Project Pope

Forty-six

The tiny room was barren, a place of four walls carved from the rock, with the metallic plate set into the wall that faced the chairs on which they sat. The face formed slowly on the plate. For a time after it had formed, nothing happened, then the Pope said, 'I am pleased that you could come to see me.

'It pleases us, Your Holiness, to be here, said Jill.

'I have many advisers, said the Pope, 'and, at times, they give me much conflicting advice, so that often I am somewhat puzzled as to what counsel I should take. Now, if you are agreeable, I'd like to avail myself of somewhat different counsel. Generally, my advisers give me the benefit of robotic thinking. At times, over the years, there have been some humans, but not many of them and too many of them unwilling to freely express their inner thoughts.

I now have Ecuyer, of course, and while he is more valuable than many of the others, he has a tendency to think from a single viewpoint. He is so wrapped up in his Search Program…. 'He is a devoted man, said Tennyson.

'Yes, there's that, of course. May I ask you something? As humans, are you outraged by our calling this place Vatican? 'Not at all, said Jill.

'Do you happen to be Christians?

'That is a question we have discussed among ourselves, said Jill.

'We are not certain exactly what we are. The two of us happen to have Christian roots. Which is no more than to say that our culture is not Jewish or Moslem or any other of the many faiths developed by mankind.

'We are not the Vatican, of course, said the Pope. 'Not even a Vatican. We term ourselves Vatican-17, although the numeral is very seldom used. I suspect that at the time this establishment was built, there may have been sixteen other Vaticans, scattered through as many solar systems settled by humankind, although as to that I cannot be positive. I suspect as well that the Old Earth Vatican is still the premier Vatican, if that is the correct way of saying it, and all the others that now exist are subsidiaries, if, again, that is the correct terminology. The subsidiary Vaticans undoubtedly would have had the right to use the name. We did not even ask. If we were to establish ourselves today, I doubt we'd use the name. If I were constructed today, I am certain I would not be termed a pope. When this Vatican and I were built, the robots were fresh from Earth, still starry-eyed and filled with the wonder of the great religions there, especially impressed by the majesty and the tradition of the Catholic faith. Thus, this place became Vatican and I became a pope. You would get objection to what I've told you from many functionaries of this Vatican. There are many who still regard this as a holy place and a holy venture. The terms were used out of the great respect and perhaps even a love of Old Earth Christianity. Despite the fact our founders were denied the privilege of becoming communicants, they still held their love of the ancient faith.

'We understand all that, said Tennyson. 'We can understand the robots' reason for the use of the terminology — and sympathize with it.

'As a pope, said His Holiness, 'I am supposed to be infallible. I am supposed to know all answers. This community looks to me for guidance. As a sophisticated computer, I am equipped to work out long-range answers; on the short range, more often than not, I find myself fumbling. Ask me for an answer that may be valid ten thousand years from now and, given time, I can come up with the good approximation. Ask me for a decision about tomorrow and I am as uncertain as the next one. You can see my problem?

'Yes, we can, said Jill.

'The one thing that confuses me the most, said His Holiness, 'is this matter of faith. Throughout this galaxy and, undoubtedly, throughout the universe, many different peoples have developed many types of faith, based on widely varying concepts and various kinds of deities. This may seem to you to be a strange way for a pope to talk.

'We are listening, said Tennyson. 'Most attentively.

'It is true, as I have said, that throughout the universe there are many kinds of faiths. For sheer diversity, however, no planet that I know of can exceed Earth in the number of its faiths. How many separate faiths would you say that Earth might have?

'I have never taken the time to count them up, said Jill. 'Even if I tried, I imagine I'd leave out a number that were purely local. But there are a lot of them.

'And none agreeing. Each of them arguing, even to the death, that theirs is the one and only faith. There was a time in Earth's history, continuing for centuries, that men of different faiths slaughtered one another to prove their faith was best. A faith based on the letting of blood. Does this seem right to you? To what would you attribute it?

'To the madness of mankind, said Tennyson. 'In many ways we are a vicious race.

'And yet one that is deeply loved by robots. Your people created my people. Out of your minds and skills our people sprang. Out of you came us. You created and developed us. For this reason, if for no other, there must be great good in you. There must be in you an overflowing measure of nobility and love.

'Your Holiness, our philosophers for years have asked the questions you are asking, said Tennyson. 'They are not new to us.

'Then what about this matter of faith? You know the problem that Vatican is facing. As a derivative of a robot, which is a derivative of a human, I am asking you. I do not promise I will accept your advice; I have many factors to consider, but I do need to know how you think about it. That is why I asked you here, alone, unaccompanied by your friend the cardinal. Come on, speak up. Tell me what's in your mind. I ask you as two valued friends.

'We did not come here first as friends, said Tennyson. 'Jill came as a writer who wished to tell your story to the galaxy and you were extremely wroth at that. I came as a man fleeing human justice, and while I was given sanctuary, I was tolerated only as a physician, which you needed since your doctor had been killed.

'But since then you both have proved to us that you are friends, said the Pope. 'You have become identified with Vatican. There was a time when you resented our implied threat that we would not let you leave; now we would be hard put to drive you off. What have you found in Vatican that brings this change of heart?

'I am not sure that I can tell you, said Tennyson.

And yet, he thought, perhaps he could. How, he thought, can I count the ways?

'The quietness of it, said Jill. 'The quiet way of living and the quietness of the dedication. Although I sense now that the quietness of the dedication is beginning to break up. The little clinic garden, the fields of grain, the mountains…

'I had the impression, said Tennyson, 'that you did not care for mountains.

'I do now. I saw them just the other day. I saw them, Jason, as you have been seeing them.

'Back in the medieval days of Earth, Tennyson told the Pope, 'there were many monasteries. Men withdrew to them, spent their lives in them, living Christian lives under Christian rule. They would have told you, had you asked them, that they did it for the love of Christ, that this was their way of serving Christ. I am inclined to think that, deep down, they used the monasteries as refuges against the brutal times. There they found a world of peace and quiet. Which did not make them any less devout, but, without their realizing it, their devotion had less to do with their being there than they might have thought. I think that's what you have here, what I've found here — a refuge from the turbulence of a contending galaxy.

'And that, said the Pope, 'is what we wish it to remain. A quiet place in which to go about our work. But the question is: What should be our work?

'If you are asking me if you should follow faith or knowledge, I'd say knowledge, for it seems to me faith will come out of knowledge, not knowledge out of faith. But that is personal opinion. Ask a dozen, or a hundred, other humans, not including the indoctrinated humans on End of Nothing, and you would get different answers. Some of them would give my answer, others would plump for faith. Maybe the answer is that there can be no true answer any more than there may be true faith.

'And a true knowledge?

'I think that somewhere there must be. I know I'll never know it; I'm not certain you will ever find it.

'Perhaps, said His Holiness, 'our good robots miscalculated in my construction. Perhaps they failed to instill in me the piety that they felt within themselves. But I am inclined to agree with you. If, however, I make such a decision, Vatican will be torn apart. There'll be contentious arguing for years, and not all of Vatican would follow my decision — which would not do much for the image of the Pope. And whether you may think so or not, the image of the Pope is important to every one of us.

Neither of the humans answered him.

'You humans feel both love and hate, said the Pope. 'I can feel neither of them. I think that's one up for me and my fellow robots. You have your dreams and I have mine, but my dream cannot be identical with yours. You have the arts — music, painting, literature — and while I am aware of these, while I recognize the function that they serve and the pleasure to be gotten from them, I cannot respond to them.

'Holiness, said Jill, 'faith itself may be an art.

'I do not doubt it, said the Pope. 'You may have put your finger on an important consideration. Yet you cannot say that robots are lacking in their faith and their hunger for the faith. It was that hunger which built Vatican and has carried us through a thousand years of searching for a more perfect faith. Could it be that there are many varieties, not of faiths, but of perfect faiths, of truthful and solid faiths?

'There may appear to be, said Tennyson, 'but in the last analysis, I am certain there will be one faith, one faith alone that thinking creatures can accept. There'll be one true faith as there will be one full truth — a final faith and a final truth. I would not be surprised if the two should prove the same, the faith and the truth.

'And this is why you believe we should follow truth, that it provides a better and an easier road to faith than to seek for faith alone?

'I think so, said Tennyson. 'Searching for truth you will have some guidelines. Faith is very short of solid guidelines.

'I have stowed within me so vast a reservoir of knowledge, said the Pope, 'furnished by the Listeners through the centuries, that at times I scarcely know where to turn. I must seek frantically through my dustbin of knowledge, hunting for that single bit of information that might fit into a puzzle to which I seek solution. There are many puzzles, and simultaneously I must seek the many bits of knowledge that possibly will give form and substance to the many puzzles. Even while I am doing this, I am haunted by the thought that perhaps the required bits of knowledge for which I seek have not as yet been found by the Listeners. They range far and endlessly and yet they have made only the barest scratch upon the knowledge of the universe.

'Which means' said Tennyson 'that you must keep the Listeners to their tasks. Tomorrow one of them may find one of those bits of knowledge that you need, or it may require a hundred years to find it, or a thousand, but if the Listeners do not continue going out into the universe, it never will be found.

'I know, the Pope said. 'I know. And yet there are those who say, with knowing smirks on their metallic faces, that I do not exist in the real world, that in my isolation, imprisoned in the stone of these mountains, I no longer am in touch with reality. I do not think this is true, but I cannot make them understand. I think this real world they talk about is a provincial world, that it is bounded by the areas they know and the peculiar conditions that exist there. What is the real world on End of Nothing and in Vatican would not be the real world on a planet halfway across the galaxy, or even in a planet that was next door to us. Our limited senses, which restrict our understanding and make it limited as well, fence us in against the reality of the universe. I think that I, rather than they, exist in a world much more real than theirs.

'I've outgrown them, said the Pope. 'That's what has happened. I have grown beyond them. But that is what they wanted. When they constructed me, they sought infallibility, like the Pope on Earth. But I've outgrown them and disappointed them. Infallibility on a single planet and in the universe are two different things.