The Last Starship From Earth (13 page)

He might have believed that some divinity had shaped him to this end, had he not come to the conclusion that the mills which ground were not the gods’.

LV
²
= (−T) would remove the stain of his father’s blood, wipe out the damned spot which condemned him, and topple the Weird Sisters!

The Church was going to be gratified to receive into its arms the most penitent miscegenationist since the founding of the Holy Israel Empire, and the campus friends of Haldane O, née IV, were going to be dumbfounded to discover that the erstwhile Paul Bunyan of the recreational parlors had chosen the celibate life of an engine room mechanic in the laser room of a starship.

As an aftermath of Haldane’s slugging match with nineteenth-century literature, he had acquired a taste for tales of lust and violence, which he was satisfying the next morning when a knock came on the door. Turning to the Sermon on the Mount, he left the Bible open and went to answer the knock.

An elderly man, in the neighborhood of eighty, stood in the corridor, a diffident look on his face. “Are you Haldane IV?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you. My name’s Gurlick V, M-5, and I was told to come over and talk to you. May I come in?”

“Indeed, sir.”

Haldane ushered him in and offered him the chair. He sat on the edge of the bunk while the old man creaked onto the chair, saying, “This is the first time I’ve drawn jury duty in ten years. By the way, I know your dad. He and I worked on a project about three years ago.”

“He died last January,” Haldane said.

“Ah, yes. That’s too bad. He was a good man.” The old man looked off into space in a conspicuous effort to gather his thoughts. “They tell me you were involved with a young lady in another category.”

“Yes, sir. She knew Dad, too.”

Looking at the old man, Haldane figured there was no, point in concealing any theories from Gurlick. At best, Gurlick had only ten years left, and in those ten years he would be concerned mostly with his physical functions.

“The name Gurlick sounds familiar, sir. Did you ever teach at Cal?”

“Yes. I’ve taught theoretical math.”

“Probably I’ve seen your name in the catalogue.”

“Ah, yes. When I learned I was to be on your jury, I called up Dean Brack. He tells me you’re a wizard in both theoretical and empirical math. Most I ever did in the other line was to figure out a system for winning at tic-tac-toe.

“Tell me something, son.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you ken the Fairweather Effect?”

Haldane’s first reaction to the lowered, humble question was almost tears. Here a mathematician, far older than his father had been, was petitioning for information that his father had been too proud to request. He wanted to hug the old man for the bravery in his humility.

It occured to Haldane that the old man could be feeding him a loaded question, one designed to determine his work category. Very well. If this were a classification question, he wanted to be classified as high as possible.

“Yes,” he answered.

“What did he mean by ‘minus time’?”

“Time in excess of simultaneity.”

“Define!” The pedagogue in the old mathematician was alerted, and his voice cracked as he almost shrieked the command.

“The so-called time barrier prevents a speed faster than simultaneity because one solid cannot occupy two places simultaneously. You cannot leave New York and be in San Francisco an hour before you leave, except in earth-relative time, because you would be in San Francisco at the same time you were in New York. You cannot occupy two places at once.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“My understanding isn’t intelligence,” Haldane modesty admitted. “You understand Fairweather by a trick of he mind. You have to think in nonhuman concepts, Fairweather explicitly points out the nature of this understanding in his
Jumping the Time Warp
; yet some mathematicians still aren’t able to grasp his ideas.”

“How could he apply nonhuman concepts to mechanical things, like the Hell ships? Tell me that, young one.”

“He didn’t,” Haldane said. “Starships operate on Newton’s statement that every action has a reaction. He contrived a pod of lasers where light converged at a single point to give a push before the beams diverged. The actual principle is the same as that used in primitive jet aircraft.”

“Well, I’ll be darned. There’s no new thing under the sun. I just wish I could live a little bit longer to find out what they’ll do next.”

“If I had the gift of prophesy…” Haldane started to speak, and precautionary signals flashed in his mind.

He was skirting the periphery of a concept that had come to him, like an aurora borealis, in this deepest winter of his mind, and this particular man was less a juror than a judge.

Strangely, the old man did not look for him to finish the sentence. Instead, Gurlick turned his watery blue eyes toward the window and in a most lovable and absurdly human manner scratched himself. The frail veined hands, fluttering about the dessicated crotch, aroused Haldane’s compassion. If this old professor was tricking a student, then Haldane was his own grandmother.

“Ah, yes. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with my kidneys lately. I don’t reckon I’m long for this world, but I just can’t help wondering what they’ll do next.”

He was balanced so precariously on the edge of eternity that Haldane feared for him. Yet, within that skull encompassed by its parchment skin burned still the naive curiosity of a child or a mathematician.

“I’m a lousy prophet, sir, but maybe they can break the light barrier. You can’t be in San Francisco before you leave New York, but then you don’t have to be in New York.”

“People are always rushing… Son, I was supposed to find out what your feelings were about people, whether you’d rather work with a group or whether you’d rather work alone, but I’ve got to go. If this trial comes out badly for you, have you got any job in mind you’d like to do?”

“I don’t mind working with a small group, and I like to work with laser beams.”

“Ah, yes. You’re pragmatic. I’ll remember that… Well, I don’t want to keep you. I’ll be getting along.”

He got up slowly and stuck out his hand. “Thanks for inviting me in. I’ve enjoyed talking with you. Could you direct me to the lavatory, son?”

Haldane helped him to the door and showed him the lavatory across the corridor. As he walked hurriedly away, Gurlick called back, “Give my regards to your father, son.”

Turning back into his cell, Haldane was saddened by the decline of a mind which apologized for keeping him, forgetting he was a prisoner, and sent regards to a man who had been dead for more than three months.

Haldane’s melancholy evaporated with the arrival of his second interviewer.

Father Kelly XXXX had an impossible dynastic number, the result of an internecine battle for status between the Jews and the Irish in the Church. A group of Irishmen in the clergy had arrogated unto themselves numbers reaching back long before the Starvation, basing their numbering system on their known ancestors who were priests. The Jews countered with their ancestors reaching back, possibly, to Jesus. Apparently, Father Kelly XXXX had decided to include ancestors who were Druid priests.

Father Kelly’s impossible number suited his personality. He was incredible.

Across the board, win, place, and show, Haldane had never seen a more handsome man. His long, black tunic fitted his tall, broad-shouldered body with military precision. His lustrous black hair and brows were balanced by the high gloss of his white collar. His thin, slightly tilted nose looked so sensitive that Haldane expected it to quiver. His lips were thin, his jaw was square with a cleft in the center, and his skin had a pallor that on another might have appeared unwholesome, but on Father Kelly XXXX it was the perfect background for the dark hair and eyes.

His eyes, deep-set and piercing, were so brown the irises were almost lost. They focused with the power of a hypnotist or a fanatic, and they were at the same time the most unattractive and the most compelling feature of his face.

If it were possible for a man so heavily endowed with rugged beauty to have a strong point, Father Kelly’s strong point was his profile. From the side, his features seemed carved by a master sculptor who had lingered for years over the shape of the nose and the line of the lips.

Haldane knew this one. He had appeared often on local television presiding at the burial rites of famous actors. On camera he was handsome. In person, he was overwhelming. He made Haldane regret the size of the cell.

With an engaging smile and the self-conscious worldliness of a man of God, Father Kelly’s first remark after introducing himself was, “My son, they tell me you lost your head over a bit of tail.”

“Yes, Father.”

“It happened to Adam. It happened to you. It could happen to me.” He motioned Haldane to be seated on the bed, but he himself walked over to look out the window. There was nothing there but an alley. Flaxon’s eyes had not even focused on the view, but Father Kelly looked upward, and he seemed to be drinking in the sunlight.

“Yes, my son, I think it could have happened even to Our Blessed Savior, for he was acquainted with women of whom it might be justly said that chastity was the least of their virtues.”

It was an unusual remark from a priest, but it underlined Father Kelly’s “regular fellowness” and Haldane was able to relax slightly. If he had a preference in priests, he preferred the regular fellows, even though he had found that their regularity was often strained to the point of irregularity.

“Now that you mention it. Father, I’m sure that Jesus must have been as attractive to females as he was to males.”

Suddenly the priest turned and looked directly at Haldane, those eyes pinning the prisoner against the wall. “My son, do you repent your sin?”

Kelly’s sudden piety after his freewheeling impiety caught Haldane off guard, and his friendly feelings toward the priest were slashed by the word “sin.”

“Father, I regret, surely… But…”

“But what, lad?”

“I hadn’t thought of it as a sin. I had only thought of it as a civil offense.”

Again, the affable smile came over the priest’s face. “No, I wouldn’t suppose you would judge it a sin. Not a man alive likes to admit he’s sinful.”

He looked away, this time toward the door, his chin slightly tilted, and the held gesture flooded Haldane with insight. Father Kelly was a vain man. He had walked to the window to get the best light, and now he was showing his profile.

When he turned again to Haldane, his plastic features had shifted. There was hauteur in his eyes and primness in the lines of his lips. “You can’t judge, but I can. Mathematics is your business; morality is mine. I tell you bluntly, my son, carnality is a sin.”

“Father,” Haldane unconsciously felt his lips grow primly decisive, “I have known carnality in its manifold forms, in the houses sponsored by the state, and my relations with the girl bore the same relation to those experiences as the sacred bears to the profane.”

“You misjudge the relationship,” the priest said harshly. “The affair was carnal, and, being carnal, it was sinful. We sin when we hurt someone we do not wish to hurt. You have hurt yourself, the girl, and the state. Your sin is threefold.

“You have sinned, my son, and you will spend the rest of your life doing penance. Whether you spend it in prayer or not is up to you. Our Holy Mother does not wish to see you punished. She wishes to forgive you. But there can be no forgiveness if there is no recognition of the sin.”

Strange lights flickered in his eyes. Fervor grew in a voice that rose and fell, filling the cell with its vibrations. Then the priest looked away, tilting his profile.

“Father, I’m not being punished by the Church. I’m being punished by the state.”

“Ours, my son, is a triune state. The Church is its third leg.”

“Then, sir, if I am being punished by the state, the Church is sinning against me.”

“My son, I said that to sin is to hurt someone we do not wish to hurt. The state wishes to hurt you.”

“Father, you just said Our Holy Mother does not wish to punish me.”

“My reference was to Mary, my son.”

Kelly’s sophistry coupled with his self-adulation triggered antagonisms in Haldane. He remembered Flaxon’s warning to project humility, but no image could be projected to this monument of piety because it was so intent on its own projections that all incoming signals were drowned by the signals going out.

Haldane could not resist matching sophistries, so he posed a question in full meekness, with his voice reeking of humility. “Father, Jesus told us to love one another. Does the Church wish to punish me because I have loved another?”

Father Kelly reached in his cassock and brought out a flat case of cigarettes. Walking over, he offered one to Haldane, who refused, partly from fear that he might light the filter end. Father Kelly lit his own and returned to the north light.

He had not answered, but the bent head demonstrated that he was meditating the problem, and the slightly superior smile on his lips told Haldane that he was not meditating the profundity of the question but how best to phrase it to a simpleminded mathematician.

Haldane did a little meditating himself. He didn’t like to pass moral judgments on experts in morality. Besides, his interest now was purely clinical; he had a researcher’s desire to find how the thought processes of the priest worked. But he was intrigued by the possibility that Father Kelly had received divine grace and had overlooked the package which was lost among the other gifts that God had heaped upon him.

Father Kelly looked up, smoke curling from his nostrils. “My son, when Jesus said, ‘Love one another,’ he meant precisely that. We must love one another strongly enough to respect each other’s social rights. When you attempt to bring unauthorized life upon this overcrowded planet, you are not loving me. Jesus said, ‘Let us love one another.’ He did not say, ‘Let us make love to one another.’ ”

He could not match sophistries with this man. The priest was matchless, on earth or in heaven. Haldane had skirted the edge of disaster by baiting him, for that veering mind, energized by righteousness, might seize on him as an apostate, even an anti-Christ, and his case would be ruined.