"Oh?" Mazzare looked more alert. "I didn't think you had to do with him, Gus."

"No, ordinarily I do not. The father-general commands the provincial, who commands the heads of houses and collegia, who tell the priests what to do. And reports go back the same way. This is how it is done. But I came here by accident, found myself doing pastoral work, and was ordered to stay. The Society takes the resources it finds to use."

Heinzerling paused a moment. "I speak no secrets, you understand? The Society does God's work as well as it may and with what it finds to hand. It gives the opinion of stealthiness, dishonesty at times. What some would call . . . I am sorry, I do not know the English word. Scheinheilig? Holy-seeming, but without the reality?"

"Hypocritical," Jones supplied. "I guess the Jesuits do have a reputation for a certain, uh, moral flexibility?"

"Moral flexibility, no. Moral absolutes, and practical flexibility." Heinzerling nodded. He couldn't think how long it had been since he read Saint Ignatius' Exercises. Or, for that matter, how long since he'd even owned a copy. He felt a pang.

"You were saying, Gus?" Mazzare's tone was gentle.

Heinzerling realized how transparent he had been. "So, the Society does what it may. Here, it has me in place and must needs ignore the fact that I have twice been so close-" he held up thumb and forefinger "-to being declared incorrigible."

The other two priests nodded. Heinzerling was not proud of the way he had been. He was prepared to admit that he had been a sorry excuse for a Jesuit, even if he was about par for a regular priest in the seventeenth century, of any denomination. It was only being able to settle down, acknowledge Hannelore publicly and follow what shreds of his vocation remained to him that had let him be anything other than a brawling, drunken loser. There were very few clerics that weren't, but the Society expected-and usually got-better.

"And so," he went on, "I am instructed direct from the father-general that I must see that Father Mazzare does not stint with his researches, that he is complete and thorough and finds time to do it in a timely manner. Be a good curate, in other words."

Mazzare chuckled. "Actually, you are that. All we have to get you cured of is that filthy thing." He waved at the pipe.

"This is not so bad," Heinzerling said. "It is a less rough smoke than the clay pipe. And lasts longer also. And the Turkish tobacco is much sweeter, not so?"

Heinzerling cringed as his wife spoke from behind him. "No, Herr Mazzare, you tell this fat fool! As soon as I hear from the Doctor Nichols about the canker in the lungs, I am telling him to quit. And telling him and telling him."

"Oh, leise," he said over his shoulder. "Nur ein, ja? Just a little pleasure?"

Hannelore rolled her eyes to heaven. "Did I think he would listen, when he said he would marry me? Did I? Mary Ellen, tell me it is easier if you are a minister yourself, please? Might I become a nun and make this fool see sense?"

"Hanni," said Mary Ellen, "if there's any of them that aren't so dumb they wouldn't listen to Almighty God Herself, I haven't met him yet."

"Gus, you see what you've provoked?" said the other Reverend Jones. "And I'd give up now, frankly."

Heinzerling looked sharply at Mazzare, who was keeping his face straight. He harumphed. "As I was saying. The father-general writes to me, saying that this report is to be made. And that the order will come from Cardinal Barberini. Of course, it must. How can the father-general of the Society order a lay father like Herr Mazzare? So he asks a cardinal and a prince of the Church, and the pope's nephew, to send the order."

Mazzare nodded. "And so here it is," he said. "Three hundred years. Three hundred years of every book we have left in town, everything the schoolteachers could supply from the French and Spanish history they had at home and, God help us, some stuff we cribbed from historical romances."

"Yup. Just got to get it typed and sent off." The Reverend Jones looked at the pile of notes, and at the beer stein in his hand. "Hmm," he said, "Gus, how are those boys of yours coming along with the fire? I feel a primal urge to burn food coming on."

"I should never have let him read that stuff about pre-Christian religion," said Mary Ellen. "He took to burnt offerings a mite too well."

Chapter 6.

The barbecue had done its work and they were munching on ribs and chicken to Mary Ellen Jones' recipe. The boys were sticky all over with barbecue sauce. The adults were being as careful as they could with napkins-which, as always with barbecue, meant just about as sticky. Father Mazzare reflected that on afternoons like this, with a good bellyful of barbecue and a stein of good beer, it was possible to be very content with life.

"Hello the house!" came a call. Mazzare thought he recognized the voice of Mike Stearns, and he got up to greet him.

"Hello yourself!" he called back, heading toward the path around the side of the rectory. "We're in back; come on round."

It was indeed Mike Stearns, and he had brought Francisco Nasi with him. "Resting from your homework, Father?"

"Just about done, as it happens. Have a seat, Mike, Francisco. A few bits left to add, one more read-through and then we can type it up."

"Good, good," Mike said. Mazzare sensed he had something on his mind, and decided to let him come to the point however he saw fit. Nasi was his usual serene self, nodding as greetings went around and deferring to Mike in the making of small talk. The weather continued fair, the Heinzerling boys were looking well, and small wonder, the cooking smelled like it had been good, everyone was well, the pressures of the Mike's job were bearable for the moment but, of course, everyone was worried about Rebecca in Amsterdam and the people in the Tower of London.

"In fact," said Mike, after that last topic had been appropriately commiserated on, "that was what I came to talk to you about."

"The situation in England?" Mazzare frowned. He didn't know much more about that than he could have gotten from any newspaper. And if it was a theological problem, it wasn't his field at all. In fact, the nearest thing Grantville had to the Anglican Communion was the Reverends Jones and their congregation, and the history of Methodism didn't start for another century, and that with their divergence from the Church of England. Mazzare idly wondered what Wesley would do when he showed up.

Except he wouldn't, Mazzare knew. There would be no John Wesley in this universe. Wesley hadn't been born until early in the eighteenth century, and Tom Stone had once explained to Mazzare that the so-called butterfly effect would have started scrambling the gene pool in Europe immediately after the Ring of Fire. Within days, apparently, spreading out from Thuringia with incredible speed. By now, Tom had said firmly, it would have swept the entire globe.

Mazzare had found that hard to believe, at first. That the butterfly effect was real, of course, he didn't doubt for a moment. He had only to look around him to see the many ways in which the Ring of Fire had changed Europe in less than three years. But the idea that its effects could be felt that quickly, and across such a great distance . . .

Tom had shaken his head. "You're mixing apples and oranges, Father. Sperm cells are a lot more sensitive to the environment than kings and queens-or housewives, for that matter. You'd be amazed how little it takes-"

There had followed a lengthy explanation in far more detail than Mazzare could follow. But, at the end, he'd been convinced that almost anyone who'd been conceived very long after the Ring of Fire in their old universe would never exist in this one. Although he had, smilingly, cautioned Tom not to tell Rebecca Stearns whenever she returned from Amsterdam that her much-prized adopted son "Baby Spinoza" probably wasn't Spinoza at all.

"Not to worry," Tom had replied, grinning. "In the immortal words of Muhammad Ali, 'I'm bold but I'm not crazy.' " Then, much more seriously: "It doesn't matter anyway. Whoever the kid is, genetically, he'll be awfully close to the original. And since his environment's been completely changed, he wouldn't grow up the same even if he does have the identical genome. So who cares? All that matters now is that he's Mike and Rebecca's kid."

It made Mazzare dizzy, sometimes, trying to follow the logic of the causal loops caused by the Ring of Fire. In this universe, "Methodism" would be founded, more than by anyone else, by the only two Methodist ministers in the world: his good friends Simon and Mary Ellen Jones. But when he'd said that to Simon once, his friend had shaken his head. "No, not really. Because we trace where we come from back to John Wesley-so he still does exist in this universe. If you look at it the right way. His soul exists here, even if his chromosomes never will."

Mazzare could hardly argue with that. Whatever other doctrinal disputes he had with Simon Jones, the primacy of the spirit over matter was not one of them.

But he was woolgathering, he suddenly realized, while Mike had been talking. He was jolted out of the half-reverie by the last phrase Mike had spoken.

"-like to offer you a job."

Mazzare sat up abruptly. "I've, ah, already got one." He gestured vaguely at the bulk of St. Mary's over the fence of the rectory garden. He was uncomfortably aware of having missed something important. Beer at lunchtime probably wasn't a good idea, however nice a day it was, and whatever down-time custom might have to say on the matter.

"Yes, but this one's important, and for the government," Mike replied. "And I don't think we've got a better man for the job available, frankly. I want you to be an ambassador."

"I can't!" Mazzare protested, almost as a reflex. "Anyway, parish priest's a very important job by itself." So's ambassador, a treacherous little part of him said. He grabbed for the first lifeline to hand. "Anyway, I can't. Separation of Church and State."

"Ah, not so," said Nasi. "We rather ignore your status as an ordained minister-"

"Priest!" Mazzare barked, wincing as soon he did so. Just because he was suddenly panicking, there was no reason to be rude.

"Priest, I thank you for the correction," Nasi continued smoothly, "but we employ you in a secular capacity, if you follow me?"

Mazzare spotted the flaw immediately. "My parish, Don Francisco. This is my first responsibility, the cure of souls or to see it discharged. If you found a curate for me, another curate rather, while I'm away, that's the state funding the church right there."

"Again, and with the greatest of respect, not so, Father." Don Nasi gave every impression of already having reached this point in the argument and having passed it some time ago. "Your stipend as an ambassador will be suitably generous to compensate you for the expenses of the post. Insofar as you choose to disburse some of it to a curate, that is done by you in your private management of what is, in law, your own household. Not a matter for the State at all."

Mazzare detected the authentic whiff of lawyering. A sort of brimstone reek. He fumed to himself, keeping his face straight the while.

For all of Nasi's smooth legalese, there was still a real problem involved. Since the Reformation, southern Thuringia's Catholic Church had ceased to exist-there were no archdeaconries, no dioceses, no Catholic ecclesiastical administration of any kind. The impact of the Thirty Years' War, especially since Gustav Adolf's decisive victory at Breitenfeld two years earlier, had spread the disorganization into the parts of Franconia that made up the remainder of the territory that Grantville was managing for the Swedish king. The bishops of Wuerzburg and Bamberg were in exile at the Habsburg court, as was the prince-abbot of Fulda. The archbishop of Mainz had fled in the other direction, to Cologne, also outside of the CPE, which removed that link in the religious chain of command.

The normal clear hierarchies simply didn't exist any longer in Thuringia and Franconia. For all practical purposes, there was nobody between Father Larry Mazzare and . . . well, the pope himself. Although Mazzare always insisted that he was simply a parish priest, in fact he'd increasingly been playing the informal role of "the bishop of Thuringia and Franconia."

That was part of the reason, of course, that the Jesuits were so eager to come to Thuringia and set up shop. Protestants in the area tended to view their activities as part of a fiendish Jesuitical plot. But Mazzare knew that most of the explanation was simply that the Jesuits were delighted not to face the usual hassles with a diocesan bishop.