She reached a spot some three feet in front of him and halted. She bent a knee and the cardinal extended a hand. There's the ring, she thought. She kissed it. He took away the hand and made a motion for her to rise, so she rose.
'Miss Roberts, said the cardinal, his voice low and deep.
'Your Eminence, she said.
'Please be seated.
She saw the chair that had been placed for her, at one corner of the desk.
'Thank you, she murmured, sinking into it.
For a moment silence held in the muffled room, then the cardinal said, 'I would suppose good manners should lead me to express the hope that you had a pleasant voyage. But knowing the ship, I'm sure that was impossible. So may I say I hope it was not too bad.
'It was not too bad, Your Eminence. The captain is a good man. He did what he could.
The cardinal reached out to the desk, picked up folded sheets of paper that were lying there: The papers made a crinkling sound.
'Miss Roberts, said the cardinal, 'you are a persistent person. We have here several letters from you.
'Yes, Your Eminence. Which you failed to answer.
'Our failure, said the cardinal, 'was deliberate. We answer few letters. Especially we do not answer letters such as yours.
'Which means, I imagine, that you do not want me here.
There, she thought, I did it! I forgot to call him Eminence.
The cardinal, if he noticed, did not seem to mind.
'I do not know, he said, 'how I can explain our policy without seeming rude.
'Then, Your Eminence, said Jill, 'please that you be rude. For I want to know.
'We have no wish, said the cardinal, 'to be publicized. We do not wish our existence and our work exposed to public view.
'You could have told me that before I made my trip, Your Eminence. You could have written to discourage me. I would have listened to reason. I might even have accepted, perhaps have understood, your posture. But you hoped, of course, that ignoring me would be discouragement enough.
'We had hoped it would, Miss Roberts. 'Your psychology, Your Eminence, did not work. A frank disclosure of your policy, as you call it, would have served you better.
The cardinal sighed. 'Is this defiance that I hear?
'I'm not sure, Jill replied. 'Ordinarily, I'm not defiant of authority. I never set out to be. But it seems to me that I deserve better of you. I was frank in my letters. I told you what I planned to do, what I hoped to do. I asked your cooperation. You could, Your Eminence, have granted me the courtesy of telling me not to come.
'Granted, we could have done that, said the cardinal. 'It would have been more fair to you and more considerate of us. But our thinking was that such a move on our part would have placed undue emphasis on the work we're doing here. A refusal of your request might have made it seem we were working undercover, as it were, and have made us seem more important, perhaps more sensational, than we are. We operate with an extremely low profile and wish to keep it that way. We have been laboring the last ten centuries and in that time have accomplished something of what we set out to do, but not as much as we had hoped. We may need many more millennia to achieve our goal, and to achieve that goal, we must be allowed to work without interference. We do not want the galaxy to begin moving in on us.
'Your Eminence, each year you have thousands of pilgrims moving in on you.
'That is true, but these thousands are a mere handful to the numbers that would move in or attempt to move in if a journalist of your competence and reputation were to write of us. The pilgrims come from many planets, most of them members of obscure faiths that have heard of us. But because the faiths are obscure and scattered over many planets, and not too many visit us from any single planet, the impact is not massive and awareness of us is diluted. We do not proselytize, we do not try to bring our message to the galaxy, for, as yet, I doubt that we have a message. Someday, some century, we will have a message, but not yet.
However, we cannot close our doors to those who, in full faith, seek us out. We are honor-bound to do what we can for them and, in all honesty, I must admit that the contributions they make to our cause are welcome, for we have no financial backing…
'Let me write of your work, Eminence, and you will have the backing. All the backing that you need.
The cardinal raised his hands out of his lap and made a negatory sign. 'The cost would be too great, he said. 'We still have far to go, and we must walk that road in our own way and our own fashion. The pressures that would intrude from the galaxy, were we better known, would defeat our purpose. We still must labor, holding tight to the humility of a task little more than started. Seeming success, any sort of adulation, would work very much against us. We must hold to our dream of a universal religion and we must spare no effort. Worldliness would undermine our purpose. Do you understand?
'I think I can, Your Eminence, said Jill, 'but, surely, to accomplish your purpose you need not work in obscurity.
'But, Miss Roberts, that is exactly what we must do. Were we not obscure, we would be subjected to much interference, some of it well meant, some of it not so well intentioned. Even now… He paused and started at her owlishly.
'Even now, Eminence? she prompted.
'Consider, he said, 'that we have something the galaxy could well use but which, in all conscience, cannot be put to use until we know the whole of it, or at least can glimpse an outline of the whole of it. There are, I am sure, unscrupulous forces in existence that would try to steal from us, to wrest our knowledge from us, for purposes of their own, ignoring the total structure that we try to forge. We do not fear this for our sake, but for the sake of the galaxy, perhaps the universe. Our structure must remain unflawed. It must, when completed, be whole, a consistent whole, built on a logic that cannot be denied, that is apparent to all who may look upon it. It cannot be picked apart by vultures. It cannot be riddled by the worms of self-interest. Pieces of it must not be wrenched away and put in the marketplace for the limited benefits these pieces would represent. We have recognized this danger from our beginning; recognition of the peril has been impressed upon us through the years. We fear that even now, even in our obscurity, there may be burrowers nibbling at us. We do not know who they are or what they are or how they nibble or even the purpose of their nibbling, but we feel sure that they are there. This small nibbling we perhaps can withstand, but if we were open to the galaxy, in full sight of the galaxy, if you should write of us…
'You want me to leave, she said. 'You want me to turn about and go away.
'We have tried to be honest with you, said the cardinal. 'I have tried to reason with you. In reasoning with you, I may have said too much. We could have refused you admittance, refused to talk with you, but we realize that, in your heart, you mean no harm to us, that you did not even dream of the implications of what you propose to do. We regret the trouble and expense to which you have been put. We could wish you had not come, but since you have, we feel we must accord you a certain courtesy, cold though it may seem. We hope that you will think about what I have told you. I believe you are stopping at Human House.
'Yes, I am, said Jill.
'Please, said the cardinal, 'would you be our guest? A suite can be assigned to you, for as long as you may wish to stay. Naturally, all expenses that you have incurred or are likely to incur as a result of coming here will be repaid by us in full. Plus a per diem to compensate for the time you've wasted. Would you do at least this much for us: Accept our invitation to be our guest and give yourself the time to think on what I've said.
'Your offer is generous, Eminence, said Jill, 'but I do not intend to let it go at that. I do not accept your blanket refusal. Surely we can talk again.