She stomped the pedal to squeal us out of the driveway and away. That didn't sit too well with my current condition. The acceleration pushed me through the seat cushion until only a black, hazy smear of Dell Ammo remained.

The ride was as much of a nightmare as the dissecting room. Shapes jumped from corners, colors rammed against screaming odors. I tried balling myself up as much as I could and only succeeded in curling smaller and smaller like Igli until I disappeared and returned to the passenger seat.

By the time we reached her home, I had almost completely recovered. I shivered and yanked myself together. An arm here, a leg there. One last squid stuck a tentacle at us from the bushes around her driveway as we pulled in to park. The fear still sat with me.

"It was just a bad trip, Dell. The things you're scared of don't exist."

I pulled over to the far side of the car, leaned up against the door. "They do, though. They're in my mind. Waiting like some punk around a corner. Waiting to strike no matter what I believe."

She unlatched the door and got me out of the car. I noticed that it was a Porsche 964. Not bad.

I stood and took a step up the brick path. I walked well enough. What made me unsteady was the urge to flinch at every wavering shadow, at every flitting insect and bird. The breeze blowing up the back of my hospital smock didn't help much, either.

"Those people programmed the fears in, and you can reprogram them right out just as easily. That's what psychotomimetic drugs are for. Programming and metaprogramming. Better than hypnosis."

She used some pretty long words for an accountant. My suspicions weren't exactly lying quiescent…

The house was no mansion. It sat up on a hill overlooking Silver Lake, one of many. The construction looked mid-twenties, maybe early thirties. She kept it in good repair. Two stories, white paint. A garden ran from the driveway to the front door, split by a brick walk.

She offered me her arm. I accepted it for reasons perhaps ulterior. She looked beautiful despite the rough treatment she had obviously received.

"Where'd you rent the car?" My mind had regained enough of its fortitude to wonder how the hell Ann had escaped her kidnappers.

"It's registered to a Reverend Morris Beathan."

I grinned even though my legs were feeling like unvulcanized rubber.

"What did they do to you?"

"More or less what they did to you." She fumbled about in her purse for the house keys. "They took me to the monastery and grilled me about you, about the contract, about Emil Zacharias, the TV evangelist. They thought locking me in a stuffy confessional for hours would make me crack. I pretended to and gave them a bunch of creative nonsense to keep them paranoid."

"Uh… Such as?"

She pulled out a key ring made of silver and turquoise and unlocked the door. "I told them that we were making a horror film. The rumors were designed to build interest in the movie."

I frowned. "They bought that?"

"No. That was when they took me out, shot me up with junk, and locked me in the rectory with a little guy for a guard. I guess that's all they figured I'd need." She rattled the key loose and pushed the door open. "When I was done with him, he couldn't have broken his celibacy vows if he'd tried."

"The drugs seem to have worn off faster for you than they have for me." I stepped inside and watched my head spin.

"Are you kidding?" she asked. "I'm sailing the stratosphere!" In the subdued light of the hallway, I saw that her pupils were the size of dimes.

"Less than a novelty to you, I presume?"

She grinned giddily. "When I was a young, sweet, impressionable child of sixteen I consumed a greater variety of drugs than most people are comfortable pronouncing. I was always the only person in my group who could drive wasted." She closed the door and set the deadbolt. "When they started the injections, I was sort of grateful for the free vacation. They didn't expect me to be able to function."

"Why weren't you so resourceful when they first grabbed you at the bar?"

She shrugged. "They had the drop on me with guns. They didn't seem to care whether they killed me or not. So I went along."

My drug-sensitized nose immediately bore an assault by a riot of scents. It smelled as if we were in a flower garden in spring. I felt safe, reassured, cozy.

"What is that smell?"

"Just some flowers and stuff. Come on."

She led me through a hallway done up with the sort of knickknacks a woman accumulates. She sat me in the living room on a high-backed wing chair. The place had a few bookshelves with a fair amount of books. That's the way I gauge people, I suppose. The fewer the books, the stupider and duller the person.

She wasn't dull. Her actions revealed that much.

"Anyway," she continued, clanking around in the kitchen, "I snuck out of a window and into the courtyard and hotwired the first car I could get to."

"You have good taste in cars."

"I was on my way to call the police when I saw you."

"Forget the cops-they're just priests with guns."

I heard her laugh lightly. In a moment she appeared with a cup of coffee.

"Black?" she asked.

"Black." I took the cup and let the hot liquid warm my insides.

"Feeling better?"

"Yeah." I stretched and slid back in the chair. "I saw a whole lot of bad things back there. In my mind. I've seen worse in real life. I'll get over it." I let out a breath, took another sip of brew. My hair may have been getting younger, but I wasn't. I felt old and rattled.

Ann went back into the kitchen and reappeared with her own cup. She pulled up a chair next to mine and sat. A shaft of morning sunlight hit the lower part of her dress, shotgunning silver and gold pinpoints around the room. Her hair hung in straggles caused by drying sweat. She'd been through a lot and came out looking like an angel slumming it among mortals.

I felt a few degrees less than mortal. The house was too cheerful to reflect the way I felt.

"They mean business, Dell."

"If they meant business, babe, we'd be under the churchyard by now." I finished the cup and set it aside. "Here I thought I'd just draw some pay for a few weeks from a flush eccentric. Next thing I know, someone's taking it seriously!"

"You took it seriously enough to accept the offer."

"If God is worried about me, why doesn't He just hit me with a bolt of lightning?"

"They say he works in mysterious ways. Maybe he's softening you up first." She grinned. Her eyes were mostly pupil. I understood why women used to put belladonna drops in their eyes. She looked achingly beautiful.

"Or maybe," she suggested, "the reactions to you are taking place through a network of consciousness."

What she said didn't make much sense, but I was still stoned enough that her words carried a profound impact. I sensed that something important was trying to get through. I answered with appropriate awe.

"Huh?"

She leaned forward, suddenly emphatic.

"People such as those monks are acting on feelings that don't come from within them. They're operating on emotions impinging on them from outside-from a worldwide reaction to our activities."

It was as if she'd stuck another hypo of junk into me. I felt a swelling tide of alarm flow over me. This was true. I was really supposed to assassinate God! And there were forces out to stop me.

And then I realized what was happening.

"What're you up to, Blondie? You're laying a program on me as thick as the one Beathan tried."

She stared with those black saucers for a moment, then said, "Everything will seem more important right now. Don't pay any attention to it. We've got work to do."