'Then why am I so concerned with three outsider humans? Am I assuming the attitude of a child toward a father image? A disapproving father who may stand ready to correct me.
'All of us — not you alone, but all of us — are bowed down under an inferiority complex, said Roberts. 'It is a cross we must bear as best we can. Give us a few more millennia and we will outgrow it.
'What you say is true, said Theodosius. 'I find within myself, upon close examination, so much tangled guilt that I can barely stand up under it. There are even times — forgive me, Eminence — there are even times when I feel a guilt in our having brought about His Holiness. There is a possibility, I tell myself, that in doing this, we have committed sacrilege, that in fact His Holiness is no more than another one of us — not holy at all, but simply another machine, another exquisitely sophisticated robot, a cybernetic shadow with which we delude ourselves.
'Your Eminence, Roberts exclaimed in horror, 'I hope you have not repeated such a heresy where others than myself might hear you. As an ancient friend, I can understand the guilt, but…
'I have not breathed a word of this before, said Theodosius. 'I have kept it bottled up. Only to such as you, old friend, could I have said a word of it. I would not have said it now were it not for so many happenings. This sighting of Heaven by one of the Listeners-
'Yes, that is bad. said Roberts. 'It has had a greater impact among our brethren than I like. My hope had been that it would blow over soon and be quite forgotten. The Listener, I understand, was very close to death, which would have ended all the foolishness, but this doctor…
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…