“Yes, sir.”
“Call me Brother, Mondschein. Brother Langholt here has said some good things about you.”
He has? Mondschein thought in surprise.
Langholt said, “I’ve told the Supervisor that you’re ambitious, eager, and enthusiastic. I’ve also pointed out that you’ve got those qualities to an excessive degree, in some ways. Perhaps you’ll learn some moderation at Santa Fe.”
Stunned, Mondschein said, “Brother Langholt, I thought my application for a transfer had been turned down.”
Kirby nodded. “It’s been opened again. We need some control subjects, you see. Non-espers. A few dozen acolytes have been requisitioned, and the computer tossed your name up. You fit the needs. I take it you still want to go to Santa Fe?”
“Of course, sir—Brother Kirby.”
“Good. You’ll have a week to wrap up your affairs here.” The green eyes were suddenly piercing. “I hope you’ll prove useful out there, Brother Mondschein.”
Mondschein could not make up his mind whether he was being sent to Santa Fe as a belated yielding to his request or to get rid of him at Nyack. It seemed incomprehensible to him tat Langholt would approve the transfer after having rejected it so scathingly a few weeks before. But the Vorster high ones moved in mysterious ways, Mondschein decided. He accepted the puzzling decision in good grace, asking no questions. When his week was up, he knelt in the Nyack chapel one last time, said good-bye to Brother Langholt, and went to the quickboat station for the noon flight westward.
He was in Santa Fe by mid-morning local time. The station there, he noticed, was thronged with blue-robed ones, more than he had ever seen in a public place at any one time. Mondschein waited at the station, uneasily eying the immensity of the New Mexican landscape. The sky was a strangely bright shade of blue, and visibility seemed unlimited. Miles away Mondschein saw bare sandstone mountains rising. A tawny desert dotted with grayish-green sagebrush surrounded the station. Mondschein had never seen so much open space before.
“Brother Mondschein?” a pudgy acolyte asked.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Brother Capodimonte. I’m your escort. Got your luggage? Good. Let’s go, then.”
A teardrop was parked in back. Capodimonte took Mondschein’s lone suitcase and racked it. He was about forty, Mondschein guessed. A little old to be an acolyte. A roll of fat bulged over his collar at the back of his neck.
They entered the teardrop. Capodimonte activated it and it shot away.
“First time here?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mondschein said. “I’m impressed by the countryside.”
“It’s marvelous stuff, isn’t it? Life-enhancing. You get a sense of space here. And of history. Prehistoric ruins scattered all over the place. After you’re settled, perhaps we can go up to Frijoles Canyon for a look at the cave dwellings. Does that kind of thing interest you, Mondschein?”
“I don’t know much about it,” he admitted. “But I’ll be glad to look, anyway.”
“What’s your specialty?”
“Nucleonics,” Mondschein said. “I’m a furnace tender.”
“I was an anthropologist until I joined the Brotherhood. I spend my spare time out at the pueblos. It’s good to step back into the past occasionally. Especially out here, when you see the future erupting with such speed all around you.”
“They’re really making progress, are they?”
Capodimonte nodded. “Coming along quite well, they tell me. Of course, I’m not an insider. Insiders don’t get to leave the center much. But from what I hear, they’re accomplishing great things. Look out there, Brother—that’s the city of Santa Fe we’re passing right now.”
Mondschein looked. Quaint was the word that occurred to him. The city was small, both in area and in the size of its buildings, which seemed to be no higher than three or four stories anywhere. Even at this distance Mondschein could make out the dusky reddish-brown of adobe.
“I expected it to be much bigger,” Mondschein said.
“Zoning. Historical monument and all that. They’ve kept it pretty well as it was a hundred years ago. No new construction’s allowed.”
Mondschein frowned. “What about the laboratory center, though?”
“Oh, that’s not really in Santa Fe. Santa Fe’s just the nearest big city. We’re actually about forty miles north,” said Capodimonte. “Up near the Picuris country. Still plenty of Indians there, you know.”
They were beginning to climb now. The teardrop surged up hillside roads, and the vegetation began to change, the twisted, gnarled junipers and piñon pines giving way to dark stands of Douglas fir and ponderosas. Mondschein still found it hard to believe that he was soon to arrive at the genetic center. It goes to show, he told himself. The only way to get anywhere in the world was to stand up and yell.
He had yelled. They had scolded him for it—but they had sent him to Santa Fe anyhow.
To live forever! To surrender his body to the experimenters who were learning how to replace cell with cell, how to regenerate organs, how to restore youth. Mondschein knew what they were working on here. Of course, there were risks, but what of that? At the very worst, he’d die—but in the ordinary scheme of events that would happen anyway. On the other hand, he might be one of the chosen, one of the elect.
A gate loomed before them. Sunlight gleamed furiously from the metal shield.
“We’re here,” Capodimonte announced.
The gate began to open.
Mondschein said, “Won’t I be given some kind of esper scanning before they let me in?”
Capodimonte laughed. “Brother Mondschein, you’ve been getting a scanning for the last fifteen minutes. If there were any reason to turn you back, that gate wouldn’t be opening now. Relax. And welcome. You’ve made it.”
six
The official name of the place was the Noel Vorst Center for the Biological Sciences. It sprawled over some fifteen square miles of plateau country, every last inch of it ringed by a well-bugged fence. Within were dozens of buildings—dormitories, laboratories, other structures of less obvious purpose. The entire enterprise was underwritten by the contributions of the faithful, who gave according to their means—a dollar here, a thousand dollars there.
The center was heart and core of the Vorster operation. Here the research was carried out that served to improve the lives of Vorsters everywhere. The essence of the Brotherhood’s appeal was that it offered not merely spiritual counseling—which the old religions could provide just as well—but also the most advanced scientific benefits. Vorster hospitals existed now in every major population center. Vorster medics were at the fore-front of their profession. The Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance healed both body and soul.
And, as the Brotherhood did not attempt to conceal, the greater goal of the organization was the conquest of death. Not merely the overthrow of disease, but the downfall of age itself. Even before the Vorster movement had begun, men had been making great progress in that direction. The mean life expectancy was up to ninety-odd, above one hundred in some countries. That was why the Earth teemed with people, despite the stringent birth-control regulations that were in effect almost everywhere. Close to eleven billion people now, and the birth rate, though dropping sharply, was still greater than the death rate.
The Vorsters hoped to push the life expectancy still higher for those who wanted longer lives. A hundred and twenty, a hundred and fifty years—that was the immediate goal. Why not two hundred, three hundred, a thousand later on? “Give us everlasting life,” the multitudes cried, and flocked to the chapels to make sure they were among the elect.