Project Pope

Forty-seven

'What was that all about? asked Jill.

'Vatican's coming apart, said Tennyson, 'and the Pope's the one who knows it.

'We didn't help him much.

'We helped him not at all. He's disappointed in us. The robots still hold the infantile notion that their humans are great men of magic, that we can reach down and come up with answers, that when they get stuck, we'll bail them out. The father image — the Old Man can do anything, he can fix it up. The Pope's the same. Maybe he knew we couldn't do anything for him, but he still held the father fantasy. And now he's disappointed in us.

Tennyson got up and threw a couple of logs on the fire, came back to sit beside Jill.

'It is the Search Program that holds Vatican together, he said.

'Ecuyer said something about it, I remember, when we first came here. He told me that Vatican was only an excuse to continue the Search Program. I thought he was simply bragging, trying to impress me with his own importance. But there is a great deal of truth in it. I realize that now. With the Search Program, Vatican is a dynamic operation; without it, it will become a fuzzy fumbling after something that no one understands. There'll be endless empty arguments and much vague philosophizing, and heresies will spring up to fight bitterly with ecclesiastical authority. Without the Listeners, Vatican, in its present form, will not last another thousand years. Even if it does, it will be meaningless.

'But His Holiness told us, said Jill, 'that he has a great backlog of knowledge furnished by the Listeners. I got the idea he is nowhere near caught up with it. Couldn't he continue working with what he has? If that's what he wants to do, and I think it is. With all this backlog-

'Don't you see? asked Tennyson. 'It would be a dead end. A lot of the information that he has never will be used. He can still continue sifting through it, he can sift through it endlessly, still with the greater part of it not being used. To keep his work viable, to keep it moving forward, that backlog he speaks of must keep growing. Like new wood for a fire. This may not be possible, for if the theologians do take over, in a few years the Listeners will be gone. The present Listeners will die off, and if there are no others recruited to take their place and if the clones aren't trained, then the Search Program will die. And that's the end of it.

'And once gone, it can't be started up again.

'That's exactly it, said Tennyson. 'Jill, we are sitting here and facing the death of one of the most ambitious research projects the galaxy has ever known. God knows how much will be lost. No one can estimate what the impact of such a failure will be upon the robots and the humans. I include the humans because what the robots have also belongs to humans. We may think of them as two different races, but they're not. The robots have a human heritage; they are a part of us. They belong to us and we belong to them.

'Jason, we have to do something about it. You and I must do something. We are the only ones.

'There is Ecuyer.

'Yes, sure, there is Ecuyer but he's too much Vatican.

'I suppose you re right. He is tainted in a lesser degree than other End of Nothing humans, but he is still tainted. He is still Vatican.

'Jason, we have to do something. What can we do?

'My darling, I don't know. As of now, I'm fresh out of all ideas. I haven't got a one. If we could get to Heaven…

'And bring back proof. We'd have to bring back proof.

'Yes, of course we would. Without it, no one would believe us. But that's something we don't need to worry about. We're not going there.

'I just thought of something.

'Yes, what is it?

'What if it was really Heaven? What if Mary had been right?

'Heaven's not a place. It is a state of mind.

'No, Jason, cut that out. You are mouthing a phrase. No more than flip judgment. I told you about the equation people. I said it might be possible they operated on a variable logic pattern. What if this whole universe operated on a variable logic pattern? Wouldn't that make all our human preconceptions invalid? Could we be as wrong as that?

'If you're trying to tell me there could be a Heaven…

'I'm not saying that. I'm asking you if there was, what would you do?

'You mean would I accept it?

'Yes, that is what I'm asking. If your nose were rubbed in Heaven —

'I imagine I would gag a bit.

'And accept it?

'I would have to, wouldn't I? But how could I tell if it was Heaven? Not the golden stairs, not angels…

'Probably not golden stairs nor angels. Those are old tales, someone trying to make Heaven the sort of place the people of that early day hungered after. A place they'd want to live. A sort of eternal picnic. But I think you would know if it was Heaven.

'A good fishing stream, said Tennyson. 'Woodland paths to walk. Mountains to look at. Good restaurants where the waiters were your friends — not just servitors, but friends — other friends to talk with, good books to read and think about, and you….

'That's your idea of Heaven?

'Just off the cuff. Give me some time to think about it and I can come up with more.

'I don't know, said Jill. 'I'm confused by all of it — Vatican and the equation worlds and all the rest of it. I can't help but believe it, and yet there are times when I get angry at myself for believing. His Holiness talked about reality. Living here, I know it's real, but when I get off by myself and think about it, I tell myself it's not reality, it is not the sort of place I could have imagined before I first saw it. It all is so unreal.

He put his arm around her and she came up against him and he held her close. The fire talked in the chimney throat and a stillness they had not noticed before closed down all about them. They were alone and safe in the darkness of the world.

'Jason, I am happy.

'So am I. Let us stay that way.

'You were running from Gutshot when you came here. And I was running too. Not running from anything, not even from myself. Just running. I've been running all my life.

'But not any longer.

'No, not any longer. You told His Holiness about the old medieval monasteries. This is our monastery: good work to do, a hiding from the world outside, a happiness and surety in our hearts. Maybe I don't belong here. There were no women in the old monasteries, were there?

'Well, only now and then. When the monks could sneak them in.

The firelight glittered on something that floated down in front of the fireplace.

Tennyson sat bolt upright.

'Jill, he said, 'Whisperer is here.

— Decker, said Whisperer. Decker. Decker. Decker. I have only now found out.

— Come to me, said Jill. Come to me. I will grieve with you.

— Come to both of us, said Tennyson.

He came to both of them and they grieved with him.