Case of Conscience (22 page)

"Yes, I could. But Mike, it's physically impossible. There just isn't time to get Chtexa here, even if we had the resources and the—authority to do it."

"I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of CirCon, d'Averoigne's new circum-continuum radio. I don't know what shape it's in, but the Message Tree puts out a powerful signal—possibly d'Averoigne could pick it up. If so, you might be able to talk to Chtexa. I'll see what I can find out, anyhow."

"I'm willing to try," Ruiz-Sanchez said. "But it doesn't sound very promising."

He stopped to think, not of more answers—he had already hit his head against that wall more than often enough—but of what questions he still needed to ask, Michelis' appearance gave him the cue. It had shocked him at first, and he could still not quite get used to it. The big chemist had aged markedly: his face was drawn, and he had deeply cut, liverish circles under his eyes. Liu looked no better; while she had not seemed to age any, she looked miserable. There was a tension in the air between them, too, as though they had failed to find in each other sufficient release from the tensions of the world around them.

"It's possible that Agronski might know something that would be helpful," he said, only half-aloud.

"Maybe," Michelis said. "I've seen him only once—at a party, the one where Egtverchi caused such a stink. He was behaving very oddly. I'm sure he recognized us, but he wouldn't meet our eyes, let alone come and talk to us. As a matter of fact, I can't remember seeing him talking to anybody. He just sat in a corner and drank. It wasn't at all like him."

"Why did he come, do you suppose?"

"Oh, that's not hard to guess. He's a fan of Egtverchi's."

"Martin? How do you know?"

"Egtverchi bragged about it. He said he hoped to have the whole Lithia commission on his side eventually." Michelis grimaced.

"The way Agronski was acting, he'll be of no use to Egtverchi or anybody else."

"And so we have still another soul on the way to damnation," Ruiz-Sanchez said grimly. "I should have suspected it. There's so little meaning in Agronski's life as it is, it won't take Egtverchi long to cut him off from any contact with reality at all. That is what evil does—it empties you."

"I'm none too sure Egtverchi's to blame," Michelis said, his voice steeped in gloom. "Except as a symptom. The Earth is riddled with schizophrenics already. If Agronski had any tendency that way, and obviously he did, then all he needed was to be planted here again for the tendency to flower."

"That wasn't my impression of him," Liu said. "From what little I saw of him, and from what you've told me, he seemed dreadfully normal—even simple-minded. I don't see how he could get deep enough into any question to be driven insane—or how he could be tempted to fall into your theological vacuum, Ramon."

"In this universe of discourse, Liu, we are all very much alike," Ruiz-Sanchez said dispiritedly. "And from what Mike tells me, I think we may be already too late to do much for Martin. And he's only-only a sample of what's happening everywhere within the sound of Egtverchi's voice."

"It's a mistake to think of schizophrenia as a disease of the wits, anyhow," Michelis said. "Back in the days when it was first being described, the English used to call it 'lorry-driver's disease.' When intellectuals get it, the results are spectacular only because they can articulate what they feel: Nijinski, van Gogh, T. E. Lawrence, Nietzsche, Wilson… it's a long list, but it's nothing compared to the ordinary people who've had it. And they get it fifty-to-one over intellectuals. Agronski is just the usual kind of victim, no more, no less."

"What has happened to that threat you mentioned?" Ruiz-Sanchez said. "Egtverchi got on the air again last night without his being made a ward of yours. Was your friend in the complicated hat just flailing the air?"

"I think that's partly the answer," Michelis said hopefully. "They haven't said another word to us, so I'm just guessing, but it may be that your arrival disconcerted them. They expected you to be publicly unfrocked—and the fact that you weren't has thrown their schedule for announcing the Lithia decision seriously out of joint. They're probably waiting to see what you will do now."

"So," Ruiz-Sanchez said grimly, "am I. I might just do nothing, which would probably be the most confusing thing I could do. I think their hands are tied, Mike. He's never mentioned the Bifalcos' products but that once, but obviously he must be selling them by the warehouse-load, so his sponsors won't cut him off. Nor can I see on what grounds the UN Communications Commission can do it." He laughed shortly. "They've been trying for decades to encourage more independent comment on 3-V anyhow—and Egtverchi is certainly a giant step in that direction."

"I should think he'd be open to charges of inciting to riot," Michelis said.

"He hasn't incited any riots that I've heard about," Ruiz-Sanchez said. "The Frisco affair happened spontaneously as far as anyone could see—and I noticed that the pictures didn't show a single one of those uniformed followers of his in the crowds."

"But he praised the rioters' spirit, and made fun of the police," Liu pointed out. "He as good as endorsed it."

"That's not incitement," Michelis said. "I see what Ramon means. He's smart enough to do nothing for which he could be brought to trial—and a false arrest would be suicide, the UN would be inciting a riot itself."

"Besides, what would they do with him if they got a conviction?" Ruiz asked. "He's a citizen, but his needs aren't like ours; they'd be chancing killing him with a thirty-day sentence. I suppose they could deport him, but they can't declare him an undesirable, alien without declaring Lithia a foreign country—and until that report is released, Lithia is a protectorate, with a right to admission to the UN as a member state!"

"Small chance of that," Michelis said. "That would mean ditching Cleaver's project."

Ruiz-Sanchez felt the same sinking of the heart that had overcome him when Michelis first gave him that news. "How far advanced is it now?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. All I know is that they've been shipping equipment to him in huge amounts. There's another load scheduled to leave in two weeks. The scuttlebutt says that Cleaver has some kind of crucial experiment ready to go as soon as that shipment gets there. That puts it pretty close—the new ships make the trip in less than a month."

"Betrayed again," Ruiz-Sanchez said bitterly.

"Then is there nothing you can do, Ramon?" Liu asked.

"I'll interpret for Egtverchi and Chtexa, if anything comes of that project."

"Yes, but…"

"I know what you mean," he said. "Yes, there is something decisive that I can do. And possibly it would work. In fact, it is something that I must do."

He stared blindly at them. The buzzing of the bees, so reminiscent of the singing of the jungles of Lithia, probed insistently at him.

"But," he said, "I don't think that I'm going to do it."

Michelis moved mountains. He was formidable enough under normal conditions, but when he was desperate and saw a possible way out, no bulldozer could have been more implacable in crushing through an opening.

Lucien le Comte des Bois-d'Averoigne, late Procurator of Canarsie, and always fellow in the brotherhood of science, received them all cordially in his Canadian retreat. Not even the sardonically silent figure of Egtverchi made him blink; he shook hands with the displaced Lithian as though they were old friends meeting again after a lapse of a few weeks. The count himself was a large, rotund man 'in his early sixties, with a protuberant belly, and he was brown all over: his remaining hair was brown, his suit was brown, he was deeply tanned, and he was smoking a long brown cigar.

The room in which he received them—Ruiz-Sanchez, Michelis, Liu, and Egtverchi—was a curious mixture of lodge and laboratory. It had an open fireplace, rough furniture, 257 mounted guns, an elk's head, and an amazing mess of wires and apparatus.

"I am by no means sure that this is going to work," he told them promptly. "Everything I have is still in the breadboard stage, as you can see. It's been years since I last handled a soldering iron and a voltmeter, too, so we may well have a simple electronic failure somewhere in this mass of wiring—but it wasn't a task I could leave to a technician."

He waved them to seats while he made final adjustments. Egtverchi remained standing in the rear of the room in the shadows, motionless except for the gentle rise and fall of his great chest as he breathed, and an occasional sudden movement of his eyes.

"There will be no image, of course," the count said abstractedly.

"This giant J-J coupling you describe obviously doesn't broadcast in that band. But if we are very lucky, we may get some sound… Ah."

A loudspeaker almost hidden in the maze crackled and then began to emit distant, patterned bursts of hissing. Except for the pattern, it seemed to Ruiz-Sanchez to be nothing but noise, but the count said at once:

"I'm getting something in that region. I didn't expect to pick it up so soon. I don't make much sense of it, however."

Neither did Ruiz, and for a few moments he had all he could do to get over his amazement. "Those are signals—the Message Tree is broadcasting now?" he said, with a touch of incredulity.

"I hope so," the count said drily. "I have been busy all day installing chokes against any other possible signal."

The Jesuit's respect for the mathematician came close to awe. To think that this disorderly tangle of wiring, little black acorns, small red and brown objects like firecrackers, the shining interlocking blades of variable condensers, massively heavy coils, and flickering meters was even now reaching directly through the subether, around fifty light-years of space-time, to eavesdrop on the pulses of the crystalline cliff buried beneath Xoredeshch Sfath…

"Can you tune it?" he said at last. "I think those must be the stutter pattern—what the Lithians use as a navigational grid for their ships and planes. There ought to be an audio band—"

Except, he recalled suddenly, that that band couldn't possibly be an "audio" band. Nobody ever spoke directly to the Message Tree—only to the single Lithian who stood in the center of the Tree's chamber. How he got the substance of the message transformed into radio waves had never been explained to any of the Earthmen.

And yet suddenly there was a voice.

"—a powerful tap on the Tree," the voice said in clear, even, cold Lithian. "Who is receiving? Do you hear me? I do not understand the direction your carrier is coming from. It seems inside the Tree, which is impossible. Does anyone understand me?" Silently, the count thrust a microphone into Ruiz' hand. He discovered that he was trembling.

"We understand you," he said in Lithian in a shaky voice. "We are on Earth. Can you hear me?"

"I hear you," the voice said at once. "We understood that what you say is impossible. But what you say is not always accurate, we have found. What do you want?"

"I would like to speak to Chtexa, the metallist," Ruiz said. "This is Ruiz-Sanchez, who was in Xoredeshch Sfath last year."

"He can be summoned," said the cold, distant voice. There was a brief hashing sound from the speaker; then it went away again. "If he wishes to speak to you."

"Tell him," Ruiz-Sanchez said, "that his son Egtverchi also wishes to speak to him."

"Ah," said the voice after a pause. "Then no doubt he will come. But you cannot speak long on this channel. The direction from which your signal comes is damaging my sanity. Can you receive—a sound-modulated signal if we can arrange to send one?"

Michelis murmured to the count, who nodded energetically and pointed to the loudspeaker.

"That is how we are receiving you—now," Ruiz said. "How are you transmitting?"

"That I cannot explain to you," said the cold voice. "I cannot speak to you any longer or I will be damaged. Chtexa has been called."

The voice stopped and there was a long silence. Ruiz-Sanchez wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Telepathy?" Michelis muttered behind him. "No, it fits into the electro-magnetic spectrum somewhere. But where? Boy, there sure is a lot we don't know about that Tree."

The count nodded ruefully. He was watching his meters like a hawk but, judging from his expression, they were not telling him anything he did not already know.

"Ruiz-Sanchez," the loudspeaker said. Ruiz started.

It was Chtexa's voice, clear and strong.

Ruiz beckoned at the shadows, and Egtverchi came forward. He was in no hurry. There was something almost insolent in his very walk.

"This is Ruiz-Sanchez, Chtexa," Ruiz said. "I'm talking to you from Earth—a new experimental communications system one of our scientists has evolved. I need your help."

"I will be glad to do whatever I can," Chtexa said. "I was sorry that you did not return with the other Earthman. He was less welcome. He and his friends have razed one of our finest forests near Gleshchtehk Sfath, and built ugly buildings here in the city."

"I'm sorry, too," Ruiz-Sanchez said. The words seemed inadequate, but it would be impossible to explain to Chtexa exactly what the situation was—impossible, and illegal. "I still hope to come some day. But I am calling about your son."

There was a brief pause, during which the speaker emitted a series of muted, anomalous sounds, almost yet not quite recognizable. Evidently the Lithians' audio hookup was catching some background noise from inside the Tree, or even outside it. The clarity of the reception was astonishing; it was impossible to believe that the Tree was fifty light-years away.

"Egtverchi is an adult now," Chtexa's voice said. "He has seen many wonders on your world. Is he with you?"

"Yes," Ruiz-Sanchez said, beginning to sweat again. "But he does not know your language, Chtexa. I will interpret as best I can.''

"That is strange," Chtexa said. "But I will hear his voice. Ask him when he is coming home; he has much to tell us."

Ruiz put the question.

"I have no home," Egtverchi said indifferently.

"I can't just tell him that, Egtverchi. Say something intelligible, in heaven's name. You owe your existence to Chtexa, you know that."