Jon Grimwood - redRobe

The imminent, expected return to prominence of Cardinal Santo Ducque made first story on most newsfeeds that evening.

On screen Axl swore on the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud and the works of Immanuel Kant. Then waited while the IMF, WorldBank and Rome read off his blood pressure, heartbeat and limbic pattern, took and matched MRI scans to already-prepared templates to confirm that Axl regarded Joan’s being both alive and dead as a statement of fact not of faith, hope or belief. That statement would go on file until it was needed, several years from then.

Mostly, what happened after Axl’s return to the Villa Carlotta were negatives. The Vatican didn’t go into conclave to elect a new pope. Under a statute previously agreed by the UN, the Cardinal currently holding voting rights (which happened to be Cardinal Santo Ducque) kept both his proxy vote in the UN and control of the Vatican Bank. Interim audits were not issued. Nor would they be while the court case was running. Which could be forever, or at least as long as it took the Cardinal to replenish the accounts emptied by Joan shipping ‘fugees to Samsara.

No matter how often Axl watched reruns, he was faced with the fact that he limped in through the door of Villa Carlotta, head jerking to some unheard soundtrack and looking so dirty you could practically smell him through the screen.

And the stuff shot though his own eyes shook so badly by the end that Axl was surprised CySat had been able to use it. But what Axl really remembered about that night were the calls which flooded in between the rolling of the credits and the breaking news of Cardinal Santo Ducque’s comeback.

A thin man, utterly unmemorable except for the large pectoral cross hung round the neck of his black silk Armani jacket called from New York. He wanted to be the first to tell the Cardinal how audacious, how brilliant a move it had been to stream Axl’s quest for Pope Joan live on CySat.

But others followed within seconds. Rome, Rio, even Beijing. Everyone thought the Cardinal was brilliant, none had ever doubted him… And sitting at his desk taking the calls, Cardinal Santo Ducque had looked up and seen Axl staring at him, with something between outrage and admiration in his eyes.

‘Look,’ said the Cardinal, ‘I just wanted to run a dummy past WorldBank. The idea to run it live and reactivate your soundtrack came from that bloody gun of yours…’