Project Pope

Forty-four

'I wish I could tell you, Jill said to Tennyson, 'but my mind's all cluttered up. So much strange was happening. As I told you, I looked at that insane diagram with the squiggle to one side and I knew the diagram was me and the squiggle was a question mark. He was asking what I was and I was racking my brain about what I could tell him when Whisperer spoke inside my mind and said he would take over.

'So he did.

'Yes, and I was there with him. He was inside my mind and we were, really, Just one mind and I knew what was going on, but I had no idea what it was. Back, millennia ago, they had this device called a telegraph over which men talked to one another with clicks transmitted over wires; you could stand there and listen to all that clicking and not know what was going on because you did not know the code. Or listening to two aliens talking and hearing all the words, all the clatter and the jabber that they use as words, but completely lost because you know nothing of the language.

'You said telegraph. Were there clicks?

'Some clicks, I guess, and a lot of other things, a lot of other sounds, which I suppose that I was making, not knowing how or why I made them and a bunch of funny thoughts running through my brain, as if they were my thoughts, but they must have been Whisperer's, for they surely weren't mine. At times I would think that I was catching on to what was going on and then I'd lose the thread of it and would be lost again. Ordinarily such a situation would have bothered me; in another situation I might have gone insane wondering what kind of creature I had turned into. But it didn't bother me. It wasn't as if I was in a daze, for I wasn't. My mind was entirely clear, although considerably flabbergasted. At times it seemed to me I was something else entirely and, at other times, I seemed to be standing off to one side, simply looking on, standing outside myself and watching this other self doing all those strange things. All this time the equation person, with a number of others all grouped about him, was slowly running through a number of equations and some diagrams, very simple basic equations and diagrams, not long strings of equations and complicated diagrams, as if he were talking carefully to a child. Baby talk, like one talks to children. And I thought, why, he's as confused as I am. He doesn't know any more about what is going on than I do. For the clicks and grunts and treebles and all the other sounds I was making could not have seemed like a language to him, any more than his diagrams and equations looked like a language to me.

'Whisperer probably was understanding some of it, said Tennyson. 'Whisperer was the one in control. He was a sort of double-jointed interpreter.

'He didn't pan out so well as an interpreter for me, said Jill. 'Although I think that may have been the case. He was working both sides of the street. We moved up close — I mean I moved up close to this equation person and watched what was going on and every once in a while, I'd point a finger at an equation or a diagram as if I might be asking a question about it, although it wasn't me who was asking the question. It was Whisperer, and when that happened, the equation person would go through all of it again, patient, trying to make us understand. Sometimes he had to go through it several times before Whisperer seemed to understand.

'But you understood none of it?

'Jason, I think I did — some of it. Not a full understanding, of course, but snatches of it. And some of it I may have marginally understood I plain forgot because I don't think it was the kind of information that the human mind could be expected to grasp the first time around. Some of it, I know, was outrageous — outrageous by human standards. There seemed to be no logic in it. You know what I think, Jason? — 'No, what do you think?

'I think the equation world operates on a variable logic pattern. One statement can be logical in one context, but not in the next. It was infuriating. I'd grab a piece of it by the tail, then something would come along to make that one piece I had grasped outlandish. I don't know. I really do not know. Some of it I'm sure I caught the drift of at the time, but I don't have it now. Whisperer said he wanted me to go with him because my viewpoint might be different from yours and I guess it must have been. Nothing like this happened to you when you were there — did it?

'No, it didn't. I was just confused.

'The difference, said Jill, 'might not have been with you and me. Come to think of it, I don't believe it was. The difference was with Whisperer. He'd been there twice, you see. He might have been getting the hang of it. On a second trip you, too, might get the hang of it. And he'd probably been thinking about it all the time since he got back with you.

'Jill, I'm sorry you had to go through this. There was no reason that you should. I told Whisperer to leave you out of it. He thought he could work with you as he had worked with me, but I told him-

'Yes, I know. He told me you had told him.

'Where is Whisperer now?

'I don't know. I came back. All of a sudden, I came back. Not here, but to my own suite. That's where we started out. Whisperer wasn't with me. He wasn't in the room and he wasn't in my mind. I don't know how I knew this, but I knew he wasn't.

'I wonder if he knows that Decker's dead. That will hit him hard. He and Decker were great pals. Decker tried to pretend that he didn't care one way or the other, but he did. He thought a lot of Whisperer.

Jill picked up the coffee pot and filled Tennyson's cup. 'I made a cake, she said. 'Do you want a piece?

'Later, he said. 'A little later on. That stew you made….

'It was good, wasn't it.

'Delicious. Filling.

'Jason, do you think the theologians killed Decker?

'It all fits together. The cubes gone, Decker dead. They took us out of it. If we could just have held on to the cubes, then Whisperer could have taken us to Heaven. No need for coordinates. He has the ability to follow a very dim trail. Like a dog trailing a fox. If he can take us to the equation world, he could have taken us to Heaven. There's a lot out there in the universe. Many trails for him to follow.

'Jason, could we be wrong? You and I and Paul? Could the Vatican theologians be right? Is a true faith more valuable than knowledge of the universe?

'Jill, I think that involves a judgment of what comes first. Vatican made that decision long ago and now someone is trying to reverse it. The decision that first you must have knowledge before you can arrive at faith. That may have been a wrong decision. I can't be certain, but I don't think it was.

'Maybe we will never know.

'You and I will never know. Someday someone will.

'What happens now?

'There's no way right now to know.

'Jason, some bits of it are coming back to me. The bits and pieces I picked up in the equation world.

'Perhaps as time goes on, more and more of it.

'There was a sense of being tired, of resting. Does that make any sense?

'Not much, said Tennyson. 'But take it easy. Your very human mind is trying to translate alien concepts into human terms.

'There is something else. The idea of games and a great excitement that here was a new game to be played.

'It probably was something else entirely, but at least it's a place to start. You picked up far more than I did. Maybe Whisperer, when he shows up, will be able to help out.

'I think so. Whisperer must have understood far more than I did.

A knock came at the door. When Tennyson opened it, Theodosius stood outside.

'How good of you to come, said Tennyson. 'Won't you step in. We are greatly honored.

The cardinal came in and Tennyson closed the door. 'I'll poke up the fire, he said, 'and we can sit and talk.

'I would like to do that, said the cardinal, 'but there is no time. His Holiness has summoned the two of you to an audience.

Jill came around the table. 'I don't understand, she said.

'His Holiness thinks most highly of you.

'You will go with us, said Tennyson.

'I'll escort you there, but I will not stay. He said the two of you. The two of you alone.