To Open the Sky Read online

  five

  “DON’T GO,” MARTELL SAID.

  “Suspicious?” Christopher Mondschein asked. “It’s a chance to see their setup. I haven’t been in Santa Fe since I was a boy. Why shouldn’t I go?”

  “There’s no telling what might happen to you there. They’d love to get their hands on you. You’re the kingpin of the whole Venusian movement.”

  “And they’ll lase me to ashes with three planets watching, eh? Be realistic, Nicholas. When the Pope visits Mecca, they take good care of him. I’m in no danger in Santa Fe.”

  “What about the espers? They’ll scan you.”

  “I’ll have Neerol with me as a mindshield,” Mondschein said. “They won’t get a thing. I’ll stack him up against any esper they have. Besides, I have nothing to hide from Noel Vorst. You of all people ought to realize that. We took you in, even though you were loaded with Vorster spy-commands. It was in our interest to tell Vorst how far we had gone.”

  Martell took a different approach. “By going to Santa Fe you’re putting the blessing of our order on this alleged Lazarus.”

  “Now you sound like Brother Emory! Are you telling me it’s a phony?”

  “I’m telling you that we ought to treat it as one. It contradicts our own legend of Lazarus. It may be a Vorster plant calculated to throw us into confusion. What do we do when they hand us a walking, talking Lazarus and let us try to reshape our entire order around him?”

  “It’s a touchy matter, Nicholas. We’ve built our faith on the existence of a holy martyr. Now, if he’s suddenly unmartyred—”

  “Exactly. It’ll crush us.”

  “I doubt that,” Mondschein said. The old Harmonist touched his gills lightly, nervously. “You aren’t looking far enough ahead, Nicholas. The Vorsters have outmaneuvered us so far, I admit. They’ve gained possession of this Lazarus, and they’re about to give him back to us. Very embarrassing, but what can we do? However, the next moves are ours. If he dies, we simply revise our writings a bit. If he lives and tries to meddle, we reveal that he’s some sort of simulacrum cooked up by the Vorsters to do mischief, and destroy him. Score a point for us—our original story stands and we reveal the Vorsters as sinister schemers.”

  “And if he’s really Lazarus?” Martell asked.

  Mondschein glowered. “Then we have a prophet on our hands, Brother Nicholas. It’s a risk we take. I’m going to Santa Fe.”

  six

  ON EARTH, the Noel Vorst Center throbbed with more-than-usual activity as preparations continued for the arrival of the cargo from Mars. An entire block of the laboratory grounds had been set aside for the resuscitation of Lazarus. For the first time since the founding of the Center video cameras would be allowed to show the worlds a little of its inner workings. The place would be full of strangers—even a delegation of Harmonists. To old-line Vorsters like Reynolds Kirby, that was almost unthinkable. Furtiveness had become a matter of course for him. The command, though, had come from Vorst himself, and no one could quarrel with the Founder. “I believe that it’s time to lift the lid a little,” Vorst had said.

  Kirby was doing some lid-lifting of his own as the great day drew near. He was troubled by certain blanks in his own memory, and by virtue of his rank as second-in-command he went searching through the Vorster archive to fill them in. The trouble was, Kirby could not remember much about David Lazarus’s pre-martyrdom career, and he felt that it was important to know something more than the official story. Who was Lazarus, anyway? How had he entered the Vorster picture—and how had he left it?

  Kirby himself had enrolled in 2077, kneeling before the Blue Fire of a cobalt reactor in New York. As a new convert, he had not been concerned with the politics of the hierarchy, but simply with the values the cult had to offer stability, the hope of long life, the dream of reaching the stars by harnessing the abilities of espers. Kirby was willing to see mankind explore the other solar systems, but he did not make that accomplishment the central yearning of his life. Nor did the chance of immortality—the chief bait for millions of Vorster converts—seem all that delicious to him.

  What drew him to the movement, at the age of forty, was merely the discipline that it offered. His pleasant life lacked structure, and the world about him was such chaos that he fled from it into one synthetic paradise after another. Along came Vorst offering a sleek new belief that snared Kirby totally. For the first few months he was content to be a worshiper. Soon he was an acolyte. And then, his natural organizational abilities demonstrating themselves, he found himself moving rapidly upward in the movement from post to post until by the time he was eighty he was Vorst’s right hand, and very much concerned with his own personal survival.

  According to the official story, the martyrdom of David Lazarus had taken place in 2090. Kirby had been a Vorster for thirteen years then, and was a District Supervisor in charge of thousands of Brothers.

  So far as he could remember, he had never even heard of Lazarus as of 2090.

  A few years later the Harmonists, the heretical movement, had begun gaining strength, decking themselves in green robes and scoffing at the craftily secular power-orientation of the Vorsters. They claimed to be followers of the martyred Lazarus, but even then, Kirby thought, they hadn’t talked much about Lazarus. Only afterward, as Harmonist power mounted and they stole Venus from Vorst, did they push the Lazarus mythos particularly hard. Why is it, Kirby wondered, that I who was a contemporary of Lazarus should never have heard his name?

  He walked toward the archives building.

  It was a milk-white geodesic dome, sheeted with some toothy fabric that gave it a sharkskin surface texture. Kirby passed through a tiled tunnel, identified himself to the robot guardians, moved toward and past a sphincter-door, and found himself in the olive-green room where the records were kept. He activated a query-stud and demanded knowledge.

  LAZARUS, DAVID.

  Drums whirled in the depths of the earth. Memory films came around, offered themselves to the kiss of the scanner, and sent images floating upward to the waiting Kirby. Glowing yellow print appeared on the reader-screen.

  A potted biography, scanty and inadequate:

  BORN 13 March 2051

  EDUCATION Primary Secondary Chicago, A.B. Harvard ’72, Ph.D. (Anthropology) Harvard ’75.

  PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION (1/1/88) 6 ft. 3 ins., 179 pounds, dark eyes and hair, no dis. scars.

  AFFILIATION Joined Cambridge chapel 4/11/71. Acolyte status conferred 7/17/73…

  There followed a list of the successive stages by which Lazarus had risen through the hierarchy, culminating with the simple entry, DEATH 2/9/90.

  That was all. It was a lean, spare record, not a word of elaboration, no appended commendations such as Kirby knew festooned his own record, no documentation of Lazarus’s disagreement with Vorst. Nothing. It was the sort of record, Kirby thought uncomfortably, that anyone could have tapped out in five minutes and inserted in the archives…yesterday.

  He prodded the memory banks, hoping to fish up some added detail about the arch-heretic. He found nothing. It was not really valid cause for suspicion; Lazarus had been dead for a long time, and probably the record-keeping had been sketchier in those early days. But it was upsetting, all the same. Kirby made his way out of the building. Acolytes stared at him as though Vorst himself had gone striding by. No doubt some of them felt the temptation to drop to their knees before him. If they only knew, Kirby thought darkly, how ignorant I am. After seventy-five years with Vorst. If they only knew.

  seven

  THE GLASS VAULT of David Lazarus, transported intact at considerable expense from Mars, rested in the center of the operating room, under the watchful eyes of the video cameras mounted in the walls and ceiling. A carefully planted forest of equipment surrounded the vault: polygraphs, compressors, centrifuges, surgistats, scanners, enzyme calibrators, laser scalpels, retractors, impacters, thorax rods, cerebral tacks, a heart-and-lung bypass, kidney surrogates, mortmains, biopticons, elsevirs, a H
elium II pressure generator, and a monstrous, glowering cryostat. The display was impressive, and it was meant to be. Vorster science was on display here, and every awesome-looking superfluity in the place had its part in the orchestration of the effects.

  Vorst himself was not present. That, too, was part of the orchestration. He and Kirby were watching the event from Vorst’s office. The highest-ranking member of the Brotherhood present was plump, cheerful Capodimonte, a District Supervisor. Beside him stood Christopher Mondschein of the Harmonists. Mondschein and Capodimonte had known each other briefly during Mondschein’s short, spectacularly unsuccessful career as a Santa Fe acolyte in 2095. Now, though, the Harmonist was a terrifying figure, his changed body concealed by a breathing-suit but still nightmarish and grotesque. A native-born Venusian, looking even more bizarre, clung to Mondschein like a skin graft. The visiting Harmonists seemed tense and grim.

  The television commentator said, “It’s already been determined that the atmosphere of the vault is a mixture of inert gases, mainly argon. Lazarus himself is in a nutrient bath. Espers have detected signs of life. The tumblers of the vault lock were opened yesterday in the presence of the delegation of Venusian Harmonists. Now the inerts are being piped out, and soon the sensitive instruments of the surgeons will reach the sleeping man and begin the infinitely complex process of restoring the life-impulses.”

  Vorst laughed.

  Kirby said, “Isn’t that what’ll happen?”

  “More or less. Except the man’s as alive as he’ll ever be, right now. All they need to do is open the vault and yank him out.”

  “That wouldn’t be very dramatic.”

  “Probably not,” the Founder agreed. Vorst folded his hands across his belly, feeling the artificials throbbing mildly inside. The commentator reeled off acres of descriptive prose. The spidery array of instruments surrounding the vault was in motion now, arms and tendrils waving like the limbs of some being of many bodies. Vorst kept his eyes on the altered face of Christopher Mondschein. He hadn’t really believed that Mondschein would return to Santa Fe. An admirable person, the old man thought. He had borne adversity well, considering how he had been bamboozled into his life’s career almost sixty years ago.

  “The vault’s open,” Kirby said.

  “So I observe. Now watch the mummy of King Tut rise and walk.”

  “You’re very lighthearted about this, Noel.”

  “Mmmm,” the Founder said. A smile flickered on his thin lips for a moment. He made minute adjustments to his hormone flow. On the screen the vault opening was almost completely obscured by the instruments that had dived into the chamber to embrace the sleeper.

  Suddenly there was faint motion in the vault. Lazarus stirred! The martyr returned!

  “Time for my grand entrance,” Vorst murmured.

  All was arranged. A glistening tunnel transported him swiftly to the operating room. Kirby did not follow. The Founder’s chair rolled serenely into the room just as the figure of David Lazarus groped its way out of sixty years of sleep and rose to a sitting position.

  A quivering hand pointed. A rusty voice strained for coherence.

  “V-V-Vorst!” Lazarus gasped.

  The Founder smiled benevolently, lifted his fleshless arm in greeting and blessing. Delicately, an unseen hand slipped a control rod and the Blue Fire flickered along the walls of the room to provide the proper theatrical touch. Christopher Mondschein, his altered face impassive behind his breathing-mask, clenched his fists angrily as the glow enveloped him.

  Vorst said, “And there is light, before and beyond our vision, for which we give thanks.

  “And there is heat, for which we are humble.

  “And there is power, for which we count ourselves blessed…

  “Welcome to life, David Lazarus. In the strength of the spectrum, the quantum, and the holy angstrom, peace, and forgive those who did evil to you!”

  Lazarus stood. His hands found and grasped the rim of his vault. Inconceivable emotions distorted his face. He muttered, “I—I’ve slept.”

  “Sixty years, David. And those who rebuked me and followed you have grown strong. See? See the green robes? Venus is yours. You head a mighty army. Go to them, David. Give them counsel. I restore you to them. You are my gift to your followers. And he that was dead came forth…loose him, and let him go.”

  Lazarus did not reply. Mondschein stood agape, leaning heavily on the Venusian at his side. Kirby, watching the screen, felt a tingle of awe that washed away his skepticism for the moment. Even the chatter of the television commentator was stilled by the miracle.

  The glow of the Blue Fire engulfed all, rising higher and higher, like the flames of the Twilight reaching toward Valhalla. And in the midst of it all stood Noel Vorst, the Founder, the First Immortal, serene and radiant, his ancient body erect, his eyes gleaming, his hands outstretched to the man who had been dead. All that was missing was the chorus of ten thousand, singing the Hymn of the Wavelengths while a cosmic organ throbbed a paean of joy.

  eight

  AND LAZARUS LIVED, and walked among his people again, holding converse with them.

  And Lazarus was greatly surprised.

  He had slept—for a moment, for the twinkling of an eye. Now sinister blue figures surrounded him—Venusians, hooded like demons against the poisonous air of Earth—and hailed him as their prophet. All about rose Vorst’s metropolis, dazzling buildings that testified to the present might of the Brotherhood of the Immanent Radiance.

  The chubby Venusian—Mondschein, was it?—pressed a book into Lazarus’s hands. “The Book of Lazarus,” he said. “The account of your life and work.”

  “And death?”

  “Yes, your death.”

  “You’ll need a new edition now,” Lazarus said. He smiled, but he was alone in his mirth.

  He felt strong. How had muscles failed to degenerate in his long sleep? How was it that he could rise and go among men, and make vocal cords obey him, and his body withstand the strain of life?

  He was alone with his followers. In a few days they would take him back to Venus with them, where he would have to live in a self-contained environment. Vorst had offered to transform him into a Venusian, but Lazarus, stunned that such things were possible at all, was not sure that he cared to become a gilled creature. He needed time to ponder all this. The world he had so unexpectedly re-entered was very different from the one he had left.

  Sixty-odd years. Vorst had taken over the whole planet now, it seemed. That was the direction he had been heading in back in the Eighties, when Lazarus had begun to disagree with him. Vorst had begun with a religio-scientific movement when Lazarus had joined it. Hocus-pocus with cobalt reactors, a litany of spectrum and electron, plenty of larded-on spiritualism, but at the bottom a bluntly materialistic creed whose chief come-on was the promise of long (or eternal) life. Lazarus had gone for that. But soon, feeling his strength, Vorst had begun to slide men into parliaments, take over banks, utilities, hospitals, insurance companies.

  Lazarus had opposed all that. Vorst had been accessible then, and Lazarus remembered arguing with him against this deviation into finance and power politics. And Vorst had said, “The plan calls for it.”

  “It’s a perversion of our religious motives.”

  “It’ll get us where we want to go.”

  Lazarus had disagreed. Quietly, gathering a few supporters, he had established a rival group, while still nominally retaining his loyalty to Vorst. His apprenticeship with Vorst made him an expert on founding a faith. He proclaimed the reign of eternal harmony, gave his people green robes, symbols, reformist fervor, prayers, a developing liturgy. He could not say that his movement had become particularly powerful beside the Vorst machine, but at least it was a leading heresy, attracting hundreds of new followers each month. Lazarus had been looking toward a missionary movement, knowing that his ideas had a better chance of taking root on Venus and perhaps Mars than Vorst’s.

  And on a day in 2090 me
n in blue robes came to him and took him away, blanking out his guard of espers and stealing him as easily as though he had been a lump of lead. After that he knew no more, until his awakening in Santa Fe. They told him that the year was 2152 and that Venus was in the hands of his people.

  Mondschein said, “Will you let yourself be changed?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I’m considering it.”

  “It’ll be difficult for you to function on Venus unless you let them adapt you.”

  “Perhaps I could stay on Earth,” Lazarus suggested.

  “Impossible. You have no power base here. Vorst’s generosity will stretch only so far. He won’t let you remain here after the excitement of your return dies down.”

  “You’re right.” Lazarus sighed. “I’ll let myself be changed, then. I’ll come to Venus and see what you’ve accomplished.”

  “You’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Mondschein promised.

  Lazarus had already been sufficiently surprised for one incarnation. They left him, and he studied the scriptures of his faith, fascinated by the martyr’s role they had written for him. A book of Harmonist history, told Lazarus his own value: where the Brotherhood’s religious emotions crystallized around the remote, forbidding figure of Vorst, the Harmonists could safely revere their gentle martyr. How awkward it must be for them that I’m back, Lazarus thought.

  Vorst did not come to him while he rested in the Brotherhood’s hospital. A man named Kirby came, though, frosty-faced with age, and said he was the Hemispheric Coordinator and Vorst’s closest collaborator.

  “I joined the Brotherhood before your disappearance,” Kirby said. “Did you ever hear of me?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “I was only an underling,” Kirby said. “I suppose you wouldn’t have had reason to hear of me. But I hoped your memory would be clear, if we ever had met. I’ve got all these intervening years to cope with, but you can look back across a clean slate.”

  “My memory’s fine,” Lazarus said evenly. “I’ve got no recollection of you.”