He smiled. “But you were so urgent about getting to town.”

“Forget it, Father. I’ve changed my mind.”

“Good. Then we’ll go back home. Why don’t you let the sisters take care of your daughter for a few days?”

“I’ll think about it.”

The car sped back along the highway toward the abbey. As they approached the Green Star camp, he could see that something was wrong. The pickets were no longer marching their tour. They had gathered in a group and were talking, or listening, to the officers and a third man that Zerchi could not identify. He switched the car over to the slow lane. One of the novices saw the car, recognized it, and began waving his sign. Dom Zerchi had no intention of stopping while the girl was in the car, but one of the officers stepped out into the slow lane just ahead of them and pointed his traffic baton at the vehicle’s obstruction detectors; the autopilot reacted automatically and brought the car to a stop. The officer waved the car off the road. Zerchi could not disobey. The two police officers approached, paused to note license numbers and demand papers. One of them glanced in curiously at the girl and the child, took note of the red tickets. The other waved toward the now-stationary picket line.

“So you’re the bejeezis behind all this, are you?” He grunted at the abbot. “Well, the gentleman in the brown tunic over there has a little news for you. I think you’d better listen.” He jerked his head toward a chubby courtroom type who came pompously toward them.

The child was crying again. The mother stirred restlessly.

“Officers, this girl and baby aren’t well. I’ll accept the process, but please let us drive on hack to the abbey now. Then I’ll come back alone.”

The officer looked at the girl again. “Ma’am?”

She stared toward the camp and looked up at the statue towering over the entrance. “I’m getting out here,” she told them tonelessly.

“You’ll be better off, ma’am,” said the officer, eying the red tickets again.

“No!” Dom Zerchi caught her arm. “Child, I forbid you—”

The officer’s hand shot out to seize the priest’s wrist.

“Let go!” he snapped, then softly: “Ma’am, are you his ward or something?”

“No.”

“Where do you get off forbidding the lady to get out?” the officer demanded. “We’re just a little impatient with you, mister, and it had better be—”

Zerchi ignored him and spoke rapidly to the girl. She shook her head.

“The baby, then. Let me take the baby back to the sisters. I insist—”

“Ma’am, is that your child?” the officer asked. The girl was already out of the car, but Zerchi was holding the child.

The girl nodded. “She’s mine.”

“Has he been holding you prisoner or something?”

“No.”

“What do you want to do, ma’am?”

She paused.

“Get back in the car,” Dom Zerchi told her.

“You cut that tone of voice, mister!” the officer barked.

“Lady, what about the kid?”

“We’re both getting out here,” she said.

Zerchi slammed the door and tried to start the car, but the officer’s hand flashed in through the window, hit the CANCEL button, and removed the key.

“Attempted kidnapping?” one officer grunted to the other.

“Maybe,” said the other, and opened the door. “Now let go of the woman’s baby!”

“To let it be murdered here?” the abbot asked. “You’ll have to use force.”

“Go around to the other side of the car, Fal.”

“No!”

“Now, just a little baton under the armpit. That’s it, pull! All right, lady — there’s your kid. No, I guess you can’t, not with those crutches Cors? Where’s Cors? Hey, Doc!”

Abbot Zerchi caught a glimpse of a familiar face coining through the crowd.

“Lift the kid out while we hold this nut, will you?”

Doctor and priest exchanged a silent glance, and then the baby was lifted from the car. The officers released the abbot’s wrists. One of them turned and found himself hemmed in by novices with upraised signs. He interpreted the signs as potential weapons, and his hand dropped to his gun.

“Back up!” he snapped.

Bewildered, the novices moved back.

“Get out.”

The abbot climbed out of the car. He found himself facing the chubby court official. The latter tapped him on the arm with a folded paper. “You have just been served with a restraining order, which I am required by the court to read and explain to you. Here is your copy. The officers are witnesses that you have been confronted with it, so you cannot resist service—”

“Oh, give it here.”

“That’s the right attitude. Now you are directed by the court as follows: ‘Whereas the plaintiff alleges that a great public nuisance has been — ’ “

“Throw the signs in the ash barrel over there,” Zerchi instructed his novices, “unless somebody objects. Then climb in the car and wait.” He paid no attention to the reading of the order, but approached the officers while the process server trailed behind, reading in monotonous staccato. “Am I under arrest?”

“We’re thinking about it.”

“‘ — and to appear before this court on the aforesaid date to show cause why an injunction — ’“

“Any particular charge?”

“We could make four or five charges stick, if you want it that way.”

Cors came back through the gate. The woman and her child had been escorted into the camp area. The doctor’s expression was grave, if not guilty.

“Listen, Father,” he said, “I know how you feel about all this, but—”

Abbot Zerchi’s fist shot out at the doctor’s face in a straight right jab. It caught Cors off balance, and he sat down hard in the driveway. He looked bewildered. He snuffled a few times. Suddenly his nose leaked blood. The police had the priest’s arms pinned behind him.

“ ‘ — and herein fail not,’“ the process server jabbered on, “‘lest a decree pro confesso — ’“

“Take him over to the car,” said one of the officers.

The car toward which the abbot was led was not his own but the police cruiser. “The judge will be a little disappointed in you,” the officer told him sourly. “Now stand still right there and be quiet. One move and you go in the locks.”

The abbot and the officer waited by the cruiser while the process server, the doctor, and the other officer conferred in the driveway. Cors was pressing a handkerchief to his nose.

They talked for five minutes. Thoroughly ashamed, Zerchi pressed his forehead against the metal of the car and tried to pray. It mattered little to him at the moment what they might decide to do. He could think only of the girl and the child. He was certain she had been ready to change her mind, had needed only the command, I, a priest of God, adjure thee, and the grace to hear it — if only they had not forced him to stop where she could witness “God’s priest” summarily overruled by “Caesar’s traffic cop.” Never to him had Christ’s Kingship seemed more distant.

“All right, mister. You’re a lucky nut, I’ll say that.”

Zerchi looked up. “What?”

“Doctor Cors refuses to file a complaint. He says he had one coming. Why did you hit him?”

“Ask him.”

“We did. I’m just trying to decide whether we take you in or just give you the summons. The court officer says you’re well known hereabouts. What do you do?”

Zerchi reddened. “Doesn’t this mean anything to you?” He touched his pectoral cross.

“Not when the guy wearing it punches somebody in the nose. What do you do?”

Zerchi swallowed the last trace of his pride. “I am the abbot of the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz at the abbey you see down the road.”

“That gives you a license to commit assault?”

“I’m sorry. If Doctor Cors will hear me, I’ll apologize. If you give me a summons, I promise to appear.”

“Fal?”

“The jail’s full of D.P.s.”

“Listen, if we just forget the whole thing, will you stay away from this place, and keep your gang out there where they belong?”