"What's eating you now, Larry?" Jones asked after a while.

Mazzare looked at the Methodist minister, where he sprawled on an antique of the future that looked too gracile for his weight. He realized he had known the wise-cracking Methodist for the best part of twelve years, and neither of them could much fool the other any more. They were too alike, for all their differences. Jones was just as full of stage fright as Mazzare was, but he was carefully wearing his professional face in these slow hours before the proceedings began. Jones would doubtless insist that that was for Mazzare's benefit, but it was as much for Jones' own peace of mind. Seeing Jones trying so hard to pretend he wasn't nervous gave Mazzare a sudden sense of warmth. It was all he could do not to fall to his knees and loudly thank God for the blessing of friendship. Al Green, Grantville's Baptist minister, would have done just that. But a pastor had to stay in his own character.

Mazzare stopped his pacing squarely in the bright golden patch of light from the big window that lit the room. He took a deep breath. "It's my client, Simon."

"Galileo? What's wrong with him? Apart from being an ornery old coot without a good word for anyone?"

"He's guilty, Simon." There, far easier to deal with now it was out in the open. There was that much truth in the old sixties saying.

"Guilty." Jones repeated the word flatly. "Go on, then, Larry, tell me about it?"

Mazzare walked over to where the window stood open and leaned against the plasterwork of the jamb. Outside, and some way below, there was the murmur of a crowd. Hushed, like the ordinary street noise of Rome never was, but noisy as thousands of people all together must always be.

"He's charged with heresy, Simon."

Jones frowned. "Well, yes. That's why we're here, isn't it?"

"Yes and no. When he was tried in our history, it happened a year earlier than this. And there was the Bellarmino memorandum, which they hung the plea on that they got him to cop. But that isn't in the papers for this trial, so they can't find him guilty of violating a direct order."

"That's to the good, isn't it?" Jones looked at the stack of trial papers, most of which he could barely read. "I mean, we don't have to answer that charge?"

"We don't. It means, though, that the Holy Office-and forget this stuff about Committees of Inquiry, it's the Inquisition-that, as I say, the Holy Office are only charging him with what they can convict him on."

"Yes, but it's still only vehement suspicion of heresy, isn't it?"

"That's the charge. The trouble is, the only defense for Galileo is to admit the actual charge of heresy."

Jones was silent a moment, working though the implications. "Oh," he said after a while.

"You see? He got off the main charge last time and they caught him on vehement suspicion of holding and defending Copernican opinions he couldn't prove."

"But we can prove them, surely?"

"It won't do any good, Simon. Didn't you pay any attention to the make-up of the court?"

Jones sat up straight and laughed, although there was little humor in it. "Sure I did. Especially the bit of the list that went Barberini, Barberini, Barberini."

"That didn't amount to a message?" Mazzare straightened up from the window-jamb and sat on the windowsill, which was at just the right height and sun-warmed. The sun on his back made him realize how tired he really was.

"Sure. The pope stacked the court with his brother and two of his nephews. He wants Galileo let off."

"Or convicted."

"Eh?" Jones stared hard at Mazzare with narrowed eyes. "That's not what you've been saying. What made you change your mind?"

Mazzare shrugged. "Perhaps simply being in Rome. It's an ancient city, Simon, and the Catholic Church is almost as ancient. The pope, in the end, will do whatever he does because he believes it is for the good of the Church." Mazzare felt strangely light and calm as he spoke. "I find myself much less prepared to state that I am certain what he will decide. His Holiness does not necessarily agree with you-or me-what the interest of the Church might be. And if he decides otherwise, he has made certain that he has a tribunal which will accommodate him."

"Now hold on-" Jones rose out of his chair and wagged a finger at Mazzare. "Don't you be getting all paranoid on me, Larry. The issue is as straightforward as it gets."

"It certainly is not!" Mazzare grew sharp, then, and stood up from his warm perch on the windowsill. "Simon, we aren't preaching to small-town congregations any more. With the best will in the world, Grantville is a rural town full of plain people who don't truck with subtleties."

Jones made a sour face. "Peasants, you mean-"

"Knock it off, Simon, you know what I mean. Pollyanna it up all you want, old friend, but there won't be any straw-man arguments in that church this morning. Every single person in that tribunal is at least as good a theologian as either of us, and most of them are better. And any of them can tell you the difference. Since you're pretending not to know better, and bless you for trying to cheer me up with it, the difference is between assuming that all that is, is by the will of God, and assuming that all is according to God's ineffable plan for the universe."

Jones held up his hands. "Pax."

"Thank you, Simon, graciously done." Mazzare smiled, resuming his pacing with his head bowed and hands clasped behind him. "The prosecution will certainly advance an argument in favour of the law of necessity that is straight out of scholasticism."

"Which I'm too rusty on to know if that's right or not, but go on."

Mazzare waved Jones's objection aside for the mere bagatelle it was. "You can look it up later. The important thing is that among the schools of philosophy His Holiness Urban VIII clove to was-" He smiled encouragingly at Jones.

"Scholasticism." Jones finished the sentence in a weak voice. "And His Holiness is also a temporal ruler who will see an immediate increase in temporal power if he steps on Galileo and publicly thwarts the USE, as represented by you, and especially me, the Protestant."

"Just so."

"Oh, damn," said Jones, with feeling. "I hadn't thought of that. We've been suckered! Set up!"

Mazzare chuckled harshly. "Don't get all paranoid on me, Simon. I didn't say that's what His Holiness would do. Just that it was indeed a very possible option."

Jones cocked his head. "What's your best estimate?"

The American priest shrugged. "My guess is that Pope Urban VIII hasn't really quite made up his own mind yet. He wants to wait and see how the trial shapes up. Which means . . . I'm on the spot, Simon. I think he is leaning in our direction, actually. But I don't think 'the fix is in.' I think he wants to see if I can do the fixing."

"Ah." Jones thought about it for moment. "Pressure situation, then, like I said. But don't forget our trusty motto, Larry. When the going gets tough, the tough go theologizing."

That brought a genuine laugh from Mazzare. "The ending of that, as I recall-the last time you recited it, anyway-was 'the tough change the oil filter.' "

"There's a difference?"

One of the palazzo's servants ushered in Monsignor Mazarini.

"It is time, Father," he said. Mazarini's voice, as usual, was calm and soft-spoken; intimate, even, without being presumptuous. The voice of a master diplomat, despite still being short of his thirty-second year of life.

Mazzare stared at the young man who, in another universe, would become France's great minister of state in the fullness of time, in that era when France was the center of the Western world. A universe in which Galileo had been convicted.

A universe where the Ring of Fire had never happened.

It all fell into place for the American priest, in that moment. Larry Mazzare had wondered himself, for three years, what God's purpose had been when he ripped Grantville out of its own time to send it to another.

Many others had as well, of course, and come to their own conclusions. Gustavus Adolphus thought it was a warning to the world's princes. So, in a different way, did Cardinal Richelieu.

But they were princes themselves. Mazzare was not. He was simply a small-town priest; ultimately, a very humble man.