Robert Silverberg - To Open the Sky

Venus was beyond direct Vorster control. The Harmonists of Venus had the pushers that Vorst needed to reach into the galaxy. They showed little interest, though, in collaborating with the Vorsters on an expedition. For weeks now Reynolds Kirby had been negotiating with his opposite number on Venus, attempting to bring about an agreement.

Meanwhile the surgeons at Santa Fe had never given up their dream of creating pushers out of Earthmen, thus making the cooperation of the unpredictable Venusians unnecessary. The synaptic-rearrangement project, flowering at last, had come to the stage where a human subject would go under the beam.

“It won’t work,” Vorst had said to Kirby. “They’re still fifty years away from anything.”

“I don’t understand it, Noel. The Venusians have the gene for telekinesis, don’t they? Why can’t we just duplicate it? Considering all we’ve done with the nucleic acids—”

Vorst smiled. “There’s no ‘gene for telekinesis,’ as such, you know. It’s part of a constellation of genetic patterns. We’ve been trying consciously to duplicate it for thirty years, and we aren’t even close. We’ve also been trying a random approach, since that’s how the Venusians got the ability. No luck there, either.

And then there’s this synapse business: alter the brain itself, not the genes. That may get us somewhere, eventually. But I can’t wait another fifty years.”

“You’ll live that long, certainly.”

“Yes,” Vorst agreed, “but I still can’t wait any longer. The Venusians have the men we need. It’s time to win them to our purposes.”

Patienty Kirby had wooed the heretics. There were signs of progress in the negotiations now. In view of the failure of the operation, the need for an agreement with Venus was more urgent.

“Come with me,” Vorst said, as the dead patient was wheeled away. “They’re testing that gargoyle today, and I want to watch.”

Kirby followed the Founder out of the amphitheater. Acolytes were close by in case of trouble. Vorst, these days, rarely tried to walk any more, and rolled along in his cradling net of webfoam. Kirby still preferred to use his feet, though he was nearly as ancient as Vorst. The sight of the two of them promenading through the plazas of the research center always stirred attention.

“You aren’t disturbed over the failure just now?” Kirby asked.

“Why should I be? I told you it was too soon for success.”

“What about this gargoyle? Any hope?”

“Our hope,” Vorst said quietly, “is Venus. They already have the pushers.”

“Then why keep trying to develop them here?”

“Momentum. The Brotherhood hasn’t slowed down in a hundred years. I’m not closing any avenues now. Not even the hopeless ones. It’s all a matter of momentum.”

Kirby shrugged. For all the power he held in the organization—and his powers were immense—he had never felt that he held any real initiative. The plans of the movement were generated, as they had been from the first, by Noel Vorst. He and only he knew what game he was playing. And if Vorst died this afternoon, with the game unfinished? What would happen to the movement then? Run on its own momentum? To what end, Kirby wondered.

They entered a squat, glittering little building of irradiated green foamglass. An awed hush preceded them: Vorst was coming! Men in blue robes came out to greet the Founder. They led him to the room in the rear where the gargoyle was kept. Kirby kept pace, ignoring the acolytes who were ready to catch him if he stumbled.

The gargoyle was sitting enmeshed in lacy restraining ribbons. He was not a pretty sight. Thirteen years old, three feet tall, grotesquely deformed, deaf, crippled, his corneas clouded, his skin pebbled and granulated. A mutant, though not one produced by any laboratory; this was Hurler’s Syndrome, a natural and congenital error of metabolism, first identified scientifically two and a half centuries before. The unlucky parents had brought the hapless monster to a chapel of the Brotherhood in Stockholm, hoping that by bathing him in the Blue Fire of the cobalt reactor his defects would be cured. The defects had not been cured, but an esper at the chapel had detected latent talents in the gargoyle, and so be was here to be probed and tested. Kirby felt a shiver of revulsion.

“What causes such a thing?” he asked the medic at his elbow.

“Abnormal genes. They produce metabolic error that results in an accumulation of mucopolysaccharides in the tissues of the body.”

Kirby nodded solemnly. “And is there supposed to be a direct link with esping?’

“Only coincidental,” said the medic.

Vorst had moved up to study the creature at close range. The Founder’s eye-shutters clicked as he peered forward. The gargoyle was humped and folded, virtually unable to move its limbs. The milky eyes held a look of pure misery. To the euthanasia heap with this one, Kirby thought. Yet Vorst hoped that such a monster would take him to the stars!

“Begin the examination,” Vorst murmured.

A pair of espers came forward, general-purpose types: a slick young woman with frizzy hair, and a plump, sad-faced man. Kirby, whose own esping facilities were deficient to the point of nonexistence, watched in silence as the wordless examination commenced. What were they doing? What shafts were they aiming at the huddled creature before them? Kirby did not know, and he took comfort in the fact that Vorst probably did not know himself. The Founder wasn’t much of an esper, either.

Ten minutes passed. Then the girl looked up and said, “Low-order pyrotic, mainly.”

“He can push molecules about?” Vorst said. “Then he’s got a shred of telekinesis.”

“Only a shred,” the second esper said. “Nothing that others don’t have. Also low-order communication abilities. He sits there telling us to kill him.”

“I’d recommend dissection,” said the girl. “The subject wouldn’t mind.”

Kirby shuddered. These two bland espers had peered within the mind of that crippled thing, and that in itself should have been enough to shrivel their souls. To see, for an empathic moment, what it was like to be a thirteen-year-old human gargoyle, to look out upon the world through those clouded eyes—! But they were all business, these two. They had merged minds with monstrosities before.

Vorst waved his hand. “Keep him for further study. Maybe he can be guided toward usefulness. If he’s really a pyrotic, take the usual precautions.”

The Founder whirled his chair around and started to leave the ward. At that same moment an acolyte came hurrying in, bearing a message. He froze at the unexpected sight of Vorst wheeling toward a collision with him. Vorst smiled paternally and guided himself around the boy, who went limp with relief.

The acolyte said, “Message for you, Coordinator Kirby.”

Kirby took it and jammed his thumb against the seal. The envelope popped open. The message was from Mondschein. “Lazarus is ready to talk to Vorst,” it said.

Vorst said, “I was insane, you know. For something like ten years. Later I discovered what the trouble was. I was suffering from time-float.”

The pallid esper girl’s eyes were very round as she gazed at him. They were alone in the Founder’s personal quarters. She was thin, loose-limbed, thirty years old. Strands of black hair dangled like painted straw down the sides of her face. Her name was Delphine, and in all the months that she had served Vorst’s needs she had never become accustomed to his frankness. She had little chance to; when she left his office after each session, other espers erased her recollections of the visit.

She said, “Shall I turn myself on?”