“If we can discover what the Core is getting from the Church in return for control of the cruciform,” murmured Isozaki. “And offer the same or better.”

Cognani nodded in a distracted manner. She was seeing how all of this related to her goals and efforts as CEO of Opus Dei. In every way, she realized at once. “In the meantime, we have to find the girl before the others do… Pax Fleet must be utilizing resources they would never reveal to the Vatican.”

“And vice versa,” said Isozaki. This kind of contest pleased him very much.

“And we will have to do the same,” said Cognani, turning toward the lift tube. “Every resource.”

She smiled at her mentor. “It’s the ultimate three-way, zero-sum game, isn’t it, Kenzosan?”

“Just so,” said Isozaki. “Everything to the winner—power, immortality, and wealth beyond human imagining. To the loser—destruction, the true death, and eternal slavery for one’s descendants.” He held up one finger. “But not a three-way game, Anna. Six.”

Cognani paused by the lift door. “I see the fourth,” she said. “The Core has its own imperative to find the girl first. But…”

Isozaki lowered his hand. “We must presume that the child has her own goals in this game, mustn’t we? And whoever or whatever has introduced her as a playing piece… well, that must be our sixth player.”

“Or one of the other five,” said Cognani, smiling. She also enjoyed a high-stakes game. Isozaki nodded and turned his chair to watch the next sunrise above the curving-away band of the Torus Mercantilus. He did not turn back when the lift door closed and Anna Pelli Cognani departed. Above the altar, Jesus Christ, his face stern and unrelenting, divided men into camps of the good and the bad—the rewarded and the damned. There was no third group.

Cardinal Lourdusamy sat in his canopied stall inside the Sistine Chapel and looked at Michelangelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment. Lourdusamy had always thought that this Christ was a bullying, authoritarian, merciless figure—perhaps an icon perfectly suited to oversee this choice of a new Vicar of Christ.

The little chapel was crowded with the eighty-three canopied stalls seating the eighty-three cardinals present in the flesh. An empty space allowed for activation of the holos representing the missing thirty-seven cardinals—one holo of a canopied stall at a time.

This was the first morning after the cardinals had been “nailed up” in the Vatican Palace.

Lourdusamy had slept and eaten well—his bedroom a cot in his Vatican office, his repast a simple meal cooked by the nuns of the Vatican guest house: simple food and a cheap white wine served in the glorious Borgia Apartments. Now all were gathered in the Sistine Chapel, their stall-thrones in place, their canopies raised. Lourdusamy knew that this splendid sight had been missing from the Conclave for many centuries—ever since the number of cardinals had grown too large to accommodate the stalls in the small chapel, sometime pre-Hegira, the nineteenth or twentieth century A.D… he thought—but the Church had grown so small by the end of the Fall of the Farcasters that the forty-some cardinals could once again easily fit. Pope Julius had kept the number small—never more than 120 cardinals, despite the growth of the Pax. And with almost forty of them unable to travel in time to the Conclave, the Sistine Chapel could hold the stalls of those cardinals permanently based on Pacem.

The moment had come. All of the cardinal-electors in the chapel stood as one.

In the empty space near the Scrutineers’ table near the altar, the holos of the thirty-seven absent cardinal-electors shimmered into existence.

Because the space was small, the holos were small—little more than doll-sized human figures in doll-sized wooden stalls—all of them floating in midair like ghosts of Conclave-electors past. Lourdusamy smiled, as he always did, at how appropriate the reduced size of these absent electors seemed. Pope Julius had always been elected by acclamation. One of the three cardinals acting as Scrutineers raised his hand: the Holy Spirit may have been prepared to move these men and women, but some coordination was required. When the Scrutineer’s hand dropped, the eighty-three cardinals and thirty-seven holos were to speak as one.

“Eligo Father Lenar Hoyt!” cried Cardinal Lourdusamy and saw Cardinal Mustafa shouting the same words from beneath the canopy of his stall.

The Scrutineer in front of the altar paused.

The acclamation had been loud and clear, but obviously not unanimous. This was a new wrinkle. For 270 years, the acclamation had been immediate.

Lourdusamy was careful not to smile or look around. He knew which of the newer cardinals had not cried out Pope Julius’s name for reelection.

He knew the wealth it had taken to bribe these men and women. He knew the terrible risk they were running and would almost certainly suffer for.

Lourdusamy knew all this because he had helped to orchestrate it.

After a moment of consultation among the Scrutineers, the one who had called for acclamation now said, “We shall proceed by Scrutiny.”

There was excited talk among the cardinals as the ballots were prepared and handed out. This had never happened before in the lifetime of most of these princes of the Church. Immediately the acclamation holos of the missing cardinal-electors had become irrelevant. Although a few of the absent cardinals had prepared their interactive chips for scrutiny, most had not bothered.

The Masters of Ceremonies moved among the stalls, distributing voting cards—three to each cardinal-elector. The Scrutineers moved among the forest of stalls to make sure that each of the cardinals had a pen. When all was in readiness, the Cardinal Deacon among the Scrutineers raised his hand again, this time to signify the moment of voting.

Lourdusamy looked at his ballot. On the upper left, the words “Eligo in Summum Pontificem” appeared in print. There was room for one name beneath it. Simon Augustino Cardinal Lourdusamy wrote in Lenar Hoyt and folded the card and held it up so that it could be seen. Within a minute, all eighty-three of the cardinals were holding a card aloft, as were half a dozen of the interactive holos.

The Scrutineer began calling the cardinals forward in order of precedence. Cardinal Lourdusamy went first, leaving his stall and walking to the Scrutineers’ table next to the altar beneath the gaze of the terrible Christ of the fresco. Genuflecting and then kneeling at the altar, Lourdusamy bowed his head in silent prayer. Rising, he said aloud, “I call to witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I consider should be elected.” Lourdusamy solemnly set his folded card on the silver plate that sat atop the vote receptacle.

Lifting the plate, he dropped his vote into the receptacle. The Cardinal Deacon among the Scrutineers nodded; Lourdusamy bowed toward the altar and returned to his stall.

Cardinal Mustafa, the Grand Inquisitor, moved majestically toward the altar to cast the second vote.

It was more than an hour later that the votes were tallied. The first Scrutineer shook the receptacle to mix the votes. The second Scrutineer counted them—including the six votes copied from the interactive holos—depositing each in a second receptacle. The count equaled the number of voting cardinals in the Conclave. The Scrutiny proceeded.

The first Scrutineer unfolded a card, wrote down the name on it, and passed the card to the second Scrutineer, who made a note and passed it to the third and final Scrutineer. This man—Cardinal Couesnongle as it turned out—said the name aloud before making a note of it.

In each of the stalls, a cardinal jotted the name on a ’scriber pad provided by the Scrutineers. At the end of the Conclave, the ’scribers would be scrambled, their files deleted so that no record of the voting would remain.