Rod nodded grimly. “It’s a potent force, no question about it—especially in a medieval society, where most of the people take their religion superstitiously. Just the kind of a conflict to topple a government, in fact—if the Church can drum up enough popular support, and an army.”

“With the futurians’ propaganda techniques and weaponry, neither should be too great a problem.”

“Not if it gets that far.” Rod grinned. “So it’s up to us to head it off before it gets to that pass, eh, old circuit rider? ”

“So many human battles could be averted by a little common sense,” Fess sighed.

“Yes, but the King and the Lord Abbot aren’t common—and when religion and politics are involved, no one’s got much sense.”

Travel light, don’t you, Father?” the spaceport guard commented.

Father Al nodded. “It is one of the advantages of being a priest. All I need is a spare cassock, a few changes of underwear, and my Mass kit.”

“And a surprising amount of literature.” The guard riffled through a book from the stack. “Magic and the Magi… Little odd for a priest, isn’t it?”

“I’m a cultural anthropologist, too.”

“Well, to each his own.” The guard sealed the suitcase. “Certainly no weapons in there—unless you come across a devil or two.”

“Hardly.” Father Al smiled. “I’m not expecting anything worse than the Imp of the Perverse.”

“ ‘Imp of the Perverse?’ ” The guard frowned. “What’s that, Father?”

“An invention of Edgar Allan Poe’s,” Father Al explained. “To my way of thinking, it nicely explains Finagle’s Law.”

The guard eyed him warily. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Father, you’re not exactly what I expect in a priest—but you’re clear.” He pointed. “The shuttle gate’s over that way.”

“Thank you.” Father Al took up his suitcase and headed for the boarding area.

On the way, he passed a fax-stand. He hesitated; then, on an impulse, he dropped in his credit card and punched up “McAran, Angus, ca. 1954.” Then he leaned back and waited. It must have been a long search; almost five seconds passed before the machine began humming. Then the hard copy emerged slowly—about a meter of it. Father Al pulled it out and devoured it with his eyes.

“McAran, Angus, Ph.D., 1929 - 2020: Physicist, engineer, financier, anthropologist. Patents…”

“Excuse me, Father.”

“Eh?” Father Al looked up, startled, at the impatient-looking gentleman behind him. “Oh! My apologies. Didn’t realize I was in the way.”

“Perfectly all right, Father,” the man said, with a smile that contradicted the words. Father Al folded the hard copy in thirds, hastily, and moved off toward the boarding area.

He sat down in a floating chair and unfolded the copy. Amazing what the PIB had stored in its molecular circuits! Here was a thumbnail biography of a man who’d been dead more than a thousand years, as fresh as the day he’d died—which was presumably the last time it’d been updated. Let’s see, now—he’d patented five major inventions, then set up his own research and development company—but, oddly enough, he hadn’t patented anything after that. Had he let his employees take the patents in their own names? Improbably generous, that. Perhaps he just hadn’t bothered to keep track of what his company was doing; he seemed to have become very heavily involved in…

“Luna Shuttle now boarding.”

Drat! Just when it was getting interesting. Father Al scrambled up, folding the copy again, and hurried to tail onto a very long line. The shuttle left once every hour, but everyone who was leaving Europe for any of Sol’s planets or for any other star system had to go through Luna. Only half a percent of Terra’s population ever left the mother planet—but half a percent of ten billion makes for very long lines.

Finally, they were all crowded onto the boarding ramp, and the door slid shut. There was no feeling of movement, and any sound from the motors was drowned out by the quiet hum of conversation; but Father Al knew the ramp was rolling across a mile of plasticrete to the shuttle.

Finally, the forward door opened, and the passengers began to file aboard the shuttle. Father Al plopped down into his seat, stretched the webbing across his ample middle, and settled down to read his hard copy with a blissful sigh.

Apparently having tired of inventing revolutionary devices, McAran had turned his hand to treasure-hunting, finding fabled hoards that had been lost for centuries; the most spectacular was King John’s treasury, but there had also been major finds all the way back to the city of Ur, circa 2000 BC. This pursuit had naturally led him into archaeology, on the one hand, and finance, on the other. Apparently the combination had worked well for him; he had died a very wealthy man.

All very impressive, Father Al admitted, but not when it came to magic. How would the man have been able to identify a wizard, even during his own time? Father Al had searched history assiduously, but had never come up with anyone who could have been a real magic-worker—they were either tricksters, espers, or poor deluded souls, almost certainly. Of course, in the very early days, there were a few who might have been sorcerers, tools of the devil. Opposing them, there were definitely saints. And, though the saints were certain, Father Al doubted there had ever really been any “Black Magic” witches; it made very poor business sense for the Devil. But magic without a source in either God or the Devil? Impossible. It would require someone who was an esper, a medium, and had some unnamed power to break the “Laws of Nature” by, essentially, merely wishing for things to happen. That was the stuff of fairy tales; neither science nor religion even admitted its possibility, had even a chink in its wall of reason through which such powers might seep.

Which, of course, was what made it so delightful a fantasy. If any such individual ever did actually come to light, those walls of reason would come tumbling down—and who could tell what new and shining palaces might emerge as they were rebuilt?

“Gentlefolk,” said a canned voice, “the ship is lifting.”

Father Al bundled up his paper, thrust it in his breast pocket, and pressed his nose against the port. No matter how many times he flew, it still seemed new to him—that wonderful, faerie sight of the spaceport growing smaller, falling away, of the whole city, then the countryside, being dwarfed, then spread out below him like a map, one that dropped away further and further beneath him, till he could see Europe enameled on the bottom of a giant bowl, its rim the curve of the Earth… and that was just on the ballistic rocket flights from one hemisphere to another. The few times he had been in space, it had been even better—the vast bowl dropping further away, till it seemed to turn inside out and become a dome, then a vast hemisphere filling the sky, somehow no longer below him, but beside him, continents mottling its surface through a swirl of clouds…

He knew that seasoned passengers eyed him with amusement, or contempt; how naïve he must seem to them, like a gawking yokel. But Father Al thought such delights were rare, and not to be missed; to him, it was wrong to ever cease to glory in the wonder of God’s handiwork. And, at the moment when he sat most enthralled with the majestic vista on the other side of the port, a question sometimes tickled the back of his mind: Who was the true sophisticate, they or he?

This time, the overcast quickly cut off sight of the faerie landscape below, but turned into a dazzling sea of cotton beneath him, sinking away till it seemed a vast snowfield. Then, just barely, he felt the ship quiver, then begin a low, threshold hum of muted power. The antigravity units had been shut off, and the powerful planetary drive now propelled the shuttle.