The Pontiff of Sol
The priest knelt before the Pontiff. “Why must it die, Your Holiness?”
“Do you question my Pontificate, my child?” asked the Pontiff.
“Never, Your Holiness.” The priest’s reply was somewhat muffled by a combination of deep carpet and even deeper obeisance. “I merely pray for understanding.”
The Pontiff gestured, and the throne of St Peter rose from the dais and drifted across the chamber to the great window. “Follow me, my child.”
The priest rose, and followed.
The Pontiff pointed. “Tell me what you see.”
The vista before them was groined and arched and studded with hideous gargoyles; achingly familiar to all of Sol’s teeming trillions of faithful. “I see the great cathedral of the Vatican Hive City, Your Holiness.” The priest was sure that the Pontiff expected more.
The priest was correct. “And do you see the priests who would lose their faith? The workers who lose their obedience? The warriors who would lose their honor?” hissed the Pontiff. “Do you see all of our works, raised to the greater glory of God, crashing down around us? This will happen, if this... creature is allowed to spread its horrid lies.”
The priest was puzzled by the vehemence of the Pontiff’s reply. “It has confessed the sin of travelling through time, Your Holiness. I thought it was a mutant, but it claims to be a child of Man.”
“Does it look like any child of Man that you have ever seen?”
“No, Your Holiness.” In point of fact, the time traveller had seemed closer kin to the gargoyles of the cathedral than to anything human.
“And how did it explain this?”
“It claimed that its people, not ours, were made in God’s image, Your Holiness.”
The Pontiff snorted with disgust. “This heresy is worse than I had ever imagined! May the abomination be thankful for the mercy of God and our Holy Inquisition.” The throne beeped, and administered a calmative. As the drug took effect, the Pontiff relaxed into the embrace of the throne of St Peter.
“When I found it, lost and alone in the sewers, I thought it was a mutant, Your Holiness,” moaned the priest. “A relic of the Fall. Confused. Denied understanding of its place in God’s great scheme... ”
“My child, it has no place in God’s great scheme. It commits the sin of heresy when it falsely claims to be made in God’s own image. It comes to us from the Fall; no forgotten relic, but a sinful traveller through time. What else could this creature be, but an agent of Lucifer, seeking to drown our genetic purity once more in the nuclear tides of the Fall?”
The priest recoiled in horror.
“If it is not staked and burned, the heresy it speaks will fire the souls of those who lack the faith to resist. Will you allow Mankind to Fall again?”
“No, Your Holiness,” whispered the priest. “Should it be God’s will, I will light the pyre myself.”
The Pontiff beamed. “You shall. Your decision to deliver this creature unto me for judgement was surely guided by God. You have done well, my daughter.”
The priest stared at the Holy Mother in disbelief. My daughter? To no longer be a neuter, living in fear of falling male? To rise to be female? To be a bishop, Mother of a hive city? “Truly, God moves in mysterious ways, Your Holiness.”
The Pontiff clacked her mandibles together in agreement.
Copyright © 2006 by Bewildering Stories
on behalf of the author
