NELLIFER: And the flies.

BAKETAMON: And the cattle getting murrain.

NELLIFER: And the death of the firstborn. A lot of people hated that one.

BAKETAMON: Of course, it didn’t touch Nelli and me.

NELLIFER: We were lucky. Our firstborns were already dead.

BAKETAMON: Mine died in the hail.

INTERVIEWER: Frozen?

BAKETAMON: Beaned.

NELLIFER: Mine had been suffering from chronic diarrhea since he was a month old, so when the waters became blood — zap, kid got dehydrated.

BAKETAMON: Nelli, your mind’s going. It was your secondborn who died when the waters became blood. Your firstborn died in the darkness, when he accidentally drank that turpentine.

NELLIFER: No, my secondborn died much later, drowned when the Red Sea rolled back into its bed. My thirdborn drank the turpentine. A mother remembers these things.

INTERVIEWER: I was certain you’d be more bitter about your ordeals.

NELLIFER: Initially we thought the plagues were unjust. Then we came to understand our innate depravity and intrinsic wickedness.

BAKETAMON: There’s only one good Person in the whole universe, and that’s the Lord God Jehovah.

INTERVIEWER: You’ve converted to monotheism?

BAKETAMON: (nodding) We love the Lord our God with all our heart.

NELLIFER: All our soul.

BAKETAMON: All our strength.

NELLIFER: Besides, there’s no telling what He might do to us next.

BAKETAMON: Fire ants, possibly.

NELLIFER: Killer bees.

BAKETAMON: Meningitis.

NELLIFER: I’ve got two sons left.

BAKETAMON: I’m still up a daughter.

NELLIFER: The Lord giveth.

BAKETAMON: And the Lord taketh away.

NELLIFER: Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Cassie scanned the audience. Shimmering halos of pure reason hovered above Joe Spicer, Dolores Haycox, and Bud Ramsey, igniting their faces with skepticism’s holy glow. The Enlightenment, she sensed, was about to prevail. As God Without Tears progressed, the Valparaíso deserters would inevitably come to apprehend and reject the fatal fallacy on which they were predicating their rebellion.

The spotlight swings back to Moses atop the sand dune.

INTERVIEWER: When you went up on Mount Sinai, Jehovah offered you a lot more than the Decalogue.

MOSES: DeMille shot everything, Marty, all six hundred and twelve laws, each one destined for the cutting-room floor.

A rear-projection screen descends, displaying an excerpt from The Ten Commandments. God’s animated forefinger is busily etching the Decalogue on the face of Sinai. As the last rule is carved — THOU SHALT NOT COVET — the frame suddenly freezes.

GOD: (voice-over) Now for the details, (beat) When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your power, if you see a beautiful woman among the prisoners and find her desirable, you may make her your wife.

INTERVIEWER: I have to admire DeMille for using something like that. Deuteronomy 21:10, right?

MOSES: You got it, Marty. He was a much gutsier filmmaker than his detractors imagine.

GOD: (voice-over) When two men are fighting together, if the wife of one intervenes to protect her husband by putting out her hand and seizing the other by the private parts, you shall cut off her hand and show no pity.

INTERVIEWER: “Private parts”? DeMille used that?

MOSES: Deuteronomy 25:11.

GOD: (voice-over) If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, his father and mother shall bring him out to the elders of the town, and all his fellow citizens shall stone the son to death.

MOSES: Deuteronomy 21:21.

INTERVIEWER: And here I’d always thought DeMille was afraid of controversy.

MOSES: One ballsy mogul, Marty.

INTERVIEWER: Damn theater chains.

MOSES: (nodding) They think they own the world.

Joe Spicer jumped to his feet, hurled down his horseshoe crab, and said, “Mates, we’ve been committing a serious epistemological error!”

“Schopenhauer was cracking walnuts in his ass!” agreed Dolores Haycox, tossing aside her Liberian sea snake. “Life’s meaning doesn’t come from God! Life’s meaning comes from life!”

“Captain, you gotta forgive us!” pleaded Bud Ramsey.

At which point Cassie woke up.

August 6.

Ockham wasn’t kidding. The bastards cleaned us out. Until we can get a fishing party together, we’ll be eating whatever stuff they dropped or didn’t want in the first place.

I’m burning up, Popeye. I’m ablaze with migraine auras and shimmering visions of what I’ll do to the mutineers once I catch them. I see myself keelhauling Ramsey, the Val’s barnacled bottom scraping off his skin like a galley grunt peeling a potato. I see myself cutting Haycox into neat little cubes and tossing them into the Gibraltar Sea, snacks for sharks. And Joe Spicer? Spicer I’ll tie to a Butterworth plate, whipping him till the sun glints off his backbone.

Welcome to Anno Postdomini One, Joe.

At 1320 Sam Follingsbee handed me an inventory: 1 bunch of bananas, 2 dozen hot dogs, 3 pounds of Cheerios, 5 loaves of bread, 4 slices of Kraft American cheese … I can’t go on, Popeye, it’s too depressing. I told the steward to work out a rationing system, something that will keep us functioning for the rest of the month.

“And after that?” he asked.

“We pray,” I replied.

Although the mutineers broke into the fo’c’sle hold and made off with all the antipredator weapons, they didn’t think to loot the deckhouse locker, so they’re without shells for the bazookas and harpoons for the WP-17s. When it comes to serious firepower, we have effectively disarmed each other. Unfortunately, they also ripped off two decorative cutlasses from the wardroom, six or seven flare pistols, and a handful of blasting caps. Given this arsenal and their superior numbers, I see no way to attack their camp and win.

So we sit. And wait. And stew.

Sparks keeps trying to raise the outside world. No luck. I can deal with a grounding, a food shortage, maybe even a mutiny, but this endless fog is making me nuts.

At 1430 Ockham and Sister Miriam filled their knapsacks and set off north across the dunes, looking for the bastards. “We’re assuming Immanuel Kant had it right,” the padre explained. “There’s a natural moral law — a categorical imperative — latent within every person’s soul.”

“If we can make the deserters understand that,” said Miriam, “they may very well recover.”

Know what I think, Popeye? I think they’re about to get themselves killed.

They found the deserters by their laughter: whoops of primitive delight and cries of post-theistic joy blowing across the wet sands. Thomas’s heart beat faster, rattling the miniature crucifix sandwiched between his chest and sweatshirt.

Straight ahead, a range of high, damp dunes sizzled in the sun. Side by side, Jesuit and Carmelite ascended, pausing halfway up to drink from their canteens and mop the perspiration from their brows.

“No matter how far they’ve sunk, we must offer them love,” Sister Miriam insisted.

“We’ve been there ourselves, haven’t we?” said Thomas. “We know what havoc the Idea of the Corpse can wreak.” Reaching the summit, he lifted Van Horne’s binoculars to his eyes. He blanched, transfixed by a sight so astonishing it rivaled Miriam’s recent Dance of the Seven Veils. “Lord…”

A marble amphitheater sprawled across the valley floor, its fa зade broken by arched niches in which resided eight-foot-high statues of nude men wearing the heads of bulls, vultures, and crocodiles, its main gate guarded by a sculpted hermaphrodite happily engaged in a singularly dexterous act of self-pleasuring. Built to accommodate several thousand spectators, the arena now held a mere thirty-two, each deserter stuffing his face with food while watching the gaudy entertainment frantically unfolding below.