Project Pope

Sixteen

Mary improved. The fever went down and the breathing difficulty all but disappeared. The blankness left her eyes. She became aware of those around her and was able to sit up.

She became imperious, assumed the attitude of a rather shabby, beat-up old grande dame. She snubbed Tennyson, lorded it over the nursing staff, ignored medical orders with a fine insouciance.

'It's this damned Heaven business, said Ecuyer. 'It has set her apart from all the other Listeners, above everyone, in fact. Over the years she has been a top-notch Listener. She has pulled in a lot of data for us. But nothing so obviously important as this. Some of the other findings were important, of course — all data has potential importance — but nothing dramatic. Nothing like finding Heaven. That, on the face of it, is important. I'm afraid the finding of Heaven will ruin the woman as a Listener. To be a good Listener, you must be devoted and sincere and humble. The task of Listening must be approached with humility. The Listener must subordinate himself, or herself, must cancel out personality, must go out with an empty mind or close to an empty mind. It is a pity that Mary's clones — ,

'You mentioned clones before, said Tennyson. 'You mean that you have created other Marys?

'That is right, Ecuyer told him. 'When we get an extraordinary Listener, we go to cloning. It's only a recent development. I think that, more than likely, the Vatican biological research laboratory has developed more advanced cloning procedures than can be found anywhere in the known galaxy. Foolproof, certain — no aberrations whatsoever. Good Listeners are hard to find. You have no idea how long we search to find a decent one. A decent one, mind you; Mary is superb. We can't lose such a Listener; we must duplicate. We must have more like Mary. We have three clones of her, but they are little more than children. They are still growing up. Even when they are grown, there is no guarantee that any one of them can find her way to Heaven, although we could hope they'd have a better chance than another Listener unrelated to Mary. Superb Listeners, sure, but we can't be sure of Heaven.

'Then Mary might be your only hope.

'That's the truth of it, said Ecuyer. 'And she knows it. That's what makes her so suddenly important.

'Is there anything that can be done about it? Anything to snap her out of it?

'Leave her alone, said Ecuyer. 'Pay her no attention. The more she gets, the worse she'll be.

Jill accepted the job of writing the Vatican history.

'What the hell, she said to Tennyson, walking in the garden. 'It'll be five weeks or more before the ship from Gutshot comes again. Five weeks before I can even think of leaving. I'd go crazy just sitting here. Nothing to do. Nothing to see.

'You could look at the mountains. They keep changing all the time. They change as the light changes. They're never quite the same. I never tire of watching them.

'You watch them, she said. 'I'm no mountain freak.

'What if you get hooked on the Vatican history? What if it proves so fascinating you can't tear yourself away from it — if Vatican will allow you to tear yourself away. There might come a time you knew so much, they couldn't let you go.

'I'll take my chances, she told him. 'This girl has found herself in tight spots before and always has been able to wiggle out of them. And, God, the information that's there. When they said they kept a detailed record, they really meant detailed.

She threw herself into the job. There were days on end when Tennyson would not see her. Then she'd show up for dinner and a talk.

'I can't tell you, she said. 'There is so much to tell. It all is there. Everything they planned or did, everything they thought.

'You're getting sucked into it, he warned her. 'You'll never leave. You'll become a research person, so involved in tracking down and pinning down that a lifetime's not enough.

'Somewhere inside of me, she said, 'there still remains Jill Roberts, the demon freelance writer, the galaxy trotter who follows stories to worlds' ends. When the time comes — but let that go. Forget about me. How about you, Jason?

'I'm getting settled in.

'And happy?

'Happy? I don't know. What is happiness? Contentment, yes. Contentment for the moment. Medical chores that I enjoy, but not too many of them. I never was, I guess, one of your dedicated doctors intent upon setting his mark high on the medical roll of honor, never devastated with the thirst to do more than passing well for his fellow humans. There is just enough of it here to make me feel professionally competent and that, again for the moment, is everything I want. I get along with Ecuyer and all the rest of them.

'How about your Heaven lady?

'The Heaven lady? Damned if I know. Physically, she is well enough….

'But?

'She's taken a strange turn. She preens herself. She has become the Great Lady. The rest of us are dirt beneath her feet. Her mental processes are all screwed up.

'But you have to understand her, realize what Heaven meant to her. Whether she found Heaven or not, it's still important to her. Maybe the first time in her life that something important really happened to her.

'Oh, she thinks she found Heaven well enough. She is convinced of it.

'So is half of Vatican.

'Half of Vatican? I would have thought all of Vatican.

'Jason, I'm not sure. People don't tell me, but I hear some talk. Hard to understand. Not all of them are entirely happy with Heaven being found.

'Why should that be? Heaven! Jesus, I'd think they'd be thrilled out of their skulls.

'Vatican isn't what it sounds like. Not what we think it is. Because of the terminology — Vatican, Pope, cardinals, all the rest of it — the easy assumption is that it's basically Christian. Well, it's not all Christian. There is much else to it. Just what that much else is I don't know, but you gain the impression that there are an awful lot of things. At one time, it may have been basically Christian; that's all the poor things had when they came out from Earth. But the robots have found so much else, so many hints of so much else, that it's no longer entirely Christian. And there is another factor…

She hesitated for a moment. Tennyson waited, saying nothing. Then she went on.

'There are two groups of robots in Vatican, not too well defined. There is the old group, the ones who came from Earth. They are still inclined to be closely identified with humans. To them the humans and the robots are tied together. This is not so true of the younger robots, the ones who were created here, built here, forged here, however you may say it, by robots, not by humans. You can sense in them an underlying resentment, maybe not of humans, but of the attitude the older robots hold toward humans. These youngsters want to cut the ties with humanity. Oh, they still subscribe to the debt that robots owe to humans, but they want to cut away; they want to strengthen their own identities. Mary's Heaven, I think, is under some suspicion because it's human-based. Mary is a human and she found a Christian concept —

'That doesn't follow, said Tennyson. 'Not all humans are Christians. I think only a small percentage of them are. I'm not sure I'm Christian, nor, I think, are you. Perhaps at one time our ancestors were — although they could as well have been Jewish or Moslem or —

'But many of us have a Christian heritage, whether we're actually Christians or not. It doesn't make any difference whether we are or not. In many of us, the old way of Christian thinking still hangs on. Look, we still use Christian swear words — hell and Christ and God and Jesus. Those words roll easily and naturally off our tongues.

Tennyson nodded soberly. 'Yes, I can see how the robots might think we were, in our hearts, still Christian. Not that it's a bad thing being Christian.

'Of course not, Jason. But when mankind began leaving Earth, they lost a lot, or shed a lot, along the way. A lot of us don't know what we really are.

They sat silently for a time and then she said, her voice soft and low, 'Jason, you don't notice my face any longer — the stigma, that horrible angry scar. I can tell you don't. I can tell you really don't. You're the first man in my experience who has ever gotten so he didn't notice it.

'My dear, he said, 'why should I?

'Because it disfigures me. Because it makes me ugly.

'There is enough beauty in you, he told her, 'both inside and outside you, that disfigurement doesn't matter. It takes nothing from you. And you're right — I don't see it any longer.

She leaned toward him and he caught her in his arms.

'Hold me, she said. 'Hold me. I need it so much, Jason.

One evening only. Most other evenings he did not see her. She worked long hours digging out the history — extracting it from the records, pulling it together, trying to understand what she was finding, wondering at the fanatical devotion that through the years had driven the robots on their dedicated quest. Not religion, she told herself at times, not entirely religion, then again she would become convinced that it was religion. Although as she worked, the nagging question came in her mind and would not go away:

What is religion?

Cardinal Theodosius came at times to visit her at her work, hunched on a stool beside her, muffled and overwhelmed in his purple vestments, looking very much like a wrapped-up mummy.

'Do you need more help? he'd ask her. 'If so, we could find more aides for you.

'You've been most kind to me, Your Eminence, she'd say. 'I have all the willing help I need.

And she had. The two robots working with her seemed as interested as she. The three of them, grouped about the great desk where she worked, put their heads together in an attempt to puzzle out the occasional obscurity in the record, to debate fine points of theology and meaning, trying to make come clear and understandable the faith and thought that had been put down centuries before.

On one of his visits the cardinal said, without preamble, 'You are becoming one of us, Miss Roberts.

'Well, hardly, Your Eminence, said Jill Roberts.

'I did not mean what you apparently thought I meant, said the cardinal. 'I was thinking of your viewpoint, of your evident enthusiasm and devotion to fact.

'If you're thinking of truth, Eminence, I've always been devoted to the truth.

'It is not the matter of truth so much, the robot said, 'as it is of understanding. I do believe you may be beginning to understand our purpose here.

Jill pushed away the papers she had been working on. 'No, Eminence, I do not understand. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

There are great areas of understanding that are lacking. The principal lack is an explanation of what made you come out here to End of Nothing. What drove you out of Earth? The supposition is that you chafed under the rule that no robot could become a communicant of a church, that you were denied religion. That is what any robot in Vatican will tell you, speaking as if this is an article of faith. But here I find no clear-cut evidence —

'What came before the fact of our coming here, said the cardinal, 'is not in the record. There was no need to put it in. All of us knew why we came here. It was a part of us, it was understood. There was no reason to record it, for it was well known.

She said no more; she was hesitant to argue with a cardinal, even a robot cardinal.

He seemed not to notice she did not pursue the question; possibly he was confident he had explained to her satisfaction. Nor did he push the conversation further. He sat hunched upon his stool for a few minutes longer, then rose and left.

Tennyson's days were filled. He prowled Vatican, observing, learning, talking with the robots he met. He visited with the Listeners and got to know some of them well. He established a singular rapport with James Henry, the man who had been a trilobite.

'So you scanned the trilobite cube, Henry said to him. 'Tell me how it struck you.

'It left me, said Tennyson, 'funny in the gizzard.

'It left me the same, said Henry. 'I've done no Listening since. Frankly, I'm afraid to. I tell myself that back to the trilobite is as far as I should go. The trilobite must be close to the edge of sentience. Go back another step and a man is apt to wind up a lump of mindless protoplasm, knowing nothing but the urge toward food, the flight from danger. That was almost the case with the trilobite. But it was my own mind intruding that made sense of the trilobite. It just could be that if I went back far enough, I could get stuck forever in a mass of living jelly. That would be a hell of a way for a man to end his days.

'You could try for something else.

'You don't understand. Sure I could try for something else. A lot of the Listeners aim for specific areas. Sometimes they make it; a lot of times they don't. You can't quite be sure. Listening is a tricky business. It's not entirely under control. Take Mary, for instance. I suppose she will try for Heaven again, and with a Listener like Mary, she'll probably find her way. But even she can't be sure. You can never be sure. I never really tried to go back along the germ-plasma line. I just happened to.

'Then why are you reluctant to do any more Listening? You might not-

'Dr. Tennyson, said Henry, 'as I told you, I don't know why I started on that route in the first place or why I kept on going back. But I do know this — after the first few times, it was as if I were sliding down a well-greased chute. The chute, I'm afraid, is still there and waiting for me. I didn't mind to start with. It was, in fact, a lot of fun. Very interesting. I was several kinds of primitive men and that was to the good. Scared a lot of the time, of course, doing a lot of running for my life. I tell you, mister, those old ancestors of ours didn't cut too grand a figure in the early days. We were not, you might say, high on the totem pole. We were just one hunk of meat among many other hunks of meat. The carnivores didn't give a damn if it was us they ate or something else. Just protein and fat, that was all we were. Half the time I would be running scared. The rest of the time I scrounged for food — carrion left by the big cats and other predators, rodents I could knock over, fruit, roots, insects. It sickens me at times, remembering the kind of food I ate, gulping it down and happy to have it. It didn't bother me at the time. But there are times still when I dream of turning over a rotting log and scooping up a handful of white grubs that are hiding under it. They wriggle and try to get away, but I don't let them. I hold them tight and pop them in my mouth. They feel good going down. They have a sort of sweetish taste. And I wake up and I'm sweating all over and I have a gone feeling in the gut. But aside from that, it wasn't bad. Even when I was running for my life, it wasn't bad. Scared, sure, but there is a lot of exhilaration in being scared, a lot of satisfaction when you get away, thumbing your nose at the big cat that had tried to get you and saying yah, yah, yah at him. Mocking him. Feeling feisty as hell yourself. Nothing to do but fill your gut and find a place in the sun, where it's warm, to sleep. Horny as a hoptoad, chasing down a female.

'I'll tell you the best thing that I ever was. It wasn't any man, no old human ancestor, or even close to human. I'm not sure some of the old man-things I was were human. This best thing was a sort of lizard. I don't know what it was, nor does anyone else. Ecuyer had a hell's own time trying to figure out what it was. He even sent for some books that he thought might tell him what it was, but they didn't. What it was never bothered me, but it did him. I guess it must have been some sort of missing link, a critter that never left a skeleton for paleontologists to dig up and ponder over. I figure, and so does Ecuyer, that it lived back in the Triassic. I said a lizard, but it probably wasn't any lizard. It wasn't big, but it was fast — it was one of the fastest things that lived at that time. And mean. Christ, was it mean! It hated everything, it fought with everything, it would eat anything that moved. It harried the hell out of everything in sight. I never knew until then how good it made a man feel to be really mean. Bone-chilling mean. A real, low-down bastard. The time I spent as a trilobite was short, but I lived as this lizard for a longtime. I don't know how long, for there was no sense of time. I just lived in the middle of forever. Maybe I stayed with it so long because I was enjoying myself so much. Why don't you ask Ecuyer to dig out that lizard cube for you? You'd enjoy it.

'Perhaps someday I will, said Tennyson.

He did not view the lizard cube. There were too many others. Ecuyer had no objection to his seeing them. He gave the robot custodian of the Listening files instructions to show Tennyson any that he wished, suggested a long list that he should see.

It was puzzling, Tennyson told himself. Here he was, a stranger, and still the files were being opened to him. As if, in all fact, he was a member of the project. And in the Vatican library, the historical record had been made available to Jill. None of it squared with what the cardinal had told Jill when she had her interview with him — that Vatican was adamant in its refusal to allow any public exposure. The answer must be, he told himself, that Vatican was confident it could guard against public exposure by refusing to allow anyone with knowledge of its operations to leave the planet.

Or it might be that by revealing its operations to Jill and him, both of them would be won over to the case. Vatican was made up of a band of dedicated fanatics isolated from the nearby galaxy — the only part of the galaxy that counted, the only part of it that was close enough to be tempted to move in — and out of this dedication and isolation the fact of Vatican and its purpose would loom larger in their eyes than it really was. Thus Vatican would fall victim to its egocentrism, and the cause would seem so grand, so sacred and so clearly reasonable that no one, adequately informed, could do anything but align himself with it. All that needed to be done was to explain and everyone would fall in line.

Tennyson shook his head over the puzzle. The line taken by Vatican was illogical. They could, if they had wished, have sent both him and Jill packing when Wayfarer lifted off to return to Gutshot. Certainly both of them would have known something of Vatican, but very little of what was actually going on. Jill could write her article detailing how she had been thrown off the planet. But in the midst of all the causes, all the crusades, all the quarrels, all the problems of the galaxy — such an article would have made no more impression than the slightest ripple occasioned by a thrown stone in a storm-tossed ocean.

The simplest answer, and the one that he was most reluctant to accept, was that both of them were needed here. Certainly there was need of a doctor to care for the human population; it might be true that Vatican felt a real need for the writing of its history. And it was true, as well, that it was difficult for such an out-of-the-way place to attract outside professionals, so difficult that when a couple of them dropped unannounced onto the planet, Vatican would latch onto them. But, for some reason that he was not able to understand, Tennyson was reluctant to accept such a thesis. He could not, for one thing, accept the thought that Jill and he could be so important to them. Unless, and this he kept coming back to, Vatican had no intention of allowing them to leave.

One of the cubes he viewed was highly disturbing. Even inside the mind of one of its inhabitants, which he assumed was where he was, it was a sort of place that made no human sense, was entirely incomprehensible. What he saw, although he realized later that it was not really seeing, was a world of diagrams and equations, or what he took to be diagrams and equations, although he saw no conventional signs or symbols even vaguely comparable to human ones. It was as if he existed somewhere inside a huge three-dimensional blackboard, with the signs and symbols, the diagrams and equations grouped about him and, on all sides, receding far into the distance. And it seemed at times, although how he sensed this he did not know, that he himself, or the entity whose mind he shared, was itself an equation.

He sought vainly for an answer, for an explanation, feebly probing the mind of his host, but getting no reaction. The creature, he thought, more than likely, didn't know he was there. It itself needed no answer or explanation; it understood what it was seeing. Perhaps interpreting what it was seeing, sharing in the experience of its interactions with all the other diagrams and equations. But if so, all this escaped Tennyson. He was lost in a sea of unknowing.

He did not give up; he stayed in there and fought for some sort of understanding, trying to seize just one thing, one small bit of relevance that he could tuck away as a start toward an understanding.

That one bit of relevance never came. When the cube came to an end and he found himself back in the human world, he knew as little as he did when popped into that other mind.

He sat, stricken, in the chair.

'That was quite something, was it not, sir? asked the custodian, chirping blithely.

Tennyson rubbed his hand across the face, trying to clear away the fog.

'Yes, he said. 'What was it?

'Sir, we do not know.

'What good, then, he asked, 'of finding it, of seeing it?

'Vatican may know, said the custodian. 'Vatican has ways of knowing.

'Well, I sincerely hope so, said Tennyson, rising from the chair. 'That's all I can stand today. How about tomorrow?

'Certainly, sir. Tomorrow. Any time you wish.

Tomorrow turned out to be the autumn land.

It was really nothing; it was just a place. This time, he was sure, he did not exist inside an intelligence. He was simply there. Thinking back on it, he could not be sure he had been anyplace at all, although certainly he had had a sense of being in an actual place. He could swear that he had heard the crackle and rustle of fallen autumn leaves beneath his feet, that he had breathed a sharp, crisp, wine-like air redolent of leaf bonfires, of ripened apples hanging on a laden bough, the faint scent of late-blooming flowers and a touch of frost on withering vegetation. He had heard, or thought he heard, the rustle of a field-dried patch of corn, the patter of hickory nuts falling from a tree, the sudden, far-off whir of partridge wings, the soft, liquid singing of a placid brook carrying on its surface a freight of fallen autumn leaves. And there had been color, he was sure of that — the coin-golden color of a walnut tree, the purple of an ash, the shouting sun-bright yellow of an aspen, the bright-blood of a sugar maple, and rich red and brown of oak. And over and above it all that bittersweet feel of autumn, the glory of the dying year when work was done and a quiet season of rest had been proclaimed.

The sense of it, the feel of it, almost the surety, yet not quite the surety of it, had all been there. He had felt at ease with it, had entered wholeheartedly into, it. He had tramped the hills and gone along the winding brook, he had stood and stared across the brown and gold of an autumn-haunted marsh, he had heard the shouting of the gold and red and yellow of the painted trees against the sky and he had felt a strange abiding peace within him. The peace that comes at the long end of summer, the peace and quiet before the chill winter of the soul comes howling down. The little time of respite, the time for resting and for thought, the time for binding up the ancient wounds and forgetting them and all the vagaries of life that had inflicted them.

Later, thinking on it, he told himself that this had been Heaven, his own personal Heaven. Not the high shining towers, the great broad golden staircase, the winding of celestial trumpets that was Mary's Heaven — this was the real Heaven, this, the quiet autumn afternoon that fell upon the land after the blazing summer sun and the long and dusty roads.

He went away, reflective, after only a courteous exchange with the blithe custodian. Walking back to his suite, he had tried to catch it all again, to see it and experience it all again, only to become aware of its insubstantiality, the ephemeral quality of this autumn land, somewhere deep in space.

He told Jill that evening, 'It was as if I'd gone back to my home planet, the days of boyhood and early manhood before I left to enter medical school. My home was an Earthlike planet, an astonishingly Earthlike planet. I can't really judge, for I've never been on Earth, but I was told that my home planet was Earthlike. British settled. It was called Paddington — a planet named for a town, if «ton» means «town» and I think it does. The inhabitants never saw anything wrong with that. The British have no sense of humor. I judge we were very English, very British, whichever is the right term. There was a lot of talk of Old Earth, Old Earth being England, although that was strange, for in my later reading I became convinced the planet tallied more with North America. In my boyhood I was obsessed with England, or with the legend of England. I read a lot of English history. The library in our town had a large section-

'I've been meaning to tell you, said Jill, 'but it always slips my mind. Vatican library has a lot of Old Earth books — I mean books brought from Old Earth. Books, not tapes. Pages between covers. Anyone is welcome to come in and browse. I think, too, you can manage a loan if you find something that you want.

'One of these days, said Tennyson, 'I'll come in and browse. I was telling you about Paddington. The land, I was told, was almost a duplicate of Old Earth. The people there were always saying how lucky they had been to find it. There are livable planets, sure, but not many of them that are like Old Earth. Many of the trees and plants were much like those found on Earth — but, mind you, the kind that were found in North America rather than in England, although North America and England do have some trees and plants in common. And the seasons were the same as they were on Earth. In my hometown, we had a glorious autumn — Indian-summer days, trees aflame with color, the distances smoky with an autumn haze. I'd almost forgotten it, but today I saw it all again. Or I think I saw it. I smelled the autumn and heard it and walked in it again….

'Jason, you're all upset. Try to forget. Let's go to bed.

He questioned Ecuyer. 'This world of equations, he said. 'It makes no sense. Was your Listener able to go back again?

'Several times, said Ecuyer.

'And?

'It still made no sense. No sense at all.

'Does this sort of thing happen often?

'Well, not places with equations. You seldom repeat a specific sighting. In a universe where anything, anything at all, statistically will happen at least once — where everything possible will happen at least once — there's not much chance of repetition. It does happen, but not often. But, yes, these kinds of things do happen, the inexplicable situations that have neither head nor tail to them.

'Then what's the use? What profit is there in it?

'Perhaps profit for Vatican.

'You mean you just hand this stuff over to Vatican?

'Certainly. That's why we do it. For Vatican. They have the right, the chance, to review everything. They review it and evaluate it and then send back the cubes to us for storage. Sometimes they may follow up the leads, sometimes not. They have ways of doing things.

'But to follow up on this equation place, someone would have to go there. Actually go there physically, in person. Viewing it from one's own viewpoint, not seeing it through the eyes of an inhabitant. I'm convinced of that.

'Well, there are times that Vatican can go to places that we find.

'You mean actually go there? Travel to those places?

'That is correct, said Ecuyer. -I thought you understood that.

'No, I hadn't, said Tennyson. 'No one ever told me. So it's not always just a matter of peeking through a keyhole?

'Sometimes it's more than that. Sometimes not. Sometimes we have to be content with our keyhole peek.

'Then why doesn't Vatican go out and pin down the Heaven sighting? I would think-

'Perhaps they can't, said Ecuyer. 'They may not know where it is. They may have no coordinates.

'I don't understand. Can the Listeners at times pick up coordinates?

'No, they can't. But there are other ways to go about it. Vatican people, in things like this, can be very tricky. One of the simpler ways is to pick up star patterns.

'There are no star patterns in the Heaven cube? I suppose there wouldn't be if it were really Heaven. Heaven probably would have nothing to do with either time or space. But if Vatican did locate it, what would they do? Send someone out to Heaven?

'I really do not know, said Ecuyer. 'I cannot speak for Vatican.

It was a dead end, Tennyson thought. The Heaven sighting was so tied with gut philosophy, the touchiness of theology, the awesome wonder of it that everyone in authority would be scared to death. He remembered what Jill had said about the deep rift of opinion it had brought about among the robots of Vatican.

'Heaven, said Tennyson, 'would presume an afterlife, a life after death. Can you tell me — have the Listeners found any clues that would point to such an afterlife, even the outside possibility of an afterlife?

'Jason, I don't know. I honestly can't be sure. There's no way —

'What do you mean, you can't be sure?

'Look, there are so many kinds of life. The universe, it seems, seethes with life, both biological and nonbiological, and the non-biological, in turn, may be divided into several classifications. We can't be sure.

'Well, yes, of course, said.Tennyson. 'There are the robots.

'Dammit, I'm not talking about the robots. They are nonbiological, certainly. Manufactured nonbiological. But there is natural life, or what seems to be life, that is nonbiological as well. There is a cloud of dust and gas out in the Orion region, or what on Earth would be designated as the Orion region. A small speck of dust and gas. From here even the largest telescope would fail to pick it up. A welter of magnetic fields, high gas density, massive ionization, heavy drifts of cosmic dust. And there's something alive in there. Perhaps the gas and dust itself. Or maybe something else. But whatever it is, it's alive. You can feel the pulse of life, the rhythm of living — and it talks. Maybe talks is not the right word. Communicates would be the better term. It can be heard, or sensed, but it can't be understood. There is no way to know what it is saying. The life forms within it may be talking back and forth or all of them may be talking to themselves…

'But what has this got to do with afterlife?

'Did I say it had something to do with afterlife? Tennyson said, 'No, I guess you didn't.

At times, Tennyson prowled the countryside, following faint trails, trudging along narrow, green valleys, climbing steep hillsides, with lunch and a bottle of wine in his knapsack, a canteen over his shoulder. Always the mountains were in view, looming over him, blue and purple, majestic and always fascinating, with shadows drifting along their spurs, the sunlight glinting off the icy peaks. He spent long hours sitting atop the rugged hills, staring at the mountains, never seeing quite enough of them, the mystery and the wonder of them persisting no matter how long he might look at them.

Then, turning back toward Vatican, he'd finally find one of the few roads, little more than a broader trail, to lead him home. He'd trudge along it happily, his feet raising little puffs of dust, the warmth of the sun upon his back, the peace of the mountain on his mind. And a few days later, he would go out again, perhaps in a different direction this time, to prowl up and down the land while the mountains watched.

One afternoon, heading back toward Vatican along one of the narrow roads, he heard something approaching from behind. Looking back, he saw a beat-up surface vehicle, with a man sitting at its wheel. Tennyson was surprised, for this was the first time on any of his hikes that he had seen another person, let alone a car. He stepped well out of the road to give it room to pass, but it did not pass. When the car drew up to him, it stopped and the man said to him, 'Are you so dedicated to your walking that you would refuse a lift?

The man had an honest, open face, with searching blue eyes.

'I would appreciate a lift, said Tennyson.

'I take it, said the man as Tennyson climbed into the seat beside him, 'that you are the new doctor over at Vatican. Tennyson, isn't it?

'That's right. And you?

'I'm Decker. Thomas Decker, at your service, sir.

'I've been roaming around out here off and on for several weeks, said Tennyson. 'You're the first man I've seen in all my rambles.

'And the only one you are likely to see, said Decker. 'All the rest of them stick close to home and fireside. They have no curiosity or appreciation for what lies all about them. They look at the mountains every day of their lives and all they see are mountains. You see more than mountains, don't you, Doctor?

'A great deal more, said Tennyson.

'How about seeing even more? I'm in a mood, if you wish, to conduct a guided tour.

'You have a customer, said Tennyson.

'Well, then, the battery's up, said Decker, 'and we have hours of operation. First, let us see the farms.

'The farms?

'Yes, of course, the farms. You eat bread, do you not? And meat and milk and eggs?

'Certainly I do.

'Where, then, did you think it all came from, other than from farms?

'I suppose I never thought about it.

'These robots think of everything, said Decker. 'They must feed their humans, so some of them are farmers. Electricity is needed, so they built a dam and set up a power facility. Some solar power as well, but they've not pushed the solar power. However, they have the capability and can expand it any time it's needed. They also have a sawmill, but it runs only part-time, for now there's no great demand for lumber. Some centuries ago, when the building was going on, there was a great need of it. He chuckled. 'You can't beat the robots for efficiency. They use a primitive steam engine to operate the sawmill, using slabs and sawdust produced by the mill to drive the engine.

'They're a self-sufficient community, said Tennyson.

'They have to be. Out here they are on their own. There's no such thing as imports, except for small items they may need from time to time. The small items Wayfarer hauls in for them. The freight costs a pretty penny. The robots keep pace with the economy's demand by keeping the demands small and simple. If you don't need much, you don't need much cash, and the robots have very little cash. What they gouge out of the pilgrims just about keeps them going. They have a small woods crew that does nothing all the year around but cut logs for the fireplaces that are used by everyone. A steady demand, a steady supply, perfectly balanced. They have it figured out. They have a grist mill to grind their wheat and other grains into flour. Again, a steady demand and a steady supply, with a reserve stashed away against a bad year, although so far, I understand, there has never been a bad year. All primitive as hell, but it works and that's what counts.

They now were driving along a somewhat better road than the one from which Decker had picked up Tennyson, cut into level farming country. Acres of ripening grain stood blowing in the wind.

'Soon they'll be harvesting, said Decker. 'Even Vatican people will drop all their sanctified duties and go out into the fields to bring in the crops. Cardinals with their red and purple robes tucked up to guard them against being stained by dust. Brown-clad monks bobbing along, being useful for the only time in the year. They use cradles to cut and gather the grain, swarming about the field like so many ants. They've rigged up a threshing machine that works rather well, and it runs for weeks to get all the threshing done. Another steam engine to operate the thresher. For it they haul in and stack cords of wood well ahead of time.

Interspersed among the grain fields were pastures, lush with grass, roamed by cattle, horses, sheep and goats. Hog pens held thousands of grunting porkers. Hordes of chickens roamed a fenced-in hilly section.

Decker jerked his thumb toward the horizon. 'Fields of maize, he said, 'to fatten up the hogs. And that small field ahead of us is buckwheat. I told you; they think of everything. Back in the hills, they have an apiary with hundreds of stands of bees. Somewhere around here — yes, we're coming up on it now. See it? Cane, Sorghum cane. Sorghum for the buckwheat cakes you'll be eating later on.

'It takes me back to my home planet, Tennyson said. 'Ours was a farming planet. Solidly based on agriculture.

They came on orchards — apples, pears, apricots, peaches and other kinds of fruit.

'A cherry orchard, said Decker, jerking his thumb again. 'Cherries ripen early. All the crop's been picked.

You're right, said Tennyson. The robots have thought of everything.

Decker grunted. 'They've had a long time to think of it. Almost a thousand years — perhaps a little longer, I don't know. Wouldn't have needed any of this if they hadn't needed humans. But they needed humans. Your robot is a silly sort of chap; he has to have his humans. I don't know when the first humans were brought in. My impression is a century, or less, after the robots got their start.

The sun was close to setting when they turned back.

'I'm glad you showed it to me, said Tennyson. 'I had no idea.

'How you getting along at Vatican? asked Decker.

'Well enough. I've scarcely gotten settled in. What I see I like.

'What do you know about this Heaven flap?

'I hear something occasionally. I'm not sure I know what it's all about. There is a woman who thinks that she found Heaven.

'Did she?

'I honestly don't know. I'm inclined to doubt it.

Decker wagged his head. 'There are always flaps of one kind or another. If not Heaven, then it's something else.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tennyson caught the glitter over Decker's right shoulder. He looked away and then looked back and the glitter was still there, like a haze of suspended diamond dust. He put up a fist to rub his eyes, and as he did, the glitter went away.

'Get something in your eye? asked Decker.

'It's nothing, said Tennyson. 'Just some dust. I have it out.

'Want me to take a look at it? Make sure?

'No, thank you. It's all right.

Decker headed the car up a winding road that climbed the ridge on which Vatican crouched against the backdrop of the mountains, now purple with approaching dusk.

'You want to be dropped at the clinic? Decker asked. 'Or is there some other place that would be more convenient?

'The clinic's fine, said Tennyson. 'And I must thank you for the tour. It's been enjoyable.

'I go rock hunting every now and then, said Decker. 'Out for several days. Back into the mountains. If you could find that kind of time, how about joining me on one of the trips?

'I'd like to do that, Decker.

'Call me Tom.

'All right, Tom. I'm Jason. There might be periods when I could go. I'd have to pick my time.

'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.