Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Jason knew something out of the ordinary was afoot the moment he entered the office, for he recognized Rutherford’s black-clad visitor even before he saw the clerical collar.
“Have a seat, Jason,” Rutherford invited. “I don’t believe you know Father Casinde, do you?”
“Actually, we’ve met briefly. A pleasure to see you again, Father,” said Jason as he shook hands with Father Julian Casinde, Clerk Regular of the Society of Jesus. “And I certainly know of you: the only clergyman who is also an officer of the Temporal Service. When I first heard of it, I must admit I found it a little . . . incongruous.”
“Not as much as you might think,” said the Jesuit. He was a slender youngish man of medium height, pale-olive-complexioned, with regular features and very dark hair and eyes. “I’m associated with the Assistancy of St. Eligius.” Seeing Jason’s blank look, he elaborated with a smile. “St. Eligius is the patron of clockmakers. Hence it’s an appropriate name for the Assistancy.”
“Er . . . ‘Assistancy’?”
“There are a number of them within the Order, under Assistants who advise the Superior General on matters pertaining to geographical regions or specialized subject areas—in our case, the theological implications of the discoveries made through time travel.”
“The Authority,” Rutherford explained, “reached an agreement with the Holy See, as it seemed in the interest of both parties. Father Casinde has been extremely useful to us, leading expeditions touching on matters of religious significance—to the extent that we are, as a matter of practical politics, allowed to investigate such sensitive matters.”
“Of course.” Jason recalled some of the ideas the Authority had had to quietly drop—an expedition to Jerusalem around Passover in 30 A.D., for instance.
It was, he thought, not a surprising arrangement on today’s Earth, with its culture of conscious archaism. The Transhuman Dispensation, with its more-than-Stalinist compulsion to obliterate the human past, had been particularly hostile to all religions, persecuting them with an intensity which seemed almost gratuitous given the fact that they had been steadily losing ground for centuries. This, of course, had given those religions—at least in their outward aspects—a new lease on life. After the wars of liberation, the human race had sought in every way possible to nurture what was left of its history and traditions, like plants that had been torn up by the roots and carefully replanted. Literal belief in religion was rare on twenty-fourth century Earth, but there was widespread observance of its forms and ceremonies, and painstaking restoration of its shrines.
Still, Jason couldn’t avoid a certain surprise that the slightly built, scholarly-looking Casinde had qualified for the Temporal Service, especially considering some of the unsanctified things its officers were sometimes called upon to do. But, on further reflection, he decided it wasn’t so strange after all, given the Jesuits’ almost military ethos, including willingness to live in extreme conditions when required. These, he reminded himself, were men who in past ages had hacked missions out of South American jungles and spirited Jews away from the SS.
“Most recently,” Rutherford was saying, “Father Casinde led an expedition to Rome in 1978, seeking to settle certain persistent questions surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I.”
“Uh, I’m afraid I’m not familiar with . . .”
“He was found dead, sitting up in bed, only thirty-three days after his election,” explained Casinde. “It was one of the shortest pontificates in history—the first ‘Year of Three Popes’ since 1605. The Vatican reported it as a heart attack . . . but no autopsy was performed. This, plus certain irregularities in the issuance of a death certificate, provided fertile ground for conspiracy theories. One was that he was assassinated by the Soviet KGB because he was planning to change the Church’s policy of accommodation with Communist regimes. Another was that he was poisoned by Bishop Paul Marcinikus, the head of the Instituto per le Opere Religiosi, or Institute of Religious Works—better known as the Vatican Bank—because he was about to order a thorough housecleaning of the bank’s notorious corruption, exposing its ties to the Italian Mafia and also to the Freemasons, a favorite suspect of conspiracy theorists in those days. It didn’t help when, four years later, Bishop Marcinikus’ business associate Roberto Calvi was found murdered in what was claimed to be Masonic ritual fashion. I believe the Bavarian Illuminati were also dragged in, as they so often were. And other motives for murdering the Holy Father were also proposed: either he was going to please feminists with certain changes in Church doctrine, or he was going to please traditionalists by restoring the Tridentine Mass, or whatever, depending on who you read.”
Jason cocked his head. “I get the impression that you don’t take any of this too seriously.”
“The Church has always denied these claims,” the Jesuit answered obliquely. “But the doubts and questions have never gone away, and recently the Holy See has changed its position to the extent of agreeing to cooperate with the Authority in an attempt to resolve the matter once and for all.”
“The fact that Father Casinde was to be the mission leader helped to reconcile them to the project,” Rutherford added.
“At any rate,” Casinde resumed, “I took a party of researchers back to Rome in the relevant time period of September, 1978. While there, to my amazement, my implant detected nearby use of bionics.”
For a fraction of a second, it didn’t even register on Jason. Then he sat bolt upright, his entire consciousness in a state of quaveringly focused attention.
Direct neural computer interfacing was one of the things proscribed by the Human Integrity Act. But there were special exceptions, one of which was for the benefit of law enforcement officers and certain others, including Temporal Service officers who functioned as mission leaders. They had a brain implant that served various useful functions such as the recording of aural and visual sensory input, and the projection directly onto the optic nerve of a wealth of information, including a map of the user’s environs. Almost incidentally, it incorporated a sensor which detected functioning bionics within a very limited range.
And bionics in twentieth-century Italy could mean only one thing . . .
“Transhumanist time travelers,” Jason said softly.
“That was my own conclusion. Exercising my legal authority as mission leader, I declared a state of extraordinary emergency and made investigation of this new development our first priority. However, our TRDs of course activated at the set time—”
“Of course,” Jason echoed. The implanted “temporal retrieval devices” which restored time travelers’ temporal energy potential so that they reappeared on the displacer stage from which they had originally departed were normally timed to do so at a predetermined instant, thus facilitating “traffic control” on the displacer stage. The “controllable” variety, activated by the mission leader at his own discretion, was used only for Special Ops missions, which required more flexibility.
“—before we were able to make any headway. And at any rate, I was uncomfortable with exposing the academicians in my party to potential danger. So we learned essentially nothing.” Casinde paused, and spoke with what seemed like great reluctance. “We did obtain certain clues as to the Transhumanists’ activities that pointed in the direction of Venice.”
“So,” said Rutherford to Jason, “you can see that this is a job for the Special Operations Section.”
“Right. We’ll go back to a point slightly earlier than Father Casinde here spotted them, and determine what kind of ‘time bomb’ they’ve planted.”
“Yes. And you’ll have to exercise extreme caution to avoid running afoul of the Observer Effect, because Father Casinde certainly didn’t encounter his own very slightly older self at any time.”
“What? You mean you intend to send him back with us?”
“Yes. He has volunteered for it. And his knowledge of the milieu, together with his recent first-hand experience of it, should be invaluable. Indispensable, in fact.”
Jason gave the slightly built Casinde a sidelong glance. “Father, I mean no reflection on you, but you’re not a member of the Special Operations Section.”
Casinde seemed only slightly miffed. “I am, however, an officer of the Temporal Service. So I have met the qualifications, and received the training, for surviving and functioning in lower-technology historical epochs.”
“Of course you have. But in Special Ops we do things just a little differently than the rest of the Service.” Jason pretended not to notice the faint choking noises from Rutherford’s direction. “Sometimes our missions unavoidably entail violence, because we exist to combat extremely ruthless people—people who have no regard for the lives of ‘Pugs,’ as they call normal, unmodified humans. If it should become necessary, are you going to be able to . . . that is, are your vows going to allow you to—?”
“Commander, my unique dual status has frequently forced me to reconcile knotty questions of right and wrong—cases of conscience, as we call them. In fact, I’ve often had to resort to the kind of casuistry for which the Society of Jesus is renowned, if not notorious.” Casinde’s eyes took on a dark twinkle. “In this particular case, the fact that the Transhumanists were present to be detected at the time I did so, and evidently not exercising any special precautions, would seem to suggest that we had not come into violent contact with them before that point in time.”
Jason chuckled. “No offense, Father, but I’m beginning to think there’s something very appropriate about a Jesuit being a time traveler! All right: I’ll want to put you through certain tests and expose you to a little . . . specialized training by my deputy, Superintendent Alexandre Mondrago. But, conditional on all that, you’re in.” He turned back to Rutherford. “The question is, where do we want to arrive? Rome would be the obvious place, but evidently there’s some sort of Venetian connection. And there, at least, we’d avoid the Observer Effect issues you mentioned.”
“True.” The older man sighed. “It’s a difficult choice, since we have nothing to go on. There’s no event in that milieu with any obvious link to any Transhumanist machinations.”
“No, there isn’t.” Jason was about to continue when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, Casinde’s troubled look. “What is it, Father?”
The Jesuit seemed to reach a decision. “Actually, there may just possibly be such a link.”
“But what? The only major event in that temporal and geographical neighborhood was the death of the Pope, and they’d have no interest in that.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s something else—something that occurred to me when Venice came into the picture. Something I’ve been unwilling to mention . . . even though it has a relation of sorts to the subject of time travel.”
Jason recalled Casinde’s odd hesitancy on the subject of Venice. “What was there in that time and place that could have anything to do with time travel? And why the reluctance to bring it to our attention?”
“Well . . . from the standpoint of the Church, it’s slightly embarrassing. And it seems so far-fetched that I wasn’t sure it was worth bothering you with.”
“That’s all right; any lead is better than the zero we have now. So what is it in Venice that year that might be of interest to the Transhumanists?”
Casinde took a deep breath. “Father Pellegrino Ernetti.”