He wasn't happy about that, I could tell. But he was a real mensch. He told me he understood, and he wished me good luck with the Fleshists, and he let me roll away fast. I could see his point, though, and I was very sorry about his not being a possible. I mean, how would you like it to sit all day baking in the sun, with birds making pish in your face, and the best you got to look forward to is a juicy bug.

And if I'd known what I had coming, what tsuris, I'd have gladly only, happily yet, you can believe it, taken that Rock back with me, bug dreck and all. Believe me, there are worse things than a rock that eats bugs.

I'll make a long story short. I followed the trail of that putz Kadak from the pit of the Fleshists (where I lost the use of my pupik, all my coin, the sight of one eye in the back, the second arm on the left side, and my yarmulkah), to the embarkation dock at the spaceport where the sect called the Denigrators were getting on board ships for that Bromios (where I got beat up so bad I crawled away), to the lava beds where the True Believers of Suffering were doing their last rites before leaving (where I suffered first degree miserable and such a pain you wouldn't accept over half my poor body), to the Tabernacle of the Mouth (where some big deal prophet that was all teeth bit off the tip of one antenna. God knows why, maybe out of pique at being left behind), to the Caucus Race of the Malforms (where I fit right in, as crapped up and bloody as I was), to the Lair of the Blessed Profundity of the Unspeakable Trihll (which I could not, even if I had several mouths, pronounce…but they punched and kicked me anyhow, really sensational people), to the Archdruid of Nothingness, always following that miserable creep Kadak from religion to religion-and let me tell you, no one had a good word for that schmuck, not even the worst of those heathens-and it was there, kayn-ahora, that the Archdruid told me the last he'd seen of Kadak was ten years earlier, when he had changed him into a butterfly, and sent him out into the desert to hopefully drop dead in the heat.

Which is why, finally, I'm standing here talking to you, dumb creep butterfly. So now I've told it all, and you see what a puke condition I'm in, don't for a minute think that Avram or those others will respect me for what I did, they'll only nuhdz me about how long it took, and that's why you got to come back with me.

Not a word. Not a sound through all this. Not a flap or a flitter or a how are you Evsise. Nothing.

Look. I'm not going to tummel with you, Mr. I-Can't-Make-Up-My-Mind-What-Kind-Of-Religion-I-Want-To-Be butterfly.

You think I stood here all this time, sinking in up to my rims in sand, just to tell you a cute story? I know you're Kadak! And how do I know?

Go ahead, snuffie like that again and ask me how I know!

Come on. You'll come either by yourself or I'll drag you by your wings, you know for a butterfly you're not even a nice looking butterfly? You're an ugly, is what you are. And as for being a Jew, only that by birth, such a disgrace to the entire blue Jews on Zsouchmuhn.

As you can see, I'm getting angry. You've gotten me raped, crapped on, burned, maimed, crippled, blinded, insulted, run around, exposed to heathens, robbed, sunburned, covered with bug shmootz, altogether miserable and unhappy, and I'll tell you, very frankly, you'll come with me, Mr. Kadak, or I'll choke you dead right here in this !arblondjet desert!

Now what do you say?

I thought that's what you'd say.

“Here he is.”

Yankel didn't believe it. Chaim laughed. Shmuel started to cry, his nose running green. Snodle coughed. And Reb Jeshaia hung his head. “I should have sent Avram,” he said.

Avram looked away. Like a dead leaf it should fall off.

“Here he is, is what I said, and here he is, is what it is,” I said. “This is your Kadak, may he rot in his cocoon.”

Then I told them the whole story.

At least they had the grace to be amazed.

“This is what makes the minyan?” Moishe said. “This?”

“Make him change back, and that's him,” I said. “I wash my hands of it.” I went over in a comer of the shoul and settled down. It was their problem now.

For hours they went at him. They tried everything. They threatened him, they begged him, they implored him, they intimidated him, they cajoled him, they shmacheled him, they insulted him, they slugged him, they chased his tuchis all over the shoul...

Sure. Of course. Wouldn't you know. That rotten Kadak wouldn't change back. At last, he found a thing he wanted to be. A dumb creep butterfly.

With a snuffle. Still with a rotten snuffle. Did you ever know how much worse a butterfly snuffles than a person?

You could plotz from it.

And finally, when they couldn't get him to change backand if you want to know the truth, I don't think he could change back after that weirdnik buhbie Archdruid changed him-they held him down and Reb Jeshaia made the rabbinical decision that his presence was enough, in this great emergency. So Meyer Kahaha sat on him, and we started to sit shivah, finally, for Zsouchmuhn and for Snodle.

And then Reb J eshaia got a terrible look on his face and he said, “Oh my God!”

“What!? What what!?” I yelled. “What now, what?”

Very softly, Reb Jeshaia asked me, “Evsise, how long ago did the Archdruid say he changed Kadak into this thing?”

“Ten years ago,” I said, “but what-”

And I stopped. And I sat down again. And knew we had lost, and we would still be there when the goniffs came to rip the planet out of orbit, and we would die, along with the crazies in the Apostate Cathedral and the nafkeh, and the Rock and the Archdruid and everyone else who was too nuts to get safely away the way they were supposed to.

“What's the matter?” asked Meyer Kahaha, the oysvorf. “What's wrong? Why does it matter he's been a butterfly for ten years?”

“Only ten years,” said Shmuel.

“Not thirteen, schmuck, only ten,” said Yankel, sticking his pointing arm in Meyer Kahaha's ninth eye.

We looked at Meyer Kahaha till the light dawned, even for him. “Oh my God,” he said, and rolled over on his side. The butterfly, that miserable Kadak, fluttered up and flew around the shoul. No one paid any attention to him. It had all been in vain.

Scripture says, very clearly there should be no mistake, that all ten of the participants of a minyan have to be over thirteen years old. At thirteen, for a Jew, a boy becomes a man. “Today I am a man,” it's an old gag. Ha ha. Very funny. It's the reason for the Bar Mitzvah. Thirteen. Not ten.

Kadak wasn't old enough.

Still dead, still lying on his face, Snodle began weeping.

Reb Jeshaia and the other seven, the last blue Jews on Zsouchmuhn, now doomed to die without ever again gumming their lust-nest concubines, they all slumped into seats and waited for destruction.

I felt worse than them. I hurt in more places.

Then I looked up, and began to smile. I smiled so wide and so loud, everyone turned to look at me.

“He's gone crazy,” said Chaim.

“It's better that way,” said Shmuel. “He won't feel the pain.”

“Poor Evsise,” said Yitzchak.

“Dummies!” I shouted, leaping up and rolling and hopping

and unwinding like a tummeler.” Dummies! Dummies! Even you, Reb Jeshaia, you're a dummy, we're all dummies!”

“Is that a way to talk to a Rabbi?” said Reb Jeshaia.

“Sure it is,” I yowled, reeling and rocking, “sure it is, sure it is, sure it is, sure it is…”