Project Pope

Forty-eight

Enoch Cardinal Theodosius walked the clinic garden. There was no one there, not even the ancient caretaker, John. There were few stars to relieve the blackness of the sky, a dozen at most, but widely separated, and here and there the faint luminosities of distant galaxies, fairy hints of myriad worlds very far away. Above the eastern horizon hung the frosty glitter of the Milky Way, the home galaxy, and the dim shimmering specks that were a few of the globular clusters that hung above the galaxy.

The cardinal's feet crunched on the brick pavement as he paced slowly along the walks, his hands clasped behind his back and his head bowed low in thought.

We can be wrong, he thought. We were wrong about the Old Ones and we can be wrong about other things as well. Simply because we believe a thing is so does not mean it's so.

For years we had thought the Old Ones were fierce carnivores. We thought of them as bloodthirsty lurkers in the forest; to meet one of them was death. Jealous of their forests and their world, keeping watch on us, keeping us penned in. And yet one of them brought in Decker, dead, and Hubert, dead as well — he brought them home to us and laid them on the stone before the basilica and straightened their limbs when he put them down so that they lay there in all decency.

And he spoke, saying the Old Ones were wardens and there could be no senseless killings, warning us against further senseless killings.

Wardens? Theodosius asked himself. Wardens of this world? More than likely, he told himself, wardens of this world. All these years watching us and not interfering, perhaps not interfering because we somehow managed to be decent tenants of this world of theirs.

Watching us, studying us far more closely than we knew, for they know our language. Knowing how to talk, hut never talking to us, perhaps because until this moment there had been no need to talk. Talking to us with some effort, perhaps not the way they talk among themselves. Adapting their way to our way because they knew we could not adapt to theirs.

We have lived these thousand years on End of Nothing by their sufferance. They have let us go our way and have made no move against us except for the killing of the humans, which served to reinforce our conception of them as dangerous beasts. But killing the humans only because the humans had set out to kill them. In such a light, their actions can be understood. Humans, even robots, would not hesitate to kill someone who came to them in violence, seeking their death.

There had been stories that the Old Ones could talk in the human tongue, but that had been no more than a part of that myth which had been built around them. Had some human or some robot talked with them? he wondered. He shook his head, doubting it. It was just part of the chimney-corner story that had evolved about them. When a myth is manufactured, there always was the chance that some small part of it might turn out to be true.

The waste of it, he thought, the shameful waste of it. All these years the Old Ones had stood out there as potential friends, as people worth knowing, as people who might have had some impact upon our lives and we, perhaps, on theirs. Certainly when anyone settled on a planet, he should know the wardens of it. So few other planets had wardens; perhaps none at all. So in this sense, End of Nothing would be unique, and we should have known how unique it is. It might have made a difference if we had.

The Old One had brought Decker and Hubert home — and why had Hubert done the deed — why had he killed Decker? Tennyson seemed to have no doubt that Hubert had been the transgressor in the killings. That Hubert had been acting for the theologians was a strong possibility, although now Theodosius found himself reluctant to admit it. That was strange, he thought. He had found no reluctance in believing it had been the theologians who had stolen the Heaven cubes, but theft and killing were two different things, not to be equated. How could a robot, he asked himself, bring himself to kill a human — Decker or any other human? One robot, perhaps, one brain-twisted, deranged robot, but in the Decker killing, if Hubert had killed for the theologians, more than one robot was involved. More than likely a fairly large group — just how many he could not even guess. The thought shook him, that a large group of desperate robots should employ such means to implement their policy. He felt within himself an unaccustomed sense of anger and an unaccustomed fear and the two of them, the anger and the fear, warred with one another.

Tennyson had told him, briefly and in no detail, that there had been a possibility Decker might have held Heaven information and that it was because of this that Decker had been slain. But Decker was a newcomer to End of Nothing, and much as he might admire and even like the man, the cardinal found in himself an unwillingness to accept Tennyson's appraisal of the situation at face value. For Tennyson likewise was a newcomer to Vatican. Tennyson had been a friend of Decker, perhaps the only friend the man had in all of End of Nothing. Decker may have told him, or hinted, that he knew something of Heaven, but how much reliance could be put on Decker's word? The man had been an enigma, popping out of nowhere. He had not arrived aboard the Wayfarer; Vatican, early on, had made sure of that. Barring the Wayfarer, how could he have arrived? He himself had given no evidence. He had made no friends until Tennyson arrived. He had talked with few; in all his talk he had offered no explanation of himself. There was, Theodosius told himself, something strange about the man.

Yet we have been wrong about the Old Ones, he thought; could we be wrong with Decker, too? In how many ways have we been wrong?

We came here, all the centuries ago, to find that thing the theologians now insist we must look the harder for, striving toward that greater and that truer faith. That was our original intent, that was why we abandoned Earth and now we find ourselves at cross-purposes as to how to go about it. In all truth, he asked himself, have we drifted so far from that original intent? Are we tinged, without admitting it openly, with the materialistic ethics of the humans who built us and trained us and guided us and formed us in their image, not only in the image of their bodies but likewise the image of their minds? And who, having done this, used us unmercifully. Yes, he said, talking to himself, they did use us unmercifully, but despite the lack of mercy, always with an innate kindness. They did this because, deep within themselves, they knew, along with us, that the two of us were brothers, that we were no more, and no less, than extensions of themselves. Looking at us, they saw themselves, and looking at them, we also see ourselves. So we are, in all truth, one race. What we do here in our work, at any time they ask, we will share with them. We go to great care to shield ourselves from the galaxy, but not from the humans in the galaxy. From others in the galaxy, but not the humans who are there. We would give the humans willingly all that we have found, and they, scattered as they are, would share what they have with us. So it is no great wonder that we may find ourselves smeared with their materialism, which in itself is no bad thing, either, for if there had been no materialism in them, if they had not reached hard and far to better their condition, they would, even now, be no more than another species of mammals, sharing their home planet with many other mammals. In such a case, there would have been no robots and no Vatican.

If this is true, he thought, then in our materialism we have been guilty of no sin, as the theologians tell us we have been — unless the original sin of which we hear so much was, in all truth, this same materialism. But it could not have been, for if our brother humans had not attempted to better their condition, they never would have reached the mental capacity to conceive that great religion we admire so much. They still would be worshiping, if they worshiped at all, some nonsense spirit represented by an awkward structure formed of mud and sticks and bones, crouching in their caves against an unreasoned fear of dark, gibbering of omens.

Our human brothers stumbled many times along their way, they followed fearfully and uncertainly that three-million-year-long road — and here we have stumbled along, as bumbling as they, as uncertain as they, for no more than a thousand years. If, at this juncture of our venture and our purpose, we should stumble badly, commit a great mistake, we have done no more than they did many times before and, as was the case with them, we will recover from it.

The task that we must do, that we must work toward with all our strength and faith, is to make sure that Vatican survives, that the structure we built still will stand in place so that, even if we stumble, we can pick ourselves up and go ahead, finally steady to our purpose.

I am aware that many of the humans of Vatican and End of Nothing view with some disdain our robotic inclination to take the long view, to think of a century as nothing, even of a millennium as inconsequential, if such wasting of time (as they term it) will enable us to pick up and carry on.

He halted his walking and stood upon the brick-paved path, lifting his bowed head to stare toward the east, to where the brittle glitter of the Milky Way, so distant from him, yet to which he was so closely tied, the home of Man, shimmered in the sky.

Out there, toward the east, somewhere in those tangled hills above Decker's cabin, he had been told, was a place that was frequented by an Old One. Perhaps the one who had brought Decker home. Perhaps one that had been watching over Decker. Why should one of them, he wondered, watch principally over Decker?

Perhaps, he told himself, it would be only proper for someone from Vatican, perhaps himself, to go out to talk with Decker's Old One. It would be no more than simple courtesy to return a visit.