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 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.