Robert Silverberg - To Open the Sky

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.

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 Kirby had seen other men presume too deeply on their closeness to Vorst, and he had seen that closeness imperceptibly withdrawn.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.

The surgical amphitheater was a chilly horseshoe lit by a pale violet glow. At the north end, windows on the level of the second gallery admitted frosty New Mexico sun-light. From where he sat, overlooking the operating table, Noel Vorst could see the bluish mountains in the middle distance beyond the confines of the research center. The mountains did not interest him. Neither did what was taking place on the operating table. But he kept his lack of interest to himself.

Vorst had not needed to attend the operation in person, of course. He knew already that a successful outcome was improbable, and so did everyone else. But the Founder was 144 years old, and thought it useful to appear in public as often as his strength could sustain the effort, it did not do to have people think he had lapsed into senility.

Down below, the surgeons were clustered about a bare brain. Vorst had watched them lift the dome of a skull and thrust their scalpels of light deep into the wrinkled gray mass. There were ten billion neurons in that block of tissue, and an infinity of axonal terminals and dendritic receptors. The surgeons hoped to rearrange the synaptic nets of that brain, altering the protein-molecular switchgear to render the patient more useful to Vorst’s plan.

Folly, the old man thought. He hid his pessimism and sat quietly, listening to the pulsing of the blood in his own glossy artificial arteries.