To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) (38 page)

They held services for Doreen, Neva, Rob, Bennett, and Narmada. The bodies were then sent down the chutes to the fusion torches, to be recycled through the mass accelerators. They never found Sergeant White's body, and presumed it had been recycled during the cleanup.

"Atomic dust unto atomic dust," Marta philosophized.

The remaining friends lingered, reluctant to part. Kapuki asked if they had heard that Lieutenant Cady had been found hiding in one of the lower cells of the Arena, dressed in a bloody retiarius costume. "They executed him along with the rest of the cadre," she added.

"A change of power can be so bloody," Rio shivered.

"I made my speech," Blake said, "but it didn't stop much bloodshed, I'm afraid. There were just too many years of oppression to get out of their system. I didn't want them to reject religion, I just wanted them to remember never to let it control everything, ever again."

"The old ways die hard, darling. New ways are not easily assimilated," Rio consoled him.

"Granville," Marta asked, "are you going to like being a Professor of Modern History?"

"As long as they let me soak up information outside my field," the older man said. "They are talking about building some starships again and reviving the colonies out on Mars and Callisto. If they really get a starship going someplace, I think I'd like to be on board."

Kapuki said, "Do you know what Linda Muirwood is selling in her shop now? Little animatronic robots of Christ and Satan. Fighting."

"Ah, commercialism combined with patriotism." Rio laughed.

"Maybe the outcome of the battle is optional," Blake commented.

"It always is," Rio said.

The friends parted, with promises of future meetings, but each was off to pursue his or her life. Marta was shipping out to the colony at Bradbury, on Mars, and no one expected her to return.

As they left the chapel, Granville cautioned Blake about those who might be thinking of either capturing his favor or of removing him from their path.

Blake shook his head as he and Rio took a slidewalk toward the helipad on the Bay side of Fremont.
"I'm
so tired of all the plots and counterplots," he said moodily. "All those pockets of resistance that are still being talked out of it ... or subdued. Everyone wants his say in the new Constitution. And things are bogging down, nothing seems to be getting done."

Rio patted his arm. "Thank God for the Total Information Service. At least we can educate people better and quicker, and their choices and desires can be made known swiftly."

Blake blew out his cheeks in an explosive release of air. "Nitpickers, that's what Granville calls them – all those politicians. So few of them fought for the liberation. The ones that believed in it hard enough to lay their lives on the line soon got disgusted with all the talk-talk, and pulled out. Leaving the politicians."

Blake shook his head sadly. The reformation of most of the world's religious, political, and power structures was under way, but he knew it was far from finished.

"Now what?" Rio asked.

"To Rome. They've unsealed the Vatican, and pilgrims are pouring in from all over. The clergy are coming out of hiding."

"The Catholic Church – like the Jews – has had a lot of experience in survival," Rio said. "And has the philosophy for it. But those very facts made them dangerous to most of the new churches: the old ones had to go before the new ones could really take hold."

They switched slidewalks and crossed an area of carnage that was slowly being cleaned up. Rudely printed signs taped to walls pointed in the direction of Catholic churches, Hebrew temples, and Moslem mosques.

"The Catholics and Jews know how to lean with the blows," Rio said. "It sounds odd, the old religions going against total church control, but they were one of the biggest and strongest of the rebelling factors."

They came out on the helipad, and Blake showed his credentials as a member of the Western Revolutionary Council and commandeered an aircar to the airport.

"You're going to resign, aren't you?" Rio asked.

"I'm going to try. Cardinal Crowe seems to think `Once a pope, always a pope.' They've never had anyone want to resign before." He patted Rio's hand. "But don't worry, you aren't going to end up a nun."

"Oh, I
know
I'm not. Nor the pope's mistress, either."

Cardinal Barbella was a large, florid man who had spent his years as an outlawed cardinal working as a butcher. He was uncomfortable and hot in his new robes, which smelled of mothballs and moist catacombs. He looked at Blake mournfully for a long time, then his eyes quickly scanned Rio, who stood in the background.

The red-clad fat man sighed mountainously. Then he looked briefly at the semicircle of monsignori, bishops, and other cardinals. His glum expression matched theirs.

"You are determined to do this?" he questioned in heavily accented English.

"Yes," Blake said. He looked back at Rio. "I'm not really the pope and you know it. I was never really elected by the College of Cardinals, and I'm tired of people asking me, 'Is the pope Catholic?' and having to say no."

"You could convert. From whatever you are – or were." The cardinal seemed frustrated and faintly angry.

"From what? Hedonism? Once I've licked them, join them?" Blake was beginning to become angry. "Look, I was handed a holy mission. I did it. Now I want out. Why the hell do you want to keep me, anyway? Surely I can't be someone you
want?"

Cardinal Barbella looked both annoyed and embarrassed. "You are known as the pope. You are a figure of international acclaim. You are someone the various disunited factions could unite behind."

"A figurehead." Blake snorted. Cardinal Barbella spread his hands in an expressive gesture. "No, thanks."

One of the female clergy spoke up. "If His Eminence will permit...?"

The cardinal made a gesture.

"Senor
Mason..."

"See,
she
doesn't think I'm the pope," Blake said quickly.

"Senor
Mason, please, may I speak?" The woman gestured toward Rio. "Is it because of the woman, Rio Volas? Perhaps–"

"Monsignora Graef!" Cardinal Barbella exploded. "Are you suggesting–"

"Never mind what she was suggesting," Blake interrupted. "Jesus H. Christ, this job is harder to quit than to get!" He leaned across Cardinal Barbella's ornate carved desk and pounded it. "Look, I'm quitting. I'm going. Now. Good-bye. Understand? Tell the press what you will. Excommunicate me. Tell them I'm retiring. Whatever you want. But I'm leaving!"

"And how will you make a living?" Monsignora Graef asked silkily.

Blake stopped his angry thumping and looked at the slim churchwoman. "I'll go back to what I did before. I was pretty good at it."

"Ah, but your reputation was based on your sensual designs, was it not? `Devout hedonism' I believe the media of your time called your style."

Blake looked with new respect at the woman who had obviously dug into his past. He said, "Yes ... Go on."

"Do you truly expect the permissiveness of your period to return overnight? If you do, you do not know history,
Senor
Mason."

Rio stepped to Blake's side and said, "She's right."

"And I believe your trust fund and other monies were confiscated by an interchurch department more than fifty years ago?"

"Are you saying I should stay in this nice, comfortable job, draw my pay, keep my mouth shut, and never have Rio?" Blake laughed briefly. "You just don't understand me, do you? Your sort of life – not to even mention the celibacy – is just not for me. Nor could it ever be. I was your – what did Network B call it? – your ‘warrior pope’ because I
had
to be, just to get the job done. But I don't need to do that now."

Blake put an arm around Rio. "Don't worry about me, monsignora. I won't disgrace you by dying in the gutter with a bottle of sacramental wine in my fist. I'll get a job."

"Cardinal Barbella," the monsignora said, turning to the man behind the desk. "May I suggest something? It would not be, ur, suitable for one whom the world thinks of as Pope Urban X to engage in, urn, unsuitable vocations." Cardinal Barbella nodded his agreement, as did several of the other clergymen and -women. "The Church will need restorations, new churches, hospitals, many buildings. Perhaps
Senor
Mason could–"

"Ah, yes! Perfect, perfect!" Cardinal Barbella's face creased in a bright smile. "Yes?" he asked Blake.

Blake was shaking his head. "The Church is too steeped in the old forms. They would never like the ideas I have. I don't want to do repeats of forms already explored."

The fat cardinal just smiled. "You have new ideas?"

Blake said, "Yes, I do. New materials, new techniques can dictate new forms. A church is a place to worship, to meditate, to think, to focus the mind. There are materials that can give us soaring spires of crystal, underwater chapels surrounded by the living sea, orbiting temples with real stars in the ceiling, transparent–"

"Hooked," Rio said, amazed. "They've really hooked you."

"There are even forms no one has touched," Blake said. "Three-dimensional super-ellipses, floating in ... Huh?" Blake looked at the smiles around him. A smile tugged at one corner of his own mouth, then broke across it. "Suckered." he said with a snort. "All right, I'll design some things for you."

He started to turn away, his arm around Rio, but the cardinal stopped him. "When can we expect the ceremony to take place?"

"What ceremony?" Blake asked.

"The marriage ceremony between you and
Senorita
Volas?" the cardinal said suavely.

"Marriage?" Blake looked at Rio blankly. "Why?" The cardinal spread his hands again.

"Respectability," Rio said. "They want their architect to be respectable."

Blake looked into Rio's eyes for a long moment, reading what was there. He looked at Cardinal Barbella and nodded.

They went out under Bramante's arches, away from everyone, and embraced and kissed.

"'Living happily ever after' will take up a lot of time," Rio said.

"We have a few dozen decades, remember?"

"Yes. I remember. Just enough time for me to try
a
lot of the things
I've
been wanting to do."

"Ah, a happy beginning..." Blake said.

They walked out toward the fountain in the center of St. Peter's Square. The moon was full and bright. Behind them they heard a choir begin to sing.

Hand in hand, they began to run.