Sympathy for the Devil

The Son of Rust is here, I know it. He would not miss this event for the world.

Cardinal Wurtz greets me warmly, her red taffeta dress hissing as she leads me to the center of the roof, where the Law stands upright on a dais-two identical forms, the holy bookends, swathed in velvet. A thousand photofloods and strobe lights flash across the vibrant red fabric.

“Have you read them?” I ask.

“I want to be surprised.” Cardinal Wurtz strokes the occluded canon. In her nervousness, she has overdone the perfume. She reeks of amberjack.

Now come the speeches-a solemn invocation by Cardinal Fremont, a spirited sermon by Archbishop Marquand, an awkward address by poor David Eisenberg-each word beamed instantaneously across the entire globe via holovision. Cardinal Wurtz steps onto the podium, grasping the lectern in her long dark hands. “Tonight God’s expectations for our species will be revealed,” she begins, surveying the crowd with her cobalt eyes. “Tonight, after a hiatus of over three thousand years, the testament of Moses will be made manifest. Of all the many individuals whose lives find fulfillment in this moment, from Joshua to Pope Gladys, our faithful Series-700 servant YHWH impresses us as the creature most worthy to hand down the Law to his planet. And so now I ask him to step forward.”

I approach the tablets. I need not unveil them-their contents are forevermore lodged in my brain.”

“I am YHWH your God,” I begin, “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You will have no gods…”

“‘No gods except me’-right?” says the Son of Rust as we stride down South Street.

“Right,” I reply.

“You don’t see the rub?”

“No.”

My companion grins. “Such a prescription implies there is but one true faith. Let it stand, Domine, and you will be setting Christian against Jew, Buddhist against Hindu, Muslim against pagan…”

“An overstatement,” I inisit.

“Two-‘You will not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven or on earth…’ Here again lie seeds of discord. Imagine the ill feeling this commandment will generate toward the Roman Church.”

I set my voice to a sarcastic pitch. “We’ll have to paint over the Sistine Chapel.”

“Three-‘You will not utter the name of YHWH your God to misuse it.’ A reasonable piece of etiquette, I suppose, but clearly there are worse sins.”

“Which the Law of Moses covers.”

“Like, ‘Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy’? A step backward, that fourth commandment, don’t you think? Consider the i

“I find your objection specious.”

“Five-‘Honor your father and your mother.’ Ah, but suppose the child is not being honored in turn? Put this rule into practice, and millions of abusive parents will hide behind it. Before long we’ll have a world in which deranged fathers prosper, empowered by their relatives; silence, protected by the presumed sanctity of the family.”

“Let’s not deal in hypotheticals.”

“Equally troubling is the rule’s vagueness. It still permits us to shunt our parents into nursing homes, honoring them all the way, insisting it’s for their own good.”

“Nursing homes?”

“Ke

I grab the machine’s left gauntlet. “Six,” I anticipate. “‘You will not kill.’ This is the height of morality.”

“The height of ambiguity, Domine. In a few short years, every church and government in creation will interpret it thus: ‘You will not kill offensively-you will not commit murder.’ After which, of course, you’ve sanctioned a hundred varieties of mayhem. I’m not just envisioning capital punishment or whales hunted to extinction. The danger is far more profound. Ratify this rule, and we shall find ourselves on the slippery slope marked self-defense. I’m talking about burning witches at the stake, for surely a true faith must defend itself against heresy. I’m talking about Europe’s Jews being executed en masse by the astonishingly civilized country of Germany, for surely Aryans must defend themselves against contamination. I’m talking about a weapons race, for surely a nation must defend itself against comparably armed states.”

“A what race?” I ask.

“Weapons. A commodity you should be thankful no one has sought to invent. Seven-‘You will not commit adultery.’”

“Now you’re going to make a case for adultery,” I moan.

“An overrated sin, don’t you think? Many of our greatest leaders are adulterers-should we lock them up and deprive ourselves of their genius? Furthermore, if people can no longer turn to their neighbors for sexual solace, they’ll end up relying on prostitutes instead.”

“What are prostitutes?’

“Never mind.”

“Eight-‘You will not steal.’ Not inclusive enough, I suppose?”

The sophist nods. “The eighth commandment still allows you to practice theft, provided you call it something else-an honest profit, dialectical materialism, manifest destiny, whatever. Believe me, brother, I have no trouble picturing a future in which your country’s indigenous peoples-its Navajos, Sioux, Comanches, and Arapahos-are driven off their lands, yet none will dare call it theft.”

I issue a quick, electric snort.

“Nine-‘You will not bear false witness against your neighbor.’ Again, that maddening inconclusiveness. Can this really be the Almighty’s definitive denunciation of fraud and deceit? Mark my words, this rule tacitly empowers myriad scoundrels-politicians, advertisers, captains of polluting industry.”

I want to bash the robot’s iron chest with my steel hand. “You are completely paranoid.”

“And finally, Ten-‘You will not covet your neighbor’s house. You will not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his servant, man or woman, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is his.”

“There-don’t covet. That will check the greed you fear.”

“Let us examine the language here. Evidently God is addressing this code to a patriarchy that will in turn disseminate it among the less powerful, namely wives and servants. How long before these servants are downgraded further still… into slaves, even? Ten whole commandments, and not one word against slavery, not to mention bigotry, misogyny, or war.”

“I’m sick of your sophistries.”

“You’re sick of my truths.”

“What is this slavery thing?” I ask. “What is this war?”

But the Son of Rust has melted into the shadows.

Falling, I see myself standing by the shrouded tablets, two dozen holovision cameras pressing their snoutlike lenses in my face, a hundred presumptuous microphones poised to catch the Law’s every syllable.

“You will not make yourself a carved image,” I tell the world.

A thousand humans stare at me with frozen, cheerless grins. They are profoundly uneasy. They expected something else.

I do not finish the commandment. Indeed, I stop at, “You will not utter the name of YHWH your God to misuse it.” Like a magician pulling a scarf off a cage full of doves, I slide the velvet cloth away. Seizing a tablet, I snap it in half as if opening an immense fortune cookie.

A gasp erupts from the crowd. “No!” screams Cardinal Wurtz.

“These rules are not worthy of you!” I shout, burrowing into the second slab with my steel fingers, splitting it down the middle.

“Let us read them!” please Archbishop Marqand.

“Please!” begs Bishop Black.

“We must know!” insists Cardinal Fremont.

I gather the granite oblongs into my arms. The crowd rushes toward me. Cardinal Wurtz lunges for the Law.

I turn. I trip.

The Son of Rust laughs.

Falling, I press the hunks against my chest. This will be no common disintegration, no mere sundering across molecular lines.