Forbidden Sanctuary (7 page)

It was when they began to watch it for the third time that Collingwood became sure that nothing would be done. Actually, he had suspected it ever since Clement had called in Fontanelli to view the tape with him. Clement's choice of advisers predetermined his policy. He knew what his Secretary of State would say, and that was what he wanted to hear. It was all so drearily predictable.

What Collingwood did not know was how conscious Clement was of this method of his. It was hard to credit a man in his position with such naïveté, but the longer Collingwood worked for him the more uncertain he was of just how much intelligence this Supreme Pontiff possessed.

He slumped a little lower in his chair; with the tip of his shoe he traced a pattern on the tastefully simple Oriental rug that covered the parquet floor in Clement's private office. He was travel-weary and in a sour mood. He had no one to blame but himself, of course; he had been carried away by rhetoric, by grand visions of interplanetary churches and turning points in human history. He had lost hold of his one great virtue: his clear-sighted pragmatism. And now he was committed to a position he knew was hopeless.

The video flickered along. Clement sat bolt upright, hands folded on his lap, white skullcap slightly askew. He had seemed very interested at first, but now his face was expressionless, except for the tired air that had lately become a permanent feature. Next to him Fontanelli was tilted to one side, a cigarette stuck in the hand that supported his head; a legal pad lay unused on his lap. Behind his hooded eyes he could have been asleep. After a while he muttered something to Clement that Collingwood didn't catch. Clement nodded, and Fontanelli rose stiffly to turn the machine off.

Clement didn't speak until Fontanelli had sat back down. "Quite fascinating, Anthony," he said in his soft British accent. "I'm very glad you brought the tape to us. Now, what do you suggest we do?"

"Issue a statement," Collingwood replied promptly. "Carefully worded, not saying you necessarily believe that Chitlan is Christ, but that naturally we have an interest in studying the similarities between the two religions. Suggest to the UN the importance to the human race of seeing that the followers of Chitlan are not wiped out, and urge that they make that a strong consideration in their dealings with the Numoi."

"Couldn't these points be made privately?"

Collingwood shook his head. "Only by using the threat of a public statement The UN has no reason to go along with us on this, and we have no power over it, except in the power we have to influence the citizens of its constituent governments. Ashanti would just put us off until the Numoi leave. Besides, the great value of the situation would lie in the public reaction to it. We have a chance to stir them up on our side, get them interested in religion again."

Clement glanced at Fontanelli, who was lighting another cigarette with his none-too-steady hand. "How do you feel about this, Carlo?"

The cardinal waved a cloud of smoke away from his face. "Let us assume the best case," he replied in his thickly accented English. "Let us say the girl is telling the truth—which I believe. Let us say this alien is telling the truth—which I do not know. Let us say things are as they allege—the religion exists, it is similar to Christianity, it is being persecuted. Still, I do not see how a statement like this can help matters. At best the UN is convinced to do as we ask; but I cannot see them convincing the aliens. If the Numoi are at all similar to the ancient Romans, as this girl suggests, then they both despise and fear this new religion. To allow it to exist would be unthinkable; it threatens their civilization. If the aliens offered America the secret of faster-than-light travel on condition that it become Communist, would America agree? In fact, I see exactly the opposite effect: the aliens become more determined than ever to stamp out the religion, now that they know it has support on our planet. I say nothing, of course, about the obvious political dangers we run by challenging the UN."

"You would do nothing, then?" Clement asked.

Fontanelli shrugged. "Talk to Ashanti. I agree he won't do anything, but at least he will be aware of the situation and understand our concern. Perhaps we can work toward something in future contacts, when the connection between the two planets is too strong to be broken."

Clement shifted his gaze to Collingwood. His turn. "What do you think of that, Anthony?"

He thought it was precisely what he had expected from Fontanelli: caution and shortsightedness, cleverly presented. He knew Clement would grab at the advice. It was the easy way out. Well, Collingwood thought, I won't give up without scoring a couple of points.

"This sounds like a conversation out of World War II," he remarked. "Our support will only harm the Jews, so it is best to say nothing." Fontanelli glared at him blackly, but Collingwood pressed on. "In any event, you ignore my main point. Private dealings leave the public unaffected. The world should know about this. It bears on the truth of what a third of its inhabitants profess to believe. Frankly, I am not particularly interested in launching an interplanetary crusade to save the followers of Chitlan. God will provide for them. We must tend our own flock. But to hide this from the flock would be a breach of our trust."

"I wonder," Fontanelli replied, "if this will have the marvelous effect you seem to think it will have. Even, once again, in the best case, those who want to believe will believe. Those who do not will find an explanation that fits their unbelief. The world will go on, as always." He stubbed out his cigarette and began to doodle on his legal pad.

Clement looked from one to another, slowly, his face a mask.
You cannot bring this before the synods,
Collingwood thought. This
is your decision. This is why you were elected.

Clement stood up abruptly. "We will think about this matter," he murmured. "We will let you know in the morning what we want done."

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.