THE SNAKE OIL WARS or Scheherazade Ginsberg Strikes Again PARKE GODWIN A FOUNDATION BOOK D O U B L E D A Y New York · London · Toronto · Sydney · Auckland A Foundation Book Published by Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103 Doubleday, Foundation, and the portrayal of the letter F are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0-385-24772-9 ISBN 0-385-26350-3 (pbk.) Copyright © 1989 by Parke Godwin All Rights Reserved These ePub, Mobi and LIT editions v1.0 by Dead^Man November 2011 dmebooks at live dot ca Printed in the United States of America August 1989 First Edition BP YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE Copyright © 1945 by WILLIAMSON MUSIC CO. Copyright Renewed. Used by permission. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I’LL BE SEEING YOU Copyright © 1938 by WILLIAMSON MUSIC CO. Copyright Renewed. Used by permission. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED To those lucid and courageous minds who gave you the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, Falwell, Robertson and the God-inspired Rule of the Righteous. To those intrepid souls who fight with unflagging zeal to remove from libraries dangerous books they have not read and from theaters those spiritually toxic films they have not seen, believing that thought is a controlled substance and secular thinking hazardous to mental health. Prologue: Godhead, or doing hard time A few million years ago aliens invaded Earth. Well, not really an invasion, just a class of graduating students who thought the young planet would be a fun place to party. Even more fun was leaving two annoying brothers, Barion and Coyly, stranded on this uncharted world where the highest form of life was a dismally unpromising ape. Everyone knew humanoid apes were losers that began primitive and violent ended religious and lethal. Where the party got home, no one could remember exactly where they’d left the brothers. Not to worry. Being close to immortal, someone would find them sooner or later. With nothing else to occupy their time, Baryon and Coyly took a dead-ending ape and boosted its intelligence far earlier than was legal or even prudent. Though briefly fashionable, anthropoids were never a major study among their kind. The field work was spotty and accepted theories disastrously inaccurate. For example, the post-life energy pools. These carbon cycle creatures continued after death as personal energy. As time went on, Barion and Coyul had to take charge of a growing mass of restless human personalities whom death rendered more permanent than improved – vicious, vain and self-deluding as ever. They polarized according to taste around Baryon or Coyul, conditioned to expect an uppercase god, devil or other deities. To their pleasure or consternation, they found only the unassuming Barion in a place/state of mind called Topside, or an equally bewildering Below Stairs where Coyul ran his office like a salon and tried amid constant and colorful interruptions to compose music and keep his guests from each other’s throats. By the time Sorlij found the beleaguered brothers he’d marooned as a student prank, their experimental ape had evolved into a formidable creature whose emotions lagged far behind his intellect, capable of brilliance and mayhem in consecutive breaths. Coyul, known by then as the Prince to his intimates, was left to clean up the mess and reeducate the results of their irresponsible meddling. Barion was taken home for trial and sentence. EXTRACT FROM THE TRIAL OF BARION UNAUTHORIZED EXPERIMENTATION AND PREMATURE SEEDING (From Sorlij’s testimony) : Against all reasonable projection, the species is promising but painfully immature. Fortunately SORLIJ their system is so remote, they won’t constitute a danger to the main civilizations during those millennia needed to fit them for society at large. Why was Coyul left rather than Barion? : He did the crucial work in lifting the species over Cultural Threshold. I wouldn’t have thought him SORLIJ capable of that, but he seems to know them better. And your instructions to Coyul : The obvious: to bring their emotional growth into parity with their intellectual capacity. Some are SORLIJ already admirable specimens. But he must educate them away from dualistic or miraculous doctrines immediately. Sorlij, are we to understand you blithely told him to negate the major religions of a species never without them anywhere in the known universe? : The situation was tertiary. Their technology is already probing into space, yet their essential SORLIJ thinking hasn’t changed in thousands of years, and these emotional tendencies are at the root of it like a large tumor in the base of the brain. Radical surgery was required. Your own discipline is...? : Marine biology. My work is known throughout the field. SORLIJ : We always said he did a mean oyster. BARION Strike that remark from the record. Sorlij given the parameters of this improbable anthropoid, do you as a scientist think they will accept Coyul’s adjustment? : Oh yes, eventually. What else can happen when you introduce an intelligent being to an empirical SORLIJ fact? : Among humans, civil war. BARION Strike that. Barion, you’ve already been warned about these impertinent interruptions. : Not impertinent but expert. I spent five million years among them. Anyway, what have I got to BARION lose? I know I’m going to the Rock. I’m more worried about Coyul when he tries to educate Topside. : Why? They can’t destroy him. SORLIJ : They’re human, they’ll try. Hope springs eternal. BARION 1 Your teeth are okay but your gums have to come out The television commentator’s voice was far more familiar to older viewers than his image on camera, cadenced and thoughtful, recalled as filtering through the shortwave radio static of 1940. “This is John Mcbain for Topside Television, Not since the days of the London Blitz have I reported a story so fraught with consequence for Mankind. In a few moments, here in this Megachurch, Coyul, the alleged younger brother of Barion, will address the population of Topside on an issue that promises to rock the establishment to its religious foundations. Barion was said by some to be God – not as we conceived of Him, but in fact. Darker stories are told of Coyul and his longtime sway over Below Stairs. One thing is certain: there are few Topside today not watching and listening for what Coyul has to say...” McBain’s estimate was conservative; there were few Below Stairs not watching with equal concern. Their friend and cosmic therapist, the beloved and sympatico Prince was assuming the mantle dropped by Barion. They knew Coyul’s message to Topside would be as popular as the repeal of Prohibition to bootleggers. Brooding in the cool, dark Sports Bar in the high-rise district of Below Stairs, Arnold Rothstein squinted at the TV set and wished money were still meaningful. In life he’d financed much of the action along Broadway, immortalized by Damon Runyon as the Brain. Now he felt ancient stirrings like a hunting call. He wanted to lay a sound bet for a piece of the action, however meaningless. The Brain turned to his drinking companion, a former New York editor who had offed himself through a fondness for chic narcotics. “Ten to one they don’t buy him at all. Seven to five they don’t let him finish the telecast. Even money he won’t make it out of the starting gate.” “I’ll take some of that.” The editor was known in betting circles as more of a fish than a handicapper. “The Prince is upscale, man. High concept, great moves. What’s the bet?” Arnold Rothstein considered. Money was a pleasant memory. The stake should be something one desired very much or wanted, out of common sense, to avoid. “Loser goes Topside to a revival meeting.” “That is a downer.” “I am not finished.” Rothstein lifted a qualifying finger. “Just to make it interesting, loser has to come forward and wave to the winner on camera.” “What the hell, I feel lucky today. Bet.” They shook hands. Coyul will finesse the whole scene.” RIOT IN TOPSIDE MEGACHURCH! FUNDYS VOTE RIOTOUS NO ON COYUL NEW PREXY HAS NARROW ESCAPE “This is Cathy Cataton for TSTV. Here’s what’s happening...” Cathy Cataton didn’t have the standard bland-blond screen image of Nancy Noncommit of BSTV, rather what some males would call a hatchet face; wide cheekbones and a narrow chin, her hair in short, dark curls. Only after death did she find her true calling as a newswoman. “Coyul the new appointee head of Topside triggered a riot in our largest Megachurch today when he attempted to set the record straight on his intended program. TSTV cameras were on the scene.” For Topside watchers who had never met or seen Coyul, his televised image was an anticlimax. He was short and plump, and in his mild, patient manner, there was a disconcerting cosmic ennui. “Ladies and gentlemen – by whatever name, image or reputation you may know me – my name is Coyul. My brother Barion, who managed this establishment for so long, never represented himself as a god, never promised you a messiah, only wisdom and common sense to those rare spirits brave enough to heed it.” End of clip. Cataton again: “Coyly never got a chance to finish his presentation. He was interrupted by an American from Kansas.” And cut to Coyul again on the podium. “Elation found it necessary with so many conflicting faiths, to establish an absolute freedom of belief. Frankly, it never occurred to either of us to do otherwise from the time we started with you five million years ago —” “Did Barion lie to us?” Now the screen image was much more photogenic: a slender thirtyish man who ran agitated fingers through his rumpled hair. “I think every Christian is asking that question with me.” A caption superimposed on the impassioned young image; , . . . . In the LANCE CANDOR AMERICAN DIED SAVING THE PRESIDENT OF THE U S FROM ASSASSINATION row behind Candor, a small woman in a faded paisley dress waved a placard: KANSAS FOR GOD AND THE BIBLE! In his vulnerable honesty, Lance Candor reminded viewers of young James Stewart, game but about to collapse on the Senate Boor in the Capra movie. For American idealism, Can. dor made Stewart look like a Chicano. Mr. Candor repeated his challenge; “Did Barion lie to us on the inerrancy of the Bible?” And cut to Cathy Cataton again; “Candor was only the beginning. The riot broke out in earnest when Coyul matter of factly explained, or tried to explain, the essential fact of what he termed an anthropological experiment gone wrong —” Coyul again, visibly aware of laboring in a lost cause. “You’re not finished. Not nearly finished. You’re not the center of a Battering myth, but let me help you.” “KILLLLL HIMMMM —” The cameras caught a forward surge through the audience, like tall grass lashed by a high wind. Acres of people rising, stampeding down on the mild little figure in front of the microphones. The tidal wave of moral outrage converged on the podium, engulfing Coyul as he simply vanished and Cataton’s voice-over ended the segment. “‘Trouble right here in River City.’ The confrontation brewing for years between radical and conservative religious viewpoints here in Topside seems to have come to a head in Coyul, thought by many to be the Devil. How long his authority will be accepted, if at all, is up for guesses.”