“Good Lord,” said Thomas.
The haloed man landed before the red proscenium curtains. Steadying himself on the young physician, he set his harp on the lectern and twiddled a pair of console knobs. The curtains parted; the room darkened; a cone of bright light spread outward from the projection booth, striking the beaded screen.
“The Corpus Dei,” said the creature matter-of-factly as a 35mm color slide flashed before the priest’s eyes. “God’s dead body.”
Thomas squinted, but the image — a large, humanoid object adrift on a bile-dark sea — remained blurry. “What did you say?”
The next slide clicked into place: same subject, a closer but equally fuzzy view. “God’s dead body,” the haloed man insisted.
“Can you focus it any better?”
“No.” The man ran through three more unsatisfactory shots of the enigmatic mass. “I took them myself, with a Leica.”
“He has corroborating evidence,” said Cardinal Orselli.
“An electrocardiogram as flat as a flounder,” the creature explained.
As the last slide vanished, the projector lamp again flooded the screen with its pristine radiance.
“Is this some sort of a joke?” Thomas asked. What else could it be? In a civilization where tabloid art directors routinely forged photos of Bigfoot and UFO pilots, it would take more than a few slides of a foggy something-or-other to transform Thomas’s interior image of God along such radically anthropomorphic lines.
Except that his knees were rattling.
Sweat was collecting in his palms.
He stared at the rug, contemplating its thick, sound-absorbent fibers, and when he looked up the angel’s eyes riveted him: golden eyes, sparkling and electric, like miniature Van de Graaff generators spewing out slivers of lightning.
“Dead?” Thomas rasped.
“Dead.”
“Cause?”
“Total mystery. We haven’t a clue.”
“Are you… Raphael?”
“Raphael’s in New York City, tracking down Anthony Van Horne — yes, Captain Anthony Van Horne, the man who turned Matagorda Bay to licorice.”
As the angel brought up the house lights, Thomas saw that he was coming unglued. Silvery hairs floated down from his scalp. His wings exfoliated like a Mexican roof shedding tiles. “And the others?”
“Adabiel and Haniel passed away yesterday,” said the angel, retrieving his harp from the lectern. “Terminal empathy. Michael’s fading fast, Chamuel’s not long for this world, Zaphiel’s on his deathbed…”
“That leaves Gabriel.”
The angel plucked his harp.
“In short, Father Ockham,” said Monsignor Di Luca, as if he’d just finished explaining a great deal, when in fact he’d explained nothing, “we want you on the ship. We want you on the Carpco Valparaíso.”
“The only Ultra Large Crude Carrier ever chartered by the Vatican,” the Holy Father elaborated. “A sullied vessel, to be sure, but none other is equal to the task — or so Gabriel tells us.”
“What task?” asked Thomas.
“Salvaging the Corpus Dei.” Bright tears spilled down Gabriel’s fissured cheeks. Luminous mucus leaked from his nostrils. “Protecting Him from those” — the angel cast a quick glance toward Di Luca — “who would exploit His condition for their own ends. Giving Him a decent burial.”
“Once the body’s in Arctic waters,” Orselli explained, “the putrefaction will stop.”
“We have prepared a place,” said Gabriel, listlessly picking out the Dies Irae on his instrument. “An iceberg tomb adjoining Kvitoya.”
“And all the while, you’ll be on the navigation bridge,” said Di Luca, laying a red-gloved hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “Our sole liaison, keeping Van Horne on his appointed path. The man’s no Catholic, you see. He’s barely a Christian.”
“The ship’s manifest will list you as a PAC — a Person in Addition to Crew,” said Orselli. “In reality you’ll be the most important man on the voyage.”
“Let me be explicit.” Gabriel fixed his electric eyes directly on Innocent XIV. “We want an honorable interment, nothing more. No stunts, Holiness. None of your billion-dollar funerals, no priceless sculpture on the tomb, no carving Him up for relics.”
“We understand,” said the Pope.
“I’m not sure you do. You run a tenacious organization, gentlemen. We’re afraid you don’t know when to quit.”
“You can trust us,” said Di Luca.
Curling his left wing into a semicircle, Gabriel brushed Thomas’s cheek with the tip. “I envy you, Professor. Unlike me, you’ll have time to figure out why this awful event happened. I’m convinced that, if you apply the full measure of your Jesuit intellect to the problem, pondering it night and day as the Valparaíso plies the North Atlantic, you’re bound to hit upon the solution.”
“Through reason alone?” said Thomas.
“Through reason alone. I can practically guarantee it. Give yourself till journey’s end, and the answer to the riddle will suddenly—”
A harsh, guttural groan. Dr. Carminati rushed over and, opening the angel’s robe, pressed the stethoscope against his milk-white bosom. Whimpering softly, Innocent XIV brought his right hand to his lips and sucked the velvet fingertips.
Gabriel sank into the nearest seat, his halo darkening until it came to resemble a lei of dead flowers.
“Pardon, Holiness” — the physician popped the stethoscope out of his ears — “but we should return him to the infirmary now.
“Go with God,” said the Pope, raising his moistened hand, rotating it sideways, and etching an invisible cross in the air.
“Remember,” said the angel, “no stunts.”
The young doctor looped his arm around Gabriel’s shoulder and, like a dutiful son guiding his dying father down the hallway of a cancer ward, escorted him out of the room.
Thomas studied the barren screen. God’s dead body? God had a body? What were the cosmological implications of this astonishing claim? Was He truly gone, or had His spirit merely vacated some gratuitous husk? (Gabriel’s grief suggested there was no putting a happy face on the situation.) Did heaven still exist? (Since the afterlife consisted essentially in God’s eternal presence, then the answer was logically no, but surely the question merited further study.) What of the Son and the Ghost? (Assuming Catholic theology counted for anything, then these Persons were inert now too, the Trinity being ipso facto indivisible, but, again, the issue manifestly deserved the attentions of a synod or perhaps even a Vatican Council.)
He turned to the other clerics. “There are problems here.”
“A secret consistory has been in session since Tuesday,” said the Pope, nodding. “The entire College of Cardinals, burning the midnight oil. We’re tackling the full spectrum: the possible causes of death, the chances of resuscitation, the future of the Church…”
“We’d like your answer now, Father Ockham,” said Di Luca. “The Valparaíso weighs anchor in just five days.”
Thomas took a deep breath, enjoying the rich, savory hypocrisy of the moment. Historically, Rome had tended to regard her Jesuits as expendable, something between a nuisance and a threat. Ah, but now that the chips were down, to whom did the Vatican turn? To the faithful, unflappable warriors of Ignatius Loyola, that’s who.
“May I keep this?” Thomas lifted a stray feather from the floor.
“Very well,” said Innocent XIV.
Thomas’s gaze wandered back and forth between the Pope and the feather. “One item on your agenda confuses me.”
“Do you accept?” demanded Di Luca.
“What item?” asked the Pope.
The feather exuded a feeble glow, like a burning candle fashioned from the tallow of some lost, forsaken lamb.
“Resuscitation.”
Resuscitation: the word wove tauntingly through Thomas’s head as he emerged from the fetid dampness of Union Square Station and started down Fourteenth Street. It was all highly speculative, of course; the desiccation rate Di Luca had selected for a Supreme Being’s central nervous system (ten thousand neurons a minute) bordered on the arbitrary. But assuming the cardinale knew whereof he spoke, an encouraging conclusion followed. According to the Vatican’s OMNIVAC-5000, He would not be brain-dead before the eighteenth of August — a sufficient interval in which to ferry Him above the Arctic Circle — though it had to be allowed that the computer had made the prediction under protest, crying INSUFFICIENT DATA all the way.