That St. Michael’s had produced legions for Christ, eager young soldiers anxious to dare the world. What had happened? What in God’s name had gone wrong? Through his office windows, Chesley could see the old gym, its stone and glass walls a tribute to the generosity of his father’s generation. Now it stood empty. The last of the residence halls had been closed two years. To save on utilities, the seminarians now lived in the upper levels of the faculty house.
He recalled old teachers, friends long gone, occasional young women. He had become acquainted with the women incidentally through his pastoral duties, had enjoyed their company. One in particular he would have given his life to possess. But he had never violated his vows. Still, their portraits were sharp. And the old stirrings returned, laced now with a sense of loss.
Here, on these grounds where he had lived his young manhood, ghosts seemed particularly active. Perhaps he should have stayed away.
He was working halfheartedly on a table of initiatives which he’d promised to make available to the staff Monday morning when he realized there was someone else in the building. He leaned back from his word processor and listened.
Warm air hissed out of ducts at floor level.
Someone was speaking. The voice was muffled. Indistinct.
It seemed to be coming from across the hall. In the rectors conference room. He got up from his desk.
The sound stopped.
Chesley opened his door and peered out into the corridor. He did not believe anyone could have come into the building without his knowledge.
He strode across the passageway. The conference room was routinely left unlocked. He put his ear to the door, twisted the knob, and pushed it open. The room was empty. He went inside, glanced under the table, looked behind the door, and inspected the storage closet. Nothing.
Dust motes drifted through the gray light.
“Monsignor.”
“Who’s there?” Chesley’s heart did a quick kick. “Gus? Is that you?”
“Yes. I hope I didn’t startle you.”
“No.” Grumpily: “Of course not.” He’d thought that Gus had to be summoned.
“Good. I wanted to talk with you.”
The controls of the computer/communications link were built into the conference table. Chesley lowered himself into the chair directly in front of them. The red power lamp in the terminal console was on. “Holtz,” he said, “or anyone else: I don’t take kindly to practical jokes.”
“Only I am here, Monsignor.”
“That’s not possible.”
An electronic chuckle: “You may not think highly of Augustine, but surely you would not accuse him of lying.”
Heat flooded Chesley’s cheeks. “You’re not capable of initiating contact—.”
“Certainly I am. Why not? When I sense that someone needs me, I am quite able to act.”
Chesley was having trouble sorting it out. “Why? Why would you want to talk to me?”
“You seem so fearful. I thought I might be of assistance.”
“Fearful? You’re not serious.”
“Why do you feel threatened by me?”
“I do not feel threatened by you.” Wildly, he wondered if this was being taped. Something to make him look ridiculous later. “I just don’t think we have any use here for an electronic saint. Augustine for the millions.”
“I see.”
“Our students will never get to know the real Augustine if we substitute a computer game.” Chesley’s right index finger touched the concave plastic surface of the power key.
“And do you know the real Augustine?”
“I know enough. Certainly enough to be aware that delivering pieces and bits from his work is mischievous. And that suggesting to students that they have a familiarity with the philosophy of a great saint, when in fact they are utterly ignorant on the subject, is dangerous.” He fell back in his chair and took a long, deep breath. “I have work to do,” he said. “I don’t think this conversation has any real point.”
He pressed the key, and the red lamp went out. But it was several minutes before he got up and left the room.
The next day Holtz told him quietly, “I talked it over with Father Brandon.” Brandon was head of the theology department. “I have to tell you he thinks your views are extreme.” The Comptroller did not smile. “He sees no problem.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“However, he suggested a compromise. Would you be willing to trade Augustine for Aquinas?”
“What do you mean?”
“We got the Augustine module from ATL Industries. They’re presently assembling an Aquinas module, which Brandon would rather have anyway—.”
“I think that misses the point, Adrian. St. Michael’s should have no use for a saint-in-the-box. If you want to continue with this, I can’t prevent it. But I won’t be party to it—.”
Holtz nodded. “Okay. We’ll get rid of it. If you feel it’s that important.”
“I do.”
“With one proviso: I can’t ask the theology department to rewrite their curriculum overnight. We’ll stop using Gus in January, at the end of the present semester.”
Two nights after his conversation with Holtz, Chesley heard again the after-hours sound of a voice from the conference room. It was almost eleven on a weeknight, and he was just preparing to quit for the evening.
The rector’s conference room was dark, save for the bright ruby light of the power indicator. “Gus?”
“Good evening, Monsignor Chesley.”
“I take it you have something else to say to me.”
“Yes. I want you to know that I am aware of your efforts to have me disconnected. I do not approve.”
“I don’t imagine you would. Anything else?”
“Yes. I admire your courage in taking a stand, even though it is wrongheaded.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you know you have offended Father Brandon?”
“I rarely see him.”
“He wonders why you did not go directly to him with the issue.”
“Would he have concurred?”
“No.”
“Then what would be the point?”
Gus was slow to respond. “Do you really believe that I am corrupting the students?”
“Yes.” Chesley left the lights off. It was less disconcerting when he could not see he was talking to an empty room. “Yes, I do.”
“Truth does not corrupt.” The voice was very soft.
“Truth is not an issue. We’re talking about perspectives. It’s one thing for theologians to sit in ivory towers and compose abstract theories about good and evil. But these kids have to go out into the streets. Life is tough now.”
“You find life difficult, then?”
“Yes, I do.” The superior tone of the thing was infuriating. “The Church has serious problems to deal with today. People are disaffected. Vocations are down. Seminaries are closing everywhere.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Well, maybe you need to know the facts. Life isn’t as easy for us as it was for you—.”
Deep in the building, down among the heat exchangers and storage vaults, something stirred. Cold and hard, the voice replied: “Where were you, Chesley, when the Vandals were at the walls? When the skies were red with the flames of the world? I never set out to be a theologian. If you want the truth, I made up my theology as I went along. I was a pastor, not a schoolbound theoretician along the lines of Aquinas. I had to serve real human beings, desperately poor, living in an iron age. You want salvation without pain. Suburban religion. I had no patience for such notions then. And I have little now.”
The red lamp blinked off.
“Adrian, that thing seems to have a mind of its own.”
Holtz nodded. “They are clever. On the other hand, it should be: it has access to university libraries and data banks across North America.”
“I got the impression yesterday that it was angry with me.”
<
br /> The Comptroller smiled. “Now you’re beginning to understand the capabilities of the system. Perhaps you would like to change your mind about getting rid of it.”
“No. It is far too convincing. It seems to me more dangerous than I had realized. If you must, get Aquinas.”
Although Gus was physically located on the ground floor of the library, conference rooms and offices throughout the seminary had terminal access to him. Chesley learned that he was capable of conducting conversations simultaneously at all sites. He also discovered that Gus didn’t much care whether anyone approved of him. It was refreshing.
“How many people do you think are saved?” Chesley asked him during a Friday afternoon late in October. The day was dismal, cold, flat, gray.
“You know as well as I do that the question is unanswerable.”
“Isn’t there any way we can get at it?”
“I doubt it. Although, if we accept the Gospel position—as I assume we must—that faith is the key, I am not encouraged.”
“Why do you say that? Millions of people go to church every Sunday in this country alone.”
“A poor indicator, Monsignor. I get the distinct impression a lot of them suspect the pope may be on to something and they’re taking no chances. We get visitors here occasionally, Catholic bankers, real estate dealers, and so on. Considering the tax advantages of a donation. If the others are like them, we had best hope no one tries their faith with lions.”
“You’re a terrible pessimist,” said Chesley.
“Not really. I have great confidence in God. He has made it very difficult not to sin. Therefore, I suggest to you that salvation may be on a curve.”
Chesley sighed. “Do you know what you are?”
“Yes, Monsignor.”
“Tell me.”
“I am a simulation of Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo during the fifth century. Author of The City of God.” And, after a long pause: “Pastor to the people of God.”
“You don’t always sound like Augustine.”
“I am what he might have been, given access to the centuries.”
Chesley laughed. “Was he as arrogant as you?”
Gus considered it. “Arrogance is a sin,” he said. “But yes, he was occasionally guilty of that offense.”
Chesley had always been addicted to nocturnal walks. He enjoyed the night skies, the murmur of the trees, the sense of withdrawal from the circle of human activity. But as the evenings cooled, he broke off these strolls increasingly early, and peeled away toward the admin building, where he talked with Gus, often until after midnight.
Seated in the unlit conference room, he argued theology and ethics and politics with the system. Increasingly, he found it easy to forget that he was talking to software.
Gus occasionally reminisced about the saint’s childhood in ancient Carthage, speaking as if it were his own. He created vivid pictures for Chesley of the docks and markets, of life at the harbor. Of his son Adeodatus.
“You lived with the boy’s mother, what, ten years?”
“Fifteen.”
“Why did you leave her?”
For the first time, Chesley sensed uncertainty in the system. “I found God.”
“And—?”
“She refused to abandon her paganism.”
“So you abandoned her?”
“Yes. God help me, I did.” Somewhere in the building a radio was playing. “There was no way we could have continued to live together.”
Chesley, sitting in darkness, nodded. “What was her name?”
Again, the long pause. “I do not remember.”
Of course. Augustine had omitted her name from his Confessions, and so it was lost to history.
“I read about the destruction of Hippo.”
“It was far worse than simply the siege of a single city, Matt.” It was the first time the system had used Chesley’s given name. “The Vandals were annihilating what remained of Roman power in North Africa. And we knew, everyone knew, that the days of the Empire itself were numbered. What might lie beyond that terrible crash, none dared consider. In a way, it was a condition worse than the nuclear threat under which you have lived.”
“You were at the end of your life at the time.”
“Yes. I was an old man then. Sick and dying. That was the worst of it: I could not help. Everywhere, people wished to flee. The fathers wrote, one by one, and asked whether I would think ill of them if they ran away.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“I sent the same message to all: If we abandon our posts, who will stand?”
Occasionally, the conversations were interrupted by long silences. Sometimes Chesley simply sat in the darkened conference room, his feet propped up alongside the window.
Gus had no visual capability. “I can hear storms when they come,” he said. “But I would like to be able to feel the rain again. To see black clouds piled high, and the blue mist of an approaching squall.”
So Chesley tried to put into words the gleam of light on a polished tabletop, the sense of gray weight in the granite towers of the library rising above the trees. He described the yellow arc of the moon, the infinite brilliance of the night sky.
“Yes,” said Gus, his electronic voice somehow far away. “I remember.”
“Why did Augustine become a priest?” Chesley asked.
“I wanted,” Gus said, with the slightest stress on the first words, “to get as close as I could to my Creator.” Thoughtfully, he added, “I seem to have traveled far afield.”
“Sometimes I think,” Chesley said, “the Creator hides himself too well.”
“Use his Church,” said Gus. “That is why it is here.”
“It has changed.”
“Of course it has changed. The world has changed.”
“The Church is supposed to be a rock.”
“Think of it rather as a refuge in a world that will not stand still.”
On the Sunday following Thanksgiving, a young priest whom Chesley had befriended called from Boston to say he had given up. “With or without permission,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, “I am leaving the priesthood.”
“Why?” asked Chesley.
“None of it works.”
“What doesn’t work?”
“Prayer. Faith. Whatever. I’m tired of praying for lost causes. For men who can’t stop drinking and women who get beaten every Saturday night. And kids who do drugs. And people who have too many children.”
That night Chesley went to Gus. “He was right,” he said, sitting in the glow of a table lamp. “We all know it. Eventually, we all have to come to terms with the futility of prayer.”
“No,” Gus said. “Don’t make the mistake of praying for the wrong things, Matt. The priests of Christ were never intended to be wielders of cures. Pray for strength to endure. Pray for faith.”
“I’ve heard that a thousand times.”
“Then pray for a sense of humor. But hold on.”
“Why?”
“What else is there?”
Two nights later, after attending a seminar at Temple, Chesley angrily activated the system. “It was one of these interdenominational things,” he told Gus. “And I have no problem with that. But the Bishop was there, and we were all trying very hard not to offend anybody. Anyway, the guest of honor was a popular Unitarian author. At least she pretends to be a Unitarian. She had the nerve to tell us that Christianity has become outdated and should be discarded.”
“The Romans used to say that,” said Gus. “I hope no one took her seriously.”
“We take everyone seriously. The Bishop—our Bishop—responded by listing the social benefits to be got from Christianity. He said, and I quote: ‘Even if the faith were, God forbid, invalid, Christianity would still be useful. If it hadn’t happened by divine fiat, we should have had to invent it.’”
“I take it that you do not share this view?”
“Gus, there cannot be a ‘useful’ Christi
anity. Either the Resurrection occurred. Or it did not. Either we have a message of vital concern. Or we have nothing.”
“Good,” said Gus. “I agree entirely.”
Chesley listened to the traffic outside. “You know, Gus,” he said, “sometimes I think you and I are the only ones around here who know what it means to be Catholic.”
“Thank you.”
“But your ideas on sexual morality are off the wall.”
“You mean unreliable?”
“Yes. To say the least. They created a lot of trouble in the Church for centuries. Probably still do, for that matter.”
“Even if it is true that I was in error, it can hardly be laid at my door that others chose to embrace my precepts. Why would you follow so slavishly what another man has said? If I was occasionally obtuse, or foolish, so be it. Use the equipment God gave you: find your own way.”
“Harry, you have one of ATL’s Saint Augustine simulations over there, don’t you?”
“Yes, Matt. We’ve got one.”
“How’s it behaving?”
“Beg pardon?”
“I mean, is it doing anything unusual?”
“Well, it’s a little cranky. Other than that, no. It doesn’t give us any problems.”
“Matt, you spend too much time talking to me.” He was in his own office now, with his own terminal.
It was the first day of Christmas vacation. “You’re probably right.”
“Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Hang around this office all the time? Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Chesley shrugged.
“I can’t hear you.”
“I work here,” he said, irritated.
“No. Businessmen work in offices. And accountants. Not priests.”
And later; “You know, Matt, I can almost remember writing The City of God.”
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 47