The Alteration

       'Yes, Your Holiness,' said Maserati with conviction.

       'And what do you do? You take two hundred of them, a measly two hundred, and have them fornicate their heads off in between doses of Crick's Conductor. Ee, what a shocking fate! What do they care if they do lose their fertility?—they're inside again at the year's end, and they'll never need it there. Why did you not take two thousand? Four thousand? Then the deformities must have appeared, would have been ten or twenty times more likely to appear. Eh?'

       'Our facilities would not have allowed so many, Your Holiness.' Maserati spoke with less conviction than before.

       'Fuck your facilities! If they lack anything it's your blame and you know it. You are the Inventor-General, we believe.'

       There was silence but for the faint sound of cicadas. Frowning, the Pope stared at the nearest wall. It was fifty feet away and, like those adjacent to it, was hung from top to bottom with olive-green velvet. The purpose of this was to rest the eye and to conceal from it the beautiful travertine stone of which the room was built. The ceiling, painted with an awe-inspiring Creation by Tiepolo, was likewise hidden by an immense sheet of white linen. No object was visible, not even a clock or a candlestick, that might show signs of more than the absolute minimum in the way of craftsmanship: not an inch of floor showed between the plain rugs, the table bore a thin but opaque cloth and the chairs were of some black-painted wood with tie'd-on cushions covered in white silk. It was not (so he often said) that John XXIV disliked art, simply that he saw enough of it at other times to make its absence refreshing when he was at work. Throughout the rest of the building, as throughout the Vatican palaces except for the various cabinets there, art flourished unchecked, indeed perceptibly added to in one room and another by the reigning Pope himself, who knew that this was one ready method of furthering his very settled ambition to be remembered with exceptional vividness as long as the Papacy should last.

       The Vicar of Christ let Maserati wait for it a few moments longer, then said with some curiosity, 'How old are you, Count?'

       'Fifty-seven, Your Holiness.' Maserati spoke as if the fact singled him out for special and favourable notice, which was what he always tried to do when the Pope asked him this question.

       'Well, that's not truly old as men go today. Some reach the zenith of their powers at such an age.' (The Pope was fifty-four.) 'And then again some... begin... to decline. Do you feel that you begin to decline?'

       'No, Your Holiness.'

       'Another error of half this proportion and out go you. Further than that door into the bargain.'

       'Yes, Your Holiness,' said Maserati, trying this time to hide his relief.

       Here, Cardinal Berlinguer broke in. His English was not nearly as good as the Count's, but then it did not need to be: he had got his red hat two years earlier than the Pope and was second only to him in power. 'May I speak?'

       'Oh, we suppose so,' said the Pope impatiently. 'There are two matters still to be conferred upon.'

       'I will be short. Consider these numbers. The children we expect in the year is eight thousand and some more. The children who are born is six thousand and some more. This is just the... denatalita...'

       'Fall in the birth-rate,' supplied the Jesuit.

       'Yes, which we want, exact. The deformed children is one per centum and some more. This is almost seventy. Corsica is three thousand three hundred... square miles and some more. This is one deformed child in fourty-seven square miles and some more. This is nearly the same as the English island of Jersey. This morning I study it. Is this... so bad?'

       The Jesuit, a pale, thin-lipped man of fifty, said without expression, 'The design was to run at first for ten years. What do you say to ten deformed children in Jersey, Your Eminence? And some more.'

       'It is not so good,' agreed Berlinguer, nodding seriously. 'But I ask is it so bad.'

       'We'll be buggered!' The Pope sounded incredulous. 'Here you are, two grown men, and you talk of Jersey, where all they do is farm or idle. We and you don't intend to work our design only in such parts, leave alone dirty little savage places like Corsica. Consider not the square miles but the number of folk. There are almost twelve hundred thousand in London. If Crick's Conductor goes into the drinking-water there, in ten years we have...' The point of his stylus moved quickly over the tablet in front of him. 'We have almost three thousand children with this particular deformity, and in all England... over a hundred thousand.'

       Cardinal Berlinguer spread his hands. 'But—'

       'Yes, it is so bad! There'd be ill feeling among our flock, and if there's one thing we can't abide it's that. There'd be talk of divine displeasure, special pilgrimages to us and all manner of nuisance. And don't forget the matter of safety. Ay, that's what we said—safety. Do you think that no one in Corsica, even in Corsica, has remarked or will ever remark that the year of the deformities was also the year when officers were uncommonly interested in records touching births, and when the births themselves were uncommonly few?'

       'Shoot them,1 said Berlinguer.

       'Why, you... You go too fast, our lad. We're all for a bit of shooting when it's needed, but to shoot the guilty folk means rinding them, and rinding them means questioning, and questioning means a further threat to safety. We won't have it, do you hear? Crick's Conductor must not be applied again as it now stands.' The Pope turned to Father Satterthwaite. 'Have London let Crick know and order him to continue his trials. No, fetch him here to us... Now, as to our plague,' he went on, with a glance at the second remaining document, 'we need say very little to you. Our Inventor-General was right at first and at last, as he so often is.'

       None of the other three showed the smallest surprise at this change of tenor, certainly not Maserati, who knew quite well that the last phrases were intended to harrow his companions for talking of Jersey, not to mollify him in the least.

       'Yes, the indications were plain enough after the provings at East Runton and, uh, that Frenchie spot. The principle was too deadly to be transmitted. By which we mean'—the Pope gave a series of weighty nods at this point-'that the bastards awoke to life immortal before they could pass it on to their neighbours. The Sitges proving wasn't really needed, but we like to be on the safe side, as you know. We're afraid you'll just have to bear with us. We know we can rely on you to do that. Well, that's nearly four hundred souls the fewer, anyhow. And at least they didn't die in vain. To be reminded that the wrath of God can be strange and terrible and sudden does folk a power of good. Cease all trials of deadly principles,' he added abruptly to the Jesuit.

       'All?' asked Berlinguer.

       'Ay, all.' His Holiness gave a long sigh. 'Safety again. See, if we were a canny sod in a village on the coast and we learned of these incidents, do you know what we'd do? We'd conduct a design of night sentinels to watch for strangers, for anything out of the common coming by sea or land. That's what we'd do. And then...'

       'I said we were wrong to publish these things.'

       'Worse to let rumour do its work. Now, we graciously thank the honoured Inventor-General for his attendance and give him our blessing.'

       There was more silence when Maserati had taken his leave.

       The Pope, neatly-brushed head lowered, gazed at the final paper on the tablecloth before him. His expression was very grim indeed. Berlinguer and Satterthwaite exchanged looks of foreboding.