PAMELA D. HODGSON

THE CANTERBURY PATH

Sometimes fiction forces us to look at things in a new light. Science fiction in
particular can examine ancient beliefs and remake them -- and not always to our
liking.

Encyclopedia of Anglican Catholic History, Volume 3:

Elisabeth Altgeld, Anglican missionary, born 2111, Illinois, Earth, ordained
2137 (before the Anglican-Roman Compact of 2183 ended female ordination in
exchange for limitation of powers of the papacy; see article Vol. 1). Credited
with bringing Christianity to the Magellanic planets; little is known of her
specific activities, except that she spent most of her career on Kputkp, where
she died in 2150, possibly due to the famine of that year.

The insectile alien joined the group of Canterbury pilgrims, as the tourists
liked to be called, just before the tour reached the Martyrdom. The creature was
black, standing upright on two bug legs, with a ring of flexible appendages,
more gray than black, around its middle. The head had a maw of sorts, and what
were presumably eyes -- two round, spongy lumps on the sides of a bullet-shaped
head. From its neck hung a wooden crucifix.

Father George Morville nodded recognition at the alien, reluctantly, and went on
giving the tour, the quaver of age in his voice multiplying in the echo off the
marble pilasters. "This stone marks the spot of the Martyrdom of St. Thomas
Becket, December 29, 1170. All gather 'round, within the range of the
stimfield--" humans and others, three dozen in all, drew in closer around him,
"-- and we'll show you it, let you see and feel it, just as it happened,
seventeen hundred and twenty-three solar years ago." He checked his math; yes,
2893 less 1170, that was right. Memory was as bad as his eyesight.

The space around the group wavered, then reshaped itself. Over George's
shoulder, the 1184 A.D. choir, with its screen of stone statues, was replaced
with Anselm's Norman structure as it must have looked in 1170 when it was only
forty years old. Brown-hooded monks, heads deeply bowed, shuffled into the
choir, but still circumnavigating the clot of visitors. One of the tourists
reached out to tug at a coarse brown sleeve. She looked disappointed when the
image didn't react.

George gestured toward the arched stone doorway from the cloister. The tourists
turned to watch the silk-coped figure of Archbishop Thomas Becket hurry past
them into the transept, darting a glance over his shoulder. Behind them, the
murmur of Latin vespers rose like heat toward the vaulted roof. Before Thomas
could join the monks, four knights bolted through the door after him, their hard
shoes stamping like hooves on the stone floor. The monks' voices rose a little,
as if to overcome the profane sound. With one hand Thomas drew his cope tight
around him as the knights gabbed for him. With the other he slapped at one of
them, a small, dark man with a sharp arch to his brow. "FitzUrse," Thomas said,
and the tourists recognized the name from earlier in the tour, though they
understood no more of Thomas's guttural, Germanic-sounding old English.
Moonlight filtered through the clerestory windows. Thomas and the knights spat
sounds at each other, voices rising over the monks', until FitzUrse drew a sword
that sliced the air and came down with a crack upon Thomas's head. The
Archbishop fell to his knees, whispering the name of Saint Alphege. The sword
struck again, harder, and again, until the top of his head fell away like a cap,
his skull like a chalice pouring blood on the floor. One knight, who had hung
back throughout, a wiry man with a face only just showing age, crossed himself
as Thomas's body collapsed. His face was very pale.

A sharp keening wail, like a balloon squirting air, rose and echoed in the
transept. George spun to see the alien clutch its shiny black carapace and
scurry away, its wail receding along the nave. He shut off the stimfield.

Bloody alien, he thought, then immediately regretted his unkindness. Still, it
had been nothing but trouble, and frankly he thought the creature should be
excommunicated. So he'd told the Dean of the Cathedral earlier that morning. Of
course the Dean, an ambitious young fellow, not even fifty, seldom had time for
George Morville. He probably hadn't heard a word.

The tourists chattered amongst themselves, their shrill accents clashing and
ricocheting off the Bell Harry Tower. It gave George a headache. One of them
tugged at the sleeve of George's well-worn cassock. His eye roved up and down
her lithe body, clothed in a fan-pleated bodice and scuffed white leggings. He
wondered if she was just as lovely beneath the clothes, just as cool and white
and full in the proper places. But she was young, and it was his misfortune to
be old. He asked for her question.

"The one who stood back, which one was he?"

"Hugh de Morville. No relation to me, I might add. Never thought it would come
to murder when they all left King Henry. Didn't have the stomach for it."

"That Kputkp --" she pronounced it kip-ut-kip, jerking her head toward the
wailing alien's path of retreat, "-- didn't have a stomach for it either!" Most
of the humans, and some of the other aliens, laughed. There were no other
Kputkp.

The alien's stomach was not something George wanted to be reminded of. He asked
if there were other questions.

A humanoid alien -- from Kanth, conquered not too long ago in one war or the
other, George thought -- raised its mittenlike hand. Earth was a museum planet
for the history of the human race, but for some reason all these other types
wanted to see it too. At least these Kanth weren't so repulsive. "Becket was not
a kind man. How is he a saint?"

"The road to salvation is paved with forgiveness;" George answered. "The Lord
welcomes all who see His light and do His good works in the end." The Kanthian
pursed its thin blue-red lips, but didn't say more.

George wound up the tour, pointing the visitors toward the kiosk where Cathedral
souvenirs could be purchased. The group dissolved, some responding to his
halfhearted sales pitch, the rest setting off to roam the building and grounds.
One switched on a retina recorder. George couldn't be bothered to tell him it
wasn't allowed. He went outside.

There were smooth stone benches on the green, which visitors seldom paused at,
given the short time most had to see all the sights of the planet. George
lowered himself carefully to a bench in the sun, the cool stone painful against
his arthritic back and legs. Perhaps the pain was penitence for his rudeness to
the alien. It called itself an ordained priest of the Anglican-Catholic Church.
He really should be more accepting.

Called itself. Well, he supposed it really was a priest, by right of apostolic
succession. It had been ordained by one of its own, who had in turn been
ordained, and back until one of them was first ordained by a Christian
missionary from Earth, who had herself been duly ordained and consecrated. Of
course, some would question whether any of it counted, the missionary being a
woman, ordained before the reunification, when that sort of thing was done.

It had been hard enough bringing the Anglicans and Catholics together. He
couldn't see how there was a place under this ecclesiastical roof for the
bizarre alien sect this so-called priest from Kputkp had told him about a day
before.

He leaned back on the bench. and tilted his head up to the gray-blue sky. At
least it wasn't raining today.

It had rained the day before, off and on, the rush of it outside swallowing the
noise of footsteps and voices in the Cathedral.

Perhaps it was strange that the only priest present would be the tour guide.
There were plenty of others nearby; the office annex next door housed the
Archbishop and the Dean and all their ordained and lay bureaucrats. But an hour
after morning prayer, George was the only clergyman in the church itself. He
leaned heavily against the visitor information table where the tour groups
assembled, waiting to see how many there would be for his 10:15 tour. Money was
tight and the current war had cut off a large chunk of the galaxy, so it had
been a slow summer. George wasn't troubled. In nearly fifty years at Canterbury,
he had seen it all come and go and come again. Next year, or perhaps the year
after, would be better. War kept tourism down, but at least it kept his niece
Marina in a job.

There was a school group from Mars for the tour. That helped make up the
numbers. Also a few old ladies, with the zigzag haircuts that had gone out of
style a generation ago. And the nuns -- there were always nuns. As the tour was
about to begin, the alien scuttled up. George restrained the shudder that
nonhumanoids always gave him. He thought -- correctly -- it might be a Kputkp,
though contact with their planet had been sporadic at best, they being the other
side of the disputed territories. He had seen pictures of them somewhere. Rather
surprising it made it here, he thought.

It stopped fight in front of George and inclined its head toward him. Its jaws
clicked as it spoke. "Are you a priest, sir?"

George fingered his collar. "Yes."

"I would like to talk. To you. A priest."

"I have a tour to lead. I'm sure most of your questions will be answered by the
tour."

"Not to talk about this cathedral."

"Well. These people are waiting, and we don't like to be late. Perhaps someone
else can help you." George turned away.

The Kputkp joined the tour for the first part, but wandered off halfway through.
George breathed a sigh of relief, though he felt bad about doing so. He really
shouldn't be so put off..

The alien sidled up to him after the tour. "May I talk with you now, Father?"
The clicking of its jaws grated on George's nerves. He looked around. Even the
woman who minded the information table was gone.

The alien didn't wait for him to say yes. "I too am a priest. I am from Kputkp."
George looked for a clerical collar, in vain; the creature didn't wear anything
he recognized as clothing. "But being so far away...the faith has...lost
something in translation. I have come to bring it back."

He waved toward the kiosk against the wall. "There are histories available on
retina player over at the --"

"I would like to talk about what you believe."

George started to walk. It saved him having to look the alien in the eye. The
alien followed. "It's really all in the creed."

"Why are you a priest if you do not wish to talk about your faith?"

George paused. It was two questions, really, and he wasn't sure he could answer
either. He retreated to the earlier question. "I can spare a few minutes to talk
about doctrine." He gestured toward a pew. "Shall we sit?"

"No, thank you. But you sit please." George realized the alien physique didn't
really permit sitting, at least not the way humans did it. But he was tired, so
he sat. Rather than crane his neck to look up at the alien, he gazed off into
the middle distance.

The jaw-clicking of the alien's speech quickened; it reminded George of
tap-dancing. The rhythm didn't match the cadence of the words, but it
complemented the beat of the rain. "Is it true that Jesus Christ was a human
being?"

And this thing called itself a priest? George looked at the crucifix dangling
against the alien's patent-leather chest. Yes, as he looked closer, the figure
on it was...almost insectile.

"Well of course!" It came out louder than he intended. Tourists glared. He drew
in a breath before going on. "Christ was man and God in one. This is at the very
root of our faith. This is how He saves us all."

"But I am not man. Do you believe Christ died for me?"

George thought a moment. "Yes." That much he was sure of. After a few seconds
more, he went on, less certainly. "You are not a man, but you are mortal. That
is the point."

"But human survival does not require the Sacrifice. How are you in communion
with God?"

"I don't understand your question."

The alien produced a retina player -- it must have joints or pockets or
something that weren't apparent -- and offered the scanbox to George. He took
it, careful not to touch the appendage that held it. The creature gave hi m the
willies.

He raised the scanbox to his eye and pressed the button. The red laser pulsed
once, then was replaced by images that printed themselves on his brain. It was
an encyclopedia entry on the Kputkp. The Sacrifice: apparently it meant that the
Kputkp gave birth to a first offspring, which they ate to nourish themselves for
the birth of ensuing offspring who were allowed to live. Cannibals! And this --
this thing! equated that with the Holy Eucharist!

"You eat your own children..."

"So that others might live," the alien answered. "Without that, what do you eat
for communion?"

"Bread, of course. And wine,"

"How is that the Sacrifice of the Lord, who gave his only Son that others might
live?"

That newly familiar clicking sound interrupted his thoughts. He snapped hi s
head up, neck creaking a little, to see the alien standing in the sun near his
bench. He looked off over its shoulder.

"Father, I want to talk again." George thought he detected sadness, though he
wondered if Kputkp even had emotions. Could they, who ate their children?

"I really think you should speak with the Dean. He is in charge here."

"I want to talk to you."

There was little he could say to that.

"I came here to learn about Jesus Christ, who lived here in your world. I
understand how the Father could let His people kill His Son, because He would
eat the flesh, as do we all, to nourish the rest of His children, which are we
all. That His Son should be one of you --" the alien lowered its bullet-shaped
head, rocking it gently back and forth, "-- was a revelation." The jaws clicked
like an admonishment.

"We thought it mere coincidence that Christ lived here. Upon learning His human
parentage, I thought then that you must be a Christlike people. But I come to
your place of worship, the place our missionary founder, Mother Altgeld, came
from, and see a vicious, brutal murder. A waste, not a sacrifice." It ended the
sentence with a sound like a retch.

"The men who killed Becket were punished for their crime. It's said that they
wandered for years before they could find peace and forgiveness."

"They killed a man!"

"Christ offers us all forgiveness. Would you have us eat them for their crime?"

"Never. They are profane. Weren't they Christians?"

"Yes, they were. The fight was all about --"

"It does not matter -- they are Christians and yet they are murderers. And you,
Christian, can recreate it and look at it without revulsion every single day!"
The alien's rocking head moved more quickly. After a moment, its entire body
began to shudder, and once again it departed abruptly. A breeze lifted its
appendages as it went.

George shook his head. He would let the Dean see to it. He reached into his
pocket for the letter he had been carrying that he had been looking forward to
all day. He smiled that his niece still carried on the old craft of written
language, that he could share that secret language with her, even now that she
was grown. He unfolded the page.

"Dear Uncle George," he read. Her lettering was as fine and vertical as the
script on the Accord of Winchester floating in preservation liquid inside the
Cathedral. He remembered showing it to her and explaining about words on paper,
how things were recorded and passed on in the days before you could scan
information through your eye straight into your brain. She was a child then, new
to Earth, her mother having taken a job maintaining the Amazon. The child,
Marina, traced her fingers in the air in the forms of the letters, her bright
blue eyes wide. George taught her to write then. They'd been writing each other
since, despite the time and cost. They did it because each liked holding
something the other had recently touched.

"Just a quick note," the letter read. "I'm working this week on designs for
settlement buildings on the captured planets. I try to make them beautiful and
memorable, like your cathedral. I want us to bring these planets something
worthwhile. But what we can fabricate on-ship is pretty limited, so mostly
they're just practical. I do my best.

"It's boring as hell out here. I'm not sure hardcopy transfer is being done with
any efficiency this far away, so I don't know when you'll get this. Anyway, I'll
write again when I can. Love, Marina."

Marina was fourteen last time she visited him at Canterbury. She was getting
tall, she was almost as tall as George. She wore her straight brown hair very
short, with bangs that, though neatly trimmed, hung over her eyes to the tip of
her nose. He guessed that was how all the kids were wearing their hair. She was
sturdier than her mother -- Nan was more the willowy type. They sat across from
each other at his well-used dining table. Marina was a bright spot in the
mustard-colored room.

She fingered the gold cross dangling from a chain around her neck. George had
given it to her when she was ten. "Glad to see you still have that," he said.

"I don't wear it much."

He looked down at the wood and began tracing the grain with his fingertip. "I
suppose it's not the fashion."

"I don't do things just 'cause everyone else does. I just don't think this cross
thing means much."

His finger stopped tracing.

"It does mean something that it came from you. But I don't go to church any
more." He started to smile at her. "You're gonna say it's a phase. It's like I
can't think anything without everyone calling it a phase." She twirled a strand
of her bangs, tugging it mouthward. It wouldn't reach. "I just think there's a
problem with religion when it says it's for everyone, but it's more --" She
stopped to search for the words, then finished triumphantly. "It's more
exclusive than inclusive." George wondered who she was quoting.

"You're thinking too much, child."

Marina sighed. "So according to your church, I'm not supposed to think. Great.
Thinking is what separates us from the sheep. So, church is for sheep?"

"It has to do with faith, dear."

She shook her head, but she smiled. "I still like the Cathedral, though. I want
to be an architect. Can we go walk around? It's kind of a busman's holiday for
you, but..."

Busman's holiday. She'd learned that expression from him.

The alien was back. Last thing he needed.

"I have something for you, Father." One of the limp appendages snaked around
another scanbox. George took it. He held it up and pressed the button.

He flinched at first. The images were of aliens, Kputkp, their carapaces
reflecting a low-hanging orange sun. They gathered around a small altar, on
which rested a chalice, a silver paten and a long ruby skewer. The crowd of
aliens parted, and one of them carried forward a small one, even more buglike
than its elders. The others rocked their heads as it passed. The small one was
set gently in the center of the altar just as another adult, the one that stood
before George here in Canterbury -- he was surprised to find he could tell one
from another -- stepped behind the altar, a ragged clerical stole draped over
its body. Above it George saw a crucifix: a black metal cross with a figure
pinned to it, writhing in agony, that was in no way a man. He dropped the
scanbox.

"Continue please," said the alien. It loomed over him, blocking his way, though
he doubted the creature would restrain him. He had to confess a certain morbid
curiosity. His stomach churned. He brought the box back up to his eye.

The alien priest raised the paten, the chalice, and the ruby blade each in a
separate appendage. Then it moved all its appendages, seven he now counted, in
unison to trace the shape of a cross. The others did likewise. At last, the
blade came down upon the child, the first stroke quick, the others less so, but
equally deliberate. George flinched with each one. A steamy rust-colored fluid
oozed from the rents. The priest collected it in the chalice. George could smell
the sick sweetness of death. The Kputkp dissected the body neatly and arranged
the pieces on the paten to form the letters alpha and omega.

He closed his eyes long enough to take a deep breath and compose himself. When
he opened them, he saw the Kputkp line up for communion. The weakest ones were
ushered forth first. Some of them had to be helped. Each devoured hunks of flesh
from the plate, curled itself momentarily on the ground in what George took to
be a genuflection, took a long drink from the chalice, curled itself again, then
returned to the crowd.

The next to eat looked less frail. George thought they looked sad. The rest
followed. There were only crumbs left on the plate when the priest ate. He
wrapped his maw around the entire chalice and sucked out the remaining drops of
blood. George put down the scanbox.

"To each according to his need," the alien said. "There is more." Its appendage,
smooth as glass, pressed his hand back up.

A date flashed at the comer of his eye, telling him this was much earlier. There
were the Kputkp again, but this time a woman, a human, among them. Mother
Altgeld, the missionary, he guessed. Her hair was gold, with a faint tinge of
red, her pale brown eyes round and expressive, still beautiful despite the lines
spraying out from them.

Mother Altgeld was surrounded by Kputkp, almost all of them thin and weak. "The
famine," George heard the alien priest say, his voice like an echo. The woman
stood in front of a table made of twigs stacked in piles, her voice simulating
the sounds of the Kputkp language.

Mother Altgeld climbed onto the altar. She stretched herself out as if to sleep.
She crossed herself. The name Mother suited her, he decided. He could imagine
her among children.

One of the aliens came forward with the ruby knife. George gasped. Mother
Altgeld opened her palm and accepted it from him. Her chest rose and fell with a
deep breath. She closed her eyes and plunged the knife into her own chest.
George dropped the box. It clattered on the stone path.

The alien picked it up. "Since the martyrdom of Mother Altgeld seven hundred
years ago, we've had no wars, no greed. She gave us the example -- one must
sacrifice for the greater good, even beyond what is normally required. The
Sacrifice is not just for one's own offspring and not just for food Rather than
evolutionary necessity, we do it for one another, for the whole We care for our
hungry and our needy, so no one's needs fail to be met. We are truly brothers to
one another. This is what Jesus Christ taught, Mother Altgeld said, and so we
follow. Is this not what you believe?"

"No wars?"

"None."

"But you didn't have many before, did you?"

"Our population was halved by war just before Mother Altgeld came to us. We were
hungry when she came because our crops were decimated by war. Yes, Father, we
had wars. Until Mother Altgeld taught us to follow Christ, through her own
example." George heard derision. "Now you see why I was so shocked to learn
Jesus Christ was one of you."

"What do your women say about losing their children to your sacrifices? They
can't be --"

"We all reproduce. Since Mother Altgeld's coming, the young that are consecrated
are offspring of a priest. Others may offer their young, if they are needed for
the greater good. But most are mine, or another priest's."

George shook his gray head. It was too much to think about. The alien held up
the scanbox. George raised his hand to reach for it, then changed his mind and
let his hand drop in his lap. He gazed down at his veiny pale fingers instead.

When he looked up, the alien had gone. He sighed. He hoisted himself up off the
bench, palms flat against its surface. He walked slowly, the only way he could
walk many days, back into the great west door. Sunlight slanted through the
stained glass; the fat frogs in the miracle windows cast blobs of green on the
stone floor.

As he walked, George passed the northwest transept and the martyrdom s tone. He
stopped to trace the letters with the toe of his shoe. He remembered the
stimfield image, the one that had horrified the Kputkp priest, the one he had
replayed two or three times a day for nearly fifty years. For the first time,
the brutality of it disgusted him.

Something crinkled against his side. The letter in his pocket. He would sooner
go home and write Marina than stay here today. He found a curate and arranged
for him to take over the day's tours, pleading illness. The young man was kind
about it, but George knew that later he would say that it was just more proof
the old man should be retired, and room made for some new blood, someone not
living in the past. Never mind. He took off his cassock and went home.

Home was a flat just across the green, spacious really, considering he lived
alone. The furnishings were much as he had found them when he first came to
Canterbury: beige and brown chairs that sculpted themselves to the occupant's
body, their supposedly indestructible fabric showing the signs of half a
century's wear. The building dated from the fifteenth century, so there was a
large stone fireplace in the middle of the parlor, remnants of wood and ash in
it left from when he last lit it perhaps a year or two ago. He had an
old-fashioned scanbox, the great big kind, too heavy to move. It would play the
new scans, with full sensory output, but the library of cartridges he had on a
shelf nearby were all the very old kind, that read actual text directly into the
eye. You could make the images yourself. You could see what you wanted to see.

Marina understood, almost. He extracted her letter, now crumpled, and flattened
it in front of him. Marina, with her hair so fine you could hardly feel it when
you touched it. Not a pretty girl, by most people's lights, but with a certain
brightness behind her eyes that suggested intelligence as well as humor.

He dozed in his chair, the letter still clenched in his paper-white fingers.

He woke in the morning to the bleating of the seephone. It was a moment before
he recognized the sound, he used the thing so seldom. Joints stiff, he shuffled
to the console. For a moment he wished Museum Earth offered its residents the
more modern appliances, like a seephone that came right over to you.

It was Marina's mother, her dark hair partially hidden by a vine-covered hat.
She scratched at the corner of her eye. "George. It's about Marina." George
waited. "She's dead." Marina's ship had been taken out by a pulse weapon left
behind as a sort of land mine in space, she told him.

George stayed in his chair the rest of the morning and into the afternoon,
conscious but careless of the stubble on his cheeks, the stale odor of the
clothes he had slept in, the pinch of the thick-soled black shoes he'd never
bothered to remove. He stared at the wall ahead of him. He remembered telling
her that William the Conqueror signed with a cross because he couldn't write.
She had made a cross with her finger in the air.

He held Marina's letter in his hand, printing it with sweat. The ink faded and
ran, and made marks on his fingers. The letters smeared so they couldn't be
read, even if you knew how.

The alien didn't announce himself with a knock, didn't wait to be asked in. He
just appeared in front of George's chair, back to the fireplace. George looked
up at him and said nothing.

"Father, I have heard," he said. "Your human wars come home to you. Do you still
have faith?"

George thought for a long moment. He wanted to tell the truth. "Yes."

The chair folded itself around George, reshaping itself like a womb as he sunk
deeper inside it. The alien snaked out an appendage and stroked lightly,
comfortingly, across his arm.

"How can you understand? You lose your children -- you kill them yourself! --
routinely. You can't possibly understand."

"There is a greater love."

The message from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of the Church of England,
came the following morning. George was summoned to a meeting with the Archbishop
within the hour. He dressed and hurried as best a man his age could. His eyes
were still sore and red.

He paused as he entered through the cloisters near the spot where the alien had
run screaming from the tour. The image stuck in him like a dull blade. He
wondered for the first time whether Thomas Becket was the appropriate symbol for
this place.

The church wasn't open for visitors yet. Though the soles of his shoes were
soft, his steps clapped against the stone, against the names of the saints and
kings buried beneath the floor and remembered in words chiseled into the
surfaces and worn with age, so that many were barely legible and barely
recalled.

He paused as he passed the choir screen, his fingers running across the carving.
He passed through the screen, up the center aisle flanked by the burnished wood
pews, and genuflected before the high altar. He circled left around the
sanctuary to the apse at the east that housed the Trinity Chapel. Morning light
yellowed the air and speckled the floor with the red and gold of the stained
glass. George slid into the back pew and lowered himself to the kneeler. His
knees cracked as his weight settled on them, and pain trellised up his back.

Head bowed, forehead resting on hands, he prayed for he knew not what. Guidance,
he supposed. Answers to the unanswerable: why God made a universe that killed
its children, while he, an old, useless man, lived on; where a race that looked
like cockroaches could devour their meaty young in the name of the Eucharist and
still be better Christians than all of humanity.

They would retire him now, he was sure. He asked the Lord where he would go,
where he could be of use. He had been so long at Canterbury, so long a priest in
this anachronistic world. But he had been no use. He knew that now.

Yet he wasn't ready to die. He was as afraid as anyone of death. Despite all he
had told the dying over his years as a priest, in the final analysis his own
faith was wanting. He feared death. He would not go, not yet. Where would he go
instead?

He poured out the questions until he had no more, then lifted his head to look
for an answer. Instead, he heard the scuttling step of the alien behind him a
distance. He raised himself, and turned. The alien rocked its head in
acknowledgment. It started to leave, to give him privacy, but he went after it,
and it waited for him.

"Just one question, Father," George said to the alien. "I've never asked your
name."

"Logosh," or something that sounded like that, was its answer. George nodded and
thanked it. The alien continued on its way.

George doddered to the southwest transept and through the door to the office
complex, vintage twenty-second century, where he was to meet the Dean and the
Archbishop. The bright artificial light, keyed to the wavelength components of
natural sunlight, made him see spots. Squinting he made his way to the giant
simulated oak door of the Archbishop's conference room and pushed it open.

The Dean's sharply creased creamy gray trousers showed a single neat wrinkle at
the knee where they bent against the eighteenth century walnut chair. His crisp
black shirt was like perfect night against the pure white of his collar. White,
George noticed for the first time, didn't suit the man. It made his fair skin
sallow below his graying hair. The archbishop sat at the head of the walnut
table, leaning his elbows on the surface scarred with generations of leaning,
eating, writing living. The man was almost as old as George, though with stem,
hawkish features and black pinprick eyes. His hair was thick and steely silver,
like the silver of the heavy rings on his fingers and the ornate cross that
dangled from his neck, swinging like a corpse at the gallows, tapping lightly
against his chest.

George waited to be asked to sit. The Archbishop poked a finger toward a vacant
chair across from the Dean. George settled himself into it. The carved back
pricked his spine in several places like a medieval torture device The surface
of the table gleamed and reflected. The room smelled faintly of lemon.

The Dean spoke first. "I've conveyed to the Archbishop the information I've
recently received regarding the practice of our faith on Kputkp. I told him you
were in a position to confirm some of it."

It was not the first time the Dean had taken credit where none was due. George
went along as he always had. "Father Logosh of Kputkp has shared with me some of
their customs. He has also showed me how well the gospel is practiced in his
world. There are no wars there. No famine. Everyone cares for each other. Our
Lord's kingdom has indeed come, in many ways."

The Archbishop drummed his fingers, peering at the Dean rather than George. "I
thought you said they performed child sacrifice."

The Dean glared at George. George took it as his cue to answer. "One must
understand their culture --"

"Child sacrifice or no?" 'The Archbishop's cross beat a tattoo on his chest.

"I'm not sure."

"If there is child sacrifice, they'll have to be excommunicated. We can't have
them calling themselves part of the Church if they murder babies."

"The question is the greater good, I think. Some must die, that more might be
saved."

The Archbishop finally addressed himself directly to George. "Do they kill
children?"

"They celebrate the Eucharist, in the way that is true for the people of
Kputkp." Who do you say that I am? was the question that passed through George's
mind.

"This requires further investigation, don't you think?" the Dean said.

"We don't have anyone we can send that far for so long. We don't even know
they'd make it alive."

"I could go."

The Dean and the Archbishop looked at each other. George knew from their
expressions that this was an easy solution to a problem they had already
discussed. He smiled and went on. "And perhaps Father Logosh would like to stay
here, and study the history of the Church. I think you will find him very
interesting."

The Archbishop leaned back in his chair, the cross hitting his chest with an
impact that wasn't fully absorbed by the cloth of his shirt. "A possibility," he
said. When his elbows came up from the table, George knew the interview was at
an end. He went home to pack.

Encyclopedia of Anglican Catholic History, Volume 23:

St. George of Kputkp, born George Morville in Bradbury, Mars, July 12, 2812,
ordained Canterbury, Museum Earth, April 5, 2833, died Yutp, Kputkp, January 6,
2911, canonized January 6, 2918. Known for his work as a teacher on Kputkp, for
bridging the gap between the faith of the non-human planets and the human
colonies. He offered himself for martyrdom in the manner of St. Elisabeth
Altgeld, whose canonization he championed, as aid to the starving population
after a series of planetquakes jeopardized the peaceful civilization of Kputkp.
He is also remembered for inspiring the famous pacifist Logosh of Canterbury,
who mediated hundreds of wars in his lifetime and brought the gospel to human
and non-human cultures throughout the galaxy before being elected Archbishop of
Canterbury. Logosh was chiefly responsible for St. George's canonization. No
relics of St. George remain, but shrines to his memory are venerated on Kputkp
and in the northwest transept of Canterbury Cathedral. His epitaph reads, "He
Who Hath Builded The House Hath More Honour Than the House."