He strode by them, his nose wrinkling, in spite of himself, at the odor of tobacco smoke, booze, and unwashed bodies. "Let them discover, God, what they are doing to themselves. Show these children the light so that they may follow it if they would!"

"Give it to them, Father!" a man shouted. "Scorch them with hellfire and brimstone!" He laughed uproariously.

Father Tom stopped, turned, and said, "I don't preach hellfire, my son. I preach love, peace, and harmony."

The man got to his knees and stretched out his arms in mock-repentance. "Forgive me, Father! I know not what I do!"

"A prophet is not without honor save in his own block building," Zurvan said. "I don't have the power to forgive you. You forgive yourself, and then God will forgive you."

He stepped out into Shinbone Alley under a cloudless sky and a steadily warming sun. The light of day was not as bright as that which came from everywhere in the world, from the distant stars invisible even to radio astronomers, from the trees and the grass, from the rocks in the garden, and from the center of the Earth. Brightest of all, though, was that which shone from the center of Father Tom Zurvan.

Thus the day passed with Father Tom standing on the street corners and preaching to whomever would listen or standing outside the doors of block buildings or private residences and shouting that he had The Word and the tenants should come out and listen to It. At 1:00 P.M., he went to the door of a restaurant and rapped on the window until a waiter came. He gave his order for a light lunch and passed his ID disc-star to the waiter. Presently, the waiter came with the star, which he had used to register the purchase, and he handed the platter of food and glass of water to the priest.

The organics watched him closely, ready to arrest him if he went into a restaurant with bare feet. Father Tom, grinning, usually went to them and asked if they cared to share his meal. They always refused. To accept would have made them open to a charge of bribe-taking. The priest could also have been arrested for offering a bribe, but the organics had orders just to observe and record. The only act so far that had upset them during the past subyear was his conversion of an organic who had been shadowing him. That had been entirely unexpected, had been done without coercion by Zurvan, and was not illegal. However, the convert had been discharged from the force on grounds of religiousness and adherence to superstition.

At 3:00 P.M., Father Tom was standing on a box in Washington Square. Around him were two hundred members of the Cosmic Church of Confession, about a hundred of the curious, and a hundred who had nothing better to do. There were other soapboxers scattered through the park, but they did not draw such large crowds.

Here Father Tom began preaching. His voice blared out deeply and richly. His timing and phraseology were suited to his message and appreciated by most of the hearers, even those who rejected The Word. Father Tom, having studied the great black preachers of the past who had also been on fire with The Word, knew how to deliver it.

"Bless you, citizens of Sunday. Whether or not you are here to hear a voice of God-not the voice, a voice-bless you. May your virtues swell and your weaknesses shrink. Bless you, my children, sons and daughters of God all!"

"Amen, Father!"

"You're telling the truth, Father!"

"God bless you and us, Father!"

"The hound of heaven is baying at your heels, Father!"

"Yes, brothers and sisters!" Zurvan cried. "The hound of heaven is barking! Ba-a-arking, I say!"

"Yeah, Father, barking!"

"It has been sent out by the great hunter to bring you in, my children!"

"Bring us in! Yeah, bring us in! You speak the truth, Father!"

Eyes wide and seeming to flash, his shepherd's staff held high, Father Tom thundered, "Barking, I say!"

"Barking, Father! We hear him!"

"But!"

Father Tom paused and glared at the crowd. "But ... is the hound of heaven barking up the wrong tree?"

"What tree, Father?"

"The wrong tree, I say! Is the hound barking up the wrong tree?"

"Never!" a woman screamed out. "Never!"

"You said it, sister!" Father Tom said. "Never! God never makes mistakes, and His hound wouldn't ever lose the quarry! His hound ... and our hound ... is us."

"Us, Father!"

"When the hound of heaven has treed its quarry ... who is that creature up in the tree?"

"It's us, Father!"

"And them, too!" Zurvan cried, waving his staff to indicate the nonbelievers. "Everybody!"

"Everybody, Father!"

He was improvising, yet he spoke as if he had long rehearsed his speech and his disciples responded as if they knew the exact timing and phrasing expected from him. He praised the government for all the many benefits it had ensured for the people, and he listed the great ills that had plagued the world and had made so many suffer in the past. These, he said, were gone. This was indeed the best government the world had ever had.

"Now children ... children, I say, who will someday be adults in God ..

"How abaut adulterers in God!" a man on the fringe of the crowd shouted.

"Bless you, brother, and bless your big mouth and hard heart, too! Saint Francis of Assisi, a true saint, greeted whatever donkey he met on the road as Brother Ass! May I call you Brother Ass? May I address you as a fellow Assisian?"

Zurvan paused, smiled, and looked around until the crowd's laughter had ceased. He shouted, "Yet the government is not perfect, my children! It could change many things for the betterment of its citizens. But has it changed now for, lo, five generations? Has it not ceased to seek change for the better because it claims that there is no need for change? Did it not cease? I ask you, did it not cease!"

"Yes, Father! It has ceased!"

"Thus! Thus! Thus! Thus, my children! The hound of heaven does not bark up the wrong tree! But, thus, my children, the hound of the government barks up the wrong tree! 0, how it barks! Day and night, from every side, it barks! We hear that it is perfect! The millennium has come, and all is right in this world! The government discourages any talk of change for the better! 'We are perfect!' the government says!

"Is it perfect? Is the government, like God, perfect?"

"No, no, no, Father!"

Zurvan stepped down from the box then. Shouting, continuing to speak, his disciples trooping after him, moaning, crying, and yelling, he walked to a place one hundred and sixty feet away. The other speakers were also moving. Zurvan occupied a spot just vacated, and he mounted the box again. The law had been observed, and the place of meeting had been moved within the legal time to a legal distance away.

"The government permits the practice of religion! Yet . the government allows no believer in God to hold a government office! Is that the truth?"

"That's the truth, Father!"

"Who says that only those who believe in fact, in reality, in the truth ... T ... R ... U ... T ... H ... are fit to hold government office?"

"The government, Father!"

"And who defines fact, reality, and truth?"

"The government, Father!"

"Who defines religion as superstition?"

"The government, Father!"

"Who says there is no need for change, for betterment?"

"The government, Father!"

"Do not we deny that? Do not we know that there is a great, a crying, need for betterment?"

"Yes, Father!"

"Does not the government say that it has a contract with the people, a social contract?"

"It does, Father."

"Then tell me, children, what good is a contract if, of the two parties who agree to the contract, only one can enforce it?"

"None, Father!"

That was as far as he dared to go today on that subject. He was not yet ready for martyrdom. He now switched to his "cooling-off" stage. He asked for a few questions from non-members of the church, and, as always, he was asked why he daubed his nose, what the S on his forehead stood for, and what the butterfly shapes on his beard symbolized.