Project Pope (8 page)

“I'll reserve my opinion. But the data. How does your Search Program collect the data? You are here; the data, the data you must be after, is out in the universe.”

“We use people we call Listeners. Not too good a term, but it serves.”

“Sensitives?”

“Yes. Special kinds of sensitives. We comb the galaxy for them. We hunt them down. We have recruiters out, working quietly. The robots have developed methods and supports that enhance their abilities. Some of our results are unbelievable.”

“All humans?”

“All human, so far. We have, at times, tried to use aliens. But it has never worked. Perhaps someday we'll find how to work with them. It is one of the projects we are working on. Aliens probably could provide us data humans never can.”

“And this data you get is fed into the pope?”

“A good part of it. Of late we have become somewhat selective. We make some value judgments. We just don't feed in all the raw data we get. But we do keep complete files. We have it all down on—I was going to say on tapes, but it's not quite tape. But, anyhow, we have it all. We've built up a library that would astound the galaxy were it known.”

“You don't want it known.”

“Dr. Tennyson, we don't want the galaxy to come crashing in on us.”

“Mary is a Listener. And she thinks she has come on Heaven.”

“That is true.”

“And you, a part-time believer, what do you think?”

“I'm not discounting it. She is one of our most efficient and trustworthy Listeners.”

“But
Heaven
?”

“Consider this,” said Ecuyer. “We know we are not dealing in physical space alone. In some instances, we don't know what we're reaching into. Let me give you one rather simple example. We have one Listener who has, for years, been going back through time. And not only through time, not haphazardly through time, but, apparently, following his own ancestry. Why he is taking this direction we do not know, nor does he. Someday we may find out. He seems to be following his ancestry, his remote ancestry, tracing out his blood and bone. Step by step down through millennia. The other day he lived as a trilobite.”

“A trilobite?”

“An ancient Earth form of life that died out some three hundred million years ago.”

“But a human as a trilobite!”

“The germ plasma, Doctor. The life force. Go back far enough …”

“Yes, I see,” said Tennyson.

“It's fascinating,” Ecuyer said.

“One thing bothers me,” said Tennyson. “You're telling me all this. Yet you don't want it known. When I leave End of Nothing—”

“
If
you leave End of Nothing.”

“What's that?”

“We hope you'll stay. We can make you a most attractive offer. We can discuss the details later.”

“I may decide not to stay.”

“Only one ship ever comes here,” said Ecuyer. “It shuttles between here and Gutshot. Gutshot is the only place it can take you.”

“And you're gambling that I don't want to return to Gutshot?”

“I had the impression that you might not want to. If you really want to leave, I doubt we'd try to stop you. We could, of course, if we wanted to. One word to the captain and he'd find himself lacking room to take you. But I think it would be safe to let you go. Even if you repeated what I told you tonight, I doubt that anyone would believe you. It would be just another space myth.”

“You seem to be sure of yourselves,” said Tennyson.

“We are,” said Ecuyer.

Chapter Ten

It was still dark when Tennyson awoke. He lay for long minutes in a fuzzy, comfortable, woolly blackness, not sleeping, but still not quite awake, not entirely aware, remembering nothing of what had happened, thinking hazily that he was still in Gutshot. The room was dark, but there was a hidden light somewhere and through half-open eyes he could make out the darker shapes of objects in the room. The bed was comfortable, and a sense of delicious drowsiness filled him. He shut his eyes again, willing himself to sink deeper into sleep. But he felt that something was different, that he was not in Gutshot, nor in the ship.…

The ship! He sat upright in bed, jerked out of sleep by the thought. The ship and Jill and End of Nothing.…

The End of Nothing, for the love of Christ! And then everything came tumbling in upon him.

A terrible stillness lowered over him and a stiff rigidity, and he sat stricken in the bed.

Mary had found Heaven!

The light, he saw, came from a door that opened into the living area. The light flickered and wavered, brightening and fading, dancing on the walls, reaching forth and falling back. It came, he realized, from the fireplace, still burning. The fire, he told himself, should have burned to embers, drowned in gray ash, long ago.

In one dark corner of the room, a shadow moved, separating itself from the other shadows. “Sir, are you awake?” it asked.

“Yes, awake,” said Tennyson, through stiff lips. “And who the hell are you?”

“I am Hubert,” said the shadow. “I have been assigned your batman. I will do for you.”

“I know what a batman is,” said Tennyson. “I ran across the term some years ago in the reading of an Old Earth history. Something to do with the British military. The phrase was so strange that it stuck in my mind.”

“This is exceptional,” said Hubert. “I congratulate you, sir. Most people would not have known.”

The batman moved out of the deeper shadows and now could be seen more clearly. He was a strange, angular, humanlike figure with an air of mingled strength and humility.

“Rest easy, sir,” he said. “I am a robot, but I will do no harm. My one purpose is to serve you. Shall I turn on a light? Are you ready for a light?”

“Yes, I am ready. Please, a light,” said Tennyson.

A lamp on a table against the farther wall came on. The room was a match for the living area he had seen earlier, its furniture solid and substantial, metal knobs gleaming, old wood shining darkly, paintings on the walls.

He threw back the covers and saw that he was naked. He swung his legs out of bed and his feet came down on carpeting. He reached for the chair beside his bed where he had draped his clothes. They were no longer there. He pulled back his hand, ran it through his hair and scrubbed his face. The whiskers grated underneath his palm.

“Your wardrobe has not arrived as yet,” said Hubert, “but I managed to obtain a change of clothes for you. The bath is over there; the coffee's ready in the kitchen.”

“Bath first,” said Tennyson. “Would there be a shower?”

“A shower or tub. If you prefer the tub, I can draw your bath.”

“No, shower's fine. Faster. I have work to do. Is there any word of Mary?”

“Knowing you would wish to know,” said Hubert, “I visited her about an hour ago. Nurse tells me she is doing well, responding to the protein. You'll find towels, toothbrush and shaving tackle laid out in the bath. When you are finished, I'll have your clothing for you.”

“Thanks,” said Tennyson. “You're proficient at your job. Do you do it often?”

“I am Mr. Ecuyer's man, sir. He has two of us. He is loaning me to you.”

When he emerged from the bath, Tennyson found that the bed had been made and his clothes laid out on it.

The robot, he realized, now really seeing him for the first time, was a close approximation of a human—an idealized, shiny human. His head was bald and his polished metal was quite frankly metal, but other than that, he was passing human. He wore no clothing, but his entire body had a decorative look about it that gave the illusion of clothes.

“Will you wish breakfast now?” the robot asked.

“No, only coffee now. Breakfast can come later. I'll look in on Mary and then be back.”

“I'll serve the coffee in the living room,” said Hubert. “In front of the fireplace. I'll stir up the fire and have it blazing well.”

Chapter Eleven

Tennyson found the garden in the rear of the building where the clinic was housed. The sun was coming up and to the west the mountains loomed close—perhaps seeming much closer than they were, he thought—a great wall of blue shadow, with the blueness changing tone and character, darker at the base, lighter near the mountaintops, with the whiteness of the icy peaks glittering with a diamond brightness in the first light of the sun. The garden was formal and well kept and, in this early-morning hour, had a softness to it. Brick-paved walks ran through it, the walks bordered by low-growing shrubbery and neatly laid-out beds of flowers, many of which were in bloom. Looking at them, Tennyson was unable to find one with which he was familiar. Far to his right, at the other end of the garden, three figures in brown robes strolled slowly, apparently in deep reflection, down a path, their gleaming skulls bowed forward, metal chins resting on their breasts.

The chill of the night was rapidly disappearing with the rising of the sun. The garden was a quiet and pleasant place, and Tennyson found himself thinking how fine it was to be there. At an angle where three paths ran together, he came upon a bench of stone and sat down upon it, facing the blue loom of the mountains.

Sitting there, he was astonished to find within himself a quiet, warm pride of competence he had not felt in years. Mary was doing well—perhaps beginning the road to full recovery, although it was still too early to be sure of that. The fever was abating and her pulse was stronger. The breathing was less labored. He had seen, or imagined he had seen, a faint flicker of latent consciousness in her eyes. She was old, of course, but in that pitifully shrunken body, he had sensed a willingness and a' power to fight for life. Perhaps, he told himself, she might have much to fight for. She had found Heaven, Ecuyer had said, and that was patent nonsense. But having found Heaven, or what she thought was Heaven, the wish might be strong within her to learn a great deal more about it. That, at least, had been the sense of what Ecuyer had told him the night before—that Mary's life must be saved so she could learn more of Heaven.

There was no logic in it, he told himself. Someone was mistaken—either that, or it was some sort of joke, some sort of in-joke in Vatican or, perhaps, in the Search Program. Although Ecuyer, telling him of it, had not sounded as if he might be joking. He had told Ecuyer, and sitting there on the garden bench, he now told himself again, that Heaven, if it in fact existed, was not the sort of place that could be found. Heaven is a state of mind, he had said to Ecuyer; and Ecuyer had not disputed that, although it had been apparent that Ecuyer, a self-confessed not-quite-believer in Vatican itself, had held some sort of faith that Heaven could be found.

Nonsense, he told himself again. There was not a scrap of logic in it. And yet, he thought, more than likely this Heaven business was not one isolated instance of nonsense, but an extension of centuries of nonsense. No logic in it, and yet a robot, if it was distinguished by any character at all, would be known for its logic. The very concept of robotics was based on logic. Ecuyer had said that the robots had worked on self-improvement, were far better mechanisms than they had been when they first had come to End of Nothing. It did not seem possible, on the face of it, that the process of self-improvement would have lessened the quality or the scope of the logic that had served as the cornerstone of their creation.

He was missing something, he thought. Within all this array of apparent illogic, there must be some factor, perhaps a number of factors, that he did not recognize. Vatican-17 was not an institution that could be dismissed lightly. Ten centuries of devoted effort had gone into it, with the effort still continuing—the effort to establish a truly universal religion, to construct an infallible pope, the search to discover and understand all the facets that could be, or should be, incorporated into a universal faith.

He was trying too soon to evaluate it, he thought. Perhaps a human lifetime would not be sufficient to reach an evaluation that had some color of validity. He'd have to go along with it, watch and listen and question where he could, cultivate a feeling for what was happening in this place, get to know the personalities who were connected with it.

And thinking this, he was astonished to find that, unbidden, he had reached a decision, while thinking of something other than decision. For if he was to watch and listen, to question when he could, then the assumption must be that he would be staying here.

And why not? he asked himself. To get off this planet, he would have to return to Gutshot and, within the foreseeable future, that was the last thing he wanted to do. It was not bad here—not what he had seen of it, at least. Staying here he'd have the opportunity to practice medicine, perhaps a rather leisurely practice, watching over the health of the humans associated with Vatican, and probably occasionally caring for some of the human colony not actually associated with Vatican. He'd have good quarters, with a robot to look after him, more than likely interesting people with whom he could spend time. When he had fled Gutshot, he had been looking for sanctuary of any kind, and here he had found a better sanctuary than he had thought possible. A strange place, but he could become accustomed to it. Primitive in many ways, although no more primitive than Gutshot.

He sat on the bench and scrubbed the toe of one shoe back and forth along a crack in the bricks of the walk. He had come to a decision, he thought, much more easily than he had anticipated. Perhaps he would tentatively have accepted Ecuyer's offer the night before if the man had not thrown in the implied threat that Vatican held the means to keep him here. The threat had been uncalled for; why had Ecuyer felt impelled to make it? Threat or not, Tennyson told himself, staying on made sense. He had no place else to go.

He rose from the bench and strolled slowly down the walk. In a little while, he'd go back to the suite, where Hubert would have breakfast waiting. But he realized that this was precious time, that when the sun finally came up, this early-morning garden would become something different. The soft, gentle magic of the moment would be gone and might never come again—perhaps for someone else, but not for him. Here he had caught the needed moment to come to terms with himself, to decide, without rancor and with no guilt, that he would remain in this sanctuary.