“We are glad to be here,” Tennyson said shortly.
The Bubbly spoke, Decker translating, “It would be proper now for you to tender us your credentials, with a statement of why you came, so kindly, to visit us.”
“We have no credentials,” said Tennyson. “We are representing no one. We came as free members of the galactic society. We came as travelers.”
“Then, perhaps,” said the Bubbly, “you would not mind telling how you came to know of us.”
“Certainly,” said Tennyson, “all in the galaxy must know of the greatness of the Center.”
“This one mocks us,” Smoky said to Decker. “He would make sport of us.”
“I doubt it,” said Decker. “It is just his way of speaking. He is a rank barbarian.”
The Bubbly said to Tennyson, “Then your purpose. You must have had a purpose.”
“We were looking around,” said Tennyson. “We were no more than giddy tourists.”
—You’re pushing it a bit, Jill said to Tennyson. You best ease off.
—He’s fishing for information, said Tennyson. I’m not about to give any. It’s apparent he doesn’t know who we are or where we came from, and it’s best he remain in ignorance.
“Friend,” said Decker, “you are going about this wrong. It would be only common courtesy to give us some straight answers.”
—They have not as yet finished the reconstruction of the two of you, said Whisperer. If they had, there would be no questions asked of you. The answers could be gotten from the recreated humans. It seems, however, that this one is in something of a hurry. He does not want to wait for answers.
“I can tell you honestly enough,” Tennyson told Decker, “that I have been giving answers as straight as you will get. If your friend wishes to know where our home planet lies, tell him to seek it out by other means, for I am not about to tell him. If he wishes to know how we got here or why we came, then he can learn it later from our recreations, but from us he will not get it. Or he might try talking with the cubes. Maybe they will tell him.”
“You are deliberately making it difficult for me,” said Decker. “You know very well we cannot converse with the cubes.”
“What is this all about?” grated Smoky. “Tell me, Decker, what is going on.”
“Just a matter of semantics,” Decker told him. “Give me a little time and I’ll get it all worked out.”
Plop, went Plopper, plop, plop, plop.
“I do not like this,” said Haystack. “Dammit, Decker, there is something going on. Tell us what it is.”
“Be quiet,” said Decker. “Keep your fat mouth shut.”
“I’ve told him and I’ve told him,” wailed Haystack, “and he pays me no attention. Decker, you and I are reasonable beings. Let’s give ourselves a little time to work it out. Let’s drop the matter for the moment; we can pick up later on.”
“I will not drop it for the moment,” yelled Smoky. “I want the answers now. There are ways that we can get them.”
—I cannot catch the thoughts complete, said Whisperer, but I would judge it is getting slightly sticky.
—Let it get sticky, then, said Tennyson.
—I could jerk you out of here.
—Not quite yet, said Tennyson. Let us see what happens.
Plopper had positioned himself directly in front of Smoky and was jumping now in place, straight up and down, going very fast.
Plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop …
—We still have no proof, said Jill. If we go now, there’ll be no proof. We must get some proof.
“I’ll tell you man to man, human to human,” Tennyson said to Decker, “something that you can understand. Being human, you can understand it; no alien could. We made a bet, you see. We bet that we could come here and bring back proof that we had been here. Give us that proof—proof that no one could question—and let us go. Should you do that, we’ll return—on our honor we’ll return and answer all your questions.”
“You’re mad!” yelled Decker. “To expect me to believe that kind of story. You cannot bargain—”
“Decker!” screamed Smoky. “Fill me in. I command you tell me.”
“They refuse to answer questions now,” said Decker. “They have proposed a bargain.”
“Bargain! They would bargain with me?”
“Why should we not bargain?” piped Haystack. “As creatures of reason—”
“I will not stand for this!” raged Smoky. “I will not be defied by supercilious barbarians.”
“It would be better if you accepted some defiance,” counseled Decker. “I know humans because I am a human, and I stand here to tell you that you cannot shout them down and furthermore …”
Plopper’s plopping now became so rapid and so loud that it was almost continuous, drowning out what Decker was saying. He was bouncing up and down, straight up into the air and down, maintaining his position in front of Smoky, and now Smoky was beginning to bounce, too, not as high or as energetically as Plopper, but jiggling up and down at a fairly rapid rate.
—I think, said Whisperer, that it may be time for us to go.
—We have to have some proof, said Tennyson. We can’t go back with nothing.…
—You’ll get no proof from these maniacs. Any minute now they’ll explode right in our face.
“Smoky!” yelled Decker, trying to raise his voice so it could be heard above the racket. “Smoky, you are out of line. You are—”
“Anathema!” screamed Smoky. “Anathema! I call down anathema!”
—Now, said Whisperer, and Tennyson tried to cry out a protest, but there was no time to protest.
But before the scene cut out before him, he caught a glimpse of Plopper exploding in his face—a flare of light and fire that was not fire, but cold.…
Chapter Sixty
The rumor that something was happening quickly spread in Vatican. There was something happening or about to happen. Cardinal Theodosius and an Old One were out at the foot of the basilica staircase, waiting for something that they must know was about to happen. And did you hear the latest—Jill and Tennyson are in Heaven and now they’re coming back? Just like Mary went to Heaven and came back. They’ll be bringing good word. They’ll bring word that it is really Heaven. They’ll tell us that Mary was right in what she told us.
Or at least that was what some of them said. Others had a different version. You’re wrong, they told the believers. To believe that Heaven is a place you could go to in the flesh is at variance with the tenets of Vatican. Heaven is a mystery; it is not of this world, but of some other and some better plane. There were still others who also disputed what the first group said on the grounds that Jill and Tennyson were creatures of Theodosius and other cardinals who did not believe in the finding of Heaven, or who would not allow themselves to so believe, for if it was determined that the place Mary found was Heaven, then they must abandon their search for knowledge, since Heaven would wipe out any need of knowledge; if Heaven was found, then there would be no need of knowledge, since faith would be all one needed.
John, the gardener, came striding down the steps of the basilica to confront Theodosius.
“I understand, Your Eminence,” he said, “that you have been to see His Holiness.”
“That I have,” replied Theodosius, “and who has a better right?”
“And that in your audience with him, you accused me of treachery to Vatican?”
“I accused you,” said Theodosius, “of interfering in matters that were none of your concern.”
“The preservation of the faith is everyone’s concern,” said the gardener.
“But the murder of an esteemed human and the theft of Listener cubes is not,” said Theodosius, speaking bluntly.
“Did you accuse me of that?”
“Do you deny that you were the instigator and the leader of the theologian movement? Do you deny that you are the one who stirred up the stink about canonizing Mary?”
“It was not a
stink. It was an honest attempt to haul Vatican back to the course it should have followed all these years. The Church had need of a saint and I supplied it one.”
“To me it was a stink,” said Theodosius. “It was a stench within the nostrils of the Church. You used the story of a deluded woman to bring all this about.”
“I would have used,” said John, “anything at all to bring Vatican to its proper senses.”
He turned on his heel and started up the stairway, then turned about and spoke again.
“You demanded of His Holiness that if there should prove to be no Heaven I’m to be demoted to a piddling monk.”
“That I did,” said Theodosius, “and I mean to see it done.”
“You have first to prove it is not Heaven,” said John. “Should you fail, the same to you.”
“I would think,” said the cardinal, “that you have it twisted all around. I would argue that the onus lies with you—not that I must prove this place of Mary’s is not Heaven, but yours to prove it is.”
“Why is it, Your Eminence, that you are so hostile to Heaven?”
“I am not hostile to it,” said Theodosius. “I would much hope that there is a Heaven. But not the kind of Heaven you dreamed up.”
John turned about and this time he went up the stairs, saying nothing further.
Still the rumors ran.
Did you notice that Theodosius is sitting on a stool? No robot before him has ever sat so long upon a stool. Someone told me that it is a punishment—that His Holiness has told him that, in all humility, he must perch upon a stool.
And the Old One? What’s the Old One doing here? He has no business here. Do you notice how he and the cardinal stick so close together, as if they were firm, fast friends? What business has a cardinal of Vatican to be friends with a ravening beast such as the Old Ones are? I tell you there is more to all of this than meets the eye.
But another objected, saying you must remember that an Old One, this same Old One, some say, brought the dead Decker and Hubert home to Vatican, a neighborly and compassionate thing to do.
Brought them home! exclaimed another. It was the least that he could do, since more than likely he was the one who killed them in the first place.
These and other rumors. Vatican went wild.
No work was done. Crowds gathered along the perimeter of the esplanade, leaving the central area free since, by some kind of popular osmosis, it seemed to be understood that whatever was about to happen would take place out in its central area. The basilica stairs were jammed with watching robots. Wood-cutting crews, harvesters, cowherds, haulers, steam-engine operators, all dropped what they were doing and came trickling in. End of Nothing humans left their jobs and businesses and zeroed in on the basilica. Someone began ringing the bells, and this continued until Theodosius got up from his stool and went storming up the stairs and put a stop to it. Even some of the Listeners, who rarely mingled with the Vatican hosts, came out to see what was going on. A hastily put-together corps of technicians, wholly without authorization, installed a huge video screen on the basilica’s facade and hooked it up to one of the papal audience panels. Within minutes after the hook-up had been made, the cross-stitch visage of His Holiness appeared upon the screen, saying nothing, but joining the watch.
Nothing happened. Hours went by and nothing happened.
The crowd that had been noisy with constant chattering grew quieter as the sun went down the western sky. The tension grew.
“Could you have been mistaken?” Theodosius asked the Old One. “Could the message have been wrong?”
“The message was as I gave it to you,” said the Old One.
“Then something has gone wrong,” said Theodosius. “I just know something has gone wrong.”
He had counted too much, he told himself, on everything going right—on his two human friends returning with word that would set Vatican on its proper track again, putting an end to the premature, infantile infatuation with Heaven and with saints.
He tried to console himself. If, in fact, everything went wrong, it would not be forever. He and some other people in the Vatican, perhaps not many, but a few, would keep the flame of hope alive. Vatican would not go down to a saintly darkness that would last forever. It would not dream the remainder of its life away. Sometime, centuries from now, people would weary of the sterile saintliness and would turn back to the search for knowledge which, in time, might lead to the true faith. And if, sometime in the far future, it should be determined that there was no true faith, that in fact it was an uncaring universe, it would be better to learn this and face it than to go on pretending that there had to be a faith.
Thinking all of this, he had bowed his head in a prayerful attitude and now he heard behind him a sudden rustle of attention. Jerking up his head, he saw what the others saw.
Jill and Tennyson stood on the esplanade, no more than a hundred feet away. Above them he caught a glimpse of a momentary glitter, as if a patch of diamond dust were shining. He wondered momentarily if the glitter might be Whisperer.
He started to rise from the stool, then sat down again with a weak-kneed knowledge something had gone wrong. For out in front of Jill and Tennyson hopped a strange monstrosity. It looked like an octopus standing on its head, and as it hopped, it made a plopping sound.
Out on the esplanade, Tennyson spoke to Whisperer.
—What the hell is going on? he asked. You brought along the Plopper.
—I just sort of grabbed hold of him at the last second, said Whisperer. When he exploded in our faces, I somehow got inside his mind, something I had not been able to do before, although I’d tried. I don’t think I planned to bring him along with us, but he just sort of came.
—The last time I saw him, said Jill, he was big and fiery.
—Well, said Whisperer, it seems he got over that.
—Do you know what he is? asked Tennyson.
—I’m not entirely certain. It becomes slightly complicated. Smoky thinks he is a god, a god that he could use. Worship him and use him, paying for his help with worship, which, after all, is what you humans do as well, but in a slightly different way. Not quite so cynically, perhaps, as Smoky.
—And is he—a god, I mean.
—Who’s to know? Smoky thinks he is. He figures he has gotten hold of something none of the other Bubblies have and that he can use it to achieve his ends. Get the right god, you know, and you can do anything. Near as I can make out, Plopper thinks he is a god as well. Which makes two of them thinking it, and where does that leave us? How many people must think a thing’s a god before it truly is?
Plop, plop, plop, went Plopper.
Theodosius had risen from his stool and was walking out to meet them. The Old One, spinning slowly, moved along beside him. Behind them the people clustered, the robots and the humans. They jammed the staircase that ran to the basilica, they perched on every roof, they spread out as flankers on both sides of the esplanade. On the facade of the basilica, the cross-hatched face of His Holiness stared out at them.
Theodosius held out his hand to them, first to Jill, then to Tennyson.
“Welcome home,” he said, “and our heartfelt thanks for the journey that you made for us.”
Plopper, bouncing madly, hopped an intricate fandango around Theodosius and the Old One.
“You,” said Theodosius, speaking to Tennyson, “have met Decker’s Old One, but I doubt that Jill has met him.”
“I am pleased to meet you, sir,” said Jill.
The Old One wheezed and hummed and finally he said, “It is my privilege and pleasure to have met the two of you and to welcome you back to End of Nothing.”
The crowd had started slowly edging in, a close-packed semicircle about the four of them—five, if one counted Plopper.
“First of all,” said Theodosius, “out of sheer curiosity, what is this bouncing horror you brought along with you? Does it have significance?”
“Your Eminence,” said Tennyson, “I rathe
r doubt it does.”
“Then why is it along?”
“You might say it got caught up in a traffic jam.”
“Our intelligence is that you reached Mary’s Heaven.”
“Yes, we did,” said Tennyson, “and it is not Heaven. It is a research center similar to Vatican. We did not have the chance, however, to explore it. It seems we got entangled in local politics.”
A robot elbowed his way through the crowd and came up to stand alongside Theodosius. Tennyson saw that it was John, the gardener.
“Dr. Tennyson,” asked John, “what proof can you offer that it is not Heaven?”
“Why, no proof at all,” said Tennyson, brazening it out. “No documentary proof. Can you not accept our word? I would have thought a human’s word would be enough for you.”
“In a situation such as this,” said John, “no unsupported word is good enough. Not even a human’s word. It seems to me you humans—”
“John,” said Theodosius, “where is your respect?”
“Your Eminence, respect is not a factor. We all are in this together.”
“The Tennyson speaks the truth,” said the Old. One. “He radiates the truth.”
“You thought, perhaps,” said John to Tennyson, ignoring the Old One, “that this bouncing betsy you brought might serve to support your story. Pointing to it, you would ask if such a thing would be found in Heaven.”
“I thought no such thing,” said Tennyson, “for if I should do that, then you would ask that I prove it was, indeed, from Heaven, and not picked up otherwhere.”
“That I would have done,” said John.
The crowd cried out in a single voice and thereupon surged back, still crying out in wonder and in terror.
“For the love of God!” exclaimed Theodosius, standing straight and rigid.
Tennyson spun around and there they stood: Smoky and Haystack and Decker II, huddled in a row, with the equation folk standing guard on them.
—The equation folk must have understood what was going on, said Whisperer. I wondered if they did and felt certain that they didn’t. Could this be the proof you need?