"Is something wrong?"

No, she thought. Nothing wrong at all. Not if you're used to seeing someone do a quick-change routine from Wall Street Formal to Atlantis Casual every blessed day!

Broadway Merman, and no, she didn't mean Ethel: There was no other way to describe the Reverend Everything's new look. Somehow, in the short time Peez had been viewing the sanctuary's saltwater decor, he had stripped off his natty, cream-colored suit in favor of a multicolored, spangled fishtail that a bathhouse era Bette Midler would have rejected as too garish. His chest was bare, though he'd acquired a frosty green beard long enough to obscure most of it.

"Ohhh," he said, nodding in sympathy for Peez's abrupt silence. His foot-high diadem of shells and dried seahorses swayed gently. "I see what's bothering you. You've never attended one of my services before. I do this sort of thing all the time."

He used his crystal trident to retrieve the cast-off suit and held it out for her inspection. "It's a one-piece outfit with hidden Velcro closures. A lot like the sort of rental clothing they use for the dear departed in funeral homes, in cases where the family does not provide a, heh, going-away outfit; much easier to remove for reuse in that critical post-viewing, pre-burial time slot. Now, was that the only thing upsetting you?"

"Y-y-yes. That and—and—" She didn't know quite how to say it and still consider herself to be a lady, so she made vague motions at the Reverend's chest.

He looked down at himself in puzzlement, then chuckled. "Ah! It's the pasties, right?" He pointed at the pair of iridescent plastic squids covering his nipples, two islands in a Sargasso Sea of pepper-and-salt chest hair. Chuckling, he added, "I know they must seem a trifle over-the-top for some tastes, but I felt that as the spiritual leader of a large and loyal congregation, I owed it to the dignity of my calling to veil my vestigial mammaries from sight. It must be the quest for enlightenment, not the humble guide, that claims their attention. I would never want to distract my Seekers."

"Distract them? Distract them?!" Peez shrilled, rising to her feet. "You look like the illegitimate gay offspring of Poseidon and Cher and you're worried about distracting the congregation because you've got naked nipples?!"

Reverend Everything gaped at her. He wasn't the only one left stunned by her outburst. Peez herself gasped, clamped both hands over her mouth, and collapsed back into her chair, horrified at what she'd just done.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean that. I didn't say that. Oh, I am so, so sorry."

Reverend Everything took a deep breath, tilted his head back so far that his shell crown fell off, and laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. When at last he recovered himself enough to speak, he said, "Ms. Godz, your innocence is like a breath of salt air from our own Mother Ocean's revivifying lips. Seen like this, outside of the context of our worship services, my garb must indeed look a trifle theatrical, but pageantry is often a part of religious rites. I assure you, when you see our rites as a whole, my chosen appearance will look perfectly natural."

"Of course it will," Peez muttered, still blushing.

And so it did.

—for a freak show, Peez thought. No, that's too harsh. For a circus, then, or an aquacade, or whatever the hell this extravaganza is. She took another pull at the loop-de- loop pink plastic straw protruding from her sacramental pina colada and took in the scene before her with a jaundiced eye.

Services were nearly over—the drinks had been distributed when Reverend Everything called his followers to partake in the "refreshment of the soul"—but plenty was still going on. It was standing room only in the dolphin tank, for one thing.

No, not the tank; the Immersionarium, Peez mentally corrected herself. Where the suckers go to get a real soaking.

Less than fifteen minutes ago she had sat back and listened while the Reverend Everything told the congregation that the way to become One with the Universe was to let your soul float free. Money was the ballast holding you down on the bottom of the great Cosmic Sea where the Crabs of Crotchetyness would nibble your toes and the Remoras of Remorse stood poised to suck the good karma out of you. The people groaned and made bubbling noises with their lips on hearing this.

Yet there was hope. Or, in the Reverend's own words, "But wait! There's more!" He then called upon his lovely assistants to bring forth those worshipers who had given up the most ballast at the previous week's service. These finny handmaidens too were dressed like rejects from a Las Vegas-based road company of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Their fishtails made walking up and down the aisles a chore, so they settled for announcing the names of the favored through microphones disguised as lobsters.

With joyous sounds last heard on episodes of Flipper, the chosen ones came forward, walking down the center aisle and up the steps to the deck surrounding the dolphin tank. One by one they were taken behind a dressing screen only to emerge shortly thereafter wearing swimsuits. Peez was impressed to see so many people mastering Reverend Everything's own talent for doing a quick change act until she noticed that the screen also concealed a picked team of additional assistants who could get the clothes off a body faster than a horny sixteen-year-old.

As soon as a worshiper emerged from behind the screen, he or she was escorted to the edge of the dolphin tank where the Reverend Everything was waiting, crystal trident in hand. He said a few words about there being a tide in the affairs of men, going with the flow, life as a river, the fount of all knowledge, sinners being pond scum, and brooking no arguments from any outsiders who decried the methods of the Soulhaven Retreat and Starchild Immersionarium because such drips were spiritual wet blankets.

Then he used his trident to swat the Seeker into the pool. The dolphins, aka Starchildren, swam around each new visitor happily, sometimes taking an interest, sometimes ignoring him completely. That was all right, though, because the Reverend's earlier preachings had made sure to point out that it was the Seeker's soul that the Starchildren would touch, and every person emerging from the tank insisted that he or she had been very touched indeed.

It was all deeply moving. In fact, it moved those members of the congregation who had not been chosen this week to renew their charitable zeal and fill the collection baskets to overflowing.

Afterwards, a fishnet curtain descended from on high, veiling the tank as the congregation made their exit while the organ played selections from Handel's Water Music over a tape recording of whale songs. These sounds mingled sweetly with the squish, squish, squish of improperly dried feet ruining costly Italian leather shoes. As the great doors of the sanctuary closed behind the departing Seekers, the Reverend Everything removed his shell tiara and fake beard. He ducked behind the dressing screen with a happy sigh whose meaning might have signified either satisfaction in a ministry well fulfilled or Thank God that's over!

Peez had her own convictions as to which one it was.

"That does it," she told the air. "I quit."

"What did you say?" Reverend Everything stuck his head out from behind the screen. He looked sincerely concerned.

"You heard me," Peez said. "I quit. This is not the right line of work for me. If the future of E. Godz, Inc. is going to depend on someone who's able to put up with watching this kind of hijinks with a big old Miss America smile on her face, I'm out. I'm leaving the field to my brother, Dov. Let him hitch a ride on the hurdy-gurdy, but I'm getting off now." She stood up and headed for the steps leading down from the tank deck.