Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,86

you think of the wall?"

"It's great," said Joshua.

"It's not that great," I said.

There was a long line waiting to get through the giant gate, where scores of bureaucrats collected taxes from caravan masters as they passed through. The gatehouses alone were each as big as one of Herod's palaces, and soldiers rode horses atop the wall, patrolling far into the distance. We were a good league back from the gate and the line didn't seem to be moving.

"This is going to take all day," I said. "Why would they build such a thing? If you can build a wall like this then you ought to be able to raise an army large enough to defeat any invaders."

"Lao-tzu built this wall," Joshua said.

"The old master who wrote the Tao? I don't think so."

"What does the Tao value above all else?"

"Compassion? Those other two jewel things?"

"No, inaction. Contemplation. Steadiness. Conservatism. A wall is the defense of a country that values inaction. But a wall imprisons the people of a country as much as it protects them. That's why Balthasar had us go this way. He wanted me to see the error in the Tao. One can't be free without action."

"So he spent all that time teaching us the Tao so we could see that it was wrong."

"No, not wrong. Not all of it. The compassion, humility, and moderation of the Tao, these are the qualities of a righteous man, but not inaction. These people are slaves to inaction."

"You worked as a stonecutter, Josh," I said, nodding toward the massive wall. "You think this wall was built through inaction?"

"The magus wasn't teaching us about action as in work, it was action as in change. That's why we learned Confucius first - everything having to do with the order of our fathers, the law, manners. Confucius is like the Torah, rules to follow. And Lao-tzu is even more conservative, saying that if you do nothing you won't break any rules. You have to let tradition fall sometime, you have to take action, you have to eat bacon. That's what Balthasar was trying to teach me."

"I've said it before, Josh - and you know how I love bacon - but I don't think bacon is enough for the Messiah to bring."

"Change," Joshua said. "A Messiah has to bring change. Change comes through action. Balthasar once said to me, 'There's no such thing as a conservative hero.' He was wise, that old man."

I thought about the old magus as I looked at the wall stretching over the hills, then at the line of travelers ahead of us. A small city had grown up at the entrance to the wall to accommodate the needs of the delayed travelers along the Silk Road and it boiled with merchants hawking food and drink along the line.

"Screw it," I said. "This is going to take forever. How long can it be? Let's go around."

A month later, when we had returned to the same gate and we were standing in line to get through, Joshua asked: "So what do you think of the wall now? I mean, now that we've seen so much more of it?"

"I think it's ostentatious and unpleasant," I said.

"If they don't have a name for it, you should suggest that."

And so it came to pass that through the ages the wall was known as the Ostentatious and Unpleasant Wall of China. At least I hope that's what happened. It's not on my Friendly Flyer Miles map, so I can't be sure.

We could see the mountain where Gaspar's monastery lay long before we reached it. Like the other peaks around it, it cut the sky like a huge tooth. Below the mountain was a village surrounded by high pasture. We stopped there to rest and water our camels. The people of the village all came out to greet us and they marveled at our strange eyes and Joshua's curly hair as if we were gods that had been lowered out of the heavens (which I guess was true in Josh's case, but you forget about that when you're around someone a lot). An old toothless woman who spoke a dialect of Chinese similar to the one we had learned from Joy convinced us to leave the camels in the village. She traced the path up the mountain with a craggy finger and it was obvious that the path was both too narrow and too steep to accommodate the animals.

The villagers served us a spicy meat dish with frothy