A Case of Conscience

"I never heard of the Law of the Whole," Egtverchi said when this was translated for him. "I doubt that there is any such thing. I make up my own laws as I go along. Tell him he is making Lithia sound like a bore, and that if he keeps it up I'll make a point of never going there at all."

"Blast it, Egtverchi — " Michelis burst in.

"Hush, Mike, one pilot is enough. Egtverchi, you were willing to co-operate with us up to now; at least, you came here with us. Did you do it just for the pleasure of defying and insulting your father? Chtexa is far wiser than you are; why don't you stop acting like a child and listen to him?"

"Because I don't choose to," Egtverchi said. "And you make me no more willing by wheedling, dear foster father. I didn't choose to be born a Lithian, and I didn't choose to be brought to Earth — but now that I'm a free agent I mean to make my own choices, and explain them to nobody if that's what pleases me."

"Then why did you come here?"

"There's no reason why I should explain that, but I will. I came to hear my father's voice. Now I've heard it. I don't understand what he says, and he makes no better sense in your translation, and that's all there is to it as far as I am concerned. Bid him farewell for me — I shan't speak to him again."

"What does he say?" Chtexa's voice said.

"That he does not acknowledge the Law of the Whole, and will not come home," Ruiz-Sanchez told the microphone. The little instrument was slippery with sweat in his palm. "And he says to bid you farewell."

"Farewell, then," Ghtexa said. "And farewell to you, too, Ruiz-Sanchez. I am at fault, and this fills me with sorrow; but it is too late. I may not talk to you again, even by means of your marvelous instrument."

Behind the voice, the strange, half-familiar whine rose to a savage, snarling scream which lasted almost a minute. Ruiz-Sanchez waited until he thought he could be heard over it again.

"Why not, Chtexa?" he said huskily. "The fault is ours as much as it is yours. I am still your friend, and wish you well."

"And I am your friend, and wish you well," Chtexa's voice said. "But we may not talk again. Can you not hear the power saws?"

So that was what that sound was!

"Yes. Yes, I hear them."

"That is the reason," Chtexa said. "Your friend Xlevher is cutting down the Message Tree."

The gloom was thick in the Michelis apartment. As the time drew closer for Egtverchi's next broadcast, it became increasingly apparent that their analysis of the UN's essential helplessness had been correct. Egtverchi was not openly triumphant, though he was exposed to that temptation in several newspaper interviews; but he floated some disquieting hints of vast plans which might well be started in motion when he was next on the air. Ruiz-Sanchez had not the least desire to listen to the broadcast, but he had to face the fact that he would be unable to stay away from it. He could not afford to be without any new data that the program might yield. Nothing he had learned had done him any good thus far, but there was always the slim chance that something would turn up.

In the meantime, there was the problem of Cleaver, and his associates. However you looked at it, they were human souls. If Ruiz-Sanchez were to be driven, somehow, to the step that Hadrian VIII had commanded, and it did not fail, more than a set of attractive hallucinations would be lost. It would plunge several hundred human souls into instant death and more than probable damnation; Ruiz-Sanchez did not believe that the hand of God would reach forth to pluck to salvation men who were involved in such a project as Cleaver's, but he was equally convinced that his should not be the hand to condemn any man to death, let alone to an unshriven death. Ruiz was condemned already — but not yet of murder.

It had been Tannhauser who had been told that his salvation was as unlikely as the blossoming of the pilgrim's staff in his hand. And Ruiz-Sanchez' was as unlikely as sanctified murder.

Yet the Holy Father had commanded it; had said it was the only road back for Ruiz-Sanchez, and for the world. The Pope's clear implication had been that he shared with Ruiz-Sanchez the view that the world stood on the brink of Armageddon — and he had said flatly that only Ruiz-Sanchez could avert it. Their only difference was doctrinal, and in these matters the Pope could not err…

But if it was possible that the dogma of the infertility of Satan was wrong, then it was possible that the dogma of Papal infallibility was wrong. After all, it was a recent invention; quite a few Popes in history had got along without it. Heresies, Ruiz-Sanchez thought — not for the first time — come in snarls. It is impossible to pull free one thread; tug at one, and the whole mass begins to roll down upon you.

I believe, O Lord; help me in mine unbelief. But it was useless. It was as though he were praying to God's back.

There was a knock on his door. "Coming, Ramon?" Michelis' tired voice said. "He's due to go on in two minutes."