"Special bulletin: Our government has just announced its intention to honor the cease-fire for ten days if the enemy agrees to an immediate meeting of foreign ministers and military commanders on Guam. The enemy is expected to accept."
"Ten days," the abbot groaned. "It doesn't give us enough time."
"The Asian radio, however, is still insisting that the recent thermonuclear disaster in Itu Wan, causing some eighty thousand casualties, was the work of an errant Atlantic missile, and the destruction of the city of Texarkana was therefore retaliation in kind..."
The abbot snapped off the set. "Where's the truth?" he asked quietly. "What's to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is the bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification in our "police action" in space? How can we know? Certainly there was no justification for what they did — or was there? We only know what that thing says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease its government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where's the difference? Dear God, there must be half a million dead, if they hit Texarkana with the real thing. I feel like saying words I've never even heard. Toad's dung. Hag pus. Gangrene of the soul. Immortal brain-rot. Do you understand me, Brother? And Christ breathed the same carrion air with us; how meek the Majesty of our Almighty God! What an Infinite Sense of Humor — for Him to become one of us! — King of the Universe, nailed on a cross as a Yiddish Schlemiel by the likes of us. They say Lucifer was cast down for refusing to adore the Incarnate Word; the Foul One must totally lack a sense of humor! God of Jacob, God even of Cain! Why do they do it all again?
"Forgive me, I'm raving," he added, less to Joshua than to the old woodcarving of Saint Leibowitz that stood in one corner of the study. He had paused in his pacing to glance up at the face of the image. The image was old, very old. Some earlier ruler of the abbey had sent it down to a basement storeroom to stand in dust and gloom while a dry-rot etched the wood, eating away the spring grain and leaving the summer grain so that the face seemed deeply lined. The saint wore a slightly satiric smile. Zerchi had rescued it from oblivion because of the smile.
"Did you see that old beggar in the refectory last night?" he asked irrelevantly, still peering curiously at the statue's smile.
"I didn't notice, Domne. Why?"
"Never mind, I guess I'm just imagining it." He fingered the mound of faggots where the wooden martyr stood. That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins. And some of them are mine. Mine, Adam's, Herod's, Judas's, Hannegan's, mine. Everybody's. Always culminates in the colossus of the State, somehow, drawing about itself the mantle of godhood, being struck down by wrath of Heaven: Why? We shouted it loudly enough — God's to be obeyed by nations as by men. Caesar's to be God's policeman, not His plenipotentiary successor, nor His heir. To all ages, all peoples — "Whoever exalts a race or a State of a particular form of State or the depositories of power . . . whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God..." Where had that come from? Eleventh Pius, he thought, without certainty — eighteen centuries ago. But when Caesar got the means to destroy the world, wasn't he already divinized? Only by the consent of the people — same rabble that shouted: "Non habemus regem nisi caesarem," when confronted by Him — God Incarnate, mocked and spat upon. Same rabble that martyred Leibowitz...
"Caesar's divinity is showing again."
"Domne?"
"Let it pass. Are the brothers in the courtyard yet?"
"About half of them were when I passed. Shall I go see?"
"Do. Then come back here. I have something to say to you before we join them."
Before Joshua returned, the abbot had got the Quo peregrinatur papers out of the wall safe.
"Read the précis," he told the monk. "Look at the table of organization, read the procedural outline. You'll have to study the rest in detail, but later."
The communicator buzzed loudly while Joshua was reading.
"Reverend Father Jethrah Zerchi, Abbas, please," droned the voice of a robot operator.
"Speaking."
"Urgent priority wire from Sir Eric Cardinal Hoffstraff, New Rome. There is no courier service at this hour. Shall I read?"
"Yes, read the text of it. I'll send someone down later to pick up a copy."
"The text is as follows: 'Grex peregrinus erit. Quam primum est factum suscipiendum vobis, jussu Sactae Sedis. Suscipite ergo operis partem ordini vestro propriam . . .' "
"Can you read that back in Southwest translation?" the abbot asked.
The operator complied, but in neither did the message seem to contain anything unexpected. It was a confirmation of the plan and a request for speed.
"Receipt acknowledged," he said at last.
"Will there be a reply?"
"Reply as follows: Eminentissimo Domino Eric Cardinali Hoffstraff obsequitur Jethra Zerchius, A.O.L., Abbas. Ad has res disputandas iam coegi discessuros fratres ut hodie parati dimitti Roman primā aerisnave possint. End of text."
"I read back: 'Eminentissimo . . .' "
"All right, that's all. Out."
Joshua had finished reading the précis. He closed the portfolio and looked up slowly.
"Are you ready to get nailed on it?" Zerchi asked.
"I — I'm not sure I understand." The monk's face was pale.
"I asked you three questions yesterday. I need the answers now."
"I'm willing to go."
"That leaves two to be answered."
"I'm not sure about the priesthood, Domne."
"Look, you'll have to decide. You have less experience with starships than any of the others. None of the others is ordained. Someone has to be partially released from technical duties for pastoral and administrative duties. I told you this will not mean abandoning the Order. It won't, but your group will become an independent daughter house of the Order, under a modified rule. The Superior will be elected by secret ballet of the professed, of course — and you are the most obvious candidate, if you have a vocation to the priesthood as well. Have you, or haven't you? There's your inquisition, and the time's now, and a brief now it is too."
"But Reverend Father, I'm not through studying—"
"That doesn't matter. Besides the twenty-seven-man crew — all our people — others are going too: six sisters and twenty children from the Saint Joseph school, a couple of scientists, and three bishops, two of them newly consecrated. They can ordain, and since one of the three is a delegate of the Holy Father, they will even have the power to consecrate bishops. They can ordain you when they feel you're ready. You'll be in space for years, you know. But we want to know whether you have a vocation, and we want to know it now."
Brother Joshua stammered for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't know."
"Would you like half an hour? Would you like a glass of water? You go so gray. I tell you, son, if you're to lead the flock, you'll have to be able to decide things here-and-now. You need to now. Well, can you speak?"
"Domne, I'm not — certain—"
"You can croak anyhow, eh? Are you going to submit to the yoke, son? Or aren't you broken yet? You'll be asked to be the ass He rides into Jerusalem, but it's a heavy load, and it'll break your back, because He's carrying the sins of the world."
"I don't think I'm able."
"Croak and wheeze. But you can growl too, and that's well for the leader of the pack. Listen, none of us has been really able. But we've tried, and we've been tried. It tries you to destruction, but you're here for that. This Order has had abbots of gold, abbots of cold tough steel, abbots of corroded lead, and none of them was able, although some were abler than others, some saints even. The
gold got battered, the steel got brittle and broke, and the corroded lead got stamped into ashes by Heaven. Me, I've been lucky enough to be quicksilver; I spatter, but I run back together somehow. I feel another spattering coming on, though, Brother, and I think it's for keeps this time. What are you made of, son? What's to be tried?"
"Puppy dog tails. I'm meat, and I'm scared, Reverend Father."
"Steel screams when it's forged, it gasps when it's quenched. It creaks when it goes under load. I think even steel is scared, son. Take half an hour to think? A drink of water? A drink of wind? Totter off awhile. If it makes you seasick, then prudently vomit. If it makes you terrified, scream. If it makes you anything, pray. But come into the church before Mass, and tell us what a monk is made of. The Order is fissioning, and the part of us that goes into space goes forever. Are you called to be its shepherd, or are you not? Go and decide."
"I guess there's no way out."
"Of course there is. You have only to say, 'I'm not called to it.' Then somebody else will be elected, that's all. But go, calm down, and then come to us in church with a yes or a no. That's where I'm going now." The abbot arose and nodded a dismissal.
The darkness in the courtyard was nearly total. Only a thin sliver of light leaked from under the church doors. The faint luminosity of starlight was blurred by a dust haze. No hint of dawn had appeared in the east. Brother Joshua wandered in silence. Finally he sat on a curbing that enclosed a bed of rose bushes. He put his chin in his hands and rolled a pebble around with his toe. The buildings of the abbey were dark and sleeping shadows. A faint slice of cantaloupe moon hung low in the south.
The murmur of chanting came from the church: Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni, ut salvos — Stir up thy might indeed, O Lord, and come to save us. That breath of prayer would go on and on, as long as there was breath to breathe it. Even if the brethren thought it futile . . .
But they couldn't know it to be futile. Or could they? If Rome had any hope, why send the starship? Why, if they believed that prayers for peace on earth would ever be answered? Was not the starship an act of despair? . . . Retrahe me, Satanus, et discede! he thought. The starship is an act of hope. Hope for Man elsewhere, peace somewhere, if not here and now, then someplace: Alpha Centauri's planet maybe, Beta Hydri, or one of the sickly straggling colonies on that planet of What's-its-name in Scorpius. Hope, and not futility, is sending the ship, thou foul Seductor. It is a weary and dog-tired hope, maybe, a hope that says: Shake the dust off your sandals and go preach Sodom to Gomorrha. But it is hope, or it wouldn't say go at all. It isn't hope for Earth, but hope for the soul and substance of Man somewhere. With Lucifer hanging over, not sending the ship would be an act of presumption, as you, dirtiest one, tempted Our Lord: If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from the pinnacle. For angels will bear thee up.
Too much hope for Earth had led men to try to make it Eden, and of that they might well despair until the time toward the consumption of the world—
Someone had opened the abbey doors. Monks were leaving quietly for their cells. Only a dim glow spilled from the doorway into the courtyard. The light was dim in the church. Joshua could see only a few candles and the dim red eye of the sanctuary lamp. The twenty-six of his brethren were just visible where they knelt, waiting. Someone closed the doors again, but not quite for through a crack he could still see the red dot of the sanctuary lamp. Fire kindled in worship, burning in praise, burning gently in adoration there in its red receptacle. Fire, loveliest of the four elements of the world, and yet an element too in Hell. While it burned adoringly in the core of the Temple, it had also scorched the life from a city, this night, and spewed its venom over the land. How strange of God to speak from a burning bush, and of Man to make a symbol of Heaven into a symbol of Hell.
He peered up again at the dusty stars of morning. Well, there would be no Edens found out there, they said. Yet there were men out there now, men who looked up to strange suns in stranger skies, gasped strange air, tilled strange earth. On worlds of frozen equatorial tundra, worlds of steaming Arctic jungle, a little like Earth perhaps, enough like Earth so that Man might live somehow, by the same sweat of his brow. They were but a handful, these celestial colonists of Homo loquax nonnumquam sapiens, a few harassed colonies of humanity that had had small help from Earth thus far; and now they might expect no help at all, there in their new non-Edens, even less like Paradise than Earth had been. Fortunately for them, perhaps. The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn. Well, they were going to destroy it again, were they — this garden Earth, civilized and knowing, to be torn apart again that Man might hope again in wretched darkness.
And yet the Memorabilia was to go with the ship! Was it a curse? . . . Discede, Seductor informis! It was no curse, this knowledge, unless perverted by Man, as fire had been, this night...
Why do I have to leave, Lord? he wondered. Must I go? And what am I trying to decide: to go, or to refuse to go? But that was already decided; there had been a summons to that — long ago. Egrediamur tellure, then, for it was commanded by a vow I pledged. So I go. But to lay hands on me and call me a priest, to call me abbas even, to set me to watch over the souls of my brethren? Must Reverend Father insist on that? But he isn't insisting on that; he is only insisting on knowing whether God insists on that. But he is in such a terrible hurry. Is he really so sure of me as all that? To drop it on me this way, he must be more certain of me than I am of myself.
Speak up, destiny, speak up! Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it's not decades away; it's right now. But maybe destiny is always right now, right here, right this very instant, maybe.
Isn't it enough that he's sure of me? But no, that is not nearly enough. Got to be sure myself, somehow. In half an hour. Less than half, now. Audi me, Domine — please, Lord — It's only one of your vipers of this generation, begging for something, begging to know, begging a sign, a sign, a portent, an omen. I've not enough time to decide.
He started nervously. Something — slithering?
He heard it as a quiet rustling in the dry leaves under the rose bushes behind him. It stopped, rustled, and slithered again. Would a sign from Heaven slither? An omen or a portent might. The Psalmist's negotium perambulans in tenebris might. A sidewinder might.
A cricket, perhaps. It was only rustling. Brother Hegan had killed a sidewinder in the courtyard once, but... Now it slithered again! — a slow dragging in the leaves. Would it be an appropriate sign if it slithered out and stung him in the backside?
The sound of prayer came from the church again: Reminiscentur et convertentur ad Dominum universi fines terrae. Et adorabunt in conspectu universae familiae gentium. Quoniam Domini est regnum; et ipse dominabitur... Strange words for tonight: All the ends of the Earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord...
The slithering stopped suddenly. Was it right behind him? Really, Lord, a sign isn't absolutely essential. Really, I…
Something nudged at his wrist. He shot upward with a yelp and leaped away from the rose bushes. He seized a loose rock and threw it into the bushes. The crash was louder than he had expected. He scratched at his beard and felt sheepish. He waited. Nothing emerged from the bushes. Nothing slithered. He tossed a pebble. It too rattled offensively in the darkness. He waited, but nothing stirred in the bushes. Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes — de essentia hominum.
A pink tongue of dawn was beginning to lick the stars fr
om the sky. Soon he would have to go tell the abbot. And tell him what?
Brother Joshua brushed gnats from his beard and started toward the church, because someone had just come to the door and looked out — looking for him?
Unus panis, et unum corpus multi sumus, came the murmur from the church, omnes qui de uno . . . One bread and one body, though many, are we, and of one bread and one chalice have partaken...
He paused in the doorway to look back toward the rose bushes. It was a trap, wasn't it? he thought. You'd send it, knowing I'd throw stones at it, wouldn't you?
A moment later, he slipped inside and went to kneel with the others. His voice joined theirs in the entreaty; for a time he ceased to think, amid the company of monastic spacegoers assembled there. Annuntiabitur Domino generatio ventura . . . And these shall be declared to the Lord a generation to come; and the heavens shall show forth His justice. To a people that shall be born, which the Lord hath made...
When he became aware again, he saw the abbot motioning to him. Brother Joshua went to kneel next to him.
"Hoc officium, Fili — tibine imponemus oneri?" he whispered.
"If they want me," the monk answered softly, "honorem accipiam."
The abbot smiled. "You heard me badly. I said 'burden,' not 'honor.' Crucis autem onus si audisti ut honorem, nihilo errasti auribus."
"Accipiam," the monk repeated.
"You're certain?"
"If they choose me, I shall be certain."
"Well enough."
Thus it was settled. While the sun rose, a shepherd was elected to lead the flock.
Afterward, the conventual Mass was a Mass for Pilgrims and Travelers.
It had not been easy to charter a plane for the flight to New Rome. Even harder was the task of winning clearance for the flight after the plane had been chartered. All civil aircraft had come under the jurisdiction of the military for the duration of the emergency, and a military clearance was required. It had been refused by the local ZDI. If Abbot Zerchi had not been aware of the fact that a certain air marshal and a certain cardinal archbishop happened to be friends, the ostensible pilgrimage to New Rome by twenty-seven bookleggers with bindlestiffs might well have proceeded on shank's mare, for lack of permission to use rapid transport jet. By midafternoon, however, clearance had been granted. Abbot Zerchi boarded the plane briefly before takeoff — for last farewells.
A Canticle For Leibowitz Page 29
