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

God in our Judeo-Christian world. Jesus, Jehovah, Brahma, Buddha. Which is your god?”
    “You omitted some,” Salamanda said. Then, for five minutes, he recited the names of other gods, as if to underscore the ignorance of the TV-show host. When he was done, he looked up and smiled.
    “Whichever of these names you choose to give to God, that name is pleasing to us. But know you this: that each of these gods has followers and that, we think, must please that god. But for a god’s followers to carry on, a god’s followers must procreate. Therefore, does it not mean that all these gods approve of the sexual act, and of sexual congress? Because if they did not, they would be saying to the man who follows them: no more, stop, cease, stop living, be gone and be dead. That is not a living god who speaks to living people. We share with everyone’s view of god the idea that god is love and his people are love and he has made them to love. And we practice what god preaches.”
    According to the magazines, it was no contest. The talk-show host was reduced to falling back on the fear of spreading AIDS to discredit Salamanda. Time ’s television critic pointed out that in Swami Salamanda America was seeing a new kind of guru. In the past, he said, the gurus who had come to America to shill their wares—most of them from India—were a decidedly foreign commodity. They looked funny. Most were bearded, short, and squat. They spoke funny, some of them with such heavily accented English that it couldn’t be understood by anyone but Peter Sellers. Salamanda looked like the start of the second wave. His English—which had an Indian accent only when he chose to use one—was better than most Americans’, and instead of looking like a foreigner, he looked like a handsome British actor wearing tea stain and doing a remake of Four Feathers . This was a guru who used television for his own ends instead of being victimized by it the way most were.
    A final paragraph in one story wondered about Salamanda’s own sex life and a reporter was able to ask him about it in a written question. He got a written reply: “I have always held that we should do sex, not talk about it,” Salamanda wrote. The reporter conceded that there was not even a hint of sex scandal about Salamanda personally but pointed out that if the urge ever hit him, there was certainly no shortage of beautiful, willing female disciples standing by.
    Sarge borrowed the copies of Time and Newsweek and took them to the stationery store on the corner, where he photocopied the stories about Salamanda for twenty-five cents a page. He had found out in life that good reports weren’t really as important as thick reports.
    Sunday morning, he had followed Gloria Alcetta from her apartment to the House of Love, where a sign was posted on the front door: CLOSED MEETING TODAY.
    He had returned to his office over Bogie’s Restaurant and had called the Salamanda headquarters and asked to speak to Gloria.
    “You mean Sister Glorious?” a male voice asked.
    “Yes.”
    “I’m sorry. She is working today with new members. She will not be available until late this evening.”
    “Thank you.” Sarge hung up, feeling sure that Gloria Alcetta wouldn’t be leaving the House of Love, and started to typewrite—with two fingers—a report for Alcetta. He doubted that the young moron would ask him to keep following his wife when he had obviously found nothing of any worth. But who knew? Maybe all the talk about the Swami of Sex might get Alcetta mad enough to pay Sarge some more good money to follow his wife from apartment to office and back to apartment again.
    One thing he suspected. The fact that Gloria was now using the name “Charterman,” instead of Alcetta, would make him furious. He made that one of the cornerstones of his report.
    He finished it up with a few large questions:
    Does Salamanda approve of bizarre sex practices as has often been alleged?
    Does the woman who now calls