Some minutes prior to New Year’s Eve, Fr Kaleem Hacob found breathing space before his next, most important client. He straightened his tunic and stretched, pacing a circle around his office in the House of John, newly carpeted and, thanks to a generous donor, with all his equipment brand new. He blinked up at the centuries-old dome above him, the imagery lost under its twenty-first century mixture of dust and paint. It had been salvaged from one of the grand Cathedrals of the West, recently demolished to make way for yet another townrise.
The President of the Republic walked in on him then, still musing over the fading traces of eye or ear or mouth, and possibly a vine just below one of the dome’s two huge cupola windows, both of which now rendered a holograph of an almost-midnight sky. The President wiped industriously at a red smudge that ran down his neck from ear to collarbone with an immaculately white lace handkerchief, all the rage now among the rich and famous for its rarity and ancient sentimentality. Continue reading
