Free Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny Page A

you don't have a halo or a handful of thunderbolts?"
    "Because I do have a couple friends, both of whom suggested I continue living—quietly—rather than face the probe. I took their sage advice to heart and consequently am still around to mend sails and raise occasional hell in the local bistros. Else"—he raised a callused hand, snapped his fingers—"else, if not the real death, then perhaps a body shot full with cancer, or the interesting life of a gelded water buffalo, or . . ."
    "A dog?" asked Sam.
    "Just so," Jan replied.
    Jan filled the silence and two glasses with a splashing of alcohol.
    "Thanks."
    "Happy hellfire." He replaced the bottle on his workstand.
    "On an empty stomach yet. . . . You make that yourself?"
    "Yep. Got a still in the next room."
    "Congratulations, I guess. If I had any bad karma, it should all be dissolved by now."
    "The definition of bad karma is anything our friends the gods don't like."
    "What made you think you had some?"
    "I wanted to start passing out machines among our descendants here. Got batted down at Council for it. Recanted, and hoped they'd forget. But Accelerationism is so far out now that it'll never make it back in during my lifetime. Pity, too. I'd like to lift sail again, head off toward another horizon. Or lift ship. . ."
    "The probe is actually sensitive enough to spot something as intangible as an Accelerationist attitude?"
    "The probe," said Jan, "is sensitive enough to tell what you had for breakfast eleven years ago yesterday and where you cut yourself shaving that morning, while humming the Andorran national anthem."
    "They were experimental things when we left home," said Sam. "The two we brought along were very basic brain-wave translators. When did the breakthrough occur?"
    "Hear me, country cousin," said Jan. "Do you remember a snot-nosed brat of dubious parentage, third generation, named Yama? The kid who was always souping up generators, until one day one blew and he was so badly burned that he got his second body—one over fifty years old—when he was only sixteen? The kid who loved weapons? The fellow who anesthetized one of everything that moves out there and dissected it, taking such pleasure in his studies that we called him deathgod?"
    "Yes, I recall him. Is he still alive?"
    "If you want to call it that. He now
is
deathgod—not by nickname, but by title. He perfected the probe about forty years ago, but the Deicrats kept it under wraps until fairly recently. I hear he's dreamed up some other little jewels, too, to serve the will of the gods . . . like a mechanical cobra capable of registering encephalogram readings from a mile away, when it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd, regardless of the body he wears. There is no known antidote for its venom. Four seconds, no more. . . . Or the fire wand, which is said to have scored the surfaces of all three moons while Lord Agni stood upon the seashore and waved it. And I understand that he is designing some sort of jet-propelled juggernaut for Lord Shiva at this moment. . . things like that."
    "Oh," said Sam.
    "Will you pass the probe?" Jan asked.
    "I'm afraid not," he replied. "Tell me, I saw a machine this morning which I think may best be described as a pray-o-mat—are they very common?"
    "Yes," said Jan. "They appeared about two years ago—dreamed up by young Leonardo over a short glass of soma one night. Now that the karma idea has caught on, the things are better than tax collectors. When mister citizen presents himself at the clinic of the god of the church of his choice on the eve of his sixtieth year, his prayer account is said to be considered along with his sin account, in deciding the caste he will enter—as well as the age, sex and health of the body he will receive. Nice. Neat."
    "I will not pass the probe," said Sam, "even if I build up a mighty prayer account. They'll snare me when it comes to sin."
    "What sort of sin?"
    "Sins I have yet to commit, but which are