“Please don’t smoke,” I said.
He looked utterly shocked.
“It’s bad for your lungs and ours,” I added.
Sighing, he slipped the case back into his pocket. “You sound like my daughter.”
“Thank you,” I said, and made a polite smile for him.
“Do you think we can settle out of court?” Sam asked.
“Where’s the Pope going to get half a billion?” I snapped.
Sam shrugged good-naturedly. “Sell some artwork, maybe?”
I pushed my chair from the table. Molina and the president shot to their feet. De Rivera was closer to me; he held my chair while I stood up.
“Allow me to escort you to your room,” he said.
“Thank you so much,” I replied.
Sam, still seated, gave me a suspicious look. But he didn’t move from his chair. The president gave me his arm and I placed my hand on it, just like we were Cinderella and the Prince at the ball. As we walked regally out of the dining room I glanced back at Sam. He was positively glowering at me.
We took an intimately small elevator up two flights. There was barely room enough in it for the two of us. De Rivera wasn’t much taller than I, but he kept bobbing up on his toes as the elevator inched its way up. I wondered if it was some sort of exercises for his legs, until I realized that he was peeking down the front of my blouse! I had dressed casually. Modestly. And there wasn’t much for him to see there anyway. But he kept peeking.
I took his proffered arm once again as he walked me to my door. The wide upstairs corridor was lined with portraits, all men, and furniture that looked antique and probably very valuable.
He opened the door to my suite, but before he could step inside I maneuvered myself into the doorway to block him.
“Thank you so much for the excellent dinner,” I said, smiling my kiss-off smile.
“I believe you will find an excellent champagne already chilled in your sitting room,” said the president.
I gave him the regretful head shake. “It’s much too late at night for me to start drinking champagne.”
“Ah, but the night is young, my lovely one.”
Lovely? Me? I was as plain as a pie pan and I knew it. But El Presidente was acting as if I was a ravishing beauty. Did he think he could win me over to his side by taking me to bed? I’ve heard of tampering with a judge but this was ridiculous.
“I’m really very tired, Mr. President.”
“Carlos,” he whispered.
“I’m really very tired, Carlos.”
“Then it would be best for you to go directly to bed, would it not?”
I was wondering if I’d have to knee him in the groin when Sam’s voice bounced cheerfully down the corridor. “Hey Jill, I just remembered that there was another so-called act of God that cost us ten-twenty mill or so.”
The president stiffened and stepped back from me. Sam came strolling down the corridor with that imp’s grin spread across his round face.
“Lemme tell you about it,” he said.
“I’m very tired and I’m going to sleep,” I said firmly. “Goodnight, Sam. And goodnight, Carlos.”
As I shut the door I saw Carlos glaring angrily at Sam. Maybe I’ve broken up their alliance, I thought.
Then I realized that Sam had come upstairs to rescue me from Carlos. He was jealous! And he cared enough about me to risk his scheme against the Pope.
Maybe he did love me after all. At least a little.
We tried to settle the mess out of court. And we might have done it, too, if it hadn’t been for the other side’s lawyer. And the assassins.
All parties concerned wanted to keep the suit as quiet as possible. Dignity. Good manners. We were talking about the Pope, for goodness’ sake. Maintain a decent self-control and don’t go blabbing to the media.
All the parties agreed to that approach. Except Sam. The instant the World Court put his suit on its arbitration calendar, Sam went roaring off to the news people. All of them, from BBC and CNN to the sleaziest tabloids and paparazzi.
Sam was on global television more than the hourly weather reports.
He pushed Santa Claus out of the headlines. You couldn’t punch up a news report on your screen without seeing Sam’s Jack-o’-lantern face grinning at you.
“I think that if God gets blamed for accidents and natural disasters, the people who claim to represent God ought to be willing to pay the damages,” Sam said gleefully, over and again. “It’s only fair.”
The media went into an orgy of excitement. Interviewers doggedly tracked down priests, ministers, nuns, lamas, imams, mullahs, gurus of every stripe and sect. Christmas was all but forgotten; seven “holiday specials” were unceremoniously bumped from the entertainment networks so they could put on panel discussions of Sam’s suit against the Pope instead.
Philosophers became as commonplace on the news as athletes. Professors of religion and ethics got to be regulars on talk shows all over the world. The Dalai Lama started his own TV series.
It was a bonanza for lawyers. People everywhere started suing God—or the nearest religious establishment. An unemployed mechanic in Minnesota sued his local Lutheran Church after he slipped on the ice while fishing on a frozen lake. An English woman sued the Archbishop of Canterbury when her cat got itself run over by a delivery truck. Ford Motor Company sued the Southern Baptists because a ship carrying electronic parts from Korea sank in a typhoon and stopped Ford’s assembly operation in Alabama.
Courts either refused to hear the suits, on the grounds that they lacked jurisdiction over You-Know-Who, or held them up pending the World Court’s decision. One way or another, Sam was going to set a global precedent.
The Pope remained stonily silent. He virtually disappeared from the public eye, except for a few ceremonial masses at St. Peter’s and his regular Sunday blessing of the crowds that he gave from his usual balcony. There were even rumors that he wouldn’t say the traditional Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter’s.
He even stopped giving audiences to visitors—after the paparazzi and seventeen network reporters infiltrated an audience that was supposed to be for victims of a flood in the Philippines. Eleven photographers and seven Filipinos were arrested after the Swiss Guard broke up the scuffle that the news people started.
The Vatican spokesman was Cardinal Hagerty, a dour-faced Irishman with the gift of gab, a veteran of the Curia’s political infighting who stonewalled the media quite effectively by sticking to three points:
One: Sam’s suit was frivolous. He never mentioned Ecuador at all; he always pinpointed the notorious Sam Gunn as the culprit.
Two: This attempt to denigrate God was sacrilegious and doomed to failure. Cardinal Hagerty never said it in so many words, but he gave the clear impression that in the good old days the Church would have taken Sam by the scruff of his atheistic little neck and burned him at the stake.
Three: The Vatican simply did not have any money to spend on malicious lawsuits. Every penny in the Vatican treasury went to running the Church and helping the poor.
The uproar was global. All across the world people were being treated to “experts” debating the central question of whether or not God should be—or could be—held responsible for the disasters that are constantly assailing us.
There were bloody riots in Calcutta after an earthquake killed several hundred people, with the Hindus blaming Allah and the Moslems blaming Kali or Rama or any of the other hundreds of Hindu gods and goddesses. The Japanese parliament solemnly declared that the Emperor, even though revered as divine, was not to be held responsible for natural disasters. Dozens of evangelist ministers in the U.S. damned Sam publicly in their TV broadcasts and as much as said that anyone who could stop the little bugger would be a hero in the eyes of God.