"You're sure you're not simply telling me — Oh, I wish I could see you! — or avoiding telling me, that the responsibilities of being a big, bad scorpion are getting in the way of your work?"

"No," I said. "More likely the opposite. In the nest, I've finally got enough people to keep me warm at night. And I can feel safe as anyone in the city. Any scorpions who think about my writing at all are simply dazzled by the object — the book you were nice enough to have it made into. A few of them even blush when descriptions of them show up in it. That leaves what actually goes on between the first line and the last entirely to me. The scorpions caught me without a fight. My mind is a magnet and they're filings in a field I've made — No, they're the magnets. I'm the filing, in a stable position now."

"You're too content to write?"

"You," I said, "are a politician; and you're just not going to understand."

"At least you're giving me a little more support in my resolve not to read your work. Well, you say you're still writing. Regardless of any personal preface you might make, even this one, I'm just as interested in your second book as I was in your first."

"I don't know if I'm about to waste any time trying to get it to you."

"If I must arrange to have it hijacked, ink still moist, from beneath the very shadow of your dark quill, I suppose that's what I'll have to do. Let's see, shall we?"

"I've got other things to do." For the first time, I was really angry at his affectation.

"Tell me about them," he said, in a voice so natural, but following so naturally from the archness, my anger was defeated.

"I… I want you to tell me something," I said.

"If I can."

"Is the Father, here at the monastery," I asked, "a good man?"

"Yes. He's very good man."

"But for me to accept that, you see," I said, "I have to know I can accept your definition of good. It probably isn't the same as mine … I don't even know if I have one!"

"Again, I wish I were allowed to see you. Your voice sounds as though you might be upset about something." (Which I hadn't realized; I didn't feel upset.) "I'm not oblivious to your efforts to keep our talk at a level of honesty I might find tedious if I didn't have the respect for truth a man forced to tell a great many lies for the most commendable reasons must. I'm not very satisfied with myself, Kid. In the past months, a dozen separate situations have propelled me to the single realization that, to be a good governor, if it is not absolutely necessary to be a good man, it is certainly of inestimable help. Bellona is an eccentric city that fosters eccentric ways. But the reason I'm here, of all eccentric places in this most eccentric place, is because I really want to—"

Dust or something blew into my mouth, got down my throat; I cleared it, thinking: Christ, I hope he doesn't decide my voice is breaking with emotion!

"— to remedy a little of that dissatisfaction. If he is not a good man, the Father is certainly a generous one. He is allowing me to stay here… Of course there's always an odd relation between the head of the state and the head of the state-approved religion. After all, I helped set up this place. Same way I helped set up Teddy's. Of course in this case, the biggest — if easiest — job, given my position with the Times, was making sure there was no publicity. In your present mood, you can probably appreciate that. But, no, my relation to the Father is not that of commoner to priest. On my side, at any rate, it is duplicitous, fraught with doubt. If I didn't doubt, I wouldn't be here now. I'm afraid the politics works through the spiritual like rot. The good governor at least wants it to be the best rot possible."

"Is the Father a good man?" I asked again and tried not to sound at all like I was upset. (Maybe that backfired?)

"Has it occurred to you, my young Diogenes, that if you polished up the chimney of your own lamp, you'd be a little more likely to find this mysterious and miraculous Other you are searching out? Why does it concern you so?"

"So I can live here," I said, "in Bellona."

"You're afraid that for want of one good man the city shall be struck down? You better look back across the train-tracks, boy. Apocolypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes. That simply isn't our problem any more. If you wanted out, you should have thought about it a long time back. Oh, you're very high-minded — and so, at times, am I. Well, as the head of the state religion, the Father does a pretty good job; good enough so that those doing not quite so well would do a bit better not to question — especially if that's all we can get."

"What do you think about the religion of the people?" I asked.

"How do you mean?"

"You know. Reverend Amy's church; George; June; that whole business."

"Does anyone take that seriously?"

"For a governor," I said, "you're pretty out of touch with what the people are into, aren't you? You've seen the things that have shown up in this sky. There're posters of him out all over town. You published the interview, and the pictures that made them gods."

"I've seen some of it, of course. But I'm afraid all that black mysticism and homoeroticism is just not something I personally find very attractive. And it certainly doesn't strike me as a particularly savory basis for worship. Is Reverend Tayler a good woman? Is George a good… god?"

"I'm not that interested in anybody's religion," I told him. "But if you want to bring the purpose of the church down to turning out people who do good things: When I was awfully hungry, she fed me. But when I was hurt and thirsty, someone at your gate told me I couldn't get a glass of water."

"Yes. That regrettable incident was reported to me. Things do catch up to you here, don't they? When you were unpublished, however, I published you."

"All right." My laugh was too sharp. "You've got the whole thing down, Mr Calkins. Sure, it's your city. Hey, you remember the article about me saving the kids from the fire the night of the party? Well, it wasn't me. It was George. I was just along. But he was down there, searching through the fire, seeing if anybody needed help. I just wandered by; and the only reason I stayed was because he told me the ones who'd started out with him from Teddy's had gotten too chickenshit and run. I heard the kids crying first, but George was the one who busted into the building and got the five of them out alive. Then, when your reporter got to him later, George made out like it was all me, because he didn't want the acclaim, prestige, and attendant hero-worship. Which, in the mood I am now, I approve of. Now is George a bad man?"

"I believe—" the voice was dry—"implicit in what you originally asked was that so necessary distinction between those who do good and who are good."

"Sure," I said. "But explicit in what you said was that bit about making do with what you can get. I can get George if I need him. He's genial enough for a god, with some nicely human failings like a history of lust."

"I think I'm still Judeo-Christian enough to be uncomfortable with expressly human demiurges."

"In the state approved religion, the governor is God's appointed representative on earth, if I remember right. Isn't that, when all is said and done, what makes the relation between the head of the state and the head of the church as ticklish as you were just telling me it is? You're as much of a god as George, minus some celestial portents and — of course, I'm just guessing — a couple of inches on your dick."