The contrast between the priest's infirmary and the rest of the building was striking.

     The nave, the reception room and the meeting rooms branching off from it had walls of stone and were lit by oil lamps whose lazily coiling wisps of rising smoke had created sooty patches on the ceiling and the walls behind them. The floors were polished wooden planking and the ceilings were textured plaster, grey and cracked with age. In contrast, the infirmary was made of smooth white plasteel that seemed to glow with newness and freshness. Randall could almost imagine a new car smell filling the air. The lighting was concealed behind panels up near the ceiling and was so even and diffuse that there was not a single shadow to be seen anywhere they looked.

     It was also warm, and the four hibernators felt their bodies coming back to life as they soaked up the heat. Randall felt his bruised and tortured feet start to throb and ache as the warmth of the floor penetrated the scraps of potato cloth that had been the only things protecting them from the cold, hard and uneven ground. Soon the ache turned into genuine pain, but it was a good pain that told him that his feet had come through the ordeal pretty much intact, despite the blood that had soaked through the thin, dirty fabric in a couple of places.

     Randall stared around in wonder and relief as if he were waking up from a terrible nightmare. It was such a simple thing, he thought. Nothing but bare walls and a warm floor, but it told him that he was back in civilisation. Back in a controlled environment where science and engineering shielded him from the harsh and unforgiving natural world. What do the common people think, he wondered, that their priest lives in a place like this while they have to go home to their cold, straw beds and their draughty brick houses. Maybe they simply thought that it was right and proper that the representative of God should live better than they did. Maybe, if the priests had some of the other benefits of civilisation, like guns and spy drones, the common people didn't dare complain.

     The room on the other side of the door was instantly recognisable as a doctors surgery, little changed from the ones in which each of the hibernators had been diagnosed with their terminal illnesses a thousand years before. Three hospital beds were lined up along the far wall surrounded by monitors and scaffolds ready to be hung with saline drips and bags of medication. One of the beds was occupied by an elderly woman dressed in a hospital gown, her hand being held by an elderly man sitting in the chair beside her.

     "Good morning, Madame Gosling," said the priest, going straight over to her and looking up at the monitors. "How are you feeling now?"

     "Much better, thank you Father," replied the woman, lifting herself up onto one elbow and pulling her hand free from her husband's grasp. "God has entered into me and taken away the curse."

     "A miracle!" said her husband, standing and going to take the priest's hand. He pumped it repeatedly with gratitude. "Thank God for what you've done for her! Thank God!"

     Jane started forward but Loach held her back. "This isn't the time," he hissed into her ear. "Save your indignation for after he's healed us."

     "You think I'd accept help from this blasphemer? I'd rather die! At least my soul will remain pure!"

     "Fine, then wait outside while he heals the rest of us."

     Jane glared at the former crime boss, then turned her back on him and went to stand in the corner of the room where she glowered silently.

     The priest, meanwhile, was touching his fingers to the woman's neck. "Your heart seems to be completely healthy, Madame Gosling," he said. "You should have plenty of healthy years ahead of you. Both of you."

     "We can never repay you," said the husband. "We thought her time had come. The number of people who come to you looking for a cure and get turned away..."

     "God is not all powerful," said the priest sadly. "He would heal everyone if He could. If God had His way, everyone would live in good health until they themselves chose to go to Him for judgement, but there are some things that even He can't do."

     The elderly couple nodded sadly. Then they thanked the priest again and moved towards the exit. The priest went with them to see them out of the church, then returned to where he'd left the hibernators.

     "The real God, the God of Abraham and Moses, could heal everyone, no matter what was wrong with them," said Jane as he re-entered the room.

     "Then why doesn't he?" replied the priest.

     "Because He has a plan for mankind, and sadly that plan sometimes requires that people die. We have to trust that He knows what's best for the whole human race in the long term."

     "Then VIX must be a part of God's plan," said the priest. "Would you like me to heal you now?"

     "I trust in the judgement of God. If He means for me to die then I will die and join the faithful in heaven."

     "And yet you entered hibernation in the hopes of receiving a cure sometime in the future."

     "If God chooses to use human doctors as an instrument of His will then I'm willing to receive treatment."

     "Maybe God is using VIX as an instrument of his will."

     "I didn't come here to bandy words with a blasphemer and an idolater. I'll wait outside."

     She turned to leave and the priest moved aside to make room for her, but then he reached out and brushed the back of her hand with his fingertips. She snatched back her hand and glared at him in revulsion, but then she wobbled and began to fall. The priest scooped her up in his arms and carried her over to the nearest hospital bed.

     "She doesn't want treatment!" protested Emily, moving to block his way.

     "If one is able to help someone, then one has a moral obligation to do so," replied the priest. "If she still wants to die afterwards, she can slash her wrists any time she wants." He picked up a pair of scissors, cut her clothes off and began hooking her up to the medical machinery. "If the rest of you would like to get undressed, I'll get to you in a minute. I only have three beds I'm afraid so one of you will have to wait, but it won't be long. A couple of hours and I'll he able to treat number four."

     He frowned at one of the monitor screens. There were a number of red lights on it, Randall saw. "Why not just have the information fed directly into your head?" asked the businessman. "I assume you have a head phone, or whatever the modern equivalent is."

     "The patients like to see it for themselves," the priest replied. "I can show them their vital statistics, show them images of an unborn child, that sort of thing."

     Loach came forward to see better. "Does red mean the same thing today that it meant back in our day?" he asked. "Danger, watch out, that sort of thing?"

     "I'm having difficulty interfacing with VIX. There's something interfering with the uplink."

     Randall saw something in the expression on Loach's face. The ghost of a smirk. The priest must have seen it as well because he rounded angrily on the crime boss. "It's you!" he cried. "You're jamming me!"

     "I'd prefer that your God doesn't know about me for a while," replied Loach. "In case I'm still wanted for some of the less than legal things I may have done."

     "You idiot! What do we care what you did a thousand years ago? Most of the records were lost in the war anyway. VIX has almost certainly never heard of you."

     "And I'd like to keep it that way."

     "How are you jamming him, anyway?" asked Randall. "More military upgrades?"

     "When you've got to keep one step ahead of the law, these things pay for themselves."

     "Please stop immediately!" said the priest. "Like I said, we don't care what crimes you carried out before the war. You have no reason to be afraid of VIX."

     "Old habits die hard, I'm afraid. I'll keep it up for a little longer I think."

     "How long can you keep it up?" asked Randall. "It must be putting quite a drain on your battery."

     "I can keep it up for a while yet. It's burning my blood glucose faster than normal so I'll be hungry later on, but that's all."

     "VIX will have noticed that I've dropped out of contact," said the priest. "He'll think I'm suffering some kind of technical difficulty. He'll be sending an engineer to investigate."

     "A man in a brown coat carrying a bag of tools?" chuckled Loach.

     The priest gave a humourless smile. "Hardly. One of the city's other priests will come to see if anything's happened to me. Sometimes, a criminal breaks into a temple to steal our valuables. Priests can sometimes be killed in the process. That's what he'll think has probably happened here."

     "How long have we got until he gets here?" asked Randall.

     "Three, four hours."

     "So we can all be healed and gone before he gets here," said Loach. "I'm going to keep on jamming, then."

     "As you wish," said the priest sulkily. He finished fitting the contacts to Jane's body, then turned to the others. "Okay, who's next?"

     Randall offered to go last, so Emily and Loach removed their potato sack clothes and lay down on the other two tables. "I have a room full of spare clothes in the back," said the priest as he applied the contacts to their bodies. "Take what you want. You can't go on wearing these rags."

     A man appeared in the doorway. He looked like a moderately wealthy merchant or tradesman. "Yer pardon fer intruding, Father," he said. His eyes darted towards Jane's naked body, then darted guiltily away. "The church's filling up fer the service. We wondered where ya wez."

     "I'll be right there," replied the priest, looking up from his work. "Please convey my apologies to everyone." The man nodded and left.

     "I have to leave you for an hour or so," the priest then told the hibernators. "There's nothing for me to do here anyway until the machines have finished their work." He then turned to Randall. "Would you like to join the service?" he said.

     "Why not?" replied the former businessman. "Might as well get a taste of the bullshit you're feeding these people."

     "I can see you don't approve, but when you've had more time to see what kind of world VIX has created for these people, I think you'll change your tune."

     "Anything's possible I suppose," Randall conceded.

     The priest nodded with pleasure. He checked the wires and contacts on Loach and Emily's bodies one last time, then led the way back into the main body of the church.