Orme looked across the street at the Shirazis' home but could not see anyone through its window.

Bronski said, 'I'm deeply sorry about Madeleine. But I am glad that you've made this decision. Perhaps Madeleine will calm down. I think that she knows what the path is, but she just can't force herself to take it.'

Orme was worried about Danton, too. However, the news that the Iranian was also going to convert rocked him. What made them change their minds? And why couldn't he change his?

'I would have had to leave her anyway,' Nadir said. 'She's a pagan, and the People of the Covenant aren't allowed to marry pagans. We'll be divorced, though we probably would have been in any event. She's impossible to live with.'

There was no way of knowing why, at this moment, hearing these words, Orme made his decision. No great light bloomed, no trumpets blared. It happened as quietly as the birth of a mouse in a dark cupboard.

Shaking with excitement, he said, 'I'll see you later.'

They stared at him. As he went out the door, he heard Bronski call after him. 'Where are you going?'

'You'll find out!'

An hour later, having first found out where she was, he stopped his car outside the school where Gulthilo taught. Alerted by his call, she was waiting for him in an office near the entrance. Today she was dressed in a robe printed with blue and red flowers. He could smell her musky perfume. Her hair was a golden cataract down her back. Her blue eyes glowed; her smile seemed wide enough to take him in.

'You wouldn't say why it was so important that I see you at once,' she said. 'But I think I know. You want to marry me?'

'Right,' he said, and he took her in his arms. Behind him he heard some small girls giggle from just outside the office door.

The initiation ceremony into the faith was short but impressive. There was a huge crowd, an estimated one hundred and fifty thousand. The onlookers were there partly because of the historic importance, since this was the first time in two thousand years that the ritual had been used. The other attraction was the presence of the Messiah.

Jesus arrived in a ground car, probably much to the disappointment of those who hoped that he would levitate. He wore a sky-blue robe and the tephillin or phylacteries, two little leather cases, each holding four passages of the Law and worn on the forehead and left arm. He also carried his tallith, the prayer shawl. According to the law, a Jew was to wrap himself in the shawl and wear the tephillin during prayer, but when Orme had breakfasted with Jesus, his host had not done this. But as the Messiah, he was given a certain freedom. But this time he was apparelled as the chief rabbi should be.

His wife, Miryam, was making one of her rare public appearances. She came in another car, and when she got out to enter the synagogue, the people closest to her tried to touch her robe. If unable to do this, they touched those who had succeeded. It was as if they thought the power was transmitted to her from her husband and could even be felt at fourth-hand. Or perhaps it was just an exhibition of the public's affection for her.

Orme, Bronski, and Shirazi waited on the steps of the beth kinneseth, the synagogue. From inside it came music by an orchestra of a hundred. Gulthilo was among them; she had winked at Orme as she passed by him. There was no repressing her.

With a blare of trumpets and a crash of cymbals Jesus entered, and the converts and notables followed him. Orme was numb throughout the vows, the symbolic circumcision necessary because they had had their prepuces removed at birth, the prayers, and then the meal eaten afterward in a large room at the university. His happiness was alloyed with a doubt. Was he really doing the right thing? Wasn't he being swept along by pure emotion? But then, in these matters, it was always the heart that dictated after the mind had pondered.

The next day he went through a ceremony almost as numbing but one in which he forgot his uncertainty. He and Gulthilo were married by Jesus himself. The mistitha or wedding was solemn, but the celebrating afterwards was very lively. Mistitha was an Aramaic word originally meaning 'carouse', and this certainly was one. He believed that it would have been even wilder if Jesus had not been there. No one was going to tell jokes about a bride and bridegroom on their wedding night or drink themselves into a stupor while he was around. After he had left, the party exploded, but the newlyweds did not stay long. Gulthilo's mother wanted to talk more to Orme about her daughter. Gulthilo said, 'He knows all about me, mother,' kissed her, and they fled.

They drove to a little lodge on the shore of a lake in the adjoining cavern and wasted no time in getting into bed. At six in the morning an exhausted Orme was wakened by the shrilling of the TV. He dragged himself off the bed and staggered to the set. Nadir Shirazi's image appeared.

Before he heard the Iranian, Orme knew that he was the bearer of bad news. Grief had cut even deeper lines into his face.

'Madeleine called me about an hour ago. She said she was going to kill herself. I begged her not to, but she cut me off. Before I could get to the house - I was staying with Bronski, you know - she had driven a knife deep into her heart. I'm sorry to call you so early in the morning, but... I thought... you should know.'

He began weeping. Orme waited until the deep racking sobs had subsided, then said, 'We'll be there as soon as possible. But it's a long drive...'

'That's all right, Hfathon will send an airboat for you.'

Gulthilo and Orme arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes later. Bronski, Shirazi, Hfathon, and a Krsh doctor, Dawidh ben-Yishaq, were in the waiting room.

'I thought you said she was dead!' Orme said.

'She was,' Nadir said. 'But they repaired the wounds, got the heart working again, and now she lives.'

'But the oxygen supply to her brain... she'd been dead how long before they got her to the hospital?'

'Ten minutes. And she was dead at least half an hour. But the ambulance men had her in a cryonics chamber as soon as they arrived. Even so...'

Orme thought that she would be an idiot, a vegetable. Why bother? Then he thought of Jesus Christ. Couldn't he restore the cells to their original condition?

He took Bronski aside and asked him this. The Frenchman said, 'It wasn't necessary to ask him to come. In the first place, all restoration that could be done, even by him, was done at once. You forget, Richard, that their medical science is far ahead of ours. As for her brain, well, some irreversible damage occurred. Not even he could help her. There are certain things lost that only the Creator could restore.'

'What do you mean?'

'Her memory. Many of the cells storing this must have decayed. They can be restored, but their contents will be gone forever. They'll be empty containers, waiting to be filled.'

'Yes, but what about Lazarus? He'd been dead three days, and when he was raised by Jesus, he was as good as ever.'

Bronski smiled sadly. 'You still aren't able to distinguish between the Jesus of the Gospels and the historical one. No one could revivify a corpse that had been rotting for three days in that hot climate. That's a story that originated after Jesus had died or perhaps even when he was living. It's just one of the wild tales that collected about extraordinary people in those days.'

That was true. Madeleine did live, and her body was healthy, and her intelligence was as high as before. But she spoke believing herself to be twelve years old and in her parents' house in the city of Montreal. Prepared for something like this, the doctors had heavily sedated her to ease the shock. It would be a long time, if ever, before she would be able to understand what had happened to her.