Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

Yeah, sure, he thought. That was when I was so arrogant I didn’t realize that every time you solved one you got three more puzzles that were worse. And with computers smarter than the lot of them working nonstop on those problems, few had been solved since.

“I can not believe you are still going around with this God business,” McGraw told him over a good meal and good wine. “Karl, I can not understand this. What a waste.”

“So you’ve solved the mystery of the Great Silence, and why all the gates inward and all the wild holes inward no longer work?” Woodward teased, knowing the answer.

“No, of course not, but it is a solvable problem. Nothing supernatural. No voodoo and priestly mumbo jumbo.”

Woodward didn’t take offense. He long ago realized that there were those who were called and could hear and those for whom the Word would always be blocked off. That was the way humanity was set up. He never set out to convert everybody; he was looking for the few amongst the many.

“So, Oscar, I see at least that medical technology has kept you going as it has me for longer than either of us expected.”

“I always expected an exception to be made in my case,” McGraw chuckled. “Me, I only fear that one day they are going to say, ‘Celebrate! We’ve discovered the key to immortality and total regeneration of mind and body! But you can’t be more than fifty years old or it doesn’t work.’ ”

They laughed over that, but McGraw kept returning to Woodward’s sudden decision to chuck a hard science career and pursue a religious vocation he’d never shown any interest in up to that point. “We never could understand it,” he told his old friend.

“Oscar, I will wager that in all your intense study of physics and mathematics you’ve spent incredible time in deep analytical work, learning all you could, testing what you could,” Woodward said. “How much time, almost since you could read, have you ever spent studying religion? Any religion? A few years? A few months? Weeks? Days?”

“I gave up those childish beliefs when I discovered the wonders of science. You know that,” the little man replied. “You need not waste time on what is a remnant of our primitive past, any more than it would profit me to spend any time studying gnomes and fairies. There are too many real miracles in the rational universe for me to go chasing after fantasies.”

“Politics and religion are the two areas where every single person is an expert and nobody has to study anything,” Woodward responded. “Well, it hasn’t been a waste. It’s been rewarding and enriching, even though you’ll probably hear different from the dissidents I just threw off the ship.”

“On the contrary, most of them say you are the smartest and wisest man they ever met, but they just can’t live up to your demands.”

Woodward’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed? They would say that. I’d much prefer they said the opposite, or that they took your pragmatic and utilitarian view of the cosmos, Oscar. They’re just going to take their misunderstanding of my teaching and pervert a new group as it is. I guess I can’t stop them, though. Did any of them say what caused them to walk?”

Oscar McGraw stared into his old friend’s face. “They say you’ve found the Three Kings. Is this true?”

Woodward smiled. “Come, come, Oscar! The Three Kings? Fairy stories! El Dorado, the Mines of King Solomon, the Golden Moon of Perseus. Surely you don’t believe in those pie-in-the-sky legends!”

“You are mocking me. You have found them, then! I can tell, even after all this time.”

“You’ve done the math. You know that a system like the Three Kings is bordering on unlikely to impossible.”

“Karl—there are good reasons why scouts become cybernetic hybrids, fused with their small and highly maneuverable ships. Taking a ship through a natural wormhole into a situation where the forces of gravity alone must create bizarre conditions—this is not what you do with lots of young people and a ship like this.”

Karl Woodward looked into the eyes of his former colleague and said, quite simply, “Yes, it is.”

Eve had progressed rather well, much faster than anyone had expected. She was now in a maglev chair, able to glide around with minimal effort using a direct neural connection. Her voice, while lower and raspier than before, was back, and she had reasonable control of her mouth, tongue, and vocal chords so the lisping was now quite mild. She had feeling to one degree or another through most of her body, but operations were still difficult and the muscles were still in need of retraining. Still, she was beginning to look, sound, and feel human.

John Robey had tried to visit with her as much as possible every day since the first, and the medtechs had incorporated him into her rehabilitation routine. Machines could do a lot of the basic work on her body, but they were nearly helpless in healing the mental scars.

The old Eve would have been irrepressible and flying all around the big ship in her levitating chair, but this Eve, the new one, would not leave the medical facility or even go from one part of it to another without someone else along. Strangers, and there were many aboard during the orbital docking and retrofitting, caused her to freeze and then go back and hide in her room. Anybody she didn’t know, even from the ship’s company, caused her deep anxiety, even when with somebody like Robey.

“You can’t keep torturing yourself like this,” he warned her. “You’ll go crazy.”

“I know it’s insane, that there’s nothing to it, but saying that and feeling that, deep down, are two different things,” she replied. “I keep thinking that somebody’s gonna just put something on me or near me and it’s gonna go into me and I’ll be a puppet again, only this time nobody’ll know but me. The feeling of total helplessness is just indescribable. I’d rather be dead than have anything like that happen again.”

“What are you going to do when we get to the Three Kings? Sit in your room here and watch on the screen?” he asked her. “You know the Doctor hasn’t made up his mind about the former hostages yet.”

She looked panicked. “What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t want anybody to go unless they are demonstrating total faith. If you’re hiding out from life the way you and some of the others are, well, he says that’s a total lack of faith and he won’t be a part of it. The work here will be done in a few more days. At that point he’ll pick the final company. We’re just about broke, you know, as it is. That last mission was all give and no take, and this thing takes some work to keep in shape. I think the only reason he’s getting some work at cut rate prices here is that folks know we’re off for the Three Kings and they either want to horn in on a share of the riches that might be there or they want to take it from us. He says he wants a committed, determined group.”

“He can’t! He wouldn’t! ”

“He can and he will. You know the old man.”

“But you’re going, and you yourself said your faith was a little cracked!”

He sighed. “Yeah, maybe it was, maybe it still is. But, well, if I don’t have it then what do I have? If I can’t live up to my own standards, what good am I? This is the best test I’ve ever faced or can hope to face. Besides, I want to see what the Three Kings really are. Just more colonial-type planets in an unusual setting? Remnants of ancient alien civilizations? Heaven and Hell? It’s almost a part of me, I guess. I looked out at the Brother Timothy kind of life and I couldn’t be that kind of hypocrite in a minute. What else would I do? No money, no resumй, everything I’ve done has been here, and as a part of the Church. I’m not about to join another one, and yet the only marketable skill I’ve got is bodyguard or event organizer. I don’t know about a lot of things, but I know that this is where I’m supposed to be. This is what I do. I think it’s where you belong, too, but not if you’re no good to God or man. I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I think fairly soon you’re going to get a test from the old man.”