Project Pope (20 page)

But warp or not, something violent had happened to the ship. Seemingly, as was always the case in FTL flight, the ship had been hanging in black nothingness, with no semblance of motion, when it had staggered, lurching and careening through whatever limbo of foreverness in which it had been situated. Decker remembered that he had been standing alone before one of the forward vision ports, staring out into the featureless emptiness outside the ship, fascinated, as he always had been, by the utter lack of any aspect that might be used to characterize it. It was black and it was empty and that was all it was. The blackness, however, failed in being actually black; it was black because there was nothing there, and empty not with any sense of deprivation, but by the fact also of there being nothing there, not an emptiness achieved by taking away what had been there, but empty because there never had been anything—and, more than likely, never would be anything. Many times he had wondered what it was that attracted him to this desolate and barren blankness and never, in all his wondering, had he ever arrived at any hint of its attraction for him.

Under his feet, the deck had heaved and thrown him sprawling. He had hit the deck and skidded, his direction changing as the ship yawed and tumbled. He had sought to stabilize himself, had clutched at stationary objects, missing some, his fingers sliding off those few that he could grasp. He had banged against something solid and bounced off it. And, suddenly, he had hit his head a glancing blow on some hard and solid object and the world was filled with shooting stars.

He may have been knocked out for a time, of that he never had been sure. He had thought back on it many times and never could be sure.

The next thing he recalled was trying to pull himself erect, trying to climb one of the pilot chairs set before the navigation panels. His head buzzed and there was far-off screaming—the full-throated screams of frightened men, the raw, uninhibited howling of men so terrorized that they had lost control.

The damn fools, he had thought—what is the matter with them? But even as he wondered it, he knew what was the matter with them. The terror struck him straight between the eyes. It filled the ship to a point of suffocation and it hammered at him as if it were physical rather than emotional. Somewhere, the words booming but muffled by the terror, a great voice was shouting, but he could not make out the words.

The ship no longer bucked and heaved. He clung to the chair to keep himself from falling. When he tried to stand, his legs buckled under him. He glanced at the vision ports and saw that the black emptiness was gone; the ship was back in normal space.

The terror came in waves, buffeting him, striking him as an opponent might strike him with knotted fists. His stomach churned. Still clinging to the chair, he bent over, retching, trying to vomit but unable to.

Sheer terror. Nothing visible to indicate where the terror might be coming from; nothing to show why it should be visited upon him. Pure essence of terror without reason and all the time that background, booming voice shouting at him—at him personally, not at someone else or others, but centered on him personally. Intermingled with the booming voice, between the cracks of the booming voice, he could still hear the far and increasingly farther off howling of the crew, fleeing the terror, leaving him behind. He heard a thud and then another thud and knew that the thuds were the sounds of lifeboats launching.

By now he was on his feet and his legs seemed more sturdy under him. He put a hand to his head and felt the hank of sopping hair pasted against his skull. His hand came back red and dripping. He pushed away from the chair, aiming himself at the nearest vision port. Reeling across the deck, he reached the hull and clutched at it with his fingers, his face almost touching the hard crystal of the port.

Beneath the ship lay a planetary surface and it was far too close. Roads, thin from the distance that he viewed them, converged like the spokes of a wheel upon a central hub that lay just ahead of him. The ship, he knew, was in a tight orbit and closing fast. It was only a few minutes, more than likely, from crashing. Had it not been for the waves of terror that still came crashing in upon him, he would have heard, he knew, the thin, shrill whistle of the craft cutting into atmosphere.

His body was trying to shrivel, to sink in upon itself, drawing in and withering as a fallen apple, lying in the grass, would wither through a winter. He clutched tighter at the metal hull, although there was nothing he could clutch, but nevertheless he continued, insanely trying to sink his fingers into the very metal. Staring down and ahead, he saw more clearly now the hub upon which the roads converged. The hub was a height, a pyramid, an upthrust of rock that soared above the flatness of the surrounding countryside. The roads, he saw, did not terminate at the base of the great rock upthrust, but climbed the slope, arrowing upward toward the center of the hub.

For an instant only he saw the center of the hub, a sudden upheaval of spearlike structures that seemed to be reaching up as if to grasp him and impale him. And as he saw the center of the hub, he knew instinctively the source of the terror that was beating in upon him. With a cry wrenched from his throat, he reeled back from the port and for an instant stood cringing, undecided. Then years of training spoke to him subconsciously and he wheeled about to rush to the instrument panel. His hand reached out to seize the flight recorder. He jerked it free and, tucking it underneath his arm, turned and ran.

He had heard only two thuds, he remembered, and if that was correct, there was still a lifeboat left. Sweat broke out and ran down his body at the thought that he might have missed a thud and all the boats were gone.

His memory had not played him false. There had been only two thuds. The third boat was still in place.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Mary struggled to sit up.

“They threw me out,” she cried. “They threw me out of Heaven!”

The struggle ceased and she fell back onto the pillow. Fine-spun, foamy spittle clung and bubbled at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes stared wildly, with the look of seeing nothing.

The nurse handed Tennyson the syringe, and he jabbed the needle into Mary's arm, pushed the plunger slowly home. He handed the syringe back to the nurse.

Mary lifted a hand and clawed feebly at the air. She mumbled and after a time words came from the mumble. “Big and black. He shook a finger at me.”

Her head sank back more tightly on the pillow. The lids came down across the manic eyes. She tried to lift a hand, fingers flexed for clawing, but then the hand fell down onto the sheet and the fingers lost their hooklike attitude.

Tennyson looked across the bed at Ecuyer. “Tell me what happened. Exactly how it happened.”

“She came out of the experience,” said Ecuyer. “I know that's an awkward way to say it, but the only way that fits—she came out of the experience raving. I think raving with fright.…”

“Does this happen sometimes? Does it happen to other Listeners?”

“At times,” said Ecuyer. “Not often. Very seldom, in fact. Sometimes they do come back upset from a particularly bad scene, but ordinarily it's only surface fright, superficial fright. They realize the experience no longer obtains, that they are safely home and there's nothing now to harm them—there never was anything to harm them. In particularly bad instances, an experience may leave a mark upon them. They may dream about it. But the effect is transitory; in a short time it goes away. I have never seen anything as bad as this. Mary's reaction is the worst I have ever seen.”

“She'll be all right now,” said Tennyson. “The sedation is fairly heavy. She won't come out of it for several hours, and when she does, she should be fairly woozy. Her sensory centers will be dulled. Even if she remembers, the impact of her memory should not be violent. After that, we'll see.”

“She still thinks that she found Heaven,” said Ecuyer. “Even thrown out, she still thinks it's Heaven. That's what hit her so hard. You can imagine the emotional repercussions. To find Heaven and then be thrown out.”

“Did she say more? I mean earlier. More than she said just now.”

Ecuyer shook his head. “A few details, is all. There was this man—black and huge. He threw her down the stairs. Down the Golden Stairs. She rolled all the way to the bottom. She is convinced she is black and blue from bruises.”

“There's not a mark upon her.”

“Of course not, but she thinks there is. This experience, Jason, was very real to her. Vivid in its cruelty and rejection.”

“You haven't looked at the crystal yet.”

“Not yet. To tell you the truth, I'm reluctant to. Even knowing what it is.…”

“I understand,” said Tennyson.

“What worries me, what really worries me, is that Heaven, or the things in Heaven, or whatever may be out there, has detected our spying. That they can trace Mary back to us. We should have—”

“I think you're letting your fears run away with you. I don't see how they can trace her back. I can't imagine how they could have detected her. She wasn't really there, not in her corporeal being.”

“God, I don't know,” said Ecuyer. “I don't know anything anymore. We never should have let her go; we should have recognized the danger.”

“I can't think there is any possibility she was detected, that the project was detected.”

“This black man—this devil of hers—chased her down the stairs.”

“All right,” said Tennyson. “All right, maybe he did. Although I don't think he had anything to chase. Mary wasn't there. But even if, through the wildest of possibilities, she was and he chased her, you can't blame yourself. There was no way to know, no way that you could know.”

“Almost never is there any direct reaction to any of our Listeners in those other worlds,” said Ecuyer. “Ordinarily our people are no more than observers. When they are more than observers, they become involved by becoming one of the residents of these other worlds—by forming some link with one of them or by somehow programming their minds so they become one of them or—Jason, I just don't know. I have never known. I don't know what our Listeners do when they arrive someplace or how they go about handling the situation. I can't figure it out, and they're no help; they can't tell me how they do it. What happened to Mary has never happened before. When our people get really involved, when they enter into the physical aspects of some other place, they become involved as something other than themselves. But Mary got involved as Mary. She was in Heaven, so far as she was concerned, she herself actually was in Heaven and she met this man and he chased her down the stairs.…”

“That's what she says.”

“I'll tell you something,” said Ecuyer. “I'll bet you that it happened that way. I'm convinced that the crystal will show—”

“Of course it will,” said Tennyson. “If that's what she thinks happened, that is what will be on the record. It's not what happened, but what she thinks happened, that will show up in the crystal. But even if the record is accurate as to what really happened, even if this creature she thinks chased her down the stairs did exactly that, how can you be so sure he or his fellows could trace her back to us?”

“I don't think I'm sure,” said Ecuyer. “But I do think the possibility is there. The possibility is that she—how do you say it?—that she has given us away. Our Listeners never can be certain what they'll find out there. The man who chased her may not be the kind of being that she thinks she saw. He may have been something that was incomprehensible, so Mary's human mind translated him into human terms, into the sort of creature, horrible as he may have appeared to her, that she could understand, that would be bearable and that she could accept. Mary is an experienced observer, one of our most valuable. I'm certain she would know what she saw and certain as well that if she ran into some life form too horrible to look upon she'd instinctively protect herself by translation.”

“I don't understand your fear,” said Tennyson. “Vatican robots go out in thought-ships, or whatever you call them, to some of the worlds that your people seek out.”

“That is true,” said Ecuyer, “but there is a difference. The robots don't go blind. They know what they are getting into. Their shots are picked very carefully.”

Mary was resting comfortably, the sedation having taken hold.

“She'll be all right now,” said Tennyson. “The worst is over. She'll remember some of the event when she wakes, but the sharp edges of the experience will be dulled. All she needs is rest for the moment. Later it might be well if she could switch over to something else. Would that be possible? We can't take the chance of letting her go back to Heaven. If we can't be sure that she won't go back, it would be best to take her off the program entirely. In such a case, however, she'd brood over it. It would be preferable if she could go on to something else. New experiences would serve to blur this one. It's unlikely she'd run into anything as traumatic as Heaven.”

“I don't know,” said Ecuyer. “When she is rational, we'll have to talk with her and try to think it through.”

“I have patients waiting for me,” said Tennyson. “I'll drop in later on.”

There were only a couple of patients. When he was finished with them, Tennyson did not immediately go back to Mary. She'd still be deep in sedation and the nurse would have sent word if anything was wrong.

It was early afternoon and the day was fine. The mountains stood up a deeper blue against a pale-blue sky. Looking at the mountains, Tennyson knew where he wanted to be, where he needed to be—a place where he could sit alone for a time and think. In the last few days, even in the last few hours, too many things had happened and they needed sorting out. Near at hand was a place made to order for exactly that.

The garden was deserted. Usually a few monks could be found pacing silently along the paths, but none were in evidence. Tennyson headed for the bench that stood near the roses. Only one rose was in bloom—a pale-yellow bloom that was past its prime, the petals already beginning to come loose to be scattered by the wind.