"The fish is Christ," Cardinal Harms said, "who offers his flesh to man so that man may have eternal life."

"That's all very well, but it was unfair to the fish. She said it was a wrong thing to do. Even though the fish offered itself. Its pain was too much. Oh yes; in the dream she thought, 'We must find another kind of food, which doesn't cause the great fish suffering.' And then there were some blurred episodes where she was looking in a refrigerator; she saw a pitcher of water, a pitcher wrapped in straw or reeds or something . . . and a cube of pink food like a cube of butter. Words were written on the wrapper but she couldn't read them. The refrigerator was the common property of some kind of small settlement of people, off in a remote area. What happened, the way it worked, was that this pitcher of water and this pink cube belonged to the whole colony and you only ate the food and drank the water when you realized you were approaching your moment of death."

"What did drinking the water-"

"Then you came back later. Reborn."

Harms said, "That is the host under the two species. The consecrated wine and wafer. The blood and body of our Lord. The food of eternal life. 'This is my body. Take-'"

"The settlement seemed to exist at another time entirely. A long time ago. As in antiquity."

"Interesting," Harms said, "but we still have our problem to face, what to do about the monster baby."

"As I said," the procurator said, "we will arrange an acci- dent. Their ship won't reach Washington, D.C. When, precisely, does it arrive? How much time do we have?"

"Just a moment." Harms pressed keys on the board of a small computer terminal. "Christ!" he said.

"What's the matter? It only takes seconds to dispatch a small missile. You have them in that area.

Harms said, "Their ship has landed. While you slept. They are already being processed by Immigration at Washington, D.C."