I couldn't have been more wrong.
"You must be Mr. Markand," the elderly, white-cloaked man said as he stepped briskly through the archway into the anteroom. "I'm sorry about the delay, but I
was in conference and I've just now been told you were here."
"Oh, no problem, your Ministri, no problem," I said, scrambling to my feet and trying not to stutter. Some junior cleric, I'd been cynically expecting; but this was the man himself. First Ministri Jorgen Goribeldi, supreme head of the Church. "I've been perfectly fine here."
"Good," he said smiling easily as he waved me toward the hallway he'd emerged from. It was, I realized with some embarrassment, a reaction he was probably used to. "Come this way, please, and tell me what I can do for you."
"I should first apologize for the intrusion, your Ministri," I said as we set off together down the hallway. "I wasn't expecting them to bother you personally with this."
"That's quite all right," Goribeldi assured me. "I like meeting with people—it's too easy to get out of touch in here." He shrugged, a slight movement of his white cloak. "Besides, I'm one of the few people in the Ponte Empyreal at the moment who can help you with your questions about the Sagtt'a colony."
"Yes, sir," I said, feeling my heartbeat pick up. "Am I right, then, in assuming that the Church did indeed send a delegation there?"
"Certainly," he nodded. "At the direct invitation of the Kailth, I might add.
They had noted the Church's passion for the well-being of humanity, and wanted to demonstrate their good-will by letting us visit the humans living under their dominion. We found no evidence of cruelty or oppression, by the way."
"Yes, I've talked to some of them," I agreed. "They seem to think of the Kailth as liberators."
"Apparently with a great deal of validity. So what exactly do you wish to know?"
"It's a little hard to put into words," I said hesitantly. "I guess my question boils down to whether they could be so deeply under Kailth influence that they could appear open and honest to other people while at the same time actually being engaged in a kind of subversive warfare."
"In theory, of course they could," Goribeldi said. "Humanity has a tremendous capacity for rationalization and justification when it comes to doing evil against our brothers and sisters. They would hardly need to be under Kailth influence to do that. Or the influence of propagandists, megalomaniacal leaders, or Satan himself. It's a part of our fallen nature."
I nodded. "I see."
We had reached the end of the hallway now and a doorway flanked by a pair of brightly clad ceremonial guards. "But in this specific case," Goribeldi continued, pausing outside the door, "I would say any such worries are probably unfounded. Our delegation found the Sagtt'an society to be a strongly moral one, with a long tradition of ethical behavior. I'm sure they still have their share of people who can lie or steal with a straight face; but as a group, no, I don't think they could say one thing and do another. Not without it being obvious."
"All right," I said slowly. "But couldn't the group on Quibsh have been hand-picked by the Kailth for just that ability? Especially if it was drummed into them that the UnEthHu was their enemy?"
"I suppose that's possible," Goribeldi conceded, nodding to the guards. One of them reached over and released the old-fashioned latch, pushing the door open in front of us. "But I would still think it unlikely. Why don't you come in and I'll show you some of the relevant portions of the priestians' report."
We stepped together through the doorway. Goribeldi's private office, apparently, if the comfortably lived-in clutter was an indication. In the center of the room was a small conversation circle of silkhide-covered chairs and couches, to the right a programmable TV transceiver console, and to the left, beneath a wall of privacy-glazed windows, a large desk.
And sitting prominently on a corner of that desk was a calix.
I stopped short, my heart freezing inside me. "No," I whispered involuntarily.
"What is it?" Goribeldi asked, frowning at me.
I threw a quick glance at him, threw another out the door at my only escape route. But it was already too late. At my reaction the guards had suddenly stopped being ceremonial and were eying me like a pair of tigers already coiled to spring.
It was over. All over. And I had lost. The Kailth had gotten to First Ministri Goribeldi... and whatever the calix was supposed do to him had surely already been accomplished.
And knowing my suspicions about them, he certainly couldn't allow me to live. would just disappear from the Ponte Empyreal, with no one ever knowing what had happened.
Goribeldi was still frowning at me. "The calix," I said, with the strange calmness of someone who has nothing left to lose. "A gift from the Sagtt'ans?"
"No," he said. "From your superior." I blinked at him. "My superior? You mean... Convocant Devaro?"
"Yes, of course," he said, frowning a little harder. "He sent it here—oh, four or five weeks ago. A thank-you gift for my sending him a revised copy of our Sagtt'a report. Why, is there a problem?"
I looked at him, and the guards, and the calix. Then, as if moving in a dream, walked over to the desk. Devaro had ordered me not to touch any of the three new calices on my way back from Quibsh, and I hadn't. But I'd had four days to study them en route, and I had.
Goribeldi was right. This was indeed one of them.
I turned back to face him, feeling vaguely light-headed. "But why?" I asked.
"Why would he do this? It's a weapon."
Goribeldi shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I don't follow you."
"A weapon," I repeated. "It's programmed—programmed by touch. Whenever you hold it, it starts affecting you. It turns you from human into something else."
The guards took a step toward me. "Sir?" one of them murmured.
"No, no, it's all right," Goribeldi said, waving them back. "I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, Mr. Markand, but you have it precisely backwards.
The calix doesn't affect you. You affect it."
I stared at him. "What do you mean?"
"It's your presence that changes the calix, not the other way around," he said.
"Your touch and voice affect the wood and crystal, altering the sculpture into a
sort of echo of your own personality. A beautifully unique art form, far more individual than anything else you could possibly—"
"Wait a minute," I interrupted him, fighting hard to keep my balance as the universe seemed to tilt sideways beneath me. "You know this for a fact? I mean, it's been proven?"
"Of course," Goribeldi said. "The scientists in our delegation studied it thoroughly. In fact, 'calix' was actually the priestians' name for it, coming from an old term for the Cup of Communion. Holding a reflection of your soul, as it were. I hadn't realized the Sagtt'ans had picked up on the name."
I looked back at the calix. "I'm sorry, your Ministri," I said, my face warm with a thoroughly unpleasant mixture of embarrassment and confusion. "I guess I—" I broke off, shaking my head. "I'm sorry."
"That's all right," Goribeldi said, waving the guards back to their posts.
Apparently, he'd decided I wasn't crazy. Me, I wasn't so sure. "Come, let me show you the priestians' report."
I still wasn't sure half an hour later when he escorted me back to the anteroom and thanked me for coming. One thing I was sure of, though: the calices did indeed seem to behave exactly as he had said they did.
Which meant they weren't the weapons that Convocant Devaro had thought they were. Surely if he'd read the Church's report he already knew that.
But he'd had that report at least a month ago. If he had read it, why was he still subjecting me to weekly brainscans?
Unless he still wasn't convinced the calices were harmless. But in that case, why would he risk giving a potentially dangerous weapon to First Ministri Goribeldi?
I puzzled over it as I headed down the street toward the magtrans station. I was still puzzling, in fact, right up to the point where the two large men came up on either side of me and effortlessly stuffed me into a waiting car. There was the tingle of a stunner at my side, and the world went dark. I awoke aboard a half-wing already driving through space. The two men who'd kidnapped me were aboard as well, the three of us apparently the only passengers. As jailers they initially seemed rather amateurish; aside from the control areas and their two cabins I had complete freedom of the ship. But after two days of searching for weapons or escape routes or even information, I came to realize they weren't so much amateurish as just casually efficient. They completely ignored my questions and occasional frustrated demands, and only spoke to each other in clipped sentences of a language I didn't recognize.