Project Pope

Thirty-eight

Tennyson woke just before dawn. Jill lay beside him, asleep, breathing softly, regularly. He propped his pillow against the headboard and slid his body up to lean against it. The dark was quiet. Faint predawn light filtered through the windows of the living room, the blinds were drawn and no light could seep into the bedroom. In the kitchen the refrigerator was humming to itself.

He glanced down at Jill to see if the cheek was still clear and unblemished, but she was turned so that it was against the pillow. Even had it not been, he told himself, in the faintness of the light reflected from the living room he probably would not have been able to be sure.

Thinking of it now, even hours after it had happened, he still felt the stir of disbelief. Yet there had been evidence, hours of evidence, that the angry red scar was no longer there. Surely, if for whatever reason, it had been only a temporary effect, it should have started to return within those hours.

He raised his right hand in front of him, close to his face, and stared at it. It was shadowed in the darkness; all he could see was the shape of it. The hand was in no way different. It did not glow in the dark; it was as it had always been.

And yet the touch of it…

He shivered in a sudden coldness, although the night was warm. He tried to remember back, digging back through the folds of otherwhere, to the equation world. The equations had spun around him in a dizzy swirl, they had gone knifing through him; some of them, he was sure, had lodged inside of him and stayed. There had been a time toward the end of what he could remember when it had seemed that he, himself, had shrunk to an equation — shrunk, he thought, or grown? He tried to remember what sort of equation he had been — if, in fact, he had ever known. Certainly not one of those fat, monstrous equations, frightening in their very complexity, that he had glimpsed while he lay buried in the quivering jelly sea. Perhaps he had been a very simple equation, a simple statement of himself. When the diagrams had built the house for him, he recalled, he had quickly scuttled under it and had crouched, not knowing what he was, but quite content with what he was. A simple thought, a simple reasoning that might have gone along with a very simple equation. Had the diagrams built the shelter, he wondered, to protect him against the ravening equations that flashed and whirled outside it, spinning all around it?

Then, suddenly, with no warning, he had been free of the equation world, to find himself standing in the living room with his back turned to the fire. Free — but not entirely free, for he had brought back something from the equation world, some quality, some ability that he had not had before. There had been one evidence of that new ability; would there now be more? What am I, he asked himself, what am I, the continuing question that he had asked when he had huddled in the house the diagrams had built.

Human, he wondered, am I human still? How many alien concepts can be grafted onto human stock and it still stay human?

Had the folk of the equation world, he asked himself, known or sensed that he was a physician, a healer? Had they confined their rebuilding of him — if it had been rebuilding — to the sole purpose of designing him into a better healer? Or had they tinkered with other facets of his life as well?

Thinking of it, he was frightened, and the more he thought about it, the more frightened he became. He had meddled into something that he had no right to meddle with and he had not come out unscathed. He had been changed and he desired no change: Change was uncomfortable under any circumstance; a change in one's self was terrifying.

Yet why should he feel such terror? The change, what ever it might be, how limited or extensive, whatever it might come to in the future, had made it possible for him to give to Jill — unwittingly, and yet he'd given it — a gift that no other human could have given her.

And that was it. There was no point in being frightened or being terrified. In the end, so far as he was concerned, it all came down to Jill. If in all the future there was nothing else — if, in fact, in future time he should suffer for it- there would be no regret. Any future price that might be exacted from him would be worth what he had done. He had been paid in full in that moment he had laid his hand upon her cheek.

Thinking this, he felt a calmness in him. He stayed propped up in bed, not sliding back down again, staring into the gray edge of the early dawn. In his thoughts he went back again to the equation world, trying to puzzle how he had managed to go there in person, although he knew without question that it had not been he who had been able to go there but Whisperer who had been able to take him there. To understand how Whisperer had done it, he'd have to know a great deal more about Whisperer than he knew.

Turning his head slowly, he scanned the room, looking for some evidence of Whisperer — a glitter in a corner, a sparkle in the air. He saw no glitter or sparkle. He searched inside himself for Whisperer, for Whisperer might still be with him. But there was no hint of him, although that was not good evidence, for in the equation world, he'd not been aware of Whisperer.

He jerked himself more fully awake, for there was a tapping. It stopped for a moment and then started up again. It seemed to have no direction, it could come from almost anywhere. Listening closely, he identified it. There was someone at the door. He swung himself easily out of bed, sitting on the edge, his feet seeking blindly for the slippers that did not seem to be there.

Jill stirred in the bed, making an inquiring sound. 'It's all right, he told her. 'You stay here. There's someone at the door.

He failed to find the slippers and stood up without them, making his way around the bed and into the living room. He closed the bedroom door behind him. The tapping on the door had stopped for a time, but now it began again, a discreet tapping, not insistent.

Without turning on lights, Tennyson made his way across the living room, skirting chairs and tables. When he opened the door, for a moment he did not recognize the man who stood outside it, then saw that it was Ecuyer.

'Jason, I am sorry. This ungodly hour…

'It's all right, said Tennyson. 'I was just lying there and thinking. Ready to get up.

'Could you spare a drink? Some brandy if you have it.

'Certainly, said Tennyson. 'Sit down in front of the fire. I'll put on another log.

He closed the door and had a closer look at Ecuyer. The man was dressed in slacks and jacket.

'Up early? he asked. 'Or didn't you go to bed at all?

'Never went to bed, said Ecuyer, reaching the couch before the fire and collapsing onto it.

Tennyson found the brandy and brought Ecuyer a snifter with a generous helping.

'You look all tired out, he told him.

'I am tired out, said Ecuyer. 'Something horrible has happened. Something that's never happened before. Or, I don't think it has.

Tennyson put another log on the fire and walked back to the couch, sitting down beside Ecuyer and hoisting his bare feet up on the coffee table. He wiggled his toes. The heat from the fire felt good on them.

Ecuyer took another deep drink of the brandy. 'You won't join me?

Tennyson shook his head. 'Too early in the day.

'Ah well, said Ecuyer, 'since I never went to bed… He drank more of the brandy.

'There's something you came here to tell me, said Tennyson, 'and you're taking a long time getting to it. If you have changed yourmind…

'No, I'm just putting it off. It's something you have to know. It's a bit painful.

Tennyson said nothing. Ecuyer continued working on the brandy.

'It was like this, Ecuyer finally said. 'I've been putting off having a look at the second Heaven cube. You know I have. You've been bugging me about it. Jason, did you ever get around to viewing the first Heaven cube?

'No. Somehow I felt a strange reluctance. Maybe slightly afraid of it. Uncomfortable at the thought of it. I know I should have. I might have found something that would have helped me to treat Mary.

'I felt the same reluctance with the second cube, said Ecuyer. 'I kept putting it off, finding reasons to put it off. Maybe I was afraid of what I might experience. I don't know. I tried to analyze my feelings and came up zilch. Then last evening I decided — forced myself to decide — I'd fooled around long enough.

'So you finally viewed it.

'No, Jason, I didn't.

'Why the hell not? Shy off at the last moment? 'Not that. It wasn't there.

'What do you mean, it wasn't there?

'Just that. It isn't there. It isn't where we put it. We, old Ezra and me. You know Ezra. He's the custodian.

'Yes, I know him.

'He followed procedure. He always follows procedure. He never misses a lick. He always does what he's supposed to do. I've worked with him for years; I'd trust him with my life.

Tennyson waited and in a few moments Ecuyer resumed. 'When a new cube comes in, I deliver it to Ezra and he puts it in a safe. After I have viewed it, it may go to Vatican, and when it comes back from them, it is filed in one of the cabinets. Often a cube does not go to Vatican immediately, or may not go at all if we judge it would have no particular interest, in which case it also is filed in a cabinet. Ezra has a system all his own. I don't know what it is; maybe no more than his memory. We have thousands of cubes; ask him for one and he can lay his hands on it instantly. He never falters. He goes straight to it. So far as I know, there is no actual flung system as such, but somehow or other Ezra can find anything you ask for. There's a measure of security, of course, in such an arrangement.

Tennyson nodded. 'Ezra is the only one who knows.

'That's right. There are a few cubes, a few special ones, I can come up with without help from Ezra, but not many.

'But until you view a new cube, it stays in a safe. The Heaven cube wasn't in the safe- is that what you're telling me?

'Jason, that's what I am telling you. Ezra opened the safe and it wasn't there. There were three other cubes, but not the Heaven cube. Three that I hadn't got around to viewing-

'One of them labeled wrong?

'No. To he certain, I viewed the three of them. None of them the Heaven cube. Stuff that came in just recently.

'Paul, who else could open that safe?

'No one. Not me, not anyone but Ezra.

'All right. So Ezra…

'Impossible, said Ecuyer. 'That repository is Ezra's life. His whole existence centers on the Search Program. Without it, he'd be nothing. He'd be empty. I'd trust him further than I would trust myself. He's tied even more closely to the program than I am. He's been with it longer. He was assigned to it when it first started, centuries ago.

'But if someone in Vatican…

'Not a chance. Not even the Pope. Ezra's loyalty belongs to Search, not to Vatican.

'Then someone must have learned the combination. Would that be possible?

'I suppose so. An outside chance. An extremely outside chance.

'The cube couldn't have been mislaid?

'No. Ezra put it in the safe. I stood by and watched him put it in and lock the door.

'Paul, what do you think?

'God, Jason, I don't know. Someone stole the cube.

'Because they didn't want it viewed?

'I would suppose so. There's this theological faction in Vatican. The ones who advocate canonizing Mary —

'The ones who'd like to get rid of Search. Who'd like to discredit you.

'I can't be sure of that, said Ecuyer, 'but I assume they would — if they had a chance, that is.

The two men sat in silence for a moment. The new log Tennyson had thrown on the fire was blazing now, crackling as it burned. Dawn light had flooded the room.

'That's not all of it, said Ecuyer. 'I haven't told you all of it.

'What else is there to tell?

'The first cube, the first Heaven cube, is gone as well. It also has disappeared.