Clifford Simak - Project Pope

She shook her head. None of it made sense, but she was here and if she was, going to interview these people (people?), she had better be about it. Interview them? she asked herself — that was plain ridiculous. There was no way she and they could communicate. She'd jabber at them with her mouth and they would jabber back with their equations and neither of them would have the slightest idea of what the other might be saying.

Nevertheless, she walked toward the cube that was nearest her, a rose-red creature bearing on its surface a squiggle of damson-plum equations and an outrageously twisted diagram that glowed in sulphur yellow.

'I am Jill Roberts, she said, speaking loudly. 'I have come to talk with you.

Her words shattered the silence that hung like a gentle veil draped about this world, and the rose-red cube appeared to cringe, its color fading to a washed-out pink. Slowly, it began to edge away from her, as if it wanted to turn about and run but knew it would not be polite to turn about and run.

She thought: What a silly thing to do. I knew this was a quiet world; Jason had told me how terribly quiet it was, and I come busting in here and begin hollering out my questions. And what a silly thing to say, as well. Telling them I am Jill Roberts, and they, even if they could hear me, would not know what a jill-roberts was. If I am going to talk with them, she told herself, probably the only way to do it is to talk to them the way I talk to Whisperer. If I am going to tell them who I am — no, that won't do at all. I have to tell them what I am and not who I am. How can I go about telling them what I am? How can I or any other human, or any other form of life, tell a different form of life what it is?

Maybe, she thought, I should begin by telling them I am an organic being. But would they know what organic meant — even if they could hear and understand, would they know what organic means?

The answer seemed to be that probably they wouldn't. If she was going to talk with them, she'd have to start on a more simple level. She would have to tell them what organic was. Maybe, once she got the idea across they' might understand, for it was just possible (not probable, but possible) that they had encountered other organic life. Why was it, she wondered, that she had the idea (although she was not absolutely positive that she had the idea) that they were not organic life, but something else entirely, something very strange?

If she was going to reduce organic life to more basic concepts, how could she go about it? Come right down to it, what the hell was organic life? I wish I knew, she said. I deeply wish I knew. If Jason were here, he could be some help. Being a doctor and all, he'd know what it was. There was, she seemed to remember, something about carbon but what it was about carbon she simply did not know. She tried to remember back, wondering if she had ever known. Damn, damn, DAMN, she said, I've made it a point all my life to know so many things, to have a good working knowledge of so many things, and now that it comes right down to it, I don't know the things it is important I should know. As a reporter she had always made it a rule to bone up on any subject that she was going to talk with someone about, to know something about the creature or the human that she would be asking questions of, knowing something about its background and its interests and its work so she could hold the foolish questions down to minimum. But even had she had the time, there would have been no way she could have boned up about the equation people; there was no resource material. Maybe somewhere, but not in the human world.

The maddening thing about it was that she was trying to do it all by herself. Whisperer was here with her and he should be part of the act, not just she alone, but she and Whisperer. The little stinker was just lying doggo, not doing anything, not helping her at all.

The rose-red cube had stopped retreating and now stood at a distance from her, but not a great deal farther than it had been when she first had walked toward it. Other cubes were beginning to move in, gathering behind it, forming a solid phalanx behind it.

They are ganging up on me, she thought, the way they ganged up on Jason.

She took a few tentative steps toward the rose-red cube, and as she did, it wiped off its surface all the equations and the ugly twisted diagram and for a moment that side of it that faced her was no more than an unblemished rose-red panel.

She came up close against it, so close that she had to tip her head to see the top of it. The blackboard side of it still remained a rose-red panel and the other cubes that stood behind it and to either side of it remained exactly where they were, with their equations and their diagrams still frozen on their blackboards, not quivering, but stark and frozen there.

Now, slowly, hesitantly, the rose-red cube began to form a new diagram upon its blackboard, drawing it in a brilliant gold, working carefully, as if it might not be sure what it was doing, as if it were feeling its way.

First, high up, it formed a triangle, an upside-down triangle, with its apex pointing downward. Then another, larger triangle with its apex pointing upward, meeting the apex of the smaller triangle. Then, after some deliberation, it formed two parallel, vertical strokes, two sticks attached to the base of the larger triangle.

Jill stared at it, uncomprehending, then sucked in her breath and said aloud, but very softly, 'Why, that's me. The upper triangle is the head and the lower triangle is my body dressed in a skirt and those two sticks are legs!

Then, off to one side of the diagram that was Jill Roberts, a jagged line was formed — a jagged line with five points.

'That's a question mark, she said. 'I'm sure it's a question mark. They are asking what I am.

— That is right, said Whisperer, speaking from inside her mind. You have caught their attention. Now let me take over.

Despite the flaring candles the room was dark, the darkness soaking up the candlelight. The humped shadows of furniture crouched like stalking beasts. The guard stood, spraddle-legged, against the door. Cardinal Theodosius sat in his huge, high-backed chair, seemingly muffled in his robes.

'Dr. Tennyson, he said, 'in all the time that you've been here, this is the first time you've done me the honor of dropping in on me.

'I knew how busy you must be, Your Eminence, said Tennyson. 'And, heretofore, there was no need.

'There now is need?

'I think there is.

'You come to me at a time of some difficulty. We have few such times in Vatican. But now we do. Those fools out there.

'That's why I came to see you. Jill…

'I would have expected such action from the humans. You humans are a flighty tribe. Solid folks, but excessively emotional. At times it seems to me that you do not have good sense. With the robots I would not have expected it. We are a stolid people, at times phlegmatic. You would not have thought that robots could work themselves into such a state of hysteria. You were about to speak of Jill?

'Yes, I was. said Tennyson.

'She is one of the finest humans I have ever met. She has identified with us. She is interested in us and in Vatican. You know how hard she works.

'Indeed I do.

'When she first came to us, said the cardinal, 'she was somewhat less than enchanted. She wanted to write about us, as you well know, but that we could not allow. For a time I thought that when the ship next left she would be leaving on it. That I did not want her to do, for I knew inside myself, well before she demonstrated that I was correct, that she was the capable, devoted historian we needed and had never found. Tell me, Doctor, if you will, why simple folks such as we should feel so desperate a need to have our history written. Not for others, but for ourselves. Jill would have been glad to write our story for others, but that we would not countenance. However, we are all too happy to have her write it for ourselves.