Project Pope Page 19

  'Your Eminence, said Jill, 'I think you are unduly worried. You have built too well. Vatican is too strong. There is nothing that could bring it down.

  'Not Vatican itself, said the cardinal, 'but its purpose. We came here, so long ago, as you must know from your study of history, to seek a better and a truer faith. There are those who feel that we have abandoned that purpose, that we have gone haring off in pursuit of technological and philosophical knowledge that has nothing to do with our search for faith. In this I am convinced that they are wrong. Faith, I believe, is tied to knowledge, tied, perhaps, to one specific knowledge, but that to reach that knowledge, to arrive at that one answer, we must arrive at many answers. We may run down false trails at times, but perhaps these are trails that we must follow to be certain that they lead nowhere, or that they lead in the wrong direction.

  'Your views have changed, then, said Jill. 'In the early years the emphasis was on faith and not on knowledge.

  'Yes, superficially you are right. But at first we did not realize that faith must be based on knowledge, not on blind belief, not on the repetitious mumbling of untruths, over and over again, in a desperate attempt to make them turn into truths. We cannot accept untruths; we must know.

  He paused and stared at her with his direct, unblinking, upsetting robot stare. He raised an arm and waved it. Instinctively, Jill knew that he was waving at the universe, at all of space and time outside the room in which they sat.

  'Somewhere out there, he said, 'there is someone or something or somewhat that knows all the answers. Among all those answers we can winnow out the one we seek. Or it may be that we'll need all the answers, every one of them, to point to the one, still unfound, that we seek. Our job is to find that answer — all those answers or that one specific answer, whichever it may be. We cannot retreat into self-delusion for the comfort and the glory it may give us. We must keep on the search that we have started. No matter how long it may take or where it may lead us, we must bend to our task.

  'And Heaven, she said, 'would form a basis, a strong basis for the self-delusion that you fear.

  'We can't take the chance, he said.

  'You must suspect that it is not Heaven. Not the old Christian Heaven, with the trumpets sounding and the streets of gold and all the angels flying.

  'Yes, intellectually I'm fairly sure it's not, but what if it should turn out to be?

  'Then you'd have your answer.

  'No, I don't think we would. We might have an answer, but not the answer. Satisfied with an answer, however, we would no longer seek the answer.

  'All right, then, go out and prove it isn't Heaven. Then come back and go on with your work.

  'We cannot take the chance, said the cardinal.

  'The chance that it could be Heaven?

  'Not that alone. Either way, Vatican would lose. It's what you humans call a no-win situation. If it is not Heaven, then we face the mistaken conviction on the part of many of our people that the Listeners are unreliable. If Mary — don't you see that if Mary should be proved wrong, then the cry would go up that we can no longer be sure about the Listeners, that many of them are wrong, that most of them are wrong. Ecuyer's Search Program is the one great tool we have. It cannot be placed in jeopardy. It has taken us centuries to build it to its present point. Were it disrupted, should overwhelming doubt be cast upon it, it would take centuries to reestablish, if indeed it could be reestablished.

  Jill said, shock in her voice, 'You can't allow that to come about.

  Said the cardinal, 'God forbid it should.

  Thirty-four

  When he had been there before, the equation world had been quavery, as if he were seeing it through the shimmer of brilliant sunlight off a smooth and glittering lake, but now there was no shimmer and there was solid ground, or at least a solid surface, underneath his feet. The equation diagrams stood out in orderly array, spread out across the plane, smooth surface upon which he stood. There was a horizon, far off, rising much higher than any horizon he had even seen before, with the pea-green carpet of the planetary surface (if it was, in fact, a planet) merging almost imperceptibly with the pale lavender of the shallow bowl of sky.

  — Whisperer! said Tennyson.

  But there was no Whisperer. Only himself. Although, he told himself, that was not entirely true. Whisperer was there, but not as a separate entity. What stood there upon this alien ground was not him alone, but he and Whisperer, melded into one.

  He stood without moving, wondering how he knew this, how he could be so sure of it. And knew, even as he wondered, that it was not he who knew it, not the Tennyson, but the Whisperer who was part of him. Yet, despite this knowing, he was not aware of Whisperer and he wondered if this might not be true, quite in reverse, for Whisperer, who might be aware of himself alone and not at all of Tennyson. There was no answer to his wonderment, no clue from Whisperer that this was the case.

  The funny thing about it all, he told himself, was that he seemed actually to be there in this equation world — not merely seeing it, but there in person. He could feel the solidity of the surface underneath his feet and he was breathing — breathing as easily as he would on an Earth-type planet. Frantically, he ran through his brain the odds against finding an environment in a place such as this that would be compatible to an unprotected human — suitable air to breathe, an acceptable atmospheric density and pressure, a gravity factor that was bearable, ambient temperature that would be kind to a human body. He shuddered at the odds that his quick calculation gave him. The odds, furthermore, he knew, might be much higher than he had calculated, for not only were the life factors bearable; they were comfortable.

  The equation diagrams were in as many, if not more, colors than they had been when he had seen them in the cube, and later in his dreams. Both the cube and dreams, the dreams more so than the cube, had made them somewhat fuzzy, but here the colors were sharper and more brilliant and not fuzzy in the least. There seemed to him to be many more of them than he had seen in either cube or dream, and the equations and the diagrams were more varied and outrageous. Looking more closely at one group of them, he saw that no two of them were alike, in color, equation or diagram. Each of them stood out as an individual.

  Since arriving he had stood rooted in one spot, made numb by being there, but standing in a place where one doubting part of him, perhaps the Tennyson, had never for a moment thought that he could come. But now he moved, one slow step and then another, testing out whether he could move, not certain that he should. But the equations were not moving and someone had to move. That is, someone had to move if anything was to be done, any contact made. It would not be right, he thought, to come here, to stand and stare in disbelief, not moving, and then to go away. To do this would have made the venture no better than the cube or dream.

  Slowly, he moved across the surface until he was quite close to one of the equations. He could see that it was about eight feet tall, the top of it somewhat above his head, and twice as long. From where he was standing, since it was broadside to him, he could not estimate its breadth, but by looking at another one standing nearby, he calculated the width to be nine feet or so. They might run in different sizes, he realized, but all of those he saw seemed to be uniform, one with another.

  The equation that he had walked up to was a deep-purple background with the equations and diagrams predominantly in orange, although there were touches here and there of red and green and yellow. He tried to puzzle out the equation (a very lengthy and complicated one) that it carried on its surface, but the signs and symbols were unlike any one had ever seen.

  The cube from which he had calculated the width was a bright and startling pink, with the equations green, and just beyond, it was another that was ash gray specked with copper spots, the equations in a lemon yellow and the diagrams in lavender. It was a fancy one, the fanciest of all those in sight.

  There had been no reaction from the cubes when he had walked up to them, and there continued to be none. They
all sat there, unchanging.

  Now, for the first time, he realized that there wasn't any sound. This was a silent place. In all his life, he realized, he had at all times been accustomed to some level of sound. Even at a time of quiet, there always had been some marginal noise — a board creaking in a house, a soft breeze stirring leaves, tiny insects singing. But here there was nothing, absolutely nothing, no noise of any kind.

  He shuffled closer to the equation cube and noted with some interest that his walking made no sound. Hesitantly, he reached out a hand and touched the cube with an index finger, ready to snatch it away at an instant's notice. The cube was soft to the touch, not hard and rigid as he had expected it might be, and neither warm nor cold. It made no indication of reaction to his touch, so he laid his hand upon it. With his palm flat against its surface, it seemed even softer than it had before. He pressed lightly upon it and felt the quiver underneath his palm, as if he had placed his hand upon a plate of jelly.

  On the surface of the cube something moved and, startled, he stepped away. The equations, he saw, were changing and shifting about, and the diagrams were changing, too. The changing and the shifting at first was slow, deliberate, but quickly they became faster. They ran in a fascinating fluid motion, dissolving and running and combining into something else and then the something else was gone and there was something new. It is talking to me, he told himself, trying to communicate, attempting to bridge the gap that lies between the two of us. He watched hypnotically, and every now and then it seemed that he might be arriving at some understanding, but then the equations and the diagrams would change and he'd lose what had seemed, for a moment, to be some feeble inkling of the meaning that was being written on the blackboard surface of the cube.

  Out of the corner of one eye, he glimpsed a movement and quickly stepped away, but there was no place to go, no place he could run. The other cubes were closing in on him. Already a tight ring of them had formed, blocking all possible escape. On the surfaces of all of them the equations and the diagrams were changing and shifting. It was an unnerving sight; while there still was no sound, he had the impression that all of them were shouting at him.

  More were arriving all the time and some of them soared off the ground to perch upon those that had surrounded him and others came and settled down upon the second tier, as if they were concrete blocks and some invisible mason was using them to erect a wall around him. They were towering over him, and all the time they were moving in and he was half dizzy with the riotous running of their colors as the equations raced and scintillated to effect the changes. He had the fleeting impression that they no longer were trying to communicate, but under some impelling circumstance had come together to solve some weighty and complicated problem, with the equations building to immense complexity and the diagrams becoming twisted into inconceivable dimensions.

  Then they toppled in upon him, the wall of them that had been built around him caving in and crashing down upon him. He screamed in terror, but as they came down upon him, the terror went away and he was left with a sense of wonder that was so deep it seemed to engulf all the universe. He was not crushed. Nothing at all happened to him except that he now stood in the center of the pile of cubes that had collapsed upon him. He stood unharmed in the midst of a sea of multicolored jelly and he feared, for a moment, that he'd either drown or suffocate, for in this close-packed jelly mass, there could be no air and his nostrils and his mouth and throat would fill with jelly and it would get into his lungs — This did not happen. He felt no discomfort. For a moment he struggled to swim through the mass of jelly, seeking to rise to the surface where there would be air to breathe. Then he ceased his efforts, for somehow he knew he had no need of air and that he would not drown. The equation of cubes were sustaining him, and within the midst of them, no harm could come to him. They did not tell him this, but he knew it. He had the impression that he had absorbed the message by a strange osmosis.

  All the time the equation kept running around him and some of them twined themselves around him and some of them went through him and others of them went inside of him and stayed there and, in that moment, he seemed to understand that he had become an equation among all the rest of them. He felt the equations flowing through him and all around him and some of the diagrams joined together and constructed an intricate house for him and he crouched inside it, not knowing what he was, but for the moment quite content with being what he was.

  Thirty-five

  A group of Listeners gathered for the coffee hour.

  'What is the word on Mary? asked Ann Guthrie.

  'No one seems to know, said James Henry. 'At least no one is talking.

  'Doesn't anyone ever go to see her? asked Ann.

  'I did, said Herb Quinn. 'I could only go in for a moment. She seemed to be sleeping.

  'Or under sedation, said Janet Smith.

  'Perhaps, Herb agreed. 'The nurse marched me out. Visitors are not welcome.

  'I'd feel better, said Ann, 'if Old Doc were still around to take care of her. I don't know about this new doctor.

  'Tennyson?

  'Yes, Tennyson.

  'I think you're wrong, said James Henry. 'He seems an all-right guy. I had a talk with him a few weeks ago.

  'But you don't know how good a doctor he is.

  'No, I've never been to him.

  'I had a sore throat a while ago, said Marge Streeter. 'I went to him and he cured it for me quickly. He is a pleasant man. Easy to talk with. At times Old Doc was grumpy.

  'That's right, said Herb. 'Used to give me hell for not taking care of myself.

  'I don't like some of the stories that are going around about Mary, said Ann.

  'None of us do, said Herb. 'Vatican's always full of gossip. I never believe anything I hear.

  'Something must have happened, said Janet. 'Something rather terrible. All of us have had shocks. It can happen.

  'But we come out of it quickly. said Herb. 'A day or two.

  'Mary's getting old, said Ann. 'Maybe she's not up to it anymore. She should ease up. There are clone Marys coming up. They could take over.

  'Cloning bothers me, said Marge. 'I know it makes a lot of sense and is generally accepted throughout most of the human galaxy. Still, it has a creepy feel to it. Anyone who dabbles in cloning must think they have a license to play God. The whole idea is unnatural.

  'Playing God is nothing new, said James. 'Throughout all of history, both human history and otherwise, there has been a lot of God playing. The most flagrant example is the race that Ernie ran across. You remember it. Several years back.

  'That's the one, said Herb, 'that creates worlds and peoples them with creatures out of their own imagination….

  'That's right, said James, 'but the worlds are logical. Not a few sticks and a pile of mud and magic mumbled over them. That race's worlds are well engineered. All the factors that should go into the creation of a planet. Nothing phoney about them. All the right pieces put together correctly. And the creatures they put on them logical as well — some terribly screwy biological setups, but they work.

  'Yes, I know, said Herb, 'and then what happens? Each world becomes a stress world, a living laboratory with the populations subjected to all sorts of tests, faced with all kinds of situations that have to be solved if they want to survive. Intellectual beings used as test animals. Probably a lot of data is obtained and some social problems studied in some depth, but it is rough on the planet populations. And for no purpose.

  'Maybe there is a purpose, said Janet. 'Mind, I'm not defending the action, but there could be a purpose. Maybe not one that we would find sufficient, but…

  'I don't know about that, said Ann. 'I'm inclined to doubt it. There must be, there simply has to be a set of universal ethics. There must, through all of space and time, be some things that are wrong and others that are right. We can't excuse a vicious race for its vicious acts on the sole ground that the race itself is vicious, that it knows no better.

  '
That is an argument, said James, 'that could go on forever.

  'Did Ernie ever pin down the coordinates for that race of planet-making gods? asked Marge.

  'I don't believe he did, said Herb. 'He went back several times, made a number of observations. In a perverse sort of way, he worked up some interest in the situation — that and all the various world situations that the race cooked up. But he finally decided he was not getting much of any real interest, so he pulled back and canceled out.

  'He was lucky he could cancel, said James. 'Sometimes these experiences build up so much fascination that we get pulled back — just as Mary was pulled back to Heaven.

  'The one that I keep thinking about, said Marge, 'is that old senile computer Betsy blundered into several years ago. Out on one of the globular clusters centered almost exactly above the galactic core. The computer is still in command of a vast array of rather mysterious machinery created for some unknown purpose. Some of the machinery apparently is beginning to break down because of lack of maintenance. What the machines were supposed to do, Betsy hasn't figured out. The entire planet's haywire. At one time there apparently was an intelligent biology there, but whether it built the machines Betsy doesn't know. The biology by now is fairly well wiped out, and what is left of it gone into hiding.