The Merchant Prince Volume II by Armin Shimerman Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Author:Armin Shimerman, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2002-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

26

“H EY, YESHUA! Open up!” Strategy Brooks pounded on the door of the dressing room that had been set aside for Yeshua Ben David’s use. The thumping echoed loudly down the corridors of the enormous building. “We’ve got to talk!”

Fawg shook his heavy, squamous head and pulled himself to his feet. “Just a moment,” he called in a muffled approximation of Yeshua’s voice. “I dozed off. I’m not decent.”

“Who cares!” Strategy was running out of patience with her temperamental messiah. “We’ve got a problem!”

“Yes, yes,” Fawg soothed, in that butter-wouldn’t-meltin-my-mouth ingratiating tone of voice of his.

The newswoman could hear his sofa inside the room creaking with his getting up. She snickered at her image of him hurriedly trying to get his clothes on; she couldn’t conceive of the struggle he was having to bring his shape into the form Strategy expected.

“Hey, come on,” she prompted.

“Your Savior feels your urgency. I’m almost ready.”

“You’d better be, or I’m coming in on my own!” She gave the door another hearty slap just to make her point.

A twentyish, bearded vid-editor stuck his head out of a recording studio down the hall and gave her a withering look; she made an obscene gesture and he retreated.

Ready to deal with her, Yeshua opened the door, smiling seraphically. “Good morning, my child.” He was fully what she anticipated, and that made him particularly cordial.

The star of The GNN Nightly Report brusquely pushed past him and took over the middle of the small room. Her perfume hid the lingering trace of reptilian musk. “I’m not so sure about that,” said Strategy, unmoved by the ministerial unctuousness and determined to get his full attention; his ubiquitous dark glasses made eye contact difficult, but she was undeterred. She turned her nose up at the heavy musk scent in the room; she fanned it away with her hand as she plopped herself down on the sofa where Yeshua had been sleeping. She touched something slightly viscous and pulled her hand away, rubbing her fingers together and seeing a faint iridescence on her hand. The Messiah drool? she wondered. She made a face and wiped it away on the sofa cushion. “I had a call from Mother O’Conner this morning,” she announced.

“I see,” said Yeshua politely.

“She was calling to tell me that Romulas—you remember him, don’t you? The one you raised from the dead?—well, it seems that he’s killed himself.” Strategy gave Yeshua a hard stare. She waited for a response but none came. “Shouldn’t a messiah be able to read minds, to anticipate such behavior?”

“He couldn’t do that,” said Yeshua. “He was dead—”

“Already,” Strategy matter-of-factly finished for him. “So he was. And he finally figured it out.”

“Which was going to happen eventually,” said Yeshua. “Why does this trouble you?”

“Tell me you didn’t set this up,” Strategy challenged him.

“But how could I?” Yeshua asked, opening his hands to show his innocence.

“That’s what I want to know,” said Strategy. “You brought him back to life—okay. I can go along with that and so can the public.

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