The Atlantis Legacy - A01-A02 Read Online Free PDF

Earth from the human race is motivated by some deeper, inner desire to redeem yourself.”
    She shifted in her leather seat. It felt hard and uncomfortable. “Redeem me from what, Your Holiness?”
    “I was acquainted with your father, you know.”
    She knew.
    “Indeed,” the pope went on, “I was the bishop to whom he came for advice upon learning that your mother was pregnant.”
    This Serena did not know.
    “He wanted your mother to have an abortion.”
    “That doesn’t surprise me,” she said, scarcely able to contain the bitterness in her voice. “So I take it you advised him not to?”
    “I told him that God can make something beautiful even out of the ugliest of circumstances.”
    “I see.”
    Serena didn’t know if the pope expected her to thank him for saving her life or was simply relating historical events. He was studying her, she could tell. Not with judgment, nor pity. He simply looked curious.
    “There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you, Serena,” the pope said, and Serena leaned forward. “Considering the circumstances of your birth, how can you love Jesus?”
    “Because of the circumstances surrounding his birth,” she replied. “If Jesus was not the one, true Son of God, then he was a bastard and his mother, Mary, a whore. He could have given in to hatred. Instead he chose love, and today the Church calls him Savior.”
    The pope nodded. “At least you agree the job is taken.”
    “Indeed, Your Holiness,” she replied. “He gave you a pretty good job too.”
    He smiled. “A job which I’m told you once said you’d like to have someday.”
    Serena shrugged. “It’s overrated.”
    “True,” the pope replied and eyed her keenly, “and rather unattainable for former nuns who have repeated the sins of their fathers.”
    Suddenly her camera-ready facade crumbled and she felt naked. With this pope, a private audience was more like a therapy session than an inquisition, and she had run out of righteous indignation to prop herself up.
    “I’m not sure I understand what His Holiness is getting at,” she stammered, wondering just how much the pope knew. Then, remembering the fate of those who so often underestimated him, she decided it was best to come clean before she further embarrassed herself. “There was one close call, Your Holiness,” she said. “But you forget I’m no longer a nun nor bound by my vows. You’ll be happy to know, however, that I plan to remain celibate until I marry, which I suspect will be never.”
    The pope said, “But why then did—”
    “Just because we did not physically consummate our relationship did not mean we did not emotionally,” Serena explained. “And my feelings left me no room for doubt that I could not be a bride of Christ in this life and burn with passion for a man. Not without being a hypocrite like my father. So if you’re thinking of using this issue to undermine my credibility—”
    “Nonsense,” said the pontiff. “Doctor Yeats’s name came up in an intelligence report, that’s all.”
    “Conrad?” she asked, awed by the Vatican’s operatives.
    “Yes,” said the pope. “I understand you met him in Bolivia during your former life as our most promising linguist.”
    She leaned back in her chair. Perhaps a manuscript had turned up that required translation. Perhaps His Holiness had a job for her. She began to breathe easier. She was relieved to escape the subject of her celibacy, but the pope’s reference to Conrad had aroused her curiosity.
    “That’s right. I was working with the Aymara tribe of the Andes.”
    “An understatement,” the pope said. “You used the Aymara language to develop translation software for the Earth Summit at the United Nations. This you accomplished with a personal laptop computer after experts at a dozen European universities using supercomputers failed.”
    “I wasn’t the first,” she explained. “A Bolivian mathematician, Ivan Guzman de Rojas, did it in the 1980s.