Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  Ted and Marianne were listening. Their eyes twinkled when Steve said the word history. Ted put his hands on his knees and leaned forward, as if he didn’t want to miss a word.

  Lisa glanced outside at the Alps. “They look eternal, don’t they?” she said.

  Steve grew impatient. “We want to know what the Document says.”

  “I know,” she reassured him. “But there’s nothing to say.”

  “This can’t be the end of it. With minor interruptions Delphi’s been going continuously since 1100 BC. You can’t tell us it’s over.”

  Her smile was wistful. “But it is.” She reached out and Ted handed her the Founding Document. She held it loosely. “Hypatia,” she began. “She understood how things change. She had watched the sky and knew the stars. Those mountains seem unchanging, but they aren’t. They’re constantly growing, eroding, changing. Today the glaciers disappear, the seas rise, the climate changes. What Hypatia understood was mutation, adaptation. Bruno saw this too. But the gift of seeing was ancient even when Delphi began to prophesy. It all goes back much, much further. Lost in the past…”

  She stared out the window for a few moments. “Hypatia had only to look at the city, at Alexandria, to see how people changed the earth. To see how their numbers increased. She, and the priest, they must have calculated how long it would be before people covered the entire planet. Calculated, or intuited. Or saw.” She smiled. “Hypatia was a mathematician, she understood that circumstances change, and that we change with them. She suspected there were things about the future that for all science, all our technology, we could forecast in a general way. No need for stars falling to earth, seas boiling, monsters on the loose. But the truth is…”

  “Uncomputable?” Steve suggested.

  “Exactly, uncomputable, complex interactions between inside and outside, nonlinear, filled with surprises, filled with uncertainty, random events. Knowing the future is not a science. It can only be known through omens and portents, vague shadows the future casts back at us. Only when the two are made one…”

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes. Only then can we truly see the future’s broad shape. That’s what the Document tells us. Bruno saw it, knew it would come in our time. Raimond certainly knew, and he made as sure as he could that I would know that the time has come. The world is crowded, destructive and dangerous. The enemy isn’t the Church. The enemy is ignorance and shortsightedness and greed. The enemy is our own desperate lack of vision.” Her hair had fallen in her eyes and she brushed it back. “We have a new goal, Steve.”

  “What new goal?”

  “We’re going to engage the world. When it all comes together like this, the future is clear.” She lifted the thin sheet of vellum. It seemed to give off a faint aroma of age, or of something more intangible: wisdom, perhaps. “This states it clearly: a time will come when two will be made into one, inside like outside, outside like inside, above like below. When we will see the whole. Our planet is reacting, Steve, to pollution, to the destruction of species and soil, overfishing, all the things we’ve been hearing about the last two or three decades. And we will all disappear if we don’t act to change the future. We can’t sit by any longer, giving a little prophecy here and there, urging history along. The oracle never before tried to change the future; it only gave a glimpse, omens and portents. Now that’s over. Ahead is a world without human beings at all unless everyone can see.” She shook her head. “They saw it so clearly, the people of Delphi, the priest of Apollo, Hypatia. After two millennia must come the liberation of the world. Partial vision, greed, selfishness, ignorance, the domination of religious institutions over the mind, the taming of the world, the heedless plundering, all would come to a halt…”

  She laughed out loud, this time with genuine merriment. “I’m sorry, I sound like a zealot. I’m trying to say people today, all of us, are distracted from what’s important by petty, local things – violence in central Asia, stock markets in the Middle East, famine in Africa, drought in South America. These things seem so important, but the Delphi Agenda means seeing far more broadly and over a much longer term. It means really knowing how two are one, how the inside and the outside, the upper and the lower, are one. It means feeling the world in its place, feeling its complexity, its uncertainty, its potential. Now we start organizing, through our network, ways of overcoming conflict, of giving everyone the same vision the Pythia has always had. We must become conscious as a species.”

  “Sounds like philosophy,” Steve said.

  “No, it is a practical technology. Call it the Messiah Medicine. The time has come to really direct our own history. No more superstition, no more obscure prophecies, omens or portents. Bruno knew the universe was infinite, and was burned at the stake. We know that we are our own conscience. The Earth is changing. We will bring our choices into the light and consider them deliberately and solemnly, as a species. We will create a new art, or science, if you will, of collective will. This has been the ultimate goal of the Delphi Agenda at least since the Oracle began, or, if I am right, long before that.”

  She smiled brightly at them all. “Now the real work begins.”

  59.

  Captain Hugo dropped the flimsy sheet of paper on his desk with a grunt. “They sent a fax. Can you imagine that, Mathieu? In this day and age, they sent a fax. I wasn’t even sure we still had a fax machine in this building.”

  Mathieu cleared his throat. “The Vatican is quite conservative, Captain.”

  Hugo nodded. “Of course.”

  “What does it say?” the lieutenant asked.

  Hugo snapped the page with a finger. “Official Vatican stationery.”

  He read aloud: “In response to your request for information regarding the so-called Order of Theodosius, we regret that despite extensive searches as far back as the twelfth century the Vatican archivist has found not one single reference to such an Order. We conclude that it does not exist now, nor has it ever existed.

  “Regarding the Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis Sanctum Officium, in 1908 the Holy Office of the Inquisition changed its name to The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and then in 1965 to The Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith. This office has not been involved in the examination of heretics in many hundreds of years and has no plans to take up this activity again.

  “As for the three individuals about whom you have inquired, Gabriel Lacatuchi, Armand Defago and Teresa Williams, we have queried the Dominican Order on your behalf and can provide the following information. Complete reports are being prepared and will follow by post.

  “Gabriel Lacatuchi was a child when his family immigrated to the United States from Ploesti, Romania. He was called early to the church, took vows as one of the preaching friars, and held several positions, including bishop, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was made Cardinal in 1989. Two years later he abruptly resigned his position, left the Church, and was declared apostate. He left Baltimore for Washington, D. C., and some time in the next few years left that city. We have no further information concerning him.

  “A Dominican brother of French-Spanish origin named Armand Defago left his monastery in Toulouse, France, two years ago. He too was declared apostate. He has not been seen since.

  “As for an inclusa of the Dominican order named Sister Teresa Williams, there was such a person, a former Lieutenant in the United States Marines. She was severely wounded in Afghanistan in 2001 and during her convalescence was called to the contemplative life. She entered the Order of Dominicans and resided for two years at the convent of the Dominican priory of Prouille in Toulouse, France. She, like Armand Defago, left the convent two years ago. We have no further information.

  “If, as you say, these three people are now deceased, we regret, as always, the loss of our own. The Church is ready to welcome them back as lost sheep to the fold. The Holy Father has ordered a mass for their souls.

  “Finally, regarding the Abbaye de St. Théophile, it was deconsecrated in 1587 and abando
ned. The Vatican heartily endorses its declaration as part of the patrimony of France, and would approve its renovation and opening to the public.

  “If there is anything further we can provide you, please do not hesitate to contact us.”

  “Well, there you are,” Hugo said. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what this was all about, but everyone is satisfied, Mathieu: Quai d’Orsay, the Prefect. The perpetrators of the unfortunate incident at St. Denis have met with justice. Apparently that monk was deranged and strangled this Lacatuchi fellow after all. It appears that he and the nun were guilty of the death of Guardian of the Peace Dupond as well. No doubt they committed suicide together out of guilt. The survivor, Xavier LaMartine, claims he was just a kind of secretary who shaved his boss twice a day, that’s all. Since they shot him, too, this may well be true. At any rate, he refuses to say more.” He slipped the fax into a thick folder labeled with a number and the words Case Closed. “When the other materials arrive from the Vatican, please add them to this folder for me, Mathieu, and file it.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “On the other hand, Mathieu,” Hugo said jovially, “they would deny everything, wouldn’t they?”

  “I expect so, sir. But what about the Emmer woman?”

  The Captain frowned. “I don’t think I want to hear about her any more, Mathieu. She’s the heir to Raimond Foix, a man well connected in France; indeed he seems to have something of a worldwide reputation. We can presume she’s completely innocent, just a bystander.” He paused. “She was a lovely young woman, wasn’t she? I wish her well.”

  60.

  Lisa and Steve stood in full sunlight on the running track of the ancient stadium, their backs to the looming white limestone cliffs of Mount Parnassus. A brisk breeze blew up from the town of Itea on the Gulf of Corinth and whispered in the pines and cypresses to their right. Ted and Marianne waited beside them.

  “Is it safe?” Lisa asked.

  “Aside from that tour group over there, yes.” Ted nodded toward the group of garishly dressed tourists near the starting blocks at the other end of the stadium. They were two hundred meters away, gathered around their tour guide.

  “Then let’s do this.”

  She lifted the lid of the wooden box filled with gray ash. The breeze picked up a few grains and whirled them. Lisa closed it again. “He would have liked this,” she said softly. “To return to the beginning. When we were here three years ago …” She stopped, collected herself and continued. “We were down by the theater. He was eighty-one, I was twenty-nine. His shirt was dark red. I wore blue. I picked the color because it matched my eyes. He always liked that. He never told me what I was supposed to do. Why didn’t he warn me?”

  To Steve her melancholy smile was almost unbearably sweet.

  She answered her own question. “He didn’t warn me because I had to do this on my own. Finding the Founding Document was like taking a PhD oral exam all over again, a test with an uncertain outcome. I had to follow the trail, find my own answers. What if I had failed?”

  Marianne touched her shoulder. “You didn’t fail. But if you had, what would that have meant to the world?”

  “It would certainly have meant the end of the Pythos.”

  “And the end of the Order,” Ted added.

  Lisa inclined her head. “That, too.”

  “I repeat,” Marianne said. “So what?”

  “Ah. Then there would be no future. Not for us, probably not even for the world, which is still in grave danger. It was such a fragile moment. He had such trust in me. It’s good we didn’t fail after all.” She reflected for a moment and then laughed. Her laughter grew until she doubled over for a moment. Finally she straightened and wiped tears from her eyes. In answer to their looks she said, “It just struck me as funny. What if we aren’t the only ones?” She shook her head. “No, we aren’t alone, I’m certain of it. There were, are, many Delphi Agendas, all over the world. Oh, it will be so much fun to meet them now, won’t it?”

  With another look around she opened the box and tipped it. The wind picked up the grains of ash and lifted them in a spiral. Soon they were spinning among the stones and down along the red dirt of the running track. The dust seemed for a fraction of a second to reform into the wavering shape of a man. Then it dissolved and was just a gray-white line streaming away in the wind.

  It seemed to take forever for the box to empty, but finally it was done.

  They stood in silence. The breeze sent Lisa’s hair streaming. A few tendrils whipped in front of her face and eyes. She brushed them back.

  “Something’s changed,” Steve said with a sad smile. “You’re different.”

  “Yes.”

  Ted and Marianne walked away toward the opposite side of the track. He was saying, “The people here may have been telling people what was going to happen, but they were still betting on the games.” They stopped in the middle and looked back at Steve and Lisa. “Isn’t that curious, Marianne?”

  “Yes, Ted, they were betting on the games. It’s ironic, I suppose.”

  “And what does that tell us, love?” Their conversation faded, carried off by the breeze.

  Steve took the box from Lisa’s hands and closed it. “What happens now?”

  Her answering smile was bright. “Who knows, Steve Viginaire?” She laughed gaily. “As Lorenzo di Medici said, ‘Di doman non ce certezza. The future is uncertain.” She put her arms around him and whispered in his ear. “Won’t it be interesting to see what we make of it?”

  THE END

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  The mysteries are in the jungle in Vector, the first book in Rob Swigart’s Thriller in Paradise Series.

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  What they said about the Thriller in Paradise series:

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  Also by Rob Swigart

  The Thriller in Paradise Series:

  VECTOR

  TOXIN

  VENOM

  Archaeology Novels:

  STONE MIRROR

  XIBALBA GATE

  Satire:

  LITTLE AMERICA

  A.K.A./A COSMIC FABLE

  THE TIME TRIP

  Science Fiction:

  THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS

  PORTAL

  About the Author

  ROB SWIGART is the author of one nonfiction book, four electronic fiction titles, and 11 novels, including Little America, declared as “Wildly funny…” by the LA Times, and hailed as a “Bold and brassy…breathless romp with prose that crackles like a live wire, bites like a rabid dog, [and] smoothes like 30-year-old Scotch,” by the San Francisco Review of Books. His classic and highly revered interactive novel Portal has attained near cult status as the first ever narrative “game” produced by Activision, published two years later as a hard copy novel by St. Martin’s Press, and heralded as “spooky, audacious, breakthrough science fiction” by Timothy Leary.

  Now a visiting scholar at the Stanford University Archeology Center, Swigart’s most recent books include The Delphi Agenda, as well as two teaching novels, Xibalbá Gate, a novel of the Ancient Maya, published by AltaMira, and Stone Mirror, a novel of the Neolithic, by Left Coast Press. These works weave near-future science fiction with famous and obscure archeological events, melding true fact and fiction as a conscious product of Swigart’s lifelong passion for using narrative to tell stories of the past as found in material records. He is currently working on a nonfiction book about the Neolithic.