Cave of Stars (Macrolife Book 2)

by George Zebrowski

  The flesh on Bely’s face finally moved. The eyes came out of their abyss and gazed at Paul as he stood before the dais. He felt some guilt about his considered betrayal, but only a weak sense of wrong; the man stood in the way of his people, and had done so for much of his life.

  “They will refuse me,” Bely said with a rasping voice.

  Paul now felt a twinge of pity for the old man and said, “Perhaps they will offer medical help, rather than…the blasphemy of rejuvenation,” and wondered why he had thrown him this theological bone.

  Bely’s face filled with color. The eyes focused sharply. “So you oppose my survival?” he asked, his mouth opening into a moist red hole, and Paul’s sympathy faded.

  “No, Your Holiness, but faith requires—“

  “I am infallible on all matters of doctrine. However long I live, the Lord’s judgment will still come with the world’s end, and no one will escape.”

  Therefore, Paul thought, he reasons that it will not be wrong for him to live as long as he pleases. The temptation is too great to resist. The old man had given it some clever thought.

  Bely’s head slumped onto his chest. Blood drained from the pontiff’s face. Paul went up the three steps and felt the old man’s pulse. It still beat strongly. He had only fainted.

  Paul stood over him, debating whether he should call a physician, knowing that this might be a good moment to chance letting the old man die. All he had to do was leave.

  He checked the pulse again. It was still strong, making it likely that Bely would only sleep.

  Leave now, he told himself.

  But he could not do it.

  After a moment, he decided to call Palo, the pontiff’s valet, and leave it to him to get Josephus to bed and call a doctor.

  27

  Bely seemed very much recovered when Paul came into the papal study the next morning, as though he had slept deeply after his fainting spell.

  “This!” the old man shouted, looking up from his desk. “Petitions from three hundred people to emigrate to the new world. De Claves seemed to enjoy delivering them to me personally.”

  Paul sat down in the chair facing the large, carved wooden desk. Another of Kahl the Apostate’s creations, which Bely’s servants, the Sisters of Martha, kept so well polished. As usual, the struggle between the motionless angels and devils was unresolved.

  “And at least as many of theirs want to come here!” The old man shook his head and almost smiled. “I do not understand. Should we grant permissions to both groups?”

  Paul shifted in his chair, sympathizing with Bely’s confusion. One group wished to ascend to heaven, while the other wanted to go, if not to hell, then to a lesser life. It was one way of looking at the problem.

  “It would do no harm,” Paul said, “to let them go. After all, their faith is probably very weak.” That was true, as far as it went. Those who would be forced to stay would not be a credit to Bely’s regime.

  Bely gave him a sharp-eyed look, showing something of his youthful shrewdness, as if he completely understood the sky-dwellers.

  “Yes, I see—but why do they wish to come here?”

  Paul said, “Human dissatisfaction knows no limits.”

  Bely nodded and sat back. “Yes, yes, you’re probably right. And we would be well rid of the people who want to leave us.” The old man rubbed his hands together, as if warming them over an invisible fire. “I want you to convey a message to Blackfriar’s council. Tell them that their people can settle here with no conditions. They may do so on the other continent, or here amongst us, whether I am granted my request or not.”

  Paul nodded, not surprised. Bely was gambling, betting on a show of generosity.

  “I will convey your words, Your Holiness.”

  The old man looked at him for a moment, his eyes unusually bright. It was a spell of alertness that sometimes came to the aged, when they seemed to regain an early vigor; he would probably pay for it with exhaustion at day’s end. Paul wondered whether he himself displayed such tendencies, but was unable to reach a conclusion. How could he, with no one to tell him? And he would be unable to see the truth once he was that far gone.

  “Find Josepha for me,” Bely said. “I need to talk to her.”

  Paul nodded, wondering what the old man had in mind. “Go—go find her!”

  Paul stood up and left the study, still wondering how much to credit the old man’s spasm of youthful energy. But his feeling of suspicion was strengthened as he noted the number of papal guards in the hallways, along with a few of the city police. He counted ten armed men on the way to the terrace, but could not imagine what their presence could accomplish.

  28

  Voss paused in his walk with Blackfriar through the preserve of tall birch trees. The sunplate was at its brightest, filling the hollow with yellow-orange light. Small clouds drifted in the great central space. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves on the trees. Voss thought again of the storm that had swept through the Celestine Archipelago, and was happy to be here, talking to his mentor.

  “From what you’ve told me,” Blackfriar said, stopping next to him, “this pope, this leader, has had his time, his triumphs, and his mistakes. But if he wanted to leave his world and start a new life with us, that would be another matter. More life would give him a chance to change.”

  Voss said, “No, he only wants more of what he has, to stay in power. It’s clear there is opposition to him, and his own prime minister has his doubts about him and thinks the society would be better off without him. These people have been held back—most of them have never had a chance to pursue the knowledge that would reveal to them their true human heritage, or a more equitable and just society. We could help this Josephus Bely, Peter III, and hope he might change if the fear of imminent death was removed from his mind. But it’s more likely that he would only perpetuate a rigid and repressive regime that most benefits those who enter the church’s service. The whole system is top-heavy and ready for change, but it might hang on for decades by imprisoning opposition leaders and their followers.”

  “Then we won’t help him. Medical care, yes, but no rejuvenation. Do you think he’s sincere about not setting conditions for our people to settle?”

  “He may withdraw the offer,” Voss said, “as soon as we deny him longlife. What then?”

  They resumed their walk.

  “We can’t stop our people from leaving,” Blackfriar said. “No one will find them on the other continent. No one will search. It will be years before the two groups come into any kind of contact, assuming our people don’t call us back before the new mobile is completed and we prepare to leave.”

  “And we will have an additional group from the planet joining the mobile, according to Paul Anselle.”

  “But will they be permitted to leave?” asked Blackfriar.

  “Paul will see to it.”

  “And the prison refugees?”

  “They have nowhere to go on their world,” Voss said. “Most of them will want to stay, if not with us, then to join the new mobile. Paul has assured me that he will not tell the pope what has become of them.”

  “The new mobile will have a good, hybrid start, with the Cetians.”

  “I wonder,” Voss said as they walked on, “how many will wish to stay. They know that to go back would mean imprisonment, maybe even execution.”

  Blackfriar smiled. “Yes, it reminds me of the old Christian missions. Derelict human beings would come to them for food, even if they had to hear a sermon first. The Cetian prisoners know that we saved their lives. Soon they will know that if they stay with us we can lengthen their lives. Still, I think some might go back with our colonists, preferring a natural environment on their own world.”

  Voss nodded and said, “What troubles me is that it’s still our humankind down there, living in an archaic system that’s about to fall apart. Our example may shorten a dark age, by showing them they don’t have to have a theocracy to raise law-abiding citizens.”
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  Blackfriar glanced at him as they walked. “I think many of them already know that—Paul Anselle, for one. But I sometimes ask myself what right we have to confront a culture that has no power to resist us. Perhaps it would be best to leave them to progress by themselves, with no other example before them except their own ideals.”

  Voss said, “At least they’re not facing any kind of fatal crisis. There seems to be no warfare. We can leave them alone to survive their own changes.”

  “There are few legal rights involved here,” Blackfriar said, “and no laws have been invoked against us. We do what our rational traditions indicate is right. However, if local laws were invoked against us, we might have to follow the precedent of respecting them. If there was some kind of consensus against our presence, then we would have to leave.”

  “So what are we facing?” Voss asked.

  “An incoherent culture,” Blackfriar said, “a planet inhabited by invaders. It’s likely that their ancestors killed what native intelligence was developing. Or else they arrived too early in the planet’s history and diverted its natural development, and unknowingly prevented intelligent life from arising. The current generation is most likely unaware that its presence is something of a continuing injustice.”

  “Perhaps we should do as little as possible here,” Voss said, thinking of Paul.

  “We’re not dealing with a fixed identity,” Blackfriar said. “Whatever we do will only quicken the inevitable. There are some fifty million people here, and they will progress. As the new mobile is being built, shuttles will go down and pick up as many people as will care to join us, and as many of us who wish to leave. Nothing can stop that. Their transport system consists of railroads, a few dirigible aircraft for use by regional governors and police forces, and limited motorized vehicles. There’s nothing they can do to prevent our people, or their own, from coming and going, or even from taking an interest while we’re here.”

  “Bely might be angered,” Voss said.

  “If he’s sufficiently composed to think clearly, he won’t interfere,” Blackfriar said. “There’s probably not much he can do for his people now except pass peacefully from a changing scene.”

  “I wonder if the College of Cardinals will elect a more enlightened man when Josephus Bely dies.”

  “We may be gone by then,” Blackfriar said, “and they can get on with their problems.”

  “I still wish we could help them openly and decisively,” Voss said.

  “We did not come here for that, and they will not perish without us, from what we’ve seen.”

  “You can’t deny our sympathy for a kindred human culture.”

  “I know, I know,” Blackfriar said. “But it would be an endless job to help them significantly. It would mean annexing a culture and denying it its own development. The best we can do is leave them as much as they might profit from later, slowly. It’s the only way, short of ignoring them or taking them over.”

  “But we do know better about almost everything,” Voss said.

  “That would not be enough, because we don’t know enough about them. A century from now, if we come back this way, we’ll know what good this glancing contact will have done, and then our help might be more effective.”

  Voss felt a moment of dismay, recalling how much of human history had raged beyond the control of reason. “Do we know what we’re doing here?” he asked.

  “We’ve never done this,” Blackfriar said. “Rather than say we don’t know what we’re doing, I would say that we’ve entered into a constructive situation. We’ve recontacted a bit of our heritage from Earth. You’ve helped some people who were in danger of their lives, found a place for our own rebels to settle, and opened the door for any Cetians who may wish to join us. It’s the kind of fair exchange one might expect when two cultures meet. It happens when mobiles meet, and will continue to happen.”

  Blackfriar was right about the fair exchange, but Voss felt uneasiness clouding his reason, preventing him from seeing ahead. Even the Link agreed that the entire situation was too vague to make judgments about, and the only certainty was that the habitat would stay a while, build another, lose and acquire some population, and then leave, either alone or with the new mobile.

  As they neared an elevator kiosk, Voss thought of the new link intelligence that would be born on the new mobile, and how it would receive its education. He also thought of Josepha, and felt a moment of pleasure that she would be staying.

  29

  Ondro awoke and saw his brother watching him.

  “Welcome back,” Jason said, shifting in a chair by the bed. The harried look of bodily starvation was gone from his face as he smiled, but he was still lean.

  “Jason,” Ondro said, “I dreamt you were not rescued with the others.” He tried to sit up and failed.

  “We went into the flyer together, dear brother.”

  “The water…was washing everything away. I wake up in the dream, drowned. It’s true in the dream. I feel dead.”

  “You’ll recover. Up to talking?”

  Ondro nodded, remembering.

  “What do you think of this place? I haven’t seen much of it yet.”

  Ondro said, “They saved our lives, and they will give us back our health.” He took a deep breath and lay back, trying to order his thoughts. “When we’re well, will they send us back?”

  Jason seemed confused by the question. “If we want to go back,” he replied. “To go back would be to die in a few decades.”

  “Will they let us stay?” Ondro remembered his short conversation with Josepha, but it seemed unreal.

  “Yes, they will,” Jason said. “Do you want to go back?” He spoke as if freed from a burden.

  “So much remains to be done. There may be a better chance now of changing things.” Again he felt that he might lose himself as he saw the calm expression on his brother’s face.

  “The cardinals will elect another one like Bely, maybe worse,” Jason said.

  “Maybe these people here will help us topple the papacy once and for all. Do you think they might do that? Our cause is just.”

  “And install us in power?” Jason asked.

  “Why not? We’ve thought long and hard about what must be done, and nearly died for it.”

  “Our people might not like us any better,” Jason said, “and we might not do better.”

  Ondro sat up. “No—ours would be a democratic regime, and we’d be voted out in time if they were dissatisfied, and others would have a chance. Jason, if these people help us, we could remake our world.”

  “I think Josepha wants to stay here,” Jason said.

  “But can we just forget everything? Our father’s land and house?”

  Jason stood up, looking agitated. “Just think—we’ve survived Bely’s torments! A century from now, when he’s dust, we may still be alive, still looking forward to life. What in all hell do you want to drag yourself back to?”

  Ondro took a deep breath and asked, “Have you seen that much of this place to be so sure?”

  “I know that to go back is sure and certain suicide. We would be letting our lives…simply run out.”

  “Do you know that? Are you so sure you know what this place is?”

  “I’ve seen enough—and Josepha has seen more. She’ll tell you.” He stepped closer to the bed. “When you feel better, we’ll all go looking. You’ll see. This is a world, and it’s big—bigger than a dozen of ours.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ondro said, lying back again, exhausted. How could he forget everything and start over?

  “You’ll see, dear brother, you’ll see.”

  30

  My faults will be forgiven, because I have confessed them, Josephus Bely told himself as he looked out over the sleeping city and the dreaming ocean beyond. Imperfection is the very nature of man. I will be forgiven.

  His wrongs had been practical necessities, crucial to the survival of the papacy. He had lied only to those who did not
have a right to know the truth, as a soldier would lie to hide the truth when captured by his enemies. Suddenly he missed the Jesuit order, and regretted that so few of them had survived the journey from Earth. There would have been better defenses made of faith if the likes of a Francisco Suarez had come with them to this new world. The Jesuit philosopher had known the complexities of lying and truth telling. A hearer of the truth must deserve to hear it, making it right and proper to lie before enemies.

  My sins are mine, not my people’s, Bely insisted to himself, then looked up into the night sky. The world up there among the stars was an evil orphan, a bit of Old Earth that had wandered in from the night. It had come to steal not only resources but souls—and it would fail, if he had the courage to oppose it. Proof of its evil lay in the manner by which it had tempted him to desire immortality of the flesh, preying upon his hope to live long enough to put his world in order.

  Doubts crept into him like vermin, shaming his faith. You are a backward people, clinging to a faith that only soothes the pain of death, the devil said within his secret places, tempting him to leave his world of insoluble problems and live among the stars for endless centuries, free of the weight of an office that had outlived its usefulness and must now yield to a better way. He would cease to be Josephus Bely, Peter III, and become someone else, with a new body and a clear mind. Surely this promised more than this temporal power that waited on the word of a God who never showed himself?

  But with a wrenching act of will he pulled free from the sweet persuasion of the Tempter and turned away from the splendor in starry windows. The sword of the invisible God was in his hands, as it had been in the hands of every pope on Tau Ceti IV in the three centuries since the death of Earth. There had never been a clear enemy to use it on, but now it would protect him.