Dragon's Teeth Read Online Free PDF

afterlife before him. With the Devil so real, God was just as real, right?
    That beautiful loophole; so long as he repented, merciful God would forgive his sins. The Adversary would not have him. And he would repent, most truly and sincerely, every sin he committed as soon as he committed them. It was all there in the Bible, in unambiguous terms. If you repented, you were forgiven. That was the mistake everyone else who made these bargains seemed to make; they waited until the last minute, and before they could repent, wham. He wouldn’t be so stupid.
    But Mr. Lightman seemed blithely unconcerned by any of this. “I’d like to make a slight change in this contract, if I might,” he said instead. “Since Brother Lee’s empire is going begging, I would like to install you in his place. Conservation of effort, don’t you know, and it will make his flock so much more comfortable.”
    Lester nodded cautiously; the fiend waved his hand and the change appeared in fiery letters that glowed for a moment.
    “And now, for my articles.” Lightman handed the contract back, and there was an additional page among the rest. He scanned them carefully, including all the fine print. He had expected trouble there, but to his surprise, it seemed to be mostly verses from the Bible itself, including the Lord’s Prayer, with commentaries. It looked, in fact, like a page from a Bible-studies course. He looked up from his perusal to see Lightman gazing at him sardonically.
    “What, have you never heard that the Devil can quote Scripture?” The fiend chuckled. “It’s simply the usual stuff. So that you know that I know all the things people usually count on for loopholes.”
    That gave him pause for a moment, but he dismissed his doubts. “I’m ready to sign,” he said firmly.
    Lightman nodded, and handed him a pen filled with thick, red fluid. He doubted it was ink.

    He was the most popular televangelist ever to grace the home screen; surpassing Brother Lee’s popularity and eclipsing it. His message was a simple one, although he never phrased it bluntly: buy your way into heaven, and into heaven on earth. Send Lester Parker money, and Lester will not only see that God puts a “reserved” placard on your seat in the heavenly choir, he’ll see to it that God makes your life on earth a comfortable and happy one. He told people what they wanted to hear, no uncomfortable truths. And there were always plenty of letters he could show, which told stories of how the loyal sheep of his flock had found Jesus, peace of mind, and material prosperity as soon as they sent Lester their check.
    Of course, some of those same people would have been happy to ascribe a miraculous reversal of fortune to their “personal psychic” if they’d called the Psychic Hotline number instead of Lester’s. Above all else, people wanted to believe—wasn’t that what both sides said?
    He had a computerized answering service for all his mail; no dumping letters into the trash at the bank for him, no sir! He had a fanatically loyal bunch of part-time housewives read the things, enter the letter’s key words into the computer, and have an answer full of homey, sensible advice and religious homilies tailored to the individual run up by the machine in about the time it took to enter the address. Every letter came out a little different; every letter sounded like one of his sermons. Every letter looked like a personal answer from Lester. The computer was a wonderful thing.
    They could have gotten the same advice from Dear Abby—in fact, a good part of the advice tendered was gleaned from the back issues of Dear Abby’s compiled columns. But Abby didn’t claim to speak for God, and Lester did.
    He also preached another sort of comfort—that hatred was no sin. It was no accident that his viewers were nearly one hundred percent white; white people had money, and black, yellow, and red ones didn’t, or if they did, they generally weren’t going to part with