Project Pope

Fifty-six

'I don't know, said Jill. 'This Decker person…

Tennyson put a finger to his lips, cautioning her. She looked about the room. There was nothing there. Decker had left and they were alone.

'I wonder where Whisperer went, said Tennyson. 'It's unlike him to desert us.

'Maybe he found old friends, said Jill. 'Decker said there are Dusters here. He may be hobnobbing with them.

'I wish he would come back, said Tennyson. 'We should talk with him.

'So you feel it, too.

'Yes, Jill, I feel it too.

They sat together on the sofa, looking about the room. It had familiar furniture. The carpeting was all right. The paintings on the wall had a familiar look to them. The room could have been transported back to Vatican and it would not have seemed out of place: it would have seemed all right. But despite this, there was a haunting, a frightening sense of alienness.

Tennyson reached out a hand and Jill took it. They sat side by side, holding hands, like two apprehensive children, alert and unsure of themselves, stiff and stark against the menace of a haunted house.

Jill began to speak, but Tennyson tightened his hand on hers and she gulped and said nothing.

Then: 'Jason, Whisperer is here. He's come back to us.

— Whisperer? asked Tennyson.

— I am here, said Whisperer. I'm sorry that I left you. But I found Dusters. There are Dusters here.

— Whisperer, come to us, said Jill. We should talk among ourselves.

Whisperer came to them. They sensed him in their minds.

— We think there is something wrong, said Jill. Decker isn't right.

— I wasn't sure that you noticed it, said Tennyson. But then, I was the one who knew Decker back at Vatican. He is not my Decker. How about you, Whisperer?

— He is not the Decker that I knew, said Whisperer. A Decker, but a different Decker.

— He lied to us, said Jill. He said he had not known of Mary until we told him. And that makes no sense. This place, this Center, is sensitive on the matter of security. Mary tried twice to sneak in on them, not knowing she was sneaking in, of course. Just doing her job. They might have missed her the first time, but they must have known about her the second time, for they employed their psychological defense system to drive her away. Not knowing what she was, for no one would be afraid of Mary.

— They probably picked up some data on her, said Tennyson. Maybe not too much. Not satisfactory data, for they were dealing with whatever a Listener is when it goes out to another place. But you are right, Jill. They knew about her and I'm sure they got something. Whatever they got, they must be very puzzled with it and, from my judgment of Decker's position here, he certainly must have known about it.

— Did we tell Decker too much, Jason? Did we tell him more than we should have?

— Maybe. I don't know. We had to tell him something. Maybe we did tell him too much at first. It was a while before I sensed the wrongness in him. The word 'sensed' is right, for it was only that. He held up well otherwise, but there was a wrongness to him. Something that was not the old Decker. Can you remember all we told him?

— I can remember best what we didn't tell him. We never mentioned the robots. So far as he knows, Vatican is a human institution. We never mentioned the religious angle. We never explained why the name Vatican was used. We did not tell him that Mary thought she had found Heaven. So far as he is concerned, he does not know that Vatican is anything other than a research center like this one.

— Even so, said Whisperer, it shook him up. I think it shook this Center up. It must be a shock to know there is another Center in the galaxy.

— Do you happen to know asked Tennyson, if we really penetrated this Center without their knowing it — not knowing until we were actually here?

— I am sure we did, said Whisperer.

— Once we got here, though, said Jill, they must have known. They must have all sorts of sensors out, tuned to pick up any kind of life. In any case, the first worm would have reported us.

— That's what worries me the most, said Tennyson. There is no doubt they took pictures of us — whatever you call the kind of pictures that they take. They must have data on all of us, maybe even Whisperer. By now they may have recreated another Jill and Jason, other equation people, recreated from the data.

— Could they be listening to us now? asked Jill.

— I think not, said Whisperer.

— But there are Dusters here. They know how Dusters operate.

— There are a few here now said Whisperer. At times there are none at all. My people are not a part of Center. They drift in and out. They keep a check on Center, checking back on occasion to learn what has been found, if there's anything here that they can use. And so far as recreating one of us, I doubt that they could do it. We are, after all, little more than a mass of molecules and atoms.

— You mean the Dusters are using this place?

— Well, yes, you might say they are. There has been no cooperation. My people are scattered very far.

— I put too much faith in this Decker to start with, said Tennyson. I was glad to see him. Like meeting an old friend in an unexpected place. I was blinded by my memory of the first Decker. I may have been too open. I may have said too much. It was too late to unsay it when I began to feel that he was a different man. There was a different texture to him. He was too smooth. The old Decker was never smooth. Decker II lied several times — I am sure he did. He lied about never having heard of Mary until we told him. He lied about his own data lying around for a hundred years before he was recreated. I am convinced the Bubblies would have processed his data immediately. They would have wanted to find out what it was that had come tearing down out of space straight toward them.

— You can understand the differences that are in him, said Jill. He has been subjected for at least a century — more than likely two centuries — to the influences of this place. He has come to identify with it. He accepts its viewpoints and absorbed its philosophy, if it has a philosophy and I assume it must. He seems to have it good, has made a place for himself. He is part — a triad, is it? — with this Bubbly he calls Smoky. He and Haystack. Decker II is not the same man he was. He has changed. He probably had to change to survive. You can't blame him too much. He did what he had to do. And this is not like the old Decker at all — not like the man you described to me, Jason. Your Decker never conformed, never even tried to conform. He didn't give a damn. He lived his own life, the way he wanted it, with no notice of what others might be doing.

— You said a triad, said Whisperer. That means three, doesn't it?

— Yes, it means three.

— There are more than three, said Whisperer. There are four.

— Four?

— There is Plopper.

— Plopper? You mean that thing that was jumping all around?

— That is the one I mean. He is part of Haystack and Decker and the Bubbly.

— Well, I'll be damned, said Tennyson. How do you know this?

— I know. I know not how. But the Bubbly and the Plopper are very closely related.

— Let's try to sum it up, said Tennyson. We are here. We found this place and it is not Heaven. We should be getting back to Vatican with the word it isn't Heaven. But how can we prove it isn't Heaven? We can't just say it isn't. No one would believe us. And we haven't much time to hunt around for proof.

— We should be leaving now, said Jill. Whisperer, could you take us home?

— I can take you home.

— How about the equation folk?

— No need to worry about them. They can find their way back. If they want to go.

— You think they may not want to go? Oh, yes, I see what you mean. They were put away in an old folks' home and now they've broken free of it…

— So we have only ourselves to think of, said Tennyson. What worries me is how much time we may have to try to pick up proof and how much danger we may be in by waiting. Once the Bubblies recreate the new Jill and the new me, they might just put an end to us. They could use the new ones of us to try to weasel their way into Vatican.

— Why do we feel this way? asked Jill. Here we are assigning the Bubblies an adversary role. Maybe it won't turn out that way at all. This Center and Vatican are engaged in the same activity. They might want to be cooperative. They might want to join in with Vatican…

— Which is the last thing Vatican would want.

— I can't help it, said Jill. I think the same way you do — that the chance is they are adversaries. But we can't be sure of that.

— For one thing, said Tennyson, Decker showed far too much interest in the Listeners. He asked a lot of questions. In their data-gathering capability, Vatican is light-years ahead of this place. This gang would dearly love to get their hands on the Listeners.

— But they must have known about Vatican long before we came here. Remember the Theodosius memo. A survey party of the Bubblies did visit Vatican.

— Yes I know, I have been wondering about that. Also what Decker said about the data piling up. A Bubbly survey sweep might take centuries, might cover a lot of planets. They'd come back with tons of data. They'd be forced to pick and choose. They'd study only what seemed the most important. Maybe the Vatican data is still in the files untouched. Vatican's not too spectacular. It might not have made much of an impression. Perhaps the Bubblies never had run across robots before, would not even guess at their capabilities. So far as we know, the human made robots are the only ones in the galaxy. To the Bubblies, a robot might seem to be nothing but a lump, a chunk of metal, a machine. They stayed only a few minutes, not much more than a fly-over. Remember what that memo written by Theodosius said — that the one he saw clearly looked down upon him with enormous disdain.

— Theodosius couldn't be sure of that. It was only his impression.

— I'm not certain of that. A robot cardinal can be pretty damn discerning.

— Well maybe so, said Jill. I hope you're right.

— Do you now, asked Whisperer, wish to go back home? I am ready to transport you there. I'd not mind going back myself.

— We can't, said Tennyson. We simply must have proof. Otherwise, all this will have been for nothing. What we must have is some sort of iron-clad proof.

— You endanger yourselves, warned Whisperer. I know of danger in this place.

— I wish we could pin down, said Tennyson, some idea of what this place is all about. Decker called it a study center, and I'm inclined to believe it is. But the motive is the thing. Most research centers — human research centers, that is — are aimed at knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone. In Vatican, the acquisition of knowledge is aimed at the acquisition of a faith, in the belief that faith will come through knowledge. Another motive might be power, using knowledge as a power base. I fear that this may be the motive here. Decker spoke of a move to extend this Center's research to nearby galaxies. Could this be a reaching out for power — for power rather than knowledge?

— It could be, said Jill, but the exercise of power must presuppose a political organization. Does this place operate politically?

— There's no way we can know, said Tennyson. We haven't the time to find out.

— I know, said Jill. I know what we could take back as proof. One of the worms. If we took back a worm, the theologians would have to agree that this is not Heaven. There are no worms in Heaven. There simply could not be.

— I sorrow to tell you this, said Whisperer, but I cannot transport one of the worms. There would be too much mass for me to handle. I do not have the energy.

— Now that we know where Heaven is, said Jill, could we send out other Listeners? They could bring back proof imprinted on their cubes.

— It wouldn't work, said Tennyson. It may be the Bubblies missed Mary the first time. She came and saw Heaven and was so impressed and captivated by what she saw — or by what she thought she saw — that she returned a second time. She only caught a glimpse of it that first time. The second time she tried to enter Heaven, perhaps intent, as we are now, to bring back proof of it. The second time this place knew that she was there and they scared her off. But now that they know of the Listeners, another Listener wouldn't have a chance.

— If we, said Jill, could only take back a cube.

— We can't, said Tennyson. We aren't Listeners.

— They let us in, said Jill. They must have let us in. They could have stopped us or driven us off as they drove off Mary.

— In that you're wrong, said Whisperer. The equation people do not operate as the Listeners operate. The equation people did get us here without detection. We were here before Center knew of us. Having done it once, however, I'm not sure we could do it a second time. The people here, now aware of the chink in their defenses, will take steps to insure it won't come about a second time.

— So that's it, said Tennyson. There is no way we can come again. There is nothing we can take back as proof. Our word is all we have, and that will not be accepted by the theologians. No matter what we might take back, they could always say it was something we'd picked up along the way.

— Do you mean to say, Jill asked, that we have made this trip for nothing?

What was the answer to that? Tennyson asked himself. Could what little they had to tell give Theodosius and those who supported him the resolve to fight a little longer? Would what they had to say give the theologians some pause, stave off a little longer their take-over of Vatican and the Search Program? There was, he told himself, a bare chance that it might, but more than likely not for long — at best a short breathing spell.

Why, he wondered, had he (or Jill) not been able to foresee this situation? They had talked about it, of course — the necessity of returning from Heaven with some proof, one way or another. But they had given no adequate thought to what such proof must be. Why had they not realized the near impossibility of obtaining unquestioned proof?

If they only had more time, they could work it out. It seemed, however, that they had little time. There was a danger here, a danger that he could not define, but a danger that every fiber of his being insisted that they faced. And Whisperer agreed.

Failure, he thought. They had accomplished their mission and still they faced failure.

What the hell could he do, or Jill, or the two of them together? One thing, he knew, they could not do. They could not turn tail and run, not for a while at least.

— If we could only get word back to Theodosius, said Jill. Word that we are here and it isn't Heaven.

— I can take back word, said Whisperer.

— But who could you tell it to? There is no one on End of Nothing you can talk with. Not Theodosius, not Ecuyer….

— There are the Old Ones, said Whisperer. I can talk with them. The Old One above Decker's cabin could take the message to Theodosius.

— But we need you here.

— It would only take a while.

— No, said Tennyson, we do not want you to leave, even for a while. We might have great need of you.

— Then I can send another Duster. One of my flock brothers would carry the message for me. I told you, didn't I, that there are Dusters here?

— Yes, you did, said Jill.

— Then not to worry, said Whisperer. I'll ask one of them.