“But he’s mounted on wheels, isn’t he?” Kenneth persists.
“On treads,” replies the rabbi, giving Kenneth a fiery, devastating look and resuming his sunglasses. “Treads, like a tractor has. But I don’t think that treads are spiritually inferior to feet, or, for that matter, to wheels. If I were a Catholic I’d be proud to have a man like that as my pope.”
“Not a man,” Miss Harshaw puts in. A giddy edge enters her voice whenever she addresses Rabbi Mueller. “A robot,” she says. “He’s not a man, remember?”
“A robot like that as my pope, then,” Rabbi Mueller says, shrugging at the correction. He raises his glass. “To the new pope!”
“To the new pope!” cries Bishop FitzPatrick.
Luigi comes rushing from his cafe. Kenneth waves him away. “Wait a second,” Kenneth says. “The election isn’t over yet. How can you be so sure?”
“The Osservatore Romano,” I say, “indicates in this morning’s edition that everything will be decided today. Cardinal Carciofo has agreed to withdraw in his favor, in return for a larger real time allotment when the new computer hours are decreed at next year’s consistory.”
“In other words, the fix is in,” Kenneth says.
Bishop FitzPatrick sadly shakes his head. “You state things much too harshly, my son. For three weeks now we have been without a Holy Father. It is God’s Will that we shall have a pope. The conclave, unable to choose between the candidacies of Cardinal Carciofo and Cardinal Asciuga, thwarts that Will. If necessary, therefore, we must make certain accommodations with the realities of the times so that His Will shall not be further frustrated. Prolonged politicking within the conclave now becomes sinful. Cardinal Carciofo’s sacrifice of his personal ambitions is not as self-seeking an act as you would claim.”
Kenneth continues to attack poor Carciofo’s motives for withdrawing. Beverly occasionally applauds his cruel sallies. Miss Harshaw several times declares her unwillingness to remain a communicant of a Church whose leader is a machine. I find this dispute distasteful and swing my chair away from the table to have a better view of the Vatican. At this moment the cardinals are meeting in the Sistine Chapel. How I wish I were there! What splendid mysteries are being enacted in that gloomy, magnificent room! Each prince of the Church now sits on a small throne surmounted by a violet-hued canopy. Fat wax tapers glimmer on the desk before each throne. Masters of ceremonies move solemnly through the vast chamber, carrying the silver basins in which the blank ballots repose. These basins are placed on the table before the altar. One by one the cardinals advance to the table, take ballots, return to their desks. Now, lifting their quill pens, they begin to write. “I, Cardinal—, elect to the Supreme Pontificate the Most Reverend Lord my Lord Cardinal—.” What name do they fill in? Is it Carciofo? Is it Asciuga? Is it the name of some obscure and shriveled prelate from Madrid or Heidelberg, some last-minute choice of the anti-robot faction in its desperation? Or are they writing his name? The sound of scratching pens is loud in the chapel. The cardinals are completing their ballots, sealing them at the ends, folding them, folding them again and again, carrying them to the altar, dropping them into the great gold chalice. So have they done every morning and every afternoon for days, as the deadlock has prevailed.
“I read in the Herald-Tribune a couple of days ago,” says Miss Harshaw, “that a delegation of two hundred and fifty young Catholic robots from Iowa is waiting at the Des Moines airport for news of the election. If their man gets in, they’ve got a chartered flight ready to leave, and they intend to request that they be granted the Holy Father’s first public audience.”
“There can be no doubt,” Bishop FitzPatrick agrees, “that his election will bring a great many people of synthetic origin into the fold of the Church.”
“While driving out plenty of flesh and blood people!” Miss Harshaw says shrilly.
“I doubt that,” says the bishop. “Certainly there will be some feelings of shock, of dismay, of injury, of loss, for some of us at first. But these will pass. The inherent goodness of the new pope, to which Rabbi Mueller alluded, will prevail. Also I believe that technologically minded young folk everywhere will be encouraged to join the Church. Irresistible religious impulses will be awakened throughout the world.”
“Can you imagine two hundred and fifty robots clanking into St. Peter’s?” Miss Harshaw demands.
I contemplate the distant Vatican. The morning sunlight is brilliant and dazzling, but the assembled cardinals, walled away from the world, cannot enjoy its gay sparkle. They all have voted, now. The three cardinals who were chosen by lot as this morning’s scrutators of the vote have risen. One of them lifts the chalice and shakes it, mixing the ballots. Then he places it on the table before the altar; a second scrutator removes the ballots and counts them. He ascertains that the number of ballots is identical to the number of cardinals present. The ballots now have been transferred to a ciborium, which is a goblet ordinarily used to hold the consecrated bread of the Mass. The first scrutator withdraws a ballot, unfolds it, reads its inscription; passes it to the second scrutator, who reads it also; then it is given to the third scrutator, who reads the name aloud. Asciuga? Carciofo? Some other? His?
Rabbi Mueller is discussing angels. “Then we have the Angels of the Throne, known in Hebrew as arelim or ophanim. There are seventy of them, noted primarily for their steadfastness. Among them are the angels Orifiel, Ophaniel, Zabkiel, Jophiel, Ambriel, Tychagar, Barael, Quelamia, Paschar, Boel, and Raum. Some of these are no longer found in Heaven and are numbered among the fallen angels in Hell.”
“So much for their steadfastness,” says Kenneth.
“Then, too,” the rabbi goes on, “there are the Angels of the Presence, who apparently were circumcised at the moment of their creation. These are Michael, Metatron, Suriel, Sandalphon, Uriel, Saraqael, Astanphaeus, Phanuel, Jehoel, Zagzagael, Yefefiah, and Akatriel. But I think my favorite of the whole group is the Angel of Lust, who is mentioned in Talmud Bereshith Rabba 85 as follows, that when Judah was about to pass by—”
They have finished counting the votes by this time, surely. An immense throng has assembled in the Square of St. Peter’s. The sunlight gleams off hundreds if not thousands of steel-jacketed craniums. This must be a wonderful day for the robot population of Rome. But most of those in the piazza are creatures of flesh and blood: old women in black, gaunt young pickpockets, boys with puppies, plump vendors of sausages, and an assortment of poets, philosophers, generals, legislators, tourists, and fishermen. How has the tally gone? We will have our answer shortly. If no candidate has had a majority, they will mix the ballots with wet straw before casting them into the chapel stove, and black smoke will billow from the chimney. But if a pope has been elected, the straw will be dry, the smoke will be white.
The system has agreeable resonances. I like it. It gives me the satisfactions one normally derives from a flawless work of art: the Tristan chord, let us say, or the teeth of the frog in Bosch’s Temptation of St. Anthony. I await the outcome with fierce concentration. I am certain of the result; I can already feel the irresistible religious impulses awakening in me. Although I feel, also, an odd nostalgia for the days of flesh and blood popes. Tomorrow’s newspapers will have no interviews with the Holy Father’s aged mother in Sicily, nor with his proud younger brother in San Francisco. And will this grand ceremony of election ever be held again? Will we need another pope, when this one whom we will soon have can be repaired so easily?