So there we were: Sam, the Pope, Cardinal Hagerty, Greg, Josella and me, sitting around a circular table made of lunar plastic. Of the six of us, only Sam and I seemed truly at ease. The others looked slightly queasy from the low gravity. Cardinal Hagerty, in particular, gripped the arms of his chair as if he was afraid he’d be sucked up to the bare stone ceiling if he let go.
I was surprised at Josella’s uneasiness. She was seated next to me—I made certain to place myself between her and Sam. She had always seemed so cool and self-possessed that I felt almost pained for her.
While Greg went through the formality of reading the précis of Sam’s suit against the Vatican, I leaned over and whispered to Josella, “Are you having trouble adjusting to the gravity?”
She looked surprised, almost shocked. Then she tried to smile. “It’s … not that. It’s this room. I feel… it must be something like claustrophobia.”
I wondered that she hadn’t been bothered before, but then I figured that the other rooms of the hotel had big electronic window walls and green plants and decorations that tricked the eye into forgetting that you were buried deep underground. This conference room’s walls were bare, which made its ceiling seem low. Like a monk’s cell, I thought.
Halfway through Greg’s reading of the précis, Cardinal Hagerty cleared his throat noisily and asked, “If there’s nothing new in this travesty, could we be dispensing with the rest of this reading?”
Hagerty was by far the oldest person in the group. His face was lined and leathery; his hair thin and white. He looked frail and cranky, and his voice was as creaky as a rusted door hinge.
Sam nodded agreement, as did Josella. Greg tapped his hand-sized computer and looked up from its screen.
“Now then,” said the Pope, folding his hands on the tabletop, “let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.”
He was smiling at us. Pope William looked even younger in person than on TV. And even more dynamic and handsome. A rugged and vigorous man with steel-gray hair and steel-gray eyes. He looked more like a successful corporate executive or a lawyer than a man of God. Even in his white Papal robes, it was hard for me to think of him as a priest. And a celibate.
He had the knack of making you feel that he was concentrating all his attention on you, even when he wasn’t looking directly at you. And when his eyes did catch mine, I got goose bumps, so help me. Dynamic? He was dynamite.
Of course, he didn’t affect Sam the way he hit me.
“You want the nitty-gritty?” Sam replied, with no hint of awe at speaking face-to-face with the Pope. “Okay. God owes me half a billion dollars.”
“Ridiculous,” Cardinal Hagerty croaked.
“Not according to the insurance industry,” Sam countered. He jabbed a finger toward Josella. “Tell ’em, kid.”
Josella looked startled. “Tell them what?”
“Your employers claim that the accidents that’ve almost wrecked Ecuador National Space Systems were acts of God. Right?”
“Yes,” Josella answered warily.
Sam spread his hands. “See? They’re the ones who put the blame on God, not me. All I’m trying to do is collect what’s owed me.”
Pope William turned his megawatt smile on Sam. “Surely you don’t expect the Church to pay you for industrial accidents.”
“Don’t call me Shirley,” Sam mumbled.
“What?”
Barely suppressing his glee, Sam said, “We’ve been through all this. The insurance industry says God’s responsible. You claim to be God’s representative on Earth. So you owe Ecuador National Space Systems half a billion dollars.”
Pope William’s smile darkened just a bit. “And what will you do if we refuse to pay—assuming, that is, that the World Court should decide in your favor.”
“Which is ridiculous,” said Hagerty.
Sam was unperturbed. “If the World Court really is an International Court of Justice, as it claims to be,” he gave me the eye, “then it has to decide in my favor.”
“I doubt that,” said the Pope.
“Ridiculous,” uttered Cardinal Hagerty. It seemed to be his favorite word.
“Think about it,” Sam went on, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Think of the reaction in the Moslem nations if the World Court seems to treat the Vatican differently from other nations. Or India or China.”
Pope William’s brows knit slightly. Hagerty’s expression could have soured milk.
“Another thing,” Sam added. “You guys have been working for a century or so to heal the rifts among other Christians. Imagine how the Protestants will feel if they see the Vatican getting special treatment from the World Court.”
“Finding the Vatican innocent of responsibility for your industrial accidents is hardly special treatment,” said Pope William.
“Maybe you think so, but how will the Swedes feel about it? Or the Orthodox Catholics in Greece and Russia and so on? Or the Southern Baptists?”
The Pope said nothing.
“Think about the publicity,” Sam said, leaning back easily in his chair. “Remember what an American writer once said: ‘There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but can be destroyed by ridicule.’ ”
“ ‘By ridicule, howsoever poor and witless,’ ” the Pope finished the citation. “Mark Twain.”
“That’s right,” said Sam.
Cardinal Hagerty burst out, “You can’t hold the Vatican responsible for acts of the Lord! You can’t expect the Church to pay every time some daft golfer gets struck by lightning because he didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain!”
“Hey, you’re the guys who claim you’re God’s middleman. You spent several centuries establishing that point, too, from what I hear.”
“All right,” said Pope William, smiling again, “let’s grant for the sake of argument that the World Court decides against the Vatican. We, of course, will refuse to pay. It would be impossible for us to pay such a sum, in fact. Even if we could, we’d have to take the money away from the poor and the starving in order to give it to you.”
“To the nation of Ecuador,” Sam corrected.
“To Ecuador National Space Systems,” grumbled Cardinal Hagerty.
“Which is you,” said the Pope.
Sam shrugged.
Pope William turned to me. “What would happen if we refused to pay?”
I felt flustered. My face got hot. “I… uh—the only legal alternative would be for the Court to ask the Peacekeepers to enforce its decision.”
“So the Peacekeepers will invade the Vatican?” Cardinal Hagerty sneered. “What will they do, cart away the Pieta?. Hack off the roof of the Sistine Chapel and sell it at auction?”
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t see anything like that happening.”
“Lemme tell you what’ll happen,” Sam said. “The world will see that your claim to be God’s special spokesman is phony. The world will see that you hold yourselves above the law. Your position as a moral leader will go down the toilet. The next time you ask the nations to work for peace and unity the whole world will laugh in your face.”
Cardinal Hagerty went white with anger. He sputtered, but no words came past his lips. I thought he was going to have a stroke, right there at our conference table.
But the Pope touched him on the shoulder and the Cardinal took a deep, shuddering breath and seemed to relax somewhat.
Pope William’s smile was gone. He focused those steel-gray eyes on Sam and said, “You are a dangerous man, Mr. Gunn.”