Read Online Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak - Free Book Online Page A

then. I don’t think I’ll need protection, but it’s nice to know it would be there. But what about this setup? What would I be getting into? You call this place Vatican and I’ve heard stories about a Project Pope and all of it being headed by a band of robots. Can you tell me what’s going on? This old lady, Mary, talked of angels. Is that just an old lady’s dream, a somewhat premature deathbed vision?”
    â€œNo, it’s not,” said Ecuyer. “Mary has found Heaven.”
    â€œNow,” said Tennyson, “say that slow again. ‘Mary has found Heaven.’ You sound as if you mean it.”
    â€œOf course I do,” said Ecuyer. “She really has found Heaven. All evidence points to her having found it. We need her further observations to try to pinpoint it. Of course, we have her clones—three of them, growing up. But we can’t be certain that the clones—”
    â€œEvidence? Clones? What kind of evidence? If I remember rightly, Heaven is not a place. It’s a condition. A state of mind, a faith …”
    â€œDoctor, listen. This will take some explanation.”
    â€œI would suspect it might.”
    â€œLet’s first try to put the whole thing into perspective,” said Ecuyer. “Vatican-17, this Vatican, began almost a thousand years ago with a band of robots out of Earth. On Earth, the robots had not been members—had not been allowed to be members—of any faith. I think in some places it is different now. Robots can become communicants—not everywhere, but in certain areas, on certain planets. A thousand years ago this was not true; robots were considered beyond the pale of any religion. To be a member of any religious faith, to profess oneself to any faith, one must have a soul, or the equivalent of a soul. Robots had no souls, or were thought to have no souls, so they were barred from participating in any religious experience. How well are you acquainted with robots, Doctor?”
    â€œReally not at all, Mr. Ecuyer. In my lifetime I may have spoken to half a dozen of them, seen a few more than that. I did not come from robot country. There were a few in medical college, but humans and robots did not associate there. I’ve never really known one. I’ve never felt the urge—”
    â€œWhat you have just said is what ninety-nine out of every hundred humans would say. They’re not involved with robots, not concerned with them. Probably they think of them as metal humans, as machines trying to ape humans. I can tell you they are a whole lot more than that. At one time they would not have been, but today, here on End of Nothing, they are more than that. In the last thousand years, the robots here have evolved; they have become creatures that stand apart from men. In the process of evolving, they have never forgotten, however, that they are the creations of men, and they do not resent, as you might think they would, that they are created beings. By and large, they still feel a close relationship to humans. I could talk all night telling you what I think the robots are, what these robots here are. They came here because they had been denied religious experience elsewhere, had been read out of that part of human life that had a strong appeal to them. You have to know a robot well to understand his instinctive drive toward religious experience. It may be no more than an overcompensation—a deep instinct to model himself as closely to the human race as possible. He is denied so many things that a human has; there are so many limitations placed upon him by his very nature. A robot cannot weep; he cannot laugh. He has no sexual drive—although he does create other robots. At least here our robots do create other robots, building them with refinements that the human creators never thought of, probably would not have included in a robot’s makeup even if they had thought of them. Here, on End of