To Open the Sky Page 18

  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.”

  Kirby’s expression was guarded. After decades with Vorst, he could supply an instant translation: I’ve done something authoritarian, Vorst was saying, and I’m going to call in everybody to rubber-stamp an okay on it, but first I’m going to force a rubber-stamping out of you. Kirby was prepared to acquiesce in whatever Vorst had done. He was not a weak man by nature, but one did not dispute the doings of Vorst. The last one who had seriously attempted to try was Lazarus, who had slept in a box on Mars for sixty years as a result.

  Into Kirby’s wary silence Vorst murmured, “I’ve talked to Lazarus and closed the deal. He’s agreed to supply us with pushers, as many as we need. It’s possible we’ll have an interstellar expedition on its way by the end of the year.”

  “I feel a little numb at that, Noel.”

  “Anticlimactic, isn’t it? For a hundred years you move an inch at a time toward that goal, and suddenly you find yourself staring at the finish line, and the thrill of pursuit becomes the boredom of accomplishment.”


  “We haven’t landed that expedition on another solar system yet,” Kirby reminded the Founder quietly.

  “We will. We will. That’s beyond doubt. We’re at the finish line now. Capodimonte’s already running personnel checks for the expedition. We’ll be outfitting the capsule soon. Lazarus’s bunch will cooperate, and off we’ll go. That much is certain.”

  “How did you get him to agree, Noel?”

  “By showing him how it will be after the expedition has set out. Tell me, have you given much thought to the goals of the Brotherhood once we’ve sent that first expedition?”

  Kirby hesitated. “Well—sending more expeditions, I guess. And consolidating our position. Continuing the medical research. Carrying on with all our current work.”

  “Exactly. A long smooth slide toward utopia. No longer an uphill climb. That’s why I won’t stay around to run things any longer.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going on the expedition,” Vorst said.

  If Vorst had ripped off one of his limbs and clubbed him to the floor with it, Kirby would not have been more amazed. The Founder’s words hit him with an almost physical jolt, making him recoil. Kirby seized the arms of his chair, and in response the chair seized him, cradling him gently until his spasm of shock abated.

  “You’re going?” Kirby blurted. “No. No. It’s beyond belief, Noel. It’s madness.”

  “My mind’s made up. My work on Earth is done. I’ve guided the Brotherhood for a century, and that’s long enough. I’ve seen it take control of Earth, and by proxy I have Venus, too, and I have the cooperation if not exactly the support of the Martians. I’ve done all I’ve intended to do here. With the departure of the first interstellar expedition, I will have fulfilled what I’ll be so gaudy as to call my mission on Earth. It’s time to be moving along. I’ll try another solar system.”

  “We won’t let you go,” Kirby said, astounded by his own words. “You can’t go! At your age—to get aboard a capsule bound for—”

  “If I don’t go,” said Vorst, “there will be no capsule bound for anywhere.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Noel. You sound like a spoiled child threatening to call the party off if we don’t play the game your way. There are others bound up in the Brotherhood, too.”

  To Kirby’s surprise, Vorst looked merely amused at the harsh accusation. “I think you’re misinterpreting my words,” he said. “I don’t mean to say that unless I go along, I’ll halt the expedition. I mean that the use of Lazarus’s espers is contingent on my leaving. If I’m not aboard that capsule, he won’t lend his pushers.”

  For the second time in ten minutes Kirby was rocked by amazement. This time there was pain, too, for he was aware that there had been a betrayal.

  “Is that the deal you made, Noel?”

  “It was a fair price to pay. A shift of power is long overdue. I step out of the picture; Lazarus becomes supreme head of the movement; you can be his vicar on Earth. We get the espers. We open the sky. It works well for everybody concerned.”

  “No, Noel.”

  “I’m weary of being here. I want to leave. Lazarus wants me to leave, too. I’m too big, I overtop the entire movement. It’s time for mortals to move in. You and Lazarus can divide the authority. He’ll have the spiritual supremacy, but you’ll run Earth. The two of you will work out some kind of communicant relation between the Harmonists and the Brotherhood. It won’t be too hard; the rituals are similar enough. Ten years and any lingering bitterness will be gone. And I’ll be a dozen light-years away, safely out of your path, unable to meddle, living in retirement. Out to pasture on World X of System Y. Yes?”

  “I don’t believe any of this, Noel. That you’d abdicate after a century, go swooshing off to nowhere with a bunch of pioneers, live in a log cabin on an unknown planet at the age of nearly a hundred and fifty, drop the reins—”

  “Start believing it,” said Vorst. For the first time in the conversation the old whiplash tone returned to his voice. “I’m going. It’s decided. In a sense, I have gone.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know I’m a very low-order floater. That I plan things by hitchhiking with precogs.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve seen the outcome. I know how it was, and so I know how it’s going to be. I leave. I’ve followed the plan this far—followed and led, all in one, heels over head through time. Everything I’ve done I’ve had a hint of beforehand. From founding the Brotherhood right to this moment. So it’s settled. I go.”

  Kirby closed his eyes. He struggled for balance.

  Vorst said, “Look back on the path I’ve traveled. Was there a false step anywhere? The Brotherhood prospered. It took Earth. When we were strong enough to afford a schism, I encouraged the Harmonist heresy.”

  “You encouraged—”

  “I chose Lazarus for what he had to do and filled him full of ideas. He was just an insignificant acolyte, clay in my hands. That’s why you never knew him in the early days. But he was there. I took him. I molded him. I got his movement going in opposition to ours.”

  “Why, Noel?”

  “It didn’t pay to be monolithic. I was hedging my bets. The Brotherhood was designed to win Earth, and it did, but the same principles didn’t—couldn’t—appeal to Venus. So I started a second cult. I tailored that one for Venus and gave them Lazarus. Later I gave them Mondschein, too. Do you remember that, in 2095? He was only a greedy little acolyte, but I saw the strength in him, and I nudged him around until he found himself a changed one on Venus. I built that entire organization.”

  “And you knew that they’d come up with pushers?” Kirby asked incredulously.

  “I didn’t know. I hoped. All I knew was that setting up the Harmonists was a good idea, because I saw that it had been a good idea. Follow? For the same reason I took Lazarus away and hid him in a crypt for sixty years. I didn’t know why at the time. But I knew it might be useful to keep the Harmonist martyr in my pocket for a while, as a card to play in the future. I played that card twelve years ago, and since then the Harmonists have been mine. Today I played my last card: myself. I have to leave. My work is done, anyway. I’m bored with running out the skein. I’ve juggled everything for a hundred years, setting up my own opposition, creating conflicts designed to lead to an ultimate synthesis, and that synthesis is here, and I’m leaving.”

  After a long silence Kirby said, “You humiliate me, Noel, by asking me to ratify a decision that’s already as immutable as the tides and the sunrise.”

  “You’re free to oppose it at the council meeting.”

  “But you’ll go, anyway?”

  “Yes. I’d like your support, though. It won’t matter to the eventual outcome, but I’d still rather have you on my side than not. I’d like to think that you of all people understand what I’ve been doing all these years. Do you believe there’s any reason for me to stay on Earth any longer?”

  “We need you, Noel. That’s the only reason.”

  “Now you’re the one who’s being childish. You don’t need me. The plan is fulfilled. It’s time to clear out and turn the job over to others. You’re too dependent on me, Ron. You can’t get used to the idea that I’m not going to be pulling the strings forever.”

  “Perhaps that’s it,” admitted Kirby. “But whose fault is that? You’ve surrounded yourself with yes-men. You’ve made yourself indispensable. Here you sit at the heart of the movement like a sacred fire, and none of us can get close enough to be singed. Now you’re taking the fire away.”

  “Transferring it,” said Vorst. “Here, I’ve got a job for you. The members of the council will be arriving in six hours. I’m going to make my announcement, and I suppose it’ll shake everybody else the way it shook you. Go off by yourself for the next six hours and think about all I’ve just said. Reconcile yourself to it. More, don’t just accept it, but approve of it. At the meeting stand up and explain not simply why it’s all right if I go, but why it’s necessary and v
ital to the future of the Brotherhood that I go.”

  “You mean—”

  “Don’t say anything now. You’re still hostile. You won’t be after you’ve examined the dynamics of it. Keep your mouth closed till then.”

  Kirby smiled. “You’re still pulling strings, aren’t you?”

  “It’s an old habit by now. But this is the last one I’ll ever pull. And I promise you, your mind will change. You’ll see my point of view in an hour or two. By nightfall you’ll be willing to stuff me in that capsule yourself. I know you will. I know you.”

  six

  IN A LEAFY glade on Venus, the pushers were at their sport.

  An avenue of vast trees unrolled toward the pearly horizon. Their jagged leaves met overhead to form a thick canopy. Below, on the muddy, fungus-dotted ground, a dozen Venusian boys with bluish skins and green robes exercised their abilities. At a distance several larger figures watched them. David Lazarus stood in the center of the group. About him were the Harmonist leaders: Christopher Mondschein, Nicholas Martell, Claude Emory.

  Lazarus had been through a great deal at the hands of these men. To them, he had been only a name in a martyrology, a revered and unreal figure by whose absent power they governed a creed. They had had to adjust to his return, and it had not been easy. There had been a time when Lazarus thought they would put him to death. That time was past now, and they abided by his wishes. But, because he had slept so long, he was at once younger and older than his lieutenants, and sometimes that interfered with the exercising of his full authority.

  He said, “It’s settled. Vorst will leave and the schism will end. I’ll work something out with Kirby.”

  “It’s a trap,” said Emory gloomily. “Keep away from it, David. Vorst can’t be trusted.”

  “Vorst brought me back to life.”

  “Vorst put you in that crypt in the first place,” Emory insisted. “You said so yourself.”