Robert Silverberg - To Open the Sky

“No simplistic fairy tales,” said Martell in a brusque tone. “Agreed. That’s the whole point of our teaching. We came into a world no longer capable of believing the old stories, and instead of spinning new ones we offered simplicity, strength, the power of scientific achievement—”

“And took political control of most of the planet, while also establishing magnificent laboratories that carried on advanced research in longevity and esping. Fine. Fine. Admirable. But you failed here. We are succeeding. We have a story to tell, the story of Noel Vorst, the First Immortal, his redemption in the atomic fire, his awakening from sin. We offer our people a chance to be redeemed in Vorst and in the later prophet of Transcendent Harmony, David Lazarus. What we have is something that captures the fancy of the low-casters, and in another generation we’ll have the high-casters, too. These are pioneers, Brother Martell. They’ve cut all ties with Earth, and they’re starting over on their own, in a society just a few generations old. They need myths. They’re shaping myths of their own here. Don’t you think that in another century the first colonists of Venus will be regarded as supernatural beings, Martell? Don’t you think that they’ll be Harmonist saints by then?”

Martell was genuinely startled. “Is that your game?”

“Part of it.”

“All you’re doing is returning to fifth-century Christianity.”

“Not exactly. We’re continuing the scientific work, too.”

“And you believe your own teachings?” Martell asked.

Mondschein smiled strangely. “When I was young,” he said, “I was a Vorster acolyte, at the Nyack chapel. I went into the Brotherhood because it was a job. I needed a structure for my life, and I had a wild hope of being sent out to Santa Fe to become a subject in the immortality experiments, and so I enrolled. For the most unworthy of motives. Do you know, Martell, that I didn’t feel a shred of a religious calling? Not even the Vorster stuff—stripped down, secular—could get to me. Through a series of confusions that I still don’t fully understand and that I won’t even begin to explain to you, I left the Brotherhood and Joined the Harmonist movement and came here as a missionary. The most successful missionary ever sent to Venus, as it happens. Do you think the Harmonist mythologies can move me if I was too ratio-nal to accept Vorster thinking?”

“So you’re completely cynical in handing out this nonsense about saints and images. You do it for the sake of preserving your power. A peddler of nostrums, a quack preacher in the back-woods of Venus—”

“Easy,” Mondschein warned. “I’m getting results. And, as I think Noel Vorst himself might tell you, we deal in ends, not in means. Would you like to kneel here and pray awhile?”

“Of course not.”

“May I pray for you, then?”

“You just told me you don’t believe your own creed.”

Smiling, Mondschein said, “Even the prayers of an unbeliever may be heard. Who knows? Only one thing is certain: you’ll die here, Martell. So I’ll pray for you, that you may pass through the purifying flame of the higher frequencies.”

“Spare me. Why are you so sure I’ll die here? It’s a fallacy to assume that, simply because all previous Vorster missionaries have been martyred here, I’ll be martyred, too.”

“Our own position is uneasy enough on Venus. Yours will be impossible. Venus doesn’t want you. Shall I tell you the only way you’ll possibly live more than a month here?”

“Do.”

“Join us. Trade in that blue tunic for a green one. We have need for all the capable men we can get.”

“Don’t be absurd. Do you really think I’d do any such thing?”

“It isn’t beyond possibility. Many men have left your order for mine—myself included.”

“I prefer martyrdom,” Martell said.

“In what way will that benefit anybody? Be reasonable, Brother. Venus is a fascinating place. Wouldn’t you like to live to see a little of it? Join us. You’ll learn the rituals soon enough. You’ll see that we aren’t such ogres. And—”

“Thank you,” said Martell. “Will you excuse me now?”

“I had hoped you would be our guest for dinner.”

“That won’t be possible. I’m expected at the Martian Embassy, if I don’t meet any more local beasts in the road.”

Mondschein looked unruffled by Martell’s rejection of his offer—an offer that could not have been made, Martell thought, in any great degree of seriousness. The older man said gravely, “Allow me, at least, to offer you transportation to town. Surely your pride in your own sanctity will permit you to accept that.”

Martell smiled. “Gladly. It’ll make a good story to tell Coordinator Kirby—how the heretics saved my life and gave me a ride into town.”

“After making an attempt to seduce you from your faith.”

“Naturally. May I leave now?”

“It’ll be a few moments until I can arrange for the car. Would you like to wait outside?”

Martell bowed and made a grateful escape from the heretical chapel. Passing through the building, he emerged into the yard, a cleared space some fifty feet square bordered by scaly, grayish-green shrubbery whose thick-petaled black flowers had an oddly carnivorous look. Four Venusian boys, including Martell’s rescuer, were at work on an excavation. They were using manual tools—shovels and picks—which gave Martell the uncomfortable sensation of having slid back into the nineteenth century. Earth’s gaudy array of gadgetry, so conspicuous and so familiar, could not be found here.

The boys glared coldly at him and went on with their work. Martell watched. They were lean and supple, and he guessed that their ages ranged from about nine to fourteen, though it was hard to tell. They looked enough alike to be brothers. Their movements were graceful, almost elegant, and their bluish skins gleamed lightly with perspiration. It seemed to Martell that the bony structure of their bodies was even more alien than he had thought; they did improbable things with their joints as they worked.

Abruptly, they tossed their picks and shovels aside and joined hands. The bright eyes closed a moment. Martell saw the loose dirt rise from the excavation pit and collect itself in a neat mound some twenty feet behind it. They’re pushers, Martell thought in wonder. Look at them! Brother Mondschein appeared at that precise moment “The car is waiting, Brother,” he said smoothly.

As he entered the Venusian city, Martell could not take his mind from the casual feat of the four boys. They had scooped a few hundred pounds of loose soil from a pit, using esp abilities, and had smugly deposited it just where they wanted it to go.

Pushers! Martell trembled with barely suppressed excitement. The espers of Earth were a numerous tribe now, but their talents were mainly telepathic, not extending in the direction of telekinesis to any significant degree. Nor could the development of the powers be controlled. A program of scheduled breeding, now in its fourth or fifth generation, was intensifying the existing esp powers. It was possible for a gifted esper to reach into a man’s mind and rearrange its contents, or to probe for the deepest secrets. There were a few precogs, too, who ranged up and down the time sequence as though all points along it were one point, but they usually burned out in adolescence, and their genes were lost to the pool. Pushers—teleports—who could move physical objects from place to place were as rare as phoenixes on Earth. And here were four of them in a Harmonist chapel’s back yard on Venus!

New tensions quivered in Martell. He had made two unexpected discoveries on his first day: the presence of Harmonists on Venus, and the presence of pushers among the Harmonists. His mission had taken on devastating new urgency, suddenly. It was no longer merely a matter of gaining a foothold in an unfriendly world. It was a matter of being outstripped and surpassed by a heresy thought to be in decline.