by Ian Young
Steiner looks at me as though there has been some mistake. ‘Doctor?’ he says, frowning. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise.’ Steiner smiles and shakes my hand. ‘What’s the news?’
I hold my breath, forcing myself to ignore Steiner’s condescension. After the pause, which I think everyone understands (if Mason’s eye-rolling is anything to go by), I present my findings to the science correspondent with as much objectivity I can muster. I have to admit, though, my enthusiasm sounds a little evangelical. The journalist, whatever his thoughts, remains silent throughout. He raises his eyebrows once or twice, but perhaps only in response to my urging him to accept my theory. When I’m done, I wait, mouth open, mind racing.
‘And you can verify the age of this … artefact?’ he asks, looking at the ball, but making no move to reach for it.
Is he trying to play it cool? I mean, after what I’ve just told him he should be peeing his pants with excitement.
‘Absolutely,’ I say immediately. ‘Karl has done just that, and Seth Suter from—’
‘I mean, can it be independently verified?’
‘Karl is independent.’
‘Sorry, Karl, no offence, buddy, but I’m going to need another source.’ The journalist rises to his feet and walks around the table as though seeking a 360 degree look at the ball. ‘There’s a guy at Harvard I know, I’d like him to take a look.’
‘No way,’ I say, glancing at Mason. ‘We have to go with what we have, right away.’
‘What’s the rush?’
Mason steps forward and holds my arm. ‘There’s no rush, mate, what do you want to do?’
‘Well, we can start with a phone call, but my guess is he’ll want us to go over to Massachusetts, I mean, that’s where his lab is.’
‘Perhaps you don’t need us, me and Andi, that is.’
‘Well, I guess not, but don’t you want to keep an eye on this thing? If it were mine, I’d never let it go.’
I stare at Mason as though he’s lost his mind. The journo is right, there’s no way I’m letting this out of my sight.
‘Quite,’ says Mason. ‘Keep it with you at all times and let us know as soon as you have the full analysis. Perhaps you could email the report before you fly back?’
If Mason can feel my glare burning the side of his face he’s doing an awesome job of ignoring it. Steiner seems to consider Mason’s proposal. He stands with both his hands resting on the table, staring down at the ball.
‘I think it’s worth checking out, so yeah, OK, you got yourself a deal.’ The journalist pulls out his cell phone and calls his contact at Harvard. Within a minute or so of the call ending, I’m watching Howie’s baseball – my baseball – leave inside Steiner’s bag. As soon as the door closes I round on Mason.
‘What the fuck are you doing? You had no right—’
‘Andi, Andi,’ he says, holding my arms as though he expects another slap. ‘My job is to keep you safe, not the ball.’
‘And who the hell gave you that job?’
‘I did,’ he says, looking a little embarrassed. ‘It’s what I do, and I’m between contracts so …’
‘I can take care of myself,’ I say, and then immediately remember my near-death encounter with Howie’s murderer. ‘Actually …’
‘Andi, you’re a scientist, probably a first class scientist, I don’t know about these things, but you’re up against trained mercenaries with years of military service. With respect, you can’t, in this instance, look after yourself.’
I remain silent, knowing the Englishman, with his better-than-thou accent, is right.
‘The Pillars will go after the ball, not you. Without the ball you’re just some wacky Yank with a theory. There are millions of them out there.’
‘I’m not American, I’m Brazilian.’ For some reason it matters right now.
‘Right, but my point remains.’ Mason lets go of my arms and stands back. ‘Let this journalist guy do the running, if there’s a story in it, he’ll ferret it out and tell the world. You don’t need to get involved. You certainly don’t want to be the girl who destroys millions of lives.’
‘How will I be destroying millions of lives? I’ll be saving lives.’ I burn into Mason’s face with my own, wondering just why he doesn’t get it. Howie would. Howie wanted to change the world. Mason wants me to slink away from the greatest scientific discovery since time began.
‘You might think God is a load of old tosh,’ says Mason, ‘but billions don’t. They derive enormous courage and comfort from the idea of God, heaven … the afterlife.’
‘Bullshit!’ I start to think Mason doesn’t want any of this to come out, and if I’m right, I need to ditch him and get my ball back. ‘For every single believer who takes this comfort, there are thousands who have suffered horribly because of the same belief. Don’t you think that’s just a little bit selfish?’
Mason shrugs. ‘I’m not taking sides, Andi, I’m just pointing out that if God is disproved, and I really don’t think the artefact will do that, it will be a seismic event in human history. It could destroy humanity.’
‘Oh please,’ I drawl. ‘Give me a break.’ I storm from the room and out into the parking lot.
* * *
Dublin, Ireland
The message is unequivocal: the Vrazi is dead. Father Sean Unsworth stares at the computer screen as though it might reveal a different answer. He checks the code they’d given him, the code that allows him to monitor the tracker that his Vrazi wore. It’s definitely transmitting, definitely the right tracker. The tracking software shows a rapidly cooling body temperature and, crucially, no heartbeat.
Unsworth calls the number again; another Vrazi will be on the case in seconds. He has to make this task succeed, his reputation relies on it. It’s murder, but he was warned about that. One murder, they said, to save billions – whatever that means.
He switches on the TV and scrolls through the channels until he recognises the logo of CNN across the screen. The newsreader is just about to hand over to a reporter on the streets of LA. She describes the hit and run incident outside UCLA and gives a brief biography of the respected Professor of Pharmacology who has lost his life.
A married father of two daughters, he had recently returned from an expedition to search for materials for manufacturing new antibiotics. One of his daughters is studying French and Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, no doubt already making plans to return to the US.
Unsworth retches. There is no time to make it to the bathroom. He empties his stomach on his lap, narrowly avoiding the keyboard in front of him. After a long groan he gets up and strips the black trousers, shirt and dog collar from his numb flesh, throwing the soiled clothes in the wash, and finds plain clothes to wear. Could he still call himself a priest after causing a man’s death?
Perhaps the professor’s philosophical daughter could answer that question, though she’s unlikely to find in his favour. Unsworth has as good as murdered her father. Now he will murder another father’s daughter. Is this the best way to serve God? If people don’t want to believe in God, then surely that’s their choice. After all, not everyone understands religion. Not everyone feels the presence of God; Unsworth gets that. Science has rendered God redundant for many people, even some believers. For them, they simply can’t reconcile the Bible with more rational theories of the universe and man’s place in it. Unsworth gets that too. But religion isn’t just about God, it’s about having a belief, a set of moralistic principles with which to guide oneself through life. That’s what Unsworth believes and that’s what should be protected. At the very least, those who still believe in God should have every reason to continue believing in him.
There must be another way. He picks up the phone again. No answer. Isn’t there some kind of recall option? Surely he can call off the dogs. The Catholic pri
est slams his fist on to the desk and curses. He has to get back to Prague, has to find a way of stopping Andreia Menendes being murdered.
Chapter 10
Boston, MA, 8 April
Doctor Kendrick is used to waiting. The flight from LAX is late, it’s always late, almost as though no one from the Sunshine State wants to arrive in this provincial corner of America. Who could blame them? California has it all: Californian girls, Californian sunshine, Californian music, and now, according to some lists, the top university in the world: the Californian Institute of Technology.
But Kendrick isn’t bitter. Harvard is still the most famous university in America, and still the most highly regarded by academics. And Kendrick is Emeritus Professor of Biosciences. He has waited two decades for the accolade, but is he about to crown his glittering career in science with the impossible? Proof that God doesn’t exist, as some crazed researcher at UCLA claims.
Another passenger shoulder-charges him in haste as the man drags an oversized bag towards the exit. Kendrick turns around, quick to give the guy an angry look, but smiles when he sees him hugging a young woman. Kendrick would have been as hasty if she’d been waiting for him. The only regret at a career in science is the paucity of pretty female students that otherwise fill the humanities classrooms. Kendrick’s view, though, is a lifetime studying some dead guy’s painting or a long-dead poet is a life wasted. Yes, it took great talent to create those works of art, but no great talent staring at them for hours on end before coming up with a theory about why the hell the guy painted it in the first place. Science, on the other hand, has saved lives, improved lives, and rocketed humanity out of the dark ages – a time, perhaps, when paintings and fables were more important.
Kendrick turns away from the young couple and scans the arrivals hall for the journalist. It’s been a fruitful relationship over the years. Kendrick has published most of his papers through Frank Steiner and, in return, he has consulted on some of the stories the journalist has uncovered. But this is the big one. This is the story that would ensure Kendrick’s name will be bigger than Sagan’s or Feynman’s. Hell, he’ll be more famous than Einstein. If there’s anything in it.
Kendrick can hardly keep his feet still, shuffling from one to the other like he needs to pee. Come on, man, where the hell are you? And then he sees him, hustling through the crowd, a grin the size of a waning crescent. Kendrick spreads his lips into a smile to match and shakes the journalist’s hand.
‘Welcome to the capital of academia,’ says Kendrick.
‘Always a pleasure.’ Steiner holds Kendrick’s arm and ushers him through the waiting crowd. ‘This could be a crock of shit, John, but at the same time it could be seismic.’
‘What’s your view?’
‘Sounds too good to be true, and you know what they say.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In my bag … here.’ Steiner spreads the handles of his overnight bag and shows Kendrick inside, but the ball is buried beneath a change of clothes.
‘Come on,’ says Kendrick. ‘Let’s get back to the lab.
They rush along the row of parked cars in the short stay parking lot until Kendrick stops by an old station wagon. As the scientist rattles the key in the trunk, Steiner lets out a laugh.
‘You still driving this old heap?’
‘I suppose you got some fancy European import, eh?’
‘Not really,’ says Steiner. ‘Driving a Volvo.’
They chat about their families as Kendrick drives away from Jeffries Point towards the Sumner Tunnel. He guesses it would be quicker to pay the toll and take the shorter route back to the campus, though he hates the claustrophobic run through the seven-mile-long tunnel. Kendrick feels Steiner is teasing him, focusing on the banalities of life while Kendrick’s first Nobel Prize lies in Steiner’s bag on his lap. Damn, it’s torture.
Kendrick can see the miniature rectangle of light growing in the windscreen, marking the end of the tunnel. He watches it grow and grow as though he’s approaching hyperspace, almost expecting to be transported to wherever this other-worldly artefact had come from. They emerge into the light, just briefly, before entering another section of the dimly lit tunnel. It’s only a short drive before they emerge into daylight again and head for the I95 north to skirt around the city.
The traffic begins to thicken and their progress slows. Kendrick bangs on the wheel and shouts at a driver of a pickup truck that’s trying to change lanes, holding up the traffic behind, holding up Kendrick.
‘Cool it, buddy,’ says Steiner, ‘he might get out and shoot you through the head.’
‘Damned rednecks.’ Kendrick checks his mirror with a view to overtaking, but nearly rear-ends the pickup truck.
‘Jeez,’ he says ‘that’d piss him off.’
‘Come, on, dude’ says Steiner, ‘let’s just get there in one piece.’
Once they cross Bunker Hill Bridge the traffic thins out again and the pace picks up. After what feels like it might become a journey to rival Moses’, Kendrick pulls into the staff parking lot and jumps from the car.
‘Let’s go check it out,’ he says like a bachelor going into a lap dancing club.
Kendrick ushers Steiner into his lab and casts his arm around by way of invitation to make himself at home. Steiner takes a chair at one of the rows of empty tables while Kendrick closes the window blinds. A white worktop stretches along the wall opposite the window. Empty jars, phials and clipboards are scattered on the surface, waiting for someone to get busy. Locked cupboards, some with contents labels, hang above, everything spotless. There’s no one in the lab; it looks new and unused. At the far end is a grey-coloured machine on a table, box-like, with a concave screen in the middle. In front of the screen are two chairs. Kendrick swivels one around and sits down.
‘So, come on, tell us all you know,’ he says.
‘Well, not much,’ says Steiner, taking the other chair. ‘Couple of scientists from UCLA found this …’ Steiner digs out the ball from his bag ‘… at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.’
‘Is that it?’ Kendrick looks like he’s been given socks again for Christmas. ‘It better do some fancy shit. Does it hover?’
‘Not quite, but it does vibrate.’ Steiner grins. ‘Jeez, that’s been annoying. Got any hot water? Got to be boiling. And a clamp.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ Kendrick doesn’t move, though he glances over at the coffee pot.
‘No, come on, this is the first oddity. It only opens up in hot water, and only when facing north.’
‘Ambient locks – environmental locks, whatever.’
‘Watch this.’ Steiner puts the ball on the table and turns it until he finds north.
Kendrick’s face lights up when the ball vibrates, like he’s watching a puppy perform a trick. ‘Well that’s neat,’ he says.
‘The water, John, we need the water. Don’t forget the clamp’
Kendrick fills a bowl with boiling water and places it on the table beside the ball. He picks it up and examines the structure like he might examine a baseball before pitching it. ‘Is that a seam?’
Steiner places reading glasses on his face and peers at the ball. ‘I guess so, but it won’t open, no way, until you put it in the water.’
Kendrick looks at Steiner, who seems to be delaying the big moment until Kendrick can’t wait any longer. Steiner places the ball in the water and turns it to face north. Immediately the two halves slide apart and Steiner reaches in and fastens the clamp across the centre.
‘Shit! The freaking thing’s shocked me.’
‘You didn’t mention that,’ says Kendrick.
‘Neither did the bitch in LA. Here, hand me those tongs, will you.’
Steiner lifts the ball out and passes it to Kendrick, who examines it briefly before reaching up and firing
up the machine they sit before. He places the ball inside the chamber and waits for the gas to purge the air. With the electron microscope ready, Kendrick begins analysing the hollow half of the ball, slowly moving it around under the head.
‘Cyanobacteria, he says. ‘You mentioned that on the phone, I remember.’
‘Shouldn’t we be wearing protective clothing?’
‘They’re harmless – and dead, don’t worry. Ah, now that’s interesting.’
‘What?’ Steiner steps forward, his voice giving away a boyish excitement. ‘What’s interesting?’
‘You said it was likely billions of years old?’
‘According to a biologist in LA. He thinks the cyanobacteria proves it.’
‘Take a look at this. Recognise it?’
‘No.’ Steiner frowns at the scientist. ‘Should I?’
Kendrick shrugs. ‘Ribozymes, RNA enzymes. I’ll have to do more checks but I think we might be looking at some early molecules here.’
‘How early?’
‘The very first.’
‘Jeez, that’s a big claim.’ Steiner rubs the back of his head and sits down. ‘How can you be sure?’
‘Ever heard of the RNA world hypothesis?’
‘Sure, let me see …’
‘The idea that early forms of life used RNA to store genetic material and to catalyse chemical reactions. Problem is, nobody knows how cells got that far. There are all sorts of theories about simple gases … hydrogen, methane, ammonia, getting zapped by lightning to form complex cells, but no one knows how or where that took place, or how the leap was made to self-replicating cells.’
‘Sure, I get all that, but where does this come in?’ Steiner jabs a hand at the screen.
‘Well, the current thinking is that these simple gases would need A, a power source, and B, water to react with each other.’ Kendrick sits down and takes off his glasses. ‘It isn’t thought that the early atmosphere contained sufficient water to allow chemical reactions, and we know there are no lightning storms under the ocean. So how were the two conditions met?’
