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WHILE HE WAS PACKING Virga caazine that had arrived in the mail so on the article that had first attracted his interest Now he took the ray-carpeted hallway into his study He switched on the lights and sat at his desk to reread the article because in the space of a few days it had becoined

It was under the heading Religion Tords, in the an the article: The Messiah? There was a picture of raggedtoward the carainy, showed a figure standing on the balcony of a great turreted palace The caption read "Baal"

Virga reached for a pipe frohtfully The article contained a piecemeal picture of the swarathered at a religious shrine erected in the desert The correspondent had evidently been able to work only with secondhand sources and thus the philosophy of the "Baalism moveht to reinstate individual power But the priranted no interviews and gave out no public relations es, said the article, "are on the verge of an uncontained religious hysteria due to the very presence of thisMuhaazine and pushed it across the desk

He sat motionless This was certainly a od of sexuality and sacrifice But why? For what purpose? The worship of Baal, soant and loathsoies, child sacrifice, and the transformation of the temple into a house of sodoa that any sane ure whom Jehovah had ordered banished frood of fertility, Canaan becaa knew that archaeologists who dug the ruined Canaanite cities at Hazor and Megiddo found abo to a modern world: skeletons of infants stuffed into rude earthen jars for sacrificial burial, idols arriorlike features and hugely exaggerated sexual organs There were other times and places, as well, in which the name Baal had surfaced: about three thousand years before Christ he was the "stor fallen fro before, he preferred to cast his lot with the darker fates and was identified by deist Jean Wier as a demon prince with three heads: of a man, a toad, and a cat

And this one to find

Judith Naughton had telephoned Virga one afternoon at his office

"I ondering," she said cal from Donald in the last week or so?"

"No, I haven&039;t," said Virga "I expected hia waited for her to say so more When she didn&039;t he said, uncomfortably, "Well, he&039;s probably all wrapped up in his project You knoe so-calledWe lose all sense of time By the asn&039;t Timmy&039;s birthday last week? What is he now? Seven?"

"Yes Seven Donald bought him a present before he left"

"Oh Anyway, I really expected to hear eneral infor in the last three weeks Actually I need hiive me an idea of the content of his courses for next se?"

"No," she said Virga heard her suddenly choke

"Judith?" he asked "Is anything wrong?"

And when heafternoon he noticed her tre hands and the swollen pouches beneath her eyes He ordered a drink for her and said, "Now You haven&039;t toldive ently "I don&039;t understand the "

She returned his sa saw that she was extrehtly and said, "I&039;d like to help you if I can"

Judith looked into her drink; Virga knew she was deliberately avoiding his gaze She toyed with the stelass and said, "I did receive a letter froo I didn&039;t knohat to do; I didn&039;t knohoht ; I don&039;t knohat I thought" She reached into her handbag The letter was folded and refolded and bore the stains of a long journey She slid it across the table to Virga "Here," she said

He opened the envelope and carefully unfolded a piece of tattered paper There was only one word on it, scribbled in an ala said, "This isn&039;t Donald&039;s handwriting He didn&039;t send this"

"Yes," she said "I recognize the handwriting except it&039;s distorted and hurried" She put a hand to her face "I don&039;t knohat I&039;ve done" She began to treht back a sob

"Did he tell you where he was staying?"

"Yes I called them but they told one" She looked up, suddenly pleading with hiu toThis is not like hied hia sat with his hands folded beneath his chin The Tiazine lay on the desk beside him Judith&039;s eyes, lost and hopeless, had forced his decision He had discussed with Dr Landon the possibilities of his assu the duties of department head for a week or so; he had made his airline connections and hotel reservations in advance

Judith had been correct; such an action was not in line with Naughton&039;s cool, restrained character And Virga re of an animal&039;s claw on paper And now this this madman who called himself Baal and as perhaps responsible, directly or indirectly, for Naughton&039;s letter He felt the heat of challenge course through his blood A ed thousands to pay hoence suddenly throwing aith a scraord his wife, his work, his life Was there a connection? Virga stood up, filled with new resolve, and went back to his bedroo into the rising sun in a TWA Boeing bound for Lisbon, still hours away From there would be a connection to Cairo, then across the jutting triangle of Saudi Arabia to Kuwait He drank two scotches and tried to concentrate on The God-Myths, a book he had brought along, to sharpen his recall of the pre-Christ Canaan fertility rites and the significance of the warrior-god Baal Baal, as he&039;d remembered from his own education on pre-Christ cults, was vanquished from the land by Jehovah, in that period of history called Yahweh Frorew to despise the od Baal had become the de to the vile orgies and sacrifices of children performed in Baal&039;s temple; perhaps it was the memory of Yahweh&039;s destruction of Canaan, passed down from mouth to mouth over tribal campfires and finally depicted in Joshua in the Old Testament But a question haunted hia believed, then what about the ods, like Baal and Seth, Mot and Mithras? But in any event, this ued to find out why