Free Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

you sit down quietly and think about it quietly, it can begin to make a lot of sense.”
    â€œYes, 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.”
    â€œI’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.”
    â€œWe use people we call Listeners. Not too good a term, but it serves.”
    â€œSensitives?”
    â€œYes. 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.”
    â€œAll humans?”
    â€œAll 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.”
    â€œAnd this data you get is fed into the pope?”
    â€œA 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.”
    â€œYou don’t want it known.”
    â€œDr. Tennyson, we don’t want the galaxy to come crashing in on us.”
    â€œMary is a Listener. And she thinks she has come on Heaven.”
    â€œThat is true.”
    â€œAnd you, a part-time believer, what do you think?”
    â€œI’m not discounting it. She is one of our most efficient and trustworthy Listeners.”
    â€œBut Heaven ?”
    â€œConsider 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 millennia. The other day he lived as a trilobite.”
    â€œA trilobite?”
    â€œAn ancient Earth form of life that died out some three hundred million years ago.”
    â€œBut a human as a trilobite!”
    â€œThe germ plasma, Doctor. The life force. Go back far enough …”
    â€œYes, I see,” said Tennyson.
    â€œIt’s fascinating,” Ecuyer said.
    â€œOne thing bothers me,” said Tennyson. “You’re telling me all this. Yet you don’t want it known. When I leave End of Nothing—”
    â€œ If you leave End of Nothing.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œWe hope you’ll stay. We can make you a most attractive offer. We can discuss the details later.”
    â€œI may decide not to stay.”
    â€œOnly one ship ever comes here,” said Ecuyer. “It shuttles between here and Gutshot. Gutshot is the only place it can take you.”
    â€œAnd you’re gambling that I don’t want to return to Gutshot?”
    â€œI 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