Raising Atlantis (4 page)

“Here’s another thought, Sister Serghetti,” the colonel said, handing her a sheet of paper. It was a fax. “Leave.”

She looked the fax over twice. It was from Bishop Carlos in Jakarta, winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize. It said she was urgently needed in Rome. “The pope wants to see me?”

“The pope, the pontiff, the Holy See, whatever the hell you call him,” said Mr. Hackett. “I’m a Baptist myself. Just call yourself lucky to walk out of here.”

She turned toward her chopper in time to see several soldiers carry away the dismantled cameras from its belly.

“And the people of Aceh?” she pressed Mr. Hackett as the colonel nudged her toward his jeep. He was apparently keeping her chopper. “You can’t pretend this isn’t happening.”

“I don’t have to pretend anything, Sister,” Mr. Hackett said, waving her a smug good-bye. “If it ain’t in the news, it ain’t happening.”

Twenty-four hours later, Serena leaned back in the rear of the unmarked black sedan as old Benito nudged it through the angry protesters and camera crews in Saint Peter’s Square. That she could arouse such strong sentiments seemed impossible. And yet the demonstrations outside were meant for her.

She was only twenty-seven, but she had already made a lifetime’s worth of enemies in the petroleum, timber, and biomedical industries or anyone who put profit ahead of people, animals, or the environment. But her efforts inadvertently left a few of the people she had hoped to save jobless. Well, maybe more than a few, judging by the mob outside.

Dressed in her trademark urban uniform of an Armani suit and high-top sneakers, she hardly looked the part of a former Carmelite nun. But that was the point. As “Mother Earth” she made headlines, and with recognition came influence. How else would the style-over-substance media, the secular world, and, ultimately, Rome take her seriously?

God was another matter. She wasn’t sure what he thought of her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Serena stared through the rain-streaked window. Vatican police were pushing back the crowds and paparazzi. Then, out of nowhere,whap! —there was a loud crack, and she jumped. A protester had managed to slap his placard against the glass:FIND ANOTHER PLANET, MOTHER EARTH.

“I think they miss you,signorina,” said the driver in his best English.

“They mean well, Benito,” she replied, looking at the throngs with compassion. She could have addressed him in Italian, French, German, or a dozen other languages. But she recalled Benito wanted to work on his English. “They’re scared. They have families to feed. They need someone to blame for their unemployment. It might as well be me.”

“Only you,signorina, would bless your enemies.”

“There are no enemies, Benito, just misunderstandings.”

“Spoken like a true saint,” he said as they left the mob at the gate and curved along a winding drive.

“So, Benito, do you know why His Holiness has summoned me to the Eternal City for a private audience?” she asked, casually smoothing her pants, trying to hide the anxiety building inside.

“With you it is always hard to say.” Benito smiled in the mirror, revealing a gold tooth. “So much trouble to choose from.”

Too true, she thought. When she was a nun, Serena was usually at odds with her superiors, an outcast within her own church. Even the pope, an ally, once toldNewsweek magazine,

“Sister Serghetti is doing what God would do if only he knew the facts.” That made good copy, but she knew that no court of public opinion could protect her within these gates.

Born of an illicit affair between a Catholic priest and a housemaid outside Sydney, Serena Serghetti was filled with shame as a little girl. She grew up among sordid whispers and hated her father, who denied his patrimony to the end and died a drunken fraud. She silenced the whispers by pledging sexual purity at age twelve, excelling in her study of linguistics and, most shocking of all, joining a convent at sixteen. Within a few years she had become a living example of redemption to the Church and a walking, talking reminder to humanity of its ecological sins.

It was a good run while it lasted, which was almost seven years. Then, a few months after a personal crisis in South America, she returned to Rome for moral guidance and instead discovered that the Vatican was refusing to pay its water bills, hiding behind its status as a sovereign state and the obscure Lateran Treaty of 1929, which established that Italy must provide water for the 107-acre enclave for free but made no provision for sewage fees. “We neither render unto Caesar the taxes we owe Caesar, nor render unto God the honor we owe God as his stewards of Creation,” she said when she publicly renounced her vows and embraced the environment.

It was then that the media dubbed her “Mother Earth.”

Ever since, she couldn’t stop people from addressing her as such, or as “Sister Serghetti.” She was probably the world’s most famous former nun. Like the late Princess Diana before she died, Serena was no longer part of the church’s royal family and yet somehow had become its “Queen of Hearts.”

Swiss Guards in crimson uniforms snapped to attention as her sedan pulled up to the entrance of the Governorate.

Before Benito could open the door for her and offer her an umbrella, she was already climbing the steps in the rain at a leisurely pace, her sneakers splashing in the puddles as she looked up to the sky and enjoyed feeling a few drops on her face. If her history with the Vatican was any guide, this was probably the last breath of fresh air she’d be enjoying for a while. A guard smiled as she passed through the open door.

It was warm and dry inside, and the young Jesuit waiting for her recognized her instantly. “Sister Serghetti,” he said cordially. “This way.”

There was the buzz of activity from various offices as she followed the Jesuit down a maze of bureaucratic corridors to an old service elevator. To think it all started with a poor Jewish carpenter, she thought as they stepped inside and the door closed.

She wondered if Jesus would find himself as much a stranger in his church as she did.

She frowned at her reflection in the metal doors of the elevator and smoothed out her lapels. So ironic she should care, she realized, knowing the silk and wool were spun by the sweat of some poor child in a Far East factory to feed the global consumer market. The clothes and the image they projected represented everything she hated, but she used them to raise money and consciousness in a media age more obsessed with a former nun’s look than her charity. So be it.

But would Jesus wear Armani?

It was an insane world, and she often wondered why God had either made it that way or had simply allowed it to mutate into such an abomination. She certainly would have managed things differently.

The office she was looking for was on the fifth floor and belonged to the Vatican’s intelligence chief, a cardinal named Tucci. It was Tucci who would brief her and escort her to the papal residence for her private audience with the pope. But the cardinal was nowhere to be found. Still, the young Jesuit ushered her inside.

The study seemed older and more elegant than befit Tucci’s reputation. Medieval paintings and ancient maps graced the walls rather than the more modern, contemporary art that Tucci was reputed to favor.

Older and more elegant still was the man seated in a high-back leather chair with a pair of seventeenth-century Bleau globes on either side. The white regalia with the gold lace at the throat perfectly offset the silver hair. He looked every bit an urbane, handsome man of the faith, and the eyes, when he glanced up from the file he was reading, were clear and intelligent.

“Sister Serghetti,” said her Jesuit escort, “His Holiness.”

The pope, whom Serena instantly recognized, needed no introduction. “Your Holiness,” she said as the Jesuit closed the door behind her.

The great man seemed neither stern nor beatific to her.

Rather, he radiated the businesslike aura of a CEO. Except that this corporation was not traded daily on the exchanges of New York, London, and Tokyo. Nor did it forecast its future growth in terms of quarters, years, or even decades.

This enterprise was in its third millennium and measured its progress in terms of eternity.

“Sister Serghetti.” The pope’s voice conveyed genuine affection as he gestured to a chair. “It’s been too long.”

Surprised and suspicious, she sank into a leather chair while he looked over her Vatican file.

“Ozone protests outside the United Nations headquarters in New York,” he read aloud in a quiet yet resonant voice.

“Global boycotts against biomedical companies. Even your Internet home page registers more hits than mine.”

He looked up from the file in his lap with quick, bright eyes. “I sometimes wonder if your obsession to save Earth from the human race is motivated by some deeper, inner desire to redeem yourself.”

She shifted in her leather seat. It felt hard and uncomfortable. “Redeem me from what, Your Holiness?”

“I was acquainted with your father, you know.”

She knew.

“Indeed,” the pope went on, “I was the bishop to whom he came for advice upon learning that your mother was pregnant.”

This Serena did not know.

“He wanted your mother to have an abortion.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said, scarcely able to contain the bitterness in her voice. “So I take it you advised him not to?”

“I told him that God can make something beautiful even out of the ugliest of circumstances.”

“I see.”

Serena didn’t know if the pope expected her to thank him for saving her life or was simply relating historical events.

He was studying her, she could tell. Not with judgment, nor pity. He simply looked curious.

“There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you, Serena,” the pope said, and Serena leaned forward.

“Considering the circumstances of your birth, how can you love Jesus?”

“Because of the circumstances surrounding his birth,” she replied. “If Jesus was not the one, true Son of God, then he was a bastard and his mother, Mary, a whore. He could have given in to hatred. Instead he chose love, and today the Church calls him Savior.”

The pope nodded. “At least you agree the job is taken.”

“Indeed, Your Holiness,” she replied. “He gave you a pretty good job too.”

He smiled. “A job which I’m told you once said you’d like to have someday.”

Serena shrugged. “It’s overrated.”

“True,” the pope replied and eyed her keenly, “and rather unattainable for former nuns who have repeated the sins of their fathers.”

Suddenly her camera-ready facade crumbled and she felt naked. With this pope, a private audience was more like a therapy session than an inquisition, and she had run out of righteous indignation to prop herself up.

“I’m not sure I understand what His Holiness is getting at,” she stammered, wondering just how much the pope knew.

Then, remembering the fate of those who so often underestimated him, she decided it was best to come clean before she further embarrassed herself. “There was one close call, Your Holiness,” she said. “But you forget I’m no longer a nun nor bound by my vows. You’ll be happy to know, however, that I plan to remain celibate until I marry, which I suspect will be never.”

The pope said, “But why then did—”

“Just because we did not physically consummate our relationship did not mean we did not emotionally,” Serena explained. “And my feelings left me no room for doubt that I could not be a bride of Christ in this life and burn with passion for a man. Not without being a hypocrite like my father. So if you’re thinking of using this issue to undermine my credibility—”

“Nonsense,” said the pontiff. “Doctor Yeats’s name came up in an intelligence report, that’s all.”

“Conrad?” she asked, awed by the Vatican’s operatives.

“Yes,” said the pope. “I understand you met him in Bolivia during your former life as our most promising linguist.”

She leaned back in her chair. Perhaps a manuscript had turned up that required translation. Perhaps His Holiness had a job for her. She began to breathe easier. She was relieved to escape the subject of her celibacy, but the pope’s reference to Conrad had aroused her curiosity.

“That’s right. I was working with the Aymara tribe of the Andes.”

“An understatement,” the pope said. “You used the Aymara language to develop translation software for the Earth Summit at the United Nations. This you accomplished with a personal laptop computer after experts at a dozen European universities using supercomputers failed.”

“I wasn’t the first,” she explained. “A Bolivian mathematician, Ivan Guzman de Rojas, did it in the 1980s.

Aymara can be used as an intermediate language for simultaneously translating English into several other languages.”

“Six languages only,” the pope said. “But you’ve apparently unlocked a more universal application.”

“The only secret to my system is the rigid, logical structure of Aymara itself,” she said, her confidence returning in force. “It’s ideal for transformation into computer algorithm. Its syntactical rules can be spelled out in the kind of algebraic shorthand that computers understand.”

“I find this all quite fascinating,” he told her. “As close to hearing the whisperings of God as man may likely get in this life. Whyever did you give it up?”

“I still make a contribution now and then, Your Holiness.”

“Indeed, you are quite the freelancer. Not only are you Mother Earth and an official goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, but I see you worked on theLatinatis Nova et Vetera,” he said, referring to the Vatican’s “new look” Latin dictionary designed by traditionalists to catapult the ancient tongue of Virgil into the new millennium.

“That’s right, Your Holiness.”

“So we have you to thank for coining the Latin terms fordisco andcover girl —caberna discothecariaandterioris paginae puello.”

“Don’t forgetpilamalleus super glaciem.”

The pope had to pause to make the mental translation.

“Ice hockey?”

“Very good, Your Holiness.”

The pope smiled in spite of himself before growing very serious. “And what do you call a man like Doctor Yeats?”