Blameless in Abaddon by James Morrow

not permitted.”
    â€œI must.”
    â€œNo way, sir. Out there, the noise of the pump is enough to cause permanent hearing loss.”
    â€œLet me feel His blood, and I shall be made whole!”
    Kimberly winced, and for the first time Martin saw that her job had a downside. “No. Sorry. No.”
    The tram moved on—through Cardiovascular Control and back into the tunnel.
    â€œWe’re entering the Corridor of the Cured,” Kimberly narrated as Group C traveled past dozens of illuminated niches, each filled with a device more commonly found on the premises of the halt, the blind, or the lame. “Each and every item displayed here was once needed by a Celestial City visitor. No more. We have the largest such collection outside the famous shrine at Lourdes.” Ambulatory aids flashed by, row upon row of crutches, canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. Braces appeared next, fearsome contrivances of steel and leather designed to straighten crooked spines and warped limbs. Farther down the line lay respirators, oxygen tanks, and dialysis machines. “Not a day goes by without one of these things arriving in our mail room. That motorized ergonomic wheelchair came all the way from Kyoto, Japan. Any questions?”
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    I am a creature of many faces, manifold personae, multiple disguises. While our hero was touring the Corridor of the Cured, I was making myself a new suit: red pants, red jacket, red cap, all trimmed with white weasel fur. Yes, friends, my alter ego is none other than Father Christmas himself. Excavate our respective mythoi, and you will learn that Satan and Santa are one and the same, beginning with the anagrammatic connection between our names. According to legend, the frozen north is the Devil’s pied-à-terre, where he flies through the air aided by a team of reindeer. He enters people’s homes via their chimneys. Food and wine are left out for him as a bribe. His sobriquet “Old Nick” derives from “Saint Nicholas.”
    Needless to say, my admiration for the Corridor of the Cured was boundless. As frauds go, the Corridor easily eclipsed Piltdown man, the Hitler diaries, and Clarence Thomas’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Which is not to say the Celestial City’s visitors never benefited from the Main Attraction.
Au contraire.
Thanks to the placebo effect, these wretched pilgrims routinely enjoyed spontaneous remissions. And while it’s true that the Corridor’s proprietors obtained most of their display items from medical supply houses, their aim was not deception for deception’s sake—no, they merely wanted to harness deception to a profitable variety of healing. Never underestimate the value of a falsehood, friends. Never doubt the power of a lie. Blessed are the mendacious, for they shall grow wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.
    In case you’re wondering, I don’t spend the entire workday inside my tailor shop. Even the Devil deserves a break. Come noon, I set down my sewing needle, grab my lunch pail, and stroll into the blinding glare of His neurons. Usually I’m content to explore the immediate neighborhood, wandering through His olfactory center, a few miles due east of the hippocampus; but sometimes the arteries beckon. During the hour that Martin and Corinne were dining at the Loaves and Fishes café, for example, my friend Bishop Augustine and I were piloting my rusty old packet steamer down the crimson channel that feeds our Creator’s left cerebral hemisphere, eating corned-beef sandwiches and trailing a fish line from our stern. I’m eternally grateful to Lockheed for building the heart-lung machine. Because of this technology, the River Hiddekel’s sanguine currents remain deep, clean, and fecund. On most of our expeditions Augustine and I catch at least one leukocyte and a mess of red blood corpuscles.
    My days, I know, are numbered. All around me the landscape is