILTH AND THE DAY-UVV-VILLE INTO YOUR HEART?"
She tried to turn down the volume, but the broadcaster had a lock on
Federico's sound system. It was coming from the machine up ahead, that much
was certain.
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"Do me a search," she said. "Find out what that thing is."
Federico hummed as it went through the files. The voice changed pitch, was
joined by a kitschy angelic choir and the kind of string backing the British
'60s pop star Ken Dodd favoured on his more unbearable singles, and began to
sing.
"Little bitty orphans in Africa Need a heap of change from you, Little bitty
orphans in Africa Make ole Jesus feel downright blue Skies may be gray, skies
may be sunny But them pore little orphans need all your money..."
Her central screen lit up, and flashed at her. MINIMUM DONATION: $1,000. THE
PREACHERMOBILE WILL ACCEPT CASH, CASHPLASTIC, NEGOTIABLE BONDS, GOLD, SILVER,
RADIUM, PRECIOUS AND SEMIPRECIOUS STONES, VALID STAMPS, ELECTRICAL GOODS,
MOTOR VEHICLES, STOCK TRANSFER CERTIFICATES, VALIDATED WORKS OF ART,
SIDE-ARMS, MILITARY ORDNANCE, DRUGS, WATER AND REUSABLE HUMAN ORGANS. THANK
YOU FOR YOUR CHRISTIANITY.
The singing stopped.
"PRAISE THE LOWWWUD! HALLELUJAH! CLEANSE THYSELF OF THY SINS BY DONATING THY
WORLDLY GOODS TO THE CHOW-UCH! HELP THE CHOW-UCH HELP THE LITTLE BITTY ORPHANS
IN AFRICA!"
Federico had taken stock, and gave her a read-out on the vehicle. It was
built like a tank, with ten-inch armour plating and caterpillar tracks. There
was a miniature power plant in there somewhere and, in all probability, a
human brain.
That was good news. Whoever the machine had been, it was a cinch that he
wouldn't be a match for Federico's cerebral capacity if it came to a shooting
war. Even Israel had stopped putting Donovan brains in its military hardware
five years ago. They might have the initiative a machine lacks, but their
reflexes are slow. Plus, they tendmdashas was now obviousmdashto crack up and
go crazy.
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