Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,49

far. You really need to steer closer to the land, Titus." I pointed to land, in case Titus was unsure as to which way he should go.

It makes sense, don't you think? I mean, I grew up in an arid country, inland, where even the rivers are little more than damp ditches. My people come from the desert. The one time we actually had to cross a sea, we walked. Sailing seemed, well, unnatural.

"If the Lord had meant us to sail we would have been born with, uh, masts," I said.

"That's the dumbest thing you've ever said," said Joshua.

"Can you swim?" asked Titus.

"No," I said.

"Yes he can," Joshua said.

Titus grabbed me by the back of the neck and threw me over the stern of the ship.
Chapter 10
Chapter 10

The angel and I had been watching a movie about Moses. Raziel was angry because there were no angels in it. No one in the movie looked like any Egyptian I ever met.

"Did Moses look like that?" I asked Raziel, who was worrying the crust off of a goat cheese pizza in between spitting vitriol at the screen.

"No," said Raziel, "but that other fellow looks like Pharaoh."

"Really?"

"Yep," said Raziel. He slurped the last of a Coke through a straw making a rude noise, then tossed the paper cup across the room into the wastebasket.

"So you were there, during the Exodus?"

"Right before. I was in charge of locusts."

"How was that?"

"Didn't care for it. I wanted the plague of frogs. I like frogs."

"I like frogs too."

"You wouldn't have liked the plague of frogs. Stephan was in charge. A seraphim." He shook his head as if I should know some sad inside fact about seraphim. "We lost a lot of frogs.

"I suppose it's for the best, though," Raziel said with a sigh. "You can't have a someone who likes frogs bring a plague of frogs. If I'd done it, it would have been more of a friendly gathering of frogs."

"That wouldn't have worked," I said.

"Well, it didn't work anyway, did it? I mean, Moses, a Jew, thought it up. Frogs were unclean to the Jews. To the Jews it was a plague. To the Egyptians it was like having a big feast of frog legs drop from the sky. Moses missed it on that one. I'm just glad we didn't listen to him on the plague of pork."

"Really, he wanted to bring down a plague of pork? Pigs falling from the sky?"

"Pig pieces. Ribs, hams, feet. He wanted everything bloody. You know, unclean pork and unclean blood. The Egyptians would have eaten the pork. We talked him into just the blood."

"Are you saying that Moses was a dimwit?" I wasn't being ironic when I asked this, I was aware that I was asking the eternal dimwit of them all. Still...

"No, he just wasn't concerned with results," said the angel. "The Lord had hardened Pharaoh's heart against letting the Jews go. We could have dropped oxen from the sky and he wouldn't have changed his mind."

"That would have been something to see," I said.

"I suggested that it rain fire," the angel said.

"How'd that go?"

"It was pretty. We only had it rain on the stone palaces and monuments. Burning up all of the Jews would sort of defeated the purpose."

"Good thinking," I said.

"Well, I'm good with weather," said the angel.

"Yeah, I know," I said. Then I thought about it a second, about how Raziel nearly wore out our poor room service waiter Jesus delivering orders of ribs the day they were the special.

"You didn't suggest fire, initially, did you? You just suggested that it rain barbecued pork, didn't you?"

"That guy doesn't look anything like Moses," the angel said.

That day, thrashing in the sea, trying to swim to catch the merchant ship that plowed through the water under full sail, I first saw that Raziel was, as he claimed, "good with weather." Joshua was leaning over the aftrail of the ship, shouting alternately to me, then to Titus. It was pretty obvious that even under the light wind that day, I would never catch the ship, and when I looked in the direction of shore I could see nothing but water. Strange, the things you think of at times like that. What I thought first was "What an incredibly stupid way to die." Next I thought, "Joshua will never make it without me." And with that, I began to pray, not for my own salvation but for Joshua. I prayed for the Lord to keep him safe, then I