In this “funny, ferocious fantasy” (Philadelphia Inquirer), God is a comatose, two-mile-long tourist attraction at a Florida theme park-until a conniving judge decides to put Him on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This is the sequel to Towing Jehovah , a novel that garnered a World Fantasy Award and earned its author the moniker, "Christianity's Salman Rushdie." In this book, the two-mile long corpse of God (the corpus dei) has been towed to Florida, where the American Baptist Confederation has set it up as the Main Attraction at Celestial City. When Martin Candle, justice of the peace for Abaddon Township, Pennsylvania, loses his wife in a freak auto accident just after his doctor tells him he has prostate cancer, he decides it's time to put the Main Attraction on trial for His actions. James Morrow was born in Philadelphia in 1947. Besides writing, he plays with Lionel electric trains and collects videocassettes of vulgar biblical spectacles. Blameless in Abaddon By James Morrow Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Copyright © 1996 James Morrow All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-15-600505-0 Contents Title Page, Contents, Copyright, Dedication, Acknowledgments, Epigraph, NECESSARY EVILS, SPELUNKING THE INFINITE, GOD IN THE DOCK, About the Author, Connect with HMH, CHAPTER 1 Of all the newsworthy objects torn loose from the ice by the great Arctic earthquake of 1998, among them an intact Viking ship and the frozen carcass of a woolly mammoth, the most controversial by far was the two-mile-long body of God. The debate, oddly enough, centered not on the Corpus Dei's identity — the body was accompanied, as we shall see, by an impeccable pedigree — but rather on its metaphysical status. Was God dead, as the nihilists and the New York Times believed? Only in a coma, as the Vatican and Orthodox Judaism dearly hoped? Or — the Protestant consensus — was the Almighty as spiritually alive as ever, having merely shed His fleshly form as a molting mayfly sheds its husk? Prior to the peculiar events that constitute my tale, it looked as if the mystery might never be solved. The Corpus Dei's proprietors, devout Southern Baptists all, were ill inclined to sanction platoons of scientists tramping around inside His brain, leaving muddy footprints on His dendrites as they attempted to ascertain His degree of life or death. Moreover, as upholders of the theologically comforting Mayfly Theory, God's keepers rightly feared that such an expedition might yield signs of neural activity, thereby reinforcing the far more troublesome Coma Theory. As for me, I wholeheartedly agreed with the ban on journeys into His cerebrum. Being the Devil, I have strong opinions about how human beings ought to conduct themselves. Unlike the Baptists' views, however, my own are shaped more by prudence than by piety. It is always wise, I feel, to leave well enough alone. It is best to let sleeping gods lie. The sign on the courtroom door read JUSTICE OF THE PEACE, though neither justice nor peace figured reliably in Martin Candle's occupation, which was largely a matter of enforcing leash laws, reprimanding jaywalkers, trying petty criminals, collecting overdue parking fines, and performing civil wedding ceremonies. Martin pursued his calling in Abaddon Township, Pennsylvania, a staunchly Republican enclave spread across a wide valley twenty miles north of Philadelphia. Abaddon was a quiet and prosperous world, a place of lush parks, rolling farmlands, and bedroom communities with names like Fox Run and Glendale. The township's best feature, everyone agreed, was Waupelani Creek, a luminous stream winding gently through the valley from north to south, threading its settlements together like the string connecting the beads on a rosary. Minnows thrived in the Waupelani. Garter snakes slithered along its banks. Water striders walked Jesus-like on its surface. A rare and beautiful species, of fish lived in these waters as well, a yellow-scaled carp whose collective comings and goings on brilliant summer days transformed their habitat from a conventional brook into a river of molten gold. Bisecting the backyard of Martin's childhood home in Fox Run, the Waupelani afforded him many happy hours of ice-skating, catching crayfish, and sailing the battleships he'd nailed together from stray scraps of lumber found in the basement. Only after he'd grown up, moved to Glendale, obtained a degree from Perkinsville Community College, and won his firstelection did it occur to him that Waupelani Creek had actually functioned in his boyhood as a toy — the best toy a child could wish for, better than a tree fort or a Lionel electric train set. Abaddon Township's odd appellation traced to a warm summer evening in 1692, when a Quaker schoolmaster named Prester Harkins spied the Devil himself sitting in the boggy marsh that drained the valley's brooks and streams.