The Physiognomy

"When Father Garland gives his sermons do they represent the release of methane gas?" I asked.

She did not seem to understand that I was joking and answered in earnest, "Well, he does refer to sin as a cave-in of the soul."

As she went off down a dark corridor to search for Garland, I stood alone, staring at God. According to the portrait, the Almighty's physiognomy suggested he might be well suited for digging holes and little else. To start with, his face was dotted with all ma

This was not my introduction to the odd religious practices of the territories. I had read of the existence of a church, out in the western reaches of the realm, built of corn husks. Their deity, Belius, takes the form of a man with a bull's head. These strange Gods scrupulously watch the miserable lives of the out-landers and sit in judgment over them. The illusory guiding the ignorant to some appointed heaven beyond life where their clothes fit and their spouses don't drool. On the other hand, in the City, there was Below, a man, and the Physiognomy, an exacting science, a combination of reality and objectivity capable of rendering a perfect justice.

I heard Aria and Garland approaching down the corridor behind the altar and was about to look away from the portrait when it struck me I had seen that face somewhere before. My mind raced to think, but already Aria was introducing me to the father. Making sure the thought was filed away for later, I turned and found before me an exceedingly small man with white hair. He held out a doll-size hand with tiny fingernails sharpened to points.

He showed us to his study, a small cave at the back of the church, and offered us a liquid derivation of cremat. We kindly settled for a glass of something he said he had brewed himself—an amber-colored liquid that smelled like lilac and tasted like dirt. I couldn't stop drinking it.

Garland's voice had a strange whistling sound behind it that was most irritating. Combining this with his freakish little face and his aphorisms—"When two become one, then three becomes none and zero is the begi

"Tell me, Father," I said, after we were settled in and he had said a short prayer, "why you should not be my primary suspect."

He nodded as though it were a fair question. "I already know the way to paradise," he said.

"What about the fruit?" I asked.

"Plump and sweating sugar every minute. I touched it, and it felt like flesh. Did I ever think of biting it? Even having only heard of it, did you not already think of biting it? Everyone here wanted it. But as long as we left it alone, the power of that combined desire kept us on the path of righteousness. Now we are heading for a blizzard of sin."

"Did anyone show a particular interest in it?"

"One or two," he said.

"Who took it?" I asked.

He slowly shook his head. "For all I know demons swept down one night from out of the wilderness and crept into the altar chamber while I was sleeping."

"I've heard a lot of talk recently about an Earthly Paradise. Can you tell me exactly what that is?"

Garland pinched his nose with the fingers of his left hand and then sank into a pose of deep thought. Aria leaned forward in her seat, waiting for him to speak.

"The Earthly Paradise, your honor, is the one small spot in this enormous world where nature has made no mistakes. It is God's last best work before he was buried alive. It is a place that accommodates all sin and all glory and turns them drop by drop into eternity."

"God was buried alive?" I asked.

"Every day we dig closer to him," he said.

"What will happen when we get there?"

"We will have reached the begi

"Of what?" I asked.

"The begi

"Yes, Father," she said.

"I hear from the mayor that your dog was recently taken by a demon," I said.

He nodded sadly. "Poor Gustavus, probably rent to pieces by a pack of the filthy creatures."

"Can you describe it?" I asked.

"It was as Aria's grandfather said, like the way you always supposed a demon would look. It left a strange smell behind as I saw it flapping away."

"Did it have sharp nails?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean?"

"I think you are equating me with the demon in some way because of my nails," he said, never losing his composure. "I keep them sharpened in order to pull out splinters like the one now lodged in my heart."

"I've got a pair of chrome tweezers you can use," I said. Then I turned to Aria and asked her to leave the room. "The father and I have personal business we must discuss."

When she was gone, I told Garland I would need his church in which to perform my investigations of the townspeople.

"You mean they will disrobe in my church?" he said, standing.

"That is the procedure," I said. "You will be on hand to keep the crowd orderly and silent."

"Impossible," he said and took a step toward me, thrusting out those two little hands as if he intended to use them.

"Easy, Father," I said. "I'd hate to have to enlighten you."

Then he grimaced, and I noticed his front teeth had also been sharpened. He was turning red in the face and shaking slightly. I put my hand in my coat pocket and around the handle of my scalpel.

"Grace is God's lantern." He grunted, and instantly he began to relax. He stood very calmly for a few moments.

I nodded. "You can see this is better," I said.

'Come with me, your honor. I have something here that will interest you," he said. He walked over to the wall behind his desk and gave it a gentle push. A door swung back behind which I could see a flight of stairs leading down. He stepped through and then began to descend. "Come, your honor," he called back weakly.

My first thought was that he meant to ambush me in some dark alleyway underground, but I followed, one hand on the railing and one in my pocket on the scalpel. I had decided that with the first pass of the instrument, I would take an eye, after which I would finish him with my boot. As I continued down the long stairway, the prospect of a challenge began to appeal to me.

I found Father Garland kneeling in a marble room, well lit by torches lining the walls. Before him sat a huge wooden chair, holding what looked like an enormous and badly abused cigar. But as I drew closer, I made out the distinct features of a long, thin man, with a long, thin head. His skin, though leatherized by time, had remained completely intact. It even appeared that there were eyeballs still behind the closed lids. There were webs between his fingers and one was pierced by a thin silver ring.

"What have we here," I asked, "the God of cremat?"

Garland rose and stood next to me. "This is the one they found in the mine with the fruit," he said. "Sometimes I think he is not dead at all but just waiting to return to paradise."

"How old is it?" I asked.