Zurvan said that he and his disciples had been reviled and mocked as "bluenoses" because of their high moral standards. So, he had adopted the pejorative literally to show his pride in his belief and his indifference to the revilers and mockers. When he preached, he showed his "bluenose" to all who would see.

As for the butterflies, they represented the last stage of becoming a believer. Just as butterflies, once ugly caterpillars, wrapped themselves in a cocoon and burst forth in the metamorphosis of lovely creatures, just so the souls of himself and his followers had burst forth.

"The big S on my forehead," he thundered, "does not represent Saint or Sinner! Nor does it stand for Simpleton, as our enemies claim! It stands for Symbol! It is not a symbol, but the symbol! The S absorbs all symbols, all symbols of good, that is! Someday, so we hope, do we not, children, this S will be as instantly recognizable, and far more respected and valued, than the cross, hexagram, and crescent I spoke of earlier. Is that not our hope and trust, children?"

"Amen to that, Father!"

Zurvan then began the slow-paced approach to the calling for public confession. As the minutes went by, he sped up his delivery, his gestures, his intensity, his passion. Before five o'clock, when all lecturers and preachers had to stop, he had heard the detailed confessions of twenty, one of them an onthe-spot convert. That this part of the program attracted many more from the park than his preaching did not dim his joy. He knew that nonmembers loved to hear the confessions because of the sometimes sordid, humiliating, and salacious details. Never mind. Sometimes, some who canie to be titillated were overcome-imploded with the light of God-and they converted and confessed.

The organics were taking all this in and might use the confessions against the confessors if they found reason to. Martyrdom, however, was the price paid for faith.

At five, Zurvan went home, tired but exuberant and exultant. He was riding high on the saddle of God's light. After a low-calorie supper, he prayed. Later, he listened in the privacy of his apartment to people who had not had time to finish their confessions. At nine, he held a short service for those who crowded into his apartment. It was against the law for people to stand in the hall and watch the ceremonies on the hall strips. But organics were not usually around at that time, and the other tenants did not object. Some of them liked to watch, too, though not to share in the light.

All of this had taken place on Day-Five, Week-One, last Sunday.

Today, Day-Six, Week-One of Sunday, Father Tom Zurvan had not appeared in Washington Square. His followers, after waiting for fifteen minutes, during which they failed to get him on the strip, had gone to the apartment building on Shinbone Alley. The block chief rightly refused to use his code-key to enter Father Tom's apartment until the organics had been notified. After another long delay, two organics showed up. These went in with the block chief, the throng of disciples, and some curious tenants.

A search revealed that Father Tom was not at home. His stoner was empty. His staff was leaning against a wall strip on which was a cryptic message:

I HAVE GONE TO A HIGHER PLACE.

Chapter 28

Tom Zurvan had not lied.

He was indeed in a higher place, the Tao Towers, in Tony Horn's sixth-floor apartment at the corner of West Eleventh Street and the Kropotkin Canal. He was not altogether himself nor altogether any of his selves.

Normally, he would have gone through the ritual of becoming Father Tom and then sleeping. The nightmare of Saturday had, however, stopped the flow of customary events as an avalanche would dam up a river. It had goosed his soul and sent it screaming down paths that he did not wish to take. It had shotgunned the cocoon of Zurvan and was letting the voices and faces and even the hands of those others through the holes. They were mumbling at him, staring at him, groping him.

This had not started until he had got himself, much less smoothly than usual, through the mental mantra of metamorphosis. (Was that Bob Tingle speaking that thought, the Alley Oop of alliteration? Wyatt Repp who voiced the metaphors of "goosing" and "shotgunned"? Charlie Ohm who suggested they were "groping" him?)

He was aware but did not want to be aware that the winds of the recent past were blowing through him as if he were a shredded sail, as if fragments of the others were coming through him like pepper from a shaker.

"Stop that! Stop that!" he screamed in his mind.

Though, possibly excepting Jeff Caird, he h2td the strongest personality of all, he could not fight back with all his powers. They had been let, as it were, to other tenants who were moving in with court orders. And he was being shorn, his strength drained out just as Samson's had drained when his hair was cut by Delilah, the delicious daughter of false-faced Philistines, the buxom barber of Beelzebub.

"Stop that!" he screamed. "This is serious!"

("Damn right, it's serious!" Caird said in a faraway voice that, however, was getting nearer. "Tingle, shut up! We're about to die, and you joke!")

Aloud, his voice ringing in his apartment, Zurvan said, "By the light of God, I command you to go back into the darkness from which you came!"

("Bullshit," Charlie Ohm said.)

("Smile when you say that," Wyatt Repp said. "Come on, men. Give him a break. The lynching party is coming. If we don't hang together, we'll be hung separately on sour apple trees. He's the ramrod today. Shut up and let him save our skin. Then we can have the big powwow, see who's the big mugwump. The only way ..

("Tony Horn's apartment," Caird said. "Go there! It's the only place we'll be safe! For a while, anyway!")

"Tony Horn?" Zurvan said aloud.

("Yes. You remember. Don't you?")

("I remember," Jim Dunski said. "If I can, you can. Caird was given permission, remember. His ... our ... friend, Commissioner-General Anthony Horn. She said he could use it in case of emergency. And this is it!")

("She's an immer," Bob Tingle said. "Once an immer, always an immer, no pun intended even if you know German. She'll betray me ... I mean, us.")

("She won't know anything until Tuesday," Caird said. "Come on, Zurvan, get going! Hightail it!")

Only Will Isharashvili had not spoken. Was that because he did not know yet what was going on? Or because, being the last in line, if Tuesday was the beginning, he was the weakest? His voice would not be added until he was awakened tomorrow? If so, he would never speak. He was not going to be awakened. He would die in his sleep.

That roiled Zurvan even more. If he was not Isharashvili tomorrow, who would he be? Could he keep on being himself, Tom Zurvan? He had to. He, at least, would not perish.

"Oh, Lord, forgive me!" he cried. "I am thinking only of myself! I am abandoning my brothers! I am a coward, a Peter denying his Lord before the cock has crowed three times!"

("Peter! Cock! You big prick!" Charlie Ohm said. "Cut out the holy bullshit, man! Get going! Save our asses!")

("I wouldn't say it that way," Jeff Caird said, "but the minnie is right. Hide out! Now! Get to Horn's place! For God's sake, man, the organics may be at the door now! Or the immers may be there! Get rid of everything that'll tie you in with us! Go! ")

The voices had stilled, for the moment, anyway. As he stared at the traffic on the street and the canal, he felt a little stronger and more confident. He had no rational cause to be so, but confidence often welled not from long experience so much as from the inborn belief in one's self.

He had had to struggle hard to do what reason said he must do. Grief and a hard-quelled resistance had shaken him as he bustled about gathering up items to be compacted and stoned for the garbage collectors. The wig, beard, and robes had to go. With them went the dummy of himself. He considered destroying Ohm's also, but the chances were good that his dummy would not be discovered until next Saturday. He did get into Ohm's PP closet with the ID star from Ohm's cylinder, and he dressed in Ohm's clothes. They would make him stand out because Sunday did not wear the neck-ruff on the blouse nor kilts. That, however, could not be helped.