“History’s ahead of you, Eminence,” the captain replied. “Before he passed away, Dad bequeathed me this ship.”

“He didn’t have that right.”

“I can’t agree to follow Rome’s orders till I know what they are.

“Step one: assume command. In the interests of efficiency” — Di Luca swept his arm along the line of Maracaibo personnel — “these men have all agreed to defer to your own officers. Step two: pilot us to the motion-picture prop. Mr. Peche, do you still have it on your radar screen?”

“Aye.”

“Step three: anoint the prop fore to aft.”

“Anoint it?” said Van Horne.

“With Arabian crude oil,” Di Luca explained. “Step four: set the prop on fire. Step five: transport us back to Palermo.”

“On fire?” wailed Rafferty.

“What the fuck?” moaned O’Connor.

“No way,” hissed Haycox.

“Ah, now we’re talking!” cried Bliss, pointing her crystal pendant toward Van Horne. “Hear that, sir? You’re supposed to burn the thing!”

“You said you were hauling formaldehyde, not Arabian crude,” Thomas protested.

Di Luca grinned feebly. “We’re hauling oil,” he admitted.

“You have your orders, Captain,” said Bliss. “Now follow them.”

“You know perfectly well the body’s meant to be entombed at Kvitoya,” Thomas reminded the cardinal. “You heard Gabriel’s wishes in person.”

Di Luca pressed his palms to his bosom and smoothed his waterproof cassock. “Professor Ockham, need I make the embarrassingly obvious point that Rome’s liaison on this mission is no longer you but myself?”

Thomas grew suddenly aware of his own blood. He felt his plasma heating up. “Don’t underestimate your man, Eminence. Don’t expect this Jesuit to lie down and die.”

Leaning toward Van Horne, Di Luca picked up a glass ashtray, holding it out like Christ offering the first stone to the mob. “The problem, Captain, is that Kvitoya provides no deterrents to intrusion. Only a cremation can guarantee that, in the years to come, the corpse won’t be exhumed and defiled.”

“What does it matter if a movie prop gets defiled?” asked Peche.

“The angels seemed to think Kvitoya would be just fine,” said Thomas. “So do I.”

“Please be quiet,” said Di Luca.

“Angels?” said Mangione.

“I won’t be quiet,” said Thomas.

Di Luca gave the ashtray a sudden twist, making it spin like a compass needle gone berserk. “Sir, is it not true that, once our Creator’s death became common knowledge aboard the Valparaíso, a severe ethical breakdown occurred?”

“Whose death?” said Peche.

“Yes, but thanks to the meat, we’re past that now,” said Van Horne.

“Meat?” said Di Luca.

“When we fed the crew Quarter Pounders with Cheese, they regained their moral bearings.”

“Quarter Pounders?”

“You don’t want to know,” said Rafferty.

“According to Father Ockham’s fax of July twenty-eighth, there were thefts, attempted rapes, vandalism, quite possibly a murder.” The cardinal arrested the whirling ashtray. “Now, sir, project such anarchy onto the planet at large, and you have chaos beyond comprehension.”

“There’s another way to look at it,” said Van Horne. “Consider: our trip to the Gibraltar Sea was amazingly intense. We saw the corpse all the time, smelled it around the clock, killed its predators on every watch. Naturally the thing took hold of us. The whole world’s never going to enter into such a close relationship with God.”

“God?” said Mangione.

“The body must be obliterated,” said Di Luca.

Thomas slammed his palm against the table. “Oh, come on, Tullio. Let’s be honest, okay? Your heart was never in this project. If your OMNIVAC hadn’t predicted a few surviving neurons, you’d have wanted a cremation straight away. But now the brain’s beyond salvation, which means all your careers might be beyond salvation too, should the news ever get out. To which I say, ‘Too bad, gentlemen. Swallow your pill. The Chair of Peter was never a tenure-track position.’ ”

“Father Thomas, I want you to leave this meeting,” growled Di Luca. “Right now.”

“Go fry an egg,” said the priest. “From the Church’s perspective this corpse might be a white elephant, but for Captain Van Horne and myself it’s a sacred trust!”

“Get out!”

“No!”

The cardinal grew suddenly mute, absorbed in rapping the ashtray against the table, a steady, frustrated thonk-thonk-thonk.

“It’s not a movie prop, is it?” said Peche.

“Not remotely,” said O’Connor.

“Good God.”

“Exactly,” said Haycox.

Van Horne directed a wide, hostile smile toward Di Luca. “Step one: we steam over to our cargo. Step two: we lash Him to our stern. Step three: we restart the tow.” He shifted his stare to Peche. “Assuming there are no objections…”

A sudden joy took hold of Thomas. How wonderful to be fighting, for once, on the same side as Van Horne.

“My mind’s confused,” asserted Peche, “but my heart, it knows how unforgivable it would be to burn this body.”

Cornejo muttered, “If it’s really what you say it is … if it’s really, really that …”

“Who are we to go against angels?” said Mangione.

The captain reached into the pocket of his shirt, drawing out Raphael’s angel feather and pointing it toward the first mate.

“Marbles, I want you to place our radio shack under armed guard. Any attempt by Monsignor Di Luca to enter should be resisted. While we’re at it, let’s be sure to blackball Sparks here and her buddy Dr. Fowler.”

“Aye,” said Rafferty.

Bliss clutched her crystal pendant and sneered.

“I assume you realize that, as of this moment, you’re all in a lot of trouble with the Vatican,” said Di Luca. “Rome receives regular dispatches from me. When I fail to report, they’ll send another Gulf tanker after you. They’ll send two — three — a whole armada.”

“Never a dull moment,” said Van Horne.

“You’re making a tragic mistake, Captain. Worse than Matagorda Bay.”

“I survived that. I’ll survive this too.” Van Horne aimed the feather directly at Dr. Carminati. “How soon before you lift the survivors out of here?”

“We expect the choppers in about twenty minutes. Give us an hour after that. I hope you realize I’m not about to join this outrageous mutiny of yours.”

“Mutiny’s the word,” said Di Luca.

Van Horne shifted the feather from the physician to the cardinal. “If I’m in rebellion against the Vatican, Eminence, then the Vatican’s in rebellion against heaven.” The captain closed his eyes. “I shall leave it for you to decide which is the more serious sin.”

The half-dozen vending machines in the Maracaibo’s snack bar dispensed a wide variety of grotesqueries: Hostess Twinkies, Li’l Debbie Snack Cakes, Ring Dings — each item underscoring Oliver’s creeping conviction that, with or without a Corpus Dei, Western civilization stood on the brink of collapse. Cassie occupied a contoured plastic chair adjacent to a small Formica table, nursing a Mountain Dew beneath the Lucite glow of the COLD DRINKS machine, an image that for Oliver recalled Degas’s masterful Glass of Absinthe. To her right, PASTRY ’N SNACKS. To her left, CANDY ’N SWEETS. He approached HOT DRINKS, secured black coffee in a paper cup unaccountably decorated with playing cards, and joined her.

“I believe the Reenactment Society is going out of business,” he said. “Midway finished it off.”

“The past dies hard.”

“I guess. Sure. You’ve always been a deeper thinker than me.”

“It kicks and screams, but eventually it dies.” Oliver jammed his thumb into the scalding coffee, savoring the penitential pain. “Hey, Cassandra, we’ve had some terrific times together, haven’t we? Remember Denver?” In some ways that particular Enlightenment League escapade — a colorful protest against the gigantic plywood Ten Commandments that the Fraternal Order of Eagles had erected on the capitol lawn — had been the high point of their relationship. In the park across the street he and Cassie had raised an equally formidable sign labeled WHAT GOD REALLY SAID and featuring a nouvelle decalogue they’d coauthored two days earlier between episodes of rapturous sex (they were field-testing the Shostak Supreme) in her apartment. “I’ll bet if we work at it, we can remember them all. ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, except for Roman Catholics if they don’t get tacky about it’.”