“He may have been our Creator,” she said, “but He was also something of a malicious lunatic.”

“He may have been something of a malicious lunatic,” he said, “but He was also our Creator.”

The instant Neil spotted the altar — a long, low table of ice spread out beneath the blue whale — he was overwhelmed by a desire to use it. He was not alone in this wish. Somberly the officers and crew filed back up the gangway, returning twenty minutes later, tributes in hand. One by one, the deckies approached the altar, and soon it was piled high with oblations: a National steel guitar, a trainman’s watch on a gold chain, a Sony Walkman, a Texas Instruments calculator, a packet of top-of-the-line condoms (the pricey Shostak Supremes), a silver whiskey flask, a five-string banjo, a shaving mug imprinted with a Currier and Ives skating scene, three bottles of Moosehead beer, a belt buckle bearing the sculpted likeness of a clipper ship.

A disturbing truth fell upon Neil as he observed James Echohawk offer up his 35mm Nikon. Years from now, enacting his love for the God of the four A.M. watch, Neil might actually start feeling good about himself. In buying Big Joe Spicer’s sister a dress for her senior prom or funding a hip operation for Leo Zook’s father, he might very well find inner peace. And the instant this happened, the minute he experienced satisfaction, he’d know he wasn’t doing enough.

Anthony Van Horne came forward and, with a shudder of reluctance, laid down a Bowditch sextant replica that must have been worth five hundred dollars. Sam Follingsbee surrendered a varnished walnut case filled with stainless-steel Ginsu knives. Father Thomas arrived next, sacrificing a jeweled chalice and a silver ciborium, followed by Sister Miriam, who lifted a golden-beaded rosary from her parka and rested it on the stack. Marbles Rafferty added a pair of high-powered Minolta binoculars, Crock O’Connor a matched set of Sears Craftsman socket wrenches, Lianne Bliss her crystal pendant.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Cassie Fowler.

Reaching into his wool leggings, Neil drew out his gift. “Veimeru: amein,” he muttered. And let us say: Amen. “Yeah, Miss Fowler?”

“You’re right — whatever else, we still owe Him. I wish I had an offering. I came aboard with nothing but an Elvis cup and a Betty Boop towel.”

Neil placed his grandfather’s Ben-Gurion medal on the altar and said, “Why not give Him your gratitude?”

In God’s private tomb, Cassie Fowler soon learned, time did not exist. No tides foretold the dusk; no stars announced the night; no birds declared the break of day. Only by glancing at the bridge clock did she know it was noon, eighteen hours after she’d watched Neil Weisinger offer up his bronze medal.

Stepping out of the wheelhouse, melding with the small, sad party on the starboard wing, Cassie was chagrined to realize that everyone else wore more respectful clothing than she. Anthony looked magnificent in his dress whites. Father Thomas had put on a red silk vestment fitted over a black claw-hammer coat. Cardinal Di Luca sported a luxurious fur stole wrapped around a brilliant purple alb. In her shabby orange parka (courtesy of Lianne), ratty green mittens (donated by An-mei Jong), and scruffy leather riding boots (from James Echohawk), Cassie felt downright irreverent. She didn’t mind snubbing their cargo — this was, after all, the God of Western Patriarchy — but she did mind feeding the clich й that rationalists have no sense of the sacred.

Raising the PA microphone to his fissured lips, Father Thomas addressed the company below, half of them assembled on the weather deck, the rest milling around on the pier. “Welcome, friends, and peace be with you.” The cavernous crypt replayed his words, be with you, with you, with you. “Now that our Creator has departed, let it be known that we commend Him to Himself and commit His body to its final resting place — ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

Anthony took up the deckhouse walkie-talkie, pressed SEND, and solemnly contacted the pump room. “Mr. Horrocks, the hoses…”

With the same spectacular efficiency it had displayed during the Battle of Midway, the Maracaibo’s firefighting system swung into action. A dozen hoses rose along the afterdeck and spewed out gallon upon gallon of thick white foam. Every bubble, Cassie knew, was holy, Father Thomas and Monsignor Di Luca having spent the morning in a frenzy of consecration. The purified lather arced through the air and splashed against His left shoulder, freezing solid at the instant of anointment.

“God Almighty, we pray that You may sleep here in peace until You awaken Yourself to glory,” said Father Thomas. Cassie admired the skill with which the priest had adapted the classic rite, the subtle balance he’d struck between traditional Christian optimism and the brute facticity of the corpse. “Then You will see Yourself face to face and know Your might and majesty…”

Hearing her cue, she came forward, Father Thomas’s Jerusalem Bible tucked under her arm.

“Our castaway, Cassie Fowler, has asked permission to address you,” the priest told the sailors. “I don’t know exactly what she intends to say” — an admonitory glance — “but I’m sure it will be thoughtful.”

As she took up the mike, Cassie worried that she might be about to make a fool of herself. It was one thing to lecture on food chains and ecological niches before a class of Tarrytown sophomores and quite another to critique the cosmos before a mob of hardened and depressed merchant sailors. “In all of Scripture,” she began, “it is perhaps the ordeal of Job that best allows me to articulate how rationalists such as myself feel about our cargo.” Swallowing a frigid mouthful of air, she glanced down at the wharf. Lianne Bliss, standing beneath the blue whale, gave her an encouraging smile. Dolores Haycox, slumped against the sequoia, offered a reassuring wink. “Job, you may recall, demanded to know the reason for his terrible losses — possessions, family, health — whereupon the Whirlwind appeared and explained that justice for one mere individual was not the point.” She leaned the Bible’s spine against the rail and opened it near the middle. “ ‘Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?’ God asks, rhetorically. ‘What supports its pillars at their bases? Who pent up the sea behind closed doors when it leapt tumultuous out of the womb?’ ” She extended her right mitten, indicating the frozen hippopotamus. “ ‘Now think of Behemoth,’ ” she said, still quoting God. “ ‘What strength he has in his loins, what power in his stomach muscles. His tail is as stiff as a cedar, the sinews of his thighs are tightly knit. His vertebrae are bronze tubing, his bones as hard as hammered iron…’ ” Pivoting ninety degrees, Cassie spoke to the Corpus Dei. “What can I say, Sir? I’m a rationalist. I don’t believe the splendor of hippos is any sort of answer to the suffering of humans. Where do I even begin? The Lisbon earthquake? The London plague? Malignant melanoma?” She sighed with a mixture of resignation and exasperation. “And yet, throughout it all, You still remained You, didn’t You? You, Creator: a function You performed astonishingly well, laying those foundations and anchoring those supporting pillars. You were not a very good man, God, but You were a very good wizard, and for that I, even I, give You my gratitude.”

Accepting both the mike and the Jerusalem Bible from Cassie, Father Thomas ran through the rest of the modified liturgy. “Before we go our separate ways, let us take leave of our Creator. May our farewell express our love for Him. May it ease our sadness and strengthen our hope. Now please join me in reciting the words Christ taught us on that celebrated Mount in Judea: ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come…’ ”

While the Maracaibo’s company prayed, Cassie scanned their smiling cargo, pondering its myriad misfortunes. The voyage had not been kind to God. Nearly a sixth of the right breast had been plundered for fillets. Demolition-bomb craters scarred the belly. Torpedo holes pocked the neck. The chin appeared to have been shaved with a blowtorch. Head to toe, the bites of predators and the ravages of ice alternated with vast swampy tracts of decay. A Martian happening upon the scene would never guess that the thing these mourners were entombing had once been their principal deity.