Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,98

learning. In the late afternoon Raziel inquired of a bus driver as to where we might go to meet Spider-Man. I could have gone another two thousand years without seeing the kind of disappointment I saw on Raziel's face when the bus driver gave his answer. We returned here to the room where Raziel said, "I miss destroying cities full of humans."

"I know what you mean," I said, even though it was my best friend who had caused that sort of thing to go out of fashion, and not a moment too soon. But the angel needed to hear it. There's a difference between bearing false witness and saving someone's feelings. Even Joshua knew that.

"Joshua, you're scaring me," I said, talking to the disembodied voice that floated before me in the temple. "Where are you?"

"I am everywhere and nowhere," Joshua's voice said.

"How come your voice is in front of me then?" I didn't like this at all. Yes, my years with Joshua had jaded me in regard to supernatural experiences, but my meditation hadn't yet brought me to the place where I wouldn't react to my friend being invisible.

"I suppose it is the nature of a voice that it must come from somewhere, but only so that it may be let go."

Gaspar had been sitting in the temple and at the sound of our voices he rose and came over to me. He didn't appear to be angry, but then, he never did. "Why?" Gaspar said to me, meaning, Why are you talking and disturbing everyone's meditation with your infernal noise, you barbarian?

"Joshua has attained enlightenment," I said.

Gaspar said nothing, meaning, So? That's the idea, you unworthy spawn of a razor-burned yak. I could tell that's what he meant by the tone in his voice.

"So he's invisible."

"Mu," Joshua's voice said. Mu meaning nothing beyond nothingness in Chinese.

In an act of distinctly uncontrolled spontaneity, Gaspar screamed like a little girl and jumped four feet straight in the air. Monks stopped chanting and looked up. "What was that?"

"That's Joshua."

"I am free of self, free of ego," Joshua said. There was a little squeak and then a nasty stench infused us.

I looked at Gaspar and he shook his head. He looked at me and I shrugged.

"Was that you?" Gaspar asked Joshua.

"Me in the sense that I am part of all things, or me in the sense of I am the one who poofed the gefilte gas?" asked Josh.

"The latter," said Gaspar.

"No," said Josh.

"You lie," I said, as amazed at that as I was at the fact that I couldn't see my friend.

"I should stop talking now. Having a voice separates me from all that is." With that he was quiet, and Gaspar looked as if he were about to panic.

"Don't go away, Joshua," the abbot said. "Stay as you are if you must, but come to the tea chamber at dawn tomorrow." Gaspar looked to me. "You come too."

"I have to train on the poles in the morning," I said.

"You are excused," Gaspar said. "And if Joshua talks to you anymore tonight, try to persuade him to share our existence." Then he hurried off in a very unenlightened way.

That night I was falling asleep when I heard a squeak in the hall outside of my cell, then an incredibly foul odor jolted me awake.

"Joshua?" I crawled out of my cell into the hall. There were narrow slots high in the walls through which moonlight could sift, but I saw nothing but faint blue light on the stone. "Joshua, is that you?"

"How could you tell?" Joshua's disembodied voice said.

"Well, honestly, you stink, Josh."

"The last time we went to the village for alms, a woman gave Number Fourteen and me a thousand-year-old egg. It didn't sit well."

"Can't imagine why. I don't think you're supposed to eat an egg after, oh, two hundred years or so."

"They bury them, leave them there, then dig them up."

"Is that why I can't see you?"

"No, that's because of my meditation. I've let go of everything. I've achieved perfect freedom."

"You've been free ever since we left Galilee."

"It's not the same. That's what I came to tell you, that I can't free our people from the rule of Romans."

"Why not?"

"Because that's not true freedom. Any freedom that can be given can be taken away. Moses didn't need to ask Pharaoh to release our people, our people didn't need to be released from the Babylonians, and they don't need to be released from the Romans. I can't give them freedom. Freedom is in