Page 12 - Ferry Tales

Lightfoot

to say the people there have any better record of behaving. I speak
thousands of languages.”
Lightfoot desperately wanted to cover his ears against what he was
hearing. Of course, he wasn’t really hearing it, and his ears were
elsewhere, under the tender care of some low-budget embalmers
hired by his church.
“I need someone to pray with me!” he cries. “Together we can
defeat this agent of Satan!”
“You are in for an awful disappointment,” I inform him. “Deities
aren’t there to process your requests, like a radio disc jockey. It’s
power you want, and if you can’t have it you’ll imagine you can curry
favor with those who do. Again, people want it both ways: to control
their gods with prayers or curses, offerings, black and white magic,
special pleading—at the same time abasing themselves before
implacable and inexplicable forces. That’s the crude version of an
intelligent being, Lightfoot: it can think, but won’t.”
“We can recognize divinity.”
Was I talking to myself? I suppose if these willfully obtuse types
didn’t irritate me so much, I wouldn’t have been given this job. The
Angel of Darkness doesn’t want any of us to enjoy our work very
much; Hell is Hell for all involved. Sometimes I think I’d be much
happier running Five Rivers of Hell cruises for imps and demons on
vacation. You’d probably rather be ripping and shredding sinners
instead of chasing them without ever catching any; you’re like a
greyhound racing after a metal rabbit on a track. Well, if it’s any
satisfaction to you, animal mistreaters and wanton carnivores get a
strong dose of their own medicine down there.
“That’s a lot of fudge,” I tell him. “Apart from fallacies of
anthropomorphization, reification, idealization, valorization, and
teleofication, you metaphysical dualists are endlessly projecting your
own bad behavior and illogical ideas on the rest of the cosmos. Your
deity was betrayed, mocked, tortured and crucified? You create the
Inquisition. Did the Devil make you do that? Your belief in
transubstantiation seamlessly shifts to promoting blood libel,
vampirism and ghouls. Mental illness becomes in your mind demonic
possession. Repressed urges for you is proof of original sin. Divine
11