Pandaemonium

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Sir, if only you knew.

  It was a stick-on that Miss Ross and Mr Kane would be the teachers asked to go on the retreat. They were the two teachers best able to talk to the kids and more importantly, to get the kids to talk to them. And just as certain, given the choice of those two doves, was that there would have to be the biggest hawk as well, Guthrie, coming along to play bad cop. His eyes are darting back and forth, divided between reverent participation in the service and scanning the room in search of further signs of disrespect. She wonders which activity lights his fire more. Of the staff, the only one giving the altar undivided and devout attention is Miss Ross. Caitlin was unaware that she was particularly religious: the thing to look for among the staff was which teachers went up to receive communion during a school mass, because that was what separated the nominal Catholics from the genuinely practising ones. She doesn’t recall Miss Ross being in the latter group, but right now she’s got her hands clasped and her gaze locked on Father Blake with rapt attention.

  Most of the time, Caitlin can just zone out during mass, let her mind drift so that the tedium passes quicker, but occasionally she can’t help but pay attention, and that’s when the sheer inanity of it really grates on her cognitive faculties. They’re conditioned to nod their head whenever they or the priest says ‘Jesus’, but it’s taking Caitlin more and more willpower not to shake hers throughout.

  ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,

  maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.’

  AKA the Intelligent Designer. The Vatican had latterly decided it could accommodate evolution within its view of Creation (largely because it could no longer accommodate the embarrassment it was feeling by continuing to do otherwise), but it was adamant that an acceptance of evolution didn’t preclude God having started it. Yes, God set in motion this astronomically complex process but knew all along, despite the infinitely branching possibilities created by an incalculable multiplicity of random factors, that the end product would be mankind: begging the question, if that was always the plan, why did he take the long way around instead of creating mankind right off the bat?

  ‘God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,

  Through him all things were made.

  For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven . . .’

  So, having waited nine billion years for Earth to form, then held off another four and a half billion for his chosen species to fully evolve, He blows his wad early by sending down his messiah during the Bronze Age? If he wanted us to believe in Him and to live by His Word, couldn’t He have hung on another infinitesimal couple of millennia and sent his miracle-working superhero ambassador in the age of broadcast media and other verifiable means of record, instead of staking thirteen and a half billion years’ work on the reliability of a few goat-herders in an insignificant backwater of a primitive civilisation?

  ‘By the power of the Holy Spirit,

  ‘He was born of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.’

  Yeah, that seems to happen a lot with gods. The Greek myths are full of it: lonely virgin out on the hillside, gets impregnated by an, ahem, ‘god’, to explain why she’s up the stick and there’s no father in sight. Tracy O’Keefe should have tried that one when she had her wean in fourth year: It was a god that did it. He appeared on the hillside (or the Gleniston golf course, anyway), with a halo (okay, a gold hoop through one ear), and he cast a spell on her (got her fuelled up with Buckfast), then vanished back to his realm (ran off to boast to all his mates).

  ‘For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate . . .’

  Welease Wodewick! Welease Woger!

  ‘He suffered death and was buried.

  On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures . . .’

  Because those things never get rewritten after the fact.

  ‘We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.

  Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

  With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.’

  Wait a sec, didn’t you say just a minute ago that you believed in one God? You’ve now listed three. ‘Ah, but that’s a Blessed Mystery.’

  ‘We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church.

  We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

  We look for the resurrection of the dead . . .’

  No we don’t, surely. Not if we’ve seen any George Romero movies.

  ‘And the life of the world to come.’

  This will be world version 2.2, then, world 1.1 having presumably failed four and a half billion years of beta?

  ‘Amen.’

  Amen indeed.

  V

  General McCormack glances up restlessly at the row of clocks on the wall. They are all set to different time zones, each bearing two extra designations supplementary to its military one, as a courtesy to the other constituencies represented at the facility. The one showing local time thus reads London, GMT and Zulu, but by any name, it demonstrates inarguably that the meeting should have started five minutes ago. Not long in Tullian’s world, but to a military mind, surely an aeon.

  They are in the Command Room, which on three sides could be the interior of any military building in the world, but from the fourth is an elevated perspective upon why right now it’s more important than any of the rest. A vast single pane of specially developed reinforced Plexiglas affords a view of live rock adorned with pipes, cables, vents, dials and LEDs, plunging forty feet to the observation platform, then thirty more to the floor of what has been christened the Cathedral. The nickname had been a harmless irreverence that in retrospect now looked like an odiously mordant perversion. Down below, sustained by this vast steel, plastic, copper and fibreglass respiratory system, and nurtured by billions of dollars’ worth of research and technology, lies the greatest folly since the Tower of Babel.

  The magnitude of its hubris has latterly been appreciated by the other men around the room, but the difference between Tullian and his military counterparts is that he is the only one to understand that the threat presented is not merely to man’s future on this Earth, but to his ultimate fate in the life beyond.

  McCormack may be visibly agitated, but Tullian, while concealing it better, is on tenterhooks.

  ‘My arse is making buttons,’ he recalls a joyously and unapologetically coarse Irish colleague once remarking as they awaited the outcome of a vote. The issue at stake had meant more to Cardinal Daly and thus Tullian had regarded it as merely a colourfully crude remark. Here, today, he appreciates how close to the literal it was.

  People imagined that military battles only took place in fields of mud and rubble-strewn landscapes. In truth, wars could be won and lost around oak tables like the one he was seated at right now. After four decades a priest, he was used to decisions being in the gift of superiors; and just as accustomed to decisions being in the gift of another estate. In both arenas, the arts of judicious lobbying and subtle persuasion could always tip the scales, and though he had found that the volatile factors of arrogance and caprice were less pronounced when it came to the military, one could never rule out a change in the wind, so he was taking nothing for granted when the stakes were this high.

  McCormack looks at the bank of clocks again. ‘Goddamn it,’ he grumbles. ‘Where in the hell is Steinmeyer? If that sonofabitch can’t be assed turning up to hear it from the horse’s mouth, then he can’t complain if he just ends up reading the news in his email.’

  ‘He’ll be here, sir,’ urges Havelock anxiously, always Steinmeyer’s advocate, even if Steinmeyer lacked the vision to notice this. The physicist had become so entrenched in his siege mentality that he saw enemies all around him and no longer had the sense to recognise who his allies were.

  Tullian, despite his caution, can’t help but feel relief seep in as he listens to McCormack’s words. Hear it, read the news. This isn’t a meeting, it’s an announcem
ent, and there’s only one announcement it could be.

  He thanks God and with this thought immediately feels his relief turn to a different kind of anxiety, that which always accompanies getting what you had prayed for: a vertiginous uncertainty as to whether God was acting in approval of your desire, or granting your wishes in order to teach you a difficult lesson. In either case, it marked the onset of a great and testing task. When your prayers were answered, it was not a resolution, but a beginning: God was not taking matters into His own hands, but placing greater trust in your own. Even an act of God can be futile if the will of man is weak in response. Thus Tullian endures a burden of expectation underpinned by the driving, hollow fear of what it would feel like to fail.

  I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth . . .

  Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

  ‘I swear, Havelock,’ McCormack begins, prompting Colonel Havelock to get to his feet and move towards the door, perhaps intending to retrieve Steinmeyer personally. His intentions are rendered moot as the professor finally makes his appearance, with the fraught and agitated air of a man who doesn’t believe he can spare even seconds for anything not immediately pertinent to his own agenda. Unfortunately for him, this is likely to prove more than merely an unwelcome distraction.

  Steinmeyer looks as frantic as he does exhausted. Tullian guesses he has barely slept in a week, sustaining himself on caffeine and energy bars, relegating rest to the status of unaffordable luxury. Like Tullian, he must know what’s coming; must have known it for days, which is why he has lashed himself to the mast and clung to the helm before time runs out.

  Tullian feels for him, quite achingly so. Steinmeyer is a passionate, driven man, whom he admires for qualities he sincerely aspires towards in himself. His desire is pure, his dedication is absolute and he has no thought for base rewards: not for glory nor riches, only for knowledge and truth. He has foregone both renown and remuneration, guided in his choices only by what will afford him the greatest opportunity to pursue his work, and cares not for posterity, wishing simply to bequeath a legacy that may be built upon by those unknown who will one day follow him. Tullian wishes that in his church there were but a dozen cardinals of whom he could say as much.

  However, the one quality Tullian can lay claim to that Steinmeyer lacks is the humility of knowing when something greater than your own passion should be deferred to, regardless of how altruistic you believe that passion to be. Steinmeyer has lost perspective through a process that began with his own selflessness - a difficult lesson that many a priest has learned the hard way - discounting the cost to himself of his work as of no regard. At the end of that path, unfortunately, lies a dark place where to further one’s work, any cost becomes a necessary price, no matter what may be wrought in its extraction.

  Steinmeyer was lost in that place, consumed by a quest, as Marlowe put it in Faustus, ‘to practise more than heavenly power permits’.

  He stands at the edge of the table for a moment, as though hopeful that he can pay his scant regard to the meeting and then swiftly be on his way again. General McCormack gestures to a chair, the strain on his patience vented with a sigh.

  ‘You better have a seat,’ Havelock urges. ‘This is important.’

  Steinmeyer casts an arch glance towards Tullian, the implication of which is unmistakable: if the cardinal is involved, then as far as he is concerned, it clearly isn’t important.

  The suffering physicist is consumed with anger to the point that it must be shrivelling his soul. Tullian has tried tirelessly to reach out to him, even just to help him talk through his grievances, but he’s balled up too tight to accept any olive branches. His entrenched position is that he refuses to recognise any legitimacy to Tullian’s presence here at all, regarding it as an affront to his scientific principles. Tullian can sympathise: he respects the boundaries between their respective domains, but it is for this reason that he deeply wishes he did have no business here, and that Steinmeyer’s attitude was merely impolite. Unfortunately, the reality is that under the current circumstances, his obduracy is reckless, and worst of all, unscientific.

  ‘We’re shutting it down,’ McCormack says, before Steinmeyer’s back has hit the leather of the chair. ‘There, Colonel Havelock told you it was important,’ he adds with unnecessary spite, perhaps in retaliation for being made to wait.

  Steinmeyer all but gags on the news, and while he searches for his voice, McCormack presses the point home.

  ‘You can spare me the histrionics, Professor. This can’t be coming as a surprise.’

  Steinmeyer’s nostrils flare as he fights to control his rage. Tullian feels his own pulse increase in the fear that the professor will do something rash, as they are surrounded by strong and dangerous men, most of whom are only marginally less tired and overwrought than Steinmeyer.

  ‘Lucius,’ Havelock implores, ‘we appreciate you’re gonna be angry, but don’t go burning any bridges here.’

  There is silence for a long few seconds, then Steinmeyer speaks.

  ‘It’s no surprise, General,’ he concedes, though his tone implies that this is the only concession he’s about to make. ‘I realised you had suffered a terminal failure of nerve back on day one of the anomaly, when instead of massively expanding the scientific roster, you called in the chaplain. After that, it was only a matter of time.’

  ‘Failure of nerve?’ McCormack responds. He’s very slow to anger, a difficult man to upset, but there is a growing exasperation to his demeanour that began long, long before this meeting commenced. ‘You have no idea where your debts lie, Professor. It’s only because of me that you were allowed to keep this freak show running. I’m the one who has kept the Pentagon in the dark about just how far off the reservation you’ve taken us here, and I may yet get handed my ass for it.’

  ‘Well I’d sure hate this epoch-making scientific discovery to have a deleterious effect on your career, General.’

  ‘It’s not my career I’m concerned about. There will be no shortage of wars for men like me to fight if we don’t put a lid on this thing. It’s potentially the biggest powderkeg this planet has ever seen.’

  ‘Which is why you shouldn’t be “putting a lid on it”. You should be escalating this operation: there ought to be ten times the number of scientists down here in order to understand what we’ve discovered. Instead you sent half the science staff away after the anomaly appeared because you didn’t want them to see anything they might tell somebody about. We’ve made a discovery that could change our understanding of the nature of the universe, that could provide the primer for the Unified Theory, and since then all we’ve had down here looking into it is a skeleton staff. Opportunities like this need men of courage, General. It’s all right to feel awe, but can’t you dial down the fear? You’re all so scared.’

  ‘Damn right we’re scared,’ the General thunders, slapping the table with the heel of his palm and knocking over two bottles of mineral water at the far end. ‘Scared of more than it would even occur to you to imagine. A lot of people are scared, people who have greater responsibilities than compiling equations or separating quarks and gluons. When I say powderkeg, you think I’m only talking about what’s coming through the looking glass. I mean, did you ever notice, over the past few years, maybe the odd time you lifted your head up from the particle accelerators, that there are one or two folks out there in the world who tend to get a little bit exercised over the subject of religion? So don’t you see how the ramifications of our little science project might just make every government on the planet a teensy bit nervous?’

  ‘We can’t halt our quest to further our understanding on account of the superstitious fools who wish to wallow in ignorance. Knowledge is the antidote to superstition, General.’

  ‘Yeah, Professor, it would work like that, because people would read the fine print and sift through the scientific interpretations, wouldn’t they? Jesus Chri
st, man, can you imagine what kind of hysterical apocalyptic shit would be unleashed upon the world if just one of those things got out, or if people even just started hearing rumours about what we’ve found here?’

  ‘We don’t know what we’ve found here,’ Steinmeyer replies furiously, his bloodshot, caffeine-strung eyes bulging in his indignation. ‘Finding out what we’ve discovered is the point of the exercise. It’s called science.’

  ‘No, Steinmeyer, this has turned into something way beyond goddamn science, and you’re too intoxicated by it to admit you’re out of your depth. You came here looking for the fabled graviton. You even warned me that if you could merge gravity with the other three forces, it might warp the fabric of space-time and create a miniature black hole. But you ain’t telling me you were expecting any of this shit.’

  ‘Well I sure as hell wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition. This was a scientific operation—’

  ‘It is - and always was - a military operation,’ McCormack reminds him.

  ‘Quite, and yet you’ve handed the reins to the Vatican’s spook patrol.’

  Tullian doesn’t rise to the bait, though he did have to bite back a fleeting desire to say: ‘No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.’ Much as humour could, in his experience, be entrusted to defuse certain situations, this wasn’t one of them. Steinmeyer’s anger was driven by the awareness that he had already lost this battle; it would only blow itself out once he felt he had made his point, so attempting to make light of the situation would be counterproductive.