The Sam Gunn Omnibus (91 page)

So there we were: Sam, the Pope,
Cardinal Hagerty, Greg, Josella and me, sitting around a circular table made of
lunar plastic. Of the six of us, only Sam and I seemed truly at ease. The
others looked slightly queasy from the low gravity. Cardinal Hagerty, in
particular, gripped the arms of his chair as if he was afraid he’d be sucked up
to the bare stone ceiling if he let go.

I
was surprised at Josella’s
uneasiness. She was seated next to me—I made certain to place myself between
her and Sam. She had always seemed so cool and self-possessed that I felt
almost pained for her.

While Greg went through the formality
of reading the précis of Sam’s suit against the Vatican, I leaned over and
whispered to Josella, “Are you having trouble adjusting to the gravity?”

She looked surprised, almost
shocked. Then she tried to smile. “It’s ... not that. It’s this room. I feel...
it must be something like claustrophobia.”

I
wondered that she
hadn’t been bothered before, but then I figured that the other rooms of the
hotel had big electronic window walls and green plants and decorations that
tricked the eye into forgetting that you were buried deep underground. This
conference room’s walls were bare, which made its ceiling seem low. Like a monk’s
cell, I thought.

Halfway through Greg’s reading of
the précis, Cardinal Hagerty cleared his throat noisily and asked, “If there’s nothing
new in this travesty, could we be dispensing with the rest of this reading?”

Hagerty was by far the oldest
person in the group. His face was lined

and
leathery; his hair thin and white. He looked frail and cranky, and his voice
was as creaky as a rusted door hinge.

Sam nodded agreement, as did
Josella. Greg tapped his hand-sized computer and looked up from its screen.

“Now then,” said the Pope, folding
his hands on the tabletop, “let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.”

He was smiling at us. Pope William
looked even younger in person than on TV. And even more dynamic and handsome. A
rugged and vigorous man with steel-gray hair and steel-gray eyes. He looked more
like a successful corporate executive or a lawyer than a man of God. Even in
his white Papal robes, it was hard for me to think of him as a priest. And a
celibate.

He had the knack of making you feel
that he was concentrating all his attention on you, even when he wasn’t looking
directly at you. And when his eyes did catch mine, I got goose bumps, so help me.
Dynamic? He was
dynamite.

Of course, he didn’t affect Sam the
way he hit me.

“You want the nitty-gritty?” Sam
replied, with no hint of awe at speaking face-to-face with the Pope. “Okay. God
owes me half a billion dollars.”

“Ridiculous,” Cardinal Hagerty
croaked.

“Not according to the insurance
industry,” Sam countered. He jabbed a finger toward Josella. “Tell ‘em, kid.”

Josella looked startled. “Tell them
what?”

“Your employers claim that the
accidents that’ve almost wrecked Ecuador National Space Systems were acts of
God. Right?”

“Yes,” Josella answered warily.

Sam spread his hands. “See?
They’re
the ones who put the blame on God, not me. All I’m trying to do is collect what’s
owed me.”

Pope William turned his megawatt
smile on Sam. “Surely you don’t expect the Church to pay you for industrial
accidents.”

“Don’t call me Shirley,” Sam mumbled.

“What?”

Barely suppressing his glee, Sam
said, “We’ve been through all this. The insurance industry says God’s
responsible. You claim to be God’s representative on Earth. So you owe Ecuador
National Space Systems half a billion dollars.”

Pope William’s smile darkened just
a bit. “And what will you do if we refuse to pay—assuming, that is, that the
World Court should decide in your favor.”

“Which
is ridiculous,” said Hagerty.

Sam
was unperturbed. “If the World Court really is an International Court of
Justice, as it claims to be,” he gave me the eye, “then it has to decide in my
favor.”

“I
doubt that,” said the Pope.

“Ridiculous,”
uttered Cardinal Hagerty. It seemed to be his favorite word.

“Think
about it,” Sam went on, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Think of the
reaction in the Moslem nations if the World Court seems to treat the Vatican
differently from other nations. Or India or China.”

Pope
William’s brows knit slightly. Hagerty’s expression could have soured milk.

“Another
thing,” Sam added. “You guys have been working for a century or so to heal the
rifts among other Christians. Imagine how the Protestants will feel if they see
the Vatican getting special treatment from the World Court.”

“Finding
the Vatican innocent of responsibility for your industrial accidents is hardly
special treatment,” said Pope William.

“Maybe
you think so, but how will the Swedes feel about it? Or the Orthodox Catholics
in Greece and Russia and so on? Or the Southern Baptists?”

The
Pope said nothing.

“Think
about the publicity,” Sam said, leaning back easily in his chair. “Remember
what an American writer once said:
‘
There
is no character, howsoever good and fine, but can be destroyed by ridicule.’“

“ ‘By
ridicule, howsoever poor and witless,’“ the Pope finished the citation. “Mark
Twain.”

“That’s
right,” said Sam.

Cardinal
Hagerty burst out, “You can’t hold the Vatican responsible for acts of the
Lord! You can’t expect the Church to pay every time some daft golfer gets
struck by lightning because he didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the
rain!”

“Hey,
you’re
the guys who claim you’re God’s middleman. You spent several centuries
establishing that point, too, from what I hear.”

“All
right,” said Pope William, smiling again, “let’s grant for the sake of argument
that the World Court decides against the Vatican. We, of course, will refuse to
pay. It would be impossible for us to pay such a sum, in fact. Even if we
could, we’d have to take the money away from the poor and the starving in order
to give it to you.”

“To
the nation of Ecuador,” Sam corrected.

“To
Ecuador National Space Systems,” grumbled Cardinal Hagerty.

“Which
is you,” said the Pope.

Sam
shrugged.

Pope
William turned to me. “What would happen if we refused to pay?”

I
felt flustered. My face got
hot. “I...
uh—the only legal alternative
would be for the Court to ask the Peacekeepers to enforce its decision.”

“So
the Peacekeepers will invade the Vatican?” Cardinal Hagerty sneered. “What will
they do, cart away the
Pieta?.
Hack off the roof of the Sistine Chapel and sell it at auction?”

“No,”
I admitted. “I don’t see anything like that happening.”

“Lemme
tell you what’ll happen,” Sam said. “The world will see that your claim to be
God’s special spokesman is phony. The world will see that you hold yourselves
above the law. Your position as a moral leader will go down the toilet. The
next time you ask the nations to work for peace and unity the whole world will
laugh in your face.”

Cardinal
Hagerty went white with anger. He sputtered, but no words came past his lips. I
thought he was going to have a stroke, right there at our conference table.

But
the Pope touched him on the shoulder and the Cardinal took a deep, shuddering
breath and seemed to relax somewhat.

Pope
William’s smile was gone. He focused those steel-gray eyes on Sam and said, “You
are a dangerous man, Mr. Gunn.”

Sam
stared right back at him. “I’ve been called lots of things in my time, but
never dangerous.”

“You
would extort half a billion dollars out of the mouths of the world’s neediest
people?”

“And
use it to create jobs so that they wouldn’t be needy anymore. So they won’t
have to depend on you or anybody else. So they can stand on their own feet and
live in dignity.”

Sam
was getting worked up. For the first time in my life, I saw Sam becoming really
angry.

“You
go around the world telling people to accept what God sends them. You’ll help
them. Sure you will. You’ll help them to stay poor, to stay miserable, to be
dependent on Big Daddy from Rome.”

“Sam!”
I admonished.

“I’ve
read the Gospels. Christ went among the poor and shared what he had with them.
He told a rich guy to sell everything he had and give it to the poor if he
wanted to make it into heaven. I don’t see anybody selling off the papal
jewels. I see Cardinals jet-setting around the world. I see

the
Pope telling the poor that they’re God’s chosen people—from the balconies of
posh hotels.”

Greg Molina smiled grimly. He must
be a Catholic who’s turned against the Church, I thought.

Sam kept on, “All my life I’ve seen
the same old story: big government or big religion or big corporations telling
the little guys to stay in their places and be grateful for whatever miserable
crumbs they get. And they stay in their places and take what you deign to give
them. And their children grow up poor and hungry and miserable and listen to
the same sad song and make more children who grow up just as poor and hungry
and miserable.”

“That’s not his fault,” I said.

“Isn’t it?” Sam was trembling with
rage. “They’re all the same, whether it’s government or corporate or religion.
As long as you
stay
poor and miserable they’ll
help you. And all they do is help you to stay dependent on them.”

Pope William’s expression was grim.
But he said, “You’re entirely right.”

Sam’s mouth opened, then clicked
shut. Then he managed to utter, “Huh?”

“You are entirely right,” the Pope
repeated. He smiled again, but now it was almost sad, from the heart. “Oh, maybe
not
entirely,
but right enough. Holy
Mother Church has struggled to help the world’s poor for centuries, but today
we have more poor people than ever before. It is clear that our methods are not
successful.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed warily, sensing
a trap ahead. Cardinal Hagerty grumbled something too low fo
r
me to hear.

“For centuries we have ridden on
the horns of a dilemma; a paradox, if you will,” the Pope continued. “The goal
of Holy Mother Church—the task given to Peter by Christ—was to save souls, not
bodies. The Church’s eyes have always been turned toward Heaven. Everything we
have done has been done to bring souls to salvation, regardless of the
suffering those souls must endure on Earth.”

Before Sam could object, the Pope
added, “Or so we have told ourselves.”

Cardinal Hagerty let out his breath
in what might have been a sigh. Or a hiss.

Pope William smiled at the old man,
then continued, “The news media have hinted
at...
frictions between myself and the
Curia—the bureaucracy that actually runs the Vatican.”

“I’ve
heard such rumors,” I said.

Clasping
his hands together, the Pope said, “The differences between myself and the
Curia are based on the assessment that you have just made, Mr. Gunn. The Church
has indeed told its faithful to ignore the needs of this world in order to
prepare for the next. I believe that such an attitude has served us poorly. I believe
the Church must change its position on many things. We can’t save souls who
have given themselves to despair, to crime and drugs and all kinds of immorality.
We must give our people
hope”

“Amen
to that,” Sam muttered.

“Hope
for a better life here on Earth.”

Ordinarily
Sam would have quipped that we weren’t on Earth at the moment. But he remained
quiet.