‘To make a pope?’
‘Yes. A computer pope.’
‘Oh, my God!’ said Tennyson.
‘Yes, oh, my God, Dr. Tennyson. They are still building him. They build him and improve him year by year. Over the centuries he expands. He is crammed with additional data almost every day, and as the years go by, he becomes more infallible.’
‘I can’t believe it. It is-‘
‘You do not need to believe in it. Nor do I. It is enough that the robots believe it. After all, it is their faith. And if you sit down quietly and think about it quietly, it can begin to make a lot of sense.’
‘Yes, I suppose it does. Faith is based on instant and authoritative – infallible – answers. Yes, come to think of it, it makes a lot of sense. The data, I suppose, comes from the Search Program.’
Ecuyer nodded. ‘That is right,’ he said. ‘And just because I have told you all of this matter-of-factly, perhaps even lightly, don’t think that I am a total nonbeliever. I may not be a true believer, but there are some things I can believe in.’
‘I’ll reserve my opinion. But the data. How does your Search Program collect the data? You are here; the data, the data you must be after, is out in the universe.’
‘We use people we call Listeners. Not too good a term, but it serves.’
‘Sensitives?’
‘Yes. Special kinds of sensitives. We comb the galaxy for them. We hunt them down. We have recruiters out, working quietly. The robots have developed methods and supports that enhance their abilities. Some of our results are unbelievable.’
‘All humans?’
‘All human, so far. We have, at times, tried to use aliens. But it has never worked. Perhaps someday we’ll find how to work with them. It is one of the projects we are working on. Aliens probably could provide us data humans never can.’
‘And this data you get is fed into the pope?’
‘A good part of it. Of late we have become somewhat selective. We make some value judgments. We just don’t feed in all the raw data we get. But we do keep complete files. We have it all down on – I was going to say on tapes, but it’s not quite tape. But, anyhow, we have it all. We’ve built up a library that would astound the galaxy were it known.’
‘You don’t want it known.’
‘Dr. Tennyson, we don’t want the galaxy to come crashing in on us.’
‘Mary is a Listener. And she thinks she has come on Heaven.’
‘That is true.’
‘And you, a part-time believer, what do you think?’
‘I’m not discounting it. She is one of our most efficient and trustworthy Listeners.’
‘But Heaven?’
‘Consider this,’ said Ecuyer. ‘We know we are not dealing in physical space alone. In some instances, we don’t know what we’re reaching into. Let me give you one rather simple example. We have one Listener who has, for years, been going back through time. And not only through time, not haphazardly through time, but, apparently, following his own ancestry. Why he is taking this direction we do not know, nor does he. Someday we may find out. He seems to be following his ancestry, his remote ancestry, tracing out his blood and bone. Step by step down through millennia. The other day he lived as a trilobite.’
‘A trilobite?’
‘An ancient Earth form of life that died out some three hundred million years ago.’
‘But a human as a trilobite!’
‘The germ plasma, Doctor. The life force. Go back far enough…’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Tennyson.
‘It’s fascinating,’ Ecuyer said.
‘One thing bothers me,’ said Tennyson. ‘You’re telling me all this. Yet you don’t want it known. When I leave End of Nothing-‘
‘If you leave End of Nothing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We hope you’ll stay. We can make you a most attractive offer. We can discuss the details later.’
‘I may decide not to stay.’
‘Only one ship ever comes here,’ said Ecuyer. ‘It shuttles between here and Gutshot. Gutshot is the only place it can take you.’
‘And you’re gambling that I don’t want to return to Gutshot?’
‘I had the impression that you might not want to. If you really want to leave, I doubt we’d try to stop you. We could, of course, if we wanted to. One word to the captain and he’d find himself lacking room to take you. But I think it would be safe to let you go. Even if you repeated what I told you tonight, I doubt that anyone would believe you. It would be just another space myth.’
‘You seem to be sure of yourselves,’ said Tennyson.
‘We are,’ said Ecuyer.
Ten
It was still dark when Tennyson awoke. He lay for long minutes in a fuzzy, comfortable, woolly blackness, not sleeping, but still not quite awake, not entirely aware, remembering nothing of what had happened, thinking hazily that he was still in Gutshot. The room was dark, but there was a hidden light somewhere and through half-open eyes he could make out the darker shapes of objects in the room. The bed was comfortable, and a sense of delicious drowsiness filled him. He shut his eyes again, willing himself to sink deeper into sleep. But he felt that something was different, that he was not in Gutshot, nor in the ship.
The ship! He sat upright in bed, jerked out of sleep by the thought. The ship and Jill and End of Nothing.
The End of Nothing, for the love of Christ! And then everything came tumbling in upon him.
A terrible stillness lowered over him and a stiff rigidity, and he sat stricken in the bed.
Mary had found Heaven!
The light, he saw, came from a door that opened into the living area. The light flickered and wavered, brightening and fading, dancing on the walls, reaching forth and falling back. It came, he realized, from the fireplace, still burning. The fire, he told himself, should have burned to embers, drowned in gray ash, long ago.
In one dark corner of the room, a shadow moved, separating itself from the other shadows. ‘Sir, are you awake?’ it asked.
‘Yes, awake,’ said Tennyson, through stiff lips. ‘And who the hell are you?’
‘I am Hubert,’ said the shadow. ‘I have been assigned your batman. I will do for you.’
‘I know what a batman is,’ said Tennyson. ‘I ran across the term some years ago in the reading of an Old Earth history. Something to do with the British military. The phrase was so strange that it stuck in my mind.’
‘This is exceptional,’ said Hubert. ‘I congratulate you, sir. Most people would not have known.’
The batman moved out of the deeper shadows and now could be seen more clearly. He was a strange, angular, humanlike figure with an air of mingled strength and humility.
‘Rest easy, sir,’ he said. ‘I am a robot, but I will do no harm. My one purpose is to serve you. Shall I turn on a light? Are you ready for a light?’
‘Yes, I am ready. Please, a light,’ said Tennyson.
A lamp on a table against the farther wall came on. The room was a match for the living area he had seen earlier, its furniture solid and substantial, metal knobs gleaming, old wood shining darkly, paintings on the walls.
He threw back the covers and saw that he was naked. He swung his legs out of bed and his feet came down on carpeting. He reached for the chair beside his bed where he had draped his clothes. They were no longer there. He pulled back his hand, ran it through his hair and scrubbed his face. The whiskers grated underneath his palm.
‘Your wardrobe has not arrived as yet,’ said Hubert, ‘but I managed to obtain a change of clothes for you. The bath is over there; the coffee’s ready in the kitchen.’
‘Bath first,’ said Tennyson. ‘Would there be a shower?’
‘A shower or tub. If you prefer the tub, I can draw your bath.’
‘No, shower’s fine. Faster. I have work to do. Is there any word of Mary?’
‘Knowing you would wish to know,’ said Hubert, ‘I visited her about an hour ago. Nurse tells me she is doing well, responding to the protein. You’ll find towels, toothbrush and shaving tackle laid out in the bath. When you are finished, I’ll have your clothing for you.’
‘Thanks,’ said Tennyson. ‘You’re proficient at your job. Do you do it often?’
‘I am Mr. Ecuyer’s man, sir. He has two of us. He is loaning me to you.’
When he emerged from the bath, Tennyson found that the bed had been made and his clothes laid out on it.
The robot, he realized, now really seeing him for the first time, was a close approximation of a human – an idealized, shiny human. His head was bald and his polished metal was quite frankly metal, but other than that, he was passing human. He wore no clothing, but his entire body had a decorative look about it that gave the illusion of clothes.