The Sam Gunn Omnibus

by Ben Bova

  But when I got to the restaurant Sam was practically bouncing with excitement. As the maitre d’ led me to the table, Sam jumped to his feet so hard that he rose clear above the table and soared over it, landing on his

  toes right in front of me like a star ballet dancer. People stared from their tables.

  Gracefully, Sam took my hand and bent his lips to it. His lips were curved into a tremendously self-satisfied smile.

  Alarm bells went off in my head. Either he’s finally scored with Josella or he’s found a new love. I knew he couldn’t possibly be this happy just to see me again.

  Sam shooed the maitre d’ away and helped me into my chair. Then he chugged around the table and sat down, folded his hands and rested his chin on them, and grinned at me as if he was a cat who’d just cornered the canary market.

  I saw that there was a chilled bottle of French champagne in a silver bucket next to the table. A waiter immediately brought a dish of caviar and placed it in the center of the table.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Sam cocked an eyebrow at me. “Going on? What do you mean?”

  “The champagne and caviar. The grin on your face.”

  “Couldn’t that be just because I’m so happy to see you?”

  “No it couldn’t,” I said. “Come on, Sam, we’ve known each other too long for this kind of runaround.”

  He laughed softly and leaned closer toward me. “He’s coming here.”

  “Who’s coming here?”

  “Il Papa himself,” Sam whispered.

  “The Pope?” My voice squeaked like a surprised mouse.

  His head bobbing up and down, Sam said, “William I. The bishop of Rome. Vicar of Christ. Successor to the prince of the Apostles. Supreme pontiff of the universal church. Patriarch of the west, primate of Italy, archbishop and metropolitan of the Roman province, sovereign of the state of Vatican City, servant of the servants of God.” He took a breath. “That one.”

  “The Pope is coming here? To the Moon? To Selene?”

  “Just got the word from Cardinal Hagerty himself. Pope Bill is coming here to deal with me personally.”

  I felt as if I was in free fall, everything inside me sinking. “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Nope,” said Sam. “Just His representative.”

  IT WAS SUPPOSED to be very hush-hush. No news reporters. No leaks. The Pope came incognito, slipping out of Rome in plain clothes and riding to the Moon in a private rocket furnished by Rockledge Industries and paid for by Frank Banners insurance consortium.

  For once in his life Sam kept a secret that wasn’t his own. He bubbled and jittered through the two days it took for the Pope to arrive at Selene. Instead of putting him up in the hotel, where he might be recognized, Sam ensconced Pope William, Cardinal Hagerty and their retinue of guards and servants—all male—in a new wing of Selene’s living quarters that hadn’t been opened yet for occupancy.

  Their quarters were a little rough, a little unfinished. Walls nothing but bare stone. Some of the electrical fixtures hadn’t been installed yet. But there was comfortable furniture and plenty of room for them.

  Suddenly I was a World Court judge in charge of a pretrial hearing again. I set up the meeting in the Pope’s suite, after a half-day of phone discussions with Sam and Cardinal Hagerty. Greg Molina reluctantly came up from Quito; Sam provided him with a special high-energy boost so he could get to us within twenty-four hours.

  So there we were: Sam, the Pope, Cardinal Hagerty, Greg, Josella and me, sitting around a circular table made of lunar plastic. Of the six of us, only Sam and I seemed truly at ease. The others looked slightly queasy from the low gravity. Cardinal Hagerty, in particular, gripped the arms of his chair as if he was afraid he’d be sucked up to the bare stone ceiling if he let go.

  I was surprised at Josella’s uneasiness. She was seated next to me—I made certain to place myself between her and Sam. She had always seemed so cool and self-possessed that I felt almost pained for her.

  While Greg went through the formality of reading the précis of Sam’s suit against the Vatican, I leaned over and whispered to Josella, “Are you having trouble adjusting to the gravity?”

  She looked surprised, almost shocked. Then she tried to smile. “It’s ... not that. It’s this room. I feel... it must be something like claustrophobia.”

  I wondered that she hadn’t been bothered before, but then I figured that the other rooms of the hotel had big electronic window walls and green plants and decorations that tricked the eye into forgetting that you were buried deep underground. This conference room’s walls were bare, which made its ceiling seem low. Like a monk’s cell, I thought.

  Halfway through Greg’s reading of the précis, Cardinal Hagerty cleared his throat noisily and asked, “If there’s nothing new in this travesty, could we be dispensing with the rest of this reading?”

  Hagerty was by far the oldest person in the group. His face was lined

  and leathery; his hair thin and white. He looked frail and cranky, and his voice was as creaky as a rusted door hinge.

  Sam nodded agreement, as did Josella. Greg tapped his hand-sized computer and looked up from its screen.

  “Now then,” said the Pope, folding his hands on the tabletop, “let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.”

  He was smiling at us. Pope William looked even younger in person than on TV. And even more dynamic and handsome. A rugged and vigorous man with steel-gray hair and steel-gray eyes. He looked more like a successful corporate executive or a lawyer than a man of God. Even in his white Papal robes, it was hard for me to think of him as a priest. And a celibate.

  He had the knack of making you feel that he was concentrating all his attention on you, even when he wasn’t looking directly at you. And when his eyes did catch mine, I got goose bumps, so help me. Dynamic? He was dynamite.

  Of course, he didn’t affect Sam the way he hit me.

  “You want the nitty-gritty?” Sam replied, with no hint of awe at speaking face-to-face with the Pope. “Okay. God owes me half a billion dollars.”

  “Ridiculous,” Cardinal Hagerty croaked.

  “Not according to the insurance industry,” Sam countered. He jabbed a finger toward Josella. “Tell ‘em, kid.”

  Josella looked startled. “Tell them what?”

  “Your employers claim that the accidents that’ve almost wrecked Ecuador National Space Systems were acts of God. Right?”

  “Yes,” Josella answered warily.

  Sam spread his hands. “See? They’re the ones who put the blame on God, not me. All I’m trying to do is collect what’s owed me.”

  Pope William turned his megawatt smile on Sam. “Surely you don’t expect the Church to pay you for industrial accidents.”

  “Don’t call me Shirley,” Sam mumbled.

  “What?”

  Barely suppressing his glee, Sam said, “We’ve been through all this. The insurance industry says God’s responsible. You claim to be God’s representative on Earth. So you owe Ecuador National Space Systems half a billion dollars.”

  Pope William’s smile darkened just a bit. “And what will you do if we refuse to pay—assuming, that is, that the World Court should decide in your favor.”

  “Which is ridiculous,” said Hagerty.

  Sam was unperturbed. “If the World Court really is an International Court of Justice, as it claims to be,” he gave me the eye, “then it has to decide in my favor.”

  “I doubt that,” said the Pope.

  “Ridiculous,” uttered Cardinal Hagerty. It seemed to be his favorite word.

  “Think about it,” Sam went on, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Think of the reaction in the Moslem nations if the World Court seems to treat the Vatican differently from other nations. Or India or China.”

  Pope William’s brows knit slightly. Hagerty’s expression could have soured milk.

  “Another thing,” Sam added. “You guys have been working for a century or so to hea
l the rifts among other Christians. Imagine how the Protestants will feel if they see the Vatican getting special treatment from the World Court.”

  “Finding the Vatican innocent of responsibility for your industrial accidents is hardly special treatment,” said Pope William.

  “Maybe you think so, but how will the Swedes feel about it? Or the Orthodox Catholics in Greece and Russia and so on? Or the Southern Baptists?”

  The Pope said nothing.

  “Think about the publicity,” Sam said, leaning back easily in his chair. “Remember what an American writer once said: ‘There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but can be destroyed by ridicule.’“

  “ ‘By ridicule, howsoever poor and witless,’“ the Pope finished the citation. “Mark Twain.”

  “That’s right,” said Sam.

  Cardinal Hagerty burst out, “You can’t hold the Vatican responsible for acts of the Lord! You can’t expect the Church to pay every time some daft golfer gets struck by lightning because he didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain!”

  “Hey, you’re the guys who claim you’re God’s middleman. You spent several centuries establishing that point, too, from what I hear.”

  “All right,” said Pope William, smiling again, “let’s grant for the sake of argument that the World Court decides against the Vatican. We, of course, will refuse to pay. It would be impossible for us to pay such a sum, in fact. Even if we could, we’d have to take the money away from the poor and the starving in order to give it to you.”

  “To the nation of Ecuador,” Sam corrected.

  “To Ecuador National Space Systems,” grumbled Cardinal Hagerty.

  “Which is you,” said the Pope.

  Sam shrugged.

  Pope William turned to me. “What would happen if we refused to pay?”

  I felt flustered. My face got hot. “I... uh—the only legal alternative would be for the Court to ask the Peacekeepers to enforce its decision.”

  “So the Peacekeepers will invade the Vatican?” Cardinal Hagerty sneered. “What will they do, cart away the Pieta?. Hack off the roof of the Sistine Chapel and sell it at auction?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I don’t see anything like that happening.”

  “Lemme tell you what’ll happen,” Sam said. “The world will see that your claim to be God’s special spokesman is phony. The world will see that you hold yourselves above the law. Your position as a moral leader will go down the toilet. The next time you ask the nations to work for peace and unity the whole world will laugh in your face.”

  Cardinal Hagerty went white with anger. He sputtered, but no words came past his lips. I thought he was going to have a stroke, right there at our conference table.

  But the Pope touched him on the shoulder and the Cardinal took a deep, shuddering breath and seemed to relax somewhat.

  Pope William’s smile was gone. He focused those steel-gray eyes on Sam and said, “You are a dangerous man, Mr. Gunn.”

  Sam stared right back at him. “I’ve been called lots of things in my time, but never dangerous.”

  “You would extort half a billion dollars out of the mouths of the world’s neediest people?”

  “And use it to create jobs so that they wouldn’t be needy anymore. So they won’t have to depend on you or anybody else. So they can stand on their own feet and live in dignity.”

  Sam was getting worked up. For the first time in my life, I saw Sam becoming really angry.

  “You go around the world telling people to accept what God sends them. You’ll help them. Sure you will. You’ll help them to stay poor, to stay miserable, to be dependent on Big Daddy from Rome.”

  “Sam!” I admonished.

  “I’ve read the Gospels. Christ went among the poor and shared what he had with them. He told a rich guy to sell everything he had and give it to the poor if he wanted to make it into heaven. I don’t see anybody selling off the papal jewels. I see Cardinals jet-setting around the world. I see

  the Pope telling the poor that they’re God’s chosen people—from the balconies of posh hotels.”

  Greg Molina smiled grimly. He must be a Catholic who’s turned against the Church, I thought.

  Sam kept on, “All my life I’ve seen the same old story: big government or big religion or big corporations telling the little guys to stay in their places and be grateful for whatever miserable crumbs they get. And they stay in their places and take what you deign to give them. And their children grow up poor and hungry and miserable and listen to the same sad song and make more children who grow up just as poor and hungry and miserable.”

  “That’s not his fault,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?” Sam was trembling with rage. “They’re all the same, whether it’s government or corporate or religion. As long as you stay poor and miserable they’ll help you. And all they do is help you to stay dependent on them.”

  Pope William’s expression was grim. But he said, “You’re entirely right.”

  Sam’s mouth opened, then clicked shut. Then he managed to utter, “Huh?”

  “You are entirely right,” the Pope repeated. He smiled again, but now it was almost sad, from the heart. “Oh, maybe not entirely, but right enough. Holy Mother Church has struggled to help the world’s poor for centuries, but today we have more poor people than ever before. It is clear that our methods are not successful.”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed warily, sensing a trap ahead. Cardinal Hagerty grumbled something too low for me to hear.

  “For centuries we have ridden on the horns of a dilemma; a paradox, if you will,” the Pope continued. “The goal of Holy Mother Church—the task given to Peter by Christ—was to save souls, not bodies. The Church’s eyes have always been turned toward Heaven. Everything we have done has been done to bring souls to salvation, regardless of the suffering those souls must endure on Earth.”

  Before Sam could object, the Pope added, “Or so we have told ourselves.”

  Cardinal Hagerty let out his breath in what might have been a sigh. Or a hiss.

  Pope William smiled at the old man, then continued, “The news media have hinted at... frictions between myself and the Curia—the bureaucracy that actually runs the Vatican.”

  “I’ve heard such rumors,” I said.

  Clasping his hands together, the Pope said, “The differences between myself and the Curia are based on the assessment that you have just made, Mr. Gunn. The Church has indeed told its faithful to ignore the needs of this world in order to prepare for the next. I believe that such an attitude has served us poorly. I believe the Church must change its position on many things. We can’t save souls who have given themselves to despair, to crime and drugs and all kinds of immorality. We must give our people hope”

  “Amen to that,” Sam muttered.

  “Hope for a better life here on Earth.”

  Ordinarily Sam would have quipped that we weren’t on Earth at the moment. But he remained quiet.

  “So you see,” Pope William said, “we are not so far apart as you thought.”

  Sam shook himself, like a man trying to break loose from a hypnotic spell. “I still want my half bill,” he said.

  Pope William smiled at him. “We don’t have it, and even if we did, we wouldn’t give it to you.”

  “Then you’re going to go down the tubes, just like I said.”

  “And the changes I am trying to make within the Vatican will go down the tubes with me,” Pope William replied.

  Sam thought a moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess they will.”

  Leaning toward Sam, Pope William pleaded, “But don’t you understand? If you press your case, all the reforms that the Church needs will never be made. Even if you don’t win, the case will be so infamous that I’ll be blocked at every turn by the Curia.”

  “That’s your problem,” Sam replied, so low I could barely hear him.

  “Why do you think I came up here?” the Pope continued. “I wanted to make a personal appeal to yo
u to be reasonable. I need your help!”

  Sam said nothing.

  Cardinal Hagerty recovered his voice. “I thought from the beginning that this trip was a waste of precious time.”

  Pope William pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m afraid you were right all along,” he said to the Cardinal.

  “So we’ll have a trial,” Sam said, getting to his feet.

  “We will,” said the Pope. He was nearly six feet tall; he towered over Sam.

  “You’ll lose,” Sam warned.

  The Pope’s smile returned, but it was only a pale imitation of the earlier version. “You’re forgetting one thing, Mr. Gunn. God is on our side.”

  Sam gave him a rueful grin. “That’s okay. I’m used to working against the big guys.”

  SAM AND I walked slowly along the corridor that led from the Pope’s quarters to the main living section of Selene. Josella trudged along on Sam’s other side; Greg was a few steps ahead of us.

  “Sam,” I said, “I’m going to recommend against a trial.”

  He didn’t look surprised.

  “You can’t do this,” I said. “It’s not right.”

  Sam seemed subdued, but he still replied, “You can recommend all you want to, Jill. The Court will still have to hear the case. The law’s on my side.”

  “Then the law is an ass!”

  He grinned at me. “Old gray-eyes got to you, didn’t he? Sexy guy, for a Pope.”

  I glared at him. There’s nothing so infuriating as a man who thinks he knows what’s going on inside your head. Especially when he’s right.

  Josella said, “I’ll have to report this meeting to my superiors back in Hartford.”

  “How about having supper with me?” Sam asked her. Right in front of me.

  Josella glanced at me. “I don’t think so, Sam. It might be seen as a conflict of interest.”

  Sam laughed. “We’ll bring the judge along. We’ll discuss the case. Hey Greg,” he called up the corridor, “you wanna have dinner with the rest of us?”