Kill The Monster, Chapter 22

XX. THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS

And then, he woke up, and it was all a dream. The headless corpse of Whitney Houston was no longer pursuing him around Disneyland. Instead, he was in a well-appointed room with art nouveau furnishings, in a bed only slightly smaller than Rhode Island. And he knew, all of a sudden, what had woken him. He could no longer hear the gentle whirr of the air conditioner.

He clambered to the edge of the bed, prepared to present himself to troopers at its state line. At the edge of the bed he found his sandals. There had been times in his life when he'd despised sandals. Still, gladiators had worn them, and no-one had ever called Spartacus a Jesus creeper.

"Screen seven on."

The liquid crystal mirror at one end of the room ceased to be an image of him, and became another person sitting on another bed, not a mile away. In another well-decorated suite with meaningless modernist abstracts cluttering the walls, a fifteen-year-old boy heaved himself out of bed, sought out the TV remote, flicked the flat screen at one end of the room on. Channel One came on; Italian TV, news anchorpersons excitedly discussing the imminent visit to Venice of the Pastor of the Church of the Book, and incidentally also the Pope. The boy flicked to Channel Two in disgust; Italian TV, a dumb housewife in a quiz show deliberating over whether the capital of America was Minneapolis, Washington, New York, or Disneyland. The dumbest thing was that the show was subtitled. The housewife was American. Now, ah don't thank it's Disneylayand, but this could be one o'them there trick questions, y'knaaow -

The boy changed channel again; the hotel porn channel, on which there was a parental lock. The boy flicked the channels back and forth between two and three expertly with the remote until the inadequate locking software was fooled and the channel stabilized on porn. The adult channel had a 3D submenu in English, ranging from Paradiso delle Tette through Manipolato dai Nani to Texas Longhorn (Guida Quel Toro, Cowboy). The three menu axes graded content by what Sean could only assume were standardized SI measures of Perversione, Hardcoreità, and Eterosessualità. The boy chose a Five-Ten-Zero setting and began to undo the front button of his expensive pyjamas.

"Screen off." Sean left his son some privacy. Enjoying watching one's children grow up had its limits.

His back hurt this morning. The old bullet wound he'd received in the Victorian era had caused the muscles on the left side of his spine to spasm; he'd been pretending to be another, significantly less gutshot man at the time, and proper medical attention had been late in arriving. Still, the bullet hadn't killed him. He was still alive.

The most powerful man in the world stared at his veined feet sadly, then eased them into his bedroom slippers.

"SCREEN ON."

His wall mirror changed again. Rather than hisown face staring out at him, his own face was staring out at him.

"Are you ready for your audience with Ourself this evening?"

He looked at the carpet and nodded wearily.

The other man looked him up and down with distaste from above a starched military collar. "Your medicine is on the bedside table, ready mixed. We've upped the dosage. You're required to take in ten per cent more protein, ethyl alcohol, and vitamin B to compensate."

Sean stared at the glutinous mass on the table with unconcealed nausea. "Have you any idea what all of this confounded crap is doing to us?"

The General's red eyes stared out of the screen from a world where dissent no longer existed. Sean suspected he enjoyed their little conversations solely since he could obtain an argument nowhere else. "Certainly have, I've had two precautionary heart bypass operations in as many months, and I am working on my third liver. Drink the goddamned medicine."

"Your third? Where did you get the donor organs? Have you been cloning yourself for spare parts? Ah, but I forget myself - He would be dipping into you for spares, no need for cloning there -"

His head jerked back as if rammed against the bed by an invisible genie, and he fell against the headboard sweating. He fingered the electric necklace he wore thoughtfully.

"I thought we had come to an agreement", said the General, "that there would be no more taking of His name in vain."

Sean stared into the screen in silent rage, but chewed it back into himself.

“I obtained the spare parts from our father and grandfather”, said the General. “Immediately after death. Waste not, want not.”

“You went back in time”, hissed Sean, “and robbed the graves of your ancestors, right after you watched them die.” He rubbed along one side of his spine. Now it hurt even worse.

“Of course not”, said the General. “I made our son do it. Just before you foolishly let him get away.”

“You’re fooling nobody.” Sean reached over for the semi-liquid goop by his bedside and drained it, consciously suppressing his gag reflex. “You left us together for a full ten minutes, despite the fact that you knew what I was going to do. You couldn’t but know, because you’re me. You remember everything I’ve ever done. You could no more have failed to stop me if you’d wanted than you’d let me point a gun at your head and pull the trigger.”

“Aha!” The General lifted a warning finger to Sean. “But.”

“Sorry. Sorry.” Sean rubbed his eyes. “Bad analogy. Neither of us can die yet. Mind you, He might. Wilson said He’d not appeared in public for years, that there was some speculation in the Resistance that he might even be dead.”

The General looked placidly out of the viewscreen. “The Resistance have been infiltrated by benign forces for many years. And it suits Him to appear dead. The Resistance are unlikely to attempt to assassinate a dead man. George Edward Wilson will fulfil his purpose of unwittingly giving birth to the Pastor, then he will be disposed of in the same manner as all antiecumenicals.”

Sean stared sorrowfully into the future. “And his two small daughters?”

The future looked back into Sean. “And all the cuddly lemurs in Madagascar. All you experienced was a fictional account of the year 2040, produced by players whom we canlocate, and whom we can either force to lie or dupe into believing their own lies.”

Sean tried to keep his voice as casual as possible. “And have you found the players yet?”

“Of course. How could it be otherwise? He will be victorious. And He can never die.” The General sat back in his seat with an expression of inexhaustible calm. “You must understand, we are doing this for your benefit, for when you reach Ascension Day, you will become Him.”

“Ascension Day.” He was sure he remembered what Ascension Day was from all the RE lessons he’d fallen asleep through as a child.

“Yes. Lo, you were killed and your body hurled into the pit. Lo, after three years you returned to life, and walked forth again among your Faithful. And lo in another seven years’ time you ascend to cast off the shoddy flesh of Man and become one with the Divine once more.”

“Oh. That Ascension Day.” Sean looked critically at the screen. “Looking forward to it?”

The General shrugged. “It’s my manifest destiny.” But Sean was sure he detected a touch of sadness in the older, even fatter man’s eyes.

He wanted to say He’s mad. Being Pastor of every flock has gone to his head. Can’t you see that? But for the General to recognize that would be to recognize that he, the General, was slowly going mad, and that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He knows it anyway. It’s in his eyes. He looks like our troopers did after Xian, when the Chinese let off tactical neutron bombs. Knowing they’d taken fatal doses of radioactivity, that they were walking dead men and that there was nothing our field surgeries could do. Many of them just sat down on the battlefield on their own tin hats and gave up. But some fought on. More cruelly and harder than ever. The Chinese forgot their own ancient general’s maxim – always allow your enemy a way out.

“You have another appointment at five. With ourself. In Piazza San Marco.”

Sean nodded. “May I be permitted to dress?”

Without a trace of irony, the General nodded slowly. The screen flicked off.

Sighing, the tyrant of the world eased his feet into his orthotic bedroom slippers. Outside, it was another fine day. It was always a fine day, nowadays. This was the last decade he could bear to be in Venice in. Even this early in time, from Spring to Autumn the heat spilling out from the Sahara was sufficient to turn calli into kilns, piazze into frying pans. Swimming in the canals was both illegal and dangerous, due to water traffic and dangerously high blue green algae levels, but it would happen every day in every sestiere all through the summer. Every afternoon in August, Venice would shut down and became a water park.

Luckily, Winter still had a feeble presence here. In summer, he would be forced to stay indoors, sit by the window, and watch the world, even when the massive power drain of so many air conditioning units turned on together forced scheduled outages all over the city. The power for the Palazzo Agnello did not come from this sestiere, nor even from this solar system. A heavy cable, taped to the wall to prevent accidents, ran the length of the palace’s seventeenth-century spinal corridor and took a left turn into a box room where it terminated in an oil production facility on Zeta Tucanae Three. Locked in a man-made nuclear winter, the planet’s massive sub-crustal hydrocarbon bounty provided power enough for one tenth of 2025 Earth’s annual needs, let alone for one bijou palace in the pre-Pastoral era. Zeta Tucanae 3 also had blessing of being sheathed in a kilometre of ice from pole to pole; the chill wind whistling through the permanently-maintained Gate was routed, in summer, directly into the palace air conditioning.

“Curtains sesame.”

The massive, bombproof picture window, thicker than aquarium glass, looked out on perhaps a billion dollars’ worth of waterfront. The Palazzo Balbi, Palazzo Grassi, and Palazzo Ca’Foscari, the recent acquisition of which by mysterious foreign buyers had sent Venetian property prices soaring into the moronosphere, maintained dignified closed curtains this early in the morning, though the blinds on the Balbi’s swimming pool were up as usual. High Primate Kagame, an enthusiastic up-and-coming Level Thirty, was aware of the effect his fifteen-year-old daughter had on the Pastor’s libido, and ensured she swam naked every morning for the delight of his eye. Sean breathed out heavily whilst watching the girl step slowly down the gaudily gilded ladder into the water, and reminded himself to have Kagame reassigned to a menial post on a colony planet. The girl, perhaps, might be elevated several levels and given more pleasant work in cooler climes, as long as those climes put her a long way away from her Pastor.

He left his rooms wearing an unassuming Church robe in brown, gold, scarlet, gold, ermine and gold. A house technician, dressed in furs for a visit to the box room, passed him in the corridor and bowed down to ground level, brushing the boards with his forehead. Sean nodded in acknowledgement, making a mental note to set the man straight on house protocol later. Frantic full kneels executed by serving staff every time they encountered the Pastor resulted in lengthy delays at dinner and many spilled drinks.

Breakfast was ready for him in the Sala degli Putti, which the General insisted he eat in in preference to his own rooms, which had a perfectly serviceable dining area. The single small table was lost in the room’s emptiness, a tiled black-and-white floor surrounded by acres of Renaissance murals of suspiciously lovingly-rendered plump-buttocked young cupidons fluttering on hopelessly inadequate wings. On the small table was toast, rose-and-strawberry jam, scrambled egg, bacon, mushrooms, and an espresso the size of a thimble containing enough caffeine to mutate laboratory animals. There were also six rows of colour-coded pills set out on one side of his fork, together with a scrap of paper containing the doctor’s pill-taking instructions of the day. Pill A could not be taken with coffee. Pill B was best taken after ingestion of animal protein. Pill C, if taken in conjunction with certain analgesics, would kill him. In addition to pills and food, there was a wad of newspapers in English, Arabic, Hebrew and Italian. As training for his forthcoming Godhood, he had to read them all, and none of the domestic staff, by order of the General, were allowed to help him. Oddly, the Italian had proved more difficult than either the Arabic or the Hebrew – the Hebrew in particular had come to him as if remembered from a dream, causing him to suspect his dreams had been tampered with. The papers were all the more depressing since they were 2025 editions containing nothing but good news. Much of the good news concerned him, recently risen from the dead, the indisputable saviour of mankind. One particularly good piece of news announced that over a hundred thousand lives had been saved when a stray Chinese naval missile had fallen in East Side, rather than West Side, St. Louis, doing God’s work for His people by exterminating over a million Failures-to-Take-Up in a glorious blaze of holy incandescence.

A mud-and-blood-covered messenger from the Divine Banner Legion entered to inform him that Muling had finally been taken by advancing Russian forces. Muling, a tiny town sitting astride the main road from Harbin to Vladivostok (now renamed Vladovechka, ‘Lord Lamb’), would probably never have ever entered his consciousness if he had not had one hundred thousand men fighting and dying to take it.

Behind the Legionnaire, Farinelli, a minor kitchen functionary, stood idle while Tamburini, the dwarfish majordomo, cleared the breakfast plates. The reason for this apparent role reversal was that, in addition to being a minor functionary, Farinelli was also the palace representative of the Committee of Truth and Beauty, a closely guarded secret known to all.

As the Legionnaire saluted and left, Farinelli cleared his throat. “Pastor, there is the small matter of an incoming package which we deemed suspicious. It was received via the normal mail as a present intended for the Pastor specifically on this date –“

“On this date? When did you receive it?”

Farinelli squirmed with embarrassment. “Pastor, it was received two weeks after the inception of the Committee, here in 2013; it has been in our safekeeping ever since. As it was addressed to Your Holiness as a surprise gift, we” – here he attempted to fidget himself into invisibility – “did not inform you.”

Sean stared hard at the package in Farinelli’s hands. “What is it?”

“It has been checked for security risks, Pastor; none were found. The packaging has been expertly removed and reconstituted using the very latest techniques. No traces of poisons, carcinogens, or viral or bacterial agents were discovered.”

Sean clicked his fingers irritably. “Bring it here! Here! A present. A surprise present. Normally I do not receive such things.”

Farinelli shook his head. “No, Pastor. Your Holiness expressed a wish to have all gifts and incoming letters screened and replied to by Committee personnel, letting through only those items having a net worth of over ten million dollars.”

“I did? I must have been drunk. It’s the little things that matter, Farinelli, the little things. Open it! This diet foisted on me by myself has given me useless sausage fingers.”

Farinelli bowed and, using the single envenomed ceramic fingernail implanted in his forefinger by virtue of his office, slit the wrapping on the package neatly top to bottom. He extracted a green bottle and handed it to the Pastor.

“Technically”, he warned, “it is extremely toxic.”

The Pastor turned the bottle in his hands in the sunlight; it sparkled like a liquid jewel. “Green absinthe. I always wondered when I started drinking this stuff.”

“We have taken the precaution of ordering another ten bottles”, bowed Farinelli, “in case it’s to your Holiness’s taste.”

“But there’s something else in the wrapping.” The Pastor leaned closer, reached for the other component of the gift. A dull grey, roughly pressed from steel panels, it bore indistinct lettering down one side of its receiver: US ARMY.

“An M1911A1 Colt .45 service automatic”, said Farinelli. “An antique. Loaded. The ammunition has been non-intrusively inspected and found to be above board.”

“Gimme that.” Sean took up the pistol, inspected it. “You know these things are considered the most reliable handguns ever made? The US Army’s proposed replacements for them simply couldn’t match the standard the Colt set. Let’s see if it’s still working after all these years –“

- Farinelli shuddered and braced himself for impact –

“- how does this grip safety work – aha!”

Having located the safety, he turned the barrel till it faced his eye and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“Yup”, he nodded. “Working fine.”

“The Lord still has work for your Holiness to do, Pastor”, comforted Farinelli. “The gift comprises both gun and bottle, and would have been, as I said before, dealt with by a delegate, had it not been for the fact”, he said, presenting a brown paper envelope, “that it purports to come from your Holiness’s mother.”

Sean could say nothing. He looked at Farinelli for long seconds.

“You opened”, he said, “a private communication addressed from my mother to me.”

The Committee man’s face paled. Sean felt ashamed of himself. Baiting secret policemen was one of the few malicious pleasures left him, but if a high level turannone emitter baited his subordinates, those subordinates could genuinely sicken and die. Besides, one benefit of mind control was the fact that even secret policemen did their jobs out of pure love. They could also rape, torture, and murder in the name of love. Many of them smiled as they did so.

“I’m afraid I must confirm your Holiness’s suspicion”, said Farinelli.

If I handed him this gun now and asked him to blow out his brains, he would, thought Sean.

Instead, he smiled beatifically. “Jolly good. Let’s see what the old girl wants.” He accepted the envelope and tore it open.

“The envelope is an American Government-Letter manila produced between the years 1960 and 1970 by the United Envelope company of America”, said Farinelli. “The paper is a British variety called Basildon Bond. Both are extremely widely used. The letter was franked somewhere in the New York metropolitan area on the Fifth of December, 2012. It was received by our office in Minneapolis one week later. Luckily, as has happened with a number of mails over the years that might otherwise have resulted in your Holiness’s death, it was intercepted by vigilant officers of the Committee of the Future…”

One of the drawbacksof belonging to a successful organisation that spanned time was the fact that, sooner or later, representatives of Head Office in 2035 were bound to arrive back in the present day to inform their country cousins how things should and would be run. In the Church’s case, however, the problem was not limited to pre-announced corporate visits. The present was filled with representatives of the secret police of the future.

The letter, unfolded, read: DRINK ME. MOTHER KNOWS BEST.

“You know as well as I do”, said Sean, “that I cannot be killed.”

Farinelli cringed again. “Quite so, your Holiness.”

“Are you a member of the Committee of the Future, Farinelli?”

“If I were”, said Farinelli, staring at the floor, “I would hardly be able to divulge the fact –“

“- to a mere level Thirty-Three”, finished Sean. Farinelli’s face visibly changed colour. Like being an ancient Roman emperor, having a dolphin fish set before him out of water to watch it iridesce in its death agonies –

“Our entire world is now so heavily controlled by turannone dependency”, said Sean, “that we can, in many ways, no longer be considered human.” He picked up pill A. “These are not drugs, but chemicals which alter our DNA. We are arguably not the same subspecies as our ancestors. I have mutated into a new subspecies inside a single generation.”

Farinelli bowed solemnly. “Your Holiness is, as ever, correct.”

“But you, Farinelli, you were born with helotone in your bloodstream. You do not know what it is to be truly human.”

“If your Holiness says so, it is true.”

“We churn out turannonovirus in factories the size of cities worldwide”, said Sean. “We ship it for free to people we claim we cannot even afford to feed. We produce complexes of auxiliary drugs, just to keep our leadership, who produce levels of turannone hazardous to their own health, alive. There are disciplines of medicine entirely devoted to turannone addiction, and massive worldwide police forces dedicated only to trackingdown people who have a natural immunity. One of the main ingredients in turannone production is an organic compound found in the Manchioneel tree, native to Vieques in Antigua. The tree is so venomous the Carib indians used to use its bark to make arrow poison. It is not only inedible, but actually hazardous to human life. And we grow fields of it! Fields!” He picked up his teacup, a Josiah Wedgewood original, and hurled it at the wall. It bounced.

“You’ve been replacing my tableware.”

“At your Holiness’s insistence”, bowed Farinelli. “Too many priceless works of art were being broken. It is still an original; Mr. Wedgewood was most interested to be working with the new materials we presented to him.”

Sean placed his head in his hands. “What have we become, Farinelli?”

“People who do not waste crockery, Holiness?” Farinelli picked up the cup and set it firmly back on the table.

Sean grinned thinly. “Now I know you’re Future Committee.”

“I’m afraid I really cannot comment, Holiness.”

“And our leadership holiday here amid the worst excesses of the past. Winter in Venice. Summer in Babylon.” He grunted and pushed his bulk upwards from the table. “Help me up. I must go to the gymnasium for my morning physio. That confounded old gunshot wound is still hurting.”

***

His To Do list for the day was monumental. Luckily most of it could be delegated to others, but the ongoing land war in Asia required personal attention. The mess of prelates who'd been put in charge of the amphibious assault on Hainan had been assuming God was going to do their thinking for them. Ten waves of troops had so far broken on indomitable and cunningly wrought Chinese shore defences.

In addition, Marco was waiting for him on the high balcony above the square. This early in the day and year, the air was almost cool enough to be a Twentieth Century English spring afternoon, and the lines of tourists queueing to enter the duomo had shrunk to a mere ten metres in length. Over Sean's head, the four great horses reared, straining eternally at the traces that bound them to their chariot, frozen forever in the act of thundering off the edge of the cathedral and plunging to their brazen doom. The horses, he knew, along with much of what was today considered uniquely Venetian, had been plundered from Byzantium by crusaders who had turned on their fellow Christians. Even the bones of the city's patron saint, contained within the duomo, had been stolen from Alexandria.

Surrounded by the squad of taciturn Committee men who accompanied the Pastor at all times, Marco's face was downcast.

"It has to be, Marco. You are aware of this."

Marco nodded briefly.

"Men in the employ of God are like blades in the hands of a surgeon, Marco. I ask you to carry out this task because you are the sharpest edge I have. I wish there to be no suffering." He paused and reconsidered the sentence. "No unnecessary suffering. In a few hours' time it will be necessary for me to treat you quite badly, even to appear to be making fun of you. This is because I know I do it. God has written a script which I must follow. Have you ever heard of the Gospel of Judas, Marco?"

Marco looked up. Yes, I know you've heard of it, Marco, because the Level Tens who clean your cell discovered a hidden copy of it. With written footnotes.

"It's a third century AD religious manuscript, purportedly originally written by Judas himself", said Sean. "Whether it's authentic or not is one of those great stones of history the Redaction Office has yet to overturn. But regardless of its authenticity, the question it poses is valid. Most Christian histories from the Dark Ages onwards cast Judas as the most evil man in history, the betrayer, irrevocably damned. Renaissance paintings show him as an ugly misshapen chap with an untidy beard. Dante places him next to Brutus and Cassius in Hell, being munched on eternally by one of the many mouths of Satan. But what if Judas had known what his betrayal would achieve? What if he'd known that Christ's death was necessary for the redemption and salvation of mankind? What if Christ had confessed all to him? Had loved him above all his other disciples and had entrusted him with that awful mission? Become the most hated man in history, in order to save history?"

Sean turned to the warming city, hands clasped behind his back.

"In case you're wondering, I'm not alluding to what you have to do by killing John Lang. I'm whining about my own troubles as usual."

Behind him, he heard Marco, predictably, falling to his knees to kiss the hem of his robe. The indignities to which turannone could subject the wisest and cleverest of men were abhorrent.

He placed a hand on Marco's head.

"Go and do", he said. "We both have our scripts. I'll see you in Harry's." His subordinate, a man with twice his own abilities in every respect, scurried away gratefully. There was, Sean knew, a specially prepared and cleared path from the duomo to the Doge's Palace.

On Sean's right hand, Stephanie stood silent and harmless as a hand grenade with the pin in. On his left, Giustiniano stood marvelling at the view. Sean felt a momentary irritation at his bodyguard's lack of attention, until he realized that Giustiniano was watching himself, holding his grandmother's hand, allowing himself to be led with meek docility across the plaza in the direction of the Accademia, his gumboots splashing in the acqua alta.

Behind Sean, smartly dressed, immaculately manicured, burning with hereditary suicidal devotion to duty, stood Bram Hamed, fresh out of seminary and Basic Training, young, eager, bright-eyed, disturbing. Sean had objected to being served in the capacity of bodyguard by yet another Hamed, but the General had insisted, and Abraham had volunteered. Today at least, however, there could be no problems. Sean had seen this day before, albeit through another man's eyes. This day's crop of bodyguards should still be up and living at the end of it.

"Today, Bram", he said, "for the first time in my life, I get to meet a god."

"Does not the Bible tell us", said Bram, "that when we meet the lowliest of beggars on the street, we have crossed paths with God?"

Sean was not entirely sure whether the Bible said this or not, but gave his bodyguard the benefit of the doubt.

"Remind me", he said, staring out at the fog-shrouded roofs, "what number two on the To-Do list is."

Stephanie spoke without needing to consult an aide-mémoire. "Personally ordering the summary execution of ten thousand Chinese prisoners of war, Pastor. You felt it would build your Holiness's character."

He remembered the order now. A cruel order, but an expedient one. The Church forces about to advance into Harbin would face two more months of fierce resistance; advance temporal reconnaissance had confirmed this. Attempting to find sufficient manpower to guard ten thousand POW's would cost even more Church lives. But liquidating prisoners-of-war was a decision, he believed, that could not be left to the middle ranks. The C-in-C had to take that stain on his own soul. Still, it made it easier when a future version of himself was ordering himself to do it.

I'm only obeying orders.

And then, in the future, his future self would be able to say: I was never the one who actually pulled the trigger.

"Do we still have my present?" he said. Stephanie nodded, and produced the pistol.

"I mean", said Sean, rubbing his hands eagerly. "The absinthe." But he took the pistol anyway, and made sure it was safe in his robes.

"The Committee of the Future felt", said Bram Hamed, clearing his throat, "that you might hurt yourself with it, Holiness."

"Its active ingredients", said Stephanie, "apart from an astronomically high alcohol-by-volume, also include a chemical called thujone, whose effects on a high-level turannone-synthetic metabolism have not yet been established. Thujone is said to have hallucinogenic properties. Pastor, in our own time this bottle would be illegal. Please give us time to check its effects on a suitable test subject."

"Such as who?" blinked Sean, all happy innocence.

Stephanie and Bram swapped anxious glances.

"It's all right", said the Pastor wearily, reaching up to caress a brazen fetlock. "I know who my every round of drugs was tested on. I know who my poison-taster was. I know why she died early. Who gave the order?"

"You did, Pastor."

"Which me? The one with the gay Brazilian cinema commissionaire's uniform, or the god?"

Bram licked his lips nervously. "If it please your Holiness, it was your ascended self who gave the order to your pre-ascended. Your pre-ascended self wept and attempted suicided several times after receiving the order. I had difficulty reconciling this with my faith until I remembered, Holiness, that even Christ requested that his Father take the cup from his lips."

"But we've run out of test subjects now", said Sean. He could see the white icing dome of Santa Maria della Salute from here, and the vast brick bulk of the Iglesia de Santa Maria dei Frari. If he squinted, he fancied he could even see church towers on the mainland.

"We might elevate a trusted servant to thirty-two", said Bram. "High Primate Kagame has made it known he is eager to volunteer."

"Yes", said Sam. "I'll bet he is."

"This bottle is particularly suspect, as it is a Pernod Fils produced prior to 1915, when absinthe production ceased in France due to a number of high-profile incidents, one of which involved a previously mild-mannered man shooting dead his entire family", said Bram.

"We're lucky there", said Sean. "I don't believe I have any family left to shoot. I will drink from the bottle. As I remember seeing myself drink from it, I have no choice."

"We could supply an identical bottle", said Stephanie, "furnished by ourselves. That would be safer."

"How many years have you been looking for something in that bottle that might kill me?"

Bram inspected his feet minutely. "Twelve, Pastor."

"And I know I am still alive in ten years' time", said Sean. "I will demonstrate the truth of this. Il dio è guasto! Yahveh maveth! Allahu mayyet! God is dead!"

He shouted the words so loudly that a group of nearby nuns crossed themselves. The punishment, however, was immediate; his expensive necklace spat sparks, and his body jerked as if in an invisible wind, the stone flags flying up to hit him like hammerheads. He writhed on the cold stone for several secons as Bram, Giustiniano, and Stephanie looked on.

"L'uomo povero sta soffrendo un grippaggio epilettico", said the first nun.

"Il dio sta punendolo per la sua malvagità", said another.

"Assomiglia notevolmente all'immagine del nuovo candidato vice-presidenziale Americano in Playboy", commented a third. "Ma è più vecchio."

"È meglio non interferire", interposed Bram. "I grippaggi sono soltanto momentanei." He knelt down to cradle Sean's head in his hands, keeping it from banging against the flags.

The rapture ceased. He lay on the uneven floor, gulping for air.

"Yep", he said. "I'm still watching me in the future."

"Your ascended self watches over you to make sure of your ascension", explained Stephanie. He attempted to vomit over Stephanie. She stepped back adroitly.

He pushed himself upright with the aid of a column, wiping his mouth clean on his robe, outlying muscles still twitching in his arms and legs.

"You know", he said, leaning up against the pillar, sweating vilely, "apologist historians are going to have a hell of a time explaining all this."

"Even our Lord on the cross", said Stephanie primly, "asked His Lord why He had forsaken Him."

Sean looked up with flecks of vomit clinging to his unshaven jowls.

"Are you taking the piss?"

***

On their way out of the cathedral, through the ridiculous façade carved out of seven shades of marble, a vagrant ran out of the crowd - a crook-backed, gat-toothed man with grime scoured into his skin so deeply no industrial scourer could ever remove it. By the look of his leering smile, the dirt reached all the way in to his soul. Stephanie, Bram and Giustiniano had the man pinned on his front on the pavement in an instant, all four limbs splayed out like a lepidopterist's specimen. He howled in pain. Sean drew his robe close about himself; an earlier version of him was expected in this square later that same day, and it would not do to be recognized. The square was swarming with 2013-era Committee agents, and heads already seemed to be turning in their direction.

The vagrant was crying out in English, language of free men and soccer hooligans. Oddly-accented English, it was true, but English nevertheless. Sean wondered how long it was since he had last heard it.

"I have a very urgent message for the Pastor! I have a very urgent message for the Pastor!"

"Let him go", said the Pastor.

Sean could hear Bram's teeth grind in his head with frustration. "Pastor, I haven't yet searched him properly for weapons. He has something in his fist."

"And you and I know I can't be killed yet. Let him go."

The hobo sat up, grinning with all his meagre teeth. He squinted at Sean. "And you would be the Pastor", he said.

"I would", said Sean. "What's your message?"

"They chose me because I am a drunk", said the drunk, spitting out a mouthful of what might have been tobacco, mixed with blood; Sean's bodyguard were nothing if not thorough. "I have cancers in my lungs, mouth, bowel and lymphatic system. My every joint is twisted, crippled, and racked with pain. I am entirely useless as any sort of assassination weapon."

"Go on", said Sean.

"Hence", said the hobo, "it was judged I might get close enough to deliver you a message." He held his hand out; it held a small folded square of grey paper, which had probably once been white.

"Take it", urged the tramp. Sean took it, and began unfolding it.

"Don't READ it!" The vagrant was impatient. "Not NOW! Drink the drink, listen to the Green Fairy, THEN read it. Those are your instructions. You can follow instructions, can't you?"

"Pastor", warned Bram, "that packet could contain anthrax spores, plutonium dust, or nanocontainers holding any sort of toxin you can think of."

"Nobody reads the instructions", said the tramp, "but the Pastor. And afterwards", he added, "he must burn them."

"Where do the instructions come from?" said Stephanie.

"From the Pastor's mother", said the tramp.

"We can interrogate you", said Bram. "We will find out the instructions."

"I", said the vagrant with great satisfaction, "have not read the instructions."

Sean crumpled the paper in his fist and held his fist so tight that no 2035 spy device might penetrate it. What about x-rays? Would they go right through the paper as well?

"You must tell us the content of the paper, Pastor", said Bram.

"Did you not say", said Sean, "that when I cross paths with the lowliest of beggars, I am crossing paths with God?"

"He is not a beggar", argued Stephanie. "He has not begged."

"Spare a million lire for a shot of heroin, guvnor", begged the beggar.

"Take him away to be interrogated", said Stephanie, nodding to Bram and Giustiniano. The beggar shook his head. "Fraid not, holy sirs." He appeared to bite on something hard and swallow, then stood beaming at them with an expression of pure beatific love.

Bram moved more quickly than Stephanie or Giustiniano, reaching the beggar before he hit the ground. "Get his mouth open! Thump him in the stomach -!"

"No use", gasped the beggar, his eyes wide in wonder. "Irreversible. One hundred mg overdose of a level thirty-two turannone precursor. Oh, the coloured lights! The patterns!"

His eyes twitched briefly, and he'd died.

Sean stood apart, the message still in his fist.

Bram rounded on him. "You should tell us the contents of the message, Pastor."

"If you do not tell us", said Stephanie, "we can find out."

Sean's fist curled tighter round the scrap than Superman's round a lump of coal. At that moment, inexplicably, it felt more valuable than the diamond the Man of Steel could squeeze coal into. His three bodyguards were backing him up against the wall of the duomo.

"Excuse me, sir, is anything wrong?"

The voice was familiar, but Sean could not place it. He could see nobody among the many faces turned his way whom he recognized from the year 2025.

"Don't I know you, sir?"

He turned and stared into the face of the man he least needed to see.

Oh my God. It's one of the locals.

The municipal authorities tried to keep Church officials as insulated from Locals as possible, but they were a necessary evil. It was another few seconds before he realized the question had not been asked in Italian.

The man's face was young - or at least, it had not aged, whilst Sean had had to watch his own face deteriorate in mirrors for the last twenty years. The man was dressed in an immaculate business suit as clean as the soul that lay within it.

"...Adam?"

Of course. He's out in the square, before the big performance, making last minute spot checks. Leaving nothing to chance.

And he's armed.

Luckily, Sean's gape of abject terror was interrupted by Bram.

"...grandfather?"

That confused him. How old should Adam Hamed's only grandchild be in 2013? Four? Five? Six?

He swallowed his fear, and talked rapidly. "Adam. It is me."

"Mr. Agnello." Not Pastor Lamb. Not even Pastor Agnello, this far back in time.

"Yes. I, I have a very important message."

"Which is?" He had moved casually to one side so that the breast of his jacket fell open, Sean noticed. If he went for his gun - that tiny, pathetic little Kel-Tec they used to issue to security staff - the bullets would splatter like raindrops on the body armour Bram, Stephanie and Giustiniano were wearing. And Adam was wearing no body armour - could be wearing no body armour capable of stopping the kind of projectiles that would come out of 2025-vintage weapons. They'd tear him in two and massively structurally damage the cathedral portico pillars behind him.

"I'm really, really sorry, Adam."

An eyebrow raised; the lip curled. The gun hand did not move. "The message?"

"That is the message. You're about to die, Adam. And there's nothing you or I can do about it."

Hamed swallowed. "Is that a threat?"

Sean shook his head. "The time experiments were a success. We're from twenty-twenty-five. You die today. It is the death I regret most of all. And, uh, there have been a few..."

"Billions", clarified Bram.

Hamed nodded as if he had expected as much.

"Do I die well?" he said.

Sean nodded. "The best."

"Then that is all any man can ask for. Are my family well cared for?"

"They are exalted among the highest", said Stephanie.

Hamed was breathing heavily. It was hardly surprising in the circumstances.

"I suppose", he said, looking back into the church, "I should prepare myself." He looked round at Bram, Stephanie, and Giustiniano, appraising the situation. "Do these people mean you harm at all, Sean?"

Sean looked hard at Bram. "I don't believe so." Bram, failing to meet either Sean's or Adam's gazes, shook his head. Sean's hand remained tightly balled around the tramp's instructions.

"I'll be getting along, then."

"You've a hell of a day ahead of you. I wish I had your sang froid."

Hamed smiled thinly. "I'm a believer. This world is a vale of tears. If I die today, those tears will be coming to an end."

"Not in my case. I'm downward bound when I die."

Hamed frowned. "There's only one who knows that, and it's neither you nor I. Maybe I ought not to be so complacent. Be seeing you, Sean."

"Be seeing you, Adam."

A crowd had gathered. Sean was almost certain that half the crowd was armed. A third of its armed complement would be CIA and Church security, of course. The other two thirds would be 2025 Committee and Committee-of-the-Future. Maybe those few who didn't look armed were Committee-of-the-Even-Further-Future.

"Lady and gentlemen", said Sean, "I feel there is time for me to squeeze in several stiff green ones before lunch."

The inside of Harry's Bar was oppressively filled with Church nomenklatura. Many of them were on the Grand Tour and had not even bothered to change costume since Trajan's Triumphal Games, VE Day, the Summer of Love, the Great Exhibition, or the dedication of the Temple of the Sun, so the atmosphere was one of carnevale come several weeks too early. A group of spoiled little rich girls was hogging the bar, chattering excitedly about the staying power of the Emperor's Pannonians, their togas still singed with cinders from a stopover in Pompeii. As Sean walked in, they were hastily swept aside as if by an invisible wind.

The barkeep, this early in the day, was not yet Marco.

"What'll it be?" he said in English.

Sean slapped the bottle of Fils on the bar top. "This", he said.

"An excellent choice", said the barkeep.

Behind him, he heard an American voice say "Do you think we can do that, Prody?" The answering glare from the barkeep put an end to the possibility. However, the Fils was opened and swiftly poured backhandedly into a small glass. Then the barkeep produced a slotted silver spoon, hooked it round the glass, and, with the ceremony of a priest handing out the Body of Christ, placed a single sugar cube atop the spoon. Finally, he reached below the counter for a miniscule jug of iced water and gently tipped it so that the cube melted like Greenland snow in a January rainfall. Sean watched like a small child, fascinated, as the cold sugar water mixed into the wormwood spirit, raising up the louche, the clouds of undissolved essential oils, turning the mixture transparent, no longer letting light travel through it until it had given it colour, the brilliant opalescent green of the place where the Green Fairy lived.

"You know", said Sean, cradling the glass in his hand as the waiter handed it to him, "I knew I was going to end up drinking this stuff, so I found out about it. I've never tasted it till now."

He sipped it. The taste was an odd combination of bitter and sweet. The bitter component, like that of a properly manufactured gin or whisky, merely barked at his tastebuds rather than biting them. The sweet component, meanwhile, whispered in his ear, see, that wasn't so bad, was it? You can drink more of me. Heck, I'll bet you could go on drinking me all night.

He felt the healthy radioactive glow of it spreading in his bloodstream. Soon, with more of it inside him, he would be capable of good things.

"Hell", he said, staring at the glass, "that's good."

Behind him, the American voice inquired whether it could have what the priest was drinking.

"I'm sorry", said the barkeep, smiling angelically. "We don't serve absinthe."

***

He could hear his bodyguard talking amongst themselves, imagining they could not be overheard.

"I'm worried about him."

"He can't inflict damage on himself."

"He has personally instructed us to bring him before Himself at 11:30 am Eastern Standard Time. If we bring him so drunk he is nearly dead, I feel we will have failed in our mission."

"He still has the Colt. It is in his pocket."

"He can do no more damage to himself with it than he can with the bottle, and he can certainly do no damage to Himself with it. Even though no traveller has returned back to us from any time later than 2030, it is unthinkable that any mere bullet could wound a god."

"All the same, I am worried. Even one of those old weapons will kill a man."

"You are talking in human terms, and we are speaking of gods. Are you, perhaps, more concerned for your own safety? You should put the Pastor's safety first."

"Our safety is the Pastor's. If he intoxicates himself and starts shooting at his own bodyguard and we are then not here to protect him, what then?"

"This evening in Venice passes without incident." Stephanie handed Bram a copy of Il Gazzettino. "This is tomorrow's news. It makes great mention of the assassination of the two Pastors and the Pope, but completely fails to cover any sort of gunfight in Harry's Bar."

"You are suggesting we do nothing?"

"We need to do nothing. Hindsight has already informed us that nothing requires to be done."

There was a sudden magpie-chatter of gunfire from the Palazzo Ducale; nobody in the bar paid attention in any way. Knowing the timetable of events by heart, Sean, by now on his third absinthe, counted out the seconds between the first volley and the second, deeper, more continuous rumble of machine-gun fire from the Accademia.

"There are now fifteen minutes, thirty-seven seconds", announced Sean loudly, "before I walk in through that door." He slurped down the last of the third absinthe, slapped the glass down on the counter top. "Another."

"Are you sure", said Stephanie, "you shouldn't be pacing yourself, Pastor?"

"I have to be drunk", said Sean. "I have to be very, very drunk. I remember being very, very drunk. Goodness gracious me, who are all these people?"

These people were the frightened crowd from the piazza outside, pushed back by that other half of the crowd that had suddenly produced guns and government permits to use them and was clearing a semicircle round the palace in a panicked reflex reaction to what was going on in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio within. Bram and Giustiniano, at a nod from Stephanie, were at the door in a second, sprouting weapons of their own and holding the door shut with stern expressions and Italian police ID's that were almost certainly genuine. Half of the bar were suddenly with them, lining the windows in a human shield - bodyguards of High Primates, enthusiastic nomenklatura eager to be seen to personally defend their Pastor, and Committee escorts the Pastor hadn't known he had. He was not surprised to see that one of the Committee guns lined up against the glass at the front of the shop was the American woman who had asked for an absinthe.

Stephanie was barking instructions. When she had finished barking, Sean was happily twirling a scrap of notepaper in a lighter flame held up by the barkeep.

"Pastor", she said.

"Don't worry", smiled Sean. "I read it first. It says 'The atom bomb is hidden under the seat of your airplane where the life jacket should be'. No, I'm lying. It says 'We intend to invade Manhattan by bicycle. Be ready!' No! It says 'Steve Tyler is our greatest ally. Contact him in the year 1964, before the release of his first album, for instructions on defeating Yourself'."

"Pastor", said Stephanie, "you are being very irresponsible."

"Not really", said Sean, "I've always hated Aerosmith. If the plate-lipped fuckwit gets anally probed all his born days, so much the better. But all this just illustrates the real reason why you and Bram and Giustiniano still work for me. You're not bodyguards. Why would you be assigned to protect a man who can't die? You're assigned to me because the Committee of the Future is afraid of me. Afraid of the one man in history who can still kill the Leader."

Stephanie stood solid as a waxwork, as if any movement on her part might betray her thoughts.

"Well, I've news for you. If I'd harboured thoughts of killing Myself, I'm sure I'd remember them. And I'm equally sure that the self-serving fuck I become in the future would take corrective action. I can't kill Myself, Stephanie. I'll see Myself coming, every time." He stared into the depths of his absinthe sadly.

"I may have saved you from a cold death in the ocean when you were a little girl, Stephanie. But it was also I who issued that order to take out every cross channel ferry between Rotterdam and Boulogne. It was I who took your parents away from you. I issued that very order to the troops yesterday, on the instruction of myself-of-five-years-from-now. Can't you see", he said, oozing green and wormwood-laden tears, "that I didn't really do you any favours at all? That the burn only feels better because I put your hand in the icebox after I'd slapped it on the hot plate?"

Stephanie remained immobile. The only part of her that moved were two viscous wellings of water that quivered in her eyes.

"In any case", said Sean, glancing at his watch, "we are now at t minus sixty seconds. Places everyone."

The human chain moved away from the window, became natural and inoffensive almost instantly. The High Primates melted back into their places. The few actual tourists in the bar looked around themselves in consternation.

Sean turned to the man behind the bar, who was now polishing glasses.

"Marco", he said.

The man behind the bar nodded sadly. He was still breathing heavily. Despite the fully functioning air conditioning, he was also beaded with sweat.

"There's blood upon thy face."

Marco bowed. "'Tis Banquo's, then."

"You are but an instrument, Marco", said Sean, reaching over the counter to take the other man's hand. "And there is no hell hotter than the one a man forges for himself. But that heat tempers a man, makes his heart strong as steel when it is wrenched out and quenched in the cold world we live in."

Marco nodded. Sean removed his hand.

"Set 'em up, Marco."

The door of the café opened, and a young, scruffy-looing man in a water-sodden suit and tie entered. "PROUD OF YOUR DAY'S WORK?" he boomed, with the firm proud bravery of a man who knew no man could kill him. Sean groaned inwardly. Like men trapped between electrical contacts of massively opposed potential, no other person in the café dared move a muscle.

"Oh, hush", said Sean. "The ears of the law will hear you."