Shakespeare's Planet Read Online Free PDF Page A

was frightened, and the fright brought honesty. Confessional honesty, he thought, although never in the confessional had he ever been as honest as he was being now.
    What was that? asked the grande dame. What was that we felt?
    It was the hand of God , he told her, brushed against our brow .
    That’s ridiculous , said the scientist. I note it; that is all. A manifestation of some sort. From far out in space, perhaps. Not a product of this planet. I have the distinct impression that it was not of local origin. But until we have more data, we must make no attempt to characterize it .
    That’s the sheerest twaddle I have ever heard , said the grande dame. Our colleague, the priest, did better .
    Not a priest , said the monk. I have told you. A monk. A mere monk. A very piss-poor monk .
    And that was what he’d been, he told himself, continuing with his honest self-assessment. He never had been more. A less-than-nothing monk who had been afraid of death. Not the holy man that he had been acclaimed, but a sniveling, shivering coward who was afraid to die, and no man who was afraid of death ever could be holy. To the truly holy, death must be a promise of a new beginning and, thinking back, he knew he never had been able to conceive of it as anything but an end and nothingness.
    For the first time, thinking thus, he was able to admit what he never had been able to admit before, or honest enough to admit before—that he had seized the opportunity to become the servant of science to escape the fear of death. Although he knew he had purchased only a deferment of his death, for even as the Ship, he could not escape it altogether. Or at least could not be certain he’d escape it altogether, for there was the chance—the very slightest chance—which the scientist and the grande dame had discussed centuries ago, with himself staying strictly out of the discussion, afraid to enter it, that as the millennia went on, if they survived that long, the three of them possibly could become pure mind alone. And if that should prove to be the case, he thought, then they could become, in the strictest sense, immortal and eternal. But if this did not happen, they still must face the fact of death, for the spaceship could not last forever. In time it would become, for one reason or another, a shattered, worn-out hulk adrift between the stars, and in time no more than dust in the cosmic wind. But that would not be for a long time yet, he told himself, grasping at the hope. The Ship, with any luck, might survive millions of years, and that might give the three of them the time they needed to become pure mind alone—if, in fact, it was possible to become pure mind alone.
    Why this overriding fear of death , he asked himself. Why this cringing from it, not as an ordinary man would cringe, but as someone who was obsessed with a repugnance against the very thought of it? Was it, perhaps, because he’d lost his faith in God, or perhaps, which was even worse, had never achieved a faith in God? And if that were the case, why had he become a monk?
    Having got a start with honesty, he gave himself an honest answer. He had chosen monking as an occupation (not a calling, but an occupation) because he feared not only death, but even life itself, thinking that it might be easy work which would provide him shelter against the world he feared.
    In one thing, however, he had been mistaken. Monking had not proved an easy life, but by the time he’d found this out, he was afraid again—afraid of admitting his mistake, afraid of confessing, even to himself, the lie that he was living. So he had gone on as a monk and in the course of time, in one way and another (more than likely by pure happenstance) had achieved a reputation for a piety and devotion that was at once the envy and the pride of all his fellow monks, although some of them, on occasion, delivered some rather unworthy snide remarks. As time went on, it seemed that