Pandaemonium

by Christopher Brookmyre

‘Right. I’m not your mammy, lads, and I’m not here to say “lights out”. You’re all big boys now. Just don’t kick the arse out of it - remember we’ve got a long day tomorrow. Nighty-night.’

  Several boys reply, ‘Good night, sir,’ from inside their rooms, in a variety of giggling silly voices. Kane smiles to himself, making a counting-down gesture with his fingers. Four, three, two, one:

  ‘Good night, John-Boy,’ calls out Deso.

  Damn it: he had Beansy in the sweep.

  He is about to walk away when he notices that one door remains closed, and his geography tells him it’s likely to be the room with no lights on. Kane approaches tentatively, his hand slowly reaching out to the handle and turning it, revealing the interior to be indeed in darkness. A thin and widening wedge of light streaks across the floor. It picks out only the edge of one bed. He sticks his head through the gap, at which point a pale-coloured shape flies at speed towards him.

  It strikes him in the face and he bats away what turns out to be a pillow.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ issues an irritated voice. ‘Light pollution, man. Shut the bloody door.’

  Stepping fully into the room, Kane sees Adnan, Radar, Matt, Ewan and Cameron gathered around a telescope, which is pointed out of the open window at the vividly starry night sky. It is at this point that Adnan spots who he’s talking to.

  ‘Oh fuck, sorry, sir. And sorry about the language too,’ he adds, a smile in his voice though his face is in darkness.

  ‘Don’t rip the piss, Adnan,’ Kane replies. ‘How’s the seeing?’

  ‘Different class.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the middle of nowhere for you.’

  ‘Take a look.’

  Kane makes his way delicately to the telescope and peers into the eyepiece. He sees a bright circular disc, a hint of grey-blue around its edges.

  ‘Venus?’ he suggests.

  ‘Good spot.’

  ‘Looks like it’s a ten-bob bus fare away, doesn’t it, sir?’ says Radar.

  ‘Try thirty million miles when it passes closest,’ says Adnan. ‘And that’s the nearest planet. The nearest star is Proxima Centauri, four light years away.’

  ‘I’ll leave you guys to it,’ Kane says. He exits and closes the door.

  Adnan gives himself a moment for his eyes to readjust, then makes some alterations to the telescope’s position, keying in the corresponding coordinates on the computerised alt-azimuth mount.

  ‘This is Polaris, the North Star,’ he says.

  Ewan has a look.

  ‘It’s actually two stars in binary orbit, but it looks like one because it’s four hundred and thirty light years away.’

  ‘Wow. So that means what I’m seeing here is actually . . .’

  ‘Four hundred and thirty years ago, yeah. Shakespeare was live onstage when that light started its journey.’

  ‘How did you get into this?’ Ewan asks him. ‘Did you get a telescope when you were wee?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ Adnan answers. ‘I got a scope when I was wee because I was already into it. It was the winter that started me off.’

  ‘Whit? Early dark? Clear skies?’

  ‘No. When I was a kid, I hated being cold, and when winter was coming, I used to wonder why it had to. Was there any reason, maybe, why one year it might not, and we’d get the same weather all year round? I didn’t understand why there had to be seasons. Then I found out it was an astronomy question.’

  ‘Because the Earth goes round the sun,’ Cameron suggests.

  ‘No; well, partly. It’s because of the Earth’s axial tilt. During half our orbit, the northern hemisphere is closer to the sun, and during the other half, it’s the southern. That got me thinking about what was in the sky as solid objects rather than just lights and dots. Got my first scope when I was ten.’

  ‘I’d just have been using it to see in lassies’ windaes,’ Radar says.

  ‘Only if you get turned on by looking at folk upside down,’ says Matt, making one of his rare but insightful, if arcane, contributions.

  ‘How’s that?’ Radar asks, but Matt doesn’t answer.

  ‘The image is inverted,’ Adnan tells him, keying in a new set of coordinates. ‘Doesn’t make much difference when you’re looking at stars. In space, there’s no such thing as the right way up. Now, get a load of this.’

  They take it in turns to have a look.

  ‘It’s Andromeda.’

  ‘Is that a star? Looks a bit like a hamburger.’

  ‘It’s a whole galaxy.’

  ‘Fuck, so it is,’ Cameron says. ‘Like a flattened disc.’

  ‘The Earth wasn’t flat, but it turned out the universe is,’ Matt mumbles.

  ‘Messier 31,’ Adnan informs them. ‘Two hundred thousand light years across. It’s the nearest galaxy to here, and it’s heading towards us on collision course at three hundred thousand miles an hour.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Cameron shouts, and dives theatrically out of the way, prompting much hilarity.

  ‘Don’t sweat. It’s two and a half million light years away. We’ve got three billion years before impact.’

  ‘Nothing can travel faster than light,’ Radar says. ‘I remember Mr Kane telling us that. So that means humans are never going to reach these places, are we?’

  ‘Not travelling on a linear plane, no. In fact, the universe is expanding at such a rate of acceleration that the light from the more distant parts of it will never reach us. But that’s only talking about movement in three dimensions.’

  ‘Well what other dimensions could you be talking about?’ Radar asks. ‘The fifth one, with Mr Mxyzptlk from Superman?’

  ‘Physicists are increasingly accepting that there may be higher dimensions, as well as parallel universes.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Cameron asks, lifting his head from the scope and letting Ewan jump in.

  ‘Straight up,’ Adnan assures him. ‘Our universe could be a four-dimensional island floating in higher-dimensional space, one of an infinity of islands, in fact. But the thing about this higher dimension is that if we could see it, if we could move through it, we’d have a very different concept of distance.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, think about an ant on this duvet.’

  ‘More like a flea if it’s Radar’s,’ Ewan suggests.

  ‘Shut it you, ya fudnut.’

  ‘The point is, the ant is only moving in two dimensions: width and length. It can’t access - and isn’t even aware of - what is effectively a higher dimension: height. So if there was a group of ants on this duvet and you picked one up, it would look to its mates like it had dematerialised. You put it down again on the other side of them, and it looks to the ants like it’s been teleported. But all that’s happened is it’s moved through a dimension the ants can’t see and aren’t aware of. We move in three dimensions, plus the dimension of time, but if there was a fifth dimension, the same effect could apply to us.’

  ‘You could perform surgery without breaking the skin,’ says Matt, grasping the principle and expanding on it in his familiarly skewed way. ‘To a fifth-dimensional being, our anatomy would look like a cut-away diagram.’

  ‘But how would we cover distance quicker?’ Radar asks. ‘The ant still has to travel - it hasn’t taken a short-cut.’

  ‘There’s a limit to the analogy,’ Adnan admits. ‘But if you can imagine, our perception of three-dimensional distance might not reflect reality, just like the ant’s perception of two-D distance. Look at this.’

  Adnan takes a corner of the duvet in his hand.

  ‘The ant is here, right, at one end of this wee universe. To get to the opposite corner, it’s a long distance in two-D space, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye,’ Radar and Cameron agree.

  ‘Now watch this.’

  Adnan folds the duvet diagonally until the opposite corners are held only an inch apart. ‘The distance in two-D space remains the same, but the distance in three-D space is much shorter.’

  ‘Wow,’ Camer
on says. ‘That’s just . . .’

  Adnan witnesses Cameron’s awe in HUD-mode for a moment. He pictures the word OVERLOAD flashing across the screen, counter bars pulsing into the red zones at either side.

  ‘We think of space as a place,’ he continues, ‘or even an absence of material, but scientifically you need to think of it almost like a substance itself. That’s why parallel universes, if they exist, could be only a molecule’s width apart from our own: a universe creates its own space.’

  In Adnan’s HUD, Cameron’s head actually explodes.

  Guthrie has a darkening glower about him, sighing with a dissatisfaction that appears to be growing in proportion to his obvious efforts to refrain from expressing it. There’s been a weird atmosphere since Kane left, exacerbated by it being his bedroom that they’re sitting in. Kane had allowed Guthrie the last word and perhaps tactfully chosen that moment to withdraw, but he knew that Guthrie’s values would be affronted that they were even having such a discussion at all. Consequently it feels to Blake a bit like Kane farted and then left everyone else to smell it.

  ‘I should have gone for Beansy,’ Blake says, harking back to the sweep to lighten the mood. ‘Schoolboy error picking Roxburgh. Too grown-up these days, or aspiring to be.’

  ‘Yep,’ Heather agrees. ‘That’s why I went for Deso. Unapologetically juvenile. Dan’s on a decent shout with Radar.’

  But Guthrie’s not going to be soft-soaped.

  ‘With all respect, Father Blake, I think it’s high time you stopped apologising for your church and started standing up for it. All this so-called atheism is just a fashion, a trend. They know the truth deep down and that’s why they all change their tune as soon as they realise they need God.’

  ‘They don’t seem to be realising it in great numbers,’ Blake replies softly. ‘My growing fear is that I’m part of a dying way of life. How many kids who’ve been through St Peter’s in your time ended up becoming priests?’

  ‘That’s just my point, Father. Secular influences: it’s not trendy. But trends are localised. There’s no shortage of priests coming through from the developing world, where they’re less worried about their hairstyles, or what’s being said about them on each other’s web pages.’

  ‘Yes. The priesthood is a popular vocation where there’s mass poverty, low literacy and limited access to communications technology. That isn’t telling me the same good news as it’s telling you.’

  ‘Of course, there is a simple solution,’ Heather ventures.

  Guthrie turns towards her with genuine interest. It’s clear he has no idea what she’s about to suggest, which is entirely the point she’s making.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Start ordaining women.’

  Guthrie sighs with irritation, like he was genuinely hoping to hear something constructive but has instead merely received another ‘anti-Catholic’ jibe. However, it’s Blake whom Heather decides to put on the spot about it.

  ‘Why not?’ she asks him. ‘Do oestrogen levels interfere with the process of transubstantiation?’

  ‘No, we’re concerned that you’ll start knitting in the middle of mass, or giving sermons about shoes.’

  ‘Seriously, Con, why not?’

  She’s looking at him with something he just can’t read. There’s a mischief, a toying about her, and yet there’s something else she wants from him, an invitation to break ranks on her behalf.

  ‘Jesus didn’t pick women. He created a priesthood of men.’

  ‘That’s the party line. What do you believe?’

  ‘Any priest who declares in favour of female ordination would be doing so against the Deposit of Faith: the body of unchangeable teachings entrusted by Christ to his apostles.’

  He hopes she hears his real answer, encoded in the word ‘would’, but if so, she doesn’t look satisfied.

  ‘I think the Church would rather crash and burn than cave in on that one,’ she opines.

  ‘It would crash and burn if it did cave in,’ declares Guthrie. ‘Because it wouldn’t be the Church any more. That’s what the modernists and apologists don’t understand. We can’t start throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If we keep bowing to transient values just to be popular, then we end up giving away the farm.’

  Heather puts down her glass, still with the best part of a measure in it, and stands up.

  ‘I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence,’ she says. ‘But in defiance of the Book of Timothy, being a teacher, I’m away to shout at Kane to get a shift on.’

  And then there were two.

  Guthrie pours himself another shot from Kane’s bottle, while Blake braces himself for a sustained onslaught that he really can’t be bothered with after a long day. Instead, however, Guthrie necks it in one and gets to his feet.

  ‘I’m for my cot,’ he says, stretching.

  Before he goes, though, he puts a paternal hand on Blake’s shoulder.

  ‘Stand fast, Father,’ he says. ‘Take strength from the Lord. This church has endured for two thousand years, and it’s had harder things to face in that time than the goggle box and the internet. It’s God’s will, and none can oppose it.’

  Blake gives him a smile and a nod that he hopes look convincing.

  I wish I had your faith, he thinks. I wish I had your faith.

  ‘How’s things on the distaff side of the fire doors?’ Kane asks.

  ‘Calm,’ Heather tells him. ‘Winding down into late-night blethers mode. I’m just putting in an appearance for show: I think both sides know who’s going to crash out first.’

  ‘Aye. We can get our revenge in the morning, though. Wake them up early and kick in their hangovers.’

  Heather realises he’s only half joking. Despite dire announcements about being sent home instantly if booze was found on them, everybody knew it would still be flowing, even Guthrie. It was a matter of entrusting the kids to police themselves: it wouldn’t be an issue unless any of them were daft enough to make it one.

  They’re walking slowly along the link corridor that forms an alternative route back towards reception, avoiding a trip back through the boys’ corridor. It’s fairly quiet, just the occasional burst of laughter.

  ‘You’re fifteen quid up, by the way,’ Blake tells her. ‘The sweep.’

  ‘Oh, nice. I’ll put it towards more malt. Actually, on second thought . . .’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kane says, a hint of a blush about him. She expected him to be unapologetic, even perversely proud of starting a rammy, but she sees something else. It’s as though he’s been caught doing something, and she thinks she knows what it is.

  ‘I used to think that Guthrie got on Con’s case, but I’m starting to realise: Dan’s a pussycat compared to you.’

  ‘It’s not what it looks like,’ he insists. ‘Con and I go way back. We’ve been friends since before we were the age of the kids here. We like to butt heads, philosophically, but it’s just a debate, albeit an endless one.’

  ‘It looked like more than that to me,’ Heather says.

  ‘Don’t worry about it - there’s no animosity, I can assure you.’

  ‘I believe you. What I saw was the opposite of animosity. You were impassioned. It was like Blake’s an alcoholic and you’re his best friend staging an intervention.’

  Kane opens his mouth as though to offer a denial, then lets out a regretful sigh. Busted.

  ‘You guys were at school together. Catholic school. But one day you saw the light and you’ve been trying to save him ever since?’

  ‘That would be one way of looking at it,’ he concedes. ‘Except I don’t tend to regard it as being me that had a conversion. It was growing up talking to Con about things that set me on my heretical way. He was always a deep thinker about these matters; about all matters. Smartest guy I’ve ever known.’

  ‘But if the smart guy turns religious, you reckon something’s gone wrong? Doesn’t that seem a little arrogant?’


  ‘It would if that was the whole story. Someone once said that “the reason smart people believe weird things is that they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons”. Usually that reason is that they were told this belief at an early and impressionable age by someone they trusted to tell them the truth. Then decades of reinforcement weave a web that is very difficult for the individual to pick apart because it’s like performing surgery on yourself. With Con, I’m determined to keep picking at the web for him, stop it from hardening.’

  ‘Because you think a “non-smart” reason lies at the heart of his faith. Sorry, but that still sounds incredibly arrogant.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s not the whole story.’

  ‘I heard he was once engaged before he decided to become a priest. Is that part of the story?’

  Kane has a glance back along the corridor, as though checking there aren’t a dozen kids sneaking up on him. They’re approaching reception. With a troubled look on his face, he nods towards a couple of couches, and they sit.

  ‘Blake met this girl Gail in second year at uni, met her through me. She and I were at Strathclyde, Con was at Glasgow. She was studying law, but she said she’d no great desire to be a lawyer. Con was different: he didn’t know what he wanted to do before he went to uni, then once he got there, he just knew he didn’t want to leave. He enjoyed learning and he enjoyed teaching. By third year he was already paying back his student loan by tutoring kids for their Standard Grades and Highers. The guy just loved academia. He also loved Gail. The two of them were sickening, in fact, back then. I’d be going from one disastrous relationship to another and they were love’s young dream.’

  Kane grimaces a little, like he’s suffering acid reflux and will have to re-swallow something bitter.

  ‘Just a fucking waste,’ he says. ‘Thinking of what he could have had. What they could have had.’

  ‘So what prompted this dramatic change of path? Never mind that, what about Gail: if they were engaged, how did the poor girl take him ditching her to join the clergy?’

  Kane swallows, and it’s as bitter as he anticipated.

  ‘She dropped dead on a squash court two days after Con sat the last of his finals. Undiagnosed cardiac defect.’