The Grand Inquisitor had been ordered to appear with his aide for a papal audience at 0800 hours Vatican time. At 0752 hours, his black EMV arrived at the Via del Belvedere checkpoint entrance to the papal apartments. The Inquisitor and his aide, Father Farrell, were passed through detector portals and handheld sensors—first at the Swiss Guard checkpoint, then at the Palatine Guard station, and finally at the new Noble Guard post.

John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa, the Grand Inquisitor, gave the most subtle of looks to his aide as they were passed by this final checkpoint. The Noble Guard at this point seemed to consist of cloned twins—all thin men and women with lank hair, sallow complexions, and dead gazes. A millennium ago, Mustafa knew, the Swiss Guard had been the paid mercenary force for the Pope, the Palatine Guard had consisted of trusted locals, always of Roman birth, who provided an honor guard for His Holiness’s public appearances, and the Noble Guard had been chosen from aristocracy as a form of papal reward for loyalty. Today the Swiss Guard was the most elite of Pax Fleet’s regular forces, the Palatines had been reinstated only a year earlier by Pope Julius XIV, and now Pope Urban appeared to be relying upon this strange brotherhood of the new Noble Guard for his personal safety.

The Grand Inquisitor knew that the Noble Guard twins were indeed clones, early prototypes of the secret Legion in building, and vanguards of a new fighting force requested by the Pope and his Secretary of State and designed by the Core. The Inquisitor had paid dearly for this information, and he knew that his position—if not his life—might be forfeit if Lourdusamy or His Holiness discovered that he knew of it. Past the lower guard posts, with Father Farrell straightening his cassock after the search, Cardinal Mustafa waved away the papal assistant who offered to guide them upstairs. The Cardinal personally opened the door to the ancient lift that would take them to the papal apartments.

This private way to the Pope’s quarters actually began in the basement, since the reconstructed Vatican was built on a hill with the Via del Belvedere entrance beneath the usual ground floor. Rising in the creaking cage, Father Farrell nervously fidgeting with his ’scriber and folder of papers, the Grand Inquisitor relaxed as they passed the ground-floor courtyard of San Damaso. They passed the second floor with the fantastic Borgia Apartments and the Sistine Chapel. They creaked and groaned their way past the second floor with the papal state apartments, the Consistorial Hall, the library, the audience suite, and the beautiful Raphael Rooms. On the third floor they stopped and the cage doors slammed open.

Cardinal Lourdusamy and his aide, Monsignor Lucas Oddi, nodded and smiled. “Domenico,” said Lourdusamy, taking the Grand Inquisitor’s hand and squeezing it tightly.

“Simon Augustino,” said the Grand Inquisitor with a bow. So the Secretary of State was to be in this meeting. Mustafa had suspected and feared as much. Stepping out of the lift and walking with the others toward the papal private apartments, the Grand Inquisitor glanced down the hallway toward the offices of the Secretariat of State and—for the ten-thousandth time—envied this man’s access to the Pope.

The Pope met the party in the wide, brilliantly lit gallery that connected the Secretariat of State offices with the two stories of rooms that were the private domain of His Holiness. The usually serious Pontiff was smiling. This day he was dressed in a white-caped cassock with a white zucchetto on his head and a white fascia tied around his waist. His white shoes made only the slightest of whispering noises on the tiled floors. “Ah, Domenico,” said Pope Urban XVI as he extended his ring hand to be kissed. “Simon. How good of you to come.” Father Farrell and Monsignor Oddi waited on one knee for the Holy Father to turn to them so that they could kiss the Ring of St. Peter.

His Holiness looked well, thought the Grand Inquisitor, definitely younger and more rested than before his most recent death. The high forehead and burning eyes were the same, but Mustafa thought that there was something simultaneously more urgent and satisfied-looking about the resurrected Pope’s appearance this morning.

“We were just about to take our morning stroll in the garden,” said His Holiness. “Would you care to join us?”

The four men nodded and fell in with the Pope’s quick pace as he walked the length of the gallery and then climbed smooth, broad stairs to the roof.

His Holiness’s personal aides kept their distance, the Swiss Guard troopers at the entrance to the garden stood at rigid attention while staring straight ahead, Lourdusamy and the Grand Inquisitor walked only a pace behind the Holy Father, while Monsignor Oddi and Father Farrell kept pace two steps back.

The papal gardens consisted of a maze of flowered trellises, trickling fountains, perfectly trimmed hedges and topiaried trees from three hundred Pax worlds, stone walkways, and fantastic flowering shrubs. Above all this, a force-ten containment field—transparent from this side, opaqued to outside observers—provided both privacy and protection. Pacem’s sky was a brilliant, unclouded blue this morning.

“Do either of you remember,” began His Holiness, his cassock rustling as they walked briskly down the garden path, “when our sky here was yellow?”

Cardinal Lourdusamy produced the deep rumble that passed for a chuckle with him. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I remember when the sky was a sick yellow, the air was all but unbreathable, it was cold all the time, and the rain never ended. A marginal world then, Pacem. The only reason the old Hegemony ever allowed the Church to settle here.”

Pope Urban XVI smiled thinly and gestured toward the blue sky and warm sunlight. “So there has been some improvement during our time of service here, eh, Simon Augustino?” Both cardinals laughed softly. They had made a quick circuit of the rooftop, and now His Holiness took another route through the center of the garden. Stepping from stone to stone on the narrow path, the two cardinals and their aides followed the white-cassocked Pontiff in single file.

Suddenly His Holiness stopped and turned. A fountain burbled softly behind him. “You have heard,” he said, all jesting gone from his tone, “that Admiral Aldikacti’s task force has translated beyond the Great Wall?”

Both cardinals nodded.

“It is but the first of what will be many such incursions,” said the Holy Father. “We do not hope this… we do not predict this… we know this.”

The head of the Holy Office and the Secretary of State and their aides waited.

The Pope looked at each man in turn.

“This afternoon, my friends, we plan to travel to Castel Gandolfo…”

The Grand Inquisitor stopped himself from glancing upward, knowing that the papal asteroid could not be seen during the daytime. He knew that the Pontiff was speaking in the royal “we” and not inviting Lourdusamy and him to come along.

“… where we will pray and meditate for several days while composing our next encyclical,” continued the Pope. “It will be entitled Redemptor Hominis and it will be the most important document of our tenure as shepherd of our Holy Mother Church.”

The Grand Inquisitor bowed his head. The Redeemer of Mankind, he thought. It could be about anything.

When Cardinal Mustafa looked up, His Holiness was smiling as if reading his thoughts. “It will be about our sacred obligation to keep humanity human, Domenico,” said the Pope. “It will extend, clarify, and broaden what has become known as our Crusade Encyclical. It will define Our Lord’s wish… nay, commandment… that mankind remain in the form and visage of mankind, and not be defiled by deliberate mutation and mutilation.”

“The final solution to the Ouster problem,” murmured Cardinal Lourdusamy.