Of course, Dr. Passim had not been the same since he sailed through a vast stained-glass window of the cathedral at Metz, France. Formerly he had talked occasionally in tongues and now he talked only in tongues. This had inspired a popular TV comic to suggest that an English-Glossolalia dictionary be brought out, so that folks could understand Dr. Passim. This in turn had given rise to such indignation in the pious that Cardinal Harms had it jotted down on his desk calendar somewhere that, when possible, he should pronounce the comic anathema. But, as usual, he had not gotten around to such petty matters.

Much of Cardinal Harms's time was spent in a secret activity: he had been feeding St. Anselm's Proslogion to the great Artifi- cial Intelligence system Big Noodle with the idea of resurrecting the long-discredited Ontological Proof for the existence of God.

He had gone right back to Anselm and the original statement of the argument, unsoiled by the accretions of time:

Anything understood must be in the intelligence. Certainly, too, the being greater than which none can be conceived can- not exist in the intellect alone; for if it were only in the intel- lect it could be conceived as existing also in reality and this would be to conceive a still greater being. In such a case, if the being greater than which none can be conceived is merely in the intelligence (and not in reality), then this same being is something than which one could still conceive a greater (i.e., one which exists both in the intelligence and in reality). This is a contradiction. Consequently, there can be no doubt that the being greater than which none can be conceived must exist both in the intelligence and in reality.

However, Big Noodle knew all about Aquinas and Descartes and Kant and Russell and their criticisms, and the A.I. system also possessed common sense. It informed Harms that Anselm's argument did not hold water, and presented him with page after page of analysis as to why. Harms's response was to edit out Big Noodle's analysis and seize upon Hartshorne and Malcolm's de- fense of Anselm; viz: that God's existence is either logically nec- essary or logically impossible. Since it has not been demonstrated to be impossible-which is to say, the concept of such an entity has not been shown to be self-contradictory-then it follows that we must of necessity conclude that God exists.

Upon fastening onto this weary argument, Harms had dis- patched a copy via his direct line to the ailing Procurator Maxi- mus as a means of instilling new vigor in his co-ruler.

"Now take the Giants," Arnold the barber was saying as he valiantly tried to bleach the yellow from the cardinal's hair. "I say you can't count them out. Look at Eddy Tubb's ERA for last year. So he has a sore arm; pitchers always get sore arms.

The day had begun for the Chief Prelate Cardinal Fulton Sta- tler Harms; trying to hear the news, meditating simultaneously on his enterprise vis-a-vis St. Anseim, fending off Arnold's base-ball statistics-this constituted his morning confrontation with reality, his routine. All that remained to make it the Platonic archetypal beginning of his activity phase was the mandatory- and futile-attempt to pin down Deirdre regarding her cost over- run.

He was prepared for that; he had a new girl waiting in the wings. Dierdre, who did not know it, was about to go.

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At his resort city on the Black Sea the Procurator Maximus walked in slow circles as he read Deirdre Connell' s most recent report on the chief prelate. No health problems assailed the pro- curator; he had allowed news of his "medical condition" to leak its way into the media so as to ensnare his co-ruler in a web of self-serving lies. This gave him time to study his intelligence staff's appraisal of Deirdre Connell's daily reports. So far it was the educated opinion of everyone who intimately served the pro- curator that Cardinal Harms had lost touch with reality and was lost in harebrained theological quests-journeys that led him fur- ther and further away from any control over the political and economic situation that was pro forma his purview.

The fake reports also gave him time to fish and relax and sun himself and figure out how to depose the cardinal in order to get one of his own people into the position of chief prelate of the C.I.C. Bulkowsky had a number of S.L. functionaries in the curia, well-trained and eager. As long as Deirdre Connell held down the post of executive secretary and mistress to the cardinal, Bulkowsky had the edge. He felt reasonably certain that Harms owned no one in the Scientific Legate's top positions, owned no reciprocal access. Bulkowsky had no mistress; he was a family man with a plump, middle-aged wife, and three children all at- tending private schools in Switzerland. In addition, his conver- sion to Dr. Passim's enthusiastic nonsense-the miracle of flying had of course been achieved by technological means-was a stra- tegic fraud, designed to lull the cardinal deeper into his grand dreams.

The procurator knew all about the attempt to induce Big Noo- dle to come up with verification of St. Anselm' s Ontological Proof for the existence of God; the topic was a joke in regions domi- nated by the Scientific Legate. Deirdre Connell had been in- structed to recommend to her aging lover that he spend more and more time in his lofty venture.

Nonetheless, although wholly rooted in reality, Bulkowsky had not been able to solve certain problems of his own-matters which he concealed from his co-ruler. Decisions for the S.L. had fallen off among the youth cadres during recent months; more and more college students, even those in the hard sciences, were finding for the C.I.C., throwing aside the hammer-and-sickle pin and donning the cross. Specifically there had developed a paucity of ark engineers, with the result that three S.L. orbiting arks, with their inhabitants, had had to be abandoned. This news had not reached the media, since the inhabitants had perished. To shield the public from the grim news the designations of the re- maining S.L. arks had been changed. On computer printouts the malfunctions did not appear; the situation gave the semblance of normality. At least we did eliminate Cohn Passim, Bulkowsky reflected. A man who talks like an aud-tape of a duck played backward is no threat. The evangelist had, without suspecting it, succumbed to S.L. advanced weaponry. The balance of world power had thus been made to shift ever so slightly. Little things like that added up. Take, for instance, the presence of the S.L. agent duked in as the cardinal's mistress and secretary. Without that- Bulkowsky felt supremely confident. The dialectical force of historic necessity was on his side. He could retire to his floating bed, half an hour from now, with a knowledge that the world situation was in hand.

"Cognac," he said to a robot attendant. "Courvoisier Napo- leon."

As he stood by his desk warming the snifter with the palms of his hands his wife, Galina, entered the room. "Make no appoint- ments for Thursday night," she said. "General Yakir has planned a recital for the Moscow corps. The American chanteuse Linda Fox will be singing. Yakir expects us."

"Certainly," Bulkowsky said. "Have roses prepared for the end of the recital." To a pair of robot servants he said, "Have my valet de chambre remind me."

"Don't nod off during the recital," Galina said. "Mrs. Yakir will be hurt. You remember the last time."

"The Penderecki abomination," Bulkowsky said, remember- ing well. He had snored through the "Quia Fecit" of the "Mag- nificat" and then read about his behavior in intelligence documents a week later.

"Remember that as far as informed circles know, you are a born-again Christian," Galina said. "What did you do about those responsible for the loss of the three arks?"