He came up from the seat like a snake. I’m no fighter. I just know that the more scared I am, the harder and straighter I hit. This time I was lucky. But as he crumpled back I felt a slap and four stabs of pain in my cheek. I clapped my hand to it. I could feel the four gashes made by her dagger finger caps, and the warm blood oozing out from them.
She didn’t look at me. She was bending over little Zirk and cuddling her mask to his cheek and crooning, “There, there, don’t feel bad, you’ll be able to hurt me afterward.”
There were sounds around us, but they didn’t come close. I leaned forward and ripped the mask from her face.
I really don’t know why I should have expected her face to be anything else. It was very pale, of course, and there weren’t any cosmetics. I suppose there’s no point in wearing any under a mask. The eyebrows were untidy and the lips chapped. But as for the general expression, as for the feelings crawling and wriggling across it . .
Have you ever lifted a rock from damp soil? Have you ever watched the slimy white grubs?
I looked down at her, she up at me. “Yes, you’re so frightened, aren’t you?” I said sarcastically. “You dread this little nightly drama, don’t you? You’re scared to death.”
And I walked right out into the purple night, still holding my hand to my bleeding cheek. No one stopped me, not even the girl wrestlers. I wished I could tear a tab from under my shirt and test it then and there, and find I’d taken too much radiation, and so be able to ask to cross the Hudson and go down New Jersey, past the lingering radiance of the Narrows Bomb, and so on to Sandy Hook to wait for the rusty ship that would take me back over the seas to England.
THE BISHOP OF ROME, the head of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Vicar of Christ on Earth—in short, the Pope—brushed a cockroach from the ifith-encrusted wooden table, took another sip of the raw red wine, and resumed his discourse.
“In some respects, Thomas,” he smiled, “we are stronger now than when we flourished in the liberty and exaltation for which we still pray after Mass. We know, as they knew in the Catacombs, that those who are of our flock are indeed truly of it; that they belong to Holy Mother the Church because they believe in the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God—not because they can further their political aspirations, their social ambitions, their business contacts.”
“Not of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. . .“ Thomas quoted softly from St. John.
The Pope nodded. “We are, in a way, born again in Christ; but there are still too few of us—too few even if we include those other handfu]s who are not of our faith, but still acknowledge God through the teachings of Luther or Lao-tse, Gautama Buddha or Joseph Smith. Too many men still go to their deaths hearing no gospel preached to them but the cynical self-worship of the Technarchy. And that is why, Thomas, you must go forth on your quest.”
“But Your Holiness,” Thomas protested, “if God’s word and God’s love will not convert them, what can saints and miracles do?”
“I seem to recall,” murmured the Pope, “that God’s own Son once made a similar protest. But human nature, however illogical it may seem, is part of His design, and we must cater to it. If signs and wonders can lead souls to God, then by all means let us find the signs and wonders. And what can be better for the purpose than this legendary Aquin? Come now, Thomas; be not too scrupulously exact in copying the doubts of your namesake, but prepare for your journey.”
The Pope lifted the skin that covered the doorway and passed into the next room, with Thomas frowning at his heels. It was past legal hours and the main room of the tavern was empty. The swarthy innkeeper roused from his doze to drop to his knees and kiss the ring on the hand which the Pope extended to him. He rose crossing himself and at the same time glancing furtively about as though a Loyalty Checker might have seen him. Silently he indicated another door in the back, and the two priests passed through.
Toward the west the surf purred in an oddly gentle way at the edges of the fishing village. Toward the south the stars were sharp and bright; toward the north they dimmed a little in the persistent radiation of what had once been San Francisco.
“Your steed is here,” the Pope said, with something like laughter in his voice.
“Steed?”
“We may be as poor and as persecuted as the primitive church, but we can occasionally gain greater advantages from our tyrants. I have secured for you a robass—gift of a leading Technarch who, like Nicodemus, does good by stealth—a secret convert, and converted indeed by that very Aquin whom you seek.”
It looked harmlessly like a woodpile sheltered against possible rain. Thomas pulled off the skins and contemplated the sleek functional lines of the robass. Smiling, he stowed his minimal gear into its panthers and climbed into the foam saddle. The starlight was bright enough so that he could check the necessary coordinates on his map and feed the data into the electronic controls.
Meanwhile there was a murmur of Latin in the still night air, and the Pope’s hand moved over Thomas in the immemorial symbol. Then he extended that hand, first for the kiss on the ring, and then again for the handclasp of a man to a friend he may never see again.
Thomas looked back once more as the robass moved off. The Pope was wisely removing his ring and slipping it into the hollow heel of his shoe.
Thomas looked hastily up at the sky. On that altar at least the candies still burnt openly to the glory of God.
Thomas had never ridden a robass before, but he was inclined, within their patent limitations, to trust the works of the Technarchy. After several miles had proved that the coordinates were duly registered, he put up the foam backrest, said his evening office (from memory; the possession of a breviary meant the death sentence), and went to sleep.
They were skirting the devastated area to the east of the Bay when he awoke. The foam seat and back had given him his best sleep in years; and it was with difficulty that he smothered an envy of the Technarchs and their creature comforts.
He said his morning office, breakfasted lightly, and took his first opportunity to inspect the robass in full light.~ He admired the fast-plodding, articulated legs, so necessary since roads had degenerated to, at best, trails in all save metropolitan areas; the side wheels that could be lowered into action if surface conditions permitted; and above all the smooth black mound that housed the electronic brain—the brain that stored commands and data concerning ultimate objectives and made its own decisions on how to fulfill those commands in view of those data; the brain that made this thing neither a beast, like the ass his Saviour had ridden, nor a machine, like the jeep of his many-times-great-grandfather, but a robot. . . a robass.
“Well,” said a voice, “what do you think of the ride.”
Thomas looked about him. The area on this fringe of desolation was as devoid of people as it was of vegetation.
“Well,” the voice repeated unemotionally. “Are not priests taught to answer when spoken to politely.”
There was no querying inflection to the question. No inflection at all—each syllable was at the same dead level. It sounded strange, mechani.
Thomas stared at the black mound of brain. “Are you talking to me?” he asked the robass.
“Ha ha,” the voice said in lieu of laughter. “Surprised, are you not.”
“Somewhat,” Thomas confessed. “I thought the ‘only robots who could talk were in library information service and such.”
“I am a new model. Designed-to-provide-conversation-to-entertain-the-way-worn-traveler,” the robass said slurring the words together as though that phrase of promotional copy was released all at once by one of his simplest binary synapses.
“Well,” said Thomas simply. “One keeps learning new marvels.”
“I am no marvel. I am a very simple robot. You do not know much about robots do you.”
“I will admit that I have never studied the subject closely. I’ll confess to being a little shocked at the whole robotic concept. It seems almost as though man were arrogating to himself the powers of—” Thomas stopped abruptly.
