Project Pope (9 page)

Ahead of him the path took a sharp angle which was masked by a small group of purple-flowered shrubs, somewhat higher than most of the others. Rounding the curve, Tennyson stopped in midstride. Squatted on the walk, working with a pair of pruning shears on an array of bushes, was a robot. The bushes sprouted magnificient blooms of red, the velvet petals of the flowers jeweled with morning dew.

The robot looked up.

“Good morning, sir,” he said. “You must be the physician who arrived last night.”

“Yes, I am,” said Tennyson. “But how do you come to know of me?”

The robot wagged his head. “Not I alone,” he said. “Everyone has heard of you. There is nothing happens here that is not known to everyone at once.”

“I see,” said Tennyson. “But tell me—these are roses, are they not?”

“Indeed they are,” the robot said. “A flower out of ancient Earth. We have many of them here and we prize them greatly. They do not have wide distribution. You recognized them; have you seen other roses?”

“Once,” said Tennyson. “Long ago.”

“You know, of course,” the robot said, “that we ourselves came from Earth. The ties have long since been broken with the Mother Planet, but we cling tightly to the heritage. Will you tell me, sir, have you ever walked on Earth?”

“No, I haven't. Not many humans have.”

“Ah, well,” the robot said, “I only thought I'd ask.” He clipped a single, long-stemmed blossom and held it out to Tennyson.

“Please, sir,” he said, “accept from me a piece of ancient Earth.”

Chapter Twelve

Enoch Cardinal Theodosius had the appearance of a little man well muffled, almost overwhelmed, by the purple vestment that enveloped him. But the metallic gleam of his face, beneath the scarlet skullcap, betrayed him as a robot. Although, Jill Roberts told herself, betrayed was not the word. Cardinal Theodosius—or any of his fellows—was not seeking to masquerade as human. Perhaps, she thought, they might be proud of being robots. If what they had done here on End of Nothing was a true measure of their skill and capability, they had reason to be proud.

The functionary who had escorted her to the cardinal's study now closed the door behind her and placed his broad back against it, standing with his feet spread and his hands behind his back. The study was dim, with only a single candle burning on the desk beside which the cardinal sat. And why a candle? she wondered. With electricity and electric lights, why should there be a candle? Perhaps nothing more than window dressing, she decided. In this place, there was a lot of window dressing.

Red and gold drapes hung on the walls, and if there were windows, they also were covered by thick draperies. The floor was carpeted, perhaps in red as well, although she could not be certain. In the faint light, it appeared to be black—and who would install black carpeting? Furniture was placed haphazardly about, but in the dim light the furniture was only humped-up shadows, like resting monsters that at any moment might stretch their paws and come to life.

Slowly she walked toward the cardinal, trying to remember all the protocol on which she had been briefed in the anteroom. Kneel to kiss his ring, then don't rise until he lifts you up, then remain standing until he bids that you be seated. Address him as “Your Eminence,” although after the first greeting, “Eminence” would suffice if she wished to use the shortened form. There might have been more, but if there had, it had slipped her mind. But she'd get through it, she assured herself; she had muddled through worse than this many times before. And what did it matter? If she slipped up on a point or two of etiquette she'd probably be excused. After all, they would tell one another, she was nothing more than a stupid bitch who meant no harm.

She moved slowly, hoping that slowness might signify some measure of dignity, although she had doubts it would. More than likely, the cardinal would lay it to the fact she was shaking in her pants. And she wasn't shaking; this robot cardinal on an obscure world at the edge of the galaxy meant very little to her. The cardinal sat quietly, waiting for her, probably sizing her up as she walked across the room.

She reached a spot some three feet in front of him and halted. She bent a knee and the cardinal extended a hand. There's the ring, she thought. She kissed it. He took away the hand and made a motion for her to rise, so she rose.

“Miss Roberts,” said the cardinal, his voice low and deep.

“Your Eminence,” she said.

“Please be seated.”

She saw the chair that had been placed for her, at one corner of the desk.

“Thank you,” she murmured, sinking into it.

For a moment silence held in the muffled room, then the cardinal said, “I would suppose good manners should lead me to express the hope that you had a pleasant voyage. But knowing the ship, I'm sure that was impossible. So may I say I hope it was not too bad.”

“It was not too bad, Your Eminence. The captain is a good man. He did what he could.”

The cardinal reached out to the desk, picked up folded sheets of paper that were lying there. The papers made a crinkling sound.

“Miss Roberts,” said the cardinal, “you are a persistent person. We have here several letters from you.”

“Yes, Your Eminence. Which you failed to answer.”

“Our failure,” said the cardinal, “was deliberate. We answer few letters. Especially we do not answer letters such as yours.”

“Which means, I imagine, that you do not want me here.”

There, she thought, I did it! I forgot to call him Eminence.

The cardinal, if he noticed, did not seem to mind.

“I do not know,” he said, “how I can explain our policy without seeming rude.”

“Then, Your Eminence,” said Jill, “please that you be rude. For I want to know.”

“We have no wish,” said the cardinal, “to be publicized. We do not wish our existence and our work exposed to public view.”

“You could have told me that before I made my trip, Your Eminence. You could have written to discourage me. I would have listened to reason. I might even have accepted, perhaps have understood, your posture. But you hoped, of course, that ignoring me would be discouragement enough.”

“We had hoped it would, Miss Roberts.”

“Your psychology; Your Eminence, did not work. A frank disclosure of your policy, as you call it, would have served you better.”

The cardinal sighed. “Is this defiance that I hear?”

“I'm not sure,” Jill replied. “Ordinarily, I'm not defiant of authority. I never set out to be. But it seems to me that I deserve better of you. I was frank in my letters. I told you what I planned to do, what I hoped to do. I asked your cooperation. You could, Your Eminence, have granted me the courtesy of telling me not to come.”

“Granted, we could have done that,” said the cardinal. “It would have been more fair to you and more considerate of us. But our thinking was that such a move on our part would have placed undue emphasis on the work we're doing here. A refusal of your request might have made it seem we were working undercover, as it were, and have made us seem more important, perhaps more sensational, than we are. We operate with an extremely low profile and wish to keep it that way. We have been laboring the last ten centuries and in that time have accomplished something of what we set out to do, but not as much as we had hoped. We may need many more millennia to achieve our goal, and to achieve that goal, we must be allowed to work without interference. We do not want the galaxy to begin moving in on us.”

“Your Eminence, each year you have thousands of pilgrims moving in on you.”

“That is true; but these thousands are a mere handful to the numbers that would move in or attempt to move in if a journalist of your competence and reputation were to write of us. The pilgrims come from many planets, most of them members of obscure faiths that have heard of us. But because the faiths are obscure and scattered over many planets, and not too many visit us from any single planet, the impact is not massive and awareness of us is diluted. We do not proselyte, we do not try to bring our message to the galaxy, for, as yet, I doubt that we have a message. Someday, some century, we will have a message, but not yet. However, we cannot close our doors to those who, in full faith, seek us out. We are honor-bound to do what we can for them and, in all honesty, I must admit that the contributions they make to our cause are welcome, for we have no financial backing.…”

“Let me write of your work, Eminence, and you will have the backing. All the backing that you need.”

The cardinal raised his hands out of his lap and made a negatory sign. “The cost would be too great,” he said. “We still have far to go, and we must walk that road in our own way and our own fashion. The pressures that would intrude from the galaxy, were we better known, would defeat our purpose. We still must labor, holding tight to the humility of a task little more than started. Seeming success, any sort of adulation, would work very much against us. We must hold to our dream of a universal religion and we must spare no effort. Worldliness would undermine our purpose. Do you understand?”

“I think I can, Your Eminence,” said Jill, “but, surely, to accomplish your purpose you need not work in obscurity.”

“But, Miss Roberts, that is exactly what we must do. Were we not obscure, we would be subjected to much interference, some of it well meant, some of it not so well intentioned. Even now …”

He paused and stared at her owlishly.

“Even now, Eminence?” she prompted.

“Consider,” he said, “that we have something the galaxy could well use but which, in all conscience, cannot be put to use until we know the whole of it, or at least can glimpse an outline of, the whole of it. There are, I am sure, unscrupulous forces in existence that would try to steal from us, to wrest our knowledge from us, for purposes of their own, ignoring the total structure that we try to forge. We do not fear this for our sake, but for the sake of the galaxy, perhaps the universe. Our structure must remain unflawed. It must, when completed, be whole, a consistent whole, built on a logic that cannot be denied, that is apparent to all who may look upon it. It cannot be picked apart by vultures. It cannot be riddled by the worms of self-interest. Pieces of it must not be wrenched away and put in the marketplace for the limited benefits these pieces would represent. We have recognized this danger from our beginning; recognition of the peril has been impressed upon us through the years. We fear that even now, even in our obscurity, there may be burrowers nibbling at us. We do not know who they are or what they are or how they nibble or even the purpose of their nibbling, but we feel sure that they are there. This small nibbling we perhaps can withstand, but if we were open to the galaxy, in full sight of the galaxy, if you should write of us.…”

“You want me to leave,” she said. “You want me to turn about and go away.”

“We have tried to be honest with you,” said the cardinal. “I have tried to reason with you. In reasoning with you, I may have said too much. We could have refused you admittance, refused to talk with you, but we realize that, in your heart, you mean no harm to us, that you did not even dream of the implications of what you propose to do. We regret the trouble and expense to which you have been put. We could wish you had not come, but since you have, we feel we must accord you a certain courtesy, cold though it may seem. We hope that you will think about what I have told you. I believe you are stopping at Human House.”

“Yes, I am,” said Jill.

“Please,” said the cardinal, “would you be our guest? A suite can be assigned to you, for as long as you may wish to stay. Naturally, all expenses that you have incurred or are likely to incur as a result of coming here will be repaid by us in full. Plus a per diem to compensate for the time you've wasted. Would you do at least this much for us: Accept our invitation to be our guest and give yourself the time to think on what I've said.”

“Your offer is generous, Eminence,” said Jill, “but I do not intend to let it go at that. I do not accept your blanket refusal. Surely we can talk again.”

“Yes, we can talk again. But I fear to little purpose. Our viewpoints differ too extensively.”

“There must be certain facets of your work that can be safely told. Perhaps not the whole story.…”

“I have in mind, Miss Roberts, an alternative suggestion.”

“An alternative, Eminence?”

“Yes, how would you like to work for us? We can offer you a most attractive position.”

“A position? I'm not looking for a position.”

“Please,” said the cardinal. “Before you refuse me, allow me to explain. For many years, we have talked of the advisability of writing a formal, authoritative history of Vatican-17, for our own use only. Over the centuries, we have stored the data that would go into such a history—all the happenings, even from the day we first arrived upon this planet, an account of all our work, the hopes, the successes and the failures. It is all there and waiting for retrieval, but somehow we have never gotten around to it. We've had so much to do and, truth to tell, we never have had anyone competent to do it. But now.…”

“But now you think that I might write it for you—a thousand years of history. In some detail, I would suppose. How many thousand pages of manuscript? How long would you think that it might take? A lifetime, or two? And you'd pay me well for it?”

“Well, yes, naturally we'd pay you handsomely for it,” said the cardinal. “More than you'd make, far more than you'd make, flitting around the galaxy in search of disjointed subjects for your writing. And more than that. Optimum working conditions. All the assistance you might wish. Pleasant surroundings in which to live and work. No pressure for completion.”

“That's good of you,” she said.

“At least,” he said, “you'll accept our hospitality for the moment. Someone can show you the suites available. You can take your pick. No need to go back to Human House. We can pick up your luggage and bring it here.”