“Are we going to St. Peter’s Square?” I asked Aenea. “Into the Vatican?”
“Let’s see if we can,” she said.
We started down the pedestrian walkway, just a man and a younger woman walking with a priest on a cool, rainy day. Across the street from us was a sign indicating that the imposing, windowless structure there was the barracks for the Swiss Guard. Troopers from that barracks in formal, Renaissance-era black cloaks, white ruffled collars, and yellow-and-black leggings stood holding pikes at the Porta Sant’Anna and at the intersections while Pax security police in no-nonsense black impact armor manned roadblocks and floated overhead in black skimmers.
St. Peter’s Square was closed off to foot traffic except for several security gates where guards were carefully checking passes and chipcard ID’s.
“We won’t get through there,” said Father de Soya. It was dark enough that the lights had come on atop Bernini’s colonnade to illuminate statuary and the stone papal coats of arms there. The priest pointed to two windows glowing above the colonnade and to the right of St. Peter’s facade topped by statues of Christ, John the Baptist, and the Apostles. “Those are the Pope’s private offices.”
“Just a rifle shot away,” I said, although I had no thoughts of attacking the Pope.
Father de Soya shook his head. “Class-ten containment field.” He glanced around. Much of the pedestrian traffic had passed through the security gates into St. Peter’s Square and we were becoming more obvious on the street. “We’re going to get our ID checked if we don’t do something,” he said.
“Is this level of security common?” asked Aenea.
“No,” said Father de Soya. “It may be because of your message that you were coming but it is more probable that it is the usual security when His Holiness is saying a papal Mass. Those bells we heard were a call to an afternoon Mass at which he is presiding.”
“How do you know that?” I said, amazed that he could read so much from the sound of a few bells.
Father de Soya looked surprised. “I know that because it is Holy Thursday,” he said, looking shocked either because we did not know such an elementary fact or because he had managed to forget it until this moment. “This is Holy Week,” he went on, talking softly as if to himself. “All this week His Holiness must carry out both his papal and diocesan duties. Today… this afternoon… certainly at this Mass, he performs the ceremony of washing the feet of twelve priests who symbolize the twelve disciples whose feet Jesus washed at the Last Supper. The ceremony was always held at the Pope’s diocese church, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, which used to be beyond the Vatican walls, but ever since the Vatican was moved to Pacem it’s been held in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Basilica of St. John Lateran was left behind during the Hegira because it had been destroyed during the Seven Nation Wars in the twenty-first century and…” De Soya stopped what I had thought was nervous chatter. His face had gone blank in that way common to mild epileptics or deeply thoughtful people.
Aenea and I waited. I admit that I was glancing with some anxiety toward the patrol of black-armored Pax security men moving toward us down the long boulevard.
“I know how we can get into the Vatican,” said Father de Soya and turned back toward an alley opposite the Vatican Boulevard.
“Good,” said Aenea, following quickly.
The Jesuit stopped suddenly. “I think that I can get us in,” he said. “But I have no idea how to get us out.”
“Just get us in, please,” said Aenea.
The steel door was at the rear of a ruined, windowless stone chapel three blocks from the Vatican. It was locked with a small padlock and a large chain. The sign on the sealed door said TOURS ON ALTERNATE SATURDAYS ONLY: Closed During Holy Week: CONTACT VATICAN TOUR OFFICE 3888 SQUARE OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MARTYRS.
“Can you break this chain?” Father de Soya asked me.
I felt the massive chain and the solid padlock. My only tool or weapon was the small hunting knife still in my belt sheath.
“No,” I said. “But maybe I can pick the lock. See if you can find some wire in that garbage module there… baling wire would do.”
We stood there in the drizzle for at least ten minutes, with the light fading around us and the sound of traffic on nearby boulevards seeming to grow louder, waiting every minute for the Swiss Guard or security people to swoop down on us. Everything I had learned about picking locks had come from an old riverboat gambler on the Kans who had turned to gambling after the Port Romance authorities had removed two of his fingers for thieving. As I worked, I thought of the ten years of odyssey for Aenea and me, of Father de Soya’s long voyage to this place, of the hundreds of light-years traveled and tens of thousands of hours of tension and pain and sacrifice and terror. And the goddamn ten-florin lock would not budge.
Finally the point of my knife broke. I cursed, threw the knife away, and slammed the stinking lousy cretinous piece-of-shit lock and chain against the grimy stone wall. The padlock clicked open.
It was dark inside. If there was a light switch, none of us could find it. If there was an idiot AI somewhere controlling the lights, it did not respond to our commands. None of us had brought a light. After carrying a flashlight laser for years, I had left mine behind in my backpack this day. When the time had come to leave the Yggdrasill, I had stepped forward and taken Aenea’s hand without a thought to weapons or other necessary items.
“Is this the Basilica of St. John Lateran?” whispered Aenea. It was impossible to speak in anything above a whisper in the oppressive darkness.
“No, no,” whispered Father de Soya. “Just a tiny memorial chapel built near the original basilica in the twenty-first…” He stopped and I could imagine his thoughtful expression returning. “It is a working chapel, I believe,” he said. “Wait here.”
Aenea and I stood with shoulders touching as we heard Father de Soya moving around the perimeter of the tiny building. Once something heavy fell with the sound of iron on stone and we all stood holding our breath. A minute later we heard the sound of his hands sliding along the inside walls again and the rustle of his cassock. There was a muffled “Ahhh… “and a second later light flared.
The Jesuit was standing less than ten meters from us, holding a lighted match. A box of matches was in his left hand. “A chapel,” he explained. “They still had the stand for votive candles.” I could see that the candles themselves had been melted to uselessness and never replaced, but the tapers and this one box of matches had remained for God knows how long in this dark, abandoned place. We joined him in the small circle of light, waited while he lighted a second match, and followed him to a heavy wooden door set behind rotting curtains. “Father Baggio, my resurrection chaplain, told me about this tour when I was under house arrest near here some years ago,” whispered Father de Soya. This door was not locked, but opened with a squeal of ancient, unoiled hinges. “I believe he thought it would appeal to my sense of the macabre,” went on Father de Soya, leading us down a narrow, spiraling stone stairway not much wider than my shoulders. Aenea followed the priest. I kept close to Aenea.
The stairway continued down, then down some more, and then more. I estimated that we were at least twenty meters beneath street level when the stairway ended and we passed through a series of narrow corridors into a wider, echoing hallway. The priest had gone through a half-dozen matches by this point, dropping each only after it had burned his fingers.
I did not ask him how many matches were left in the small matchbox.
“When the Church decided to move St. Peter’s and the Vatican during the Hegira,” said de Soya, his voice loud enough now to empty in the black space, “they brought it en masse to Pacem using heavy field lifters and tractor-field towers. Since mass was not a problem, they brought half of Rome with them, including the huge Castel Sant’Angelo and everything under the old city down to a depth of sixty meters. This was the twentieth-century subway system.”