'Psychopathology? That's a harsh judgement.'

'Amply justified by history. Imagine that you're an intelligent extraterrestrial, concerned only with verifiable truths. You discover a species which has divided itself into thousands – no by now millions – of tribal groups holding an incredible variety of beliefs about the origin of the universe and the way to behave in it. Although many of them have ideas in common, even when there's a ninety-nine per cent overlap, the remaining one per cent is enough to set them killing and torturing each other, over trivial points of doctrine, utterly meaningless to outsiders.'

'How to account for such irrational behaviour? Lucretius hit it on the nail when he said that religion was the by-product of fear – a reaction to a mysterious and often hostile universe. For much of human prehistory, it may have been a necessary evil – but why was it so much more evil than necessary – and why did it survive when it was no longer necessary?

'I said evil – and I mean it, because fear leads to cruelty. The slightest knowledge of the Inquisition makes one ashamed to belong to the human species... One of the most revolting books ever published was the Hammer of Witches, written by a couple of sadistic perverts and describing the tortures the Church authorized – encouraged! – to extract "confessions" from thousands of harmless old women, before it burned them alive... The Pope himself wrote an approving foreword!'

'But most of the other religions, with a few honourable exceptions, were just as bad as Christianity... Even in your century, little boys were kept chained and whipped until they'd memorized whole volumes of pious gibberish, and robbed of their childhood and manhood to become monks...'

'Perhaps the most baffling aspect of the whole affair is how obvious madmen, century after century, would proclaim that they – and they alone! – had received messages from God. If all the messages had agreed, that would have settled the matter. But of course they were wildly discordant – which never prevented self-styled messiahs from gathering hundreds – sometimes millions – of adherents, who would fight to the death against equally deluded believers of a microscopically differing faith.'

Poole thought it was about time he got a word in edgeways.

'You've reminded me of something that happened in my home-town when I was a kid. A holy man – quote, unquote – set up shop, claimed he could work miracles – and collected a crowd of devotees in next to no time. And they weren't ignorant or illiterate; often they came from the best families. Every Sunday I used to see expensive cars parked round his – ah – temple.'

'The "Rasputin Syndrome", it's been called: there are millions of such cases, all through history, in every country. And about one time in a thousand the cult survives for a couple of generations. What happened in this case?'

'Well, the competition was very unhappy, and did its best to discredit him. Wish I could remember his name – he used a long Indian one – Swami something-or-other – but it turned out he came from Alabama. One of his tricks was to produce holy objects out of thin air, and hand them to his worshippers. As it happened, our local rabbi was an amateur conjuror, and gave public demonstrations showing exactly how it was done. Didn't make the slightest difference – the faithful said that their man's magic was real, and the rabbi was just jealous.'

'At one time, I'm sorry to say, Mother took the rascal seriously – it was soon after Dad had run off, which may have had something to do with it – and dragged me to one of his sessions. I was only about ten, but I thought I'd never seen anyone so unpleasant-looking. He had a beard that could have held several birds' nests, and probably did.'

'He sounds like the standard model. How long did he flourish?'

'Three or four years. And then he had to leave town in a hurry: he was caught running teenage orgies. Of course, he claimed he was using mystical soul-saving techniques. And you won't believe this -,

'Try me.'

'Even then, lots of his dupes still had faith in him. Their god could do no wrong, so he must have been framed.'

'Framed?'

'Sorry – convicted by faked evidence – sometimes used by the police to catch criminals, when all else fails.'

'Hmm. Well, your swami was perfectly typical: I'm rather disappointed. But he does help to prove my case -that most of humanity has always been insane, at least some of the time.'

'Rather an unrepresentative sample – one small Flagstaff suburb.'

'True, but I could multiply it by thousands – not only in your century, but all down the ages. There's never been anything, however absurd, that countless people weren't prepared to believe, often so passionately that they'd fight to the death rather than abandon their illusions. To me, that's a good operational definition of insanity.'

'Would you argue that anyone with strong religious beliefs was insane?'

'In a strictly technical sense, yes – if they really were sincere, and not hypocrites. As I suspect ninety per cent were.'

'I'm certain that Rabbi Berenstein was sincere – and he was one of the sanest men I ever knew, as well as one of the finest. And how do you account for this? The only real genius I ever met was Dr Chandra, who led the HAL project. I once had to go into his office – there was no reply when I knocked, and I thought it was unoccupied.'

'He was praying to a group of fantastic little bronze statues, draped with flowers. One of them looked like an elephant... another had more than the regular number of arms... I was quite embarrassed, but luckily he didn't hear me and I tiptoed out. Would you say he was insane?'

'You've chosen a bad example: genius often is! So let's say: not insane, but mentally impaired, owing to childhood conditioning. The Jesuits claimed: "Give me a boy for six years, and he is mine for life." If they'd got hold of little Chandra in time, he'd have been a devout Catholic – not a Hindu.'

'Possibly. But I'm puzzled – why were you so anxious to meet me? I'm afraid I've never been a devout anything. What have I got to do with all this?'

Slowly, and with the obvious enjoyment of a man unburdening himself of a heavy, long-hoarded secret, Dr Khan told him.

RECORD POOLE

Hello, Frank... So you've finally met Ted. Yes, you could call him a crank – if you define that as an enthusiast with no sense of humour. But cranks often get that way because they know a Big Truth – can, you hear my capitals?

– and no one will listen... I'm glad you did – and I suggest you take him quite seriously.

You said you were surprised to see a Pope's portrait prominently displayed in Ted's apartment. That would have been his hero, Pius XX – I'm sure I mentioned him to you. Look him up – he's usually called the Impius! It's a fascinating story, and exactly parallels something that happened just before you were born. You must know how Mikhail Gorbachev, the President of the Soviet Empire, brought about its dissolution at the end of the twentieth century, by exposing its crimes and excesses.

He didn't intend to go that far – he'd hoped to reform it, but that was no longer possible. We'll never know if Pius XX had the same idea, because he was assassinated by a demented cardinal soon after he'd horrified the world by releasing the secret files of the Inquisition...

The religious were still shaken by the discovery of TMA ZERO only a few decades earlier – that had a great impact on Pius XX, and certainly influenced his actions...

But you still haven't told me how Ted, that old cryptoDeist, thinks you can help him in his search for God. I believe he's still mad at him for hiding so successfully. Better not say I told you that.

On second thoughts, why not?