“Yes,” one sensayer found strength to answer. “Yes, you are relevant. Thank you for making the time to come.”

“What is more important?” No one could face His pure black stare and think the question was rhetorical.

“Nothing,” they agreed.

Julia smiled. “I asked Jehovah to come, in case some of you had questions. It should make certain decisions easier.”

The others nodded stunned thanks, and raised no protest as Julia took her seat as Conclave Head. Her smile was all victory as she fingered the new pin she wore upon her breast, Quarriman’s bull’s-eye O.S. sigil. Only a day had passed since Quarriman created it, but the sign was already common on the streets, and even two here in the Conclave wore it. But it felt different on Julia, pinned beside the temporary clip-on chest monitor which oversaw her new heart. Had you forgotten Sniper’s second shot? After it fled the Forum, with Dominic still clinging rabid to the car, the living doll stopped at the jail in Antwerp and fired a second bullet through the window and clear through Julia’s heart. She had a new heart now, fully artificial, thumping coldly on within her cold chest. I have seen many strange species of courage in my years, but one of the strangest was this, to pin above her still-raw wound the bull’s-eye invitation: shoot me again, my love, if your cause demands it.

“I will answer anything you ask,” Jehovah offered, “excepting matters on which one of My Earthly offices requires silence.”

Several of the sensayers blinked as they reviewed the imperial gray armband which held the insignia of His many offices. The crisis and its power vacuums had promoted Him: no longer merely a European Parliamentary Counsel but a European Council Counsel; no longer a Humanist Bailiff but Deputy to the Humanist Attorney General; no longer a Clerk of the Cousins’ Chief Counsel’s Office but an Advising Member of the Board. It takes a rare mind in such days to forget Jehovah’s part in earthly politics; here sat many who can.

“Come on, then,” Julia prompted. “Ask away.” She waited, smiling, to see who would dare speak first among her many… what would you say they are to her now, reader? Her peers? Enemies? Vassals? Rivals? Pawns? Rebels, perhaps, eager to expel and depose her, but willing still to let her buy her way back in, in return for bringing the priceless Answer to their questions?

“What really happened on the Rostra with Sniper?” The chief rival to the Chief Sensayer was Jess Tilden-Crowner, Austrian and Brillist-raised but now Mitsubishi in a mixed Brillist-Mitsubishi bash’ composed entirely of sensayers, except for one vocateur mechanic.