Project Pope

by Clifford Simak

  'You're really afraid of them, aren't you, Paul?

  'If they get well entrenched, they'll eliminate the Search Program. That's what they've wanted to do all along. Either eliminate us or dictate the kind of work we do or, worse yet, control the interpretation of what we find. I'm not worried about myself, you understand. They'd do me no harm. I could stay on and be taken care of. They might even let me piddle around with the program a little, enough so I could tell myself I was doing something. But the program, as such, would be eviscerated. And I can't let that happen. It's the soul of Vatican, I tell you. Sure, let them mess around with their theological doings if they want to, but the real work stems from the Search Program.

  'You must have some support in Vatican.

  'Some, I think. I don't know how much. Some of the cardinals. A few others I can be sure of.

  'His Holiness?

  'No one can ever depend on the Pope. He is a cold, mechanistic mind. You never know what he is thinking. He is so clogged with all the material that our Listeners have fed into him that, despite his great capability, he can't have much time to consider present policies. Besides, I would guess that sometimes he gets confused. His job, after all, is not to guide Vatican at the moment. His is the long-range job of what Vatican should be in the far future.

  'It would seem to me, said Tennyson, 'that Vatican can't get along without the Listeners, I've heard all sorts of hints as to what it's gained from your observations. The thought-ships, for one thing. What else do they have?

  'I'm not sure I know everything they have. But they have a lot. You know about their cloning. But it's more than cloning. They don't need a cell as a starter. They can start from scratch, build a DNA pattern and go on from there. Artificial life. Engineered life, of any kind at all. And time travel. Hell, they have something better than time travel. They employ neutrinos — although they're not actually sure what they are using are neutrinos, they may be something else. But with their aid, using them, whatever they may be, they are on the verge of being able to travel a number of directions in time — not only past and future, but other directions as well. You're surprised to learn there are other directions. Well, so was I. I'm not sure I understand it. They can hunt down past and future, or will be able to as soon as they have the technology well developed, and they also will be able to go to conditions other than past or future. Maybe alternate worlds and universes. I don't know. It's all too deep for me. But whatever they have, it is the key to time travel, dimensional travel, probably other things. These two examples give you some idea of what they have.

  'Having all of this, they would give it up?

  'Not all of them. Not willingly. The theological party is a different matter. Some of them honestly feel Vatican has lost sight of, or betrayed, its original purpose. The others, which are the most of them, are scared. The universe has proved bigger than they thought. It has in it many more and stranger conditions and situations than they had ever dreamed. They are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what the Listeners are finding. The universe is so vast, the possibilities so mind-boggling, that they're beginning to feel naked. They're looking for a place to hide.

  'We could run a bluff, suggested Tennyson. 'Float a rumor that we have found a way to get to Heaven. They don't want anyone going to Heaven. If someone went there and found it wasn't Heaven, that would jerk the rug out from under them. Such a rumor would at least slow them up for a while, give us time.

  Ecuyer said, 'No, we can't do that. If we ran a bluff and they called us, that would strengthen them, would make them more sure of themselves than ever. If, and when, we make our move, we must be fairly confident we can follow through.

  'Yes, said Tennyson. 'Yes, I suppose you're right.

  'Jason, when Decker told you he was sure, or fairly sure, that he knew where Heaven is, did you get the feeling that he might have some documentation, that he wasn't only speaking from memory?

  'You mean like a log book?

  'Yes, that's the sort of thing I was thinking of. Ships carry flight recorders, don't they? He ran into trouble out in space. Could he have taken the flight recorder before he got into the lifeboat?

  'To tell you the truth, said Tennyson, 'I did get that impression. I thought that he might have documentation more solid than memory alone. But he never said so. He gave me no reason to think so. I don't know why I did. I did have the impression at the time, but now I'm not sure at all.

  'Do you think we might… Ecuyer did not finish his sentence and Tennyson hesitated before he answered.

  Finally he said, 'It would go against my grain. Decker's my friend and he trusted me.

  'But, Jason, we have to know! I have to know!

  'All right, then, said Tennyson. 'You're probably right. Let's get to work. But neat, Paul. Everything goes back exactly where it was.

  They got to work. Tennyson noted that the gem carvings Whisperer had done were no longer on the table in the corner; later he found them packed in a small box on one of the shelves. Decker apparently had put them away before he left.

  They found nothing they had been looking for.

  'Maybe he has it stashed away somewhere outside the cabin, said Ecuyer.

  'If he has anything, that is, said Tennyson. 'If he has it and has it hidden somewhere, we're not going to find it.

  He thought to himself that Whisperer might know.

  'There's one other possibility, he said.

  'What is that?

  Tennyson shrugged. 'I guess not. Forget it.

  He had not mentioned Whisperer to Ecuyer and he had no intention of doing so. Thank the Lord, he had caught himself in time.

  There was, or had been, another possibility so far as Whisperer was concerned, and that, he told himself, now was gone as well. In the back of his mind it had occurred to him that if Whisperer could take him to the equation world, he could take him to Heaven, too. But that was now impossible. Whisperer would have nothing to work with because he, Tennyson, had viewed neither of the Heaven cubes.

  Jill was the only one other than himself and Decker who knew of Whisperer and that, he told himself, was the way that it would stay.

  So it finally came down to Decker; Decker was their only hope. When Decker came back from his trip, he might be able to help them. If he couldn't, if what he knew was not definitive enough, then Vatican's last chance was gone. The Search Program would be abolished, or, at best, restricted, and Vatican would become what it had first intended itself to be — a blind fumbling after the will-o'-the-wisp of spirituality.

  Whisperer, he thought, probably was with Decker, and so he would have to wait for their return before he could know what hope might still remain.

  They left the shack and closed the door behind them, making sure the latch was firmly in place. On top of the hill, they stood together and looked out over Vatican. In the harsh light of forenoon, the buildings stood out white and stark against the background of woodland and the foothills of the lofty mountains.

  As they stood there, looking at the clumped buildings in the distance, a faint tolling sound came to them.

  'It's bells, said Ecuyer. 'Why are they ringing bells? This is not the time of day to ring them. Only at certain times of day. And there are too many…

  A shift in the wind carried the full-toned sound to them, the full-tongued pealing of great bells.

  'Those are the big basilica bells, Ecuyer exclaimed. 'What the hell is going on?

  Hurriedly the two of them went down the hill.

  Forty-one

  She had never been so humiliated in all her life, Jill told herself- nor so angry. What was the matter with these people? Whatever had possessed that silly nurse to say what she had said?

  Jill slammed the door behind her and stalked across the room. She sat down on the couch in front of the fireplace, but found she couldn't stay there. She rose and began to pace the room.

  The miracle was not Mary's miracle despite that lying nurse. If anyone's, it was Jason's — and it was no
miracle. If it only could be learned, there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation to account for it. The hell of it, she thought, was that she could not explain what had happened. If it was for anyone to tell, it would be Jason, and she was sure he would say nothing. She could not even attempt to refute what the fools were yelling out there in the street.

  She stopped pacing and went back to the couch, staring at the small flicker of flames that ran along the almost-consumed logs in the fireplace. After a time, she thought, she would have to go out there and face the world, although every instinct in her cried out against it. All she wanted to do was huddle here, to lick the wounds of public humiliation. But she knew that in time she would go out and face it down. Vatican couldn't beat her; nothing had ever beaten her. Jill Roberts, in her day, had faced down worse things than this. Nothing had ever beaten her, and the stinking robots and the witless humans out there could not stand against her.

  And another thing — they'd not drive her from Vatican; they could never do that. She had her heels dug in and she had no thought of leaving. Which was, she reminded herself, a far different attitude from the one she'd held when she first had come here. Then she had felt disgust and disappointment, had been enraged by the clever little game the cardinals had played — trying to discourage her from coming by not answering her letters and when, despite their attitude, she had arrived, refusing to cooperate. Since then her perspective and priorities had changed. It had taken some time to recognize the importance of Vatican — not only to the robots, but to the humans, and not only the humans here at End of Nothing, but to all humans everywhere. There was a greatness here, a very human greatness of conception and of thought, that she could not turn her back upon. In a way she had become a part of it and she meant to remain so, along with Jason, who had become as much a part of it as she. In any case, she told herself, she would not leave even if she wanted to, for Jason was happy here and had found in this strange community the kind of life that fitted him. She could not part from him; she could not bring herself to part from him. Especially she could not leave him after what had happened the night before — his fingers reaching out and wiping away the shame upon her cheek. For it had been a shame, she now admitted to herself, much as she might have tried to pretend that it was not, treating it with a non-feminine bluntness, flaunting it because she could not hide it, bluffing it out before the entire world.

  But it was not just Jason who bound her here. Another was the old cardinal Enoch, who came to see her every day, hunching upon the stool beside her desk and talking the hours away, talking as if she were another robot or he another human. In many ways he seemed to be a doddering old idiot, but never, she told herself, an idiot — it was just his way. And kind. She had never thought a robot would be kind, but Enoch had been kind and more considerate than there was any need to be. To start with, she had called him Eminence with meticulous attention to Vatican protocol, but of late she often forgot and chattered away at him as if they were two silly schoolgirls. He did not mind at all; maybe it was refreshing for him to talk with someone who could forget for long stretches of time that he held a high post in Vatican.

  Jason had told her of the equation world and now, once again, she found herself wondering what it really had been like. He had described it to her, as best he could, trying to tell her in detail what he had seen and experienced. But it was the kind of place and the sort of happening that was quite beyond all telling, an experience so vast the human mind must fall short of taking in all of it, impossible to put into words that would make another human see it. 'I cannot tell you, Jill, he'd said. 'I can't tell you all of it; I cannot find the words, for there were certain things about it for which there are no words.

  The yelling and the yammering continued in the street. Were they hunting her? she wondered. Must they feel compelled to look again upon the evidence of the great miracle that had not come to pass? The fools, she thought, the fools!

  'There are certain things about it for which there are no words. A culture so ancient, so self-sufficient that it operated on a system of logic that was so far advanced over human knowledge and capability as the fusion of atoms was advanced beyond the chipping of stones into primitive tools. A group of cubes sitting on a great green plain manipulating symbols and diagrams — playing a complicated game or solving problems? Or were the symbols and diagrams the visual manifestations of alien thought, perhaps a band of philosophers sitting around in an informal seminar arguing hair-splitting hypotheses, a mere passing of idle time or the long, slow process of formulating new universal truths? Could the equation folk, in time long past, have penetrated to the edge of space and the end of time and now, retreated back to the place where they first had set out, wherever that might be, now be engaged in trying to pull together and evaluate all that they had seen and sensed?

  What astonishment, she thought, must they have felt to be so rudely visited by Jason, a life form similar to others they may have seen in earlier times and now forgotten, or a life form they had missed entirely and had never seen. No wonder they had acted as they had — no wonder they had gone wild with flashing, running symbols and racketing diagrams, no wonder they had built a house of diagrams to hide Jason from their sight. Yet they had given him a gift as one might give a gift to a stranger who came visiting.

  She settled back, trying to calm herself, to pull herself together. It was then she saw the flicker in one corner of the shadowed room. I'm seeing things, she told herself — now I'm seeing things.

  It was no longer, she saw, a flicker, but a hazy globe of shining dust, a tiny globe of sparkles.

  — Whisperer? she asked, speaking to the flicker instinctively as Jason told her he had spoken to him.

  — You can see me, Jill?

  — I see you, Whisperer.

  — And you can hear me?

  — Yes, I hear you.

  She was numb with wonder, thinking: It is impossible; Jason never even hinted he might come to me or, even if he did, that I could see and talk with him.

  — Jason said leave you out of it, said Whisperer. I told him I could talk with you and he said, no, to leave you alone. But, Jill, I cannot leave you out of it. I must come to you.

  — It's all right, she said.

  — You may see differently than Jason. You may see the better.

  — See what the better?

  — The equation people.

  — No, said Jill. Oh, no!

  — Why not? Would you be frightened?

  — Yes, I would be frightened. These are terrifying creatures.

  — You owe them your face.

  — Yes, I owe them that.

  — Jason brought back a gift with him. They'll make you a gift as well. They have much to give.

  — Why should they give us anything?

  — I do not know, said Whisperer. With Jason I dig very deep, but not deep enough.

  — Jason did not tell me that.

  — Jason could not share it all with me. He could not grasp the wonders that I found. Nor could I grasp all he found. We are very different minds.

  — And I? I'll understand no more.

  — But differently, perhaps. Jason could see what you could not, and you see what Jason could not.

  — Whisperer, I could not go to the equation world. I did not see the cube.

  — I've been there, said Whisperer. That is quite enough. It is imprinted on me. I can find the way.

  — Whisperer, I don't know. Whisperer, I can't!

  — No need to fear. Jason and I came back. There was no danger to us.

  — How do you know there was no danger? The two of you might only have been lucky.

  — It is important, Jill.

  — I'll have to think about it.

  — Jason said leave you out of this. He said not to bother you. And I have bothered you.

  — I told you it was all right.

  — I will urge no further. If you say no, it's no.

  I can't, Jill told herself. I'd
be petrified. And there is no need of it. Jason has been there. There is no need for me to go. And yet…

  — I've never in my life, she told Whisperer, backed away from anything. Not from End of Nothing. Not from anything. If there was something that I should see, I always went and saw it.

  That was the truth, she thought. She had always gone — the good reporter, shaking in her shoes, perhaps, scared of what she'd find or how it would turn out. But she'd gone. She'd gritted her teeth and gone. There had been times when it had been very hairy, hut always she'd come back, with her notebook filled with jotted words, with rolls of exposed film, with her nerves rasped raw and her mind seething with ideas.

  — All right, she said, I'll go. You can take me, Whisperer? Even if I've seen no cube?

  — First I must join your mind. We must be-as-one.

  She hesitated, rebelling against another entering her mind — especially another that she did not know, another that was so unlike any creature she had ever seen before.

  Yet this strange creature, this Whisperer, had been in Jason's mind. 'I did not know that he was there, Jason had said. 'Yet I was sure he was. At times I could feel him, faintly, but actually never was aware of him. There was, I think, that extra dimension of myself, but I was scarcely aware of it. Just a greater power, a deeper sense of knowing.

  — All right, she told Whisperer.

  And she was in the equation world. There was no getting ready, no preliminaries, no drawing a deep breath.

  There, as Jason had described it, was the flat green carpetlike expanse of surface melding imperceptibly with the soft lavender of sky. On the green carpet of the surface sat the cubes of the equation world, brilliant in their color and with the semblance of life afforded them by the quiver and the flicker of the changing diagrams and the smooth, even flowing of equations.

  Hell, she thought, I should have brought my cameras. She could have slung them around her neck and taken them, for they would have come along. Her clothes had come along with her, she was not standing naked — and if the clothes could travel with her, the cameras could as well.