Robert Silverberg - To Open the Sky

“The night of March thirteenth’s been erased.”

“Can you get beneath the erasure?” Magnus asked.

“Impossible. It’s an expert job. They’ve cut the whole night right out of him. And they’ve loaded him with countermnemonics all the way down the track. He doesn’t know a thing about what he’s been up to,” the girl said.

The Supervisors exchanged glances. Mondschein felt perspiration soaking through his robe. The smell of it stung his nostrils. A muscle throbbed in his cheek, and his forehead itched murderously, but he did not move.

“She can go,” Magnus said.

With the esper out of the room, the atmosphere grew a little less tense, but Mondschein did not relax. In a bleak, hopeless way, he felt that he had been tried and condemned in advance for a crime whose nature he did not even know. He thought of some of the perhaps apocryphal stories of Brotherhood vindictiveness: the man with the pain centers removed, the esper staked out to endure an overload, the lobotomized biologist, the renegade Supervisor who was left in a Nothing Chamber for ninety-six consecutive hours. He realized that he might find out very shortly just how apocryphal those stories were.

Magnus said, “For your information, Mondschein, someone broke into the longevity lab and shot the whole place up with a holograph. It was a very neat job, except that we’ve got an alarm system in there, and you happened to trip it.”

“Sir, I swear, I never set foot inside—”

“Save it, Mondschein, The morning after, we ran a neutron activation analysis in there, just as a matter of routine. We turned up traces of tungsten and molybdenum that brushed off you while you were taking those holograms. They match your skin pattern. It took us awhile to track them to you. There’s no doubt—same neutron pattern on the camera, on the lab equipment, and on your hand. You were sent in here as a spy, whether you know it or not.”

Another Supervisor said, “Kirby’s here.”

“I’d like to know what he’s got to say about this,” Magnus muttered darkly.

Mondschein saw the lean, long-limbed figure of Reynolds Kirby enter the room. His thin lips were clamped tightly together. He seemed to have aged at least ten years since Mondschein had seen him in Langholt’s office.

Magnus whirled and said with open irritation, “Here’s your man, Kirby. What do you think of him now?”

“He’s not my man,” said Kirby.

“You approved his transfer here,” Magnus snapped. “Maybe we ought to run a scan on you, eh? Somebody worked a loaded bomb into this place, and the bomb’s gone off. He handed a whole laboratory away.”

“Maybe not,” Kirby said. “Maybe he’s still got the data on him somewhere.”

“He was out of the center the day after the laboratory was entered. He and another acolyte went to visit some ancient Indian ruins. It’s a safe bet that he disposed of the holograms while he was out there.”

“Have you tracked the courier?” Kirby asked.

“We’re getting away from the point,” said Magnus. “The point is that this man came to the center on your recommendation. You picked him out of nowhere and put him here. What we’d all like to know is where you found him and why you sent him here. Eh?”

Kirby’s fleshless face worked wordlessly for a moment He glowered at Mondschein, then stared in even greater hostility at Magnus. At length he said, “I can’t take responsibility for shipping this man here. It happens that he wrote to me in February, asking to be transferred out of normal chapel duties and sent here. He was going over the heads of his local administrators, so I sent the letter back suggesting that he be disciplined a little. A few weeks later I received instructions that he be transferred out here. I was startled, to say the least, but I approved them. That’s all I know about Christopher Mondschein.”

Magnus extended a forefinger and tapped the air. “Wait one moment, Kirby. You’re a Supervisor. Who gives you instructions, anyway? How can you be pressured into making a transfer when you’re in high authority?”

“The instructions came from higher authority.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Magnus said.

Mondschein sat stock-still, enthralled dcspite his own predicament by this battle between Supervisors. He had never understood how he had managed to get that transfer, and now it began to seem as though no one else understood it, either.

Kirby said, “The instructions came from a source I’m reluctant to name.”

“Covering up for yourself, Kirby?”

“You’re taking liberties with my patience, Supervisor Magnus,” said Kirby tightly.

“I want to know who put this spy among us.”

Kirby took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you. All of you be my witness to this. The order came from Vorst. Noel Vorst called me and said he wanted this man sent here. Vorst sent him. Vorst! What do you make of that?”

They were not finished interrogating Mondschein. Waves of espers worked him over, trying to get beneath the erasure, without success. Organic methods were employed, too; Mondschein was shot full of truth serums old and new, everything from sodium pentothal on up, and batteries of hard-faced Brothers questioned him rigorously. Mondschein let them strip his soul bare, so that every bit of nastiness, every self-seeking moment, everything that made him a human being stood out in bold relief. They found nothing useful. Nor did a four-hour immersion in a Nothing Chamber yield results; Mondschein was too wobbly-brained to be able to answer questions for three days afterward, that was all.

He was as puzzled as they were. He would gladly have confessed the most heinous of sins; in fact, several times during the long interrogation he did confess, simply to have it over with, but the espers read his motives plainly and laughed his confessions to scorn. Somehow, he knew, he had fallen into the hands of the enemies of the Brotherhood and had concluded a pact with them, a pact which he had fulfilled. But he had no inner knowledge of any of that. Whole segments of his memory were gone, and that was terrifying to him.

Mondschein knew that he was finished. They would not let him remain at Santa Fe, naturally. His dream of being on hand when immortality was achieved now was ended. They would cast him out with flaming swords, and he would wither and grow old, cursing his lost opportunity. That is, if they did not kill him outright or work some subtle form of slow destruction on him.

A light December snow was falling on the day that Supervisor Kirby came to tell him his fate.

“You can go, Mondschein,” the tall man said somberly.

“Go? Where?”

“Wherever you like. Your case has been decided. You’re guilty, but there’s reasonable doubt of your volition. You’re being expelled from the Brotherhood, but otherwise no action will be taken against you.”

“Does that mean I’m expelled from the church as a communicant, too?”

“Not necessarily. That’s up to you. If you want to come to wor-ship, we won’t deny our comfort to you,” Kirby said. “But there’s no possibility of your holding a position within the church. You’ve been tampered with, and we can’t take further chances with you. I’m sorry, Mondschein.”

Mondschein was sorry, too, but relieved, as well. They would not take revenge on him. He would lose nothing but his chance at life everlasting—and perhaps he would even retain that, just as any other common worshiper did.

He had forfeited, of course, his chance to rise in the Vorster hierarchy. But there was another hierarchy, too, Mondschein thought, where a man might move more swiftly.

The Brotherhood took him to the city of Santa Fe proper, gave him some money, and turned him loose. Mondschein headed immediately for the nearest chapel of the Transcendent Harmony, which turned out to be in Albuquerque, twenty minutes away.