To Open the Sky (23 page)

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, Delphine. Do your trick. Take me along. I've said too much today."

Shyly, the girl composed herself for her great effort. She had more control than most of her kind, Vorst knew. Whereas most of the precogs eventually slipped their moorings, Delphine had clung to her powers and her life and had reached what was, for her kind of esper, a ripe old age. She would burn out, too, one day, when she overreached herself. But up to now she had been invaluable to Vorst, his crystal ball, the most helpful of all the floaters who had aided him in plotting his course. And if she could hold out just a while longer, until he saw his route past the final obstacles, the long journey would end and they both could rest.

She released her grip on the present and moved into that realm where all moments are now.

Vorst watched and waited and felt the girl taking him along as she began her time-shuttling. He could not initiate the journey himself, but he could follow. Mists enfolded him, and he swung dizzily along the line of time, as he had done so often before. He saw himself, here and here and here, and saw others, shadow-figures, dream-figures, lurking behind the curtains of time.

Lazarus? Yes, Lazarus was there. Kirby, too. Mondschein. All of them, the pawns in the game. Vorst saw the glow of otherness and looked out upon a landscape that was neither Earth nor Mars nor Venus. He trembled. He looked up at a tree eight hundred feet high, with a corona of azure leaves against a foggy sky. Then he was ripped away, and hurled into the stinking confusion of a rain-spattered city street, and stood before one of his early chapels. The building was on fire in the rain, and the smell of scorched wet wood assailed his nostrils. And then, smiling into the stunned, parched face of Reynolds Kirby. And then—

The sense of motion left him. He slipped back into his own matrix of time, making the adrenal adjustments that compensated for his exertions. The floater lay slumped in her chair, sweat-flecked, dazed. Vorst summoned an acolyte.

"Take her to her ward," he said. "Have them work on her until she comes back to her strength."

The acolyte nodded and lifted the girl. Vorst sat motionless until they were gone. He was satisfied with the session. It had confirmed his own intuitive ideas of his immediate direction, and that was always comforting.

"Send me Capodimonte," Vorst said into the communicator.

The chubby blue-robed figure entered a few minutes later. When Vorst was in Santa Fe, one did not waste time in getting to his quarters after a summons. Capodimonte was the District Supervisor for the Santa Fe region, and was customarily in charge here except when such figures as Vorst or Kirby were in residence. Capodimonte was stolid, loyal, useful. Vorst trusted him for delicate assignments. They exchanged quick, casual benedictions now.

Then Vorst said, "Capo, how long would it take you to pick the personnel for an interstellar expedition?"

"Inter—"

"Say, for departure later this year. Run the specs off at Archives and get together a few possible teams."

Capodimonte had recovered his aplomb. "What size teams?"

"All sizes. From two persons to about a dozen. Start with an Adam-and-Eve pair, and work up to, say, six couples. Matched for health, adaptability, compatibility, skills, and fertility."

"Espers?"

"With caution. You can throw in a couple of empaths, a couple of healers. Stay away from the exotics, though. And remember that these people are supposed to be pioneers. They've got to be flexible. We can do without geniuses on this trip, Capo."

"You want me to report to you or to Kirby when I've made the lists?"

"To me, Capo. I don't want you to utter a syllable about this to Kirby or anyone else. Just get in there and run off the groups as we've already programmed them. I'm not sure what size expedition we'll be sending, and I want to have a group ready that'll be self-sufficient at any level—two, four, eight, whatever it turns out to be. Take two or three days. When you've done that, put half a dozen of your best men to work on the logistics of the trip. Assume an esper-powered capsule and go over the optimum designs. We've had decades to plan it; we must have a whole arsenal full of blueprints. Look them over. This is your baby, Capo."

"Sir? One subversive question, please?"

"Ask it."

"Is this a hypothetical exercise I'm doing, or is this the real thing?"

"I don't know," said Vorst.

Four

The blue face of a Venusian looked out of the screen, alien and forbidding, but its owner had been born an Earthman, and the terrestrial heritage betrayed itself in the shape of the skull, the set of the lips, the thrust of the chin. The face was that of David Lazarus, founder and resurrected head of the cult of Transcendent Harmony. Vorst had conferred often with Lazarus in the twelve years since the arch-heresiarch's resurrection. And always the two prophets had allowed themselves the luxury of full visual contact. It was monumentally expensive to bounce not only voices but images down the chain of relay stations that led from Venus to Earth, but expense meant little to these men. Vorst insisted. He liked to see Lazarus's transformed face as they spoke. It gave him something to focus on during the long, dull time-lags in their conversations. Even at the speed of light it took a while for a message to get from planet to planet. Even a simple exchange of views required more than an hour.

Comfortable in his nest of webfoam, Vorst said, "I think it's time to unite our movements, David. We complement one another. There's nothing to gain from further division."

"There might be something to lose by union," said Lazarus. "We're the younger branch. If you reabsorbed us, we'd be swallowed up in your hierarchy."

"Not so. I guarantee you that your Harmonists will remain fully autonomous. More than that, I'll guarantee you a dominant role in policy setting."

"What kind of guarantee can you offer?"

"Let that pass a moment," Vorst said. "I've got an interstellar team ready to go. They'll be fully equipped in a matter of months. I mean
fully
equipped. They'll be able to cope with anything they meet. But they have to have a way of getting out of the solar system. Give us a push, David. You've got the personnel now. We've monitored your experiments."

Lazarus nodded, his gill-bunches quivering. "I won't deny what we've done. We can push a thousand tons from here to Pluto. We can keep the same mass going right to infinity."

"How long to get to Pluto?"

"Fast. I won't tell you exactly how fast. But let's just say the stars are in reach. Have been for the past eight or ten months. We could get a ship there in—oh, let's call it a year. Of course, we'd have no way of maintaining contact. We can push, but we can't talk across a dozen light-years. Can you?"

"No," said Vorst. "The expedition would be out of contact the moment it got past radio range. It would have to send back a conventional relay ship to announce its safe arrival. We wouldn't know for decades. But we have to try. Give us your men, David."

"You realize it would burn out dozens of our most promising youngsters?"

"I realize. Give us your men, anyway. We understand techniques for repairing burnouts. Let them push the ship to the stars, and when they drop in their tracks, we'll try to fix them up again. That's what Santa Fe is for."

"First drive them to exhaustion, then patch them together?" Lazarus asked. "That's ruthless. Are the stars that important? I'd rather see these boys develop their powers here on Venus and remain intact."

"We need them."

"So do we."

Vorst made use of the interval to flood his body with stimulants. He was tingling, palpitating with vigor by the time his reply was due. He said, "David, I own you. I made you and I want you. I put you to sleep in 2090 when you were nothing, an upstart, and I brought you back to life in 2152 and gave you a world. You owe me everything. Now I'm calling in that obligation. I've been waiting a hundred years to reach this position. You people finally have the espers who can send my people to the stars. Whatever the personal cost at your end, I want you to send them."

The strain of that speech left Vorst dizzy with fatigue. But he had time to recover. Time to think, to wait for the reply. He had made his gamble, and now it was up to Lazarus. Vorst did not have many cards left to play.

The blue-faced figure in the screen was motionless; Vorst's words had not even reached Venus yet. Lazarus's reply was a long time in coming.

He said, "I didn't think you'd be so blunt, Vorst. Why should I be grateful to you for reviving me, when you jammed me into that hole in the first place? Oh, I know. Because my movement was insignificant when you took me away from it and a major force when you brought me back. Do you take credit for that, too?" A pause. "Never mind. I don't want to give you my espers. Breed your own, if you want to get to the stars."

"You're talking foolishness. You want the stars, too, David. But you don't have the technical facilities, up there in the backwoods, to equip an expedition. I do. Let's join forces. It's what you yourself want to do, no matter how tough you talk now. Let me tell you what's holding you back from agreeing to join me, David. You're afraid of what your own people will do to you when they find out you've agreed to cooperate. They'll say you've sold out to the Vorsters. You're frozen in a position you don't believe, just because you don't have real independence. Assert yourself, David. Use your powers. I put that planet into your hands. Now I want you to repay me."

"How can I go to Mondschein and Martell and the others and tell them that I've meekly agreed to submit to you?" Lazarus asked. "They're restless enough at having had a resurrected martyr slapped down on top of them. There are times when I expect them to martyr me again, and this time for good. I need a bargaining point."

Vorst smiled. Victory was in his grasp now.

He said, "Tell them, David, that I offer you supreme authority over both worlds. Tell them that the Brotherhood not only will welcome the Harmonists back, but that you'll be made the sole head of both branches of the faith."

"Both?"

"Both."

"And what becomes of you?"

Vorst told him. And once the words were past his lips, the Founder sank back, limp with relief, knowing that he had made the final move in a game a century old, and that it had all come out in the right way.

Five

Reynolds Kirby was with his therapist when the summons came to go to Vorst. The Hemispheric Coordinator lay in a nutrient bath, an adapted Nothing Chamber whose purpose was not oblivion but revivification. If Kirby had chosen to escape into temporary nothingness, he could have sealed himself off from the universe and entered complete suspension. He had long since outgrown the need for such amusements, though. Now he was content to loll in the nutrient bath, restoring the vital substances after a fatiguing day, while an esper therapist combed the snags from his soul.

Ordinarily, Kirby did not tolerate interruptions of such sessions. At his age he needed all the peace he could get. He had been born too early to share the quasi-immortality of the younger generations; his body could not snap back to vitality the way a twenty-second-century man's body could, for he had not had the benefit of a century of Vorster research when he was born. There was one exception to Kirby's rule, however: a summons from Vorst took precedence over everything, even a session of needed therapy.

The therapist knew it. Deftly he brought the session to a premature close and fortified Kirby for his return to the tensions of the world. In less than half an hour the Coordinator was on his way to the white dome-roofed building where Vorst made his headquarters.

Vorst looked shaky. Kirby had never seen the Founder look so drained of strength. The vault of Vorst's forehead was like the roof of a skull, and the dark eyes blazed with a peculiarly discomfiting intensity. A low pumping sound was evident in the room: Vorst's machinery, feeding strength to the ancient body. Kirby took the seat toward which Vorst beckoned him. Strong fingers in the upholstery grasped him and began to knead the tension out of him.

Vorst said, "I'll be calling a council meeting in a little while to ratify the steps I've just taken. But before the entire group gathers, I want to discuss things with you, run them through once or twice."