Cave of Stars (Macrolife Book 2)

by George Zebrowski

  My sins are mine, not my people’s. I will shield my flock. He spoke the words into his own darkness, and a joyous light filled the abyss behind his eyes.

  31

  Josephus noted the lack of expression in Paul’s face, no sign of outrage or annoyance as his minister concluded his report and sat silently in the chair before the desk.

  “I’m sorry to bring such news,” he said finally.

  “Did Rhazes offer any further explanation?” Josephus asked.

  “Only what I have told you,” Paul said. “Your Holiness may receive basic medical care, in the form of materials and technical advice to be given to your physicians. I advise that you go at once to the clinic to receive this help.”

  Josephus leaned back in his chair, trying not to show his feelings of humiliation and despair. Even though he had expected what amounted to a death sentence from the offworlders, a part of him had still believed that they would extend his life, and that same part of him had known that he would set aside his resolve against the temptation. He might not have accepted what they had to give, but now they were leaving him no choice by refusing.

  You don’t care, Bely thought, watching Paul’s face, wondering if he had made a deal for his own life.

  “There is another matter that has come up,” his minister continued. “We have been asked for permission to let the mobile bring our old starship hulk in for study. This request came to me from one of their historical teams, who wish to study its design.”

  “Bring it to where?” Bely asked.

  “Into the mobile.”

  “Inside?”

  “Into one of the docks in their forward engineering level.”

  Bely was silent, curious to see what Paul would say even as his own reaction took hold and he felt a rising rage; but it subsided quickly as he realized that here was yet another sign of the Lord’s guidance and approval.

  “I have no objection,” Bely said, trying to seem unconcerned. “Tell them they may do so.”

  Paul now looked surprised.

  “It’s only an old lump of junk,” Bely added. “We took all we needed from it a long time ago. But do tell them to put it back in its proper orbit when they’ve done examining it.”

  “If it’s worthless, then why ask that it be put back?”

  Paul leaned forward, waiting for his answer.

  Bely pulled open the small drawer at his right hand and saw that the ring of old keys was still there. He covered them with his bony hand and looked up.

  Paul was still leaning forward, looking puzzled. The fool, Bely thought, cannot see that the Lord is guiding my hand.

  Bely’s fingers explored the cold keys as he tried to smile. “My faithful Paul, will you join me on the terrace later? It promises a warm eve.”

  Paul sat back, looking confused. “Of course.”

  Bely withdrew his hand from the keys and closed the drawer, feeling confirmed as his fingers found and played with the carved angelic figure in his desk’s wood. I am not damned! The Lord speaks to me still, and I will complete my work. He felt his face tighten as he exulted secretly, then sat back and put his hands together, feeling an equanimity that had not been his in years.

  “What is it, Your Holiness?” Paul asked.

  He feels my returning strength, Bely thought happily. “Your Holiness?” Paul asked again. Bely let him wait for another moment, then said, “Nothing, nothing…you may go.”

  32

  To Paul it seemed that the stars burned too brightly in a dark blue heaven that refused to blacken, and he thought it ironic that these distant hellfires had given the universe all the material elements for life and an awareness that sought heaven. He breathed the cool air uneasily as he sat waiting on the terrace for Bely to speak.

  “You have yet to tell me what else you think of Black-friar’s refusal,” Bely said, leaning back in his high chair. The old man seemed preternaturally alert in the bright evening, and Paul suddenly felt lost in his life’s role, the part he had known so well, but which now seemed to belong to another time.

  He hesitated a moment longer before replying, then said, “He is only applying certain views concerning matters of biology. Rejuvenation for them requires explicitly held assumptions about living…”

  Bely grasped his armrests and leaned forward. “And since I don’t share their ideals, I would have to become one of them to save my life!” he cried out.

  “It’s not that simple,” Paul said. “Their knowledge indicates that advanced forms of physical deterioration cannot be reversed without some loss of personality. Memory loss occurs as the body regains youthful states. You might not be quite yourself.”

  “Excuses!” Josephus said mockingly, surprising Paul with his show of energy. “I’m sure they have a way to overcome these problems for themselves, but they need excuses with me. They want me to die.”

  Not quite, Paul thought, but Bely was shrewd enough to feel the painful difference between his domain and the paradise in the sky, where a vast knowledge base had set itself to achieve all the hopes of religious dreams. Enough history, enough science was present in his mind for him to see the lateness of the hour, as he struggled with his own doubts and unfulfilled needs.

  Paul decided not to answer directly. “They train for a creative, indefinite lifespan. They cultivate experiment and personal exploration…”

  The old man’s eyes were watery in the starlight, and he seemed to be looking at him with glee. “And what do you think of all this, Paul?”

  “From what I know of history,” Paul said, “I would expect a mobile culture to show an openness to new things, far worlds, and a love of great distances…”

  Bely interrupted Paul with a wave of his hand. “Bah! The romance of pure materialism—for which one must give up all hope of the greater life to come!”

  They give up nothing, Paul wanted to say. All mentality and reflection grow out of material, biological complexity, which births the so-called soul and sustains it. There is no need for anything more.

  “Death still comes to them,” he said instead.

  “But they live with no faith in life after death, don’t they?”

  Paul nodded. “But such beliefs may be privately held, I suspect.”

  “You would want to live as they do?”

  Yes, Paul thought, but said, “Your Holiness knows where I belong,” and felt a chill as Bely’s shadowed face stared at him with suspicion.

  “Answer me directly now,” Bely muttered, and Paul saw sweat on the old man’s usually dry brow.

  “They have more of this life than we do,” Paul said. “I don’t think they intend to belittle any other way, even if they think it mistaken.”

  “You were always a clever diplomat, Paul,” Bely said, glancing upward, where the mobile was a faint, slowly rising star above the horizon. The old man pulled a cloth from his sleeve, mopped his face, then said, “Paul, they’ve denied me life!” He sat back and sighed, suddenly looking very tired. “They’ve assaulted my faith in the life to come by their very presence.” He paused, clearly reluctant to say what he felt he had to say. Paul felt his sincerity, and began to hope that it was leading to some wise conclusion after Josephus had confided his hurt.

  “You have no faith, Paul. I’ve suspected for years, so don’t bother to deny it—but if you once did have it, then you know what the threat to mine means. Their example tempts my people…”

  “I do understand,” Paul said softly.

  Bely took a deep breath, and the evening air seemed to revitalize him. He sat back, looking upward, as if taking great pleasure in the sight of heaven.

  “What do you understand, Paul?” he asked. “Being faithless, you can’t know what it’s like to know that your own thoughts are not your own, but God’s, mere fragments of the eternal. How can I tell you what I feel, knowing that soon, if my faith fails, I will have only my own inner whispers, as the Lord withdraws from me? How will I lead then? What will I teach? By making me doubt they are taking e
verything from me. Therefore I will take everything from them!”

  “I don’t understand,” Paul said, shaken by the old man’s hatred.

  “So now you don’t understand,” Bely said with derision. “But I tell you that you will understand.” He laughed. “A little faith and patience, and you will know.”

  “What are you saying?” Paul asked.

  “That I will regain my faith and my world.”

  Paul thought for a moment, then concluded that perhaps Bely was preparing to step down. But rather man question him, Paul decided to let the old man announce it in his own way. Only two popes had ever resigned, but Josephus needed to escape the stresses of the office, however he explained it to himself. Perhaps his successor would be one who could go forward in a new way with the ancient religious realities, seeing them charitably, as early human needs, meanings explained not with knowledge but with story.

  Suddenly Paul imagined that he might present his hopes to Bely’s intelligence after all, and make it possible for him to see that the division of the world into the here and the hereafter denied his people the reality of the single natural universe in which to strive and learn, replacing the willful ignorance of faith with the willingness to explore and grow in knowledge. If Bely could not set aside the gropings of faith and stand honestly before nature, then it might be better that he die rather than be thrust into a disillusionment that he would be unable to bear. Still, his body had betrayed his faith when his flesh and bones felt the lure of health and an extended life; perhaps now he would also be able to see that faith belonged to times when humankind was ignorant of its origins and had to guess at order and right in the dark.

  “We were friends once,” Bely said before Paul could speak, as if to encourage him to begin a glorious dialogue in which all problems would be identified and resolved.

  “Yes,” Paul said, “we were great friends,” hoping that with these words he might begin to free his world from the strange echo of Christian Rome, dark light-years away and dead, but still reaching out to tyrannize.

  “I had thought,” Bely continued, “that this starry visitor might be the hand of Divine Providence sent our way. I entertained, as a devil’s advocate, the idea that the medical knowledge of these people might even be the hand of the Redeemer…”

  Bely paused, and Paul saw that the old man had lost his way through the words of his argument. The old pontiff turned his face away, and Paul pitied him.

  Then the shadowed face turned back to look at him. Cave eyes stared at Paul. A bony hand, blue-white in the starlight, raised itself from the robes and pointed at the mobile.

  “There, inside,” Bely rasped, “they are picking through the bones of our old starship. I see them! They have just discovered that the timers on the old weapons are running!”

  Paul’s throat constricted. “What have you done?” he managed to ask, realizing that the line of popes had kept something to themselves these last three centuries, a secret deadly worm in the body of a transplanted Christianity. He knew vaguely that bombs had been a convenient way to carry fissionables on the long journey from Earth, and they were probably the only fissionables available to the original colonists; but the weapons had never come up for any kind of use, and since they had not been brought down to the planet, there had never been a need to think of them.

  “They might not detonate after all this time,” Paul said, struggling to hope.

  “They will!” Bely glared at him, pale hands shaking. “The weapon given to us by the Lord cannot fail. And there is no time left for the devils to find and stop them!”

  Paul sat frozen in his chair. Did they even know about the weapons up there? They wouldn’t, if the shielding was good enough. He imagined them shouting as they hurried to remove or disarm the bombs, trying to decide if there was time to jettison the ship.

  Violence was about to enter their world. How could they have let it in? he asked himself. Were they children, facing aggression for the first time in their lives?

  Feeling powerless and trapped, Paul glanced upward with dismay, then looked at Bely and longed to strike at the monster before him.

  “Any moment now!” Josephus cried like a delighted child.

  “How many bombs?” Paul asked, still hoping.

  “Three ten megatons nuclear, if I recall the order of words in the old manuals. The terms will mean more to you.”

  His stomach contorting with despair, Paul understood that these were large warheads. The only hope lay in the possible unreliability of the timers, but it was unlikely that all three would fail. Was it possible that they had been found and were already being disarmed?

  “I have left them no time to act,” Josephus said.

  Bely had decided to do this, Paul realized, as soon as he had learned that the starship was being moved into the mobile. The inspiration, coming as it did after he had been refused rejuvenation, had resolved the struggle within him. Immovable in his faith, and now fueled by resentment and hatred, Bely had descended to the chamber deep within the foundations of the palace, down into that maze containing the archival chambers storing old artifacts, computers, books, and art objects brought from Earth, to the small portable duplicate of the starship’s control room, which had been so necessary during the years after arrival, and which gradually had been pushed deeper and deeper into the bowels of the palace as the community turned away from Old Earth. The control center had been used to transfer the vast database from orbit. Paul himself had access to the database, but he had not known that there were keys in the pope’s possession that gave access to other functions through the uplink to the lingering starship.

  Silently, Bely had journeyed down into the horror of himself and condemned a world to death; then he had arranged this meeting on the terrace to view the destruction.

  “Your daughter is there with them!” Paul blurted out, hating himself for the satisfaction of having the words to hurl.

  “Wha-what?” Bely gulped air and wheezed, then fell back in his chair; but in the next moment he rallied, sat up and said defiantly, “I will pray for her soul.”

  Paul struggled to his feet. Weak-kneed and shaking, he went up to Bely and shouted, “Beg, Josephus, that the timers fail! Pray that there is a merciful God!”

  “I know that there is,” Josephus said resolutely as he looked up at Paul, “and that he will understand that I didn’t contrive this punishment for Josepha alone. But if she must die…”

  Bely’s voice cracked, and Paul listened as the old man struggled to deny his own deepest feelings.

  “…to be saved from greater sin,” Bely went on, “then so it must be.”

  Bely was fighting to hold two opposed positions at once, and Paul saw starlight in the sweat that broke out on his old friend’s face.

  “She is…my daughter,” Bely strained to say, “and I acknowledge the fact. Whatever my own grief, I may be saving her soul.”

  “Saving her soul!” Paul cried out. “How?”

  Bely trembled in his chair as if he had caught a sudden chill. Paul watched him closely, and in a moment saw him rally once more as he overcame the weakness of an old man to become the terrifying representative of his world’s poorly held beliefs.

  “Perhaps in her last moments,” he said, “she will find her faith.”

  Paul stood and listened, stunned, tasting the acid that came up from his stomach, and felt a useless anger at himself for staying his hand when he might have killed the old man.

  He reached out now to choke him, but it was too late; a better punishment waited for Bely by letting him live.

  “Josepha…” Bely croaked, his mouth open and his head rolling from side to side in agony.

  The white explosion washed silently across his face and lit up his eyes. He cried out, and it seemed that his head would tear itself from his torso.

  Paul swallowed the bitterness in his mouth and watched Bely’s pale face in the fading flash; his eyes were shut, his bony hands gripped the chair’s armrests, an
d his head slumped forward. He pitied the old man for the loss of his daughter. She had belonged to them both. And they had both killed her—Paul with his years of accommodation, Bely with his faith.

  Josephus was whispering something to him. He leaned closer and heard, “Paul, please, I must confess…”

  Gone was the speaker of brave words holding to his faith regardless of whatever cross he would have to bear, leaving only a broken father in place of the steadfast pontiff.

  Or so it seemed as Paul wondered whether there was enough left of Bely to know which one of him was still alive after he had torn himself apart.

  Paul turned away and looked up. The bloom of the explosion was just a glow now, and soon it would be nothing at all.

  33

  When Ondro arrived at the forward docks, a vision stirred his architectural engineer’s heart. Towed by a small tug, the old starship was just coming into the great open area of the dock, before the electric glare of the sun that flooded into the large space, shadowing the details on the blackened and pitted thousand-meter-long slug of a ship.

  He gazed with wonder through the panoramic window of the dock master’s observatory, and the spirit of his recovery took hold of him as he might once have imagined God’s grace would fill his soul with hope.

  What he knew most clearly, and with an intensity that had penetrated him deeply, was that here in this new world the threat of death had been lifted from him; not just death as it might have come to him on his world after a lifetime, or the death that had waited for him in the penal islands, but death as the lurking thing in one’s life, waiting to steal the victory given by birth. Now it would be put off indefinitely. He would be able to complete ambitious studies, read all that needed to be read without parceling out his devotion to fleeing, forever insufficient days.