To Open the Sky

one

Mars Monotrack One, the main line, ran from east to west like a girdle of concrete flanking the planet’s western hemisphere. To the north lay the Lake District with its fertile fields; to the south, closer to the equator, was the belt of throbbing compressor stations that had done so much to foster the miracle. The discerning eye could still make out the old craters and gouges of the landscape, hidden now under a dusting of sawtooth grass and occasional forests of pine.

The gray concrete pylons of the monotrack marched to the horizon. Spurs carried the line to the settlements of the outlands, and they were always adding new spurs as the new settlements sprouted. Logistically, it might have been simpler to have all the Martians live in One Big City, but the Martians were not that sort of people.

Spur 7Y was being added now, advancing in ungainly bounds toward the new outpost of Beltran Lakes. Already the pylon foundations had gone up three-quarters of the way from Mono One to the settlement; a vast pylon-layer was working its way through the countryside, gobbling up sand from ten yards down and spewing out concrete slabs that it stapled into the ground. Gobble, spew, staple, and move on—gobble, spew, staple. The machine moved rapidly, guided by a neatly homeostatic brain that kept it on course. Behind it came the other machines to lay track between the pylons and string the utility lines that would follow the same route. The Martian settlers had many miracles at their command, but microwave kickover of usable electric power wasn’t one of them—not yet—and so the lines had to get strung from place to place even as in the Middle Ages.

The monotrack system was intended for heavy-duty transportation. The Martians used quickboats, like everybody else, for getting themselves from place to place. But the slim little vehicles weren’t much use in the shipment of construction materials, and this was a planet under construction. Now that the reconstruction phase was over. The Terraformers were gone. Mars was a bosky dell, here in this year of grace 2152, and now the task was to plant a civilization on the finally hospitable planet. The Martians numbered in the millions. They had passed their frontiersman stage and were settling down to enjoy the pleasures of a good commercial boom. And the monotrack marched on, mile after mile, skirting the seas, rimming the lakes and rivers.

The dogwork was done by clever machines. Men rode herd on the machinery, though. You never could tell when the homeostasis would slip ever so slightly and your pylon-layer would go berserk. It had happened a few years ago, and somehow the cutoff relays had been blanked out of the circuit, and before anyone could do anything there were sixteen miles of pylons criss-crossing Holliman Lake—eight hundred feet under water. Martians hate wastefulness. The machines had shown that they were not entirely trustworthy, and thereafter they were watched.

Watching over the construction of this particular spur of Monotrack One was a lean, sun-bronzed man of sixty-eight named Paul Weiner, who had good political connections, and a plump red-haired man named Hadley Donovan, who did not. Redheads were rare on Mars for the usual statistical reasons; plump men were rare, too, but not so rare as they once had been. Life was softer these days, and so were the younger Martians. Hadley Donovan was amused by the antics of his gun-toting elders, with their formal etiquette, their theatrically taut bodies, their sense of high personal importance. Perhaps it bad been necessary to wear those poses in the pioneer days on Mars, Donovan thought, but all that had been over for thirty years. He had allowed himself the luxury of a modest paunch. He knew that Paul Weiner felt contempt for him.

The feeling was mutual.

The two men sat side by side in a landcrawler, edging through the roadless landscape twenty miles ahead of the pylon-laying rig. Transponders bleeped at appropriate intervals; on the control board in front of them, colors came and went in an evanescent flow. Weiner was supposed to be monitoring the doings of the construction rig behind them; Donovan was checking out the planned route of the track, hunting for pockets of subsurface mushiness that the pylon-builder would not be clever enough to evaluate.

Donovan was trying to do both jobs at once. He didn’t dare let a political appointee like Weiner have any real responsibility in the work. Weiner was the nephew of Nat Weiner, who stood high in ruling councils, was a hundred-and-some years old, and went to Earth every few years to have the Vorsters pluck out his pancreas or his kidneys or his carotid arteries and implant handy artificial substitutes. Nat Weiner was going to live forever, probably, and he was gradually filling the entire civil service up with members of his family, and Hadley Donovan, trying to oversee a job that really required two men’s full attention, felt vague desperation as he scanned his own board and covertly glanced over at Weiner’s every thirty seconds or so.

Something was glowing purple on the Anomaly Screen. Donovan wondered about it, but he was too busy with his own part of the job to mention it, and then Weiner was drawling, “I got something peculiar over here, Donovan. What do you make of it, Freeman?”

Donovan kicked the crawler to a halt and studied the board. “Underground rock vault, looks like. Three—four miles off the track.”

“Think we ought to take a look?”

“Why bother?” Donovan asked. “The track won’t come anywhere near it.”

“You aren’t curious? Might be a treasure vault left by the Old Martians.”

Donovan didn’t dignify that with a reply.

“What do you think it is, then?” Weiner asked. “Maybe it’s a cave carved by an underground stream. You think so? All that subsurface water Mars had before they Terraformed it? Rivers flowing under the desert?”

Feeling the needles, Donovan said, “It’s probably just a crawl-space left by the Terraforming engineers. I don’t see why—oh, hell. All right. Let’s go investigate. Shut the whole project down for half an hour. What do I care?”

He began throwing switches.

It was a foolish, pointless interruption, but the older man’s curiosity had to be satisfied. Treasure cave! Underground stream! Donovan had to admit that he couldn’t think of any rational reason why there’d be such a pocket of open space underground here. Geologically, it didn’t make much sense.

They cut across to it. It turned out to be about twenty feet down, with undisturbed-looking grass growing above it. Some close-range pinging confirmed that the vault was about ten feet long, a dozen feet wide, eight or nine feet deep. Donovan was convinced that it had been left by the Terraformers, But it wasn’t on thc charts, at any rate. He summoned a dig-robot and put it to work.

In ten minutes the roof of the vault lay bare: a slab of green fusion-glass. Donovan shivered a little. Weiner said, “I think we got ourselves a grave here, you know?”

“Let’s leave it. This isn’t our business. We’ll report it and—”

“What do we have here?” Weiner asked, and slipped his hand into an opening. He seemed to be caressing something within. Quickly he drew his hand back as a yellow glow spread over the top of the vault.

A voice said, “May the blessing of eternal harmony be on you, friends. You have come to the temporary resting place of Lazarus. Qualified medical assistance will revive me. I ask your help. Please do not attempt to open this vault except with qualified medical assistance.”

Silence.

The voice said again, “May the blessing of eternal harmony be on you, friends. You have come to the temporary—”

‘A voice-cube,” Donovan murmured.

“Look!” Weiner gasped, and pointed to the clearing vault-roof. The glass, lit from below, was transparent now. Donovan peered down into a rectangular vault. A thin, hawk-faced man lay on his back in a nutrient bath, feed-lines connected to his limbs and trunk. It was something like a Nothing Chamber, but far more elaborate. The sleeper wore a smile. Arcane symbols were inscribed on the walls of the chamber. Donovan recognized them as Harmonist symbols. That Venusian cult He felt a stab of confusion. What had they stumbled on here? “The temporary resting place of Lazarus,” the voice-cube said. Lazarus was the prophet of the Harmonists. To Donovan, all of these religions were equally inane. He would have to report this discovery now, and there would be delay in the construction project, and he himself would be pushed unwantedly into prominence, and—And none of it would ever have happened if Weiner had been dozing off as usual. Why had he noticed the anomaly on the board? Why?

“‘We better tell somebody about this,” Weiner said. “I think it’s important.”

two

In a small jungle-fringed building on Venus, eight men who were not men faced a ninth. All wore the cyanotic blue skins of Venus, though only three had been born with those skins. The others were surgical products, Earthmen converted to Venusians. Not just their bodies had been converted, either. The six changed ones had all been Vorsters at one time in their spiritual development.

The Vorsters were the most powerful figures on Earth. But this was not Earth but Venus, and Venus was in the hands of the Harmonists, sometimes called the Lazarites after their martyred founder, David Lazarus. Lazarus, the prophet of Transcendent Harmony, had been put to death by Vorster underlings more than sixty years before. Now, to the consternation of his followers—“Brother Nicholas, may we have your report?” asked

Christopher Mondschein, the head of the Harmonists on Venus.

Nicholas Martell, a slender, dogged man in early middle age, stared at his eight colleagues wearily. In the past few days he had had little sleep and many profound jolts to his equilibrium. Martell had made the round trip to Mars to check on the astonishing report that had flashed to the three planets not long before.

He said, “It’s exactly as the news story had it. Two workmen coming upon a vault while supervising the construction of a monotrack spur.”

“You saw the vault?” asked Mondschein.

“I saw the vault. They’ve got it cordoned.”

“What about Lazarus?”

“There was a figure inside the vault. It matched the image of Lazarus in Rome. It resembled all the portraits. The vault’s a sort of Nothing Chamber, and the figure is hooked up inside. The Martian authorities have checked the circuitry of the vault and they say that it’s likely to blow sky-high if anybody tampers with it.”

“And the figure,” persisted a hollow-cheeked man named Emory. “The figure is Lazarus?”

“Looks like Lazarus,” Martell said. “You must remember I never saw Lazarus in the flesh. I wasn’t born yet when he died. If he died.”

“Don’t say that” Emory snapped. “This is a hoax. Lazarus died, all right. He was fed to the converter. There’s nothing left of him but loose protons and electrons and neutrons.”

“So it says in our Scripture,” declared Mondschein warily. He closed his eyes a moment. He was the oldest man present; he had been on Venus almost sixty years and had built this branch of the movement to its present dominant position. He said, “There is always the possibility that our text is corrupt.”

“No!” The outburst came from Emory, young and conservative. “How can you say that?”

Mondschein shrugged. “The early years of our movement Brother, are shrouded in doubt. We know there was a Lazarus, that he worked with Vorst at Santa Fe, that he quarreled with Vorst over procedure and was assassinated, or at least put out of the way. But all that was a long time ago. There’s no one left in the movement who was directly associated with Lazarus. We aren’t as long-lived as the Vorsters, you know. So if it happened that Lazarus wasn’t stuffed into a converter, but was simply carried off to Mars in suspended animation and plugged into a Nothing Chamber for sixty or seventy years—”

There was silence in the room. Martell gave Mondschein a sidelong glance of distress. It was Emory who finally said, “What if he’s revived and claims to be Lazarus? What happens to the movement?”

Mondschein replied, “We’ll face that when we get to it. According to Brother Nicholas, there seems to be some doubt as to whether the vault can be opened at all.”

“That’s correct,” Martell said. “If it’s wired to explode when tampered with—”

“Let’s hope it is,” put in Brother Ward, who had not spoken. “For our purposes, the best Lazarus is a martyred Lazarus. We can keep the tomb as a shrine, and send pilgrimages there, and perhaps get the Martians interested. But if he comes back to life and begins to upset things—”

“What is in that vault is not Lazarus,” Emory said.

Mondachein stared at him in amazement. Emory seemed ready to crack apart.

“Perhaps you’d better rest awhile,” Mondschein suggested… “You’re taking this much too much to heart.”

Marten said, “It’s a disturbing business, Christopher. If you had seen that figure in the vault—he looks so angelic so confident of resurrection

Emory groaned. Mondschein furrowed his brow a moment, and in response the door opened and one of the native Venusians entered, one of the espers the Harmonists had been collecting so long on Venus.

“Brother Emory is tired, Neerol,” Mondschein said. The Venusian nodded. His hand closed on Emory’s wrist, dark purple against deep indigo. A nexus formed; there was a momentary neural flow; sluices opened somewhere within Emory’s brain. Emory relaxed. The Venusian led him from the room.

Mondschein looked around at the others. “We have to operate under the assumption,” he said, “that the genuine body of David Lazarus has turned up on Mars, that our book is in error about his fate, and that there’s at least the possibility that the body in that vault can be brought to life. The question is. how are we going to react?”

Martell, who had seen the vault and who would never be quite the same, said, “You know I’ve always been skeptical of the charismatic value of the Lazarus story. But I see this as operating to our advantage. If we can gain possession of the vault and make it the symbolic center of our movement—something to capture the public imagination—”

“Exactly,” Ward said. “It’s always been our big selling point that we’ve got a mythos. The competition’s got Vorst and his medical miracles, Santa Fe and all that, but nothing to stir the heart. We’ve had the martyrdom of Lazarus, and it’s helped us take control of Venus, which the Vorsters never were able to do. And now, with Lazarus himself come forth from the dead—”

“You miss the point,” said Mondschein thinly. “What turned up on Mars doesn’t tally with the myth. Lazarus isn’t supposed to be resurrected in the flesh. He was blasted to atoms. Suppose archaeologists found that Christ had really been beheaded, not crucified? Suppose it came to light that Mohammed never set foot in Mecca? We’ve been caught with our mythology askew—if this is really Lazarus. It could destroy us. It could wreck all we’ve built.”

three

Thirty miles from the quaint old city of Santa Fe, the sprawling laboratories of the Noel Vorst Center for the Biological Sciences rose within a ring of dark mountains. Here surgeons transformed living creatures into alien flesh. Here technicians laboriously manipulated genes. Here families of espers submitted to an endless round of experiments, and bionics men prodded their subjects mercilessly toward a new realm of existence. The Center was a mighty machine, bristling with purposefulness.

Inconceivably old men were at the heart of the machine.

The core of the movement was the domed building near the main auditorium, where Noel Vorst lived when at Santa Fe. Vorst, the Founder, acknowledged more than a century and a quarter of life. There were those who said that he was dead, that the Vorst who occasionally appeared at the chapels of the Brotherhood was a robot, a simulacrum. Vorst himself found this amusing. More of him was artificial than flesh, at this point, but he was undeniably alive, with no immediate plans for dying. If he had planned to die, he never would have gone to the trouble of founding the Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance. There had been hard years at first. It is not pleasant to be deemed a crack-pot

Among those who had deemed Vorst a crackpot in those days was his present second-in-command, the Hemispheric Coordinator, Reynolds Kirby. Kirby had stumbled into the Brotherhood at a time of personal stress, looking for something to cling to in a storm. That had been in 2077. He was still clinging, seventy-five years later. By now he was virtually Vorst’s alter ego, an adjunct of the Founder’s soul.

The Founder had been less than candid with Kirby about this Lazarus enterprise, though. For the first time in many years Vorst had held the details of a project entirely to himself. Some things could not be shared. When they were matters concerning David Lazarus, Vorst held them in pectore, unable to take even Kirby into his confidence.

The Founder sat cradled in a webfoam net that spared him most of gravity’s pull. Once he had been a vigorous, dynamic giant of a man, and when he had to, he could wear that set of attributes even now, but he preferred comfort. It was necessary to spare his strength. His plan had fulfilled itself well, but he knew that without his guiding presence it might all yet come to nothing.

Kirby sat before him, thin-lipped, grizzled, his body, like Vorst’s, a patchwork of artificial organs. The Vorster laboratories no longer needed such clumsy devices to prolong youth. Within the last generation they had managed to stimulate regeneration from within, the body’s own rebirth, always the most preferable way. Kirby had come along too early for that; so had Vorst. For them, organ replacement was the road to conditional immortality. With luck, they might last two or three centuries, undergoing periodic overhauls. Younger men, those who had joined the movement in the last forty years, might hope for several hundred years more than that. Some now living, Vorst knew, would never die.

Vorst said, “About this Lazarus thing—”

His voice came from a vocoder box. The larynx had gone sixty years ago. The effect was naturalistic enough, though.

“We can infiltrate our men,” Kirby said. “I can work through Nat Weiner. We’ll get a bomb clapped onto that vault and give Mr. Lazarus his eternal repose.”

“No?”

“Of course not,” Vorst said. He lowered the shutters that lubricated his eyes. “Nothing must happen to that vault or the man who’s in it. We’ll infiltrate, all right. You’ll have to use your pull with Weiner. But not to destroy. We’re going to bring Lazarus back to life.”

“We’re—”

“As a gift to our friends, the Harmonists. To show our enduring affection for our brothers in the Oneness.”

“No,” Kirby said. Muscles roiled in his fleshless face, and Vorst could see him making adrenal adjustments, trying to stay calm in the face of this assault on his sense of logic. “This is the prophet of the heretics,” Kirby said quietly. “I know that you’ve got your reasons for encouraging their growth in certain places, Noel. But to give them back their prophet—it doesn’t make sense.”

Vorst tapped a stud in his desk. A compartment opened and he drew forth the Book of Lazarus, the heretic scripture. Kirby seemed a little startled to find it here, in the stronghold of the movement

“You’ve read this, haven’t you?” Vorst asked.

“Of course.”

“It’s enough to make you weep. How my shameless underlings hunted down this great and good man David Lazarus and did away with him. One of the most blasphemous acts since the Crucifixion, eh? The blot on our record. We’re the villains in the Lazarus story. Now here’s Lazarus, pickled on Mars for the last sixty years. Not physically annihilated after all, despite what this book says. Fine. Splendid! We throw all the resources of Santa Fe into the task of restoring him to life. The grand ecumenical gesture. Surely you know that it’s my hope to reunite the sundered branches of our movement”

Kirby’s eyes flickered brilliantly. “You’ve been saying that for sixty or seventy years, Noel. Ever since the Harmonists split away. But do you mean it?”

“I’m sincere in all things,” said Vursi lightly. “Of course I’d take them back. On my terms, naturally—but they’d be welcome. We all serve the same ends in different ways. Did you ever know Lazarus?”

“Not really. I wasn’t very important in the Brotherhood when he died.”

“I forget that,” Vorst said. “It’s hard for me to keep everyone positioned in his temporal matrix. I keep sliding forward and backward. But certainly—you were coming to the top as Lazarus was moving away. I respected that man, Kirby. I grieved when he died, wrongheaded as he was. I intend to redeem the Brotherhood from its stain by bringing Lazarus back to life. He’s appropriately named, wouldn’t you say?”

Kirby picked up a bright metallic sphere from the desk, a paperweight of some sort, and fingered it. Vorst waited. He kept the sphere there so that his visitors could handle it and discharge their tensions into it; he knew that for many who came before him an interview with Vorst was like a trip to the top of Mount Sinai to hear the Law. Vorst found it charming. He watched Reynolds Kirby struggling with himself.

At length Kirby—the only man on the whole planet who could use Vorst’s first name to him—said thickly, “Damn it, Noel, what kind of game are you playing?”

“Game?”

“You sit there with that grin on your lips, telling me you’re going to revive Lazarus, and I can see you juggling world-lines like billiard balls, and I don’t know what it’s all about. What’s your motive? Isn’t this man better off dead?”

“No. Dead he’s a symbol. Alive he can be manipulated. That’s all I’ll say.” Vorst’s blazing eyes found Kirby’s troubled ones and held them. “Do you think I’m senile at last, perhaps? That I’ve held the plan in my mind so long that it’s rotted in there? I know what I’m doing. I need Lazarus alive, or—or I wouldn’t have begun this. Get in touch with Nat Weiner. Gain possession of the vault, I don’t care how. We’ll do our work on Lazarus here at Santa Fe.”

“All right. Noel. Whatever you say.”

“Trust me.”

“What else can I do?”

Kirby wheeled himself out of the room. Vorst, relaxing, fed hormones to his bloodstream and closed his eyes. The world wavered. For an instant he found himself drifting, and it was 2071 all over again, and he was building cobalt-60 reactors in a sordid basement and renting little rooms as chapels for his cult. He recoiled, and was whirled forward, dizzyingly, toward the border of now and a little beyond it. Vorst was a low-grade esper, his skills humble indeed, but occasionally his mind did strange things. He looked toward the brink of tomorrow and desperately anchored himself.

With a decisive jab of his fingers Vorst opened his desk-communicator and spoke briefly to an intern in the burnout ward, without identifying himself. Yes, the Founder was told, there was an esper on the verge of burnout. No, she wasn’t likely to survive.

“Get her ready,” Vorst said. “The Founder’s going to visit her.”

Vorst’s assistants clustered around, readying him for his journey. The old man refused to accept immobility and insisted on leading the most active kind of existence possible. A dropshaft took him to ground level, and then, sheltered by the cavalcade of flunkies that accompanied him everywhere, the Founder crossed the main plaza of the compound and entered the burn-out ward.

Half a dozen sick espers, segregated by thick walls and shielded by protective members of their own kind, lay at the verge of death. There were always those for whom the powers proved overwhelming, those who eventually seized more voltage than they could handle and were destroyed. From the very beginning Vorst had concentrated on saving them, for these were the espers he needed most badly. The salvage record was good nowadays. But not good enough.

Vorst knew why the burnouts happened. The ones who went were the floaters, insecurely anchored in their own time. They drifted back, forth, seesawing from past to present, unable to control their movements, building up a charge of temporal force that ultimately blasted their minds. It was a dizziness of the time-sense, a deadly vertigo. Vorst himself had felt flashes of it. For ten years, nearly a century ago, he had considered himself insane, until he understood. He had seen the edges of time, a vision of futurity that had shattered him and remade him, and that he knew, had been only a hint of what the real espers experienced.

The burnout case was young and female and Oriental: a fatal combination, it seemed. A good eighty percent of the burnouts were of Mongoloid stock, generally adolescent girls. Those who had the trait didn’t last far into adulthood. This one must have been about sixteen, though it was hard to tell; she could have been anywhere from twelve to twenty-five. She lay twisting on the bed, her body almost bare, clawing at the bedclothes in her agony. Sweat gleamed on her yellow-brown skin. She arched her back, grimaced, fell back. Her breasts, revealed by the dis-array of her robe, were like a child’s.

Blue-clad Vorsters, awed by the presence of the Founder, flanked the bed. Vorst said, “She’ll be gone in an hour, won’t she?”

Someone nodded. Vorst moved himself closer to the bed. He seized the girl’s arm in his wizened fingers. Another esper stepped in, placed one hand on Vorst, the other on the girl, providing the link that Vorst required. Suddenly he was in contact with the dying girl.

Her brain was on fire. She jolted backward and forward in time, and Vorst jolted with her, drawn along as a hitchhiker. Light flared in his mind, as though lightning danced about him. Yesterday and tomorrow became one. His thin body quivered like a buffeted reed. Images danced like demons, shadowy figures out of the past, dark avatars of tomorrow. Tell me, tell me, tell me, Vorst implored. Show me the path! He stood at the threshold of knowledge. For seventy years he had moved step by step this way, using the contorted and tortured bodies of these burnouts as his bridges to tomorrow, pulling himself forward by his own bootstraps along the world-line of his great plan.

Let me see, Vorst begged.

The figure of David Lazarus bestrode the pattern of tomorrow, Vorst knew it would. Lazarus stood like a colossus, come forth to an unexpected resurrection, holding his arms out to the green-robed brethren of his heresy. Vorst shivered. The image wavered and was gone. The frail hand of the Founder relaxed its grip.

“She’s dead,” Vorst said. “Take me away.”

four

One old man had given the word, and another obeyed, and a third was approached for a favor. Nat Weiner of the Martian Presidium was always willing to oblige his old friend Reynolds Kirby. They had known one another for more years then they cared to admit.

Weiner, like nearly all Martians, was neither Vorster nor Harmonist. Martians had little use for the cults, and steered a neutral and profitable course. On Earth, by now, the Vorsters amounted to a planetary government since their influence was felt everywhere; it was simple good sense for Mars to retain open lines to the Vorster high command, since Mars had business to do with Earth. Venus, the planet of adapted men, was a different case. No one could be too sure what went on there, except that the Harmonist heresy had established itself pretty securely in the last thirty or forty years, and might one day speak for Venus as the Vorsters spoke for Earth. Weiner had served a tour of duty as Martian Ambassador to Venus, and he thought he understood the blueskins fairly well. He didn’t like them very much. But he was past feeling any strong emotion. He had left that behind with his hundredth birthday.

At staggering cost, Reynolds Kirby in Santa Fe spoke face-to-face with Weiner, and begged a favor of him. It was twelve years since they had last met—not since Weiner’s last visit to the rejuvenation centers at Santa Fe. It wasn’t customary for unbelievers to be granted the use of the rejuvenation facilities there, but Kirby had arranged for Weiner and a select few of his Martian friends to come down for periodic treatments, as a favor.

Weiner understood quite dearly that Kirby was silently accepting promissory notes for those favors, and that the notes would be taken down for repayment one of these days. That was all right; the important thing was to survive. Weiner might even have been willing to become a Vorster, if he had to, in order to have access to Santa Fe. But of course that would have hurt him politically on Mars, where both Vorsters and Harmonists were generally looked upon as subversives. This way he had the benefits, without the risks, and he owed it to his old friend Kirby. Weiner would go quite a distance to repay Kirby for that service.

The Vorster said, “Have you seen the alleged Lazarus vault yet Nat?”

“I was out there two days ago. We’ve got a tight security guard on it. It was my nephew who found it, you know. I’d like to kill him.”

“Why?”

“All we need is finding the Harmonist muck-a-muck out by Beltran Lakes. Why couldn’t you people have buried him on Venus, where his own people are?”

“What makes you think we buried him, Nat?”

“Aren’t you the ones who killed him? Or put him into a freeze, or whatever you did to him?”

“It all happened before my time,” Kirby said. “Only Vorst knows the real story, and maybe not even he. But surely it’s Lazarus’s own supporters who tucked him away in that vault, don’t you think?”

“Not at all,” Weiner replied. “Why would they get their own story garbled? He’s their prophet. If they put him there, they should have remembered it and preached his ressurrection, yes? But they were the most surprised ones of all when he turned up.” Weiner frowned. “On the other hand, the message that was recorded with him is full of Harmonist slogans. And there are Harmonist symbols on the vault. I wish I understood. Better still: I wish we’d never found him. But why are you calling, Ron?”

“Vorst wants him.”

“Wants Lazarus?”

“That’s right. To bring him back to life. We’ll take the whole vault to Santa Fe and open it and revive him. Vorst wants to make the announcement tomorrow, all-channel hookup.”

“You can’t, Ron. If anybody gets him, it ought to be the Harmonists. He’s their prophet. How can I hand him to you boys? You’re the ones who supposedly killed him in the first place, and now—”

“And now we’re going to revive him, which, as everyone knows, is beyond the capabilities of the Harmonists. They’re welcome to try, if they want, but they simply don’t have our kind of laboratory facilities. We’re ready to revive him. Then we’ll turn him over to the Harmonists and he can preach all he wants. Just let us have access to the vault.”

“You’re asking for a lot,” Weiner said.

“We’ve given you a lot, Nat.”

Weiner nodded. The promissory notes had fallen due, he realized. He said, “The Harmonists will have my head for this.”

“Your head’s pretty tightly attached, Nat. Find a way to give us the vault. Vorst will be pretty rough on us all if you don’t.”

Weiner sighed. “His will be done.”

But how, the Martian wondered when contact had broken? By force majeure? Hand over the vault and to hell with public opinion? And if Venus got nasty about it?

“There hadn’t been an interplanetary war yet, but perhaps the time was ripe. Certainly the Harmonists wanted—and had every right to have—their own founder’s body. Just last week that convert Martell, the one who had come to Venus to plant a Vorster cell and ended up in the Harmonist camp, had been here to see the vault, Weiner thought, and had tentatively sketched out a plan for taking possession. Martell and his boss Mondschein would explode when they found out that the relic of Lazarus was being shipped to Santa Fe.

It would have to be handled delicately.

Weiner’s mind whirred and clicked like a computer, or presenting and rejecting alternate possibilities, opening and dosing one circuit after another. It was not seniority alone that kept the Martian in power. He was agile. He had gained considerably in craftiness since the night when, a drunken young yokel, he ran amok in New York.

Three hours and a great many thousand dollars’ worth of interplanetary calls later, Weiner had his solution worked out satisfactorily.

The vault was Martian governmental property, as an artifact. Therefore Mars had an important voice in its disposal. However, the Martian government recognized the unique symbolic value of this discovery, and thus proposed to consult with religious authorities of the other worlds. A committee would be formed: three Harmonists, three Vorsters, and three Martians of Weiner’s selection. Presumably the Harmonists and Vorsters would look out only for their own cult’s welfare, and the Martians on the committee would maintain an imperturbable neutrality assuring an impartial judgment.

Of course.

The committee would meet to deliberate on the fate of the vault. The Harmonists, naturally, would claim it for themselves. The Vorsters, having made public their offer to employ all their superscience to bring Lazarus back to life, would ask to be given a chance to do so. The Martians would weigh all the possibilities.

Then, Weiner thought, would come the vote. One of the Martians would vote with the Harmonists—for appearance’s sake. The other two would come out in favor of letting the Vorsters work on the sleeper, under rigorous supervision to prevent any hanky-panky. The five-to-four vote would give the vault to Vorst. Mondschein would yelp, of course. But the terms of the agreement would allow a couple of Harmonist representatives to get inside the secret labs at Santa Fe for a little while, and that would soothe them somewhat. There would be a little grumbling, but if Kirby kept his word, Lazarus would be revived and turned over to his partisans, and how could the Harmonists possibly object to that?

Weiner smiled. There was no problem so knotty that it couldn’t be untied. Given a little thought, that is. He felt pleased with himself. If he had been forty years younger, he might have gone out for a roistering celebration. But not now.

five

“Don’t go,” Martell said.

“Suspicious?” Christopher Mondschein asked. “It’s a chance to see their setup. I haven’t been in Santa Fe since I was a boy. Why shouldn’t I go?”

“There’s no telling what might happen to you there. They’d love to get their hands on you. You’re the kingpin of the whole Venusian movement.”

“And they’ll lase me to ashes with three planets watching, eh? Be realistic, Nicholas. When the Pope visits Mecca, they take good care of him. I’m in no danger in Santa Fe.”

“What about the espers? They’ll scan you.”

“I’ll have Neerol with me as a mindshield,” Mondschein said. “They won’t get a thing. I’ll stack him up—against any esper they have. Besides, I have nothing to hide from Noel Vorst. You of all people ought to realize that. We took you in, even though you were loaded with Vorster spy-commands. It was in our interest to tell Vorst how far we had gone.”

Martell took a different approach. “By going to Santa Fe you’re putting the blessing of our order on this alleged Lazarus.”

“Now you sound like Brother Emory! Are you telling me it’s a phony?”

“I’m telling you that we ought to treat it as one. It contradicts our own legend of Lazarus. It may be a Vorster plant calculated to throw us into confusion. What do we do when they hand us a walking, talking Lazarus and let us try to reshape our entire order around him?”

“It’s a touchy matter, Nicholas. We’ve built our faith on the existence of a holy martyr. Now, if he’s suddenly unmartyred—”

“Exactly. It’ll crush us.”

“I doubt that” Mondschein said. The old Harmonist touched his gills lightly, nervously. “You aren’t looking far enough ahead, Nicholas. The Vorsters have outmaneuvered us so far, I admit. They’ve gained possession of this Lazarus, and they’re about to give him back to us. Very embarrassing, but what can we do? However, the next moves are ours. If he dies, we simply revise our writings a bit. If he lives and tries to meddle, we reveal that he’s some sort of simulacrum cooked up by the Vorsters to do mischief, and destroy him. Score a point for us—our original story stands and we reveal the Vorsters as sinister schemers.”

“And if he’s really Lazarus?” Martell asked.

Mondschein giowered. “Then we have a prophet on our hands, Brother Nicholas. It’s a risk we take. I’m going to Santa Fe.”

six

On Earth, the Noel Vorst Center throbbed with more-than-usual activity as preparations continued for the arrival of the cargo from Mars. An entire block of the laboratory grounds had been set aside for the resuscitation of Lazarus. For the first time since the founding of the Center video cameras would be allowed to show the worlds a little of its inner workings. The place would be full of strangers—even a delegation of Harmonists. To old-line Vorsters like Reynolds Kirby, that was almost unthinkable. Furtiveness had become a matter of course for him. The command, though, had come from Vorst himself, and no one could quarrel with the Founder. “I believe that it’s time to lift the lid a little,” Vorst had said.

Kirby was doing some lid-lifting of his own as the great day drew near. He was troubled by certain blanks in his own memory, and by virtue of his rank as second-in-command he went searching through the Vorster archives to fill them in. The trouble was, Kirby could not remember much about David Lazarus’s pre-martyrdom career, and he felt that it was important to know something more than the official story. Who was Lazarus, anyway? How had he entered the Vorster picture—and how had he left it?

Kirby himself had enrolled in 2077, kneeling before the Blue Fire of a cobalt reactor in New York. As a new convert, he had not been concerned with the politics of the hierarchy, but simply with the values the cult had to offer: stability, the hope of long life, the dream of reaching the stars by harnessing the abilities of espers. Kirby was willing to see mankind explore the other solar systems, but he did not make that accomplishment the central yearning of his life. Nor did the chance of immortality—the chief bait for millions of Vorster converts—seem all that delicious to him.

What drew him to the movement, at the age of forty, was merely the discipline that it offered. His pleasant life lacked structure, and the world about him was such chaos that he fled from it into one synthetic paradise after another. Along came Vorst offering a sleek new belief that snared Kirby totally. For the first few months he was content to be a worshiper. Soon he was an acolyte. And then, his natural organizational abilities demonstrating themselves, he found himself moving rapidly upward in the movement from post to post until by the time he was eighty he was Vorst’s fight hand, and very much concerned with his own personal survival.

According to the official story, the martyrdom of David Lazarus had taken place in 2090. Kirby had been a Vorster for thirteen years then, and was a District Supervisor in charge of thousands of Brothers.

So far as he could remember, he had never even heard of Lazarus as of 2090.

A few years later the Harmonists, the heretical movement had begun gaining strength, decking themselves in green robes and scoffing at the craftily secular power orientation of the Vorsters. They claimed to be followers of the martyred Lazarus, but even then, Kirby thought they hadn’t talked much about Lazarus. Only afterward, as Harmonist power mounted and they stole Venus from Vorst, did they push the Lazarus mythos particularly hard. Why is it, Kirby wondered, that I who was a contemporary of Lazarus should never have heard his name?

He walked toward the archives building.

It was a milk-white geodesic dome, sheeted with some toothy fabric that gave it a sharkskin surface texture. Kirby passed through a tiled tunnel, identified himself to the robot guardians, moved toward and past a sphincter-door, and found himself in the olive-green room where the records were kept lie activated a query-stud and demanded knowledge.

Lazarus, David.

Drums whirled in the depths of the earth. Memory films came around, offered themselves to the kiss of the scanner, and sent images floating upward to the waiting Kirby. Glowing yellow print appeared on the reader-Screen.

A potted biography, scanty and inadequate:

Born 13 March 2051

Education Primary Secondary Chicago, A.B. Harvard ‘72, Ph.D. (Anthropology) Harvard ’75.

Physical Description (1/1/88) 6 ft. 3 ins., 179 pounds, dark eyes and hair, no dis. scars.

Affiliation Joined Cambridge chapel 4/11/71. Acolyte status conferred 7/17/73…

There followed a. list of the successive stages by which Lazarus had risen through the hierarchy, culminating with the simple entry, Death 2/9/90.

That was all. It was a lean, spare record, not a word of elaboration, no appended commendations such as Kirby knew festooned his own record, no documentation of Lazarus’s disagreement with Vorst. Nothing. It was the sort of record, Kirby thought uncomfortably, that anyone could have tapped out in five minutes and inserted in the archives… yesterday.

He prodded the memory banks, hoping to fish up some added detail about the arch-heretic. He found nothing. It was not really valid cause for suspicion; Lazarus had been dead for a long time, and probably the record-keeping had been sketchier in those early days. But it was upsetting, all the same. Kirby made his way out of the building. Acolytes stared at him as though Vorst himself had gone striding by. No doubt some of them felt the temptation to drop to their knees before him. I/ they only knew, Kirby thought darkly, how ignorant I am. After seventy-five years with Vorst. If they only knew.

seven

The glass vault of David Lazarus, transported intact at considerable expense from Mars, rested in the center of the operating room, under the watchful eyes of the video cameras mounted in the walls and ceiling. A carefully planted forest of equipment surrounded the vault: polygraphs, compressors, centrifuges, surgistats, scanners, enzyme calibrators, laser scalpels, retractors, impacters, thorax rods, cerebral tacks, a heart-and-lung bypass, kidney surrogates, mortmains, biopticons, elsevirs, a Helium II pressure generator, and a monstrous, glowering cryostat. The display was impressive, and it was meant to be. Vorster science was on display here, and every awesome-looking superfluity in the place had its part in the orchestration of the effects.

Vorst himself was not present. That too, was part of the orchestration. He and Kirby were watching the event from Vorst’s office. The highest-ranking member of the Brotherhood present was plump, cheerful Capodimonte, a District Supervisor. Beside him stood Christopher Mondschein of the Harmonists. Mondschein and Capodimonte had known each other briefly during Mondschein’s short, spectacularly unsuccessful career as a Santa Fe acolyte in 2095. Now, though, the Harmonist was a terrifying figure, his changed body concealed by a breathing-suit but still nightmarish and grotesque. A native-born Venusian, looking even more bizarre, clung to Mondschein like a skin graft. The visiting Harmonists seemed tense and grim. The television commentator said, “It’s already been determined that the atmosphere of the vault is a mixture of inert gases, mainly argon. Lazarus himself is in a nutrient bath. Espers have detected signs of life. The tumblers of the vault lock were opened yesterday in the presence of the delegation of Venusian Harmonists. Now the inerts are being piped out, and soon the sensitive instruments of the surgeons will reach the sleeping man and begin the infinitely complex process of restoring the life-impulses.”

Vorst laughed.

Kirby said, “Isn’t that what’ll happen?”

“More or less. Exept the man’s as alive as he’ll ever be, right now. All they need to do is open the vault and yank him out.”

“That wouldn’t be very dramatic.”

“Probably not,” the Founder agreed. Vorst folded his hands across his belly, feeling the artificials throbbing mildly inside. The commentator reeled off acres of descriptive prose. The spidery array of instruments surrounding the vault was in motion now, arms and tendrils waving like the limbs of some being of many bodies. Vorst kept his eyes on the altered face of Christopher Mondschein. He hadn’t really believed that Mondschein would return to Santa Fe. An admirable person, the old man thought. He had borne adversity well, considering how he had been bamboozled into his life’s career almost sixty years ago.

“The vault’s open,” Kirby said.

“So I observe. Now watch the mummy of King Tut rise and walk.”

“You’re very lighthearted about this, Noel.”

“Mmmm,” the Founder said. A smile ffickered on his thin lips for a moment He made minute adjustments to his hormone flow. On the screen the vault opening was almost completely obscured by the instruments that had dived into the chamber to embrace the sleeper.

Suddenly there was faint motion in the vault Lazarus stirred! The martyr returned!

“Time for my grand entrance,” Vorst murmured.

All was arranged. A glistening tunnel transported him swiftly to the operating room. Kirby did not follow. The Founder’s chair rolled serenely into the room just as the figure of David Lazarus groped its way out of sixty years of sleep and rose to a sitting position.

A quivering hand pointed. A rusty voice strained for coherence.

“V-V-Vorst!” Lazarus gasped.

The Founder smiled benevolently, lifted his fleshless arm in greeting and blessing. Delicately, an unseen hand slipped a control rod and the Blue Fire flickered along the walls of the room to provide the proper theatrical touch. Christopher Mondschein, his altered face impassive behind his breathing-mask, clenched his fists angrily as the glow enveloped him.

Vorst said, “And there is light, before and beyond our vision, for which we give thanks.

“And there is heat, for which we are humble.

“And there is power, for which we count ourselves blessed…

“Welcome to life, David Lazarus. In the strength of the spectrum, the quantum, and the holy angstrom, peace, and forgive those who did evil to you!”

Lazarus stood. His hands found and grasped the rim of his vault. Inconceivable emotions distorted his face. He muttered, “I—I’ve slept.”

“Sixty years, David. And those who rebuked me and followed you have grown strong. See? See the green robes? Venus is yours. You head a mighty army. Go to them, David. Give them counsel. I restore you to them. You are my gift to your followers. And he that was dead came forth…loose him, and let him go.”

Lazarns did not reply. Mondschein stood agape, leaning heavily on the Venusian at his side. Kirby, watching the screen, felt a tingle of awe that washed away his skepticism for the moment. Even the chatter of the television commentator was stilled by the miracle.

The glow of the Blue Fire engulfed all, rising higher and higher, like the flames of the Twilight reaching toward Valhalla. And in the midst of it all stood Noel Vorst, the Founder, the First Immortal, serene and radiant, his ancient body erect, his eyes gleaming, his hands outstretched to the man who had been dead. All that was missing was the chorus of ten thousand, singing the Hymn of the Wavelengths while a cosmic organ throbbed a paean of joy.

eight

And Lazarus lived, and walked among his people again, holding converse with them.

And Lazarus was greatly surprised.

He had slept—for a moment, for the twinkling of an eye. Now sinister blue figures surrounded him—

Venusians, hooded like demons against the poisonous air of Earth—and hailed him as their prophet. All about rose Vorst’s metropolis, dazzling buildings that testified to the present might of the Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance.

The chubby Venusian—Mondschein, was it?—pressed a book into Lazarus’s hands. “The Book of Lazarus,” he said. “The account of your life and work.”

“And death?”

“Yes, your death.”

“You’ll need a new edition now,” Lazarus said. He smiled, but he was alone in his mirth.

He felt strong. How had muscles failed to degenerate in his long sleep? How was it that he could rise and go among men, and make vocal cords obey him, and his body withstand the strain of life?

He was alone with his followers. In a few days they would take him back to Venus with them, where he would have to live in a self-contained environment. Vorst had offered to transform him into a Venusian, but Lazarus, stunned that such things were possible at all, was not sure that he cared to become a gilled creature. He needed time to ponder all this. The world he had so unexpectedly re-entered was very different from the one he had left.

Sixty-odd years. Vorst had taken over the whole planet now, it seemed. That was the direction he had been heading in back in the Eighties, when Lazarus had begun to disagree with him. Vorst had begun with a religio-scientific movement when Lazarus had joined it. Hocus-pocus with cobalt reactors, a litany of spectrum and electron, plenty of larded-on spiritualism, but at the bottom a bluntly materialistic creed whose chief come-on was the promise of long (or eternal) life. Lazarus had gone for that. But soon, feeling his strength, Vorst had begun to slide men into parliaments, take over banks, utilities, hospitals, insurance companies.

Lazarus had opposed all that. Vorst had been accessible then, and Lazarus remembered arguing with him against this deviation into finance and power politics. And Vorst had said, “The plan calls for it.”

“It’s a perversion of our religious motives.”

“It’ll get us where we want to go.”

Lazarus had disagreed. Quietly, gathering a few supporters, he had established a rival group, while still nominally retaining his loyalty to Vorst. His apprenticeship with Vorst made him an expert on founding a faith. He proclaimed the reign of eternal harmony, gave his people green robes, symbols, reformist fervor, prayers, a developing liturgy. He could not say that his movement had become particularly powerful beside the Vorst machine, but at least it was a leading heresy, attracting hundreds of new followers each month. Lazarus had been looking toward a missionary movement, knowing that his ideas had a better chance of taking root on Venus and perhaps Mars than Vorst’s.

And on a day in 2090 men in blue robes came to him and took him away, blanking out his guard of espers and stealing him as easily as though he had been a lump of lead. After that he knew no more, until his awakening in Santa Fe. They told him that the year was 2152 and that Venus was in the hands of his people.

Mondschein said, “will you let yourself be changed?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’m considering it.”

“It’ll be difficult for you to function on Venus unless you let them adapt you.”

“Perhaps I could stay on Earth,” Lazarus suggested.

“Impossible. You have no power base here. Vorst’s generosity will stretch only so far. He won’t let you remain here after the excitement of your return dies down.”

“You’re right.” Lazarus sighed. “I’ll let myself be changed, then. I’ll come to Venus and see what you’ve accomplished.”

“You’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Mondschein promised.

Lazarus had already been sufficiently surprised for one incarnation. They left him, and he studied the scriptures of his faith, fascinated by the martyr’s role they had written for him. A book of Harmonist history told Lazarus his own value: where the Brotherhood’s religious emotions crystallized around the remote, forbidding figure of Vorst, the Harmonists could safely revere their gentle martyr. How awkward it must be for them that I’m back, Lazarus thought.

Vorst did not come to him while he rested in the Brotherhood’s hospital. A man named Kirby came, though, frosty-faced with age and said he was the Hemispheric Coordinator and Vorst’s closest collaborator.

“I joined the Brotherhood before your disappearance,” Kirby said. “Did you ever hear of me?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“I was only an underling,” Kirby said. “I suppose you wouldn’t have had reason to hear of me. But I hoped your memory would be clear, if we ever had met. I’ve got all these intervening years to cope with, but you can look back across a clean slate.”

“My memory’s fine,” Lazarus said evenly. “I’ve got no recollection of you.”

“Nor I of you.”

The resuscitated man shrugged. “I worked beside Vorst. I had disputes with him. That much is beyond question. Eventually I split with him. I founded the Harmonists.

Then I—disappeared. And here I am. Do you have trouble believing in me?”

“Perhaps I’ve been tampered with,” Kirby said. “I wish I remembered you.”

Lazarus lay back. He stared at the green, rubbery walls. The instruments monitoring his life-processes whirred and t clicked. There was an acrid odor in the air: asepsis at work. Kirby looked unreal. Lazarus wondered what sort of maze of pumps and trestles held him together beneath his thick, warm blue robe.

Kirby said, “You understand that you can’t remain on Earth, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Life will be uncomfortable for you on Venus unless you’re changed. We’ll do it for you. Your own men can supervise the operation. I’ve talked to Mondschein about it. Are you interested?”

“Yes,” Lazarus said. “Change me.”

They came the next day to turn him into a Venusian. He resented the public nature of the operation, but it was idle to pretend that his life was his own any more, anyway. It would take several weeks, they said, to effect the transformation. Once it had taken months to do it. They would equip him with gills, fit him out to breathe the poisonous muck that was the atmosphere of Venus, and turn him loose. Lazarus submitted. They carved him, and put him back together again, and readied him for shipment.

Vorst came to him, feathery-voiced and shrunken, but still a commanding figure, and said, “You must realize I had no part in your kidnapping. It was totally unauthorized—the work of zealots.”

“Of course.”

“I appreciate diversity of opinion. My way is not necessarily the only right way. I’ve felt the lack of a dialogue with Venus for many years. Once you’re installed—there, I trust you’ll be willing to communicate with me.”

Lazarus said, “I won’t close my mind against you, Vorst. You’ve given me life. I’ll listen to what you have to say. There’s no reason why we can’t cooperate, so long as we respect each other’s sphere of interests.”

“Exactly! Our goal is the same, after all. We can join forces.”

“Warily,” Lazarus said.

“Warily, yes. But wholeheartedly.” Vorst smiled and departed.

The surgeons completed their work. Lazarus, now alien to Earth, journeyed to Venus with Mondschein and the rest of the Harmonist retinue. It was in the nature of a triumphant homecoming, if one can be said to come home to a place where one has never been before.

Green-robed brethren with bluish-purple skins greeted him. Lazarus saw the Harmonist shrines, the holy ikons of his order. They had carried the spiritualistic element further than he had ever visualized, practically deifying him, but Lazarus did not intend to correct that. He knew how precarious his position was. There were men of entrenched power in his organization who secretly might not welcome a prophet’s return, and who might give him a second martyrdom if he challenged their vested interests. Lazarus moved warily.

“We have made great progress with the espers,” Mondschein told him. “We’re considerably ahead of Vorst’s work in that line, so far as we know.”

“Do you have telekinesis yet?”

“For twenty years We’re building the power steadily. Another generation—”

“I’d like a demonstration.”

“We have one planned,” Mondschein said.

They showed him what they could do. To reach into a block of wood and set its molecules dancing in flame—to move a boulder through the sky—to whisk themselves from place to place—yes, it was impressive, it defied comprehension. It certainly must be beyond the abilities of the Brotherhood on Earth.

The Venusian espers cavorted for Lazarus, hour after hour. Mondschein, sedate and complacent, gleamed with satisfaction, spoke of thresholds, levitation, telekinetic impetus, fulcrums of unity, and other matters that left Lazarus baffled but encouraged.

He who had returned pointed to the gray band of clouds that hid the heavens.

“How soon?” Lazarus asked.

“We’re not ready for interstellar transport yet,” Mondschein replied. “Not even interplanetary, though in theory one shouldn’t be any harder than the other. We’re working on it. Give us time. We’ll succeed.”

“Can we do it without Vorst’s help?” Lazarus asked. Mondschein’s complacence was punctured. “What kind of help can he give us? I’ve told you, we’re a generation ahead of his espers.”

“And will espers be enough? Perhaps he can supply what we’re missing. A joint venture—Harmonists and Vorsters collaborating—don’t you think the possibilities are worth exploring, Brother Christopher?”

Mondschein smiled blandly. “Why, yes, yes, of course. Certainly they’re worth exploring. It’s an approach we hadn’t considered. I admit, but you give us a fresh insight into our problems. I’d like to discuss the matter with you further, after you’ve had a chance to settle down here.”

Lazarus accepted Mondschein’s flow of words graciously. He had not, though, been away so long that he had forgotten how to read the meanings behind the meanings.

He knew when he was being humored.

nine

At Santa Fe, with the unaccustomed invasion of Harmonists at its end, things returned to normal. Lazarus was come forth and loose upon the worlds, and the television men had retreated, and work went on. The tests, the experiments, the probing of the mysteries of life and mind—the ceaseless tasks of the Vorster inner movement.

Kirby said, “Was there ever really a David Lazarus, Noel?”

Vorst glowered up at him out of a thermoplastic cocoon. Hardly had the surgeons finished with Lazarus than they had gone to work on the Founder, who was suffering from an aneurysm in a twice-reconstituted blood vessel. Sensors had nailed the spot, subcutaneous scoops had exposed it, microtapes had been slammed into place, a network of thread and looping polymers replacing the dangerous bubble. Vorst was no stranger to such surgery.

He said, “You saw Lazarus with your own eyes, Kirby.”

“I saw something come out of that vault and stand up and talk rationally. I had conversations with it. I watched it get turned into a Venusian. That doesn’t mean it was real. You could build a Lazarus, couldn’t you, Noel?”

“If I wanted to. But why would I want to?”

“That’s obvious. To get control of the Harmonists.”

“If I had designs against the Harmonists,” Vorst explained patiently, “I would have blotted them out fifty years ago, before they took Venus. They’re all right. That young man, Mondschein—he’s developed nicely.”

“He isn’t young, Noel. He’s at least eighty.”

“A child.”

“Will you tell me whether Lazarus is genuine?”

Vorst’s eyes fluttered in irritation. “He’s genuine, Kirby. Satisfied?”

“Who put him in that vault?”

“His own followers, I suppose.”

“Who then forgot all about it?”

“Well, perhaps my men did it. Without authorization. Without telling me. It happened a long time ago.” Vorst’s hands moved in quick, agitated gestures. “How can I remember everything? He was found. We brought him back to life. I gave him to them. You’re annoying me, Kirby.”

Kirby realized that he was treading a field salted with mines. He had pushed Vorst as far as Vorst could be pushed, and anything further would be disastrous. Kirby had seen other men presume too deeply on their closeness to Vorst, and he had seen that closeness imperceptibly withdrawn.

“I’m sorry,” Kirby said.

Vorst’s displeasure vanished. “You overrate my deviousness, Kirby. Stop worrying about Lazarus’s past. Simply consider the future. I’ve given him to the Harmonists. He’ll be valuable to them, whether they think so now or not. They’re indebted to me. I’ve planted a good, heavy obligation on them. Don’t you think that’s useful? They owe me something now. When the right time comes, I’ll cash that in.”

Kirby remained mute. He sensed that somehow Vorst had altered the balance of power between the two cults, that the Harmonists, who had been on a rising curve ever since gaining possession of Venus and its rich lode of capers, had been brought to heel. But he did not know how it had been accomplished, and he did not care to try again to learn.

Vorst was using his communicator. He looked up at Kirby.

“They’ve got another burnout” he said. “I want to be there. Come with me, yes?”

“Of course,” Kirby said.

He accompanied the Founder through the maze of tubes. They emerged in the burnout ward. An esper lay dying, a boy this time, perhaps Hawaiian, his body jerking as though he were skewered on cords.

Vorst said, “A pity you’ve got no esping, Kirby. You’d see a glimpse of tomorrow.”

“I’m too old to regret it now,” Kirby said.

Vorst rolled forward and gestured to a waiting caper. The link was made. Kirby watched. What was Vorst experiencing now? The Founder’s lips were moving, almost writhing in a kind of sneer, pulling back from the gums with each twitch of the esper’s body. The boy was shuttling along the time-track, so they said. To Kirby that meant nothing. And Vorst, somehow, was shuttling with him, seeing a clouded view of the world on the other side of the wall of time.

Now—now—back—forth—

For a moment it seemed to Kirby that he, too, had joined the linkup and was riding the time-track as the esper’s other passenger. Was that the chaos of yesterday? And the golden glow of tomorrow? Now—now—damn you, you old schemer, what have you done to me?—Lazarus, rising above all else, Lazarus who wasn’t even real, only some android stew cooked up in an underground laboratory at Vorst’s command, a useful puppet, Kirby thought, Lazarus had grasped tomorrow and was stealing it—The contact broke. The esper was dead.

“We’ve wasted another one,” Vorst muttered. The Founder looked at Kirby. “Are you sick?” he asked.

“No. Tired.”

“Get some rest. Six history spools and climb into a relaxer tank. We can ease up now. Lazarus is off our hands.”

Kirby nodded. Someone drew a sheet over the dead esper’s body. In an hour the boy’s neurons would be in refrigeration somewhere in an adjoining building. Slowly, walking as if eight centuries and not just one weighed upon him, Kirby followed Vorst from the room. Night had fallen, and the stars over New Mexico had their peculiar hard brightness, and Venus, low against the mountainous horizon, was the brightest of all. They had their Lazarus, up there. They had lost a martyr and had gained a prophet. And, Kirby was beginning to realize, the whole tribe of heretics had been swept neatly into Vorst’s pocket. The old man was damnable. Kirby huddled down into his robe and kept pace, with an effort, as Vorst wheeled himself toward his office. His head ached from that brief, unfathomable contact with the esper. But in ten minutes it was better.

He thought of going to a chapel to pray. But what was the use? Why kneel before the Blue Fire? He need only go to Vorst for a blessing—Vorst, his mentor for almost eight decades. Vorst, who could make him feel still like a child, Vorst, who had brought Lazarus forth from the dead.