The Listeners Part 3

"I am building a cathedral."

They were building cathedrals, most of them. Most of them had that religious mania about their mission that would sustain them through a lifetime of labors in which no progress could be seen.

Listening for words that never come. . . .

The mere layers of stone and those who worked for pay alone eliminated themselves in time and left only those who kept alive in themselves the concept, the dream.

But they had to be a little mad to begin with.

Can it be the stars are stricken dumb?

Tonight he had heard the voices nearly all night long.

They kept trying to tell him something, something urgent, something he should do, but he could not quite make out the words. There was only the babble of distant voices, urgent and unintelligible.

Tico-tico, tico-tic. . . .

He had wanted to shout "Shut up!" to the universe. "One at a time!" "You first!" But of course there was no way to do that. Or had he tried? Had he shouted?

They're listening with ears this big!

Had he dozed at the console with the voices mumbling in his ears, or had he only thought he dozed? Or had he only dreamed he waked. Or dreamed he dreamed?

Listening for thoughts just like their own.

There was a madness to it all, but perhaps it was a divine madness, a creative madness. And is not that madness that which sustains man in his terrible self-knowledge, the driving madness which demands reason of a casual universe, the awful aloneness which seeks among the stars for companion- s.h.i.+p?

Can it be that -we are all alone?

The ringing of the telephone half penetrated through the mists of mesmerization. He picked up the handset, half expecting that it would be the universe calling, perhaps with a clipped British accent, "h.e.l.lo there, Man. h.e.l.lo. h.e.l.lo. I say, we seem to have a bad connection, what? Just wanted you to know that we're here. Are you there? Are you listening?

Message on the way. May not get there for a couple of centuries. Do be around to answer, will you? That's a good being. Righto. . . ."

Only it wasn't. It was the familiar American voice of Charley Saunders saying, "Mac, there's been an accident.

Olsen is on his way to relieve you, but I think you'd better leave now. It's Maria."

Leave it. Leave it all. What does it matter? But leave the controls on automatic; the computer can take care of it all.

Maria! Get in the car. Start it. Don't fumble! That's it. Go.

Go. Car pa.s.sing. Must be Olsen. No matter.

What kind of accident? Why didn't I ask? What does it matter what kind of accident? Maria. Nothing could have happened. Nothing serious. Not with all those people around.

Nil desperandum. And yetwhy did Charley call if it was not serious? Must be serious. I must be prepared for some- thing bad, something that will shake the world, that will tear my insides.

I must not break up in front of them. Why not? Why must I appear infallible? Why must I always be cheerful, imper- turbable, my faith unshaken? Why me? If there is something bad, if something impossibly bad has happened to Maria, what will matter? Ever? Why didn't I ask Charley what it was? Why? The bad can wait; it will get no worse for being unknown.

What does the universe care for my agony? I am nothing.

My feelings are nothing to anyone but me. My only possible meaning to the universe is the Project. Only this slim poten- tial links me with eternity. My love and my agony are me, but the significance of my life or death are the Project.

HIC'SITVS'ESTFHAETHON'CVSRVS'AVRIGA'PATERNI.

QVEM'Sr NON'TENVTI' MAGNIS'TAMEN' EXCIDIT'AVSIS By the time he reached the hacienda, MacDonald was breathing evenly. His emotions were under control. Dawn had grayed the eastern sky. It was a customary hour for Project personnel to be returning home.

Saunders met him at the door. "Dr. Lessenden is here. He's with Maria."

The odor of stale smoke and the memory of babble still lingered in the air, but someone had been busy. The party remains had been cleaned up. No doubt they all had pitched in. They were good people.

"Betty found her in the bathroom off your bedroom. She wouldn't have been there except the others were occupied.

I blame myself. I shouldn't have let you relieve me. Maybe if you had been hereBut I knew you wanted it that way."

"No one's to blame. She was alone a great deal," Mac- Donald said. "What happened?"

"Didn't I tell you? Her wrists. Slashed with a razor. Both of them. Betty found her in the bathtub. Like pink lemonade, she said."

Perce jusques au fond du coew D'une atteinte imprevue aussi bien que mortelle.

A fist tightened inside MacDonald's gut and then slowly relaxed. Yes, it had been that. He had known it, hadn't he?

He had known it would happen ever since the sleeping pills, even though he had kept telling himself, as she had told him, that the overdose had been an accident.

Or had he known? He knew only that Saunders' news had been no surprise.

Then they were at the bedroom door, and Maria was lying under a blanket on the bed, scarcely making it mound over her body, and her arms were on top of the blankets, palms up, bandages like white paint across the olive perfection of her arms, now, MacDonald reminded himself, no longer perfection but marred with ugly red lips that spoke of hidden misery and untold sorrow and a life that was a lie. . . .

Dr. Lessenden looked up, sweat trickling down from his hairline. "The bleeding is stopped, but she's lost agood deal of blood. I've got to take her to the hospital for a transfusion.

The ambulance should be here any minute." He paused.

MacDonald looked at Maria's face. It was paler than he had ever seen it. It looked almost waxen, as if it were already arranged for all time on a satin pillow. "Her chances are fifty-fifty," Lessenden said in answer to his unspoken question.

And then the attendants brushed their way past him with their litter.

"Betty found this on her dressing table," Saunders said. He handed MacDonald a slip of paper folded once.

MacDonald unfolded, it: Je m'en vay chercher un grand Peut-etre.

Everyone was surprised to see MacDonald at the office.

They did not say anything, and he did not volunteer the information that he could not bear to sit at home, among the remembrances, and wait for word to come. But they asked him about Maria, and he said, "Dr. Lessenden is hopeful.

She's still unconscious. Apparently will be for some time. The doctor said I might as well wait here as at the hospital. I think I made them nervous. They're hopeful. Maria's still un- conscious. ..." 3 0 lente, lente currite, noctis equi!

The stars move stilt, time runs, the clock will strike. . . .

Finally MacDonald was alone. He pulled out paper and pencil and worked for a long time on the statement, and then.

he balled it up and threw it into the wastebasket, scribbled a single sentence on another sheet of paper, and called Lily.

"Send this!"

She glanced at it. "No, Mac."

"Send it!"

"But"

"It's not an impulse. I've thought it over carefully. Send it."

Slowly she left, holding the piece of paper gingerly in her fingertips. MacDonald pushed the papers around on his desk, waiting for the telephone to ring. But without knocking, unannounced, Saundeis came through the door first.

"You can't do this, Mac," Saunders said.

MacDonald sighed. "Lily told you. I would fire that girl if she weren't so loyal."

"Of course she told me. This isn't just you. It affects the whole Project."

"That's what I'm thinking about."

"I think I know what you're going through) Mac"

Saunders stopped. "No, of course I don't know what you're going through. It must be h.e.l.l. But don't desert us. Think of the Pro)'ect!"

"That's what I'm thinking about. I'm a failure, Charley.

Everything I touchashes."

"You're the best of us."

"A poor linguist? An indifferent engineer? I have no quali- fications for this job, Charley. You need someone with ideas to head the Project, someone dynamic, someone who can lead, someone withcharisma."

A few minutes later he went over it all again with Olsen.

When he came to the qualifications part, all Olsen could say was, "You give a good party, Mac."

It was Adams, the skeptic, who affected him most. "Mac, you're what I believe in instead of G.o.d."

Sonnenborn said, "You are the Project. If you go, it all falls apart. It's over."

"It seems like it, always, but it never happens to those things that have life in them. The Project was here before I came. It will be here after I leave. It must be longer lived than any of us, because we are for the years and it is for the centuries."

After Sonnenborn, MacDonald told Lily wearily, "No more, Lily"

None o* them h"d had the courage to mention Maria, but MacDonald considered that failure, too. She had tried to communicate with him a month ago when she took the pills, and he had been unable to understand. How could he riddle the stars when he couldn't even understand those closest to him? Now he had to pay.

Meine Ruh' ist hin, Meine Hen ist schwer.

What would Maria want? He knew what she wanted, but if she lived h" could not let her pay that price. Too long she had been there when he wanted her, waiting like a doll put away on a shelf for him to return and take her down, so that he could have the strength to continue.

And somehow the agony had built up inside her, the dread- ful progress of the years, most dread of all to a beautliful woman growing old, alone, too much alone. He had been selfish. He had kept her to himself. He had not wanted chil- dren to mar the perfection of their being together.

Perfection for him; less than that for her.

Perhaps it was not too late for them if she lived. And if she diedhe would not have the heart to go on with work to which, he knew now, he could contribute nothing.

Que acredito su ventura, Morir querdo y vivir loco.

And finally the call came. "She's going to be all right, Mac," Lessenden said. And after a moment, "Mac, I said"

"I heard."

"She wants to see you."

"I'll be there."

"She said to give you a message. 'Tell Robby I've been a little crazy in the head. I'll be better now. That "great per- haps" looks too certain from here. And tell him not to be crazy in the head, too.' "

MacDonald put down the telephone and walked through the doorway and through the outer office, a feeling in his chest as if it were going to burst. "She's going to be all right,"

he threw over his shoulder at Lily.

"Oh, Mac"

In the hall, Joe the janitor stopped him. "Mr. Mac- Donald"

MacDonald stopped. "Been to the dentist yet, Joe?"

"No, sir, not yet, but it's not"

"Don't go. I'd like to put a tape recorder beside your bed for a while, Joe. Who knows?"

"Thank you, sir. But it's They say you're leaving, Mr.

MacDonald."

"Somebody else will do it."

"You don't understand. Don't go, Mr. MacDonaldl"

"Why not, Joe?"

"You're the one who cares."

MacDonald had been about to move on, but that stopped him.