The Soul of the Matter

by Bruce Buff

“Once in a while, you do have almost as much control over things as you think you do.”

  “That might be the biggest compliment you’ve given me.”

  “It wasn’t,” she said.

  He stood, and reached out a hand to help her to her feet.“Let’s get to the chapel and wait for Evans’s men. We don’t want to hang around here in case the wrong reinforcements arrive first.”

  Chapter 77

  The Colleoni Chapel had been emptied of visitors, and it felt every bit the crypt that it was. Though it was the warmer part of the day, the chapel felt cooler, the air heavier, the stone colder, than when they had first been there.

  Brother Cletus knelt prostrate before the altar, his fingers rapidly rubbing the rosary beads as he prayed fervently. Father Michael had already heard his confession, and it took a big effort by Trish and Dan not to hear it as well. Even though he knew that it wasn’t very charitable, Dan hoped that the beads would wear out before Brother Cletus’s penance was finished.

  A drawn-looking Trish sat slumped in a back pew.

  Father Michael walked back and forth between the doors, continually checking that they were still locked. Security guards were posted outside them and, barring a heavily armed assault, they were safe.

  Dan looked behind the recessed panel again, even though the opening behind it was empty.

  They had been there fifteen minutes, and the wait for Evans’s men was draining. There wasn’t much to do before the men arrived and took them to the airport for a flight back to the US—hopefully well before the Italian authorities decided to hold them indefinitely.

  Dan saw Trish lean back and look upward. He walked over and sat down next to her. Gently, he placed her right hand between his, leaned over, and said quietly, “I’m sorry I got you into this. You should never have had to do what you did, though it saved our lives.”

  With a calmness that was as deep as her enormous soul, Trish said, “Now that you have Stephen’s work, what will you do with it? Is there something there for Ava?”

  “I don’t know. It will take time to find out. I’d like to do that before I turn anything over to Evans. What do you think?” Dan said, asking a question when he had already made up his mind.

  “Your secrets are safe with me. Even the ones you don’t yet know about,” Trish said with a smile that brought warmth back to her, and to him.

  “You always seem to act like you have a special insight into people, know more about me than I do myself.”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  Father Michael walked over and stood in the aisle by the pew.

  “That was a bad ordeal you went through. Are you sure you’re okay?” he said.

  “We’ll recover,” Dan answered.

  “What about Stephen’s files? Are there things that will help Ava? Did he actually find what he claimed he did?” Father Michael asked.

  “You really want to know?” Dan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go find a confessional and I’ll unburden myself,” Dan said, a faint, amused, smile crossing his face as he said it.

  “You know that’s not entirely fair. I won’t be able to tell anyone or act on the information.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We can go to that pew,” Father Michael said, pointing to the other side of the chapel.

  “Wait a second. You have to tell me, too,” Trish insisted.

  “Then it will have to be a confession that you listen in on. If I am correct, that places the seal of confidentiality on you, too. Is that correct, Father Michael?” Dan said.

  “Yes, absolutely, to the extent she honors the restrictions of confession. Trish, that means you’re not allowed even to acknowledge to Dan that you heard anything from him,” Father Michael said.

  “Although I’m not Catholic, I’ll honor it,” Trish said. “Not that I couldn’t get him to tell me anyway.”

  “Now we don’t have to move. Dan?” Father Michael said.

  “I’ll begin with the easy part. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” Dan said.

  “Easy? For most of your life you would have choked trying to say those words.”

  “I’m a little more aware, not convinced in their meaning, but willing to say them for the sake of the confessional. Where they’ll lead, we’ll see. Now shut up if you want to hear what I have to say.”

  “A good priest will do what’s needed to hear a confession. Go ahead.”

  Dan proceeded to tell them everything he’d found in Stephen’s files, what he still suspected was there, how he was going to keep looking through the files, and his plans for what to do with them.

  When he was done, Father Michael said, “You haven’t said anything that requires absolution. Do you want to finish this privately?”

  “That wasn’t by accident. I won’t do what I don’t earnestly believe. That said, to retain the seal of confession, is it permissible for me to reflect on this and come back, if things change and I so desire? The one thing I cannot do now is confess to an entity I don’t fully believe in. That would be worse than not confessing at all.”

  “You can reflect and come back later,” Father Michael said.

  “Good.”

  “Now I get to say what I’ve longed to for a long time. Dan, say two Our Fathers, two Hail Marys, and two Glory Bes, with a special intention for Stephen,” Father Michael said.

  “I can do that,” Dan said.

  “You Catholics get off easy,” Trish said.

  “He didn’t absolve me of anything since I did not complete a full and sincere confession. I didn’t get let off of anything,” Dan said.

  “Reflect on what your conscience says and consider coming back. God bless you and go in peace,” Father Michael said.

  “Thank you,” Dan said, then walked over to the pews, where he quietly completed his penance for his nonconfession.

  After he was done, he sat down next to Trish again.

  “Aren’t you worried that Elena and her organization will find a way to crack your tablet, despite your precautions, or that you’ll need it?” Trish asked, steering clear of anything Dan had said to Father Michael.

  “No. When I sent a message to Evans after we got back to the chapel, I also sent a command to wipe the tablet, just in case. A few minutes later, I received a signal back that it had successfully completed. And everything on it, I have back home. As I still have Stephen’s coded files, I can resume where I left off.”

  Trish started to say something, then bit her lip in frustration, realizing the restrictions she’d agreed to were more problematic than she anticipated.

  “Were you going to say something?” Dan teased.

  Trish swung her right arm sideways and her fist rammed Dan’s biceps.

  Rubbing it, he laughed a little. “Okay, I release you from the seal of confession that you know I confessed something in your presence to Father Michael.”

  “If you don’t trust me enough to completely release me, there will be nothing for us to discuss, ever,” Trish said firmly.

  “You win. I release you completely, though I request, outside the seal of confession, that you not discuss any of this with anyone else, without first discussing that with me. That doesn’t mean you can’t discuss it with others, only talk with me beforehand.”

  “I want you to promise that you’ll tell me whatever else you find.”

  “What if I think it will endanger you?”

  “As long as you are genuinely following a pure conscience, I will leave it up to you.”

  “That’s fair,” Dan said. “I’m not looking forward to talking with Evans.”

  “I wouldn’t either if I were you,” Trish said. In a more serious voice, she added, “Borrowing from Churchill, do you think this is the end of everything Stephen stirred up, or just the end of the beginning?”


  “I don’t think it’s over, and I hope it doesn’t become our end someday.”

  Chapter 78

  DAY 17

  SUNDAY

  After an eight-hour flight in first class, almost all of it spent sleeping, a subdued Dan stood with Evans at a northeast-facing window. The Potomac was on the left, and the White House on the right. They were in Evans’s temporary office, chosen for its proximity to Secretary Robbins.

  “That was reasonably convincing, even though you still haven’t explained all you know of Stephen Bishop’s work,” Evans said, referring to the debrief Dan had just given to a large number of senior US intelligence and other government leaders.

  “That’s because I don’t know much about it,” Dan said. He was anxious to get to a place where he could resume his review.

  “Both of us could still be in serious trouble for what you did in Italy.”

  “Look how badly that turned out,” Dan said, gesturing to the beautiful view. “We live in a more secure world, thanks to my copying Viktor’s fusion files. What are you going to do with them?”

  “Research it further. Find out what went wrong. With luck, make it a commercial technology.”

  “Did you find out more about the images of nuclear material that Viktor had?”

  “The copies of Viktor’s files you gave us contained no evidence that he ever developed a technology that produced the images. Our intelligence analysts think he accessed a Nuclear Regulatory Commission database and used a graphing program to produce the images, but we were able to contain the damage before they felt compelled to act.”

  “What about Stephen’s research? The files are rather cryptic,” Dan said, knowing he had only turned over the raw data translated into symbolic code, useless without the rest of Stephen’s files.

  “I think they’ll keep a large number of people busy for a long time, presuming he really did discover something.”

  “Any luck tracking down the rest of The Commission?”

  “They’ve receded into the mist. We have some people trying to locate them, but most of our attention is focused elsewhere. But at least you got Sergei. That was no small achievement.”

  “It didn’t provide the satisfaction that I thought it would.”

  “It never does for good people,” Evans said as he patted Dan on the back.

  “Elena is as bad as he was. I’m sure she knows how to survive and will turn up again when she wants to.”

  “Yup, I agree. Haven’t found Sousan, either, though our analysts think, after looking at more detailed images after the blast, there’s a good chance she’s dead.”

  “What about your retirement, and mine?” Dan said.

  “I should be able to phase out in a few weeks. As for you, they’ll keep you on active status until they’re sure you’ve given them everything. You’ll get paid for it, of course. You got anything else up your sleeve?”

  “You always think I do,” Dan said, giving him a wide smile, one he hoped looked trustworthy. He was antsy to get back to the rest of Stephen’s files.

  “It seems to work out that way,” Evans said. “I suppose you want to get to Boston. We have a plane waiting to fly you up there.”

  “With accompaniment?” Dan asked.

  “For a little while, until we’re sure things have settled down.”

  “I don’t need the security, but if it is really only for a little while, that’s fine,” Dan said. “And no more John Doe investigation crap.”

  “No.”

  “Good, because that is the type of thing I’d get myself in trouble going after.”

  “I didn’t see much of her, but it seems like Dr. Alighieri is a remarkable person,” Agent Evans said.

  “That and more,” Dan said wistfully, wondering what Trish was doing. She had left an hour earlier, headed toward Ava.

  “Maybe something will work out.”

  “I’ve got other stuff to deal with. And sometimes, in circumstances like we’ve been through, things seem more significant than they are,” Dan replied. He knew that once things change back to normal, artificial closeness was often replaced by awkwardness, as seemed to have happened with them on the flight back to DC.

  “Still . . .”

  “My mind is on other things now,” Dan lied.

  “What are you going to do next?”

  “Help with Ava.”

  “I’m sorry about Stephen Bishop. It must be painful to accept that he manipulated so many people to get technology to exchange for medicine to save his daughter’s life. He probably didn’t understand what he was trading.”

  Dan didn’t answer. While Evans’s explanation of Stephen and Viktor surreptitiously obtaining classified US technology made far more sense than his finding the keys to the universe encoded in DNA, Dan still had trouble believing that Stephen acted in that manner. While he believed that Stephen had found things in DNA, he still had doubts whether he had done other things that he shouldn’t have. For the sake of secrecy and freedom to find out on his own, he’d play along with the government’s view.

  Filling the silence, Evans said, “You ever get the feeling the universe is laughing at us?”

  “All the time,” Dan answered.

  Chapter 79

  DAYS LATER, MID-AFTERNOON

  Groggy from a lack of sleep and too many hours spent at the computer screen, Dan poured himself another cup of strong coffee.

  He walked from the kitchen to his bedroom window to stretch his legs. A brisk wind whipped the trees and water. Long, thin, white clouds raced across the mostly blue sky.

  None of it registered.

  He was completely fixated on Stephen’s files.

  Except for a brief visit with Nancy, he’d spent all of his waking time since his meeting with Evans trying to understand Stephen’s work.

  What he had been able to figure out from Stephen’s notes was mind-boggling.

  DNA was indeed coded multiple ways. A section read one way, or through one translation mechanism, directed one outcome. Read another way, or interpreted with a different translator, it led to a different outcome, for a different purpose.

  Cell processing was based on something that could be considered analogous to a computer operating system utilizing hierarchical storage systems, only it was for biological processes.

  How all of this could have come about was inconceivable.

  How it led to one species becoming another, through a myriad of small steps, was also challenging to understand, as redundant regulatory mechanisms operated to prevent, not enable, changes in the genetic code.

  And what a code it was.

  Algorithmic gene processing used input parameters, from a source yet to be determined, to drive physical development and body plans.

  The odds of developing a single, simple protein, as astronomical as they were, were nothing in comparison to the specificity of neural arrangements in the brain. No learning could have taken place in utero that would allow a pony to be able to stand, see, and walk so soon after birth. That knowledge had to be either included in the genetic code or supplied by something else. As with the body plan, there simply wasn’t enough DNA to specify all those neural connections without algorithmic processing. There was no conceivable path, without guidance provided at the time of its origin, to produce what DNA did.

  Sitting back down at his computer, using instructions Stephen left in one file, Dan began to operate a program that apparently used information from DNA to illustrate the full cycle of human development and decline. If this was right, aging was programmed in, though to what end, Dan didn’t know. Perhaps it was intended to keep the generations apart. Society wouldn’t do too well if the older people, in the same physical condition as the younger, competed with them for companions and other resources. There wouldn’t be much of a family structure, and things like love would
be hard to develop and sustain. Biology reeked of purpose.

  A variation of the human development programs also appeared to show humans’ relationship to, and evolution from, their physical ancestors. A sequence of key parameters drove the representation of each species. The next in the series was blank. With the right input parameters, would they show what humanity was to become next?

  All of what Dan had been viewing was driven by Stephen’s converted data. He still hadn’t been able to use symbolic code created from DNA to generate Stephen’s data. That appeared to require passcodes that Dan did not possess and could not find. Perhaps it didn’t exist and everything he was looking at was just a simulation Stephen had created. It was possible it wasn’t really from DNA.

  Yet everything in Stephen’s files indicated that he thought it was real.

  The physical sciences portion of Stephen’s files, while smaller, was equally astounding, pointing to a physics more radical than previously imagined, though it meant nothing to Dan. Maybe the symbol that Stephen had drawn was a clue to something Dan was still missing. Probably Stephen hadn’t had time to complete it, and maybe that was the way things were meant to be.

  Everything screamed design, yet direct proof remained elusive. There was no signature with a name. It still came down to a degree of faith.

  Whether there was a third set of data, he might never know. He had been unable to find the files and programs needed to re-create the processing environment that would generate it, if it existed. Perhaps that, too, was best.

  What he already had, as far as he understood it, could be devastating in the wrong hands. That was responsibility enough for him.

  And then there were the rest of Viktor’s files. Although Dan didn’t have the knowledge to comprehend most of what was in them, he found more copies of nuclear images. If Viktor did develop the technology to produce them, it was way too dangerous to be entrusted to any one nation, even the US. Just trying to find out if the technology was real could trigger terrible outcomes.