The skinny guy had wrinkled his big, wide forehead like a shar-pei and was shaking his head. "I never quite got what's supposed to happen after the Mayan calendar runs out. I mean, what if it's like Y2K? Except instead of all the microchips that were supposed to break down and all, all the world's stone calendars don't work anymore. Hard to see the downside there."

"I read somewhere online that maybe Betelgeuse had gone supernova," the big Indian guy said.

"Hypernova," the bearded guy said.

"Hypernova, then."

"And that concerns us how?" the skinny kid asked.

"Well, it's, like, theorized this happened a couple hundred years ago. Supposedly the star shows signs of being unstable. Its spectra or something."

"But if it happened two centuries ago – "

"But, see, it'd take time for the explosion to get here. Even at light speed. You know how the Mayas made all these precise astronomical observations. So, maybe they noticed Betelgeuse was fixing to blow?"

"Wait," the skinny kid said. "This happened, what? Five hundred years ago? They predicted Betelgeuse would blow up two hundred years ago? Isn't that three hundred years in their future? I'm confused."

"Betelgeuse is 427 light-years away," the bearded guy said, forking up more eggs in salsa verde.

"God, you're a nerd."

"We're all nerds. Why else are we here in Snake's Navel, New Mexico? Anyway, wouldn't that mean, if the Maya made their calendar four – five centuries ago, Betelgeuse would've been blowing up more or less the same time?"

"Whatever," the Indian kid said. "The point is, supposedly they knew all these secrets of astronomy and shit. So what if they totally foresaw that the radiation from the hypernova was gonna hit Earth on December 12, 2012, when the Mayan calendar runs out?"

"Seems like kind of a long lead time for the holy kid to be predicting doom in 2012."

"Maybe he wants to give humanity plenty of time to prepare."

"What's humanity going to doabout the blast wave from a hypernova hitting the Earth in 2012? Invent teleportation and leave? To go where?"

The skinny kid reached out and rapped his knuckles on top of the bearded guy's baseball cap. "Dude, blast waves don't propagate in space. Hello. It's a vacuum? Blast waves need something to travel through. They're like sound."

The bearded guy batted his hand away. "Okay. The expanding shell of lethal hard radiation. Satisfied?"

"You're not taking this seriously," the Kiowa-looking kid said sulkily. "Native peoples had a lot of wisdom about Nature."

"Hey, I was the one who brought up the Mayan calendar. I'm not selling ancient native wisdom short here."

But the skinny guy kid had lost interest in the conversation. Instead he stared at the metal band picture on the Indian's T-shirt as if seeing it for the first time.

"Jesus, dude," he said, "are those ten-penny nails sticking out of that guy's armband?"

Chapter 4

With a heave of effort Father Robert Godin hoisted his nondescript and battered black duffel bag off the baggage carousel in the brightly lit bowels of the Albuquerque International Airport. Crowded all around him were people wearing colorful pins showing hot air balloons; images of hot-air balloons decked the area. He had had difficulty getting reservations, either for a flight in or a hotel room. The annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta was a major event and tourist draw.

Around him people chattered in a Babel of languages. He picked out French, German, Japanese, as well as English and the locally common Spanish. He half envied them their thoughtless gaiety – and half pitied them.

Yet isn't that your cross to bear, Robert? he told himself. That you should carry in this graying pate of yours fearful knowledge so that these simple children of God need never have to learn it?

Throwing the scuffed black bag over the shoulder of his brown leather jacket, he grinned behind his wire-rimmed glasses and began walking to the car rental agency's check-in counter nearby. God in His wisdom never promised to make life easy for people. Much less Jesuits.

Least of all him. But you screwed up, he reminded himself. You volunteered.

"You're not welcome here, Father."

There, Archbishop Daniel García thought with guilty satisfaction. I said it.

Although he was as tall as his visitor, and had longer legs, he seemed to be having trouble keeping up with the older man. They strolled in apparent amity around the southern quad of St. Pius X High School, the portion occupied by the Catholic Center, command center for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, over which García presided. It was a crisp October morning, blustery as usual on the West Mesa bluffs overlooking the Rio Grande. Though it was clear, the winds had driven the hot-air balloons from the sky early. The archbishop's cassock, which he liked to wear during business hours because it made him look official, snapped at his calves like a nasty little animal.

The smile never faltered on the seamed, oblong face. "I gathered as much, Excellency," Father Robert Godin said, "by your body language when I came into your office."

García's face twisted briefly, partly in annoyance, partly in alarm. He had a long, sharp, studious face and a hank of black hair under his skullcap. He was not ashamed that women found him handsome.

Am I that transparent? he wondered. Given what this man had done – and did – that was frightening.

"I don't mean you personally,of course," the archbishop said hurriedly. "All God's children are equally welcome. And I do respect your profound commitment to the church. But your mission – it's simply not something that we need."

"With all respect, Excellency, the Vatican believes otherwise."

They can be so retrograde, he thought. But you could not say that sort of thing aloud to a special Vatican emissary. "We don't wish to encourage superstition among our flocks here."

"Such as belief in miracles?" Godin asked.

Precisely,García wanted to say. But of course you couldn't say that, either. Maybe kicked back in some oak-and-leather lounge with aperitifs, cleric to cleric. But not ex cathedra, as it were.

"Let me elucidate, Father," he said, perhaps ever so slightly in hope of befuddling a nonnative English speaker. But he knew better. He had seen the man's dossier, or at least such as was available – even to a man who ranked as high in the church hierarchy as he did. Godin was known to speak at least half a dozen languages, and he spent a great deal of time in North America. And he was a Jesuit. He would have mastered the English language. "Back about thirty years ago a woman in this state believed that the image of Jesus appeared to her in the scorch marks on a tortilla. She presented this as serious evidence of a miraculous apparition. The press, needless to say, had a field day," he finally said.

"It looked more like Mozart to me," Godin said. "Also, the derision seemed aimed as much at New Mexico as the church. Remember, I was a full adult, already in seminary and long in the tooth for that, when the story came out, your Excellency. I'm a bit older than you."

"Yes. Well, it's hardly our desire to expose our parishioners to ridicule. Or our state. After all, we are quite on the cutting edge of technology here, as I'm sure you're aware."