A Canticle for Leibowitz (9 page)

“The old man.”

“Yes, Dom Arkos.”

Trying to keep any hint of a question mark out of his tone, Arkos droned: “Just an old man. Nothing more. We’re sure of that now.”

“I
think
it was just an old man, too.”

Father Arkos reached wearily for the hickory ruler.

WHACK!

“Deo gratias!”

WHACK!

“Deo…”

As Francis returned to his cell, the abbot called after him down the corridor: “By the way, I intended to mention…”

“Yes, Reverend Father?”

“No vows this year,” he said absently, and vanished into his study.

7

Brother Francis spent seven years in the novitiate, seven Lenten vigils in the desert, and became highly proficient in the imitation of wolf calls. For the amusement of his brethren, he summoned the pack to the vicinity of the abbey by howling from the walls after dark. By day, he served in the kitchen, scrubbed the stone floors, and continued his classroom study of antiquity.

Then one day a messenger from a seminary in New Rome came riding to the abbey on an ass. After a long conference with the abbot, the messenger sought out Brother Francis. He seemed surprised to find that youth, now fully a man, still wearing the habit of a novice and scrubbing the kitchen floor.

“We have been studying the documents you discovered, for some years now,” he told the novice. “Quite a few of us are convinced they’re authentic.”

Francis lowered his head. “I’m not permitted to mention the matter, Father,” he said.

“Oh, that.” The messenger smiled and handed him a scrap of paper bearing the abbot’s seal, and written in the ruler’s hand:
Ecce Inquisitor Curiae. Ausculta et obsequere. Arkos, AOL, Abbas.

“It’s all right,” he added hastily, noticing the novice’s sudden tension. “I’m not speaking to you officially. Someone else from the court will take your statements later. You know, don’t you, that your papers have been in New Rome for some time now? I just brought some of them back.”

Brother Francis shook his head. He knew less, perhaps, than anyone, concerning high-level reactions to his discovery of the relies. He noticed that the messenger wore the white habit of the Dominicans, and he wondered with a certain uneasiness about the nature of the “court” whereof the Black Friar had spoken. There was an inquisition against Catharism in the Pacific Coast region, but he could not imagine how that court could be concerned with relics of the Beatus.
Ecce Inquisitor Curiae,
the note said. Probably the abbot meant “investigator.” The Dominican seemed a rather mild-humored man, and was not carrying any visible engines of torture.

“We expect the case for canonization of your founder to be reopened soon,” the messenger explained. “Your Abbot Arkos is a very wise and prudent man.” He chuckled. “By turning the relics over to another Order for examination, and by having the shelter sealed before it was fully explored - well, you do understand, don’t you?”

“No, Father. I had supposed he thought the whole thing too trivial to spend any time on.”

The Black Friar laughed. “Trivial? I think not. But if your Order turns up evidence, relics, miracles, and whatever, the court has to consider the source.
Every
religious community is eager to see its founder canonized. So your abbot very wisely told you: ‘Hands off the shelter.’ I’m sure it’s been frustrating for all of you, but-better for the cause of your founder to let the shelter be explored with other witnesses present.”

“You’re going to open it again?” Francis asked eagerly.

“No, not I. But when the court is ready, it will send observers. Then anything that is found in the shelter that might affect the case will be safe, in case the opposition questions its authenticity. Of course, the only reason for suspecting that the contents of the shelter might affect the cause is-Well, the things you found.”

“May I ask how that is, Father?”

“Well, one of the embarrassments at the time of the beatification was the early life of Blessed Leibowitz-before he became a monk and a priest. The advocate for the other side kept trying to cast doubt on the early period, pre-Deluge. He was trying to establish that Leibowitz never made a careful search-that his wife might even have been alive at the time of his ordination. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, of course; sometimes dispensations have been granted-but that’s beside the point. The
advocatus diaboli
was just trying to cast doubt on your founder’s character. Trying to suggest that he had accepted Holy Orders and taken vows before being certain his family responsibility was ended. The opposition failed, but it may try again. And if those human remains you found really are-” He shrugged and smiled.

Francis nodded. “It would pinpoint the date of her death.”

“At the very beginning of the war that nearly ended everything. And in my own opinion-well, that handwriting in the box, it’s either that of the Beatus or a very clever counterfeit.”

Frauds reddened.

“I’m not suggesting that you were involved in any counterfeit scheme,” the Dominican added hastily, upon noticing the blush.

The novice, however, had only been remembering his own opinion of the scrawl.

“Tell me, how did it happen?-how you located the site, I mean. I’ll need the whole story of it.”

“Well, it started because of the wolves.”

The Dominican began taking notes.

A few days after the messenger’s departure from the abbey, Abbot Arkos called for Brother Francis. “Do you still feel that your vocation is with us?” Arkos asked pleasantly.

“If m’Lord Abbot will pardon my execrable vanity-”

“Oh, let’s ignore your execrable vanity £or a moment. Do you or don’t you?”

“Yes, Magister meus.”

The abbot beamed. “Well, now, my son. I think we’re convinced of it too. If you’re ready to commit yourself for all time, I think the time’s ripe for you to profess your solemn vows.” He paused for a moment, and, watching the novice’s face, seemed disappointed not to detect any change of expression. “What’s this? You’re not glad to hear it? You’re not-? Ho! what’s wrong?”

While Francis’ face had remained a politely attentive mask, the mask gradually lost color. His knees buckled suddenly.

Francis had fainted.

Two weeks later, the novice Francis, having perhaps set an endurance record for survival time on desert vigils, left the ranks of the novitiate and, vowing perpetual poverty, chastity, obedience, together with the special pledges peculiar to the community, received blessings and a bindlestiff in the abbey, and became forever a professed monk of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz, chained by chains of his own forging to the foot of the Cross and the rule of the Order. Thrice the ritual inquired of him: “If God calleth thee to be His Booklegger, wilt then suffer death before betraying thy brethren?” And thrice Francis responded:
“Aye,
Lord.”

“Then arise Brother Bookleggers and Brother Memorizers and receive the kiss of brotherhood.
Ecce quam bonum, et quam jucundum…”

Brother Francis was transferred from the kitchen and assigned to less menial labor. He became apprentice copyist to an aged monk named Horner, and, if things went well for him, he might reasonably look forward to a lifetime in the copyroom, where he would dedicate the rest of his days to such tasks as the hand-copying of algebra texts and illuminating their pages with olive leaves and cheerful cherubim surrounding tables of logarithms.

Brother Horner was a gentle old man, and Brother Francis liked him from the start. “Most of us do better work on the assigned copy,” Horner told him, “if we have our own project too. Most of the copyists become interested in some particular work from the Memorabilia and like to spend a little time at it on the side. For example, Brother Sarl over there-his work was lagging, and he was making mistakes. So we let him spend an hour a day on a project he chose for himself. When the work gets so tedious that he starts making errors in copy, he can put it aside for a while and work on his own project. I allow everyone to do the same. If you finish your assigned work before the day’s over but don’t have your own project, you’ll have to spend the extra time on our perennials.

“Perennials?”

“Yes, and I don’t mean plants. There’s a perennial demand from the whole clergy for various books-Missals, Scripture, Breviaries, the
Summa,
encyclopediae, and the like. We sell quite a lot of them. So when you don’t have pet project, we’ll put you on the perennials when you finish early. You’ve plenty of time to decide.”

“What project did Brother Sarl pick?”

The aged overseer paused. “Well, I doubt if you’d even understand it. I don’t. He seems to have found a method for restoring missing words and phrases to some of the old fragments of original text in the Memorabilia. Perhaps the left-hand side of a half-burned book is legible, but the right edge of each page is burned, with a few words missing at the end of each line. He’s worked out a mathematical method for finding the missing words. It’s not foolproof, but it works to some degree. He’s managed to restore four whole pages since he began the attempt.”

Francis glanced at Brother Sarl, who was an octogenarian and nearly blind. “How long did it take him?” the apprentice asked.

“About forty years,” said Brother Horner. “Of course he’s only spent about five hours a week at it, and it does take considerable arithmetic.”

Francis nodded thoughtfully. “If one page per decade could be restored, maybe in a few centuries-”

“Even less,” croaked Brother Sarl without looking up from his work. “The more you fill in, the faster the remainder goes. I’ll get the next page done in a couple of years. After that, God willing, maybe-” His voice tapered off into a mumble. Francis frequently noticed that Brother Sarl talked to himself while working.

“Suit yourself,” said Brother Horner. “We can always use more help on the perennials, but you can have your own project when you want one.”

The idea came to Brother Francis in an unexpected flash.

“May I use the time,” he blurted, “to make a copy of the Leibowitz blueprint I found?”

Brother Horner seemed momentarily startled. “Well-I don’t know, son. Our Lord Abbot is, well-just a little sensitive on that subject. And the thing may not belong in the Memorabilia. It’s in the tentative file now.”

“But you know they fade, Brother. And it’s been handled a lot in the light. The Dominicans had it in New Rome for so long-”

“Well-I suppose it would be a rather
brief
project. If Father Arkos doesn’t object, but-” He waggled his head in doubt.

“Perhaps I could include it as one of a set,” Francis hastily offered. “What few recopied blueprints we have are so old they’re brittle. If I made several duplicates-of some of the others-”

Horner smiled wryly. “What you’re suggesting is, that by including the Leibowitz blueprint in a set, you might escape detection.”

Francis reddened.

“Father Arkos might not even notice, eh?-if he happened to wander through.”

Francis squirmed.

“All right,” said Horner, his eyes twinkling slightly. “You may use your unassigned time to make duplicates of any of the recopied prints that are in bad condition. If anything else gets mixed up in the lot, I’ll try not to notice.”

Brother Francis spent several months of his unassigned time in redrawing some of the older prints from the Memorabilia’s files before daring to touch the Leibowitz print. If the old drawings were worth saving at all, they needed to be recopied every century or two anyhow. Not only did the original copies fade, but often the redrawn versions became nearly illegible after a time, due to the impermanence of the inks employed. He had not the slightest notion why the ancients had used white lines and lettering on a dark background, in preference to the reverse. When he roughly resketched a design in charcoal, thereby reversing the background, the rough sketch appeared more realistic than the white-on-dark, and the ancients were immeasurably wiser than Francis; if they had taken the trouble to put ink where blank paper would ordinarily be, and leave slivers of white paper where an inked line would appear in a straightforward drawing, then they must have had their reasons. Francis recopied the documents to appear as nearly like the originals as possible-even though the task of spreading blue ink around tiny white letters was particularly tedious, and quite wasteful of ink, a fact which caused Brother Horner to grumble.

He copied an old architectural print, then a drawing for a machine part whose geometry was apparent but whose purpose was vague. He redrew a mandala abstraction, titled “STATOR WNDG MOD 73-A 3-PH 6-P 1800-BPM 5-HP CL-A SQUIRREL CAGE,” which proved completely incomprehensible, and not at all capable of imprisoning a squirrel, The ancients were often subtle; perhaps one needed a special set of mirrors in order to see the squirrel. He painstakingly redrew it anyhow.

Only after the abbot, who occasionally passed through the copyroom, had seen him working at another blueprint at least three times (twice Arkos had paused for a quick look at Francis’ work), did he summon the courage to venture to the Memorabilia files for the Leibowitz blueprint, nearly a year after beginning his free-time project.

The original document had already been subjected to a certain amount of restorative work. Except for the fact that it bore the name of the Beatus, it was disappointingly like most of the others he had redrawn.

The Leibowitz print, another abstraction, appealed to nothing, least of all to reason. He studied it until he could see the whole amazing complexity with his eyes closed but knew no more than he had known before. It appeared to be no more than a network of lines connecting a patchwork of doohickii, squiggles, quids, laminulae, and thingumbob. The lines were mostly horizontal or vertical, and crossed each other with either a little jump-mark or a dot; they made right-angle turns to get around doohickii, and they never stopped in mid-space but always terminated at a squiggle, quiggle, quid, or thingumbob. It made so little sense that a long period of staring at it produced a stupefying effect. Nevertheless he began work at duplicating every detail, even to the copying of a central brownish stain which he thought might be the blood of the Blessed Martyr, but which Brother Jeris suggested was only the stain left by a decayed apple core.