A Canticle For Leibowitz

There are spaceships again, manned by a new race. The narrative switches to the format of a script, which could serve as the scene and dialogue for a play or screenplay. The script depicts the interactions between several reporters and a defense minister. They question him about elevated radiation levels on the West Coast, consistent with the detonation of a nuclear bomb. The defense minister refuses to speculate.

Dom Jethrah Zerchi is the current abbot of Leibowitz Abbey. His attempts to dictate a message on a machine called Autoscribe are foiled when the machine malfunctions. He writes to Cardinal Hoffstraff about a new, covert arms race of nuclear weaponry. He uses the phrase “Quo peregrinator grex, pastor secum,” which means, “Where the flock wanders, the pastor goes too.”

He calls Brother Joshua, who is terrified by the implications of Quo peregrinator. After the call, Joshua watches Mrs. Grales, a woman with a mutation that resulted in an extra head. He wonders where a bomb has fallen if indeed it has. On the way to the Abbey, he goes out of his way to avoid Mrs. Grales.