George snorted. "Yeah, well, we're about as likely to collect as Carl Sagan is, and he's been dead for years. Of course," he said, wheedling slightly, "that's why it would be so great if we—"

"Don't start with me, George."

"No guts."

Anne turned very slowly from the sink and looked narrowly at her beloved husband of over forty years. After drying her hands on a towel, she folded it neatly and laid it on the counter. "Eat shit," she suggested, smiling prettily, "and die." George laughed, which irritated her further. "Oh, George, be serious! You'd be leaving everyone you know and love behind—"

"Right. And even if you got back alive, everyone you knew would be dead!" he admitted belligerently. "So what? They'll be dead anyway. You want to hang around and watch?" Anne blinked. "Look. When your great-grandparents got on the boat from Europe, they may as well have been going to another planet. They left everyone behind, too! And Anne—who would we be leaving? Our parents are dead. We've got no kids. We don't even have a cat, for chrissakes."

"We have each other—" Anne said, a little defensively.

"Exactly, which is why it would be so great—"

"Oh, God. Just stop. Okay? Just stop." She turned back to the sink. "They aren't going to offer the job to a couple of old farts like us anyway."

"Wanna bet?" George asked, and she could hear the self-satisfied smile in his voice. "The priests won't be kids either. And, anyway, sixty ain't what it used to be."

"Dammit, George! I've really had enough of this!" Anne said, spinning around furiously. "So help me, if you say I'm beautiful when I'm angry, I will eviscerate you," she snarled, brandishing a dessert fork. He laughed and she cooled off. "All right. Enjoy the fantasy. Have fun. But, George," she said, eyes serious, "if they do make the offer? The answer is no, as far as I'm concerned. And that's the end of it."

Supper was unusually quiet in the Edwards household that evening.

At the end of that long Sunday, Jimmy was called into the office of Masao Yanoguchi, who took note of the ludicrous rumpled clothing and the red-rimmed eyes and estimated that the boy had been awake for almost thirty-six hours. He waved Quinn into a chair and watched the comically elongated framework fold itself into a sitting position. The guard's log was open on Yanoguchi's desk.

"Mr. Quinn, I recognize the names of Ms. Mendes and Mr. Edwards. I assume Dr. Edwards is the wife of Mr. Edwards. Who is E. J. Sandoz, please?"

"A friend, sir, a priest. They are all friends of mine. I'm sorry. I should have called you first but it was four in the morning and I wasn't really sure, not a hundred percent…"

Yanoguchi let the silence fill the room. Jimmy twisted his watch around and around his wrist in unconscious mimicry of Sofia, hours earlier. He stared at the floor for a few moments and then glanced at Yanoguchi but looked away almost immediately. "I was afraid I was wrong and I wanted someone else to listen—" Jimmy stopped and this time when he looked up, he didn't turn away. "That's not true. I knew. I was sure. I just wanted to share it with my friends first. They're like family to me, Dr. Yanoguchi. That's no excuse for poor judgment. I'll resign, sir. I'm sorry."

"I accept your apology, Mr. Quinn." Yanoguchi closed the guard's book and lifted a single small sheet of paper from his desk. "Ms. Mendes left this memo for me. She recommends that the AI project be restricted to request and return. I believe I agree. This will be carried out at considerable savings to ISAS because of your suggestion that the project be done as a wager." Yanoguchi put the memo aside. "I would like you to continue to cooperate with her, although you will no longer be required in your former position." He watched Quinn master his reaction and, pleased with the young man's self-discipline, went on to say, "Starting tomorrow morning, you will be in charge of a full-time effort to monitor the source of the transmission. You will supervise a staff of five. Round-the-clock coverage, two people per shift. I'd like you to coordinate the effort with similar crews at Barstow and the other telescopes."

He stood, and Jimmy got to his feet as well. "Congratulations, Mr. Quinn, on a historic discovery." Masao Yanoguchi, arms at his sides, bowed briefly; later, Jimmy would realize he was more surprised by this gesture than by anything else that had happened that day. "Permit me to give you a lift home," Yanoguchi suggested. "I don't think you should be driving. I'll have my chauffeur pick you up tomorrow morning as well. You can leave your car here overnight."

Jimmy was too dazed to say anything. Masao Yanoguchi laughed and led the boy out toward the parking lot.

That night, for the second time in as many nights, Emilio Sandoz had trouble falling asleep.

He used this apartment gratis because the house was too close to the encroaching ocean; no one else dared to stay in it anymore and the landlord had given up trying to rent it out. Tonight, alone as always in the little bedroom, Emilio stared at the cracked and patched ceiling made beautiful by moonlight reflected off the sea, and listened to the hypnotic sound of waves nearby. He knew sleep would not come easily and did not close his eyes to coax it.

He'd been prepared, to some extent, for nights like the one he'd passed the previous evening. "Lotta people in this ole world," D. W. Yarbrough had warned him once. "Sometime, somewhere, one or two of 'em gonna ring some bells for a man. Count on it, son." So even before he met Sofia Mendes, he understood that he'd have to reckon with someone like her. He no longer denied the turmoil she aroused in him; he simply accepted that it would take time to bring a natural response into congruence with his vows.

He'd never really questioned the vows. He accepted them as essential to the Apostolate—for making him readily available to work for the good of souls—and when the time came, he took them wholeheartedly. But at fifteen, when it all began? He'd have laughed himself stupid at the idea of becoming a priest. Oh, sure, D.W. got the charges dropped and got him off-island before anyone else took a shot at him, and he was grateful in a half-articulate way but in the beginning, he only intended to lie low until he was eighteen and could do as he pleased. Go to New York. Break into the minors. Box, maybe. Flyweight. Welterweight, if he filled out more. Sell again, if he had to.

The first months in the Jesuit high school were a shock. He was as far behind the other students scholastically as he was ahead of them in raw experience. Few of the boys talked to him, except to goad him, and he returned the favor. D.W. made him promise one thing: not to hit anyone. "Just master your hands, 'mano. No more fighting. Get a grip, son."

Nobody from his family ever wrote or called, much less visited. His brother beat the rap, D.W. told him toward the end of the first semester, but still blamed Emilio for what happened. Well, fuck him, who gives a shit? he thought savagely and swore he'd never cry again. He went over the wall that night. Found a whore, got wrecked. Came back defiant. If anybody noticed he was gone, no one said anything about it.

The tide began to turn for him about eight months into his sophomore year. The quiet orderliness of life in the boarding school began to seduce him. No crises, no sudden terror, no gunshots and screaming in the night. No beatings. Each day planned, no surprises. Almost in spite of himself, he did well at Latin. Won a prize, even. "For excellence." He liked the sound of that. Rolled the word around in his mind.

He did better junior year, despite the fact that he spent nearly all of it arguing with the priests. So much of what he knew about religion struck him as total bullshit; he was disarmed when the fathers freely admitted that some stories were in fact pious fictions. But, judging his character, they dared him to cut through what he called the crap: to find the core of truth, carefully preserved and offered to all comers through the centuries.