Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online Page B

the play itself.
    So only later, when a pause came, could he talk with Dr. Abernathy.
    “Doctor.” His voice, in his ears, sounded squeaky.
    “Yes?” Abernathy said, counting his blue chips.
    “You heard about the Pilg I’ve got to go on.”
    “Yep.”
    Tibor said, aware and thinking out his words, knowing intensely the meaning of them, “Sir, if I became a convert to Christianity, I wouldn’t have to go.”
    At once Dr. Abernathy glanced up and said, scrutinizing him, “Are you really that much afraid?” Everyone else, Peter Sands and the girl, Lurine Rae, also stared at Tibor; he felt their motionless gaze.
    “Yes,” Tibor said.
    “Often,” Dr. Abernathy said, and took a fresh deck and began to riffle and vigorously shuffle the cards, “fear or dread is based on a sense of guilt, not experienced directly.”
    Tibor said nothing. He waited with the intention of lasting it out, however unpleasant and protracted it might be. Priests, after all, were generally odd, intense people, especially the Christian ones.
    “You do not,” Dr. Abernathy stated, “in your Servants of Wrath Church, have either public or private confession.”
    “No, Doctor. But—”
    “I will not try to argue or compete,” Dr. Abernathy said in a harsh, absolutely firm tone. “You are employed by Father Handy and it is his business if he wants to send you.”
    “And yours,” Lurine added, “if you want to quit or go. Why not just quit?”
    “And go,” Tibor said, “into a vacuum.”
    “Always,” Dr. Abernathy continued, “the Christian Church is ready to accept anyone. Regardless of their spiritual condition; it asks nothing of them except their willingness. I would, however, suspect that what I can offer you—I acting as a mouthpiece of God, not as a man—is the opportunity for you to shirk your spiritual duty … or, put more precisely, the opportunity to acknowledge to yourself and to confess to me your deep
desire
to shirk your spiritual duty.”
    “To a false church?” Lurine Rae protested, her dark red eyebrows raised in astonishment. To Tibor she said, “They have a club; they’re all members. It’s what’s called ‘professional ethics.’” She laughed.
    “Why not make an appointment with me?” Dr. Abernathy asked Tibor. “I can accept your confession without your joining the Christian Church; it is not tied in, as the ancients put it.”
    With utmost caution, his mind very, very rapid in its work, Tibor answered, “I—can’t think of anything to confess.”
    “You will,” Lurine assured him. “He’ll assist you. Even further.”
    Neither Dr. Abernathy nor Pete Sands said anything, and yet they seemed in some mysterious sense, perhaps by their mere passivity, to acknowledge what the woman said to be true. The father confessor knew his trade; like a good lawyer or doctor of medicine, Tibor reflected, he could draw his client out. Lead him and inform him. Find what was deep inside, hidden—not
plant
anything, but rather harvest it.
    “Let me think this over,” Tibor said. He felt entirely hesitant now. His intentions, his decision to do this as a solution to his horror at the idea of the soon-coming Pilg, seemed swamped with the second guesses of severe and fundamental doubt. What had seemed a good idea had been, to his disbelief, returned as unacceptable by the man who stood to benefit most—at least most after Tibor McMasters, who stood at the head of the line… for obvious reasons: reasons palpable to everyone in the room.
    Confession? He felt no burden of guilt, no sting of death; he felt instead perplexed and afraid; that was all. Admittedly, he feared to a morbid and obsessive degree the proposed—in fact ordered—Pilg. But why did guilt have to come into it? The Gothic convolutions of this, the older church … and yet he had to admit that it somehow seemed appropriate, this interpretation of Dr. Abernathy’s. Perhaps merely the unexpectedness of it alone had overwhelmed him; possibly