Mysterium

by Robert Charles Wilson

  The time passed. He sat at the big desk and pretended to grade assignments. The assignments were real, and he kept them in front of him and remembered to turn a page now and again, but the words were unintelligible. The printed or handwritten letters had developed lives of their own; they bobbled over the paper like loose balloons.

  The urge to put his head down and sleep was powerfully strong, and by the end of his second class he was afraid he would simply nod off—his head was inclining when the bell rang. Students shuffled out, some looking at him oddly. Shelda Burmeister, a studious girl in high-powered corrective lenses and a torn turquoise sweater, paused at his desk until the others were gone. “Mr. Graham?”

  “Yes?” He swiveled the weighty beam of his attention toward her. “What is it, Shelda?”

  “I think you cut yourself.” She nodded at the desktop.

  He looked down. Blood had traveled down his left arm and pooled just beyond the cuff of his coat. About a tablespoon, he thought.

  “I guess I did,” he said. “I mean, cut myself. Thank you, Shelda.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  “Yes. Go on. I’m fine.”

  She left. He stood up. More blood trickled down the wounded arm. Now he was conscious of the distasteful warmth of it. He held the cuff closed and moved to the door. Maybe he could clean up in the staff men’s room, change the bandage. . . .

  The door opened before he reached it and Linneth Stone stepped into the classroom. She was fresh and impossibly radiant in a white blouse, gray skirt. He looked at her with some confusion.

  “Dex? I know we didn’t have an appointment. But the afternoon was free and I thought—Dex? My God, what happened?”

  She caught him as he fell and lowered him to the floor. There was blood on the blouse. He meant to apologize. I’m sorry, he wanted to say. But Linneth, the classroom, the school, all vanished into a sudden night.

  MYSTERIUM TREMENDAE

  PART TWO

  The past gives birth to the present.

  According to the laws of thermodynamics, nothing dies; only form changes. We reenact our evolution in the womb. As a species, our history is engraved in every cell.

  But evolution can only operate under the dicta of natural law—the evolution of the universe as much as the evolution of life. In the first nanosecond of the primordial singularity, everything that now exists became an implication needing only time to achieve embodiment. The early universe contained human consciousness the way an acorn contains an oak.

  The Gnostics speak of the Protennoia: Mind as the original substance of the world; a Protennoia derived from an Uncreated God, aggenetos (ungenerated) and androgynous.

  Humanity as a fractal subset of Mind in an imperfect Pleroma. Our divine spark, our apospasma theion, an ember of the Big Bang. Consciousness=the quantum mechanics of the archaic universe erupting into cold matter through the medium of humanity.

  I think we are the lever by which something unspeakably ancient moves the world.

  —from the secret journal of Alan Stern

  CHAPTER 11

  Coming back to the capital, even for a week, was a restorative for Symeon Demarch. No matter what happened here—and he expected nothing good from his scheduled meeting with Bisonette—he would have time to draw at least a few unfettered breaths.

  He rode a truck to Fort LeDuc, where a ponderous air transport waited on the military runway. The airplane had been outfitted with a padded wooden bench along its steel inner wall, an instant nuisance to Demarch’s spine, and the four smoky engines with their immense blades rattled the fuselage and deafened the passengers. The most reliable air transportation had gone to the western front months ago. But Demarch forgot his discomfort as soon as the vehicle lifted above a plain of cloud and wheeled away from the setting sun. He was going home.

  He let his attention focus on the circular window opposite him and his thoughts drift away. Except when the plane banked into a turn there was only the sky to see, a winter blue turning to ink at the apex. The electrical heating labored and Demarch turned up the collar of his veston.

  It was altogether dark when the aircraft circled down to the capital. The city was invisible except for its lights, but Demarch’s spirits were buoyed by the sight. All that grid of electricity was familiar territory. Parts of it he knew by heart. He picked out the stone pavilions of the Bureau Centrality as the plane lost altitude, a few windows shining in the hierarchs’ buildings and watch lanterns burning in the courtyards. Then a landing field rose to meet the wheels.

  He shuffled out of the aircraft with the other passengers, a few enlisted men who watched him guardedly as he crossed the tarmac to a waiting car. The Bureau had sent him a vehicle and driver. The driver spoke no English and his French was deeply accented. A Haitian, Demarch supposed. A number of Haitians had lately been imported to fill menial jobs emptied by conscription.

  “Neige,” the driver said. “Bientôt, je pense.” Snow soon. No doubt, Demarch told him, and let the conversation languish. He was happy with his own musing as the miles spooled past. There was not much traffic even in the narrow streets where the sacral brothels were. But it was late, and of course there was the gasoline rationing. One saw more horse-drawn vehicles these days than before the war. Dorothea had written him about a sugar shortage, too. Everything was rationed. But the fundamental nature of the countryside hadn’t changed, especially here beyond the city center. Telegraph poles lined the cobbled road, and the smell of burning sod was pungent in the cold air.

  He was surprised at the upwelling of pleasure he felt when the car came abreast of the house. It was a small house compared to the rambling compounds of the Censeurs farther west, but spacious enough and respectably old. It had belonged to an uncle of Dorothea’s and still did not properly belong to Demarch; it was an extended loan from the Saussère family during his posting to the capital. But he had lived here for ten years. It was as much a home as any place had ever been. More so.

  He thanked the driver and walked briskly up the stone steps to the door. The door opened before he touched it. Dorothea stood in a halo of lamplight, perfect and beckoning. Light twinkled from the silver crucifix pinned to her bodice. He embraced her and she offered her powdered cheek for a kiss.

  Christof peeked at him from behind a banister, frowning. Well, Christof had always been shy at reunions. It was hard for him to have a father so often absent. But that was what it meant to be born into a Bureau family.

  Dorothea whispered, “Father is here.” And Demarch saw the wheelchair rolling from the study, Armand Saussère seeming to smile but as inscrutable as ever behind his vastly old face.

  Demarch closed the door on the night air. The smell of home surrounded him. “Christof, come here,” he said. But Christof kept his wary distance.

  The same driver arrived in the morning to take him to town. The temperature had dropped but the sky was cloudless. “Pas de neige,” the driver said. No snow. Not yet.

  Demarch let familiar sights lull him until the car passed under the eagle gates of the Bureau Centrality. The Centrality was a town of its own, with its good and bad neighborhoods, its loved and hated citizens. The Censeurs in their black hats and soutanes moved across the courtyard between the Ordinage and Propaganda wings like stalking birds. Demarch felt compromised in his simple lieutenant’s uniform. When he worked here he had seldom crossed the invisible line separating staff officers from the hierarchs’ quarters . . . unless he was summoned, always a frightening episode. Well, today he had been summoned, too.

  He left the Haitian driver and crossed the pebbled yard to the Département Administratif. The halls inside were marbled and high and supported by half-columns set into the walls. This was the heart of the Centrality, part temple, part government. It was a more powerful government, within its sphere, than the Praesidium a mile away. Clerks and pages called it “the capital’s capital.”

  Censeur Bisonette waited in a conference room, a tall room with a mosaic floor and
a long oaken table. Bisonette was at ease in a high-backed chair, his angular face composed. He didn’t stand when Demarch entered. Demarch stepped forward and bowed. His footsteps echoed from the high ceiling. Everything here was designed to intimidate. Everything did.

  “Sit,” Bisonette croaked. They would speak English. It was a concession, or an insult, or both. “I want you to know our thoughts on the investigation.”

  Our thoughts: the Bureau’s new doctrine. The investigation: Two Rivers. Among the hierarchs it was always the investigation, a nebulous enquiry whose object must never be named or defined. Demarch had learned the protocol in those first mad months.

  Bisonette said, “The inventory and warehousing should be speeded up. Another military detail has been assigned—they’ll be there when you get back. I want you to report to me on their progress.”

  “I will.”

  “The technical and academic assessments can proceed apace. How is that going, by the way?”

  “A great deal has been written. Ultimately, I don’t know how valuable it will be. Copies have gone to the Ideological Branch, but I can have them forwarded directly to the Département if you’d prefer.”

  “No, never mind. Let the archivists deal with it. There was an explosion, I understand . . .”

  “A fire at a gasoline depot.”

  “Accidental or sabotage?”

  “Well, we aren’t sure. It seems now as if a militiaman might have neglected to set his hand brake. There was a robbery, but the fire may be coincidental.”

  “May be?”

  “It’s impossible to know, at this stage.”

  “Delafleur insists it was sabotage.”

  Wasn’t it Bisonette himself who had called Delafleur “a pompous idiot”? Demarch sensed Bureau politics at work here, a turn of the wheel, probably not to his advantage. “Of course it could have been, but there’s no way to prove it.”

  “Personally speaking, though, you have a suspicion?”

  “A simple robbery and a careless soldier. But again, I can’t present evidence.”

  “Yes, I do understand that. Your bets are covered, Lieutenant Demarch.”

  He felt himself blushing.

  The Censeur said, “We don’t want to see any more episodes of the kind. But in the end it doesn’t matter, because we’ve advanced our schedule.”

  It took a moment for the significance of that to sink in. When it did, Demarch felt faintly dizzy. “The weapon,” he said.

  Bisonette nodded, watching him closely. “Progress has been faster than we expected. We’ve already dispatched engineers to erect a test gantry. The prototype should be available within a matter of weeks.”

  “I thought—you said the spring.”

  “That’s changed. Do you object, Lieutenant Demarch?”

  How could he? “No. Although I wonder if it gives us time to extract everything we can from the, ah, enquiry.”

  “Oh, I think we’ve extracted a considerable amount. We’ll be mining the archival material for decades, you know, from what I understand. I think that’s enough. We can’t really let the situation stand as it is, Lieutenant. None of us knows what happened in that place and I doubt that any of us ever will—it’s beyond comprehension, which is to say it’s in the nature of a miracle. If we wait to understand it, we’ll be waiting until the end of time. In the meantime there’s a real risk of contagion, both figuratively and literally. You might look at their medical arcana some time. These people may be carrying diseases, and that poses an immediate risk. They’re certainly carrying ideological diseases.” He shook his head. “The site has to be burned, and if I had my choice I would sow the ground with salt—though if this weapon operates as promised, that won’t be necessary.”

  Demarch tried to rein in his thoughts. Be practical, he instructed himself. “It might take time to make arrangements. People will be suspicious if we start shipping out soldiers en masse.”

  “I’m sure they would. But most of the soldiers won’t be shipped out.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Bisonette shrugged as if to dismiss an annoying triviality. “The town was manned by second-rate troops. They’ve seen more than we want them talking about. They’re disease vectors, at least in the figurative sense. But don’t worry. We’ll extract the people we trust.”

  After he left Bisonette he made an unscheduled stop at the small peripheral building marked ENQUÊTES, where he had once held a desk job. He kept his collar up and walked briskly to the office of Guy Marris, an old friend.

  Friendship was important in the Centrality. Friendship governed what gossip you heard, the pivot on which a career might turn. Guy had been a wine friend, in Bureau jargon: someone you trusted enough to get drunk with.

  Guy’s office was a small room—a closet, compared to Bisonette’s conference chamber. Guy, a bespectacled man with more gray hair than Demarch remembered, looked up from a stack of requisition forms. “Symeon!”

  Demarch nodded and they talked for a time, the usual what-are-you-doing-back-in-town and what-about-the-family. But this wasn’t entirely a social visit, and Demarch began to drop hints to that effect, until Guy said, “You want a document—is that it?”

  “I need a set of identification papers. Really just the basics. Enough for someone to show at checkpoints or to an employer.”

  Guy studied his face for a long moment and then said, “Come with me.”

  They walked to the courtyard, a standard maneuver if you wanted privacy. Demarch wondered why, after all these years, the hierarchs had never found a way to eavesdrop on this windy common. Or maybe they had. Or maybe they knew about it and still permitted a sliver of secrecy: no machine runs efficiently without a little grease.

  Guy Marris shivered at the frigid air. He took a Victoire cigarette from the package in his breast pocket and lit it with a match. “I think this is unofficial work you’re talking about.”

  “Yes,” Demarch admitted.

  “Well . . . tell me the essentials. I don’t promise anything.”

  “A woman. Mid-thirties. Make her thirty-five. Dark hair. Height, five foot eight. Weight, say ten stone.”

  “She sounds intriguing.”

  “You still write documents, I hope.” There were times when Bureau operatives needed manufactured identification, and Enquêtes was the department they came to—at least, that was how it was done when Demarch worked here.

  “Oh, we do documents,” Guy said, “that hasn’t changed, but an unauthorized requisition . . .” He shook his head. “I suppose I could attribute it to someone else. But everything is signed for, Symeon. My name ends up on the paperwork one way or another. Mind you, if it reaches the file room, it’s as good as lost.” He smiled. “Have you seen Records? We call it the Library of Babel. But in the meantime, if anyone asks questions . . .”

  Demarch nodded. He already felt guilty about asking. About jeopardizing a friend.

  “Forgive me,” Guy said, “but you never struck me as the type. A liaison is a liaison, but you never let it get between you and the Bureau. Is this a special woman?”

  “I don’t mean to bring her home to Dorothea. Only to save her life.”

  Which was true. His feeling about Evelyn Woodward was that she didn’t deserve to die. It didn’t go deeper than that, because he wouldn’t allow it to.

  His father-in-law had once warned him to beware of women. They’re dangerous, he had said, grinning lewdly. They make your soft parts hard. And your hard parts soft.

  Briefly, Demarch wondered what hardness inside him Evelyn Woodward had somehow managed to thaw.

  The wind was cold and Guy was beginning to seem nervous. The tip of his Victoire flared as he drew on it, and the tobacco crackled in the chill air. “How long can you wait?”

  “A week.”

  “That’s not much.”

  “I know.”

  Guy Marris took a last draw on the cigarette and crushed it under the heel of a dress shoe. “Come see me before you l
eave.”

  “Thank you,” Demarch said.

  “No, don’t thank me yet.”

  He gave Christof a toy he had brought from Two Rivers: it was called a Rubik’s Cube, Evelyn had said, and Christof was delighted with the unexpected way it turned and twisted in his hands. He insisted on taking it to bed. Dorothea led him upstairs, and Demarch sipped an evening brandy with his beaupère, his father-in-law Armand. They sat in the library under the eye of more than five hundred books, property of the Saussère family—mainly bound collections of sermons, some of them older than Armand himself. Demarch had never liked this room.

  Armand sat brooding in his wheelchair. Five years ago he had suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right leg and removed him from active Bureau duty. His mind was unaffected, the doctors said, but since the stroke he had seemed more withdrawn, less apt to share himself.

  Tonight the brandy seemed to loosen him. He turned his head slowly and fixed Demarch with a birdlike one-eyed gaze. “Symeon . . . this hasn’t been an easy posting for you, has it?”

  “You mean the enquiry?”

  “Yes. The ‘enquiry.’ We’re so shy of words. Plain words are dangerous. But make allowances for me. I’m short of wind. Tempted to brevity. It must be difficult for you.”

  “Well, I think I’ve done a respectable job.”

  “Hard for a man to preside over such strangeness.”

  You don’t know the half of it, Demarch thought. But Armand still cultivated his Bureau contacts: he obviously knew more than Demarch would have guessed. He said, “Of course. . . .”

  “And so many deaths.”

  “Actually, there haven’t been many.”

  “But there will be. And you know it.”

  “Yes.” He shrugged. “I don’t think about it.”