The Long War

When he looked up she was smiling, that flagstone-cracking beam of a smile that had always made her look twenty years younger. Agnes’s smile wasn’t the kind of smile that the regular world would associate with the word ‘nun’. It was a smile that had always contained a touch of mischief, and also a terrible rage, kept in check until it was needed. This was what had enabled her to sustain the Home, and her many other projects, in the face of opposition from the Vatican on down. The smile and the rage.

She sipped her coffee quite convincingly, just as Lobsang’s ambulant units always had; he tried not to think about the internal plumbing that made this possible. Now she lowered her cup and looked on him with pride, it seemed. ‘Ah, me. And here you are, a full-grown man, a father, a mayor—’

‘Lobsang did this to you.’

‘He did,’ she said warningly, ‘though he used some careless talk from you as an excuse to do it, young man. We’ll have to have a serious chat about that.’

‘How? I mean—’

‘Either I was downloaded from my poor dying brain via some kind of neural scan into a bucket of gel, or I was brought back by Tibetan monks chanting the Book of the Dead over my already interred corpse for forty-nine days. Lobsang tried both ways, he says.’

Joshua smiled weakly. ‘That’s Lobsang, all right. “Always have a backup.” I came to your funeral, you know, but he kept the rest from me, I guess. I didn’t know about the reincarnation. Or the monks. They must have driven the Sisters crazy . . . Does anybody else know you’re back? I mean, at the Home—’

‘Yes, I got in touch with the Home as soon as I could. I asked for Sister Georgina, she was the least likely to go bananas when she picked up the phone and heard my voice, or so I thought. I got a note from the Archbishop, if you want to know. The Church picks up more secrets than Lobsang himself. But I’m not public knowledge yet. Of course I’ll have to come out, so to speak, some time, if I’m to assume my place in the world again. At least, thanks to Lobsang, I’m not the first, umm, revenant in silicon and gel, even if he is wrapped in a cloak of mystery. Enough people are aware of his origins; at least my basic existence might be accepted.’

‘What place in the world?’

She pursed her lips. ‘Well, Joshua, as you ought to know if you ever paid any attention, before my final illness I was deputy chief executive of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents most of America’s Catholic sisters. I was actually in the middle of a terrific fight with the Vatican itself, its Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That’s the Inquisition, to you. About a book by a Sister Hilary in Cleveland.’

‘A book? What about?’

‘The spiritual benefits of female masturbation.’

Joshua sprayed coffee. The male heads turned again.

Her eyes glittered, as if she was ready for the fight. ‘We’ve been at war with the Pope and his cardinals since the Second Vatican Council. Just because we think social justice is more important than opposing abortion or same-sex marriage. Just because we reject their patronizing patriarchy – which is why nuns become nuns in the first place, one way or another. Oh, I can’t wait to get back into the fray, Joshua. And with this new body I’m never going to run out of steam, am I? I’ll be the Energizer bunny of militant nuns.’

‘What’s an Energizer bunny?’

‘Oh my dear child, you have so much to learn.’

‘Tell me why Lobsang brought you back. Not for my benefit, I’m guessing?’

She snorted. ‘Maybe that’s ten per cent of it. Apparently, I am to serve as a moral compass for Lobsang himself.’

‘Hmm. That’s not necessarily a bad idea.’

‘Maybe so, but I remain astonished that he doesn’t realize that the pointer of my own moral compass is severely bent around the stop.’

He grinned. ‘I remember when you hit that papal nuncio with a shoe. We all enjoyed that, even though we knew nothing about the scandal that guy was wrapped up in at the time. Then about two years afterwards the cover-up was exposed, and we all wished that you had hit him with both shoes.’

‘Of course, at first, I hated Lobsang for bringing me back from the dead. What a cheek. While at the same time, if you can understand me, I was beside myself with gratitude that he did so.’ She looked down at her body, at her hands.

‘But he gave you the choice of not going along with this, right? You could have gone off and led some independent – umm, life. Or—’

‘Or have him show me where my off switch is.’

‘How did he convince you?’

She looked thoughtful. ‘Well, I’ll tell you the truth. It was one particular conversation we had. Lobsang said about something or other, “Does not compute.” “Right,” I said . . .’

‘That was an ironic allusion, by the way,’ Lobsang had added.

They had been in a kind of gym, both in more or less incongruous tracksuits, where Lobsang was helping Agnes develop her physical reflexes.

‘What was an ironic allusion?’