Abruptly the door opened. Sister Helene came in with a tray of newly uncrated glassware. Startled, the monk leaped to his feet in the tub.

“Brother Joshua!” the sister shrieked. Half a dozen beakers shattered on the floor.

The monk sat down with a splash that sprayed the room. Sister Helene clucked, sputtered, squeaked, dumped the tray on the workbench, and fled. Joshua vaulted out of the sink and donned his habit without bothering to dry himself or put on his underwear. When he got to the door, Sister Helene was already out of the corridor — probably out of the building and halfway to the sister’s chapel just down the side lane. Mortified, he hastened to complete his labors.

He emptied the suction device’s contents and collected a sample of the dust in a phial. He took the phial to the workbench, plugged in a pair of headphones, and held the phial at a measured distance from the detector element of a radiation counter while he consulted his watch and listened.

The compressor had a built-in counter. He pressed a stud marked: Reset. The whirling decimal register flipped back to zero and began counting again. He stopped it after one minute and wrote the count on the back of his hand. It was mostly plain air, filtered and compressed; but there was a whiff of something else.

He closed the lab for the afternoon. He went down to the office on the subjacent floor, wrote the count on a wall chart, eyed its perplexing upswing; then sat at his desk and flipped the viewphone switch. He dialed by feel, while gazing at the telltale wallchart. The screen flashed, the phone beeped, and the viewer fluttered into focus on the back of an empty desk chair. After a few seconds a man slid into the chair and peered into the viewer. “Abbot Zerchi here,” the abbot grunted. “Oh, Brother Joshua. I was about to call you. Have you been taking a bath?”

“Yes, m’Lord Abbot.”

“You might at least blush!”

“I am.”

“Well, it doesn’t show up on the viewer. Listen. On this side of the highway, there’s a sign just outside our gates. You’ve noticed it, of course? It says, ‘Women Beware. Enter Not Lest’ — and so forth. You’ve noticed it?”

“Surely, m’Lord.”

“Take your baths on this side of the sign.”

“Certainly.”

“Mortify yourself for offending Sister’s modesty. I’m aware that you haven’t got any. Listen, I suppose you can’t even bring yourself to pass the reservoir without jumping in, baby-spanking bald, for a swim.”

“Who told you that, m’Lord? I mean — I’ve only waded—”

“Ye-e-s-s? Well, never mind. Why did you call me?”

“You wanted me to call Spokane.”

“Oh, yes. Did you?”

“Yes.” The monk gnawed at a bit of dry skin at the corner of his wind-cracked lips and paused uneasily. “I talked to Father Leone. They’ve noticed it too.”

“The increased radiation count?”

“That’s not all.” He hesitated again. He did not like saying it. To communicate a fact seemed always to lend it fuller existence.

“Well?”

“It’s connected with that seismic disturbance a few days ago. It’s carried by the upper winds from that direction. All things considered, it looks like fallout from a low altitude burst in the megaton range.”

“Heu!” Zerchi sighed and covered his eyes with a hand. ‘Luciferum ruisse mihi dicis?”

“Yes, Domne, I’m afraid it was a weapon.”

“Not possibly an industrial accident?”

“No.”

“But if there were a war on, we’d know. An illicit test? but not that either. If they wanted to test one, they could test it on the far side of the moon, or better, Mars, and not be caught.”

Joshua nodded.

“So what does that leave?” the abbot went on. “A display? A threat? A warning shot fired over the bow?”

“That’s all I could think of..

“So that explains the defense alert. Still, there’s nothing in the news except rumors and refusals to comment. And with dead silence from Asia.”

“But the shot must have been reported from some of the observation satellites. Unless — I don’t like to suggest this, but — unless somebody has discovered a way to shoot a space-to-earth missile past the satellites, without detection until it’s on the target.”

“Is that possible?”

“There’s been some talk about it, Father Abbot.”

“The government knows. The government must know. Several of them know. And yet we hear nothing. We are being protected from hysteria. Isn’t that what they call it? Maniacs! The world’s been in a habitual state of crisis for fifty years. Fifty?” What am I saying? It’s been in a habitual state of crisis since the beginning — but for half a century now, almost unbearable. And why, for the love of God? What is the fundamental irritant, the essence of the tension? Political philosophies? Economics? Population pressure? Disparity of culture and creed? Ask a dozen experts, get a dozen answers. Now Lucifer again. Is the species congenitally insane, Brother? If we’re born mad, where’s the hope of Heaven? Through Faith alone? Or isn’t there any? God forgive me, I don’t mean that. Listen, Joshua—”

“m’Lord?”

“As soon as you close up shop, come back over here…That radiogram — I had to send Brother Pat into town to get it translated and sent by regular wire. I want you around when the answer comes. Do you know what it’s about?”

Brother Joshua shook his head.

“Quo peregrinatur grex.”

The monk slowly lost color. “To go into effect, Domne?”

“I’m just trying to learn the status of the plan. Don’t mention it to anybody. Of course, you’ll be affected. See me here when you’re through.”

“Certainly.”

“Chris’tecum.”

“Cum spiri’tuo.”

The circuit opened, the screen faded. The room was warm, but Joshua shivered. He gazed out the window into a premature twilight murky with dust. He could see no farther than the storm fence next to the highway where a passing procession of truck headlights made traveling halos in the dust haze. After a while he became aware of someone standing near the gate where the driveway opened on to the turnpike approach. The figure was dimly visible in silhouette whenever the headlights’ aurorae flashed by in review. Joshua shivered again.

The silhouette was unmistakably that of Mrs. Grales. no one else would have been recognizable in such poor visibility, but the shape of the hooded bundle on her left shoulder; and the way her head tilted toward the right, made her outline uniquely that of Old Ma’am Grales. The monk pulled curtains across the window and turned on the light. He was not repelled by the old woman’s deformity; the world had grown blasé about such genetic mishaps and pranks of the genes. His own left hand still bore a tiny scar where a sixth finger had been removed during his infancy. But the heritage of the Diluvium Ignis was something he preferred to forget for the moment, and Mrs. Grales was one of its more conspicuous heirs.

He fingered a globe of the world on his desk. He spun it so that the Pacific Ocean and East Asia drifted past. Where? Precisely where? He twirled the globe faster, slapping it lightly again and again so that the world spun like a gaming wheel, faster and yet faster until the continents and oceans became a blur. Place your bets, Sir and Madam: Where? He braked the globe abruptly with his thumb. Bank: India pays off. Please collect, Madam. The divination was wild. He spun the globe again until the axial mountings rattled; “days” flitted by as briefest instants — In a reverse sense, he noticed suddenly. If Mother Gaia pirouetted in the same sense, the sun and other passing scenery would rise in the west and set in the east. Reversing time thereby? Said the namesake of my namesake: Move not, O Sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O Moon, toward the valley — a neat trick, forsooth, and useful in these times too. Back up, O Sun, et tu, Luna, recedite in orbitas reversas… He kept spinning the globe in reverse, as if hoping the simulacrum of Earth possessed the Chronos for unwinding time. A third of a million turns might unwind enough days to carry it back to the Diluvium Ignis. Better to use a motor and spin it back to the beginning of Man. He stopped it again with his thumb; once more the divination was wild.