Charles nodded. Ann looked askance at her husband. 'You know her?' she asked, and everyone laughed. Charles found a pencil and walked up to the screen. 'She represents Rome,' he said, 'and these ten razor-sharp horns on the Beast are the ten kings who have no kingdoms yet, but who have been promised temporary power by Satan until he makes his grand appearance.'

'Why is she riding the Beast?' asked Ann.

'I don't know,' said Charles, 'but apparently she didn't stay on for long. According to the Book of Revelation, the ten kings "shall hate the whore and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire."’

'Terrific,' said Ann, shuddering. 'Do you believe all that stuff?'

'Well, what I guess I believe is that the Bible is composed of grand and wonderful metaphors. It's up to us to find meanings that are useful to us.'

'Like what, for instance?' Ann was intrigued.

Charles seemed hesitant. He wasn't one to proselytize. And it hadn't been so long ago that he, too, had scoffed at any sort of religious faith. His interest in things religious had merely been scholarly. But then, slowly, gradually, the sense that there was a God, and a pattern to things, and a reason behind it all, had begun to seep into his consciousness. There was such a consistency to the ancient artifacts he had uncovered—no matter where the dig, or what the date of the art—there was such similarity that it had to be more than coincidence. And then, once he had accepted the possibility that there was a God, everything had changed—his work, the way he perceived things, his relationships with other people.

Charles decided to go ahead and answer Ann's question honestly. 'Well,' he began slowly, 'there is a great deal of evidence that the end of the world may be near.'

'What?' Ann thought he was joking.

'A great many things that have happened in the last decade were prophesied in the Book of Revelation,' he said. 'Earthquakes, floods, famine, the sky darkening over with smog, the waters becoming polluted, climates changing...'

'But those things have always gone on,' Ann protested.

‘There are more specific things as well. For example, there's the prophecy that the end of the world would come shortly after the Bible had been translated into every written language. That just happened in the early sixties. And there's another prophecy that the final holocaust would be generated in the Middle East.'

'But-' Ann began.

Richard interrupted. 'Do you mind if we get back to the slides? If the end is so near, I'm anxious to see what else I've paid for, before it's all blown to smithereens!'