Case of Conscience Read Online Free PDF Page A

children, whose schedules persistently defy all rules. If Cleaver's burly frame should somehow throw that dose off, driven perhaps by some anaphylactic crisis impossible to rule out this early in his illness, he would need prompt attention. At the very least, he would want badly for the sound of a human voice on this planet which he hated, and which had struck him down almost without noticing that he existed.
    Still, the danger to Cleaver was not great. He most certainly did not require a minute-by-minute vigil; he was, after all, not a child, but an almost ostentatiously strong man.
    And there was such a thing as an excess of devotion, a form of pride among the pious which the Church had long found peculiarly difficult to make clear to them. At its worst, it produced the hospital saints, whose attraction to noisome-ness so peculiarly resembled the vermin-worship of the Hindi sects-or a St. Simon Stylites, who though undoubtedly acceptable to God had been for centuries very bad public relations for the Church. And had Cleaver really earned the kind of devotion Ruiz-Sanchez had been proposing, up to now, to tender him as a creature of God-or, to come closer to the mark, a godly creature?
    And with a whole planet at stake, a whole people-no, more than that, a whole problem in theology, an imminent solution to the vast, tragic riddle of original sin… What a gift to bring to the Holy Father in a jubilee year-a grander and more solemn thing than the proclamation of the conquest of Everest had been at the coronation of Elizabeth II of England! Always providing, of course, that this would be the ultimate outcome of the study of Lithia. The planet was not lacking in hints that something quite different, and fearful beyond all else, might emerge under Ruiz-Sanchez' prolonged attention. Not even prayer had yet resolved that doubt. But should he sacrifice even the possibility of this, for Cleaver?
    A lifetime of meditation over just such cases of conscience had made Ruiz-Sanchez, like most other gifted members of his order, quick to find his way to a decision through all but the most complicated of ethical labyrinths. All Catholics must be devout; but a Jesuit must be, in addition, agile.
    "Thank you," he said to Chtexa, a little shakily. "I will share your house very gladly."

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III
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    (A voice): "Cleaver? Cleaver! Wake up, you big slob. Cleaver! Where the hell have you been?"
    Cleaver groaned and tried to turn over. At his first motion, the world began to rock, gently, sickeningly. He was awash in fever. His mouth, seemed to be filled with burning pitch.
    "Cleaver, turn out. It's me-Agronski. Where's the Father? What's wrong? Why didn't we ever hear from you? Look out, you'll-"
    The warning came too late, and Cleaver could not have understood it anyhow. He had been profoundly asleep, and had no notion of his situation in space or time. At his convulsive twist away from the nagging voice, the hammock rotated on its hooks and dumped him.
    He struck the floor stunningly, taking the main blow across his right shoulder, though he hardly felt it yet. His feet, not yet part of him at all, still remained far aloft, twisted in the hammock webbing.
    "What the hell-"
    There was a brief chain of footsteps, like chestnuts dropping on a roof, and then a hollow noise of something hitting the floor near his head.
    "Cleaver, are you sick? Here, lie still a minute and let me get your feet free. Mike-Mike, can't you turn the gas up in this jug? Something's wrong back here."
    After a moment, yellow light began to pour from the glistening walls, and then the white glare of the mantles. Cleaver dragged an arm across his eyes, but it did him no good; it tired too quickly. Agronski's mild face, plump and anxious, floated directly above him like a captive balloon. He could not see Michelis anywhere, and at the moment he was just as glad he couldn't. Agronski's presence was hard enough to understand.
    "How… the hell…" he said. At the words, his lips