Gypsies

“Maybe both, Your Eminence. In any case, useful men. We had Einstein and Heisenberg on the run from the Inquisition, we had Russians like Lysenko. We had Dirac and Planck. And we supported their work. Some very unique ideas began emerging from that.”

Palestrina had read profane philosophy; he was familiar with their ideas. “They were deemed heretics for a reason, Mr. Neuma

“But surely the fundamental notions aren’t terribly heretical? I know I’m treading on dangerous ground here”—his smile was fixed—“but the duality of nature, the light and dark creative forces, those are things your order recognizes, are they not?”

“Please don’t lecture me on theology.” To Neuma

“But it’s not new—the idea of looking at nature objectively.”

“Hardly. Descartes was hanged for it.”

“But it’s useful.”

“Is that what matters?”

Neuma

“God bids us all judge, Mr. Neuma

“If you say so, Your Eminence.”

The town was full of flags. The flag of the Novus Ordo was everywhere, the black pyramid with that single leering eye set in a field of red and white bars. Between the flags and Neuma

“We gave these people a free hand,” Neuma

“Theory,” Palestrina said, wishing he could dismiss it as easily as that.

“They predicted,” Neuma

Cardinal Palestrina wanted to say that this was nonsense, chimerical, a snare and a delusion. But of course it was not nonsense, or he wouldn’t be here… Neuma

“I admired those men,” Neuma

Palestrina felt ill.

Neuma

They were deep in the government quarter now, vast stone structures crowding against the cobbled streets, a canyon of sooty architraves decorated with didactic friezes of the Virtues, of Capital and Labor striding hand in hand toward the ostensible future. The factories by the Potomac contributed a pall of oily coal smoke; on a bad day, Neuma

But the Defense Research Institute was the most appalling of any of these structures. The sight of it made the day seem even colder. There was nothing here of the spirituality of the Vatican, an architecture striving toward God; nothing prayerlike in these black stone bastions, a fence of spikes rising automatonlike as the automobile approached. They drove beneath a pillared arch, the eye-and-pyramid motif engraved in the sooty keystone, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.

The building was immense, prisonlike. It had its own powerhouse and commissary, Neuma

Palestrina hated the tag, hated the association of himself with this place. The i

“We had some trouble in the forties,” Neuma

“The escape,” Palestrina said. “The people who broke out.”

“I don’t like to use u

Neuma

Neuma

“Where are we going?” Palestrina’s reluctance was an imperative now, a physical resistance.

“My office,” Neuma

“I should speak to someone. Someone with rank… someone in charge.”

That smile.

“You’re looking at him,” Neuma

Neuma

Neuma

“You make him sound like one of our homunculi.”

“There are homunculi working as servants at the Vatican Library, Mr. Neuma

At last—Cardinal Palestrina considered it a kind of personal triumph—Neuma

“I don’t mean to insult your work—”

“Because, you know, the implications are tremendous. Even the Curia has acknowledged that. Frankly, it seemed like an extremely generous thing for the State Department to invite you here. We don’t normally share this sort of material even with allies.”

Palestrina bowed his head. “The stakes are considerable.”

“The oil supply,” Neuma

“I was thinking of the survival of Christendom.”

Neuma

“Show me the man,” Palestrina said.

“Isn’t that a little premature?”

“I know the history of this place. Do I really have to admire the architecture?” He leaned forward. “The Vatican acknowledges your nation’s generosity. Nevertheless, a moral issue persists. That’s why I’m here.”

“A moral issue,” Neuma