The other two men stood up as well. "I can have a draft of a statement ready for you by morning," Collingwood suggested.
Clement smiled. "Wait, Anthony, wait. You must be exhausted. Sleep tonight, think tomorrow." He turned to let his smile include Fontanelli, and walked slowly out of the room.
The two men stared after him. He was the one thing they had in common. "He'll never go along with this, you know," Fontanelli remarked conversationally.
"I know," Collingwood replied.
"Then why suggest it?"
Collingwood shrugged. "Perhaps one day he will realize he made a mistake, and remember who suggested the proper course."
"Then he will blame you for not being more persuasive," Fontanelli said with a dry laugh. The laugh turned into a cough, and with a half-wave he exited, his body shaking with spasms.
Collingwood waited until the sound of the coughing had died away, then he took the tape and left the office, nodding absently to the guard at the door. He climbed the stairway to his own little room in the Papal Apartments, where his suitcase lay waiting to be unpacked. He slid it onto the floor and took its place on the bed. Glancing at his watch, he performed a quick mental calculation. Then he reached for his phone and dialed a number.
"He's thinking," Collingwood said to Bernardi. "But he won't buy it."
"What should we do then?"
"Nothing, at least for the moment. We have no options. Let me give you my private number here in case something breaks on your end."
"You feel bad about bringing it up?"
"It was my decision."
"Okay. Give me the number."
When Collingwood hung up he lay for a while in his clerical garb, staring at the ceiling. For some reason he began thinking about the day Clement had been elected: Collingwood had been standing in Saint Peter's Square and gossiping with some forgotten priest. They were waiting idly for the smoke to rise over the Sistine Chapel, not really believing that it would be white this time, not yet. But then there it was, gentle fair-weather clouds streaming from the ancient chimney. And what can compare with the excitement of the wait between the signal and the introduction, when the crowd suddenly swells to fill the square and it seems the Bernini columns will have to explode outward from its pressure? The two of them had made a final wager on who would be chosen (Collingwood had thought it would be a Third Worlder with acceptable Curial ties), and pressed forward toward the balcony. Finally old Pusateri had doddered out and croaked into the microphone the obligatory "Habemus Papam." And then Collingwood had glimpsed Cardinal Herbert in the doorway. At first he was puzzled: why was he there, getting in the way of the new Pontiff? And then Herbert stepped forward, clad in white, and the crowd roared, and Collingwood's companion was pounding him delightedly on the back, and the new Pope Clement raised his hand to bless the city and the world.
And then, Collingwood recalled, I thought to myself: I am smarter than this man. I am more intelligent than the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He had assumed that before, as a matter of course, about many different people who had stumbled onto great power, but never had its truth been as evident or as forceful as on that day.
The years since had done nothing to change his opinion. Neither had the meeting that had just ended. There was something intolerable about the situation that Collingwood just didn't know how to deal with.
The price of advancement was eternal tact, though, and he did his best. This man is a saint, he would remind himself, he has more charity and holiness in him than the entire College of Cardinals. And he did not do badly back in London, where, perhaps, holiness could still accomplish something.
But dammit, it wasn't enough to run the Church in times like these. A man was supposed to grow to fill the office when he became Pope. But Clement had seemed to shrink; his virtues had become trivial, his shortcomings crippling. He was now timid, uncertain, afraid. And the worst of it was that he didn't seem to know or understand how ineffective he was.
No, the worst of it was that Collingwood had been with him every step of the way; Clement's failures were his failures. His mind wandered back even farther, back to his time at Oxford, to when he heard from a friend of a friend that Cardinal Herbert's secretary had cancer and was going to resign. "I'm going to get that job," he had said, and everyone just laughed.
"But you've never even met old Herbert," the friend of a friend said.
"Nevertheless, it's hard to ignore competence."
They remained dubious, and he set out to learn everything about the Catholic Church in England. After a month he talked his way into an interview, at which he swapped quotes from Newman, gave views that were a close fit to the Cardinal's own (although discreetly differing here and there to show he was his own man), casually mentioned his fantastic secretarial skills, and ultimately left Herbert no choice but to hire him, Herbert was at the height of his reputation then, with the Race War behind him and the English church prosperous and influential. He was widely felt to be papabile, but Collingwood refused to consider the possibility of the Vatican. That would be asking too much: it would not come if he wished for it.
It had come, nevertheless, and with it the burden of the Pope's weakness. He had done what he could, but Fontanelli was right: in Collingwood's position nothing mattered if you couldn't be persuasive.
Collingwood took his glasses off and flopped over on his stomach. Not even Saint Paul could persuade Clement on something like this. It was asking too much: offend the UN, challenge the aliens, risk political revenge. When you cannot see the goal in the distance, it is best to take only small steps, because then you cannot go too far wrong in any direction.
And of course you end up going nowhere. Wearily Collingwood rose and dragged his suitcase back up onto the bed. It was time to unpack. Then he could obey the Pope's order and go to sleep.
* * *
Pope Clement was tired but did not feel like going to bed. It was a common situation for him, and tonight he did as always: he went into his private chapel to pray. Quite often Marcello would find him there an hour or two later, asleep, and he would fuss and fume about His Holiness's back and the necessity for proper rest. And he would be quite right. But was a little pain sufficient reason to give up praying?
He leaned back on the plush red velvet chair, his eyes fixed on the softly lit tabernacle. The room was as silent as—as outer space, although he knew a Swiss Guard was stationed discreetly somewhere nearby, and dozens of people were living out their lives in the Apostolic Palace, and millions doing the same in the city surrounding the Leonine Walls. Who among them had a better setting for prayer than he did? But then, who had more need of it?
Did the aliens pray? The followers of—what was his name? Chitlan? Of course they did. Did they dream that someday their leader would live in a splendid palace in the capital city of their persecutors?
Or no, carry it further: did they dream that their persecutors would one day be an ancient memory, and different people with strange new theories would be ruling in their place; that their religion would reach a peak and then somehow lose its grip on people's minds and hearts, and their leader would sit alone in his palace, helpless to stop what seemed so inevitable?
It was odd, Clement thought, but he had no difficulty in accepting the truth of what that interpreter had said. Of course the religion existed. Of course it was the same as Christianity. God would not leave any intelligent race without knowledge of His existence, without access to His grace.
But still that did not solve his problem. Collingwood and Fontanelli always seemed so secure in their positions. Even if they later reversed them (which sometimes happened), they simply adopted their new stands with the same certainty and forcefulness, never wavering in the belief that they had right on their side. How long had it been since he had felt that way?
He had read an article once that claimed he hadn't been the same man since the Race War in England. He had used up whatever reserves of courage and decisiveness he posse
ssed in walking down that street past the machine guns trained on him and the barricades manned by hate-filled, frustrated blacks, death and fear almost tangible presences beside him. Some men can only do that once, the author had said; you can give them the Nobel Peace Prize afterward, and even elect them Pope, but you can't make them regain what they have lost.
Clement didn't know. Was it then? Or later that day, as he struggled to get through to Kuntasha, knowing that if he didn't all his courage would be wasted? Or, perhaps, was it as the ballots were counted in the Conclave, mounting inexorably toward two-thirds plus one, and he realized that a greater burden was about to fall on his shoulders than anyone should have to bear?
He didn't know. Something had happened, something had changed somewhere. He was not who he was, and tonight the thought of battling the United Nations and President Gibson and the Numoi filled him with terror. He had listened to all the arguments on both sides, and they had all made sense. There were always good arguments for caution, of course. So it came down to something other than reason, and the nonreasoning part of himself said he could not act.
They would write more articles about him, and gossip about him in the corridors of the Curia. Fine people like that earnest young interpreter would be puzzled and disappointed. But they were not Pope, and only a Pope can really understand. And life would go on, because not even the aliens could change a person's inner self.
A shadow fell across him. Marcello was standing in the doorway. "It is past midnight, Holiness."
Clement got up from his chair, genuflected, and blessed himself. "Another day," he murmured to Marcello as he followed him out of the chapel.
"And we are still alive, thank God."
"You are a pious man, Marcello."
Marcello shrugged. "It is not being pious to simply speak the truth."
They entered Clement's small bedchamber, and in the silent palace the Pope prepared to sleep.
Chapter 7
Tenon had just been on guard duty by the officers' quarters on the first level—a useless assignment, everyone knew, but they had to be given something to do as the long days passed. Still, he hadn't minded it today. It gave him a chance to think, and he desperately needed to do some thinking.
He hadn't made much progress, however, by the time Samish had dismissed him and the worst part of the day began.
He walked slowly down the central stairway, down to the lowest level of the Ship, where most of the rest of the crew were already seated around the golden machine. He walked over to his own seat opposite Sabbata, who lowered her head in greeting. They did not speak.
Rothra was in charge today, as usual looking tired and out of sorts. "All right," he said, "let's hurry it up. I'm sick of giving bad reports about this, so let's do a little better tonight, shall we?" He walked over to the machine, which, like the Ship, was a pyramid in shape, and pressed a button at its base. It hummed slightly and turned a dull copper color. "All right, let's go," he snapped, striding back to the edge of the room.
Tenon looked at Sabbata. Her eyes were on him for a moment, then they closed. His closed too.
There was nothing for a moment, and then the struggle: the probing, the adjustment, the stabs of anger and frustration, wills stretched taut over the void. Tenon knew what was happening outside: the crew couples hunched over, straining together, the retheo changing from copper to red and almost to white (he knew why it was almost white), Rothra glaring impatiently at it and them. And he knew what was happening inside himself as well: nothing. Sabbata's efforts were becoming sporadic, perfunctory. There was a haze of sadness and hurt perplexity over everything. It cannot be helped, he thought, drifting, drifting away. It cannot be helped.
All right, all right, that's enough—thoughts or words? Words. "All right, let it go," Rothra repeated as their eyes opened. "Just as bad as ever. You people'd better straighten out or we'll never get home." The retheo was back to the copper color. He walked up to it again and turned it off. "That's it. Up to the service. You better pray you do this right before very long."
The crew members got up and headed for the stairs.
Sabbata and Tenon walked together, in silence, up to the second level, and into the oval-shaped Room of the Ancients. They took their accustomed seats and waited along with the other restless crew members.
Tenon tried to think of something to say. "Whose rite is it today?" he asked Sabbata.
She gave him an a-lot-it-matters-to-you stare, then softened and said, "Ascanth, I think. It's hard to keep track, for some reason, with this new day-length."
"Why couldn't we stay on our own time, and let the aliens adjust to us?" Tenon wondered.
"Zanla," she replied, as if that were all the explanation that was needed.
Zanla, he repeated to himself, and he could feel his body become tense with fear. "He's late," he remarked, struggling to seem normal (as if that were possible with Sabbata).
"He and Ergentil are probably having another fight."
"But the Departure is set. What else is there to fight about?"
"They'll find something. They wouldn't be happy otherwise." Sabbata looked at him meaningfully. He turned away.
When Ergentil finally appeared she looked weary and cross—like Rothra; like all of them. She was wearing her white vestments. She surveyed the room quickly, motioned behind her, and entered, followed by Zanla.
They took their positions at the two foci of the ellipse.
The crew members stood. The lights dimmed, except for flickering illumination on Zanla and Ergentil. A low moaning music arose from beneath them. It swirled through the room for a while, sighed, and faded. The crew clattered back into their seats.
Ergentil's arms were raised in front of her, palms up. "On this day we honor the memory of Ascanth Most Sage. We seek the blessing of his wisdom on our endeavors. We seek to know what is good for our people, as he knew. We seek to understand what he was the first to perceive. Let us seek his wisdom." Her palms turned down, and she spread her arms out to encompass the room. The crew bowed their heads.
Tenon sneaked a look at Sabbata. Her eyes were shut tight in a fair pretense of meditation. Was she really trying to reach Ascanth's wisdom? He doubted it. It was a sham; they all knew it, but they were locked into it. And it would take Chitlan to set them free, to let them worship the true essence of life instead of some dried-up ghost that no longer had the power to move them.
Zanla was preparing for the reading, leafing through the Chronicles of the Ancients to find his place. Ergentil stared at him sourly. "I read from the Chronicle of Ascanth," he recited finally. "Pay heed to the greatness of our past.
"Now the people did not understand why man and woman both had to be a part of the sacred machines. So the Elders brought the question to Ascanth, who strove to answer them in these words: 'Man by himself is nothing. Woman by herself is nothing. But together they are life itself. Life by itself is little. Machines by themselves are less. But together they are in command of all-that-is. With man and retheo we go one step, with woman and retheo we go another step, with man, woman, and retheo we cross the Universe.'
"And someone asked if it made a difference which man and which woman, and Ascanth replied: 'Could we cross the Universe in a sailboat? Just as the machine makes a difference, the people make a difference. An unclean person and a broken machine will produce much the same result. The only difference is that it is easier to fix a retheo than it is to fix a person.'"
And on it went, the same old dreary, meaningless platitudes. Where had they all led? He could remember the Disciple Argal asking the question. Had the endless series of Ships increased the happiness or the goodness of the people? Had all the rules and rituals done anything but perpetuate a system that oppressed the planet, that chose to ignore the truth sprouting all around it like buds in springtime?
Tenon had difficulty containing his impatience as they plodded through the Litany of Praise. It had been tolerable when it was just a mindless formality—somethin
g your family had done generation after generation, like bowing in thanks to the ground before eating your supper. But now there was something in its place, and each day it seemed harder to mimic the appropriate responses, to act like a devout Numian when he knew that they would put him to death if they found out what he truly believed.
After the Litany more music, and then the Act of Homage—always the worst part. In silence, starting with the youngest, they trudged up—first to Zanla, then to Ergentil—sank to the floor in front of each, and murmured "Alm a Numos." Tenon lived in fear that his unbelief would become so obvious that the Master and the Priestess could not help but recognize it as they gazed down at him.
Tonight he need not have worried. Neither was paying any attention to him, or to any of the rest of the crew. They were acting out their parts as much as he was. How could he give homage to people like this?
Tenon picked himself up, returned to his seat, and waited until the rest were through for the Dismissal.
"May the words and deeds of the Ancients illumine our lives," Ergentil said, and turned to Zanla.
"Well," Zanla said to them, "you've had a tough day I know, and we've all been under a lot of pressure, so I won't keep you long. Just remember that it was the wisdom of people like Ascanth that brought us to where we are today. If we can all strive to have a tenth of his wisdom, we will make the most of our opportunity and prepare for an even more glorious future. All right, you are dismissed."
The lights came up, and Zanla and Ergentil left quickly. "If I hear him say 'an even more glorious future' one more time I think I'll be sick," someone behind Tenon muttered.
They all followed the Master and Priestess out of the oval room and headed down to the refectory.
At dinner the favorite topic of conversation was, as always, Departure. What is the first thing you'll do when you get back? The first meal, the first bath, the first cumoli concert, the first orgy... they would all be heroes when they returned, and for once in their lives all pleasures (within the bounds of Numian propriety) would be accessible to them.
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