A Canticle for Leibowitz (29 page)

The monk sat down with a splash that sprayed the room. Sister Helene clucked, sputtered, squeaked, dumped the tray on the workbench, and fled. Joshua vaulted out of the sink and donned his habit without bothering to dry himself or put on his underwear. When he got to the door, Sister Helene was already out of the corridor-probably out of the building and halfway to the sister’s chapel just down the side lane. Mortified, he hastened to complete his labors.

He emptied the suction device’s contents and collected a sample of the dust in a phial. He took the phial to the workbench, plugged in a pair of headphones, and held the phial at a measured distance from the detector element of a radiation counter while he consulted his watch and listened.

The compressor had a built-in counter. He pressed a stud marked: Reset. The whirling decimal register flipped back to zero and began counting again. He stopped it after one minute and wrote the count on the back of his hand. It was mostly plain air, filtered and compressed; but there was a whiff of something else.

He closed the lab for the afternoon. He went down to the office on the subjacent floor, wrote the count on a wall chart, eyed its perplexing upswing; then sat at his desk and flipped the viewphone switch. He dialed by feel, while gazing at the telltale wallchart. The screen flashed, the phone beeped, and the viewer fluttered into focus on the back of an empty desk chair. After a few seconds a man slid into the chair and peered into the viewer. “Abbot Zerchi here,” the abbot grunted. “Oh, Brother Joshua. I was about to call you. Have you been taking a bath?”

“Yes, m’Lord Abbot.”

“You might at least blush!”

“I am.”

“Well, it doesn’t show up on the viewer. Listen. On
this
side of the highway, there’s a sign just outside our gates. You’ve noticed it, of course? It says, ‘Women Beware. Enter Not Lest’-and so forth. You’ve noticed it?”

“Surely, m’Lord.”

“Take your baths on
this
side of the sign.”

“Certainly.”

“Mortify yourself for offending Sister’s modesty. I’m aware that you haven’t got any. Listen, I suppose you can’t even bring yourself to pass the reservoir without jumping in, baby-spanking bald, for a swim.”

“Who told you that, m’Lord? I mean-I’ve only waded-”

“Ye-e-s-s? Well, never mind. Why did you call me?”

“You wanted me to call Spokane.”

“Oh, yes. Did you?”

“Yes.” The monk gnawed at a bit of dry skin at the corner of his wind-cracked lips and paused uneasily. “I talked to Father Leone. They’ve noticed it too.”

“The increased radiation count?”

“That’s not all.” He hesitated again. He did not like saying it. To communicate a fact seemed always to lend it fuller existence.

“Well?”

“It’s connected with that seismic disturbance a few days ago. It’s carried by the upper winds from that direction. All things considered, it looks like fallout from a low altitude burst in the megaton range.”

“Heu!” Zerchi sighed and covered his eyes with a hand.
‘Luciferum ruisse mihi dicis?”

“Yes, Domne, I’m afraid it was a weapon.”

“Not possibly an industrial accident?”

“No.”

“But if there were a war on, we’d know. An illicit test? but not that either. If they wanted to test one, they could test it on the far side of the moon, or better, Mars, and not be caught.”

Joshua nodded.

“So what does that leave?” the abbot went on. “A display? A threat? A warning shot fired over the bow?”

“That’s all I could think of…

“So that explains the defense alert. Still, there’s nothing in the news except rumors and refusals to comment. And with dead silence from Asia.”

“But the shot
must
have been reported from some of the observation satellites. Unless-I don’t like to suggest this, but-unless somebody has discovered a way to shoot a space-to-earth missile past the satellites, without detection until it’s on the target.”

“Is that possible?”

“There’s been some talk about it, Father Abbot.”

“The government knows. The government
must
know. Several of them know. And yet we hear nothing. We are being protected from hysteria. Isn’t that what they call it? Maniacs! The world’s been in a
habitual
state of crisis for fifty years.
Fifty?”
What am I saying? It’s been in a habitual state of crisis since the beginning-but for half a century now, almost unbearable. And
why,
for the love of God? What is the fundamental irritant, the essence of the tension? Political philosophies? Economics? Population pressure? Disparity of culture and creed? Ask a dozen experts, get a dozen answers. Now Lucifer again. Is the species congenitally insane, Brother? If we’re born mad, where’s the hope of Heaven? Through Faith alone? Or isn’t there any? God forgive me, I don’t mean that. Listen, Joshua-”

“m’Lord?”

“As soon as you close up shop, come back over here…That radiogram-I had to send Brother Pat into town to get it translated and sent by regular wire. I want you around when the answer comes. Do you know what it’s about?”

Brother Joshua shook his head.

“Quo peregrinatur grex.”

The monk slowly lost color. “To go into effect, Domne?”

“I’m just trying to learn the status of the plan. Don’t mention it to anybody. Of course, you’ll be affected. See me here when you’re through.”

“Certainly.”

“Chris’tecum.”

“Cum spiri’tuo.”

The circuit opened, the screen faded. The room was warm, but Joshua shivered. He gazed out the window into a premature twilight murky with dust. He could see no farther than the storm fence next to the highway where a passing procession of truck headlights made traveling halos in the dust haze. After a while he became aware of someone standing near the gate where the driveway opened on to the turnpike approach. The figure was dimly visible in silhouette whenever the headlights’ aurorae flashed by in review. Joshua shivered again.

The silhouette was unmistakably that of Mrs. Grales. no one else would have been recognizable in such poor visibility, but the shape of the hooded bundle on her left shoulder; and the way her head tilted toward the right, made her outline uniquely that of Old Ma’am Grales. The monk pulled curtains across the window and turned on the light. He was not repelled by the old woman’s deformity; the world had grown blasé about such genetic mishaps and pranks of the genes. His own left hand still bore a tiny scar where a sixth finger had been removed during his infancy. But the heritage of the
Diluvium Ignis
was something he preferred to forget for the moment, and Mrs. Grales was one of its more conspicuous heirs.

He fingered a globe of the world on his desk. He spun it so that the Pacific Ocean and East Asia drifted past. Where? Precisely where? He twirled the globe faster, slapping it lightly again and again so that the world spun like a gaming wheel, faster and yet faster until the continents and oceans became a blur. Place your bets, Sir and Madam: Where? He braked the globe abruptly with his thumb. Bank: India pays off. Please collect, Madam. The divination was wild. He spun the globe again until the axial mountings rattled; “days” flitted by as briefest instants-In a reverse sense, he noticed suddenly. If Mother Gaia pirouetted in the same sense, the sun and other passing scenery would rise in the west and set in the east. Reversing time thereby? Said the namesake of my namesake:
Move not, O Sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O Moon, toward the valley-a
neat trick, forsooth, and useful in these times too.
Back up, O Sun, et tu, Luna, recedite in orbitas reversas…
He kept spinning the globe in reverse, as if hoping the simulacrum of Earth possessed the Chronos for unwinding time. A third of a million turns might unwind enough days to carry it back to the
Diluvium Ignis.
Better to use a motor and spin it back to the beginning of Man. He stopped it again with his thumb; once more the divination was wild.

Still he lingered in the office and dreaded going “home” again. “Home” was only across the highway, in the haunted halls of those ancient buildings whose walls still contained stones which had been the rubbled concrete of a civilization that had died eighteen centuries ago. Crossing the highway to the old abbey was like crossing an eon. Here in the new aluminum and glass buildings, he was a technician at a workbench where events were only phenomena to be observed with regard for their
How,
not questioning their
Why.
On
this
side of the road, the falling of Lucifer was only an inference derived by cold arithmetic from the chatter of radiation counters, from the sudden swing of a seismograph pen. But in the old abbey, he ceased to be a technician; over there he was a monk of Christ, a booklegger and memorizer in the community of Leibowitz. Over there, the question would be: “Why, Lord, why?” But the question had already come, and the abbot had said: “See me.”

Joshua reached for his bindlestiff and went to obey the summons of his ruler. To avoid meeting Mrs. Grales, he used the pedestrian underpass; it was no time for pleasant conversations with the bicephalous old tomato woman.

25

The dike of secrecy had broken. Several dauntless Dutch boys were swept away by the raging tide; the tide swept them right out of Texarkana to their country estates where they became unavailable for comment. Others remained at their posts and staunchly tried to plug new leaks. But the fall of certain isotopes in the wind created a universal byword, spoken on street corners and screamed by banner headlines:
LUCIFER IS FALLEN.

The Minister of Defense, his uniform immaculate, make-up unsmeared, and his equanimity unruffled, again faced the journalistic fraternity; this time the press conference was televised throughout the Christian Coalition.

LADY REPORTER: Your Lordship appears rather calm, in the face of the facts. Two violations of international law, both defined by treaty as warlike acts, have recently occurred. Doesn’t that worry the War Ministry at all?

DEFENSE MINISTER: Madam, as you very well knew, we do not have a War Ministry here; we have a
Defense
Ministry. And as far as I know, only one violation of international law has occurred. Would you mind acquainting me with the other?

LADY REPORTER: Which one are you
not
acquainted with-the disaster in Itu Wan, or the warning shot over the far South Pacific?

DEFENSE MINISTER
(suddenly stern.):
Surely Madam intends nothing seditious, but your question seems to give comfort, if not credence, to the utterly false Asian charges that the so-called Itu Wan disaster was the result of a weapon test by us and not by them!

LADY REPORTER: If it does, I invite you to throw me in jail. The question was based on a Near East neutralist account, which reported that the Itu Wan disaster was the result of an Asian weapon test, underground, which broke free. The same account said that the Itu Wan test was sighted from our satellites and immediately answered by a space-to-earth warning shot southeast Of New Zealand. But now that you suggest it, was the Itu Wan disaster also the result of a weapon test by us?

DEFENSE MINISTER
(with forced patience):
I recognize the journalistic requirement of objectivity. But to suggest that His Supremacy’s government would deliberately violate-

LADY REPORTER: His Supremacy is an eleven-year-old boy, and to call it his government is not only archaic, but a highly dishonorable-even cheap!-attempt to shift the responsibility for a full denial from your own-

MODERATOR: Madam! Please restrain the tenor of your-

DEFENSE MINISTER: Overlook it, overlook it! Madam, you have my full denial if you must dignify the fantastic charges. The so-called Itu Wan disaster was not the result of a weapon test by us. Nor do I have any knowledge of any other recent nuclear detonation.

LADY REPORTER: Thank you.

MODERATOR: I believe the editor of the
Texarkana Star-Insight
has been trying to speak.

EDITOR: Thank you. I should like to ask, Your Lordship: What did happen in Itu Wan?

DEFENSE MINISTER: We have no nationals in that area; we have had no observers there since diplomatic relations were broken during the last world crisis. I can, therefore, only rely upon indirect evidence, and the somewhat conflicting neutralist accounts.

EDITOR: That is to be understood.

DEFENSE MINISTER: Very well, then, I gather there was a sub-surface nuclear detonation-in the megaton range-and it got out of hand. It was rather obviously a test of some sort. Whether it was a weapon or, as some Asia-fringe “neutrals” claim, an attempt to divert an underground river-it was dearly illegal, and adjoining countries are preparing a protest to the World Court.

EDITOR: Is there any risk of war?

DEFENSE MINISTER: I foresee none. But as you know, we have certain detachments of our armed forces which are subject to conscription by the World Court to enforce its decisions, if needed. I foresee no such need, but I cannot speak for the court.

FIRST REPORTER: But the Asian coalition has threatened an immediate all-out strike against our space installations if the court does not take action against us. What if the court is slow in acting?

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
star
ship
?”

“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 dodged 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.”