"He is a fascinating man, Your Majesty."

"Not him, though I do think him a sweet and fervent fellow." One thing Isabella would never do was leave the impression with anyone that she looked on any man but her husband with anything approaching desire. "No, I mean that the Queen of Heaven was giving me the chance to open a vast door that had long been closed." She sighed. "But the power even of queens is not infinite. I had no ships to spare, and the cost of saying yes on the spot would have been too great. Now Talavera has decided, and I fear that he is about to close a door whose key will only be given me that one time. Now it will pa.s.s into another hand, and I will regret it forever."

"Heaven cannot condemn Your Majesty for failing to do what was not within your power to do," said Lady Felicia.

"I'm not worried at this moment about the condemnation of heaven. That's between me and my confessors."

"Oh, Your Majesty, I was not saying that you face any kind of condemnation from-"

"No no, Lady Felicia, don't worry, I didn't take your remark as anything but the kindest rea.s.surance."

Felicia, still fl.u.s.tered, got up to answer the soft knock on the door. It was Father Talavera.

"Would you wait by the door, Lady Felicia?" asked Isabella.

Talavera bowed over her hand. "Your Majesty, I am about to ask Father Maldonado to write the verdict."

The worst possible outcome. She heard the door of heaven clang shut against her. "Why today of all days?" she asked him. "You've taken all these years over this Coln fellow, and today it's suddenly an emergency that must be decided at once?"

"I think it is," he said.

"And why is that?"

"Because victory in Granada is near."

"Oh, has G.o.d spoken to you about this?"

"You feel it too. Not G.o.d, of course, but His Majesty the King. There is new energy in him. He is making the final push, and he knows that it will succeed. This next summer. By the end of 1491, all of Spain will be free of the Moor."

"And this means that you must press the issue of Coln's voyage now?"

"It means," said Talavera, "that one who wishes to do something so audacious must sometimes proceed very warily. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if our verdict were positive. Go ahead, Your Majesty, we say. This voyage is worthy of success. What then? At once Maldonado and his friends will seek His Majesty's ear, criticizing this voyage. And they will speak to many others, so that the voyage will soon be known as a folly. In particular, Isabella's folly."

She raised an eyebrow.

"I say only what will surely be said by those with malicious hearts. Now imagine if this verdict is reached when the war is over, and His Majesty can devote his fall attention to the matter. The issue of this voyage could easily become quite a stumbling block in the relations between the two kingdoms."

"I see that in your view, supporting Coln will be disastrous," she said.

"Now imagine, Your Majesty, that the verdict is negative. In fact, that Maldonado himself writes it. From that point on, Maldonado has nothing to gossip about. There will be no whispers."

"There will also be no voyage."

"Won't there?" asked Talavera. "I imagine a day when a queen might say to her husband, 'Father Talavera came to me, and we agreed that Father Maldonado should write the verdict.'"

"But I don't agree."

"I imagine this queen saying to her husband, 'We agreed that Maldonado should write the verdict because we know that the war with Granada is the most vital concern of our kingdom. We want nothing to distract you or anyone else from this holy Crusade against the Moor. Most certainly we don't want to give King John of Portugal reason to think we are planning any kind of voyage through waters he thinks of as his own. We need his unflagging friendship during this final struggle with Granada. So even though in my heart I want nothing more than to take the chance and send this Coln west, to carry the cross to the great kingdoms of the East, I have set aside this dream.'"

"What an eloquent queen you have imagined," said Isabella.

"All controversy dies. The king sees the queen as a statesman of great wisdom. He also sees the sacrifice she has made for their kingdoms and the cause of Christ. Now imagine that time pa.s.ses. The war is won. In the glow of victory, the queen comes to the king and says, 'Now let's see if this Coln still wants to sail west.'"

"And he will say, 'I thought that business was finished. I thought Talavera's examiners put a Stop to all that nonsense.'"

"Oh, does he say that?" asked Talavera. "Fortunately, the queen is quite deft, and she says, 'Oh, but you know that Talavera and I agreed to have Maldonado write that verdict. For the good of the war effort. The matter was never really settled. Many of the examiners thought Coln's project was a worthy one with a decent chance of success. Who can know, anyway? We'll find out by sending this Coln. If he comes back successful, we'll know he was right and we'll send great expeditions at once to follow through. If he comes back empty-handed, then we'll put him in prison for defrauding the Crown. And if he never comes back, we'll waste no more effort on such projects.'"

"The queen you imagine is so dry," said Isabella. "She talks like a cleric."

"It's a shortcoming of mine," said Talavera. "I haven't heard enough great ladies in private conversation with their husbands."

"I think this queen should say to her husband, 'If he sails and never returns, then we have lost a handful of caravels. Pirates take more than that every year. But if he sails and succeeds, then with three caravels we will have accomplished more than Portugal has achieved in a century of expensive, dangerous voyages along the African coast.'"

"Oh, you're right, that's much better. This king that you're imagining, he has a keen sense of compet.i.tion."

"Portugal is a thorn in his side," said Isabella.

"So you agree with me that Maldonado should write the verdict?"

"You're forgetting one thing," said Isabella.

"And that is?"

"Coln. When the verdict comes, he will leave us and head for France or England. Or Portugal."

"There are two reasons why he will not, Your Majesty."

"And those are?"

"First, Portugal has Dias and the African route to the Indies, while I happen to know that Coln's first approaches to Paris and London, through intermediaries, did not meet with any encouragement."

"He has already turned to other kings?"

"After the first four years," said Talavera dryly, "his patience began to flag a little."

"And the second reason that Coln will not leave Spain between the verdict and the end of the war with Granada?"

"He will be informed of the verdict of the examiners in a letter. And that letter, while it will contain no promises, will nevertheless give him leave to understand that when the war ends, the matter can be reopened."

"The verdict closes the door, but the letter opens the window?"

"Just a little. But if I know Coln at all, that slight crack in the window will be enough. He is a man of great hopes and great tenacity."

"Do I take it, Father Talavera, that your own personal verdict is in favor of the voyage?"

"Not at all," said Talavera. "If I had to guess which view of the world is the more correct, I think I would favor Ptolemy and Maldonado. But I would be guessing, because no one knows and no one can know with the information we now have."

"Then why did you come here today with all these - suggestions?"

"I think of them as imaginings, Your Majesty. I would not presume to suggest anything." He smiled. "While the others have been trying to determine what is correct, I have been thinking more along the lines of what is good and right. I have been thinking of St. Peter stepping from the boat and walking on the water."

"Until he doubted."

"And then he was lifted up by the hand of the Savior."

Tears came to Isabella's eyes. "Do you think Coln may be filled with the Spirit of G.o.d?"

"The Maid of Orleans was either a saint or a madwoman."

"Or a witch. They burned her as a witch."

"My point exactly. Who could know, for certain, whether G.o.d was in her? And yet by putting their trust in her as G.o.d's servant, the soldiers of France drove the English from held after field. What if she had been mad? What then? They would have lost one more battle. What difference would that have made? They had already lost so many."

"So if Coln is a madman, we will only lose a few caravels, a little money, a wasted voyage."

"Besides, if I know His Majesty at all, I suspect he'll find a way to get the boats for very little money."

"They say that if you pinch the coins with his face on them, they screech."

Talavera's eyes went wide. "Someone told Your Majesty that little jest?"

She lowered her voice. They were already talking so low that Lady Felicia could not possibly hear them; still, he leaned toward the Queen so he could hear her faint whisper. "Father Talavera, just between you and me, when that little jest was first told, I was present. In fact, when that little jest was first told, I was speaking."

"I will treat that," said Father Talavera, "with all the secrecy of a confession."

"You are such a good priest, Father Talavera. Bring me Father Maldonado's verdict. Tell him not to make it too cruel."

"Your Majesty, I will tell him to be kind. But Father Maldonado's kindness can leave scars."

Diko came home to find Father and Mother both still awake, dressed, sitting up in the front room, as if they were waiting to go somewhere. Which turned out to be the case. "Manjam has asked to see us."

"At this hour?" asked Diko. "Go then."

"Us," said Father, "including you."

They met in one of the smaller rooms at Past.w.a.tch, but one designed for the optimum viewing of the holographic display of the TruSite II. It did not occur to Diko, however, that Manjam chose the room for anything but privacy. What would he need with the TruSite II? He was not of Past.w.a.tch. He was a noted mathematician, but that was supposed to mean he had no use for the real world. His tool was a computer for number manipulation. And, of course, his own mind. After Ha.s.san, Tagiri, and Diko arrived, Manjam had them wait just a moment more for Hunahpu and Kemal. Then they all sat.

"I must begin with an apology," said Manjam. "I realize in retrospect that my explanation of temporal effects was inept in the extreme."

"On the contrary," said Tagiri, "it couldn't have been clearer."

"I don't apologize for a lack of clarity. I apologize for a lack of empathy. It isn't one of the things mathematicians get much practice at. I actually thought that telling you that our own time would cease to be real would be a comfort to you. It would be to me, you see. But then, I don't spend my life looking at history. I didn't understand the great ... compa.s.sion that fills your lives here. Tagiri, you especially. I know now what I should have said.

"That the end will be painless. There will be no cataclysm. There will be no sense of loss. There will be no regret. Instead, there will be a new Earth. A new future. And in this new future, because of the wise plans that Diko and Hunahpu have devised, there will be far more chance of happiness and fulfilment than in our own time. There will still be unhappiness, but it will not be so pervasive. That's what I should have said. That you will indeed succeed in erasing much misery, while you will create no new sources of misery."

"Yes," said Tagiri, "you should have said that."

"I'm not used to speaking in terms of misery and happiness. There is no mathematics of misery, you see. It doesn't come up in my professional life. And yet I do care about it." Manjam sighed. "More than you know."

Something that he said struck a wrong note in Diko's mind. She blurted out the question as soon as she realized what it was. "Hunahpu and I have not finalized any plans."

"Haven't you?" said Manjam. He reached out his hands to the TruSite II, and to Diko's astonishment he manipulated the controls like an expert. In fact, he almost immediately called up a control screen that Diko had never seen before, and entered a double pa.s.sword. Moments later the holographic display came alive.

In the display, to Diko's astonishment, she saw herself and Hunahpu.

"It isn't enough to stop Cristoforo, " Diko was saying in the display. "We have to help him and his crew on Hispaniola to develop a new culture in combination with the Taino. A new Christianity that adapts to the Indies the way that it adapted to the Greeks in the second century. But that also isn't enough."

"I hoped you would see it that way," said Hunahpu in the display. "Because I intend to go to Mexico."

"What do you mean, Mexico?"

"That wasn't your plan?"

"I was going to say that we need to develop technology rapidly, to the point where the new hybrid culture can be a match for Europe."

"Yes, that's what I thought you were going to say. But of course that can't be done on the island of Haiti. Oh, the Spaniards will try, but the Tainos are simply not ready to receive that level of technology. It will remain Spanish, and that means a permanent cla.s.s division between the white keepers of the machines and the brown laboring cla.s.s. Not healthy."

Manjam paused the display. The images of Diko and Hunahpu froze.

Diko looked around at the others and saw that the fear and anger in their eyes was a match for what she felt.

"Those machines," said Ha.s.san, "they aren't supposed to be able to see anything more recent than a hundred years ago."

"Normally they can't," said Marjam.

"Why does a mathematician know how to use the TruSite?" asked Hunahpu. "Past.w.a.tch already duplicated all the lost private notes of the great mathematicians of history."

"This is an unspeakable violation of privacy," said Kemal icily.

Diko agreed, but she had already leaped to the most important question. "Who are you really, Marjam?"

"Oh, I'm really Manjam," he said."But no, don't protest, I understand your real question." He regarded them all calmly for a moment. "We don't talk about what we do, because people would misunderstand. They would think we are some kind of secret cabal that rules the world behind closed doors, and nothing could be farther from the truth."

"That rea.s.sures me completely," said Diko.

"We do nothing political. Do you understand? We don't interfere with government. We care a great deal about what governments do, but when we want to achieve some goal, we act openly. I would write to a government official as myself, as Manjam. Or appear on a broadcast. Stating my opinions. Do you see? We are not a secret shadow government. We have no authority over human lives."

"And yet you spy on us."

"We monitor all that is interesting and important in the world. And because we have the TruSite II, we can do it without sending spies or openly talking to anybody. We just watch, and then, when something is important or valuable, we encourage."

"Yes yes," said Ha.s.san. "I'm sure you're n.o.ble and very kind in your G.o.dlike role. Who are the others?"

"I'm the one who came to you," said Manjam.

"And why are you showing us this? Why are you telling us?" asked Tagiri.