Marc was not one of those guys who knew he wanted to be a priest when he was seven, but he was very close to it. Diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at five, he was lucky enough to be a Canadian when universal health care was available. "Leukemia is not that bad," he told them. "Mostly you are just very, very tired and you feel you need to die as a tired child needs to sleep. The chemo, on the other hand, was very terrible."

His mother did her best, but she had other children to care for. So it fell to his paternal grandmother, perhaps compensating for the way her son had deserted the family under cover of the stress of Marc's illness, to sit by his bed, to regale him with stories of old Quebec, to pray with him and assure him with perfect confidence that a new kind of operation, an autologous bone marrow transplant, would cure him. "Only a few years earlier, the kind of leukemia I had would surely have killed me. And the transplant itself very nearly did," he admitted. "But a few weeks later—it was like a miracle. My grandmother was convinced it was in fact a literal miracle, God's plan for me."

"What about you, Marc?" Sofia asked. "Did you think it was a miracle, too? Is that when you decided to become a priest?"

"Oh, no. I wanted to be a hockey star," he told them, through a burst of surprised laughter. And when they refused to believe this, he insisted, "I was a very good goalie in high school!" The talk moved on to sports at that point and never came back to Marc's childhood. But Sofia was not far wrong, although it was almost ten years before Marc Robichaux found a focus for his clear sense that life was God's gift, to give or take.

His grandmother's rosary had come with him to Rakhat, and so did his conviction that all life is fragile and evanescent, that God alone endures. And yet he knew that Anne would find such an answer to her unanswerable question inadequate and unsatisfying. Why? she would ask. Why does it have to be that way?

In the brief hours before the first of the Rakhati dawns, as Marc kept vigil with Alan's body, he watched Jimmy Quinn moving quietly from tent to tent, listening, agreeing, finding common ground and relaying messages. There had been times, Marc knew, when each of the mission members had thought privately that Alan Pace might cause trouble, but none of them had anticipated that it would come about like this or that Anne of all people would drive a wedge into the group.

Finally, with the night noises quieting and the orange sun's chorus tuning up, Jimmy came across the clearing toward Marc. "Blessed are the peacemakers," Marc said quietly. "Has the diplomacy gone well?"

Jimmy stared toward what they called east because that's where daybreak began, and ticked off the summaries with his fingers. "George thinks it's D.W.'s fault for pushing Anne past her limits. Anne is ashamed of herself for blowing up and says it was twenty years of frustration coming to a head. D.W. understands that and wishes he'd waited until Anne was rested up. Emilio also understands about Anne but he's afraid your feelings were hurt. Sofia says not even Job got an answer to Anne's question and Job got to ask God to His face."

Unexpectedly, Marc smiled. The orange sunlight filtered through the eastern edge of the forest and reached his silvering hair, restoring to it the golden tint of his youth. He had been a spectacularly beautiful child and even in middle age, the lovely lines of his face softening, he could be a treasure to look at. "Tell Father Yarbrough I should like to be the celebrant, please. And be sure that Dr. Edwards comes to Mass, oui?"

Jimmy waited to see if Marc had anything more to say but Robichaux turned away. The beads of an antique rosary began again to slip through his fingers in the gentle rhythm only Marc, and perhaps God, could hear.

There was a brief, tight discussion before the Requiem about whether they should bury Alan, cremate the corpse or take it back to the Stella Maris. The issue was whether or not the bacteria in his body would contaminate the local ecosystem. To Anne's considerable relief, she and Marc found themselves on the same side of the argument.

"The moment we stepped out of the lander, we affected this ecosystem," Anne said, voice husky from crying. "We have breathed and vomited and excreted and shed hair and skin cells. This planet has already been inoculated with whatever bacteria we're carrying."

"Have no illusions," Marc Robichaux added. "Our presence is now a part of this planet's history."

So a grave was dug and the yellow tarp's shrouded contents were carried to its edge. The Liturgy of Resurrection was begun, and when the time came, Marc spoke of Alan Pace and of the beauty of his music and the delight he had taken in hearing whole songs only a few weeks earlier.

"The voyage was not without reward for Alan," Marc said. "But we are left with Anne's question. Why would God bring him all this way, only to die now?" He paused and looked at Sofia before continuing. "The Jewish sages tell us that the whole of the Torah, the entirety of the first five books of the Bible, is the name of God. With such a name, they ask, how much more is God? The Fathers of the Church tell us that God is Mystery and unknowable. God Himself, in Scripture, tells us, 'My ways are not your ways and My thoughts are not your thoughts. "

The noise of the forest was quieting now. Siesta was the rule in the heat of midday, when three suns' aggregate light drove many animals to shelter. They were all, priests and lay, tired and hot, and wanted Marc to finish. But Marc waited until Anne lifted her eyes to his. "It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne's last night and to receive no plain answers," he said. "Perhaps this is because we can't understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God's ways and God's thoughts. We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited. Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable."

Emilio's head came up and he looked at Marc, his face very still. Marc noted this and smiled, but continued. "The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne's are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God."

"Reyes, relax! We're in far less danger out here."

"Far less is not the same as none," Felipe Reyes told the Father General sourly. They were out of sight of land now and unlikely to run onto rocks, which Giuliani knew to be the real hazard while sailing in the bay, but Reyes was unconvinced. "I was a lot happier when we could see the shoreline."

Giuliani grinned into the sun, as they sailed close-hauled on a starboard tack. He'd put Reyes on the tiller, figuring that the man could control it using his upper arm and elbow. Usually he gave virgins the jib sheet and taught them how to keep the sail from luffing so he could take the tiller himself, but Reyes didn't have a secure enough grip to handle rope.

"This is the first day, including Sundays, in almost ten years that I haven't been in at least four meetings," the Father General said. He was stripped to the waist, tanned and big-shouldered, in remarkable condition for a man of his age. Felipe Reyes, stocky and unathletic, kept his shirt on. "It's getting so I always make a sincere Act of Contrition before I go into a meeting. Statistically, it's a good bet I'm going die during one. Prepare to come about."