“As it very nearly did.”
“As it certainly would have done,” said Mondschein, “if I had not happened to notice your predicament. That would have terminated your mission here rather prematurely. Do you like the wine?”
Martell had barely tasted it. “It’s not bad. Tell me, Mondschein, have they really let themselves be converted here?”
“A few. A few.”
“Hard to believe. What do you people know that we don’t?”
“It isn’t what we know,” Mondschein said. “It’s what we have to offer. Come with me into the chapel.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Please. It won’t give you a disease.”
Reluctantly, Martell allowed himself to be led right into the sanctum sanctorum. He looked around with distaste at the ikons, the images, and all the rest of the Harmonist rubbish. At the altar, where a Vorster chapel would have had the tiny reactor emitting blue Cerenkov radiation, there was mounted a gleaming atom-symbol model along which electron-simulacra pulsed in blinding, ceaseless motion. Martell did not think of himself as a bigoted man, but he was loyal to his faith, and the sight of all this childish paraphernalia sickened him.
Mondschein said, “Noel Vorst’s the most brilliant man of our times, and his accomplishments mustn’t be underrated. He saw the culture of Earth fragmented and decadent, saw people everywhere escaping into drug addictions and Nothing Chambers and a hundred other deplorable things. And he saw that the old religions had lost their grip, that the time was ripe for an eclectic, synthetic new creed that dispensed with the mysticism of the former religions and replaced it with a new kind of mysticism, a scientific mysticism. That Blue Fire of his—a wonderful symbol, something to capture the imagination and dazzle the eye, as good as the Cross and the Crescent, even better, because it was modern, it was scientific, it could be comprehended even while it bewildered. Vorst had the insight to establish his cult and the administrative ability to put it across. But has thinking was incomplete.”
“That’s a lofty dismissal, isn’t it? When you consider that we control Earth in a way that no single religious movement of the past has ever—”
Mondschein smiled. “The achievement on Earth is very imposing, I agree. Earth was ready for Vorst’s doctrines. Why did he fail on the other planets, though? Because his thinking was too advanced. He didn’t offer anything that colonists could surrender their hearts and souls to.”
“He offers physical immortality in the present body,” Martell said crisply. “Isn’t that enough?”
“No. He doesn’t offer a mythos. Just a cold quid-pro-quo, come to the chapel and pay your tithe and you can live forever, maybe. It’s a secular religion, despite all the litanies and rituals that have been creeping in. It lacks poetry. There’s no Christ-child in the manger, no Abraham sacrificing Isaac, no spark of humanity, no—”
“No simplistic fairy tales,” said Martell in a brusque tone. “Agreed. That’s the whole point of our teaching. We came into a world no longer capable of believing the old stories, and instead of spinning new ones we offered simplicity, strength, the power of scientific achievement—”
“And took political control of most of the planet, while also establishing magnificent laboratories that carried on advanced research in longevity and esping. Fine. Fine. Admirable. But you failed here. We are succeeding. We have a story to tell, the story of Noel Vorst, the First Immortal, his redemption in the atomic fire, his awakening from sin. We offer our people a chance to be redeemed in Vorst and in the later prophet of Transcendent Harmony, David Lazarus. What we have is something that captures the fancy of the low-casters, and in another generation we’ll have the high-casters, too. These are pioneers, Brother Martell. They’ve cut all ties with Earth, and they’re starting over on their own, in a society just a few generations old. They need myths. They’re shaping myths of their own here. Don’t you think that in another century the first colonists of Venus will be regarded as supernatural beings, Martell? Don’t you think that they’ll be Harmonist saints by then?”
Martell was genuinely startled. “Is that your game?”
“Part of it.”
“All you’re doing is returning to fifth-century Christianity.”
“Not exactly. We’re continuing the scientific work, too.”
“And you believe your own teachings?” Martell asked.
Mondschein smiled strangely. “When I was young,” he said, “I was a Vorster acolyte, at the Nyack chapel. I went into the Brotherhood because it was a job. I needed a structure for my life, and I had a wild hope of being sent out to Santa Fe to become a subject in the immortality experiments, and so I enrolled. For the most unworthy of motives. Do you know, Martell, that I didn’t feel a shred of a religious calling? Not even the Vorster stuff—stripped down, secular—could get to me. Through a series of confusions that I still don’t fully understand and that I won’t even begin to explain to you, I left the Brotherhood and Joined the Harmonist movement and came here as a missionary. The most successful missionary ever sent to Venus, as it happens. Do you think the Harmonist mythologies can move me if I was too ratio-nal to accept Vorster thinking?”
“So you’re completely cynical in handing out this nonsense about saints and images. You do it for the sake of preserving your power. A peddler of nostrums, a quack preacher in the back-woods of Venus—”
“Easy,” Mondschein warned. “I’m getting results. And, as I think Noel Vorst himself might tell you, we deal in ends, not in means. Would you like to kneel here and pray awhile?”
“Of course not.”
“May I pray for you, then?”
“You just told me you don’t believe your own creed.”
Smiling, Mondschein said, “Even the prayers of an unbeliever may be heard. Who knows? Only one thing is certain: you’ll die here, Martell. So I’ll pray for you, that you may pass through the purifying flame of the higher frequencies.”
“Spare me. Why are you so sure I’ll die here? It’s a fallacy to assume that, simply because all previous Vorster missionaries have been martyred here, I’ll be martyred, too.”
“Our own position is uneasy enough on Venus. Yours will be impossible. Venus doesn’t want you. Shall I tell you the only way you’ll possibly live more than a month here?”
“Do.”
“Join us. Trade in that blue tunic for a green one. We have need for all the capable men we can get.”
“Don’t be absurd. Do you really think I’d do any such thing?”
“It isn’t beyond possibility. Many men have left your order for mine—myself included.”
“I prefer martyrdom,” Martell said.
“In what way will that benefit anybody? Be reasonable, Brother. Venus is a fascinating place. Wouldn’t you like to live to see a little of it? Join us. You’ll learn the rituals soon enough. You’ll see that we aren’t such ogres. And—”
“Thank you,” said Martell. “Will you excuse me now?”
“I had hoped you would be our guest for dinner.”
“That won’t be possible. I’m expected at the Martian Embassy, if I don’t meet any more local beasts in the road.”
Mondschein looked unruffled by Martell’s rejection of his offer—an offer that could not have been made, Martell thought, in any great degree of seriousness. The older man said gravely, “Allow me, at least, to offer you transportation to town. Surely your pride in your own sanctity will permit you to accept that.”
Martell smiled. “Gladly. It’ll make a good story to tell Coordinator Kirby—how the heretics saved my life and gave me a ride into town.”