Sam glowered at me.
Pope William smiled. “How do we know, Senator Meyers, that this entire episode—Sam’s lawsuit, my coming to the Moon, the various assassination attempts—how do we know that all of this hasn’t been God’s way of bringing this one woman to repentance and salvation?”
“I won’t convert,” Josella snapped. “I’m a Moslem.”
“Of course,” said the Pope. “I only want you to change your life, not your religion.”
“All this,” I heard the disbelief in my own voice, “just for her?”
“There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who’s redeemed than there is over one of the faithful,” Pope William said.
Even God was concentrating on Josella, I thought, ashamed of my jealousy but feeling it seething inside me nonetheless.
Sam grinned at him. “So you think this whole thing has been an act of God, huh?”
“Everything is an act of God,” said Pope William. “Isn’t that right, Josella?”
She nodded silently.
Sam and I left Josella with the Pope. As we walked back along the corridors I tried to stop feeling so damned jealous. But the thought of her with Pope William just plain boiled me. All of a sudden it struck me that Josella might be more of a threat to William than she was to Sam. His soul, that is; not his body.
I started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Sam asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just—everything’s turned upside down and inside out.”
“Nope,” Sam said. “Everything worked out just the way I thought it would. Ol’ Francis X. was an altar boy, y’know. Went to Notre Dame and almost became a priest, before he found out how much he enjoyed making money.”
“You knew that all along?”
“I was counting on it,” Sam answered cheerfully.
We were at my door. I realized I was very weary, drained physically and emotionally. Sam looked as chipper as a sparrow, despite the hour.
“Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve,” he said.
I tapped my wristwatch. “You mean today; it’s well past midnight.”
“Right. I gotta get a high-g boost direct to Rome set up for Billy Boy if he’s gonna say Christmas Eve mass in St. Peter’s. Even then it’s gonna be awful close. See ya!”
He hustled down the corridor to his own suite, whistling shrilly off-key. And that’s the last I saw of Sam until Christmas.
POPE WILLIAM WAS overjoyed, of course. He invited me to breakfast that morning, just before his high-boost shuttle was set to take off. Even Cardinal Hagerty managed to smile, although it looked as if the effort might shatter his stony face. Josella was nowhere in sight, though.
“My prayers have been answered,” the Pope told me.
“The Lord certainly moves in mysterious ways,” I said.
“Indeed She does,” said the Pope, with a mischievous wink.
More mysterious than either of us realized at the time. Sam set up a direct high-g flight to Rome for the papal visitors, so that Pope William could get back in time for his Christmas Eve mass in St. Peter’s. But all of a sudden an intense solar flare erupted and raised radiation levels in cis-lunar space so high that all flights between the Earth and the Moon had to be canceled. All work on the lunar surface stopped and everybody had to stay underground for forty-eight hours. It was as if God was forcing all of Selene’s residents and visitors to observe the Christmas holiday.
Which is how William I became the first Pope to celebrate a public mass on the Moon. On Christmas Eve, in Selene’s main plaza. The whole population turned out, even Sam.
“I figure about five percent of this crowd is Roman Catholic,” Sam said, looking over the throng. We were seated up on the stage of the theater shell, behind the makeshift altar. Several thousand people jammed the theater’s tiers of seats and spilled out onto the grass of the plaza’s greenway.
“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “For one hour, we’re all united.”
Sam grinned. The Pope didn’t have his best ceremonial robes with him; he offered the mass in a plain white outfit. “They’re doing The Nutcracker this evening,” Sam whispered to me. “Wanna see it?”
Low-gravity ballet. Once I had dreams of becoming a dancer on the Moon. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good,” said Sam.
We watched the elaborate ritual of the mass, and the thousands of transfixed men and women and children standing out on the plaza, their eyes on the Pope. I spotted a slim, dark-skinned young man in a trim mustache and beard who looked awfully familiar.
“Y’know,” Sam whispered, “maybe I’ve been wrong about this all along.”
I nodded.
“I mean,” he went on, “if a guy really wants to make a fortune, he ought to start a religion.”
I turned and stared at him. “You wouldn’t!”
“Maybe that’s what I ought to do.”
“Oh Sam, you devil! Start a religion? You?”
“Who knows.”
I tried to glare at him but couldn’t.
“And another thing,” he whispered. “If we ever do get married, you’ll have to live here on the Moon with me. I’m not going back to Earth; it’s too dangerous down there.”
My heart skipped a couple of beats. That was the first time Sam had ever admitted there was any kind of chance he’d marry me. He shrugged good-naturedly. “Merry Christmas, Jill.” “Merry Christmas,” I replied, thinking that it might turn out to be a very interesting new year indeed.
Torch Ship Hermes
“So did you and Sam ever get married?” Jade asked.
Sitting in one of the comfortable armchairs in the torch ship’s lounge, Jill Meyers smiled enigmatically. “Not yet. I got the little SOB to within an eyelash of saying ‘I do’ a couple of times, but both times he scampered out on me before we could make it official.”
“And now … ?”
“Why do you think I’ve hired this ship? I’ll get him this time. I want to see the look on his face when he sees me—with a minister at my side.”
Despite herself Jade laughed.
“You know, there’s somebody else on this ship you should talk to,” Meyers said. “He was working with Sam when Sam got accused of genocide.”
“Genocide!”
“You haven’t heard about that one? Well, I guess they did hush it up afterward. But still—”
“He’s on this ship? I’ve got to interview him!”
Meyers nodded. “I’ll introduce you to him. His name’s Steve Wright.”
Steven Achernar Wright
Without hesitation, Jill Meyers phoned Ssteve Wright and invited him to the ship’s lounge for a drink. He turned out to be a pleasant enough fellow, somewhere near fifty, Jade judged. He had a shy, almost boyish manner, and unruly sandy hair that tended to flop over his forehead at the slightest excuse.
Once Jade started asking questions about Sam Gunn, his shyness turned to a reluctant, almost hostile series of monosyllabic grunts.
Until Jill Meyers told him, “Jade produced the video biography about Sam.”
A new light dawned in Wright’s eyes. “I haven’t seen it, but I heard it treated Sam pretty well.”
A little more conversation and a couple of drinks from the robot-tended bar, and Wright began to relax and talk nonstop.
“Look, I was the closest thing to a lawyer that Sam ever had. I mean, he hated lawyers. Probably that’s because he was always getting himself into legal troubles, you know, operating out at the edge of the law the way he always did.
“I don’t know if he really fell into that black hole or not. And I guess I don’t really care. Maybe he found real aliens out there and maybe not. We’ll see if he brings any back with him.”