Kirby shrugged. For all the power he held in the organization—and his powers were immense—he had never felt that he held any real initiative. The plans of the movement were generated, as they had been from the first, by Noel Vorst. He and only he knew what game he was playing. And if Vorst died this afternoon, with the game unfinished? What would happen to the movement then? Run on its own momentum? To what end, Kirby wondered.
They entered a squat, glittering little building of irradiated green foamglass. An awed hush preceded them: Vorst was coming! Men in blue robes came out to greet the Founder. They led him to the room in the rear where the gargoyle was kept. Kirby kept pace, ignoring the acolytes who were ready to catch him if he stumbled.
The gargoyle was sitting enmeshed in lacy restraining ribbons. He was not a pretty sight. Thirteen years old, three feet tall, grotesquely deformed, deaf, crippled, his corneas clouded, his skin pebbled and granulated. A mutant, though not one produced by any laboratory; this was Hurler’s Syndrome, a natural and congenital error of metabolism, first identified scientifically two and a half centuries before. The unlucky parents had brought the hapless monster to a chapel of the Brotherhood in Stockholm, hoping that by bathing him in the Blue Fire of the cobalt reactor his defects would be cured. The defects had not been cured, but an esper at the chapel had detected latent talents in the gargoyle, and so be was here to be probed and tested. Kirby felt a shiver of revulsion.
“What causes such a thing?” he asked the medic at his elbow.
“Abnormal genes. They produce metabolic error that results in an accumulation of mucopolysaccharides in the tissues of the body.”
Kirby nodded solemnly. “And is there supposed to be a direct link with esping?’
“Only coincidental,” said the medic.
Vorst had moved up to study the creature at close range. The Founder’s eye-shutters clicked as he peered forward. The gargoyle was humped and folded, virtually unable to move its limbs. The milky eyes held a look of pure misery. To the euthanasia heap with this one, Kirby thought. Yet Vorst hoped that such a monster would take him to the stars!
“Begin the examination,” Vorst murmured.
A pair of espers came forward, general-purpose types: a slick young woman with frizzy hair, and a plump, sad-faced man. Kirby, whose own esping facilities were deficient to the point of nonexistence, watched in silence as the wordless examination commenced. What were they doing? What shafts were they aiming at the huddled creature before them? Kirby did not know, and he took comfort in the fact that Vorst probably did not know himself. The Founder wasn’t much of an esper, either.
Ten minutes passed. Then the girl looked up and said, “Low-order pyrotic, mainly.”
“He can push molecules about?” Vorst said. “Then he’s got a shred of telekinesis.”
“Only a shred,” the second esper said. “Nothing that others don’t have. Also low-order communication abilities. He sits there telling us to kill him.”
“I’d recommend dissection,” said the girl. “The subject wouldn’t mind.”
Kirby shuddered. These two bland espers had peered within the mind of that crippled thing, and that in itself should have been enough to shrivel their souls. To see, for an empathic moment, what it was like to be a thirteen-year-old human gargoyle, to look out upon the world through those clouded eyes—! But they were all business, these two. They had merged minds with monstrosities before.
Vorst waved his hand. “Keep him for further study. Maybe he can be guided toward usefulness. If he’s really a pyrotic, take the usual precautions.”
The Founder whirled his chair around and started to leave the ward. At that same moment an acolyte came hurrying in, bearing a message. He froze at the unexpected sight of Vorst wheeling toward a collision with him. Vorst smiled paternally and guided himself around the boy, who went limp with relief.
The acolyte said, “Message for you, Coordinator Kirby.”
Kirby took it and jammed his thumb against the seal. The envelope popped open. The message was from Mondschein. “Lazarus is ready to talk to Vorst,” it said.
three
Vorst said, “I was insane, you know. For something like ten years. Later I discovered what the trouble was. I was suffering from time-float.”
The pallid esper girl’s eyes were very round as she gazed at him. They were alone in the Founder’s personal quarters. She was thin, loose-limbed, thirty years old. Strands of black hair dangled like painted straw down the sides of her face. Her name was Delphine, and in all the months that she had served Vorst’s needs she had never become accustomed to his frankness. She had little chance to; when she left his office after each session, other espers erased her recollections of the visit.
She said, “Shall I turn myself on?”
“Not yet, Delphine. Do you ever think of yourself as insane? In the difficult moments, the moments when you start ranging along the time-line and don’t think you’ll ever get back to now?”
“It’s pretty scary sometimes.”
“But you get back. That’s the miraculous thing. You know how many floaters I’ve seen burn out?” Vorst asked. “Hundreds. I’d have burned out myself, except that I’m a lousy precog. Back then, though, I kept breaking loose, drifting along the time-line. I saw the whole Brotherhood spread out before me. Call it a vision, call it a dream. I saw it, Delphine. Blurred around the edges.”
“Just as you told it in your book?”
“More or less,” said the Founder. “The years between 2055 and 2063—those were the years I had the visions worst. When I was thirty-five, it started. I was just an ordinary technician, a nobody, and then I got what could be called divine inspiration, except all it was was a peek at my own future. I thought I was going crazy. Later I understood.”
The esper was silent. Vorst shuttered his eyes. The memories glowed in him: after years of internal chaos and collapse he had come from the crucible of madness purified, aware of his purpose. He saw how he could reshape the world. More than that, he saw how he had reshaped the world. After that it was just a matter of making the beginning, of founding the first chapels, dreaming up the rituals of the cult, surrounding himself with the scientific talent necessary to realize his goals. Was there a touch of paranoia in his purpose, a bit of Hitler, a tinge of Napoleon, a tincture of Genghis Khan? Perhaps. Vorst complacently viewed himself as a fanatic and even as a megalomaniac. But a cool, rational megalomanic, and a successful one. He had been willing to stop at nothing to gain his ends, and he was just enough of a precog to know that he was going to gain them.
He said, “It’s a big responsibility, setting out to transform the world. A man has to be a little daft to attempt it or even to think he can attempt it. But it helps to know what the outcome must be. One doesn’t feel so idiotic, knowing that he’s simply acting out the inevitable.”
“It takes the challenge out of life,” said the esper.
“Ah, Delphine, you touch the gaping wound! But you’d know, of course. How dreary it is to be playing out your own script, aware of what’s ahead. At least I’ve had the mercy of uncertainty in the small things. I can’t see very much myself, so I have to hitchhike with floaters like you, and the visions aren’t clear. But you see clearly, don’t you, Delphine? You’ve been along your own world-line. Have you seen your own burnout yet, Delphine?”
The esper’s cheeks colored. She looked at the floor and did not answer.
“I’m sorry, Delphine,” Vorst said. “I had no right to ask that. I retract it. Turn on for me, Deiphine. Do your trick. Take me along. I’ve said too much today.”