"What's wrong with 'god'?" Harnon demanded.
"Every Tom, Dick, and Harry of a religion has a god," Frayne said. He reached for a synonym dictionary. "The Deity, the All Wise, the All Mighty, the All Holy, the All Merciful -"
"Why not just call him the All?" Harnon suggested.
"We could make up a name if we had to," Naida said. "Just plain 'god' has a lot of things going for it, though. For one thing, everyone knows what it means."
"Everyone knows what 'cracker' means," Frayne said, "but manufacturers go right on calling them krispy krax or crackly crisps or some such stupidity. You've got to have a striking and distinctive name to sell the product." He closed the synonym dictionary and pushed it aside. "I suppose I'll have to put someone to work on a name for god."
In the art studio, a staff artist named Al Koten was designing ecclesiastical costumes. As he worked, he glumly contemplated a photo of Alton Smith, and as he demonstrated to Frayne, no matter what he surrounded that head with, conventional vestments, or wild folds of costume, or unabashed frills, the head continued to look ridiculous.
"The only thing that'll work is swimming trunks," he announced. "Maybe it's not an appropriate religious costume, but the way to keep this guy from looking silly is to put him in a tank of water with face mask and snorkel. That Adam's apple -"
"Never mind," Frayne said. "Put it aside until the makeup people have their crack at him. The right wig, for example -"
Koten shook his head despondently. "A wig isn't enough. He needs a mask."
Frayne returned to his office and forced himself to run, for the fourteenth time, a pathetic five-minute sound motion picture of Alton Smith. Smith was reading from the Bible, stammering his way through the simplest passages, mispronouncing words, losing his place, and making fumbling repetitions. Watching it, Frayne asked himself why he hadn't tried to talk the little man into being something easy, like a professional football player.
The launching of a new religion was proving far more complicated than Frayne had expected. Smith would arrive at the end of the week, and nothing had been settled. Nothing at all.
Ron Hamon reluctantly accepted the designation as Smith's official nurse. He got the little man settled in a modest hotel and delivered him at the Prockly and Brannot offices each morning. The makeup department was given first crack at him, and two days later he emerged in a splendid aura of dignity, his wig moderately long and touched distinguishedly with gray, his stylishly trimmed beard concealing his weak chin. Special shoes compensated somewhat for his diminutive stature. A new set of teeth did wonders for his mouth, but nothing at all seemed to help his squeaky voice.
Frayne took new courage, and Koten began to sketch costumes with some effect. "The mysticism of the East," he announced, "blended with the medievalism of the West." He produced a striking robe, with a high collar that concealed Smith's bulging Adam's apple.
While Harnon shepherded Smith from department to department, and - when he wasn't needed - took him sightseeing to keep him out of their way, Frayne and Naida Ainsley grimly made a concerted attack on the doctrine problem. Frayne had posted a Buddhist motto on his walclass="underline" "From good must come good; from evil must come evil. This is the law of life." The two of them studied it until they were bleary-eyed.
"He's a wonderful old man," Naida said suddenly.
"Smith?" Frayne asked, mildly surprised.
"He is. Actually, he's never had the slightest interest in religion. He hasn't attended any kind of a church in years. He's a highly moral old guy - you should hear him go on about gambling! - but he certainly isn't religious. Would you like to know why he said he wanted his own religion?"
Frayne was regarding her dumfoundedly.
"From our reactions, he sensed that we were in trouble because he didn't want to be anything. So he said something he thought would please us. That's the sort of old fellow he is. Whatever we decide will be all right with him - he wouldn't know what to do with a religion if he had one."
"Well - he's going to have one," Frayne said grimly. "And it doesn't matter that he'll accept anything we suggest. This project also has to be accepted by the boss and the Lottery Governors, and they won't."
"But Smith will agree with anything we say and do his best at anything we ask," Naida persisted. "In the meantime, he's having a nice vacation, so he's getting something out of winning the Lottery. So let's just plan on pleasing the boss and the Governors."
"All right," Frayne said. "Let's just plan on that."
The two of them stared at the motto.
For a week they struggled to evolve the perfect religious doctrine, accompanied by a profundity of ritual, all of it aimed at pleasing Prockly and the Lottery Governors, and everything they devised seemed fatuous. Finally Naida said, crumbling a stack of paper, "It's no good. Let's forget the boss and the Governors and try to please Smith."
Frayne said irritably, "I thought you said anything at all would please him."
"It would. And if he's pleased, and insists it's what he wants, the boss and the Governors will have to go along, won't they?"
"I suppose they will, if it isn't too outrageous."
"Remember that interview I taped in St. Louis?" she asked. "The one where he described god as Santa Claus?"
"I've been trying to forget it."
"I've been reviewing all of our tapes, and that one started me thinking. Do you know how many giveaway shows the networks are offering these days? I counted them last night. Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven shows each week where people play stupid games or supply stupid answers to stupid questions or let a stupid MC play stupid practical jokes on them. In return, they receive fabulous rewards. The shows have huge audiences. Surely it isn't the games, or the questions, or the jokes that attract people. It's the pleasure of watching someone get those fabulous prizes."
"What's that got to do with religion?" Frayne asked.
"The point is this: Those contestants don't deserve prizes. They deserve appropriately placed kicks for allowing the networks to make fools of them. What if we were to put on a show and reward people who actually deserve it - in the name of religion?"
Frayne was gazing at the sign on his walclass="underline" From good must come good; from evil must come evil. "Maybe you have something there," he mused. "Santa Claus rewards good children with gifts and punishes bad children with no gifts. The Christian God rewards good people with heaven and punishes bad people with hell. A religion based on the Santa Claus mystique should be perfectly sound. It might even be popular, since Santa Claus gives gifts here and now instead of making his deserving followers die in order to be rewarded."
"It'd be a hell of a popular religion as long as the gifts lasted. How long are we prepared to make them last?"
"I'd have to ask the boss."
"There is one problem," Naida said thoughtfully. "We can use the Santa Claus mystique, but we can't use Santa Claus, no matter what Smith wants. No one will accept a god with a belly that shivers and shakes like a bowl full of jelly. The image doesn't command the respect a god has to have."
"We'll disguise him. He'll be the all merciful and the all bountiful. The ultimate giver of all things because he is the creator of all things. And instead of rewards in an uncertain hereafter, very conveniently impossible of verification, this god returns good for good now."
"As long as the gifts last, it'll sweep the country," Naida said. Frayne nodded. "But we'll have to forget the evil for evil part. We'd be sued."
"It'd spoil the show anyway. The TV way of dealing with a murderer would be to dump a pail of water on him and make the audience laugh. Then it'd give him a prize. No, this religion will accentuate the positive. It'll concentrate on returning good for good."
"We can threaten evil for evil," Frayne said. "The bad people won't complain if we don't deliver. As for the TV show approach - do we actually give merchandise?"