Mazarini told the whole story, beginning from his first news of Grantville, brought in with the intelligence reports to Avignon. He had written to Grantville's parish priest, seeking a way in to what looked like being the new politics of the Germanies. Why he had foreseen that, he did not know. It had just seemed so obvious at the time. He had sent the letter with Heinzerling, at the time his assistant and aide de camp, and the opening of communications in that way, coupled with Mazarini's attempts to lever himself into a peacemaker's role, had attracted the ire of Richelieu. Mazarini had had to cool his heels in Rome until the autumn of 1632, when he had traveled, quietly and without fuss, to Grantville to meet Father Mazzare.

He had not gone without foreknowledge. Forbidden to pass any message to Mazzare or anyone in Grantville, Mazarini had sent Heinzerling with no message at all, but required to report back. Vitelleschi nodded a quiet appreciation for a neat piece of casuistry as Mazarini recounted that. Mazarini had eventually gone to Grantville lacking anything better to do. He had seen Grantville at both its best and worst: hard-pressed and in fear of its life, fighting desperately for survival, and also triumphant, haggling the terms of a new ascendancy.

Just so had he seen Grantville's parish priest. At once the harried and overworked small-town pastor, nervous over events which he did not control. And then, after the battle, concerned to see that the right thing was done by a woman who had died, by all accounts, the most obnoxious of his parishioners.

"A true shepherd, then?" Urban remarked, when Mazarini came to a halt in his tale. There was an intrigued expression on the pope's face, an expression that spoke of a renewal of interest.

"Yes, Your Holiness," said Mazarini, suddenly deflating. He realized that as they had walked he had grown animated, had poured much of his own agitation over the business of Grantville into his words.

"Perhaps indecisive," said Vitelleschi, from where he walked behind Mazarini and the Pope.

Mazarini realized that even in his customary terseness, Vitelleschi was saying more than the usually garrulous Barberini, and it was all Mazarini could do not to grin when he realized that Cardinal Antonio Barberini the Younger was somewhat overawed by his uncle's presence, and was being seen and not heard, like a good boy.

"How say you, Monsignor?" asked Urban, after mulling this over for a moment. "Is the priest from the future indecisive?"

"Any appearance to that effect," Mazarini said, realizing that he had at last relaxed in the presence of these two great men and recovered his facility for smoothness, "derives, if I may make so bold with the father-general, from Padre Mazzare's habit of taking as much time as he can to think before acting. I have seen him, in the thick of difficulty and danger, act with decision and dispatch. If the father-general and Your Holiness will recall, he passed only a few hours in thought-perhaps as little as an hour, although I cannot say when the thought first came in to his mind-before deciding to send those first books to Your Holiness through my humble self. I think if there is pressure of time, or great passion working on the man, he will act decisively."

A few more paces, now in silence.

"If Your Holiness . . ." Mazarini trailed off, letting the silence be his request for permission.

The pope nodded his consent.

"If Your Holiness will vouchsafe his intent for Padre Mazzare, perhaps I might make my humble opinion better tailored to the fit of Your Holiness' ideas?"

"Will he make a worthy advocate before an Inquisition?" The question was put with disarming simplicity.

"Your Holiness?" Again, the pope had caught him off guard.

"I am minded to direct that he plead Galileo's case. After all, if it can be proven that Nature gives the lie to our interpretation of Scripture, we must change our interpretation. There is Scripture, Nature, and the theology of men. The creation of men cannot be allowed to gainsay the creation of God, after all, and such revisions to the Church's teaching have happened before and will doubtless happen again. And if this new learning that Grantville brings will spare the Church the embarrassment of causing to be abjured what later is proven true, then-" Urban waved a hand, a hand that sketched all manner of pleasing possibilities in the air.

Barberini spoke for the first time. "Scheiner and Grassi may yet complain."

Vitelleschi answered him. "Scheiner and Grassi are priests of the Society. They will obey." In such tones a man might declare that the sun would rise in the east.

Mazarini had thought about Mazzare as the others spoke, and remembered hearing the American priest speak at Irene Flannery's funeral. A final homily for a woman who had hated everyone, and yet he had spoke eloquently and perfectly for the time.

"Your Holiness," he said, "It is a duty which I believe that Padre Mazzare will discharge well, given time to prepare."

"That he shall have. It will be some time before Galileo stands his formal trial. Time enough for Father Mazzare to come to Rome."

"By your leave, then, Your Holiness," Mazarini said, "I shall depart as soon as may be for Venice. Padre Mazzare is there now, and I can give him warning of your summons."

"Go with God's blessing, Monsignor."

Chapter 27.

Cardinal Antonio Barberini watched Mazarini's retreating back for a while. The man had made his excuses-travel to organize, packing to supervise-and set off as if his boots were afire. It was a mark of the man that under the soutane were a cavalier's breeches and boots, a holdover from his younger days. Days, Barberini reflected with a wry smile, when Mazarini had been his own age. Antonio was still shy of his twenty-sixth birthday, and owed his rapid rise in the church entirely to family influence.

Behind him, his uncle was speaking to Vitelleschi. "Muzio, reassure me that this will achieve more than I sacrifice."

"Your Holiness." Vitelleschi acknowledged the command, and paused. At length. "I have repeated several times in advising Your Holiness that it is the doctrine that must be our grounding. I confess alarm at the prospect of further reforms so soon after the Council of Trent, but we cannot ignore what seems so clearly to be messages from our future brethren in Christ."

"And the truth of those messages?" Cardinal Barberini was more of a skeptic about this than either of the two older men. He would cheerfully admit he was no natural philosopher-was not any kind of philosopher or theologian, come to it-but he did make a point of patronizing those who were advancing the arts, letters and sciences. Leave aside the essential implausibility of the story-"Ring of Fire," indeed!-and it resolved to this: that the Americans had more and better devices and engines and weapons than anyone else.

One could either believe that a secret coterie of geniuses had gotten ahead of the rest of the world in artifice and invention, and sprung like a deus ex machina onto the stage of the Germanies with their marvels fully formed, or that they had been hurled back in time three hundred years from an age when such things were commonplace. Perhaps the older generation, unused to seeing what modern natural philosophy could do, might see something miraculous and wonderful in the American engines and weapons. But Antonio Barberini had seen demonstrations of all manner of newly discovered principles and the only feeling they stirred was envy that elsewhere there were better-scientists, to use the new word-than he had been able to attract to his own salon. Yet.

By itself, that was no problem. After all, the watchword of natural philosophy was what worked. Galileo had seen to that, with his trials and experiments. What matter the outlandish story the inventor told, if his invention actually worked? Who cared that he was changing fashion throughout Rome, or was the creator of a string of scandals?

Yet the older generation were looking at the wonders Grantville had released as a token of the truth of their claim to be from the future. And when something that necessarily did not admit of proof-such as religious doctrine, or political theory-was being expounded, the speaker's truthfulness in one sphere was often taken as a measure of his honesty in another.

Both of the older men were looking at him now. "Your Holiness, Father-General, it may be that the Americans can prove Galileo's claims. I for one would welcome it, frankly. The discussions at the Inquisition grow tiresome, and privately the astronomers are saying that Galileo's claims are helpful, even if he cannot prove them. But that logically says nothing about the truth of their other claims."

"It does furnish me with a good excuse, though, Antonio." His Holiness Urban VIII had developed a twinkle that was literally as well as figuratively avuncular.

Barberini seethed inside. These two had concocted something between them, decided on something, and were now mocking him! Or as much mockery as the constitutionally humorless Vitelleschi was capable. "Does the pope require an excuse in matters of faith?" he asked, knowing they probably had an answer already.

"Certainly," Urban said. "If the pope was not visibly commanded by God to reverse himself, what price infallibility?"

"Which is no more than a tradition!" Barberini snapped, regretting it immediately. "Your Holiness, I most humbly apologize for my tone."

"And so you should," Urban said. "But as to infallibility being a tradition, yes, it is. And a most valuable tradition it is, for without it there is no last authority on the Church's teaching and thus no certainty."

"And so we need an excuse to proceed from what is certainly wrong to what is probably right?" Barberini smiled to show he jested.

"Indeed."

"And there is more," Vitelleschi said. "We will have some chance to see the American priest in a sore trial of his wit and learning. A man may lie well and convincingly at his leisure. Under pressure even the most glib will err."

Understanding dawned on Barberini then. "The Galileo affair is not the real trial?"

"Not the real trial," Vitelleschi said.

"Then what is? Your Holiness?"

"That I do not know. I pray for guidance, Antonio. Your elder brother believes there is much to be gained by proceeding down this path, word-for-word and as fast as possible. He is more of an enthusiast than you for the new learning in every sphere of life. San Onofrio, my brother and your uncle, believes that we should place this material from Grantville in some musty corner of his library at the Lateran. Then, admit of its existence to only a few of our more trusted theologians and let the ideas out slowly and with great caution, if at all, and beginning only when we have seen the new politics established for perhaps a century, so as to be certain this has in some sense God's blessing upon it."

Barberini could barely keep himself from laughing aloud at that last. "He thinks that God has ordained a trial by combat in the Germanies?"

"Not really." Urban's smile was a little wistful. "He and I are less than an hour apart in age, but very different in some ways. He has always been the more studious of us, and I think he fears these things for which there is not ancient authority. May God bless him, he has not been well of late, and some of the things he has to say on these subjects are not entirely lucid."

"He grows unwell?" Barberini crossed himself, offered a silent prayer for his other uncle.

"Not so bad that he cannot get about. He grows . . . testy." Urban sighed. "I would that I could grow so testy as well. I prayed God to spare me this, such turmoil. And yet I see no way out of engaging with this new learning. This-basta!"

Both Barberini and Vitelleschi moved closer to the pope, whose face was now drawn and lined. "Are you unwell, uncle?" Barberini asked.