Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,45

of business. The Torah says that Moses lived to be 120 years old. I'm guessing that the children of Israel were following him just to see when he would drop. There was probably betting.

If I do manage to escape the angel, I'm not going to be able to make my living as a professional mourner, not if you people don't have the courtesy to die. Just as well, I suppose, I'd have to learn all new dirges. I've tried to get the angel to watch MTV so I can learn the vocabulary of your music, but even with the gift of tongues, I'm having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone's ass? Is "ho" always feminine, and "muthafucka" always masculine, while "bitch" can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be "stupid"? I'll not be singing over any dead mothers until I understand.

The journey. The quest. The search for the Magi.

We traveled first to the coast. Neither Joshua nor I had ever seen the sea before, so as we topped a hill near the city of Ptolomais, and the endless aquamarine of the Mediterranean stretched before us, Joshua fell to his knees and gave thanks to his father.

"You can almost see the edge of the world," Joshua said.

I squinted into the dazzling sun, really looking for the edge of the world. "It looks sort of curved," I said.

"What?" Joshua scanned the horizon, but evidently he didn't see the curve.

"The edge of the world looks curved. I think it's round."

"What's round?"

"The world. I think it's round."

"Of course it's round, like a plate. If you go to the edge you fall off. Every sailor knows that," Joshua said with great authority.

"Not round like a plate, round like a ball."

"Don't be silly," Joshua said. "If the world was round like a ball then we would slide off of it."

"Not if it's sticky," I said.

Joshua lifted his foot and looked at the bottom of his sandal, then at me, then at the ground. "Sticky?"

I looked at the bottom of my own shoe, hoping to perhaps see strands of stickiness there, like melted cheese tethering me to the ground. When your best friend is the son of God, you get tired of losing every argument. "Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean the world is not sticky."

Joshua rolled his eyes. "Let's go swimming." He took off down the hill.

"What about the God?" I asked. "You can't see him."

Joshua stopped halfway down the hill and held his arms out to the shining, aquamarine sea. "You can't?"

"That's a crappy argument, Josh." I followed him down the hill, shouting as I went. "If you're not going to try, I'm not going to argue with you anymore. So, what if stickiness is like God? You know, how He abandons our people and leads them into slavery whenever we stop believing in Him. Stickiness could be like that. You could float off into the sky any time now because you don't believe in stickiness."

"It's good that you have something to believe in, Biff. I'm going in the water." He ran down the beach, shedding his clothes as he went, then dove into the surf, naked.

Later, after we'd both swallowed enough salt water to make us sick, we headed up the coast to the city of Ptolemais.

"I didn't think it would be so salty," Joshua said.

"Yeah," I said, "you'd never know it by looking at it."

"Are you still angry about your round-earth-stickiness theory?"

"I don't expect you to understand," I said, sounding very mature, I thought. "You being a virgin and all."

Joshua stopped and grabbed my shoulder, forcing me to wheel around and face him. "The night you spent with Maggie I spent praying to my father to take away the thoughts of you two. He didn't answer me. It was like trying to sleep on a bed of thorns. Since we left I was beginning to forget, or at least leave it behind, but you keep throwing it in my face."

"You're right," I said. "I forgot how sensitive you virgins can be."

Then, once again, and not for the last time, the Prince of Peace coldcocked me. A bony, stonecutter's fist just over my right eye.