II

II

"Please wait, Father!" A shrill voice echoed in the gloomy chapel. "Men are forbidden in this convent! His Holiness the Pope himself may not enter!"

"Please let me pass, Director." The grave voice that answered indeed belonged to a man. Within the halls of the Santa Maria Cloche, which strictly regulated the chastity of its members, a male voice hadn't been heard for a few hundred years.

The owner of the voice—the silver-haired priest—fixed his blue eyes on the middle-aged abbess. "There's something I have to investigate. When I'm done, I'll leave. Please, get out of my way."

Although she involuntarily flinched at the priest's completely lifeless, hollow voice, the director courageously said, "No! Please, leave at once! What do you mean by suddenly wanting to investigate the belfry? If it's scientific research, please go through the lay council. After that, a female church worker—"

"There's no time!" His tone was as harsh as a winter storm. His was an empty voice that, although violent enough to make the nuns duck their heads, somehow sounded hopeless.

He took out a crumpled scrap of paper from his dirty cassock's pocket. The priest carefully spread out the paper. The names of many churches and convents in Rome were written there in small, crowded letters.

"There's ho time. There's no time. There are so many bells we haven't investigated yet. If we don't investigate them quickly, it will be like Barcelona all over again! Let me through there!" He roughly shoved the abbess to the side.

"Kyah!"

Without a backward glance, the priest pushed through the cluster of nuns trying to bar his way. His hollow-cheeked face looked stony and determined. His tall body, which had been approaching the belfry, suddenly somersaulted and fell.

"Guh . . ." They've probably shot me in the hip, considering the speed at which I've fallen.

Two figures looked down at the priest, who was moaning softly. He was draped halfway across a couch, which he'd smashed into during his fall.

"What are you doing here, Father Nightroad?" an icy, emotionless voice asked.

"Hey, hey, we haven't seen you for a while! We've been looking all over for you, Abel!" said a broken, hoarse voice.

 

***

 

Outside the window, remnants of the sinking sun cast subtle rays of light. Inside the restaurant, government officials returning from business mingled with off-duty church workers. A cheerful waitress brought a huge steak and a heaping salad to the table farthest inside the restaurant.

"Oh ho, it's here, it's here." Leon pushed aside the salad bowl and placed the huge slab of meat—which was so rare it still dripped blood—in front of him.

"You should eat the salad, Abel. As far back as I can remember, I've hated other priests and fresh vegetables."

Abel's downcast eyes looked at the table, but he didn't seem to see anything.

Stuffing most of the meat into his mouth in one bite, Leon shrugged as if amused. "Hey, hey, you look as though you've come from Barcelona to spread its bad luck around. Don't be shy; it's your treat. Eat up."

"It is as Father Garcia says: You have eighteen hundred seconds until you must present yourself to the Vatican. Replenish yourself as quickly as possible, Father Nightroad," said Tres, who stood motionless. Being a Killing Doll, Tres didn't need food, in the normal sense. In order to support his brain cortex and part of his cerebellum—which were organic—he took vitamins with distilled water once a month. "In the Vatican, we're on duty twenty-four hours a day. I recommend performing nutrition replenishment whenever it is possible."

"Not going," Abel murmured.

"What?"

"I'm not going." Abel repeated himself in a deliberately soft voice. Indeed, underneath his quiet demeanor, impossibly deep emotions churned. Shaking, he took out the crumpled paper. "There's something I have to do, bells I haven't investigated yet. Look, there are this many left. I can't go until I investigate them all!"

Leon gnawed on his rare steak before saying, "You idiot. How many churches do you think there are in Rome? If you count the private chapels of the nobility, it's more than three or four hundred."

In contrast to Leon's, Tres' demeanor was as cold as ice. "As for bells inside the city, the city police and special police already have conducted a joint investigation. All results were negative."

"If you overstep your bounds, Father Nightroad, your investigation will be considered illegal. Your appearance at the Vatican is not the Duchess of Milan's request—it's an order. You have no right to refuse to do exactly what she asks of you."

"Then, I quit."

"'Quit'? Meaning unknown. Re-input your answer," Tres said.

"I quit—both AX and being an agent. Wouldn't that be all right?"

"I will regard any further insubordinate utterances as deserting under enemy fire, Father Nightroad." Tres extended his hand to his hip holster.

Thick fingers grasped Tres' arm. "Leave it at that, Gunslinger." Leon effectively stopped his comrade before wiping his mouth with a napkin. "If we have a shootout in a place like this, the police will come flying in. Wouldn't Kate nail us to the cross for that?"

As if by magic, the steak in front of Leon had disappeared. After he gulped down an entire bottle of beer, Leon belched. "Phew, life is lived for a meal like this! So, Abel, are you really sure? If you quit AX now, won't there be all kinds of trouble? I don't know ..."

"I'm no good."

"Huh?" Leon raised his eyebrows and picked his teeth.

Abel's vacant eyes were focused firmly on Leon's untouched salad. "I couldn't save them . . . again. I let someone who was counting on me die ... again. I'm no good!"

"All right." Leon softly placed his hand on his overwhelmed comrade's shoulder. He patted Abel, who was trembling. He whispered kindly, "I know perfectly well that you're an incurable coward."

Nobody—not even Tres—caught sight of the answering blow. By the time the people around them became aware that Abel's cheek had been stuck, the priest's body and his chair already were flying into the neighboring table. Utensils danced in the air and rolled on the floor.

"There are two things in this world that I can't stand!" The giant priest, who'd struck a heroic pose, roared ferociously. "One: restaurants that refuse to serve meat. The other: bastards without balls who snivel and cry over their women being killed!"

Again, he sharply kicked Abel, who still hadn't gotten up from the sudden blow. The attack was merciless and threatened to rupture Abel's internal organs. Looking down at his former comrade—who was now vomiting—Leon sneered.

"Bah, it's Noelle's loss for getting killed over a blockhead like this. We're going, Tres! We have no use for a coward. On the contrary, he'll slow us down."

"Affirmative." Tres took the bill. His cold, calculating face showed no sign of emotion or shade of contempt. "Father Nightroad—no, Mister Abel Nightroad, I'll communicate your retirement request to the Duchess of Milan. There's no need for you to appear at the Vatican or Palazzio Spada again."

The two AX agents left the restaurant without turning around.

 

***

 

"He's cute, isn't he?" a man asked his companion as Leon exited the restaurant with Tres in tow.

As soon as the priests got into their car, they sped off without a backward glance.

The young man -watched their car's taillights grow distant. He took a sip of espresso. It tasted slightly bitter—but coming from the most famous cafe in Rome, it was delicious.

"I know you like to tease, Isaac. His face is similar, but his character is completely different from that person. That's why you're vexed, right?"

'"Work is half of life, and the other half is also work'— Kestner. I'm just working, Puppeteer." Mixed in with the aroma of espresso was the mellow scent of tobacco smoke. In the blue darkness of late evening, the long-haired man put a cigarillo in his mouth. "I don't work for the sake of my emotions—although I may insert my emotions into my work."

"Which means you haven't found a way to extract emotions?"

The beautiful young man narrowed his laughing eyes.

Dressed in their simple slacks and shirts, the men looked like budding painters or philosophy students. Their lovely, porcelain-white features didn't stop people from seeing them as attractive men. Women passing by this cafe's terrace walked extremely slowly, hoping to get a longer look.

"So, how's the work going, Isaac? Have you finished bringing in the big equipment?"

"Yes, that part is long done. All that remains is to activate it in accordance with the client's wishes. The demonstration in Barcelona seems to have been to his liking. He considerably hastened our schedule."

"Heh heh. Well, then, how far do you think -we'll go to defeat the priest?" He nodded at the restaurant the two priests had left. The silver-haired priest had come out just then.

Abel stood there for a while; at last, he rounded his back and began to walk into the crowd, looking dejected. He often was tripped and insulted, yet he trudged on, his tottering figure growing smaller.

"Aw, he's so down, Isaac. Maybe you teased him a little too much. Far from rising to the bait, he might slit his wrists instead."

"This is my work. As an observer, you have no right to criticize. Besides, you can't encourage me to console him," said Isaac. He was dressed neatly in a black funereal suit. He stroked his hip-length black hair back off his suit jacket and stared quietly at his companion's handsome face. "Although he looks so sad, he's still a god. He's one of the first gods we humans have contacted since the dawn of history. If we underestimate him, -we'll be destroyed."

"He's a god? The god of what—poverty? He looks like a human to me."

"Humans can't take seven million lives. They can't turn the world into an enemy, turn their comrades into enemies, and turn themselves into an enemy, too. Yes, he . . ."

Puppeteer noticed that his companion's hand faintly trembled as it pushed the cigarillo into the ashtray. His voice was dripping with delight and madness as the man spoke, "He's the god of slaughter."