Clifford Simak - Project Pope

'And once gone, it can't be started up again.

'That's exactly it, said Tennyson. 'Jill, we are sitting here and facing the death of one of the most ambitious research projects the galaxy has ever known. God knows how much will be lost. No one can estimate what the impact of such a failure will be upon the robots and the humans. I include the humans because what the robots have also belongs to humans. We may think of them as two different races, but they're not. The robots have a human heritage; they are a part of us. They belong to us and we belong to them.

'Jason, we have to do something about it. You and I must do something. We are the only ones.

'There is Ecuyer.

'Yes, sure, there is Ecuyer but he's too much Vatican.

'I suppose you re right. He is tainted in a lesser degree than other End of Nothing humans, but he is still tainted. He is still Vatican.

'Jason, we have to do something. What can we do?

'My darling, I don't know. As of now, I'm fresh out of all ideas. I haven't got a one. If we could get to Heaven…

'And bring back proof. We'd have to bring back proof.

'Yes, of course we would. Without it, no one would believe us. But that's something we don't need to worry about. We're not going there.

'I just thought of something.

'Yes, what is it?

'What if it was really Heaven? What if Mary had been right?

'Heaven's not a place. It is a state of mind.

'No, Jason, cut that out. You are mouthing a phrase. No more than flip judgment. I told you about the equation people. I said it might be possible they operated on a variable logic pattern. What if this whole universe operated on a variable logic pattern? Wouldn't that make all our human preconceptions invalid? Could we be as wrong as that?

'If you're trying to tell me there could be a Heaven…

'I'm not saying that. I'm asking you if there was, what would you do?

'You mean would I accept it?

'Yes, that is what I'm asking. If your nose were rubbed in Heaven —

'I imagine I would gag a bit.

'And accept it?

'I would have to, wouldn't I? But how could I tell if it was Heaven? Not the golden stairs, not angels…

'Probably not golden stairs nor angels. Those are old tales, someone trying to make Heaven the sort of place the people of that early day hungered after. A place they'd want to live. A sort of eternal picnic. But I think you would know if it was Heaven.

'A good fishing stream, said Tennyson. 'Woodland paths to walk. Mountains to look at. Good restaurants where the waiters were your friends — not just servitors, but friends — other friends to talk with, good books to read and think about, and you….

'That's your idea of Heaven?

'Just off the cuff. Give me some time to think about it and I can come up with more.

'I don't know, said Jill. 'I'm confused by all of it — Vatican and the equation worlds and all the rest of it. I can't help but believe it, and yet there are times when I get angry at myself for believing. His Holiness talked about reality. Living here, I know it's real, but when I get off by myself and think about it, I tell myself it's not reality, it is not the sort of place I could have imagined before I first saw it. It all is so unreal.

He put his arm around her and she came up against him and he held her close. The fire talked in the chimney throat and a stillness they had not noticed before closed down all about them. They were alone and safe in the darkness of the world.

'Jason, I am happy.

'So am I. Let us stay that way.

'You were running from Gutshot when you came here. And I was running too. Not running from anything, not even from myself. Just running. I've been running all my life.

'But not any longer.

'No, not any longer. You told His Holiness about the old medieval monasteries. This is our monastery: good work to do, a hiding from the world outside, a happiness and surety in our hearts. Maybe I don't belong here. There were no women in the old monasteries, were there?

'Well, only now and then. When the monks could sneak them in.

The firelight glittered on something that floated down in front of the fireplace.

Tennyson sat bolt upright.

'Jill, he said, 'Whisperer is here.

— Decker, said Whisperer. Decker. Decker. Decker. I have only now found out.

— Come to me, said Jill. Come to me. I will grieve with you.

— Come to both of us, said Tennyson.

He came to both of them and they grieved with him.

Enoch Cardinal Theodosius walked the clinic garden. There was no one there, not even the ancient caretaker, John. There were few stars to relieve the blackness of the sky, a dozen at most, but widely separated, and here and there the faint luminosities of distant galaxies, fairy hints of myriad worlds very far away. Above the eastern horizon hung the frosty glitter of the Milky Way, the home galaxy, and the dim shimmering specks that were a few of the globular clusters that hung above the galaxy.

The cardinal's feet crunched on the brick pavement as he paced slowly along the walks, his hands clasped behind his back and his head bowed low in thought.

We can be wrong, he thought. We were wrong about the Old Ones and we can be wrong about other things as well. Simply because we believe a thing is so does not mean it's so.

For years we had thought the Old Ones were fierce carnivores. We thought of them as bloodthirsty lurkers in the forest; to meet one of them was death. Jealous of their forests and their world, keeping watch on us, keeping us penned in. And yet one of them brought in Decker, dead, and Hubert, dead as well — he brought them home to us and laid them on the stone before the basilica and straightened their limbs when he put them down so that they lay there in all decency.

And he spoke, saying the Old Ones were wardens and there could be no senseless killings, warning us against further senseless killings.

Wardens? Theodosius asked himself. Wardens of this world? More than likely, he told himself, wardens of this world. All these years watching us and not interfering, perhaps not interfering because we somehow managed to be decent tenants of this world of theirs.

Watching us, studying us far more closely than we knew, for they know our language. Knowing how to talk, hut never talking to us, perhaps because until this moment there had been no need to talk. Talking to us with some effort, perhaps not the way they talk among themselves. Adapting their way to our way because they knew we could not adapt to theirs.

We have lived these thousand years on End of Nothing by their sufferance. They have let us go our way and have made no move against us except for the killing of the humans, which served to reinforce our conception of them as dangerous beasts. But killing the humans only because the humans had set out to kill them. In such a light, their actions can be understood. Humans, even robots, would not hesitate to kill someone who came to them in violence, seeking their death.

There had been stories that the Old Ones could talk in the human tongue, but that had been no more than a part of that myth which had been built around them. Had some human or some robot talked with them? he wondered. He shook his head, doubting it. It was just part of the chimney-corner story that had evolved about them. When a myth is manufactured, there always was the chance that some small part of it might turn out to be true.

The waste of it, he thought, the shameful waste of it. All these years the Old Ones had stood out there as potential friends, as people worth knowing, as people who might have had some impact upon our lives and we, perhaps, on theirs. Certainly when anyone settled on a planet, he should know the wardens of it. So few other planets had wardens; perhaps none at all. So in this sense, End of Nothing would be unique, and we should have known how unique it is. It might have made a difference if we had.