“It feels like a century,” I say. My eyes are focused on something far beyond the table and this room.

“It was a century for me,” says the older Jesuit. His accent is quaint and somehow charming—a French-speaking Outback world, perhaps? “Almost three centuries, actually.”

“I saw what they did to you when you were resurrected,” I say with the brazenness of the wine in me. “Lourdusamy and Albedo murdered you so that Hoyt would be reborn again from your shared cruciforms.”

Father Duré has not actually tasted his wine, but he stares down into the glass as if waiting for it to transubstantiate. “Time and time again,” he says in a tone that seems more wistful than anything else. “It is a strange life, being born just to be murdered.”

“Aenea would agree,” I say, knowing that these men are friends and good men but not feeling especially friendly to the Church in general.

“Yes,” says Paul Duré and holds up his glass in a silent toast. He drinks.

Bassin Kee fills the vacuum of silence.

“Most of the faithful left on Pacem would have Father Duré as our true pope.”

I look at the elderly Jesuit. I have been through enough that it does not make me all tingly to be in the presence of a legend, someone who was central to the Cantos. As is always the case when you are with the actual human being behind the celebrity or legend, there is something human about the man or woman that makes things less than myth. In this case, it is the soft tufts of gray hair growing in the priest’s large ears.

“Teilhard the Second?” I say, remembering that the man had reportedly been a fine pope as Teilhard I 279 years ago—for a short period before he was murdered for the first time.

Duré accepts more wine from Father de Soya and shakes his head. I can see that the sadness behind those large eyes is the same as de Soya’s—earned and heartfelt, not assumed for character effect. “No more papacy for me,” he says. “I will spend the rest of my years attempting to learn from Aenea’s teachings—listening very hard for the voices of the dead and the living—while reacquainting myself with Our Lord’s lessons on humility. For years I played the archaeologist and intellectual. It is time to rediscover myself as a simple parish priest.”

“Amen,” says de Soya and hunts in his cup board for another bottle. The former Pax starship captain sounds a bit drunk.

“You don’t wear the cruciform any longer?” I say, addressing myself to all three men while looking at Duré.

All three of them look shocked. Duré says, “Only the fools and ultimately cynical still wear the parasite, Raul. Very few on Pacem. Very few on any of the worlds where Aenea’s Shared Moment was heard.” He touches his thin chest as if remembering. “It was not a choice for me, actually. I was reborn in one of the Vatican resurrection créches at the height of the fighting. I waited for Lourdusamy and Albedo to visit me as always… to murder me as always. Instead, this man…” He extends his long fingers toward Kee, who bows slightly and pours himself a bit more wine. “This man,” continues the former Pope Teilhard, “came crashing in with his rebels, all combat armor and ancient rifles. He brought me a chalice of wine. I knew what it was. I had shared in the Shared Moment.”

I stare at the old priest. Even dormant in the bubble-memory matrix of the extra cruciform, even while being resurrected? I thought.

As if reading my gaze, Father Duré nods.

“Even there,” he says. Looking directly at me, he says, “What will you do now, Raul Endymion?”

I hesitate only a second. “I came to Pacem to find Aenea’s ashes… she asked me… she once asked…”

“We know, my son,” says Father de Soya quietly.

“Anyway,” I go on when I can, “there’s no chance of that in what’s left of Castel Sant’Angelo, so I’ll continue with my other priority.”

“Which is?” says Father Duré with infinite gentleness. Suddenly, in this dim room with the rough table and the old wine and the male smell of clean sweat all around, I can see in the old Jesuit the powerful reality behind Uncle Martin’s mythic Cantos. I realize without doubt that this was indeed the man of faith who had crucified himself not once but repeated times on the lightning-filled tesla tree rather than submit to the false cross of the cruciform. This was a true defender of the faith. This was a man whom Aenea would have loved to have met and talked with and debated with. At that moment I feel her loss with such renewed pain that I have to look down into my wine to hide my eyes from Duré and the others. “Aenea once told me that she had given birth to a child,” I manage to say and then stop. I cannot remember if this fact had been in the gestalt of memories and thoughts that was transmitted in Aenea’s Shared Moment. If so, they know all about this. I glance at them, but both priests and the corporal are waiting politely. They had not known this. “I’m going to find that child,” I say. “Find it and help raise it, if I am allowed.”

The priests look at one another in something like wonderment. Kee is looking at me. “We did not know this,” says Federico de Soya. “I am amazed. I would have wagered everything I know about human nature to say that you were the only man in her life… the only love. I have never seen two young people so happy.”

“There was someone else,” I say, raising my glass almost violently to swig down the last of the wine only to find the glass empty. I set it carefully on the table. “There was someone else,” I say again, less miserably and emphatically this time. “But that’s not important. The baby… the child… is important. I want to find it if I can.”

“Do you have any idea where the child is?” says Kee.

I sigh and shake my head. “None. But I’ll ’cast to every world in the old Pax and Outback, to every world in the galaxy if I have to. Beyond the galaxy… “I stop. I am drunk and this is too important to talk about when drunk. “Anyway, that’s where I’ll be going in a few minutes.”

Father de Soya shakes his head. “You’re exhausted, Raul. Spend the night here. Bassin has an extra cot in his house next door. We will all sleep tonight and see you off in the morning.”

“Have to go now,” I say and start to rise, to show them my ability to think straight and act decisively. The room tilts as if the ground has subsided suddenly on the south side of Father de Soya’s little house. I grab the table for support, almost miss it, and hang on.

“Perhaps the morning would be best,” says Father Duré, standing and putting a strong hand on my shoulder.

“Yes,” I say, standing again and finding the ground tremors subsiding slightly. “T’morrow’s better.” I shake all of their hands again. Twice. I am desperately close to crying again, not from grief this time, although the grief is there, always in the background like the symphony of the spheres, but out of sheer relief at their company. I have been alone for so long now.

“Come, friend,” says former Corporal Bassin Kee of the Pax Marines and the Corps Helvetica, putting his hand on my other shoulder and walking with the former Pope Teilhard and me to his little room, where I collapse onto one of the two cots there. I am drifting away when I feel someone pulling off my boots. I think it is the former Pope.

I had forgotten that Pacem has only a nineteen-standard-hour day. The nights are too short. In the morning I am still suffused with the exhilaration of my freedom, but my head hurts, my back hurts, my stomach aches, my teeth hurt, my hair hurts, and I am sure that a pack of small, fuzzy creatures has taken up residence in the back of my mouth.

The village beyond the chapel is bustling with early morning activity. All of it too loud.

Cook fires simmer. Women and children go about chores while the men emerge from the simple homes with the same stubbled, red-eyed, roadkill expression that I know I am giving to the world.