He walked toward us. Had we been in less civilized surroundings, I would have taken the opportunity to smear him into the ground.

Father Beathan smiled, pulled a chair up next to me, and sat with folded, calm hands.

"The first day of the year two-thousand? How melodramatic."

"It makes its point," I said. I lit a cigarette and eyed him, awaiting his next move.

He looked past Ann at Isadora. "There are some people who would like to see you now. Immediately. If both of you will please follow me-"

"Both of us?" the kid asked, looking at Ann and me.

Beathan nodded, looking from Isadora to me, his gaze never lighting on Ann.

Ann made a silent hushing sign with her left index finger.

"Well?" the priest asked.

Isadora peered at me, concentrating. Suddenly, the restaurant seemed to tumble and fracture and crumble away.

The kid stood in a blank room wearing a diaphanous bit of nothing. Spectral winds blew dreamlike through her hair. I seemed to be watching her, but I couldn't see my own body.

"All right, Dell-what's going on? Why can't he see Ann?"

I shrugged invisible shoulders. "It's some kind of trick she does. Or some kind of defect in her personality. You should ask questions, being able to drag me into Never-Never Land for a quick chat."

"Get stuffed!" The room dissolved like cotton candy in a rainstorm to be replaced by The Prisoner of Zelda.

"Quit looking like a brain case, Ammo. Come on." The kindly father drew something from beneath his frock. A blunt, rounded rod pointed unobtrusively from the end of a cylindrical grip. I faced the business end of a neural interruptor.

"Why, Father," I said in my friendliest fashion, "you could go to prison for ten years if you get caught carrying that."

He smirked. "You're one to care for laws. Do you know what you'll get for attempted deicide?" He gestured again with the paralyzer.

"Go ahead," I said. "Try explaining two unconscious people to the management."

"Good try, Ammo. This one's modified, though. Its power is set just low enough to make you open to persuasion."

I blew some smoke in his face.

"Come on, kid," I said. "Let's go whither the good Father taketh us."

Isadora, Beathan, and I stood. So did Ann. I left a wad of orange paper to cover the bill. As we headed toward the exit, I leaned close enough to Ann to whisper, "How long do you think you can keep this up?"

She whispered back, "As long as I'm around people who believe the lies that others tell them-or believe the lies they tell themselves."

I was hoping for something a bit more concrete.

I kept abreast of Beathan, staying between him and the kid. His constant glances toward her betrayed an inordinate amount of interest on his part. He wet his lips with the narrow tip of his tongue before speaking.

"So this is the way in which you choose to mock God." His lips pressed back together like those of a schoolteacher about to deliver a caning. "Defiling a mere child to appease your dark, animalistic master."

Isadora bristled at that. "Who're you calling mere, you bastard!" She darted around me to swing her foot at his left shin. Her pointed gold pump drove into his flesh.

I've got to give Beathan credit for not putting the NI field on us right there. He waved the thing at Isadora.

"Daughter of Eve," he said through gritted teeth, "your language is as filthy as your soul."

I restrained her this time. No sense pushing our luck. "Chill the rhetoric, pop. You want her to ruin her shoes?"

I could hear Ann's soft footsteps behind me. My mind did a sprint through Panic City. Did she have to follow so closely? What if her shield or whatever it was should lose potency? I knew other men at least to have seen her. She wasn't invisible. What if the others weren't fooled?

Beathan led us down a corridor toward the Auberge Hilton. He appeared unfazed by the wanton atmosphere and easygoing morality of Auberge, despite his wisecracks.

Two transvestites of the high-class variety strolled by us. One of them-a ringer for Veronica Lake-winked teasingly at the priest.

He ignored the gesture with a calm, disinterested expression.

His nudges directed us through the hotel lobby toward the elevator. He punched for the bottom floor-penthouse level in the crazy layout of Auberge. The penthouse suites were situated directly over a branch of the never-completed Los Angeles Municipal Subway. Only customers paying the highest fees could afford a suite near such a convenient escape route.

Beathan slipped the key card into the lock. The door eased open. He prodded me in with the muzzle of his NI. The kid followed between us.

Ann quietly slipped in last to hide in the cloakroom. Beathan still hadn't detected her presence.

The joint was big, by Auberge standards. Three steps led to a sunken living room that contained several couches, a gaming table, and a functional fireplace. I had no idea where the smoke went.

Three of the couches were arranged in a U-shape around the fireplace. Upon them sat the strangest collection of clothes this side of a Rocky Horror revival. There were a dozen old men in all, comprising a fairly thorough ethnic spread.

"Ah," I said casually, tapping the ash off what was left of my cigarette, "you must be the Ecclesia."

None of them said anything, yet somehow the room grew even quieter. The men stared coldly at Isadora and me.

"We are of dubious pleasure," said a shaven-headed man in a saffron robe, "to discover that you know of us." He looked as if he should be handing out incense at the airport.

"Relax," I said. "I read about you in the papers all the time. `Ecclesia' this, `Ecclesia' that-"

"Enough," said The Cardinal. He was dressed all in red, right up to his little beanie.

They were all old men. Some were fatter, some were skinnier. Some darker, some lighter. None of them smiled, nor did any look as if he'd smiled much since 1954.

"Let us get down to business." The Cardinal stood with a jangling of sacred hardware. "We have been informed by the Reverend Emil Zacharias that you are the mastermind behind this GodKiller campaign."

I smiled a calculated smile. "We're totally open in our operations. You could have come to our business office-"

He interrupted me. I didn't like that. "We want to know what you mean when you say that God will die."

"I mean what I say, fatso."

"Which God do you intend to kill?" he asked, as calmly as if he were asking about my vacation plans.

"All of Him," I said.

"Allah?" Some guy in a burnoose jumped up as if to reach for his sword, only to discover that he wasn't wearing one. The Rabbi beside him tugged at the fellow's khaffia. They exchanged whispers for a moment before The Ayatollah grudgingly sat back down.

"A vast undertaking," The Cardinal said. His elocution was as full and round as Anthony Quinn with a sock in his mouth. "How do you propose to do this?"

"Trade secret." Let them sweat it.

The fellow in red fiddled with an ostentatious gold ring on his index finger. A crucifix hung heavily around the thick folds of his neck, as tasteful and as dainty as a solid gold hockey stick.

"Mr. Ammo, your effort to kill God will fail because God does not exist."

"Then why treat me any differently from any other Southern California nut? You could have saved a lot in airfare."

He smiled and reached up to touch his scarlet beanie. "Mr. Ammo, it is one thing to defy God, to set up a competing religion, or even to declare oneself to be God. None of those actions robs God of His primal position in people's minds." He peered at me straight in the eye with a gaze that emerged from two narrowed, murderous slits. "To imply, on the other hand, that God is a being that can be killed is to unleash an anarchistic impulse not seen since the time of the Corn Kings."