Clifford Simak - Project Pope

'The trip could be adjusted to your schedule. I think that you might like it.

'I'm sure I would.

'Then let's plan on it.

When Decker dropped him at the clinic, Tennyson stood on the roadway, watching the clattering vehicle until it went around a bend in the road and out of sight. Then he turned about and headed for his suite, but on an impulse turned aside and went down the path that led to the garden he had found that first day he'd come to Vatican.

The garden lay in a pool of twilight, a place of softness and strange sweet-flower perfume. It was, he thought, a dimly lighted stage posed against the massive, deep-purple curtains of the towering mountains. And as he looked, he knew instinctively why he had come — here was the place to say farewell to a perfect day. Except that until this moment, he had not realized it had been a perfect day. Had it been Decker, he wondered, who had made it a perfect day, but knowing as he thought of it that it had not been Decker. The man was a new friend, someone who was not tied in with Vatican and, for that reason, somewhat different from the others he had met here. But there had been something else, he knew, although he could not put a finger on it.

A robot came trundling down the brick-paved walk.

'Good evening, sir, it said.

'A good evening to you, said Tennyson, then, 'I'm sorry. I failed to recognize you immediately. You are the gardener. How are the roses doing?

'They are doing well, said the gardener. 'Most of them, for the moment, past the best of their bloom, although there'll be more later. I have a group of yellows that are budding now. In a few days, they'll be at their best. You must come by and see them.

'That I shall do, said Tennyson.

The robot made as if to pass him, heading for the gate, then turned to face him squarely.

'Sir, have you heard the news?

'I'm not sure, said Tennyson. 'Of what news are you speaking?

'Why, sir, the move that is being made to canonize the Listener Mary.

'To canonize — you mean to proclaim her a saint?

'Exactly, sir. It is the feeling of Vatican-

'But people are not canonized until they're dead — ordinarily a long time after they are dead.

'I don't know about that, sir. But as one who has found Heaven…

'Now, wait a minute, gardener. Where did you hear this? Who is talking about it?

'Why, all the Vatican commonality. She would be our first saint. Everyone is convinced it would be an excellent idea. Our first saint; we've never had another, and it is said it is time we had one and —

'How about the cardinals? What does His Holiness think?

'Sir, I do not know. I'm not privy to such things. But the talk is everywhere. I thought you'd like to know. He raised a hand, which still grasped a pair of shears, in solemn salute and went on down the walk, passing through the gate, leaving Tennyson standing alone upon the walk.

A vagrant wind, blowing off the face of the mountains, brought a wave of perfumed lushness.

'For the love of God, said Tennyson, speaking to himself, aloud, 'there'll be no living with her now.

Late at night a single light burned above Jill's desk. Her two aides were gone — one to perform certain pious duties, the other to fetch her sandwiches and a glass of milk.

She pushed away the pile of notes she had been working on and leaned back in the chair, stretching her arms above her head. Then she folded them across her breasts, hugging herself tightly. Far places, she thought — strange, impossible places outside of time and space. Where could that be? What lay outside the boundaries of space and the restrictions of time? Once again she drove her mind to understand, but there was no way, nothing on which to base such an understanding, and the records gave no hint.

But they did make clear — these records — that, at times, the robots ventured out into that impossible area that lay beyond the space-time continuum, traveling in ships of their own devising. Ships driven by the energy of thought, the power of mind? She could not be certain, but that was the hint that lay within the records.

Good Lord, she thought, what had she gotten herself into? Why did I ever allow myself to be so sucked in? But one thing was clear — now that she had gone this far, she should not quit, she could not turn about and walk away. She could not shut the book and leave it. She simply had to know, and there was so much to learn. Jason had warned her what could happen and she should have listened to him. You'll get sucked in, he'd said; you won't be able to pull yourself away.

The aides had protested at her methods of research, her skipping through the records. This was not the way to do it, one of them had told her — you start at the beginning and go on to the end; you do not skip about. But she had to skip about, she'd told him; she must get an overview, she has to catch the pattern. Otherwise, how could she relate what has happened with what is about to happen? Once we know that, she had told him, we'll go back to the beginning and proceed from there.

The otherwhere, she thought, and the otherwhen. But that was not right. These places were neither where nor when. They were in some far distant country of the mind, but not her mind — the mind or minds of something else, of someone else. Could that far distant world, she thought, be in the esoteric dimensions of magnetic flux where lived those entities that were not biological, although they held not only life, but intelligences for which there were no explanations? No, it could not be, she thought, for outrageous as it all might be, these entities still existed within the common and familiar areas of both time and space, although perhaps one twisted beyond all human recognition. Within time and space, she told herself, the physical laws of the known universe still must operate- there must be energy and matter, cause and effect, being and not being — although within those parameters, there must be room for a consciousness and an intellect and a thinking that could quite conceivably be in advance of biological thinking. That she could buy — it came hard to say, yes, that could be so, but it still was acceptable, it still lay within the bounds of human reason.

What she could not accept was that implied area beyond the borders of either space or time, that implication of a never-never land that could exist with no need of either time or space and, presumably, without the steadying hand of the physical laws that went with them. It was one, she thought, with the energy of thought, with the thrust of mind — and 'energy' might not be the right word, for energy was a familiar component and as such could be ruled out of this other place. It all was one with the robots using the power of thought to operate the ships with which they ventured not only across the known universe, but into the areas beyond.

As far as the rest of the history of Vatican was concerned, it was straightforward narrative — the initial landing of the ships from Earth, the early pioneering days, the construction of Vatican itself, the construction, continuing even to this day, of an electronic pope, the bringing in of humans, the setting up of the Search Program, the development of new capabilities in the newly manufactured robots.

The entire project had been well thought out by the robots from the very start. Before they had ever left the Earth, they had known what they were looking for — an out-of-the-way planet where casual visitors were not likely to blunder in on them, where they would be left alone to carry out their work. But they must find, as well, a planet where it would be possible for humans to live. The robots could have lived on almost any sort of planet, and had it not been for the human factor, the search for their base of operations would have been much simpler. But never for a moment had the robots considered embarking on their project without human help. Whether at that time they had evolved the principle of the Search Program, which was based solidly on humans, was not completely apparent from the record, although Jill was inclined to believe that they had. The old bond with humanity still existed; the ancient partnership still held.