Project Pope

'I can understand a religious drive as an overcompensative impulse, said Te

'That is right, Ecuyer told him. 'There is a lot of history I could recite to you — by what thinking and what steps that small band of robots came a mille

'Of course I'm interested. If you can find the time.

'So the robots came out here, said Ecuyer, 'and established their Vatican. They based it upon an Earth religion that had a deep appeal to them — not so much because of its teaching. Rather, I would suspect, because they admired its organization, its hierarchy, its long tradition, its dogma. In this Vatican you'll find much of the liturgy and ritual of Old Earth Vatican, which served as a model, but there was no attempt, I am convinced, to follow slavishly, or even closely, Earth's Catholic faith. The robots have never made any pretense that their religion is an Earth religion transplanted to the rim of the galaxy. If it were given any serious study, which it has not been, it would probably be labeled a synthesis of religions, for the robots have borrowed many aspects of alien faiths, or what passes for alien faiths.

'Actually what they have done, said Te

'Exactly. A robotic faith — which does not make it any less a faith. It all depends on your definition of religion.

'Mr. Ecuyer — or should it be something else than mister?

'Mister is good enough, My first name is Paul. Call me Paul if you wish. I would be pleased if you did. I have no title, really. I'm not a member of the faith.

'I was about to ask you how you fit into all of this.

'I'm the coordinator of what we loosely called the Search Program.

'That I've never heard of.

'It's not much talked about. It's a part of Project Pope. I sometimes think that Project Pope now may have become little more than an excuse for the continuation of the Search Program. I would appreciate it if you did not mention this to the good fathers. Many of them remain quite pious.

'It all sounds confusing to me.

'It's all rather simple, Ecuyer said. 'And logical, in a way. The idea of a pope, of a supreme pontiff to head the faith, had a great appeal to the founders. But where would they find a pope? There was a feeling that to make a robot a pope would be sacrilegious. They could not use a human, even if they could have laid hands on one, which, at the time they came here, they could not. A human would be too short-lived to serve as a pope for a robotic church, the members of which, theoretically, could live forever. With a little proper care, that is. In any case, aside from this severe limitation, a human probably would not have been acceptable. An ideal pope, to their way of thinking, should be immortal and all-knowing — infallible beyond the infallibility of a human pope. So they set out to make a pope —

'To make a pope?

'Yes. A computer pope.

'Oh, my God! said Te

'Yes, oh, my God, Dr. Te

'I can't believe it. It is-

'You do not need to believe in it. Nor do I. It is enough that the robots believe it. After all, it is their faith. And if you sit down quietly and think about it quietly, it can begin to make a lot of sense.

'Yes, I suppose it does. Faith is based on instant and authoritative — infallible — answers. Yes, come to think of it, it makes a lot of sense. The data, I suppose, comes from the Search Program.

Ecuyer nodded. 'That is right, he said. 'And just because I have told you all of this matter-of-factly, perhaps even lightly, don't think that I am a total nonbeliever. I may not be a true believer, but there are some things I can believe in.

'I'll reserve my opinion. But the data. How does your Search Program collect the data? You are here; the data, the data you must be after, is out in the universe.

'We use people we call Listeners. Not too good a term, but it serves.

'Sensitives?

'Yes. Special kinds of sensitives. We comb the galaxy for them. We hunt them down. We have recruiters out, working quietly. The robots have developed methods and supports that enhance their abilities. Some of our results are unbelievable.

'All humans?

'All human, so far. We have, at times, tried to use aliens. But it has never worked. Perhaps someday we'll find how to work with them. It is one of the projects we are working on. Aliens probably could provide us data humans never can.

'And this data you get is fed into the pope?

'A good part of it. Of late we have become somewhat selective. We make some value judgments. We just don't feed in all the raw data we get. But we do keep complete files. We have it all down on — I was going to say on tapes, but it's not quite tape. But, anyhow, we have it all. We've built up a library that would astound the galaxy were it known.

'You don't want it known.

'Dr. Te

'Mary is a Listener. And she thinks she has come on Heaven.

'That is true.

'And you, a part-time believer, what do you think?

'I'm not discounting it. She is one of our most efficient and trustworthy Listeners.

'But Heaven?

'Consider this, said Ecuyer. 'We know we are not dealing in physical space alone. In some instances, we don't know what we're reaching into. Let me give you one rather simple example. We have one Listener who has, for years, been going back through time. And not only through time, not haphazardly through time, but, apparently, following his own ancestry. Why he is taking this direction we do not know, nor does he. Someday we may find out. He seems to be following his ancestry, his remote ancestry, tracing out his blood and bone. Step by step down through mille

'A trilobite?

'An ancient Earth form of life that died out some three hundred million years ago.

'But a human as a trilobite!

'The germ plasma, Doctor. The life force. Go back far enough…

'Yes, I see, said Te

'It's fascinating, Ecuyer said.

'One thing bothers me, said Te

'If you leave End of Nothing.

'What's that?

'We hope you'll stay. We can make you a most attractive offer. We can discuss the details later.

'I may decide not to stay.

'Only one ship ever comes here, said Ecuyer. 'It shuttles between here and Gutshot. Gutshot is the only place it can take you.

'And you're gambling that I don't want to return to Gutshot?

'I had the impression that you might not want to. If you really want to leave, I doubt we'd try to stop you. We could, of course, if we wanted to. One word to the captain and he'd find himself lacking room to take you. But I think it would be safe to let you go. Even if you repeated what I told you tonight, I doubt that anyone would believe you. It would be just another space myth.

'You seem to be sure of yourselves, said Te

'We are, said Ecuyer.