A Canticle For Leibowitz

Another reporter questions the defense minister. She wants to know about a disaster in the city of Itu Wan. He responds that it was a test that they lost control of. She asks about his “abiding faith in ‘Motherhood.’”

Zerchi watches and then talks with Joshua. He wonders if the cataclysmic cycles will always repeat. Then he tells him about the Quo peregrinator. It is a plan to send priests to Alpha Centauri and ensure the church’s existence on other planets. They have a ship and a crew at the abbey. They will never come back if they go. Joshua has three days to decide whether he will go.

They encounter Mrs. Grales, who wishes for Zerchi to baptize her superfluous, catatonic head. Zerchi says her parish priest will perform the ceremony, and Joshua believes that he sees Rachel smile.

At the Abbey, Father Lehy says LUCIFER IS FALLEN. They receive instructions. They say that only madmen could create another nuclear holocaust, given what they have seen.

Zerchi notices an old beggar in the audience. When he speaks with him, the man asks to be called Lazarus.

Joshua dreams of Mrs. Grales. Rachel calls herself The Immaculate Conception. There are rumors that Rachel grew after Mrs. Grales was born. That night there is an Atlantic assault against Asian space stations, which leads to the destruction of a city.

Zerchi and Joshua listen to the announcement of a 10-day ceasefire decreed by the World Court of Nations. Zerchi looks at the statue of Leibowitz, standing on a pyre: “That’s where we all of us are standing now.”

A robot delivers a message to Zerchi: “The flock becomes a wanderer.” He makes Joshua tell him whether he’ll go to space. Joshua contemplates his options but will agree in the end. He will serve as their abbot if they wish it.

Zerchi addresses them and then watches their plane leave. He didn’t tell them everything that will happen to them and knows that the ones left behind have an easier task.

Zerchi and Doctor Cors listen to the news on the radio. Nine days after the capital’s destruction, there are almost three million dead, but the fallout area is stabilizing. The announcer says the government explicitly forbids private citizens from performing euthanasia for those affected by radiation poisoning. The assisted suicides must occur at Green Star Relief Stations or Mercy Camps.

Zerchi allows Doctor Cors to use the courtyard for a Mercy Camp, as long as he does not encourage suicide. After their conversation, Zerchi reads a letter about Joshua’s departure. The starship is not in space yet, and word of Quo peregrinatur has leaked. It is uncertain whether they will be able to leave earth’s orbit.

Green Star sets up camp two miles away. Zerchi reads a book of verse by a mythical saint, Saint Poet of the Miraculous Eyeball. It comprises a satirical dialogue between two agnostics. He watches the Green Star camp through binoculars. A truck unloads pottery. He realizes that the urns will be used for human remains, and then he sees that there is a large furnace. When Zerchi protests, Doctor Cors refuses to move it. Zerchi tells Patrick to bring him five men to make signs.

As Zerchi prays that night, Cors arrives and says he broke his promise. While visiting a suffering woman and her child, he advised them to consider euthanasia. He agrees to leave the Abbey. Zerchi visits the woman. She is lying on a cot, holding the red card given to her by Doctor Cors. He gives her a rosary and tells her not to be an accomplice to a crime.

The next day, Zerchi speaks with Mrs. Grales, who asks for confession. He agrees, asking her to meet him at the chapel in 30 minutes. En route to the chapel, he sees the woman and her child on the side of the road. The woman has a broken hip and can barely move. He puts them in the car and sets the destination for the Mercy Camp. When they arrive, he sees five monks marching before signs that say ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

In the car, Zerchi tells the woman about his cat, Zeke. Zeke’s spine was crushed in an accident. Zerchi shot him twice to end his suffering, but the cat survived. Then he severed its spine with a shovel, but it still didn’t die immediately. He concluded that he only increased its suffering and asks the woman to reconsider the Mercy Camp. An officer stops his car and accuses him of starting the picket line. He takes the woman and her child from the car.

Zerchi sees Doctor Cors and punches him. He returns to the Abbey with the five picketers after Cors says he will not press charges. 

Zerchi confesses that he struck Doctor Cors to Father Lehy. Then he meets Mrs. Grales in the chapel. She confesses that she needs to forgive God for making her the way she is.

He agrees, even though the idea of God needing forgiveness scandalizes him. Mrs. Grales then confesses a litany of sins that he finds trite and routine. There is a sudden flash of light, and he runs outside the confession booth. The chapel is full of smoke, and the church collapses on him. He wakes in pain and hears someone calling for help. His arm is trapped. He begins screaming in agony and feels the presence of what he calls an “Awful Dark” (367).

He replays his conversations with Doctor Cors and realizes he is afraid to die before suffering as much as the burned child, whose euthanasia he denied. He loses consciousness, then wakes to the sight of three vultures nearby. He hears singing and realizes that it is Mrs. Grales. When she approaches, he sees that Rachel is smiling while the healthy head of Mrs. Grales is now in a coma. He pulls glass slivers from her arm and then begins to make the sign of the cross on Rachel’s head. She pulls away, rejecting him. Zerchi faints. When he wakes, Rachel gives him a communion wafer and commands him to live. As he dies, he sees Rachel’s eyes and her “primal innocence and the hope of resurrection” (375).

Children enter a spaceship, accompanied by singing monks and nuns. As the last monk boards, he thinks, “Sic transit mundus,” (377), which means, “Thus passes the world.” There are mushroom clouds on the horizon. Miller describes the continuing life in the ocean before the wind blows a cloud of white ashes over the water. There is a swimming shark in the deep who “was very hungry that season” (378).