To Open the Sky (22 page)

"Mondschein, sir. I'll tell him to come to you as soon as he's off."

Vorst smiled. Protocol suggested that such high-level negotiations be carried on at the administrative level, between the executives and not between the prophets. So the second-in-commands were speaking: Hemispheric Coordinator Reynolds Kirby on behalf of the Vorsters of Earth, and Christopher Mondschein for the Harmonists who ran Venus. But in time it would be necessary to close the deal with a conference between those most closely in tune with the Eternal Oneness, and that would be the task of Vorst and Lazarus.

... to close the deal...

A tremor pulled Vorst's right hand into a sudden claw. The acolyte swung around attentively, ready to jab buttons until he had restored the Founder's metabolic equilibrium. Grimly Vorst compelled the hand to relax.

"I'm all right," he insisted.

... to open the sky...

They were so close to the end now that it had all begun to seem like a dream. A century of scheming, playing chess with unborn antagonists, rearing a fantastic edifice of theocracy on a single slender, arrogant hope—

Was it madness, Vorst wondered, to wish to reshape the pattern of history?

Was it monstrous, he asked himself, to succeed?

On the operating table, the patient's leg came swimming up out of a sea of swathing and kicked fitfully and convulsively at the air. The anesthetist's fingers played over his console, and the esper who was standing by for such an emergency went into silent action. There was a flurry of activity about the table.

In that moment a tall, weathered-looking old man entered the gallery and presented himself to Vorst.

"How's the operation going?" Reynolds Kirby asked.

"The patient just died," said Vorst. "Things seemed to be going so well, too."

Two

Kirby had not expected much from the operation. He had discussed it fully with Vorst the day before; though he was no scientist himself, the Coordinator tried to keep abreast of the work being done at the research center. His own sphere of responsibility was administrative; it was Kirby's job to oversee the far-flung secular activities of the religious cult that virtually ruled the planet. It was almost ninety years since Kirby himself had been converted, and he had watched the cult grow mighty.

Political power, though it was useful to wield, was not supposed to be the Brotherhood's goal. The essence of the movement was its scientific program, centering on the facilities at Santa Fe. Here, over the decades, an unsurpassable factory of miracles had been constructed, lubricated by the cash contributions of billions of tithing Vorsters on every continent. And the miracles had been forthcoming. The regeneration processes now insured a predictable life span of three or four centuries for the newborn, perhaps more, for no one could be certain that immortality had been achieved until a few millennia of testing had elapsed. The Brotherhood could offer a reasonable facsimile of life eternal, at any rate, and that was a sufficient redemption of the promissory note on which the whole movement had been founded a hundred years before.

The other goal, though—the stars—had given the Brotherhood a harder pursuit.

Man was locked into his solar system by the limiting velocity of light. Chemical-fueled rockets and even ion-drive ships simply took too long to get about. Mars and Venus were within easy reach, but the cheerless outer planets were not, and the round trip to the nearest star would take a few decades by current technology, nine years even at the very best. So man had transformed Mars into a habitable world, and he had transformed himself into something capable of inhabiting Venus. He mined the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, paid occasional visits to Pluto, and sent robots down to examine Mercury and the gas giants. And looked hopelessly to the stars.

The laws of relativity governed the motions of real bodies through real space, but they did not necessarily apply to the events of the paranormal world. To Noel Vorst, it had seemed that the only route to the stars was the extrasensory one. So he had gathered espers of all varieties at Santa Fe, and for generations now had carried on breeding programs and genetic manipulations. The Brotherhood had spawned an interesting variety of espers, but none with the talent of transporting physical bodies through space. While on Venus the telekinetic mutation had happened spontaneously, an ironic byproduct of the adaptation of human life to that world.

Venus was beyond direct Vorster control. The Harmonists of Venus had the pushers that Vorst needed to reach into the galaxy. They showed little interest, though, in collaborating with the Vorsters on an expedition. For weeks now Reynolds Kirby had been negotiating with his opposite number on Venus, attempting to bring about an agreement.

Meanwhile the surgeons at Santa Fe had never given up their dream of creating pushers out of Earthmen, thus making the cooperation of the unpredictable Venusians unnecessary. The synaptic-rearrangement project, flowering at last, had come to the stage where a human subject would go under the beam.

"It won't work," Vorst had said to Kirby. "They're still fifty years away from anything."

"I don't understand it, Noel. The Venusians have the gene for telekinesis, don't they? Why can't we just duplicate it? Considering all we've done with the nucleic acids—"

Vorst smiled. "There's no 'gene for telekinesis,' as such, you know. It's part of a constellation of genetic patterns. We've been trying consciously to duplicate it for thirty years, and we aren't even close. We've also been trying a random approach, since that's how the Venusians got the ability. No luck there, either. And then there's this synapse business: alter the brain itself, not the genes. That may get us somewhere, eventually. But I can't wait another fifty years."

"You'll live that long, certainly."

"Yes," Vorst agreed, "but I still can't wait any longer. The Venusians have the men we need. It's time to win them to our purposes."

Patiently Kirby had wooed the heretics. There were signs of progress in the negotiations now. In view of the failure of the operation, the need for an agreement with Venus was more urgent.

"Come with me," Vorst said, as the dead patient was wheeled away. "They're testing that gargoyle today, and I want to watch."

Kirby followed the Founder out of the amphitheater. Acolytes were close by in case of trouble. Vorst, these days, rarely tried to walk any more, and rolled along in his cradling net of webfoam. Kirby still preferred to use his feet, though he was nearly as ancient as Vorst. The sight of the two of them promenading through the plazas of the research center always stirred attention.

"You aren't disturbed over the failure just now?" Kirby asked.

"Why should I be? I told you it was too soon for success."

"What about this gargoyle? Any hope?"

"Our hope," Vorst said quietly, "is Venus. They already have the pushers."

"Then why keep trying to develop them here?"

"Momentum. The Brotherhood hasn't slowed down in a hundred years. I'm not closing any avenues now. Not even the hopeless ones. It's all a matter of momentum."

Kirby shrugged. For all the power he held in the organization—and his powers were immense—he had never felt that he held any real initiative. The plans of the movement were generated, as they had been from the first, by Noel Vorst. He and only he knew what game he was playing. And if Vorst died this afternoon, with the game unfinished? What would happen to the movement then? Run on its own momentum? To what end, Kirby wondered.

They entered a squat, glittering little building of irradiated green foamglass. An awed hush preceded them: Vorst was coming! Men in blue robes came out to greet the Founder. They led him to the room in the rear where the gargoyle was kept. Kirby kept pace, ignoring the acolytes who were ready to catch him if he stumbled.

The gargoyle was sitting enmeshed in lacy restraining ribbons. He was not a pretty sight. Thirteen years old, three feet tall, grotesquely deformed, deaf, crippled, his corneas clouded, his skin pebbled and granulated. A mutant, though not one produced by any laboratory; this was Hurler's Syndrome, a natural and congenital error of metabolism, first identified scientifically two and a half centuries before. The unlucky parents had brought the hapless monster to a chapel of the Brotherhood in Stockholm, hoping that by bathing him in the Blue Fire of the cobalt reactor his defects would be cured. The defects had not been cured, but an esper at the chapel had detected latent talents in the gargoyle, and so he was here to be probed and tested. Kirby felt a shiver of revulsion.

"What causes such a thing?" he asked the medic at his elbow, "Abnormal genes. They produce metabolic error that results in an accumulation of mucopolysaccharides in the tissues of the body."

Kirby nodded solemnly. "And is there supposed to be a direct link with esping?"

"Only coincidental," said the medic.

Vorst had moved up to study the creature at close range. The Founder's eye-shutters clicked as he peered forward. The gargoyle was humped and folded, virtually unable to move its limbs. The milky eyes held a look of pure misery. To the euthanasia heap with this one, Kirby thought. Yet Vorst hoped that such a monster would take him to the stars!

"Begin the examination," Vorst murmured.

A pair of espers came forward, general-purpose types: a slick young woman with frizzy hair, and a plump, sad-faced man. Kirby, whose own esping facilities were deficient to the point of nonexistence, watched in silence as the wordless examination commenced. What were they doing? What shafts were they aiming at the huddled creature before them? Kirby did not know, and he took comfort in the fact that Vorst probably did not know himself. The Founder wasn't much of an esper, either.

Ten minutes passed. Then the girl looked up and said, "Low-order pyrotic, mainly."

"He can push molecules about?" Vorst said. "Then he's got a shred of telekinesis."

"Only a shred," the second esper said. "Nothing that others don't have. Also low-order communication abilities. He sits there telling us to kill him."

"I'd recommend dissection," said the girl. "The subject wouldn't mind."

Kirby shuddered. These two bland espers had peered within the mind of that crippled thing, and that in itself should have been enough to shrivel their souls. To see, for an empathic moment, what it was like to be a thirteen- year-old human gargoyle, to look out upon the world through those clouded eyes—! But they were all business, these two. They had merged minds with monstrosities before.

Vorst waved his hand. "Keep him for further study. Maybe he can be guided toward usefulness. If he's really a pyrotic, take the usual precautions."

The Founder whirled his chair around and started to leave the ward. At that same moment an acolyte came hurrying in, bearing a message. He froze at the unexpected sight of Vorst wheeling toward a collision with him. Vorst smiled paternally and guided himself around the boy, who went limp with relief.

The acolyte said, "Message for you, Coordinator Kirby."

Kirby took it and jammed his thumb against the seal. The envelope popped open.

The message was from Mondschein.

"LAZARUS IS READY TO TALK TO VORST," it said.

Three

Vorst said, "I was insane, you know. For something like ten years. Later I discovered what the trouble was. I was suffering from time-float."

The pallid esper girl's eyes were very round as she gazed at him. They were alone in the Founder's personal quarters. She was thin, loose-limbed, thirty years old. Strands of black hair dangled like painted straw down the sides of her face. Her name was Delphine, and in all the months that she had served Vorst's needs she had never become accustomed to his frankness. She had little chance to; when she left his office after each session, other espers erased her recollections of the visit.

She said, "Shall I turn myself on?"

"Not yet, Delphine. Do you ever think of yourself as insane? In the difficult moments, the moments when you start ranging along the time-line and don't think you'll ever get back to now?"

"It's pretty scary sometimes."

"But you get back. That's the miraculous thing. You know how many floaters I've seen burn out?" Vorst asked. "Hundreds. I'd have burned out myself, except that I'm a lousy precog. Back then, though, I kept breaking loose, drifting along the time-line. I saw the whole Brotherhood spread out before me. Call it a vision, call it a dream. I saw it, Delphine. Blurred around the edges,"

"Just as you told it in your book?"

"More or less," said the Founder. "The years between 2055 and 2063—those were the years I had the visions worst. When I was thirty-five, it started. I was just an ordinary technician, a nobody, and then I got what could be called divine inspiration, except all it was was a peek at my own future. I thought I was going crazy. Later I understood."

The esper was silent. Vorst shuttered his eyes. The memories glowed in him: after years of internal chaos and collapse he had come from the crucible of madness purified, aware of his purpose. He saw how he could reshape the world. More than that, he saw how he
had
reshaped the world. After that it was just a matter of making the beginning, of founding the first chapels, dreaming up the rituals of the cult, surrounding himself with the scientific talent necessary to realize his goals. Was there a touch of paranoia in his purpose, a bit of Hitler, a tinge of Napoleon, a tincture of Genghis Khan? Perhaps. Vorst complacently viewed himself as a fanatic and even as a megalomaniac. But a cool, rational megalomanic, and a successful one. He had been willing to stop at nothing to gain his ends, and he was just enough of a precog to know that he was going to gain them.