Free Too Old a Cat (Trace 6) by Warren Murphy Page A

lives of misery. One will only be truly fulfilled and enlightened when he makes himself as one with the greatest pleasure the great creator has given all of us—sex.” The swami went on to say, “There is no unwholesome sex, just unwholesome attitudes on the part of people who are afraid of sex.”
    Salamanda had toured the United States preaching his message, and the converts came by the hundreds. Newsweek pointed out that it would be easy to think these converts were kids, teenagers rebelling at their home life and the restrictions placed on them by their parents. But, the magazine said, while it was true that the Salamanda movement had a full complement of pimply-faced nerds who joined up hoping to score sex, the real core of Salamanda’s strength was older people—the parents, not the children—which led the magazine to believe that there were a lot of unhappy people out there.
    “And only one of them married to Hilda,” Sarge mumbled under his breath, thinking of his wife and her damned stupid surprise plan to take him on a boat cruise.
    As for the rest of his message, Swami Salamanda didn’t seem to have one. He talked about a couple of breathing tricks, meditation, hyperventilation, what Time magazine called “the same mixed bag of take-a-deep-breath-and-smile philosophical techniques.” The core of everything was sex. It was the be-all and end-all of Salamanda’s movement.
    Both magazines indicated there was no way to tell if Salamanda was getting rich on his movement. He stayed in hotels when he traveled, and when he was in New York, he lived in a small apartment in the same building as his House of Love headquarters. But he was building. Near the small town of Butler, Pennsylvania, Salamanda was building a commune that would be called the City of Love. The area was sealed off and not open for inspection, but a couple of flyovers in a rented helicopter had convinced Newsweek that this would be the commune to end all communes, with a central mansion with minarets, swimming pools, tennis courts, stables, a private air landing strip, a warehouse-size garage that already held seven Rolls-Royces, and small apartment units that looked as if they could house more than a thousand people.
    Who would live there? Time pointed out that many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people had already pledged to turn over all their worldly goods to the People of Love, as Salamanda’s movement was known, and take up residence in the new city devoted to pleasure.
    Salamanda’s own city, built with the donations of the faithful. This raised some eyebrows, but the swami was not reluctant to defend himself. He appeared on one popular morning talk show whose moderator had a reputation for being a tough interviewer, and wound up tying the moderator in knots. Where the moderator was smirking and smarmy, the swami was direct, caustic, and unfazed.
    “Don’t you find the emphasis on sex in your love-is-all movement…well, unhealthy and unreligious?” the emcee asked, rolling his eyes as if sharing a deep secret with the members of his audience.
    Salamanda, wearing a white robe and sitting on a cushion on stage, said, “The greatest expression of physical pleasure given to us by God is the sexual act. We see nothing wrong in partaking of God’s provided pleasure through that act. We pity all those who are so repressed, so dried up of body, soul, and mind that they cannot so participate. And we pity them even more because in their frustration, they try to stop others—those who can believe and can practice that love is all—these ineffectuals try to prevent others from believing and practicing, and we pity them and we pray for them to the great god who gave us all, including the act of love.” He paused and looked at the emcee. “We pray for you too. And for your wife.”
    “You mentioned God. Who is God?” the emcee asked.
    “Who would you want him to be?” Salamanda said.
    Smugly, the emcee said. “There are many views of