Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

“No. It is far too convincing. It seems to me more dangerous than I had realized. If you must, get Aquinas.”

Although Gus was physically located on the ground floor of the library, conference rooms and offices throughout the seminary had terminal access to him. Chesley learned that he was capable of conducting conversations simultaneously at all sites. He also discovered that Gus didn’t much care whether anyone approved of him. It was refreshing.

“How many people do you think are saved?” Chesley asked him during a Friday afternoon late in October. The day was dismal, cold, flat, gray.

“You know as well as I do that the question is unanswerable.”

“Isn’t there any way we can get at it?”

“I doubt it. Although, if we accept the Gospel position—as I assume we must—that faith is the key, I am not encouraged.”

“Why do you say that? Millions of people go to church every Sunday in this country alone.”

“A poor indicator, Monsignor. I get the distinct impression a lot of them suspect the pope may be on to something and they’re taking no chances. We get visitors here occasionally, Catholic bankers, real estate dealers, and so on. Considering the tax advantages of a donation. If the others are like them, we had best hope no one tries their faith with lions.”

“You’re a terrible pessimist,” said Chesley.

“Not really. I have great confidence in God. He has made it very difficult not to sin. Therefore, I suggest to you that salvation may be on a curve.”

Chesley sighed. “Do you know what you are?”

“Yes, Monsignor.”

“Tell me.”

“I am a simulation of Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo during the fifth century. Author of The City of God .” And, after a long pause: “Pastor to the people of God.”

“You don’t always sound like Augustine.”

“I am what he might have been, given access to the centuries.”

Chesley laughed. “Was he as arrogant as you?”

Gus considered it. “Arrogance is a sin,” he said. “But yes, he was occasionally guilty of that offense.”

Chesley had always been addicted to nocturnal walks. He enjoyed the night skies, the murmur of the trees, the sense of withdrawal from the circle of human activity. But as the evenings cooled, he broke off these strolls increasingly early, and peeled away toward the admin building, where he talked with Gus, often until after midnight.

Seated in the unlit conference room, he argued theology and ethics and politics with the system. Increasingly, he found it easy to forget that he was talking to software.

Gus occasionally reminisced about the saint’s childhood in ancient Carthage, speaking as if it were his own. He created vivid pictures for Chesley of the docks and markets, of life at the harbor. Of his son Adeodatus.

“You lived with the boy’s mother, what, ten years?”

“Fifteen.”

“Why did you leave her?”

For the first time, Chesley sensed uncertainty in the system. “I found God.”

“And—?”

“She refused to abandon her paganism.”

“So you abandoned her ?”

“Yes. God help me, I did.” Somewhere in the building a radio was playing. “There was no way we could have continued to live together.”

Chesley, sitting in darkness, nodded. “What was her name?”

Again, the long pause. “I do not remember.”

Of course. Augustine had omitted her name from his Confessions , and so it was lost to history.

“I read about the destruction of Hippo.”

“It was far worse than simply the siege of a single city, Matt.” It was the first time the system had used Chesley’s given name. “The Vandals were annihilating what remained of Roman power in North Africa. And we knew, everyone knew, that the days of the Empire itself were numbered. What might lie beyond that terrible crash, none dared consider. In a way, it was a condition worse than the nuclear threat under which you have lived.”

“You were at the end of your life at the time.”

“Yes. I was an old man then. Sick and dying. That was the worst of it: I could not help. Everywhere, people wished to flee. The fathers wrote, one by one, and asked whether I would think ill of them if they ran away.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“I sent the same message to all: If we abandon our posts, who will stand?”

Occasionally, the conversations were interrupted by long silences. Sometimes Chesley simply sat in the darkened conference room, his feet propped up alongside the window.

Gus had no visual capability. “I can hear storms when they come,” he said. “But I would like to be able to feel the rain again. To see black clouds piled high, and the blue mist of an approaching squall.”

So Chesley tried to put into words the gleam of light on a polished tabletop, the sense of gray weight in the granite towers of the library rising above the trees. He described the yellow arc of the moon, the infinite brilliance of the night sky.

“Yes,” said Gus, his electronic voice somehow far away. “I remember.”

“Why did Augustine become a priest?” Chesley asked.

“I wanted,” Gus said, with the slightest stress on the first words, “to get as close as I could to my Creator.” Thoughtfully, he added, “I seem to have traveled far afield.”

“Sometimes I think,” Chesley said, “the Creator hides himself too well.”

“Use his Church,” said Gus. “That is why it is here.”

“It has changed.”

“Of course it has changed. The world has changed.”

“The Church is supposed to be a rock.”

“Think of it rather as a refuge in a world that will not stand still.”

On the Sunday following Thanksgiving, a young priest whom Chesley had befriended called from Boston to say he had given up. “With or without permission,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, “I am leaving the priesthood.”

“Why?” asked Chesley.

“None of it works.”

“ What doesn’t work?”

“Prayer. Faith. Whatever. I’m tired of praying for lost causes. For men who can’t stop drinking and women who get beaten every Saturday night. And kids who do drugs. And people who have too many children.”

That night Chesley went to Gus. “He was right,” he said, sitting in the glow of a table lamp. “We all know it. Eventually, we all have to come to terms with the futility of prayer.”

“No,” Gus said. “Don’t make the mistake of praying for the wrong things, Matt. The priests of Christ were never intended to be wielders of cures. Pray for strength to endure. Pray for faith.”

“I’ve heard that a thousand times.”

“Then pray for a sense of humor. But hold on.”

“Why?”

“What else is there?”

Two nights later, after attending a seminar at Temple, Chesley angrily activated the system. “It was one of these interdenominational things,” he told Gus. “And I have no problem with that. But the Bishop was there, and we were all trying very hard not to offend anybody. Anyway, the guest of honor was a popular Unitarian author. At least she pretends to be a Unitarian. She had the nerve to tell us that Christianity has become outdated and should be discarded.”

“The Romans used to say that,” said Gus. “I hope no one took her seriously.”

“We take everyone seriously. The Bishop— our Bishop—responded by listing the social benefits to be got from Christianity. He said, and I quote: ‘Even if the faith were, God forbid, invalid, Christianity would still be useful. If it hadn’t happened by divine fiat, we should have had to invent it.’”