Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright Page A

and a half.”
    “Why so long?” Menelaus asked.
    “We had to keep you stiff until Nelson could raise the money.”
    “Nelson? He even got a job?”
    “In Newer Orleans. Some scratch he got gambling, some he got diving for treasure in the sunk part of the city. Some he got from some Anglo pumpkin with dollar signs in his eyes, just for drawing a map and making sweet talk.”
    “Damn stupid of him, going into hot water.”
    “He says its clean these days, the water.”
    “If there’s no fish, it’s not clean. Don’t care what the Geiger counter says. Fish know.” Menelaus shook his head. “Hope he’s planning to be a monk. No women’ll marry a man with nuked-up stones.”
    “Maybe Nelson wore a lead jockstrap. But funny you should mention…”
    Menelaus looked around the room. The crucifix on the wall was Spanish-style, with the figure of the torture all carved and painted in grotesque and vivid likeness, and adorned with gold leaf. “You didn’t. You surely didn’t.”
    “We did. We surely did.”
    “Can’t baptize a man without his say-so. They got rules. A catechism.”
    “We told ’em it was your last words, dying wish, all that.”
    “I ain’t joining no beaneater church.”
    “Been done. The Governor’s brother came by and put oil on your face and everything. Washed all your sins away, prettied up your soul to go meet St. Peter. But I guess you’ll call him San Pedro now, eh? Got to go to Rome and kiss the toe of the Pope.”
    “Preacher Brown says the Pope got horns and a split hoof like a goat.”
    Leonidas grinned, which made his cigarette tilt up at a jaunty angle. “Preacher Brown will take a strap to you, he finds out you say your prayers in Latin.”
    “I don’t say prayers.”
    “You do. Before your meals. I heard you.”
    “Saying “thank God, its time to eat” ain’t saying grace. Saying the blessing don’t do nothing.”
    “Well, cussing a man to hell don’t do nothing, neither, but I heard you do that, too.”
    “Well, go get the brother or whoever. Tell ’em I changed my mind, and I’m going back to … what is Preacher Brown? Whatever the hell he is, tell ’em I had a vision or something calling me back to, uh…”
    “Mormon. Preacher Brown’s a Mormon.”
    “He ain’t no Mormon. In the first case, Mormons got two wives, and in the second, we hang them when we catch them, like they do us. Utah’s enemy ground. It just ain’t possible! Umm—is it? He’s not really a Mormon, is he?”
    “Just ain’t possible you can be born and raised from a pup and don’t even know what Church you are.”
    “Which is the one that believes in hellfire?”
    “All of ’em. How many years you been a-going to Meeting? You didn’t pay not the least attention in all that time?”
    “I was thinking of something else.”
    “What?”
    “Maybe we could make a promised land by our own lone selves, asking no help and bowing to none. Maybe the Garden of Eden weren’t at the beginning of time, but at the end, a garden we can make as soon as we figure how to make it. That’s what I was thinking. Old Preacher Brown’s spook stories didn’t seem like much to me, held up against that. Call the brother.”
    “Don’t be a mule, Meany. The Governor’s brother, the Bishop, came by and tended to you while you were sick, and he didn’t turn you over to the Regulators.”
    “Bishop? Ain’t no bishops in Texas.”
    “So is. Bishop of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston. He’s shielding you. You step off of sanctuary ground, you might as well put your head in a bucket of boiling pork-lard. Mike Nails was setting to get married, did you know that?”
    “No. Who is the girl?”
    “Lil Palmer. Josiah Palmer’s girl, the man who owns half the county. See? Might have been okay if you had killed him clean, but word got out that you drilled Mike over and over.”
    “Because his gun was stupid and his chaff was packed like crap.”
    “Blew his head clean off, you did. If