Project Pope

Twenty-eight

The robots, when they came from Earth, had brought mice with them. Perhaps not intentionally, but the mice were there.

Working late at night, Jill had met the first of them. There were others that she glimpsed from time to time, but the first one had become a friend. It came to visit her in the quiet and lonely hours, peering at her from behind a pile of tapes or a stack of crystals, its soft, round ears spread wide to catch the slightest sound, its pink nose busily wriggling to catch the slightest scent. Then, sure, that all was well, that no one but she was there, it came out, still moving cautiously, not too sure of its welcome, to share a midnight snack with her, picking up a crumb of bread or cheese in its tiny forepaws, sitting erect upon its haunches, with its fat white paunch thrust forward. Watching her, always watching her with its bright, small marble eyes, it nibbled at the crumb.

She talked to it, speaking softly, for any other tone would have frightened it. Little refugee, she called it, little refugee from Earth. At times, when it was not too busy with its crumb, it would squeak at her, a companionable, conversational squeak that said it liked her, too.

At first she had quailed at the thought of the havoc mice could wreak in a library, then realized that this was not a library in the sense that she thought of one. The precious Old Earth books that were here were housed in glass cupboards, as were any written records. The tapes and crystals were locked in steel cabinets. Even the paper supply was stored in metal bins. There was little in the place that a mouse could get at.

There were not many mice, perhaps no more than a dozen, and with the exception of her friend, who came regularly for his handout, they appeared only now and then. Once her scrounging friend had finished with his lunch, he disappeared as well. This puzzled her. There was no preliminary scampering about prior to his disappearance, no zigzag explorations. He finished his crumbs of bread and cheese, then left, and never once had she been able to see where he had gone. At first this did not bother-her. It was of small concern to her where or how he might have gone. But as time went on, for no logical reason that she could determine, she found herself wondering where he, went when he finished eating and what route he took to get there. At times she became angry at herself for wasting time in thinking of such a matter. After all, what difference did it make? Even should she find out, what would she gain?

She put it away as an inconsequential item, but from time to time she still would think of it. Then one night, quite by accident, she saw where the mouse went. It ran straight across the floor between her desk and a paneled wall and disappeared into the wall. It went in a straight line, scampering, with its rigid tail held high, as if it might be following a well-beaten path (although there was no path, not even a mouse path), going fast and never slackening speed, and when it reached the wall, it did not stop but went through it.

Puzzled, she rose from her desk and, without moving her eyes from that place in the wall where the mouse had disappeared, walked across the floor until she reached it. Dropping to her knees, she ran her hand across the wall. There was no mouse hole. The paneling ran down flush to the floor — or did it? She ran her fingers along the juncture between the paneling and the floor, and as she slid them along it, one finger found a little space — a space of no more than an inch, but possibly big enough for a mouse to squeeze through if it knew exactly where it was and could flatten itself enough.

'The little devil, she said, speaking aloud.

The crack ran for only a couple of inches, then on either side the paneling came down to the floor again. Perhaps the floorboard had sagged, she told herself, to create the opening. She ran two fingers into the gap and curled them against the opposite side of the paneling. Strange, she thought — there was a strangeness here that she could not understand. She had thought a floorboard might have sagged, but when she ran a palm along the floor, she could not detect such a defect.

She inserted her fingers into the crack again, curled their ends against the paneling and pulled. With some creaking and scraping, a door came open. Behind it was a cubbyhole, a closet. From a hook in the wall hung a faded crimson robe, a cardinal's robe. To one side of the robe stood a pair of sandals. In one corner stood a wastebasket. That was all — the robe, the sandals and the basket. The entire area smelled of mouse droppings.

She stepped inside the closet, lifted out the basket, then shut the door.

Back at her desk, she explored the basket. Crumpled-up paper almost filled it; at the bottom was a huge mouse nest of chewed-up paper, a nest that probably had been used by generations of mice, with an occasional new occupant adding to its dimensions.

Rescuing the undamaged or relatively undamaged papers, she laid them out in a pile on the desktop. When she had finished, with only the mouse nest remaining in the basket, she started going through the papers, starting with the one on top and working downward.

It was disappointing trivia. Several papers bore scribbled mathematical calculations that did not appear exciting; another was a list of tasks to be done, with most of them crossed out, probably signifying that they had been done; a number of the sheets were filled with jotted notes, now cryptic, but probably at one time carrying some meaning for the one who had written them; one sheet was the beginning of a letter, undated, and continuing for only a line or two — Your Eminence, I have been thinking for the last several days on the matter we discussed at some length in the garden and have finally arrived at my decision… and then came to an end, crumpled and thrown away; another sheet was headed Notes for the consideration of His Holiness, but the rest of the sheet was blank; an enigmatic list: 600 bu. wheat, 30 cords of good hard wood suitable for long burning and for holding fire, 150 lbs. of the best potatoes, 7 tons of honey — and then came to an end. There were other sheets and scraps of paper, perhaps intriguing if one had the time to puzzle out their purposes and the circumstances under which they had been written — the greater number of them probably of no importance whatsoever.

Despite their trivia, Jill piled them all neatly, putting each one down against the hard surface of the desk and running the palm of her hand over it to partially iron out the wrinkles that had come from being crumpled. Someday, she told herself, she would find the time to go over them more carefully. Just possibly she might find a valuable clue here that would make for a better understanding of Vatican. Thinking this, she stopped as if thunderstruck, staring at the pile of paper, realizing for the first time the depth of her commitment to this task she had undertaken — a commitment that could bring her to stack up obviously worthless sheets of scratch paper in the premise that someday she would study them, wringing from them some minor footnote that might point up some piddling fact or insight. This was not, she told herself, the way that she had planned, this was not the approach she had first taken to the job. Then she had regarded it as no more than a stopgap measure, a chore that would give her an excuse for staying on while she worked on her original purpose for coming to Vatican. Jason had warned her, she remembered. You'll get hooked, he'd told her, you'll get so immersed in the research you can't pull yourself away. And now, she knew, the both of them were hooked, he as much as she, although he never had pretended that he would not stay here, for a while at least. She had been the one who had planned to leave if she was not allowed to do the reporting job she had come to do. If the chance came to get away from End of Nothing now, she asked herself, trying to be honest, would she take it? Thinking it, she found she had no answer.

She continued going through the pile of papers. Near the bottom of the pile she came upon a sheaf of several sheets clipped together, written in an atrocious longhand that she had some difficulty making out:

I, Enoch, cardinal, write this unofficial memo to myself, well knowing that it cannot be made a part of the official record, since the incident I write of was not placed in the official record, purposely not placed in the official record. I write this memo as a warning to myself, principally to myself, although as well to others to whom sometime I may pass it on, although at the present moment I have no intention of sharing it with anyone at all. I do not write it through any fear of forgetfulness (for I am not forgetful; over many centuries, I have not been forgetful), but because I wish to get down in words my feelings on the matter, my emotions (so far as I have emotions) and my fear (especially my fear and apprehension) before time has had the chance to dull or temper these impressions.

I call it an incident, for that is all it was, a rather fleeting incident, but an incident alarming in its implications. For long we have felt secure upon this isolated world of ours, located at the extreme rim of the galaxy in a region where there are few stars and our star so unspectacular that it will not attract attention. But now, since the incident, I am not so certain of our security. No others of my fellows has expressed, at least to me, any of the apprehension that I feel and I, in turn, have been careful not to show or otherwise communicate the apprehension that I feel.

For this reason — that I am reluctant to give expression to what I feel (for what reason I cannot imagine) and in the fear that in the long run I may subconsciously smother my fear (which I regard as a valuable fear) — I write this memo to myself as a reminder, in the days to come, that I did entertain this fear and am convinced that it is a real and logical fear and must be taken into consideration in our future planning.

Yesterday, we were visited. The visitors were unlike anything our human Listeners ever have encountered. Many of us, I am certain, never saw the beings at all, thinking that there was no more than the bubbles that they saw. I, who caught several glimpses of the riders of the bubbles, know that the bubbles were no more than transportation conveyances. In one of those instances in which I glimpsed the riders, I was for a moment face to face with the creature that peered out from inside the bubble. The face, I am sure it was a face, but not a robot face, nor yet a human face, was little more than a blob of drifting smoke, although I know that it was not smoke, but a face that looked like a swirl of smoke. It was a mobile face, like a rubber face pulled out of shape, capable of many shapes. Never shall I forget the expression that I saw upon it as it peered down at me from a distance of no more than thirty feet. There was upon it a smirk of amused contempt, as if it were a god looking down upon a pig sty. Seeing that look of immense disdain, I shriveled all inside. I became a small and crawling thing, mewling in pity for myself and for my kind, groveling in the filth of my debased society and all I'd done and been for naught.

There were perhaps a dozen of the bubbles, although no one seemed to have had the sense to count them. They came quickly and left quickly; they did not stay for long, perhaps for no longer than ten minutes, although it may have been even less than that. They appeared and disappeared; suddenly they were there, bursting out of nothing, and then as suddenly they disappeared, going into nothing.

They came and looked us over very briefly, wasting little time on us. Probably they had no need to stay any longer; more than likely they saw far more than any of us can imagine that they saw even in so brief a time. They gazed down upon us with amused contempt, knowing who we were and what we were doing here and more than likely scratching us out as something that was beneath their notice.

They may pose no danger to us, but now we know (or at least I know) that they are aware of us (even if they scratched us out, they are still aware of us) and I feel safe no longer. For they do know of us and even if they do nothing to or about us, the very fact they know of us constitutes a danger. If they could find us on a casual survey and look us over (even deciding we were not worth their time), then there may be others (almost certainly there are others) who can, for reasons quite unknown, seek us out.

We have sought security in remoteness and by subterfuge. We have tolerated and even encouraged pilgrims — not so much because we need the money that they bring, but in the thought that if we are noticed, the pilgrims may make it appear we are no more than another shabby cult and not worthy of any further notice. But we may have calculated wrongly and if so…

The writing came to an end. Jill tried to smooth out the crumpled pages. Carefully she folded them and put them in a pocket. Never before had she walked out of the library with any material, but this time she intended to do just that.

Enoch Cardinal Theodosius, she thought, that stodgy old robot — how could he have written this? A sharper mind, a more imaginative mind than she had guessed lay inside that metal skull.