Robert Silverberg - To Open the Sky

“Strip and get in,” the woman said.

“And if I don’t?”

“You will.”

“How long a setting?”

“Two and a half hours.”

“Too long,” Mondschein said. “Sorry. I don’t feel that tense. will you show me the way out of here?”

The woman beckoned. A robot rolled into the room, blunt-nosed, painted an ugly dull black. Mondachein had never wrestled with a robot, and he did not intend to try it now. The woman indicated the Nothing Chamber once more.

This is some sort of dream, Mondschein told himself. A very bad dream.

He began to strip. The Nothing Chamber hummed its readiness. Mondschein stepped into it and allowed it to engulf him. He could not see. He could not hear. A tube fed him air. Mondschein slipped into total passivity, into a fetal comfort. The bundle of ambitions, confficts, dreams, guilts, lusts, and ideas that constituted the mind of Christopher Mondschein was temporarily dissolved.

In time, he woke. They took him from the Chamber—he was wobbly on his legs, and they had to steady him—and gave him his clothing. His robe, he noticed, was the wrong color: green, the heretic color. How had that happened? Was he being forcibly impressed into the Harmonist movement? He knew better than to ask questions. They were putting a thermoplastic mask on his face now. I’m to travel incognito, it seems.

In a short while Mondschein was at a quickboat station. He was appalled to see Arabic lettering on the signs. Cairo, he wondered? Algiers? Beirut? Mecca?

They had reserved a private compartment for him. The woman with the altered eyelids sat with him during the swift flight. Several times Mondschein attempted to ask questions, but she gave him no reply other than a shrug.

The quickboat landed at the Tarrytown station. Familjar territory at last. A timesign told Mondschein that this was Wednesday, March 13, 2095, 0705 hours Eastern Standard Time. It had been late Tuesday afternoon, he remembered distinctly, when he crept home in disgrace from the chapel after getting his come-uppance over the matter of a transfer to Santa Fe. Say, 1630 hours. Somewhere he had lost all of Tuesday night and a chunk of Wednesday morning, about fifteen hours in all.

As they entered the main waiting room, the slim woman at his side whispered, “Go into the washroom. Third booth. Change your clothes.”

Greatly troubled, Mondschein obeyed. There was a package resting on the seat. He opened it and found that it contained his indigo acolyte’s robe. Hurriedly he peeled off the green robe and donned his own. Remembering the face mask, he stripped that off, too, and flushed it away. He packed up the green robe and, not knowing what else to do with it, left it in the booth.

As he came out, a dark-haired man of middle years approached him, holding out his hand.

“Acolyte Mondschein?”

“Yes?” Mondschein said, not recognizing him, but taking the hand anyway.

“Did you sleep well?”

“I—yes,” Mondschein said. “Very well.” There was an exchange of glances, and suddenly Mondschein did not remember why he had gone into the washroom, nor what he had done in there, nor that he had worn a green robe and a thermoplastic mask on his flight from a country where Arabic was the main language, nor that he had been in any other country at all, nor, for that matter, that he had stepped bewildered from a Nothing Chamber not too many hours ago.

He now believed that he had spent a comfortable night at home, in his own modest dwelling. He was not sure what he was doing at the Tarrytown quickboat station at this hour of the morning, but that was only a minor mystery and not worth detailed exploration.

Finding himself unusually hungry, Mondschein bought a hearty breakfast at the food console on the lower level of the station. He bolted it briskly. By eight, he was at the Nyack chapel of the Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance, ready to aid in the morning service.

Brother Langholt greeted him warmly. “Did yesterday’s little talk upset you too much, Mondschein?”

“I’m settling down now.”

“Good, good. You mustn’t let your ambitions engulf you, Mondschein. Everything comes in due time. Will you check the gamma level on the reactor, please?”

“Certainly, Brother.”

Mondschein stepped toward the altar. The Blue Fire seemed like a beacon of security in an uncertain world. The acolyte removed the gamma detector from its case and set about his morning tasks.

The message summoning him to Santa Fe arrived three weeks later. It landed on the Nyack chapel like a thunderbolt, striking down through layer after layer of authority before it finally reached the lowly acolyte.

One of Mondschein’s fellow acolytes brought him the news, in an indirect way. “You’re wanted in Brother Langholt’s office, Chris. Supervisor Kirby’s there.”

Mondschein felt alarm. “What is it? I haven’t done anything wrong—not that I know of, anyway.”

“I don’t think you’re in trouble. It’s something big, Chris. They’re all shaken up. It’s some kind of order out of Santa Fe.” Mondschein received a curious stare. “What I think they said was that you’re being shipped out there on a transfer.”

“Very funny,” Mondschein said.

He hurried to Langholt’s office. Supervisor Kirby stood against the bookshelf on the left He was a man enough like Langholt to be his brother. Both were tall, lean men in early middle age, with an ascetic look about them.

Mondschein had never seen the Supervisor at such close range before. The story was that Kirby had been a U.N. man, pretty high in the international bureaucracy, until his conversion fifteen or twenty years ago. Now he was a key man in the hierarchy, possibly one of the dozen most important in the entire organization. His hair was clipped short, and his eyes were an odd shade of green. Mondschein had difficulty meeting those eyes. Facing Kirby in the flesh, he wondered how he had ever found the nerve to write that letter to him, requesting a transfer to the Santa Fe labs.

Kirby smiled faintly. “Mondschein?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call me Brother, Mondschein. Brother Langholt here has said some good things about you.”

He has? Mondschein thought in surprise.

Langholt said, “I’ve told the Supervisor that you’re ambitious, eager, and enthusiastic. I’ve also pointed out that you’ve got those qualities to an excessive degree, in some ways. Perhaps you’ll learn some moderation at Santa Fe.”

Stunned, Mondschein said, “Brother Langholt, I thought my application for a transfer had been turned down.”

Kirby nodded. “It’s been opened again. We need some control subjects, you see. Non-espers. A few dozen acolytes have been requisitioned, and the computer tossed your name up. You fit the needs. I take it you still want to go to Santa Fe?”

“Of course, sir—Brother Kirby.”

“Good. You’ll have a week to wrap up your affairs here.” The green eyes were suddenly piercing. “I hope you’ll prove useful out there, Brother Mondschein.”

Mondschein could not make up his mind whether he was being sent to Santa Fe as a belated yielding to his request or to get rid of him at Nyack. It seemed incomprehensible to him tat Langholt would approve the transfer after having rejected it so scathingly a few weeks before. But the Vorster high ones moved in mysterious ways, Mondschein decided. He accepted the puzzling decision in good grace, asking no questions. When his week was up, he knelt in the Nyack chapel one last time, said good-bye to Brother Langholt, and went to the quickboat station for the noon flight westward.

He was in Santa Fe by mid-morning local time. The station there, he noticed, was thronged with blue-robed ones, more than he had ever seen in a public place at any one time. Mondschein waited at the station, uneasily eying the immensity of the New Mexican landscape. The sky was a strangely bright shade of blue, and visibility seemed unlimited. Miles away Mondschein saw bare sandstone mountains rising. A tawny desert dotted with grayish-green sagebrush surrounded the station. Mondschein had never seen so much open space before.