Kirby was doing some lid-lifting of his own as the great day drew near. He was troubled by certain blanks in his own memory, and by virtue of his rank as second-in-command he went searching through the Vorster archives to fill them in. The trouble was, Kirby could not remember much about David Lazarus’s pre-martyrdom career, and he felt that it was important to know something more than the official story. Who was Lazarus, anyway? How had he entered the Vorster picture—and how had he left it?
Kirby himself had enrolled in 2077, kneeling before the Blue Fire of a cobalt reactor in New York. As a new convert, he had not been concerned with the politics of the hierarchy, but simply with the values the cult had to offer: stability, the hope of long life, the dream of reaching the stars by harnessing the abilities of espers. Kirby was willing to see mankind explore the other solar systems, but he did not make that accomplishment the central yearning of his life. Nor did the chance of immortality—the chief bait for millions of Vorster converts—seem all that delicious to him.
What drew him to the movement, at the age of forty, was merely the discipline that it offered. His pleasant life lacked structure, and the world about him was such chaos that he fled from it into one synthetic paradise after another. Along came Vorst offering a sleek new belief that snared Kirby totally. For the first few months he was content to be a worshiper. Soon he was an acolyte. And then, his natural organizational abilities demonstrating themselves, he found himself moving rapidly upward in the movement from post to post until by the time he was eighty he was Vorst’s fight hand, and very much concerned with his own personal survival.
According to the official story, the martyrdom of David Lazarus had taken place in 2090. Kirby had been a Vorster for thirteen years then, and was a District Supervisor in charge of thousands of Brothers.
So far as he could remember, he had never even heard of Lazarus as of 2090.
A few years later the Harmonists, the heretical movement had begun gaining strength, decking themselves in green robes and scoffing at the craftily secular power orientation of the Vorsters. They claimed to be followers of the martyred Lazarus, but even then, Kirby thought they hadn’t talked much about Lazarus. Only afterward, as Harmonist power mounted and they stole Venus from Vorst, did they push the Lazarus mythos particularly hard. Why is it, Kirby wondered, that I who was a contemporary of Lazarus should never have heard his name?
He walked toward the archives building.
It was a milk-white geodesic dome, sheeted with some toothy fabric that gave it a sharkskin surface texture. Kirby passed through a tiled tunnel, identified himself to the robot guardians, moved toward and past a sphincter-door, and found himself in the olive-green room where the records were kept lie activated a query-stud and demanded knowledge.
Lazarus, David.
Drums whirled in the depths of the earth. Memory films came around, offered themselves to the kiss of the scanner, and sent images floating upward to the waiting Kirby. Glowing yellow print appeared on the reader-Screen.
A potted biography, scanty and inadequate:
Born 13 March 2051
Education Primary Secondary Chicago, A.B. Harvard ‘72, Ph.D. (Anthropology) Harvard ’75.
Physical Description (1/1/88) 6 ft. 3 ins., 179 pounds, dark eyes and hair, no dis. scars.
Affiliation Joined Cambridge chapel 4/11/71. Acolyte status conferred 7/17/73…
There followed a. list of the successive stages by which Lazarus had risen through the hierarchy, culminating with the simple entry, Death 2/9/90.
That was all. It was a lean, spare record, not a word of elaboration, no appended commendations such as Kirby knew festooned his own record, no documentation of Lazarus’s disagreement with Vorst. Nothing. It was the sort of record, Kirby thought uncomfortably, that anyone could have tapped out in five minutes and inserted in the archives… yesterday.
He prodded the memory banks, hoping to fish up some added detail about the arch-heretic. He found nothing. It was not really valid cause for suspicion; Lazarus had been dead for a long time, and probably the record-keeping had been sketchier in those early days. But it was upsetting, all the same. Kirby made his way out of the building. Acolytes stared at him as though Vorst himself had gone striding by. No doubt some of them felt the temptation to drop to their knees before him. I/ they only knew, Kirby thought darkly, how ignorant I am. After seventy-five years with Vorst. If they only knew.
seven
The glass vault of David Lazarus, transported intact at considerable expense from Mars, rested in the center of the operating room, under the watchful eyes of the video cameras mounted in the walls and ceiling. A carefully planted forest of equipment surrounded the vault: polygraphs, compressors, centrifuges, surgistats, scanners, enzyme calibrators, laser scalpels, retractors, impacters, thorax rods, cerebral tacks, a heart-and-lung bypass, kidney surrogates, mortmains, biopticons, elsevirs, a Helium II pressure generator, and a monstrous, glowering cryostat. The display was impressive, and it was meant to be. Vorster science was on display here, and every awesome-looking superfluity in the place had its part in the orchestration of the effects.
Vorst himself was not present. That too, was part of the orchestration. He and Kirby were watching the event from Vorst’s office. The highest-ranking member of the Brotherhood present was plump, cheerful Capodimonte, a District Supervisor. Beside him stood Christopher Mondschein of the Harmonists. Mondschein and Capodimonte had known each other briefly during Mondschein’s short, spectacularly unsuccessful career as a Santa Fe acolyte in 2095. Now, though, the Harmonist was a terrifying figure, his changed body concealed by a breathing-suit but still nightmarish and grotesque. A native-born Venusian, looking even more bizarre, clung to Mondschein like a skin graft. The visiting Harmonists seemed tense and grim. The television commentator said, “It’s already been determined that the atmosphere of the vault is a mixture of inert gases, mainly argon. Lazarus himself is in a nutrient bath. Espers have detected signs of life. The tumblers of the vault lock were opened yesterday in the presence of the delegation of Venusian Harmonists. Now the inerts are being piped out, and soon the sensitive instruments of the surgeons will reach the sleeping man and begin the infinitely complex process of restoring the life-impulses.”
Vorst laughed.
Kirby said, “Isn’t that what’ll happen?”
“More or less. Exept the man’s as alive as he’ll ever be, right now. All they need to do is open the vault and yank him out.”
“That wouldn’t be very dramatic.”
“Probably not,” the Founder agreed. Vorst folded his hands across his belly, feeling the artificials throbbing mildly inside. The commentator reeled off acres of descriptive prose. The spidery array of instruments surrounding the vault was in motion now, arms and tendrils waving like the limbs of some being of many bodies. Vorst kept his eyes on the altered face of Christopher Mondschein. He hadn’t really believed that Mondschein would return to Santa Fe. An admirable person, the old man thought. He had borne adversity well, considering how he had been bamboozled into his life’s career almost sixty years ago.
“The vault’s open,” Kirby said.
“So I observe. Now watch the mummy of King Tut rise and walk.”
“You’re very lighthearted about this, Noel.”
“Mmmm,” the Founder said. A smile ffickered on his thin lips for a moment He made minute adjustments to his hormone flow. On the screen the vault opening was almost completely obscured by the instruments that had dived into the chamber to embrace the sleeper.