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  “Sounds like quite a witchy woman….”

  John Cardinal Silver looked at me for a good long beat. “You might say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment,” he said, with a flash of eye and a sudden sardonic little smirk. He regarded the Herb with this new persona, then reached out for my spliff.

  “On second thought, perhaps I’d better,” he said. “And a dry white Bordeaux would not be amiss if you have one.”

  IV

  About my journey to Rome by helicopter, the less said, the better. For four hours, I clung to my seat in terror in the wretched contraption while Cardinal Silver babbled along happily with the pilot over flyboy arcana, pausing now and again to direct my attention to the scenery below.

  I for my part had no intention of looking down from up here at anything, and I would have kept my eyes closed for the duration, had not the petrol fumes and jouncing of the helicopter in its droning clattering battle to remain aloft against all natural law induced instant nausea whenever I tried.

  Suffice it to say that I vomited but once. Suffice it to say I was far too terrified and discombobulated to ponder deeply what on this sorry Earth this Pope wanted from me.

  Surely she wanted something. I could hardly believe that she was dragooning me into her presence by helicopter simply to receive a lugubriously premature supreme unction this far before the fact.

  After a careening eternity, the helicopter finally landed in St. Peter’s Square, and before I could purge the ringing from my ears, or the petrol fumes from my nostrils, or stiffen my spongy old knees, I was forthwith whisked inside by Cardinal Silver, and ushered into the papal presence.

  The Pope had chosen to receive us in the Vatican version of an informal sitting room. A round mahogany table whose pedestal was carved into dragon’s legs sat not quite dining-room high on some murky oriental rug beneath a gilded Renaissance ceiling featuring a second-rate version of Madonna and Child. The walls, though, were a cunning confabulation of wooden bookcases and plant stands, evoking ecological sensibility, intellectual enjoyment, and a bit of the Earth Mother mystique.

  I realized that the room was familiar, as well it should be, for Pope Mary had used it often for interviews and media pronouncements.

  And there she sat, on, or rather in, an armchair not quite grand enough to be a throne, a vast plush peacock chair of white silk embroidered into stylized feathers with papal yellow. The other chairs were scaled-down versions of this deco Seat of Peter, so that you looked slightly up when you sat in them at she who sat at the head of the papal round table from any perspective.

  Pope Mary herself wore a white cassock that would have melted her into the white background were it not for the large green cross embroidered across the chest, the shoulder-length black hair streaked with silver setting off her coppery face, and the green cap set upon it formed with just the suggestion of a miter.

  I dwell on such visual details of my first sight of the Pope in the flesh, not so much because of the awe it inspired, but because it was a different sort of awe than I had expected.

  Mary I, the media icon version, the only aspect with which I was familiar, had turned this room into a stage set for papal glamour, and that Mary, the most public of Popes, had presented herself as the motherly voice of reason, the politically correct Pontiff, the consensus Madonna of contemporary womanhood, a sort of American politician losing no opportunity to charm the voters.

  An image crafted by experts, I had thought, carried forth by a shallow-spirited symbol, a creature of Cardinal Silver and his media-wise ilk, the First Female Pope, the Church’s very own superstar, whose every pronouncement seemed to follow the scripts of the polls.

  One look at this woman’s face, however, disabused me of any such notions. She looked much older than the processed image she chose to present, and those hard black eyes older still, far older than I in some absolute sense. Her raptor’s nose made them seem regally cunning, and there was something about the set of her mouth that left no doubt who was in charge.

  This was no media ingenue, this was no puppet of any inner circle. For better or worse, this was the mind presently at the heart of the Church, a brilliant old woman who had risen to the pinnacle of the world’s most phallocratic pyramid, by hook or by crook, and probably by a good deal of both.

  Whatever my opinions on her opinions, whatever her true beliefs might really be, it felt not at all unnatural to kneel to kiss her papal ring when Cardinal Silver presented me.

  “Sit down, Father De Leone,” the Pontiff said when I had arisen. “John, will you please ask that coffee be sent?”

  Cardinal Silver obviously did not expect this dismissal any more than I. He looked at her for a long moment, the Pope gave him some sort of secret stare, he hesitated, her eyes narrowed, and he reluctantly departed.

  The Pope smiled. “Cardinal Silver is mainly responsible for creating my Papacy, as he will be the first to admit,” she said dryly. “He sometimes has difficulty fathoming that in the end it is the Papacy itself which makes the Pope.”

  “Your Holiness … ?”

  “We Popes are, after all, successor entities of a sort ourselves, are we not, Father De Leone, a long line of human matrices for that which the Original Template passed across another boundary to Peter.”

  “I had certainly never thought of it that way, Your Holiness.”

  “I’m sure you hadn’t, Father De Leone,” the Pope said sharply. “But after all, without a belief in such a continuity of the papal software, as it were, then the Rock upon which Jesus built His Church is no more than sand, and we Popes poseurs every time we issue a bull with the authority of the Holy Spirit.”

  “Nor would I propose to frame the choice thusly,” I stammered, for on the one hand her interpretation of the papal succession had more than a whiff of electronic brimstone about it, and on the other, its negation a whiff of a different sort of blasphemy. If this Pope had summoned me to a theological debate, I was already beginning to feel out of my depth.

  “But I have no choice but to frame it thusly, Father De Leone, for the times demand just such a papal bull on the central subject in question.”

  “Which is, Your Holiness?”

  “That which is tearing the Church asunder,” the Pope said forcefully. “One way or another, the matter must be resolved, and I am going to do it, no matter how endlessly Cardinal Silver urges politic prevarication. That’s why I have summoned you to Rome, Father De Leone.”

  “It is?”

  At that moment a servant entered with the coffee service, and while it was poured, my hopes soared. Was this boon truly going to be granted me at the end of my life? The Pope was going to issue a bull on the spiritual status of transcorporeal successors, and she had summoned me to advise her! Therefore she must intend, at the very least, to deny communion to successor entities once and for all, perhaps even threaten excommunication of their human templates, if I could convince her. Perhaps she even intended that I do a bit of ghostwriting on the bull.

  When the servant had retired, Mary I leaned forward slightly, sipped at her coffee, and gave me a look that in an erotic situation might have been called seductive.

  “You have the opportunity to perform one final service for the Church, Father De Leone,” she said. “If you agree, you and I will lay to rest the great demonic conundrum of the age, and restore the harmony of the Church, perhaps even attract a new generation of converts.”

  “Your Holiness!” I exclaimed. “I would be deeply honored to assist you in such an endeavor in any way that I can.”

  “Oh, yes, I was chosen to paper it all over, to change the subject, but the subject will not go away, and it has fallen to me to resolve it,” the Pope went on as if talking to herself.

  Then, as if realizing what she was doing, she fixed me with an eagle-eyed gaze that seemed almost avid. “And that’s what you and I are going to do together, Father De Leone, if you accept this mission.”

  “Your Holiness—”

  The Pope
held up an imperious hand. “This cannot be a command, Father De Leone,” she said, “you must volunteer, and before you do, you had better hear the burden I wish to set upon you, for I doubt it is what you think.”

  The Pope broke the regal mood with a sip of coffee before it could properly form. “I’ve read everything you’ve ever written,” she said, “including the interdicted material. I have also read your medical reports. It would seem the Church is about to lose your wise counsel….”

  She regarded me with an unmistakable predatory eagerness. “You are a dying man, Father De Leone; I give you my profuse papal blessing, but I also offer you a chance to achieve sainthood.”

  “Sainthood!”

  “You do this deed for the Church and you will more than deserve it,” the Pope said. “When the dust clears, I’ll push it through, or my successor will, for it will be no sham.”

  What could this woman possibly be planning? Why did this talk offer of sainthood fill me with such dread?

  “I want to record your consciousness hologram and install your successor entity in the Vatican computer net. I want to hear your wise counsel from the Other Side.”

  “What!” I shouted, rising to my feet with my fists in the air.

  “Sit down, Father De Leone, hear me out!” the Pope commanded.

  I sank back into my chair utterly stunned.

  “Yes, yes, I know, you’re appalled, you are firmly convinced that any such successor entity would be a satanic golem of the bits and bytes, and that your immortal soul would already be standing for Judgment for the sin of its creation, or, worse still, trapped in an eternal electronic limbo. I told you, I’ve read every word. That’s why you’re perfect, and that’s why if you agree to serve you will be a true saint.”

  “I understand little of what you are saying, Your Holiness,” I moaned, “but what I do reeks of mortal sin.”

  “Perhaps it does,” agreed the Pope. “Perhaps it is a terrible thing to ask. But you are the ideal choice, Father De Leone, precisely because your successor entity will be such a hostile witness to the existence of its own soul.”

  “Hostile witness?”

  “Of course, for whatever you may believe about its soul, on an expert system level it will model your beliefs and convictions, and argue as you would,” the Pope said with a sly smile. “Surely you’re not suggesting that the program would have a will of its own and argue otherwise?”

  Her smile grew more ironic still. “A bit of Solomonic wisdom if I do say so myself,” she said. “Those who believe such entities are soulless constructs will have one of their intellectual champions putting their case from the Other Side, and those who believe the contrary will have the opportunity to prove it by persuading your successor entity to acknowledge its own spiritual existence, and I will issue my bull according to the results.”

  “On the testimony of an expert system!” I exclaimed, horrified. “On this you would base papal writ?”

  “Would you rather I trusted in the testimony of a successor entity whose human template had believed it would have a soul?”

  The Pope leaned forward and stared deeply into my eyes. I could not decide whether I was gazing at a satanic logician or a woman of unfathomable wisdom.

  “Look at it this way,” she said. “Your successor entity will have your memories, your reasoning powers, your motivations, whether you believe it will be you or not. Who would you trust better to argue its own soul’s nonexistence from the Other Side?”

  “And if it is a demon spouting satanic heresy?”

  “I cannot escape the burden of papal infallibility entirely, even in this technological age, even with a stratagem such as this. Your successor entity will be interrogated by theologians of both persuasions, but in the end I must trust God, and you must trust me to decide whether I am speaking to a program or a soul.”

  Pope Mary I drew herself up in her great armchair, turning it at once into the Throne of Peter. “That far, you must trust my papal infallibility,” she said, “and that far so must I, or we are neither of us true children of Holy Mother Church.”

  Then, in quite another tone: “But papal infallibility aside, do you really deem me incapable of knowing whether I am talking to you or the wall?”

  In that moment I would have deemed this woman capable of anything, though not all of it necessarily free of sin.

  “But it is my belief that my soul will be burning in hell while you and your experts converse with its empty simulacrum!” I cried.

  “I’ll grant you absolution on your body’s deathbed, and I’ll administer supreme unction myself,” said the Pope.

  What sophistry! “Really, Your Holiness—”

  “An absolution that your own logic proves valid. For if you are wrong, and the entity in question has your soul, no sin has been committed, and if you are right, will not God forgive you for shouldering the burden of necessary evil in order that His truth be spoken from my lips?”

  “You ask a great deal, Your Holiness,” I said weakly.

  But although that seemed the understatement of the millennium, although my heart cried out against it, the woman’s relentless logic, demonic or otherwise, was beginning to ensnare me against my will.

  Who would I better trust than myself to argue the soul’s nonexistence from the Other Side? Both fear and humility compelled me to try to think of someone to whom I with a clear conscience could pass this burden, but pragmatic reality came up dry. Indeed, anyone who would take it up gladly automatically disqualified himself in my eyes.

  As the Pope knew all too well.

  “I am asking you to risk your immortal soul in the service of the Church, trusting only in the Church’s moral authority to bless that soul’s questionable venture in the eyes of God,” she admitted forthrightly. “That is why I cannot invoke your vow of obedience. Not even the Pope can command a man to become a saint. I can only ask you to obey the Voice of God in your own heart. No blame if you refuse.”

  The Pontiff shrugged. “No impasse either,” she said airily. “I have already prepared a list of secondary choices not as likely to be troubled by your moral qualms.”

  Even with that unsubtle threat behind them, the Pope’s words touched a true chord in my spirit. How could I reject this call to champion my own deepest belief from the other side of the Line out of egoistic concern for my own salvation?

  By demonic logic, or by inspired vision, or by some arcane synergy of both, in that moment, she had me. I could not let this burden pass from me.

  But even Jesus had not quaffed such a cup on the first offering.

  “I need time, Your Holiness, I must meditate, pray, one cannot summon up divine wisdom like a pot of coffee,” I prevaricated, but when our eyes met we both knew full well that it was not entirely the truth. She could, and she had, and she knew it.

  “Take all the time that you want, within reason, Father De Leone,” the Pope said with a little secret smile. “We both know you will do what God tells you is right.”

  5

  “He took quite a while to accede to the Pontiff’s desires, Mr. Philippe,” Cardinal Silver said a spliff and half a bottle of wine later, “but in the end, well in the end, Mary I usually gets what she wants.”

  The night was clear, the sea was calm, the Mellow Yellow rocked gently, there was nothing to be heard but the Cardinal’s voice spinning out his peculiarly cynical ghost story.

  “It was much the same with the hierarchy. I myself was quite appalled when the Pope finally took me into her full confidence. The whole scheme seemed so paradoxically self-defeating. If De Leone’s successor entity successfully argued its own soul’s nonexistence, the progressives would claim the program had modeled the template’s disbelief. If it declared itself a spiritual being capable of the Church’s salvation, the conservatives would simply call it Satan’s liar.”

  He paused, refilled his glass, shook his head ruefully. “I told her that a bull based on such logical absurdities would never be accepted as credib
ly infallible, and after the media stopped laughing, if it ever did, neither would she.”

  The Cardinal took a fortifying sip, more like a gulp. “And you know what she told me?” he said.

  “You’re telling the story, Your Eminence….”

  “What the Church needs is a moral miracle, she said. Our image is that of an irrelevant Don Quixote tilting at theological windmills in the last days of the world. But if we resolve the moral mystery of this Final Age, then we prove our right in all the opinion polls to declare our message the true Word of God. And in this day and age, my infallible wisdom tells me that no miracle is going to be accepted without scientific proof, or at least a good expert system model of same.”

  He shrugged. “To my surprise, when I ran it through our demographic opinion models, it played. To be seen wrestling successfully with central profundities would enhance the Church’s image, no matter what the results. That was enough to convince me and to secure the cooperative attitude of both factions, though I doubt any of that had any effect on Father De Leone.”

  Maybe it was the Herb, maybe it was the story, but I could feel leviathans stirring deep in the waters upon whose still surface we floated like bits of chum, even though I knew there had been no whales in this sea in my lifetime.

  “I was in his shoes, it wouldn’t convince me either, if you’ll pardon my saying so, Cardinal Silver,” I told him. “Seems to me I was him, I wouldn’t have cared to dance with Dr. D to optimize your opinion models on the say-so of even your super-star Pope.”

  I nodded at the depths of the sea, at the stars, at what I knew was out there beneath the interface, above it you might say, from their point of view.

  “More things in heaven or hell than are dreamt of in your catechism, Yorick.”

  The Cardinal looked up at me sharply, but lèsemajesté wasn’t on his mind. “Now you’re beginning to sound like De Leone,” he groaned.

  “What a ghastly charade! The man fought against the inevitable almost to the end but of course he was only convincing himself to do what he had decided to do already, and extracting concessions in the bargain, like an old miser tormenting his heirs with his will. I do believe he was rather enjoying his deathbed drama. Is that a strange thing to say?”