“Do you give a shit?” Eigen asked.

“In my way.” Karras smiled. “In my way.”

“I saw the bag downstairs,” I said. “Do you still box?”

“I hit the bag. Why, you need some muscle?” He threw out a couple of punches, bobbed and weaved.

“We might,” I said. “Do you remember my work on nothing?”

“Sort of. I can’t say I fucking understood it even then.”

“Someone is seeking to harness that power.” The words sounded stupid in my mouth and worse in the air. “I don’t really know why I’m here, Father Karras.”

“Damien.”

I nodded. “I need to get into the Naval Observatory tonight. I know you used to use the equipment there.”

“Before I ask why, I’ll say it can’t be done. Motherfucking vice president lives there or on campus thereabouts.”

“I was in the telescope room two nights ago.”

“Really? On a tour?”

“No, in the middle of the night, just three of us. I was there with a man named John Sill and an astronomer name Jean Luc.”

“Monfils,” he said with me. “Giant Haitian.”

I nodded.

“Smart, but he might be evil. Of course I think everyone might be evil.” He walked to his little kitchen table and filled a glass with bourbon, drank it straight down as if it were juice. “Lunch.”

“You’re an astronomer?” Eigen asked.

Karras looked at the glass in his hand. “I am. Specifically, a cosmologist. I’ve spent my entire pitiful life thinking about cosmic inflation. And one wonders why I drink. When I started my studies, I thought I would find God in the stars.”

“You didn’t?” she asked.

“It’s just a bunch of burning gases out there. It’s all very pretty, I’ll give you that. Sit down.” He pointed to chairs at his small table. “I won’t offer you this stuff, but would you like tea?”

“I’d like tea,” Eigen said.

“Please,” I said.

Karras filled a saucepan with water and put it on the electric stove top. “I hate electric, but they won’t trust me with gas. Think I’ll blow up the school.”

“Why are you a priest?” Eigen asked.

“I used to believe in God, but then I saw evil. You simply can’t fucking have both in the same world. That’s why I was interested in your damn work back then.” He smiled at me. “Not that I am comparing evil to nothing.”

“Of course,” I said. “The government has hidden some kind of craft in space. It carries a telescope as powerful as the Hubble and it’s pointed at earth.”

“I see,” he said.

“It’s using a disguised communication satellite as a relay to deliver its intel to Earth. It may also be true that they have found nothing.”

“You still contend that what you mean by nothing is not the same as antimatter,” he said.

“Nor is it dark matter,” I said.

He shook his head, looked at Eigen. “One of the things that stumps us is how there can be so much more matter than antimatter in the observable world.”