That brought silence. Their dad and the words "harsh disciplinarian" barely belonged on the same continent, let alone in the same sentence. Tom Stone had the sneaky, awful, borderline-abusive practice of being reasonable with teenagers, which was a lot harder to deal with than other kids' parents' ways of dealing with the occasional high spirits. Be that as it may, there was a line across which they had never taken him, a line on the other side of which there was the real possibility of Dad getting old-fashioned. Taking part in a commando raid on an Inquisition prison was definitely on the far side of that line.

"So, what, you're just going to go ask him?" But Gerry had lost some of the snarl from his tone.

"Yeah, why not?" Frank said, shrugging. "I just got to be subtle, but straightforward so's he doesn't suspect anything. How hard can it be?"

"Um, Frank?" said Ron, "You remember what Father Gus told us about playing poker with Father Mazzare?"

Frank remembered. "Yeah, whatever you do, don't do it, not for real money." To hear the Jesuit tell it-and despite appearances, there was plenty of brain to go with the brawn when Gus wasn't pickling it-Father Mazzare could see clear through playing cards, read minds and had ice water in his veins. There was a lot of admiration on Gus' part for Father Mazzare, although how he squared that with Mazzare being a card-shark Frank didn't know.

"Yeah, so be careful, hey?" said Ron.

"Uh, sure," said Frank. "But how's he going to suspect anything? I don't believe we're planning this, and I'm involved in it."

That, at least, got a chuckle.

There was a reception room on the second floor of the palazzo, and, the next morning, Frank waited outside it for a good five minutes wondering if they could hear his heart hammering through the big wooden doors. He'd gotten his brothers to agree to leave it to him. Just one of them being curious about the stuff they'd "heard around town" about Galileo was all very well, but all three of them would look suspicious.

Calm, he thought. Use the force, Frank.

He went in. He'd checked with the staff, and he knew Father Mazzare was in there. Sure enough, just as Frank came in the priest was sending Gus Heinzerling off somewhere. Mazzare had laid out a whole bunch of stuff on a table by the window, getting the best use he could out of the daylight to go through what looked like the world's supply of paperwork. Frank didn't envy him that one little bit.

"Morning, Frank," said Father Mazzare. "As you see, growing up doesn't stop the homework." The priest indicated the stacks of paper and vellum in front of him. "And this is just to rent a small palazzo. I'm glad we didn't hire a big place."

Mazzare's face twisted up into a wry grin. "How it's going to be when we start putting together trade deals, I dread to think."

"Morning, Father," said Frank, when Mazzare had run down. "Should, I, uh . . ." He looked back at the door.

"Oh, no, no. Sit down, there's coffee in the pot there; good stuff, too. Get yourself a mug."

Frank got himself a coffee and sat down at the table with Father Mazzare. His carefully rehearsed opening gambits were all failing him. "Uh, I . . ." he got out, and then dried up.

"Something troubling you, Frank?" Mazzare asked.

"Well, not as such, no," he said. "Only you seemed to be the best guy to ask about it, and, uh . . ."

"So, not girl trouble, then?"

Frank nearly fell out of his chair. How did he know? "No, no, no!" he said hurriedly, thankful for the small mercy that he hadn't had a mouthful of coffee at the time. "It's, uh, it's more of a religion thing, actually." There, that'd explain the nerves, he thought.

"Well, don't worry about offending me," said Mazzare. "I've almost certainly heard worse."

"Uh, sure." Frank stopped and thought. He was settling down a bit, and took a sip of his coffee. It was good, just as advertised. Probably the Nasis again, he thought, and then got back on track. "It was just that me and Ron and Gerry were out and about yesterday, and we heard some guys talking about the Galileo thing, you know, with the Inquisition?"

"Hmm. Yes, there would be talk about that, wouldn't there? Where did you hear it?"

"Oh, you know, around." Frank realized that this was heading into dangerous territory. He wondered if that whole silence-of-the-confessional thing would extend to him telling Father Mazzare that he was involved with bunch of lunatic revolutionaries who wanted to stage a raid on the Inquisition, and he was going along because he'd fallen madly in love with the daughter of the head looney even though some part of Frank understood perfectly well that it was probably just youthful infatuation but so what? Look what happened to Romeo and Juliet and they were still talking about it half a millennium later.

Probably not, he decided. Firmly, he fought down the sudden urge to confess everything. If he was grounded, he probably wouldn't see Giovanna again-a thought that was a lot scarier than any number of Inquisition goons.

Mazzare waited, patiently.

"Just . . . around," Frank said, to fill the silence.

Mazzare gave a sly grin. "And not, in any sense, in any kind of taverna or wine-shop where you might have stopped off for a refreshing glass of wine or two, right?"

Frank felt the whole of Venice give a slight lurch under him. How does he do this? Can he really read minds like Gus says?

The grin was still there. "Oh, all right, seal of the confessional, Frank. It's down to you what you tell your father. Just try to stick to the respectable ones, and know your limits, all right? A little wine for thy stomach's sake is all very well, but it's easy to overdo it if you don't have experience in handling the stuff."

Relief. Mazzare thought he was out drinking on the sly. A small sin to cover a greater one.

Frank grinned back. "Don't worry, Father, we learned our lesson about hangovers and throwing up. It's cool."

"Good. Well, no more lecture, then." Mazzare sighed, reached for the coffee pot and freshened his mug up. "About Galileo, then, what did you want to know?"

"Well, it's the whole deal with the Inquisition, you know?" That about covered it, and it wasn't an outright accusation that Mazzare was an agent of a sinister organization trying to hold back the progress of science.

"Ah, I see. You want to know if we can do anything about it?"

Another lurch. He can't know-or can he? Who knows what they teach priests how to do in those seminaries. The Catholic Church didn't stick around for two thousand years by being a bunch of dummies. Play it safe. "Well, it's not so much that, as, well . . ."

"You want to know what I think? Because I'm a priest of the Church that's putting him on trial?" Mazzare's face was taking on a decidedly severe look, now.

"Uh, if it's a problem, or you don't want to talk or anything or if, uh, I should . . ." Frank realized he was gabbling.

Mazzare waved him down. "No, no, relax. I can't say I'm too happy about the whole business, to be honest. Just because I'm on the staff, I don't have to be happy about head office policy, you understand? At least, not on nonreligious subjects, anyway."

Frank felt really uncomfortable about that. Was Mazzare in danger of a visit from the Inquisition as well? He didn't want to think about that. For all that Grantville's priest sometimes intimidated him, Frank genuinely liked the man. He didn't think he knew anybody who didn't. There was nothing ostentatious about Larry Mazzare, but he could have served as a poster model for Priest, Catholic, small town, finest example thereof.

Mazzare sighed, deeply. "It was all very amusing when it was three hundred years ago, you know, Frank. Everyone talking about Galileo like he was some plucky pioneer, fighting against the forces of medieval reaction. Of course, when you looked into it, it wasn't that simple. Just like it never really is. And it's even less simple now that we're here, of course."

"How's that?" Frank asked, intrigued in spite of the slightly icky sight of a priest being very definitely human about something. Being brought up the way he had-which was a long, long way away from anything that could even be slightly described as traditional religious beliefs, Christian or otherwise-made ministers and priests seem like slightly awesome figures to Frank Stone. Either ogres-like the televangelists, or the mad-eyed Reverend Green-or uncanny wizards, like Father Mazzare. Watching him in what was unmistakably an irritated mode was unnerving.

"Well, to start with, his trial's late. In the universe we came from, it would have been over by now. He was found guilty and sentenced in June of 1633-almost nine months ago-whereas in this universe his trial hasn't even started yet." Mazzare took another sip of his coffee. "I don't pretend to understand the mathematics of it, but they call it 'the butterfly effect.' You know, a butterfly flaps its wings in South America somewhere, and it affects how tornados form in Kansas."

Frank nodded. He'd watched Jurassic Park, too, and at least knew the buzzwords for chaos math.

"Well, it seems that we brought some butterflies of our own. Pretty big ones. Somehow, in whatever complex ways, the Ring of Fire scrambled this 'historic result' just like it's scrambled so many others. Galileo's still in Florence in this timeline. In the old history, he'd been tried and was under house arrest by this date."

"Eh? I thought he'd got burned at the stake?" Frank blurted that out, and regretted it. "Uh, sorry."

Mazzare chuckled. "For astronomy? No, the Church has plenty of astronomers of its own. You're probably mixing him up with Giordano Bruno, Frank, who was burned at the stake. No, you see the real story is that Galileo, to use the cop-show phrase, copped a plea to heresy. And, technically, that was right, he was a heretic."

"What, for saying that the Earth went around the sun?"

"Well, that's technically right, but doesn't tell the whole story. Frank, do you know what heresy is to begin with?"