Forbidden Sanctuary (22 page)

"I give you permission to say whatever you want," Clement said mildly. "I will not take offense at it. I will not let it affect your standing with me."

"Thank you, Holiness," Collingwood whispered. He stared at Clement intently for a moment, then got up and began to pace the room. He stopped in front of the window, turned, and spoke. "What I fear," he said, "is that you perceive this as the Race War all over again. That you finally feel you have found an issue you can summon up your courage and fight for. That a personal crisis is obscuring the reality of the situation for you. That you're out to prove something at the expense of the Church."

Clement nodded. "Your fears are not unreasonable. I'm only a man. My motivations cannot be entirely pure. But look at it this way, Anthony: would I do right by my conscience if I were to ignore its promptings, out of fear that my actions would be interpreted as you have interpreted them? I cannot spend my life examining my motivations. Ultimately I must act."

"All right, but you aren't acting!" Collingwood protested. "You're letting events carry you. You've got to see that this is wrong. The greatness of your role in the Race War was that, while everyone else sat around and worried, you
did
something. Sitting in the Apostolic Palace and reading Newman is not the leadership you should be providing the Church."

Now Collingwood was hitting close to home. Surely there should be something more—but what? When the world will not listen—when even the people who have taken vows of obedience to you are muttering mutinously. He felt utterly powerless, swept along by the flood of events, waiting for the inevitable. But there was no inevitable, of course. There was free will, and that meant he had some control.

The control could be infinitesimal, certainly. Still, he hadn't really expected to have any effect on Kuntasha. He had been shaving one morning, and the radio had been on, intoning evacuation plans and continued stalemates, and he had suddenly noticed the white hair, the age lines on his face, and it was as if he had truly looked at himself for the first time in a decade. And the decade had not been kind to him. The thought of death lodged in his mind like a pebble in his shoe, digging into him at every step. But a lifetime of prayer and meditation had prepared him to accept the idea of death, so almost immediately he thought:
yes, I am going to die.
What will I do with my life? And at that instant he was prepared to walk past the rifles and offer what was left of himself for peace. If he were rejected, things would not be any worse. If he were killed—well, it was not an ignominious way to die. If he succeeded...

Well, he had succeeded. And here he sat. Older, but hardly wiser, seeking to recapture something he wasn't sure he ever really had. He had less hair now, and more wrinkles. But nothing had really changed.

And the answer came to him. "You are right, Anthony. This is no time for sitting. Get me Ashanti on the phone. I want to talk to the alien leader."

Collingwood stared at him, clearly struggling to make sense of this. "You want to go to their ship?" he asked.

"I can hardly invite him to come here, can I?"

* * *

Collingwood found himself walking south from the Vatican, through Trastevere. The streets were narrow and cobblestoned, without sidewalks. They twisted and curved and doubled back on themselves; he was quickly lost in them, and more than once had to jump out of the way of taxis that were just as lost as he was. No matter.

He had never been in this section of Rome before. There was really no reason for him to come here. The Trastevirini, he had heard, claimed to be the most Roman of the Romans. Your family had to have lived here for generations before you were accepted by them. He was an outsider. Always had been—even in college, in America. Even at the seat of power—he was a foreigner, a schemer, treated with mistrust and fear, making his way alone, friendless.

He passed the warm glow of a tavern. Inside they were shouting out some bawdy song, laughing and clinking glasses. He raised the collar of his coat; he wouldn't have minded getting drunk, but how could he manage it? It would have to be alone, in his room in the Apostolic Palace—a ludicrous thought. He walked on.

Clement wanted to meet with Zanla. Ashanti was trying to arrange it now. They could be on their way as soon as tomorrow. Headlines around the planet. Hopes raised in billions of breasts. Clement had done it before, after all....

No matter what Clement said about moral obligations, it was clear to Collingwood now that the man was simply out to replicate the great triumph of his life. Perhaps it was unconscious; perhaps he had really convinced himself that he was somehow saving the Church. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he was going through with it, and Collingwood was powerless to stop him.

What mattered was that Clement hadn't the skill to carry out the mission successfully. There might be some way of presenting his position, some points of compromise that could be worked out, but Clement just wasn't the man for the job. He would be rebuffed, and the riots would continue, and they would be one day closer to total chaos.

Damn Bernardi. Why had he ever listened to the man? Why had he allowed himself to be seduced from the principles of caution and prudence that had gotten him where he was? The idea had been stupid from the beginning—to expect to produce some kind of great revival of religion out of this business. If they had gone about it slowly, diplomatically, the impact would not have been as powerful, but at least they might have gotten closer to the truth. As it was, he was implicated in what appeared to be the beginning of interplanetary war.

Collingwood had reached the Tiber. A prostitute brushed up against him and muttered something in Italian. She had orange hair, and her breath smelled of garlic. He pushed past her, feeling suddenly nauseated.

He stood on the bridge but couldn't bring himself to cross to the east bank. He was not a Roman. There was nothing for him there.

Perhaps this was how Tenon felt, Collingwood thought, standing alone in an alien world. All he had was his religion—and that, ultimately, was all Collingwood had too. Like Tenon, he was willing to go to great lengths to keep his religion from being destroyed.

He strode back to the Vatican, sticking close to the Tiber and main streets. Despite the cold, his palms were wet. Once he was in his room he took a pencil and made out a list of names. Then, without a pause, he called the first name on the list.

"Hello?"

"Hello, is this Father Jeffries?"

"Yes."

"Ed, this is Monsignor Collingwood calling, from the Vatican. Am I interrupting anything?"

"Nothing that can't wait while I talk to the Vatican."

"Yes, that one little word accomplishes a lot in certain circles. Listen, in the Chancery there in New York you're pretty close to what goes on in the Archdiocese, aren't you?"

"I like to think so, certainly."

"Well, I have a rather delicate matter to bring up that might call on your knowledge and your contacts. I hope I can rely on your discretion."

"Certainly you can, Monsignor."

"Fine. You, uh, you are certainly aware of the Pope's position on this alien business."

"Of course."

"Well, things are a little more complicated than they might appear on the newscasts. You see, his Holiness feels that the position he is taking is the only one that would be publicly acceptable for an institution like ours to take. We can't say anything else without lowering our moral stature. On the other hand, he is fully aware of the disastrous consequences if the present state of affairs is allowed to continue."

"It's quite a dilemma."

"It is indeed. Well, the easiest way out of it would simply be for the alien to be found, without the Pope having to turn him in. Unfortunately, the authorities seem to be having no luck in tracking him down. So we have decided, in the strictest secrecy, to try to help them. We don't enjoy doing this, but circumstances are forcing us."

"I understand perfectly."

"Wonderful. What we would like you to do is to make discreet inquiries among your acquaintances, to see if anyone has any information about where Bernardi and Tenon might be. Since Bernardi is from New York City, and his car was found there, it seems possible that he is in the city, and he may well have sought aid from one of his clerical friends. You're in as good a position as anyone to find out if this theory is true."

"I will certainly do my best, Monsignor."

"Great. You should not, of course, say anything about this call, or about the Vatican's interest in the matter. Vague hints should be sufficient to make the point."

"I understand. But could I just ask: why isn't Cardinal Rafferty the one to be informed about this? It would seem—"

"It was felt best to keep this effort confined to lower levels of the hierarchy. Deniability, that sort of thing. What would his Eminence do, after all, except turn the matter over to you?"

"That's true, I guess."

"Let me give you my personal phone number. If you learn anything, call me. Any time. A lot depends on it."

"Of course. I'll do my best."

After Collingwood had hung up he lay back and stared at the ceiling for a while. He was soaked with perspiration, he suddenly realized. He longed for a shower. It would take more than a shower to cleanse him now, though. He looked at the second name on the list, and picked up the phone again.

Chapter 22

Ergentil was filling up sheet after sheet with her gruesome message. It was a boring, futile task, since she was sure Zanla would not attempt to carry out the threat. For one thing, she knew it was impossible to calibrate the
retheo
that finely; for another, it would only give them another couple of days before the next stage of their bluff would be called. If the aliens didn't turn Tenon over within these three days, nothing was likely to work.

Still, she didn't really mind doing it. It gave her the sense that
something
was being accomplished, and that she had a part in it. She worked at it steadily, until she noticed Zanla standing in the doorway, staring at her. How long had he been there? They seemed incapable of not annoying each other.

"Yes?" she inquired coldly.

"I have just spoken with Bacquier," he said. "It seems the leader of this religion wants to visit me—I suppose to talk us out of our threat."

"How does he expect to do that?"

Zanla gestured his ignorance.

"Did you agree to meet him?"

"I could see no reason not to. Conceivably I could talk
him
into giving up Tenon."

"I'd say neither of you has much chance of success."

"Perhaps."

Ergentil noted the tone. "What do you have in mind?" she demanded.

"Bacquier told me before that this Pope has no military power. Presumably he will come by himself. Presumably we could—"

"No," she interrupted firmly. "The Laws of Hospitality forbid it. If we accept this man as a guest, we must treat him as a guest."

"That's the schoolbook answer, of course," Zanla countered. "But we aren't in school. If we capture this Pope, then surely his followers will have to give up Tenon in exchange for him. Our problem would be solved."

"It is deception."

"What about the threat I made to Bacquier? Wasn't that deception? You approved of that."

"It was different. We weren't dealing with a guest. The Laws of Hospitality—"

"Oh, please don't lecture me. Isn't the law of survival more important?"

"There is no such law," Ergentil responded. She was about to elaborate on his lack of regard for his religion when she felt a sudden, unexpected surge of pity for him. "You wouldn't have come to see me about this if you were at ease in your own mind," she noted.

Zanla glared at her for a moment, and then dropped his gaze to the floor. "You have written enough," he said. "I have been talking to Rothra and the other officers. The crew is not in good shape. We could try for one city if necessary. No more."

"And the Pope?"

"We will see what he has to say." Zanla bowed quickly and left the room.

Ergentil gazed after him, a little surprised—at herself, for the sympathy she felt for him; and at Zanla, for agreeing with her so readily. He was not such a bad person, perhaps. He had a flaw, that was all, a flaw that blinded his perceptions and warped his actions. Did he know she knew? It hardly mattered at this point. What mattered was that she try to correct the mistakes that flaw might cause.