Project Pope

Fifteen

Enoch Cardinal Theodosius hunted up his bosom pal, Cecil Cardinal Roberts.

'Eminence, he said, 'it seems to me that you and I should have a talk.

'You are upset, said Roberts. 'What is going on?

'These two new arrivals. The human man and woman.

'What do you know about them?

'Nothing about the man. Ecuyer has installed him as Vatican physician. I understand he came here fleeing justice.

'Have you spoken to Ecuyer of it?

'No, Your Eminence. Of late, Ecuyer has become impossible to talk with.

'Yes, I know, said Roberts. 'One gains the impression that he believes the Search Program has become our paramount concern. If you ask me, the man has gotten bigger than his britches.

Theodosius sighed. 'Much as we may admire the human race, he said, 'there are some of them one finds very hard to live with.

'And the woman, Eminence?

'I talked with her this morning. She is a writer. Imagine that, a writer! She was the one who wrote us all the letters. I told you about them?

'Yes, I believe you did.

'She wants to write about us.

'Write about us?

'Yes, it was all in the letters. You read them, did you not?

'Of course I did. And put them quite out of mind. It's impossible, of course. The impudence of it.

'Exactly, Theodosius said.

'You told her it was unthinkable.

'Yes, but she refused to accept the refusal. She is a most persistent human. Finally I offered her a job.

'You'll pardon me, Your Eminence, but there is no job…

'Yes, there is, said Theodosius. "All these years we have been talking about writing a history of Vatican. We have said how fine it would be to get it down on paper so that all might read and wonder. We have even talked about developing a new species of robot to do the work. We robots, it seems, are not cut out for writing chores. And it would be a vast amount of trouble to develop another strain capable of so limited an ability as writing. But here is one, come to us of her own free will, who can do the writing for us.

'And, pray, what was her reaction?

'I gained the impression she was not enchanted with the offer. But that's not entirely what I came to talk about.

'I thought you said that was what you wished to talk about — the new human man and woman.

'Well, yes, of course. But not of them alone. There is another factor. There are, in recent years, three disturbing human factors that have come upon us.

'Three?

'Decker is the third. He is the third unknown. What do we really know about him?

'Why, I guess, said Roberts, 'we know very little. We do not know how he got here. He did not come on Wayfarer, and I know of no other way that a human could get here. Perhaps you, Your Eminence, know more of him than I do. You have talked with him.

'Some years ago, said Theodosius. 'Shortly after he showed up. I donned the habit of a monk and went calling on him, in the pretense of extending welcome. A meddlesome, inquisitive, footloose little cleric. I thought that perhaps he would talk to such a monk whereas he might be hesitant of talking with a cardinal. I learned precisely nothing. He told me not a thing. Pleasant enough, but a distant man. And now these two — the woman and the doctor. Will you tell me, Eminence, why we must have a human doctor? We could, in a short time, train one of our robots to be physician to the humans. Fully as knowledgeable, as efficient, as capable, as any human doctor. Perhaps even more so, for we have access to certain new medical knowledge that might be adaptable to humans.

'Yes, said Roberts. 'I know. We have talked about it often. Periodically we must import an outsider to be physician to the humans. It's not desirable. No outsider is desirable. The old doctor who died, as all humans must, was quite acceptable, although, if you remember, we had doubts concerning him at first. The one who replaced him was impossible. The humans in the town and those in Vatican — except for the Listeners, of whom we do import a few — are old-time residents. They are descendants of people who have been here for centuries. Of them we need have no concern or fear. They are almost one with us. But outsiders have no real ties to us. They are not accustomed to us, nor are we to them.

'And yet, said Theodosius, 'our own people, descendants of those who have been here for ages, probably would not accept a robotic doctor. This perturbs me. It points to a cultural gap that still exists between the robot and the human. I would have hoped that after all the years the gap would have been closed. Certainly there is a difference between robot and human, but-

'I think, Your Eminence, said Roberts, 'that in the subconscious human mind, we still may be tainted, that we still smell faintly of machines. They, if charged with it, would piously deny such a thing, and believe their own denial, but it still is there. I am sure of that. On this matter of a robot doctor, it is true, of course, that we could readily supply them one, but I don't think we should. Here on End of Nothing we could have supplied our humans with many luxury services, but we have refrained from doing so because of the fear that it would seem we were taking them over. We must never seem to do that. It would be simpler, naturally, if we could make pets of them, watching closely after them, shielding them from harm, supplying all their needs. But this we must not do. We must not tamper with them. We must let them go their way and preserve their dignity.

'We face a dilemma, said Theodosius. 'We battle with ourselves. We are continually haunted by the regard, the respect, almost the worship that we feel for humans. It is a response to them, I am certain, that we can't root out; Surely not such as you and I, who were forged by humans. We stand too close to them. Some of the second-and-third-generation robots, created not by humans but by robots, might be able to root out some of this feeling for the humans. We try to comfort ourselves by saying we are no more than an extension of the human race. I suppose we would like to think so — we must, for we say it often, almost as if by rote. But the bitter truth is that we are a human product.

'Your Eminence, said Roberts, speaking kindly, 'you are too hard upon yourself, too hard on all of us. Products we may be, but surely our thousand years of effort has raised us above the level of a product. The thing that bothers us, I think, is that our attitude toward humanity smacks too much of worship. But if you think of it correctly, you'll see the fallacy in that. For centuries we have worked to discover a universal principle that would apply to all — not to robots alone, but to every thinking thing, each speck of intelligence. Eminence, we have paid our dues. We have earned the right to be ourselves.

'Then why am I so concerned with three outsider humans? Am I assuming the attitude of a child toward a father image? A disapproving father who may stand ready to correct me.

'All of us — not you alone, but all of us — are bowed down under an inferiority complex, said Roberts. 'It is a cross we must bear as best we can. Give us a few more millennia and we will outgrow it.

'What you say is true, said Theodosius. 'I find within myself, upon close examination, so much tangled guilt that I can barely stand up under it. There are even times — forgive me, Eminence — there are even times when I feel a guilt in our having brought about His Holiness. There is a possibility, I tell myself, that in doing this, we have committed sacrilege, that in fact His Holiness is no more than another one of us — not holy at all, but simply another machine, another exquisitely sophisticated robot, a cybernetic shadow with which we delude ourselves.

'Your Eminence, Roberts exclaimed in horror, 'I hope you have not repeated such a heresy where others than myself might hear you. As an ancient friend, I can understand the guilt, but…

'I have not breathed a word of this before, said Theodosius. 'I have kept it bottled up. Only to such as you, old friend, could I have said a word of it. I would not have said it now were it not for so many happenings. This sighting of Heaven by one of the Listeners-

'Yes, that is bad. said Roberts. 'It has had a greater impact among our brethren than I like. My hope had been that it would blow over soon and be quite forgotten. The Listener, I understand, was very close to death, which would have ended all the foolishness, but this doctor…