"P-please stop!" cried Havel in a weak voice as he watched the hand blade being swung toward Abel's face. "The match already is decided! Sister, useless bloodshed is an act that goes against God's will!"
"It isn't useless. I can't let this man live when he knows about the hydrocyanic acid gas. Besides ..." said Paula. The nun's face was unharmed in contrast to the priest’s bloodstained face. With the clarity of an angel of death, Paula lectured the bystander. "If we're going to talk about 'God's will,' you and this man must be killed. God is this world's order—reality itself. To mercilessly annihilate those who disobey that creed is conduct that obeys God's will. Please give up soon, Father Havel." The Lady of Death's kind whisper reached the priests ears, leaving him silent and crushed by grief. "God is power, and the reality of this world itself. You who disobeyed that power and pursued selfish ideals as you rejected holy reality are evil incarnate. There are things that are unforgivable^'
"Wr-wrong!" exclaimed Abel in a weak, muffled voice, interrupting Paula's supposed words of truth. "That's wrong, Sister Paula. What you're saying is the excuse of a beaten dog!"
Paula's eyebrows pricked up. "Beaten dog?" she asked in response to Abel's babbling about irrelevant things. "Father Abel, did you call me a beaten dog? I, a disciple of God, am a beaten dog?"
"Yes, sister—you're a pathetic beaten dog," Abel insisted, slowly moving his blood-smeared lips. Although his face was twisted in severe pain, his eyes were as serene as a snowy lane. Painfully but decisively, Abel continued, "I know, because I used to be like that, too. I viewed the world with despair and mocked the ideals of those 1 loved. Actually, I hated them—but when I think about it now, I was a beaten dog who was afraid of fighting reality. I was a pathetic beaten dog who mocked everything. I was exactly like you are now."
Abel seemed as though he were somewhere not here and in a time far from the present. His voice was filled with deep regret and sadness, but at the same time, a yearning for beloved memories. "It's good to look at reality. It's important to know that you don't have enough strength—but you can't let that defeat you. Paula, your theory is the theory of a beaten dog. It's only a beaten dog who'd give up fighting!"
"Thank you very much for the long and wise speech, Father, but do you understand your own situation?" asked Paula. Resting her icy eyes on her accuser, the nun laughed lightly as she gracefully but ferociously swung her hand blade. "Fine. If you can call me a beaten dog after I've beheaded you and annihilated this city, I'll acknowledge what you and Father Havel say. Be destroyed, agent!"
With enough force to turn the priest's head into a bloody lump, Paula's hand propelled through space, but the blade it gripped never reached Abel. "Ridiculous!" she exclaimed in a concerned tone. An overpowering strength that had struck her from behind had stolen her freedom. Paula unconsciously dropped Abel's body and faced the person who had pinioned her with one arm. "How can you move in that condition?" she asked, exasperated.
"Abel, earlier I denied my God, but God ended up existing after all," Havel said, laughing quietly as he kept the inquisitor bound. Because he'd diverted all his life-support backup circuits, his facial color was changing to that of a corpse. As he confronted death, his expression remained calm. "God certainly exists, but that alone isn't power. It isn't dreams, either—it's human volition that tries to bury the border between dreams and reality!"
"Vaclav!" By the time Abel shouted, Havel's torso had been sliced by a hand blade. His spinal cord was pulverized and subcutaneous circulation fluid overflowed from his ruptured closed circulation system. It was a fatal blow.
"Abel?" Havel whispered, smiling weakly, in spite of his being on the brink of death. "The rest ... the people... please..."
"You would-be suicide!" shouted Paula. By the time Havel's eyelids had lowered, Paula had succeeded in withdrawing her hand blade from the priest's body, which had ceased all function. Twisting her frame, which at last had regained its freedom, she faced her other enemy. "That took unnecessary rime. You're next, Father Abel."
What the triumphant Lady of Death discovered was that there wasn't any priest on the brink of death to be found. "Nanomachine Crusnik zero-two—forty-percent limited activation—authorized!" Abel said in a somber voice before standing up quietly.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Vaclav?" asked Abel.
Feeling as though he could hear somebody whispering, Havel slowly opened his eyes, but his field of vision was terribly clouded.
"Are you awake, Vaclav?" Abel asked with a half joyous, half distraught face.
Havel nodded to Abel. His vocal cords had lost nearly all their function, but by using all his body's strength, he finally could move his tongue. "The... inquisitor...?"
"I managed to fight her off. Father Leon and Father Tres are summoning the citizens and preparing for an unconditional surrender, and it looks as though we can avoid the church army invading the city. Understand? It's all thanks to you," Abel said.
"Surrender . . . ?" said Havel. So, we lost after all? As he tried to smile, Havel suddenly noticed that his head wasn't on the floor, but was propped on something soft. That something soft was somebody who had been supporting him from behind.
When that person peered into Havel's eyes, he spoke in a terribly weak voice. "A-a-are you okay, Vaclav?" asked Alessandro.
"Ah, Your Holiness. You're unharmed?" Vaclav replied, surprised. Examining the Pope's white face, Havel managed to smile. "I am as you see. We lost... and I'm very sorry for dragging Your Holiness into an absurd farce."
"F-f-forgive me, Vaclav," Alessandro pleaded as tears welled up in his eyes. "I-if I'd been a proper Pope, this kind of thing—
"It's fine, Your Holiness. It's really fine," Havel assured the sobbing boy. Doing his best to comfort the Pope, he said, "Thanks to you, I was able to reunite with the God I'd lost sight of. I'm satisfied."
"God? S-so, Havel, you met God?" asked Alessandro.
"Yes, the Lord God whom I'd lost sight of for a long time. That wasn't so—my God was inside me." Havel had labored to deliver those few words, and it appeared as though the light of life was disappearing from his body. He could no longer see the boy's expression and had so much he wanted to say, but he didn't have the time or energy to do so. At least Havel had said the most important things to Abel. It was up to Abel to allow the seed to sprout.
"Your Holiness, you're powerless now. You couldn't save us, but that powerlessness isn't your fault," Havel said. Extending a blood-smeared arm as if he were half awake, he touched the boy's bony but warm hand. "You have volition, and as long as you have volition, your powerlessness isn't powerless. As long as you're ashamed of that, the day surely will come when the God within you will grant you power. I look forward to that day."
"Vaclav?" Alessandro called to Havel, who'd closed his eyes. He shook the priest's body as if to raise his body temperature that rapidly had waned, but once Havel's eyelids had closed, they didn't open again.