A Canticle For Leibowitz l-1

by Walter M. Miller

  DEFENSE MINISTER: No ultimatum has been delivered. The threat was for Asian home consumption, as I see it; to cover their blunder in Itu Wan.

  LADY REPORTER: How is your abiding faith in Motherhood today, Lord Ragelle?

  DEFENSE MINISTER: I hope Motherhood has at least as much abiding faith in me as I have in Motherhood.

  LADY REPORTER: You deserve at least that much, I’m sure.

  The news conference, radiated from the relay satellite twenty-two thousand miles from Earth, bathed most of the Western Hemisphere with the flickering VHF signal which carried such intelligence to the panelescent wall screens of the multitudes. One among the multitudes, Abbot Dom Zerchi switched off the set.

  He paced for a while, waiting for Joshua, trying not to think. But “not thinking” proved impossible.

  Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America — burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again.

  Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?

  This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion, he thought.

  The feeling of desperation passed abruptly when Brother Pat brought him the second telegram. The abbot ripped it open, read it at a glance and chuckled. “Brother Joshua here yet, Brother?”

  “Waiting outside, Reverend Father.”

  “Send him in.”

  “Ho, Brother, shut the door and turn on the silencer. Then read this.”

  Joshua glanced at the first telegram. “An answer from New Rome?”

  “It came this morning. But turn on that silencer first. We’ve got things to discuss.”

  Joshua closed the door and flipped a wall switch. Concealed loudspeakers squealed a brief protest. When the squealing stopped, the room’s acoustic properties seemed suddenly changed.

  Dom Zerchi waved him toward a chair, and he read the, first telegram in silence.

  “. . . no action whatever to be taken by you in connection with Quo peregrinatur grex,” he read aloud.

  “You’ll have to shout with that thing on,” said the abbot, indicating the silencer. “What?”

  “I was just reading. So the plan is canceled?”

  “Don’t look so relieved. That came this morning. This came this afternoon.” The abbot tossed him the second telegram:

  IGNORE EARLIER MESSAGE OF THIS DATE. “QUO PEREGRINATUR” TO BE REACTIVATED IMMEDIATELY BY BEQUEST OF HOLY FATHER. PREPARE CADRE TO LEAVE WITHIN THREE DAYS. WAIT FOR CONFIRMING WIRE BEFORE DEPARTURE. REPORT ANY VACANCIES IN CADRE ORGANIZATION. BEGIN CONDITIONAL IMPLEMENTATION OF PLAN. ERIC CARDINAL HOFFSTRAFF, VICAR APOST. EXTRATERR. PROVINCIAE.

  The monk’s face lost color. He replaced the telegram on the desk and sat back in his chair, lips tight together.

  “You know what Quo peregrinatur is?”

  “I know what it is, Domne, but not in detail.”

  “Well, it started as a plan to send a few priests along with a colony group heading for Alpha Centauri. But that didn’t work out, because it takes bishops to ordain priests, and after the first generation of colonists, more priests would have to be sent, and so on. The question boiled down to an argument about whether the colonies would last, and if so, should provision be made to insure the apostolic succession on colony planets without recourse to Earth? You know what that would mean?”

  “Sending at least three bishops, I imagine.”

  “Yes, and that seemed a little silly. The colony groups have all been rather small. But during the last world crisis, Quo peregrinatur became an emergency plan for perpetuating the Church on the colony planets if the worst came to pass on Earth. We have a ship.”

  “A starship?”

  “No less. And we have a crew capable of managing it.”

  “Where?”

  “We have the crew right here.”

  “Here at the abbey? But who — ?” Joshua stopped. His face grew even grayer than before. “But, Domne, my experience in space has been entirely in orbital vehicles, not in starships! Before Nancy died and I went to the Cisterc—”

  “I know all about that. There are others with starship experience. You know who they are. There are even jokes about the number of ex-spacers that seem to feel a vocation to our Order. It’s no accident, of course. And you remember when you were a postulant, how you were quizzed about your experience in space?”

  Joshua nodded.

  “You must also remember being asked about your willingness to go to space again, if the Order asked it of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you were not wholly unaware that you were conditionally assigned to Quo peregrinatur, if it ever came to pass?”

  “I — I guess I was afraid it was so, m’Lord.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Suspected, rather. Afraid too, a little, because I’ve always hoped to spend the rest of my life in the Order.”

  “As a priest?”

  “That — well, I haven’t yet decided.”

  “Quo peregrinatur will not involve releasing you from your vows or mean abandoning the Order.”

  “The Order goes too?”

  Zerchi smiled. “And the Memorabilia with it.”

  “The whole kit-and — Oh, you mean on microfilm. Where to?”

  “`The Centaurus Colony.”

  “How long would we be gone, Domne?”

  “If you go, you’ll never come back.”

  The monk breathed heavily and stared at the second telegram without seeming to see it He scratched his beard and appeared bemused.

  “Three questions,” said the abbot. “Don’t answer now, but start thinking about them, and think hard. First are you willing to go? Second, do you have a vocation to the priesthood? Third, are you willing to lead the group? And by willing, I don’t mean ‘willing under obedience’; I mean enthusiastic, or willing to get that way. Think it over; you have three days to think — maybe less.”

  Modern change had made but few incursions upon the buildings and the grounds of the ancient monastery. To protect the old buildings against the encroachment of a more impatient architecture, new additions had been made outside the walls and even across the highway — sometimes at the expense of convenience. The old refectory had been condemned because of a buckling roof, and it was necessary to cross the highway in order to reach the new refectory. The inconvenience was somewhat mitigated by the culvert walkunder through which the brothers marched daily to meals.

  Centuries old, but recently widened, the highway was the same road used by pagan armies, pilgrims, peasants, donkey carts, nomads, wild horsemen out of the East, artillery, tanks, and ten-ton trucks. Its traffic had gushed or trickled or dripped, according to the age and season. Once before, long ago, there had been six lanes and robot traffic. Then the traffic had stopped, the paving had cracked, and sparse grass grew in the cracks after an occasional rain. Dust had covered it. Desert dwellers had dug up its broken concrete for the building of hovels and barricades. Erosion made it a desert trail, crossing wilderness. But now there were six lanes and robot traffic, as before.

  “Traffic’s light tonight,” the abbot observed as they left the old main gate. “Let’s hike across. That tunnel can be suffocating after a dust storm. Or don’t you feel like dodging buses?”

  “Let’s go,” Brother Joshua agreed.

  Low-slung trucks with feeble headlights (useful only for warning purposes) sped mindlessly past them with whining tires and moaning turbines. With dish antennae they watched the road, and with magnetic feelers they felt at the guiding strips of steel in the roadbed and were given guidance thereby, as they rushed along the pink, fluorescent river of oiled concrete. Economic corpuscles in an artery of Man, the behemoths charged heedlessly past the two monks who dodge
d them from lane to lane. To be felled by one of them was to be run over by truck after truck until a safety cruiser found the flattened imprint of a man on the pavement and stopped to clean it up. The autopilots’ sensing mechanisms were better at detecting masses of metal than masses of flesh and bone.

  “This was a mistake,” Joshua said as they reached the center island and paused for breath. “Look who’s standing over there.”

  The abbot peered for a moment, then clapped his forehead. “Mrs. Grales! I clean forgot: it’s her night to prowl me down. She’s sold her tomatoes to the sisters’ refectory, and now she’s after me again.”

  “After you? She was there last night, and the night before, too. I thought she was waiting for a ride. What does she want from you?”

  “Oh, nothing really. She’s finished gypping the sisters on the price of tomatoes, and now she’ll donate the surplus profit to me for the poor box. It’s a little ritual. I don’t mind the ritual. It’s what comes afterwards that’s bad. You’ll see.”

  “Shall we go back?”

  “And hurt her feelings? Nonsense. She’s seen us by now. Come on.”

  They plunged into the thin stream of trucks again.

  The two-headed woman and her six-legged dog waited with an empty vegetable basket by the new gate; the woman crooned softly to the dog. Four of the dog’s legs were healthy legs, but an extra pair dangled uselessly at its sides. As for the woman, one head was as useless as the extra legs of the dog. It was a small head, a cherubic head, but it never opened its eyes. It gave no evidence of sharing in her breathing or her understanding. It lolled uselessly on one shoulder, blind, deaf, mute, and only vegetatively alive. Perhaps it lacked a brain, for it showed no sign of independent consciousness or personality. Her other face had aged, grown wrinkled, but the superfluous head retained the features of infancy, although it had been toughened by the gritty wind and darkened by the desert sun.

  The old woman curtsied at their approach, and her dog drew back with a snarl. “Evenin’, Father Zerchi,” she drawled, “a most pleasant evenin’ to yer — and to yer, Brother.”

  “Why, hello, Mrs. Grales—”

  The dog barked, bristled, and began a frenzied dance, feinting toward the abbot’s ankles with fangs bared for slashing. Mrs. Grales promptly struck her pet with the vegetable basket. The dog’s teeth slashed the basket; the dog turned on its mistress. Mrs. Grales kept it away with the basket; and after receiving a few resounding whacks, the dog retired to sit growling in the gateway.

  “What a fine mood Priscilla’s in” Zerchi observed pleasantly. “Is she going to have pups?”

  “Beg shriv’ness, yet honors,” said Mrs. Grales, “but’s not the pup’s motherful condition as makes her so, devil fret her! but ‘tis ‘at man of mine. He’s witched the piteous pup, he has — for love of witchin — and it makes her ‘feared of all. I beg yet honors’ shriv’ness for her naughties.”

  “It’s all right. Well, good night, Mrs. Grales.”

  But escape proved not that easy. She caught at the abbot’s sleeve and smiled her toothlessly irresistible smile.

  “A minute, Father, only a minute for ‘n old tumater woman, if ye have it to spare.”

  “Why, of course! I’d be glad—”

  Joshua gave the abbot a sidelong grin and went over to negotiate with the dog concerning right of way. Priscilla eyed him with plain contempt.

  “Here, Father, here,” Mrs. Grales was saying. “Take a little something for yer box. Here—” Coins rattled while Zerchi protested. “No, here, take of it, take of it,” she insisted. “Oh, I know as how ye always say, by fret! but I be not so poor’s ye might think on me. And ye do good work. If ye don’t take of it, that no-good man of mine’ll have it from me, and do him the Devil’s work. Here — I sold my tumaters, and I got my price, near, and I bought my feed for the week and even a play-pretty for Rachel. I want ye to have of it. Here.”

  “It’s very kind…”

  “Grryumpf!” came an authoritative bark from the gateway. “Grryumpf! Rowf! rowf! RrrrrrrOWWFF!” — followed by a rapid sequence of yaps, yeeps, and Priscilla’s howling in full retreat.

  Joshua came wandering back with his hands in his sleeves.

  “Are you wounded, man?”

  “Grryumpf!” said the monk.

  “What on earth did you do to her?”

  “Grryumpf!” Brother Joshua repeated. “Rowf! Rowf! RrrrrrOWWFF!” — then explained: “Priscilla believes in werewolves. The yelping was hers. We can get past the gate now.”

  The dog had vanished; but again Mrs. Grales caught at the abbot’s sleeve. “Only a minute more of yer, Father, and I’ll keep ye no longer. It’s little Rachel I wanted to see yer about. There’s the baptism and the christenin’ to be thought of, and I wished to ask yer if ye’d do the honor of—”

  “Mrs. Grales,” he put in gently, “go see your own parish priest. He should handle these matters, not I. I have no parish — only the abbey. Talk to Father Selo at Saint Michael’s. Our church doesn’t even have a font. Women aren’t permitted, except in the tribune—”

  “The sister’s chapel has a font, and women can—”

  “It’s for Father Selo, not for me. It has to be recorded in your own parish. Only as an emergency could I—”

  “Ay, ay, that I know, but I saw Father Selo. I brought Rachel to his church and the fool of a man would not touch her.”

  “He refused to baptize Rachel?”

  “That he did, the fool of a man.”

  “It’s a priest you’re talking of, Mrs. Grales, and no fool, for I know him well. He must have his reasons for refusing. If you don’t agree with his reasons, then see someone else-but not a monastic priest. Talk to the pastor at Saint Maisie’s perhaps.”

  “Ay, and that too have I done…” She launched into what promised to be a prolonged account of her skirmishings on behalf of the unbaptized Rachel. The monks listened patiently at first, but while Joshua was watching her, he seized the abbot’s arm above the elbow; his lingers gradually dug into Zerchi’s arm until the abbot winched in pain and tore the fingers away with his free hand.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered, but then noticed the monk’s expression. Joshua’s eyes were fixed on the old woman as if she were a cockatrice. Zerchi followed his gaze, but saw nothing stranger than usual; her extra head was half concealed by a sort of veil, but Brother Joshua had certainly seen that often enough.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Grales,” Zerchi interrupted as soon as she fell short of breath. “I really must go now. I’ll tell you what: I’ll call Father Selo for you, but that’s all I can do. We’ll see you again, I’m sure.”

  “Thank yer kindly, and beg yer shriv’ness for keeping yer.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Grales.”

  They entered the gate and walked toward the refectory. Joshua thumped the heel of his hand against his temple several times as if to jar something back into place.

  “Why were you staring at her like that?” the abbot demanded. “I thought it rude”

  “Didn’t you notice?”

  “Notice what?”

  “Then you didn’t notice. Well… let it pass. But who is Rachel? Why won’t they baptize the child? Is she the woman’s daughter?”

  The abbot smiled without humor. “That’s what Mrs. Grales contends. But there’s some question as to whether Rachel is her daughter, her sister — or merely an excrescence growing out of her shoulder.”

  “Rachel! — her other head?”

  “Don’t shout so. She’ll hear you yet.”

  “And she wants it baptized?”

  “Rather urgently, wouldn’t you say? It seems to be an obsession.”

  Joshua waved his arms. “How do they settle such things?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I’m grateful to Heaven that it’s not up to me to figure it out. If it werea simple case of siamese twins, it would be easy. But it isn’t. The old-timers say Rachel wasn’t there when Mrs. Grale
s was born.”

  “A farmers’ fable!”

  “Perhaps. But some are willing to tell it under oath. How many souls has an old lady with an extra head — a head that ‘just grew’? Things like that cause ulcers in high places, my son. Now, what was it you noticed? Why were you staring at her and trying to pinch my arm off like that?”

  The monk was slow to answer. “It smiled at me,” he said at last.

  “What smiled?”

  “Her extra, uh — Rachel. She smiled. I thought she was going to wake up.”

  The abbot stopped him in the refectory’s entranceway and peered at him curiously.

  “She smiled,” the monk repeated very earnestly.

  “You imagined it.”

  “Yes, m’Lord.”

  “Then look like you imagined it.”

  Brother Joshua tried. “I can’t,” he admitted.

  The abbot dropped the old woman’s coins in the poor box. “Let’s go on inside,” he said.

  The new refectory was functional, chromium befixtured, acoustically tailored, and germicidally illuminated. Gone were the smoke-blackened stones, the tallow lamps, the wooden bowls and cellar-ripened cheeses. Except for the cruciform seating arrangement and a rank of images along one wall, the place resembled an industrial lunchroom. Its atmosphere had changed, as had the atmosphere of the entire abbey. After ages of striving to preserve remnants of culture from a civilization long dead, the monks had watched the rise of a new and mightier civilization. The old tasks had been completed; new ones were found. The past was venerated and exhibited in glass cases, but it was no longer the present. The Order conformed to the times, to an age of uranium and steel and flaring rocketry, amid the growl of heavy industry and the high thin whine of star drive converters. The Order conformed — at least in superficial ways.

  “Accedite ad eum,” the Reader intoned.

  The robed legions stood restlessly at their places during the reading. No food had yet appeared. The tables were bare of dishes. Supper had been deferred. The organism, the community whose cells were men, whose life had flowed through seventy generations, seemed tense tonight, seemed to sense a note amiss tonight, seemed aware, through the connaturality of its membership, of what had been told to only a few. The organism lived as a body, worshiped and worked as a body, and at times seemed dimly conscious as a mind that infused its members and whispered to itself and to Another in the lingua prima, baby tongue of the species. Perhaps the tension was increased as much by faint snort-growl of practice rocketry from the distant anti-missile missile range as by the unexpected postponement of the meal. The abbot rapped for silence, then gestured his prior, Father Lehy toward the lectern. The prior looked pained for a moment before speaking.