Project Pope

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.

How stupid it had been to forget the cameras!

'Whisperer, she said aloud, thinking to ask him if he knew by what means they had traveled there. But he did not answer and within her mind there was no sign of him. That, she told herself, was no more than she should have expected. Jason had told her how it had been with him. He also had called out to Whisperer and the pinch of diamond dust had been nowhere to be seen because he had not come separately, but had come with Jason and was somewhere inside of him, presumably the scattered atoms of him mixed with the atoms of Jason's human mind, and this, of course, was what had happened with her as well.

— Whisperer, she said. Damn you, answer me. Give me some sign that you are with me.

Whisperer did not answer.

Was it possible, she asked herself, that the little twerp had thrown her into this place while he had stayed behind? She thought about this and it appeared unlikely. Whisperer was an eager beaver, hell-bent on an exploration of the universe. To explore it, apparently, he had to have a guide to show him where to go. Although once he had been shown the way, he would know the way and could go there by himself, or take someone else along, as he had taken her.

— All right, she said, go on hiding. Go on playing these silly games of yours. I can get along without you.

Why had she ever come? she wondered. Because she was a dedicated reporter who could not allow anything to happen if she wasn't in on it? Because she wanted to stand upon the ground on which Jason had stood, to find here a new strand that would tie her the closer to him? God knows, she thought, there is no need of that. Or had she swallowed Whisperer's pitch — that she might see things that Jason had not seen, thereby gaining a greater understanding of the equation world?

She shook her head. None of it made sense, but she was here and if she was, going to interview these people (people?), she had better be about it. Interview them? she asked herself — that was plain ridiculous. There was no way she and they could communicate. She'd jabber at them with her mouth and they would jabber back with their equations and neither of them would have the slightest idea of what the other might be saying.

Nevertheless, she walked toward the cube that was nearest her, a rose-red creature bearing on its surface a squiggle of damson-plum equations and an outrageously twisted diagram that glowed in sulphur yellow.

'I am Jill Roberts, she said, speaking loudly. 'I have come to talk with you.

Her words shattered the silence that hung like a gentle veil draped about this world, and the rose-red cube appeared to cringe, its color fading to a washed-out pink. Slowly, it began to edge away from her, as if it wanted to turn about and run but knew it would not be polite to turn about and run.

She thought: What a silly thing to do. I knew this was a quiet world; Jason had told me how terribly quiet it was, and I come busting in here and begin hollering out my questions. And what a silly thing to say, as well. Telling them I am Jill Roberts, and they, even if they could hear me, would not know what a jill-roberts was. If I am going to talk with them, she told herself, probably the only way to do it is to talk to them the way I talk to Whisperer. If I am going to tell them who I am — no, that won't do at all. I have to tell them what I am and not who I am. How can I go about telling them what I am? How can I or any other human, or any other form of life, tell a different form of life what it is?

Maybe, she thought, I should begin by telling them I am an organic being. But would they know what organic meant — even if they could hear and understand, would they know what organic means?

The answer seemed to be that probably they wouldn't. If she was going to talk with them, she'd have to start on a more simple level. She would have to tell them what organic was. Maybe, once she got the idea across they' might understand, for it was just possible (not probable, but possible) that they had encountered other organic life. Why was it, she wondered, that she had the idea (although she was not absolutely positive that she had the idea) that they were not organic life, but something else entirely, something very strange?

If she was going to reduce organic life to more basic concepts, how could she go about it? Come right down to it, what the hell was organic life? I wish I knew, she said. I deeply wish I knew. If Jason were here, he could be some help. Being a doctor and all, he'd know what it was. There was, she seemed to remember, something about carbon but what it was about carbon she simply did not know. She tried to remember back, wondering if she had ever known. Damn, damn, DAMN, she said, I've made it a point all my life to know so many things, to have a good working knowledge of so many things, and now that it comes right down to it, I don't know the things it is important I should know. As a reporter she had always made it a rule to bone up on any subject that she was going to talk with someone about, to know something about the creature or the human that she would be asking questions of, knowing something about its background and its interests and its work so she could hold the foolish questions down to minimum. But even had she had the time, there would have been no way she could have boned up about the equation people; there was no resource material. Maybe somewhere, but not in the human world.

The maddening thing about it was that she was trying to do it all by herself. Whisperer was here with her and he should be part of the act, not just she alone, but she and Whisperer. The little stinker was just lying doggo, not doing anything, not helping her at all.

The rose-red cube had stopped retreating and now stood at a distance from her, but not a great deal farther than it had been when she first had walked toward it. Other cubes were beginning to move in, gathering behind it, forming a solid phalanx behind it.

They are ganging up on me, she thought, the way they ganged up on Jason.

She took a few tentative steps toward the rose-red cube, and as she did, it wiped off its surface all the equations and the ugly twisted diagram and for a moment that side of it that faced her was no more than an unblemished rose-red panel.

She came up close against it, so close that she had to tip her head to see the top of it. The blackboard side of it still remained a rose-red panel and the other cubes that stood behind it and to either side of it remained exactly where they were, with their equations and their diagrams still frozen on their blackboards, not quivering, but stark and frozen there.

Now, slowly, hesitantly, the rose-red cube began to form a new diagram upon its blackboard, drawing it in a brilliant gold, working carefully, as if it might not be sure what it was doing, as if it were feeling its way.

First, high up, it formed a triangle, an upside-down triangle, with its apex pointing downward. Then another, larger triangle with its apex pointing upward, meeting the apex of the smaller triangle. Then, after some deliberation, it formed two parallel, vertical strokes, two sticks attached to the base of the larger triangle.

Jill stared at it, uncomprehending, then sucked in her breath and said aloud, but very softly, 'Why, that's me. The upper triangle is the head and the lower triangle is my body dressed in a skirt and those two sticks are legs!

Then, off to one side of the diagram that was Jill Roberts, a jagged line was formed — a jagged line with five points.

'That's a question mark, she said. 'I'm sure it's a question mark. They are asking what I am.

— That is right, said Whisperer, speaking from inside her mind. You have caught their attention. Now let me take over.