Biblical (16 page)

“What’s his field?”

“He’s heavily involved in quantum computing and his part of Prometheus is to create simulations of the first moments of the universe. Gillman’s a big part of the Oxford symposium.” Casey paused. “Did Gabriel say why he wanted to kill himself?”

“He wasn’t coherent,” said Macbeth. “He kept talking about knowing the truth. That he could see what the rest of us couldn’t.”

“And did he say anything about what this ‘truth’ was?”

“Just that it wasn’t about who or what God was … it was about
when
he was, whatever that was meant to mean.”

“Search me,” said Casey. “Like I said, Gabriel was solidly atheist. He didn’t believe there was a when, who, where or what, when it came to a deity. He was very anti-religion.”

“No kidding? I kinda got that idea when he took the priest with him.” Macbeth frowned. “There was one odd thing – he kept going on about human intelligence not making sense; that it was crazy that our brains worked the way they did. That it actually put us in danger, rather than gave us an advantage.”

“He had a point, poor bastard,” said Casey dolefully.

More skyscape than landscape, this was a part of the world where the sky dominated; pressing down on land and sea and making both merely the ribbon edge of the sky’s vast banner. There was the flat blue sea, the flat pale beach rippled by the odd dune, the flat green land beyond wrinkled by the occasional unconvinced hummock; gradations of tone and shade marking the boundaries more than degrees of elevation.

A small-framed boy who was fourteen but would have been taken for twelve walked along a band of beach the color of which matched his hair and the constellation of freckles on cheeks and nose. He wore a faded sweatshirt and jeans and walked barefoot, his sneakers in his hand.

The boy, whose name was Fabian Bartelma, walked slowly, his pace burdened by the thousand anxieties of childhood’s end, his gaze sometimes out over the sea, sometimes directed towards his feet and the sand that oozed between his naked toes. It was a Saturday morning. Fabian often spent his Saturdays on the beach or cycling along the dyke. His was a traditional childhood. Traditional but solitary, because no one his age adhered to such traditions any more. Fabian spent most of his time reading or walking or cycling, never displaying any interest in playing computer games, either alone or with friends. Bizarrely, when he did try to play them, Fabian suffered from motion sickness and headaches – despite never once getting sick in the car or on a plane. He had never badgered
his parents for a cellphone or mp3 player, nor shown any interest in any of the other paraphernalia of twenty-first-century adolescence. And that had, gradually but ineluctably, disconnected Fabian from his peers.

His parents had bought him a computer for his twelfth birthday and he did use it, but mainly for homework or for looking things up. Even then, he preferred to use reference books. He was, his parents had resigned themselves, a child out of time. Someone out of kilter with the period he had been born into. At home, his bedroom was stacked with books on history: atlases of military campaigns, dictionaries of famous quotations, volumes about the great civilizations of the ancient world, the lives of the Caesars, the evolution of mankind. For Fabian, History was not a subject of study, it was a place: somewhere you could go and explore and discover. A place you could live.

Fabian felt this beach belonged to him. He knew that the shore would have changed over time, the seas pulling and shoving at the coast, eroding and redistributing sand over the centuries, but he liked it here because, apart from the lighthouse which had stood where it was for a century or more, it was an unmarked scene; an untouched landscape. No one else ever seemed to come here and he would walk or sit on the beach for hours, trying to imagine himself into another time. Wouldn’t it be good, he thought to himself, if you really could visit the past? If you could travel there for a holiday, like taking a flight to Spain?

The beach arced around the bay like the broad blade of a scythe and Fabian could see where the promontory not so much jutted as faded into the sea, the red and white spindle of the lighthouse the only clear indicator of its end. It was an empty but not desolate landscape, and Fabian could imagine himself as the only person left living on the planet. The world entirely his. He could not quite work out why the idea filled him simultaneously with melancholy and comfort. He kicked some sand
before dropping down suddenly to sit facing the sea and scowling against a salt sun, the odd cotton cloud sliding across blue silk. Stretching out his arms, he dug his fingers deep into the sand, as if clinging on to the world. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the waves.

An odd feeling.

It was like déjà vu. Something similar, but different, deeper. He was jolted by a sharp push in the ribs and sat up, shielding his eyes as he peered up at the shadow above him. Henkje Maartens, the thick-necked thug who patrolled the school with a gang of Neanderthals. Maartens, with a bully’s nose for the different, had singled out Fabian for special attention.

“So this is where you hide, is it?” Maartens sneered.

Fabian stood up, dusting off the sand from his jeans, and cast an eye in the direction he had come. Maartens was alone. That was something at least.

“What do you want?” Fabian asked, moving around Maartens so that he, not Fabian, was looking into the sun.

“I saw you and followed you,” said Maartens. “I thought to myself I’ll find out what Creepo does in his spare time. What you come down here for? Nice quiet place, is it?” Maartens lolled his tongue out the side of his mouth, went cross-eyed and mimed masturbation.

Fabian knew he couldn’t win a fight with the much bigger, heavier-built Maartens. But there was no one here to see the outcome. He would make as much a mess of Maartens’s face as he could before taking a beating. It would be a mark, a warning to others that there was a price to be paid.

“Is that it, Creepo? Is that why—”

The impact hurt Fabian’s fist. There was an ugly grinding noise from Maartens’s teeth and the bully staggered back, shocked and with the sun still in his face. Fabian hit him again, this time in the nose. Maartens’s backwards stagger meant that the blow didn’t have the force of the first and Fabian hit him
again, and again. Maartens stumbled and fell onto his back and Fabian dropped onto his chest, raining blows down on his face. A dark impulse beyond his control drove Fabian on, a thrill rising in him. He was, he realized, enjoying this. Something deep and dark and ancient had stirred within him; something from a history he had not known he had.

Realizing that Maartens, when he recovered his wits, could easily throw the lighter boy off his chest and regain the advantage, Fabian jumped up from him. As Maartens began to rise, Fabian swung a kick into the side of his face. The careful deliberation, the aiming of the kick, shocked Fabian: he had placed it to do as much damage as possible without hurting his foot through his sneakers. He kicked Maartens again, in the mouth. He could see the bigger boy was now seriously dazed, his face smeared with blood; Fabian grabbed him by his hooded top and spun him around so he was face down. Grabbing a handful of hair, he pushed Maartens’s face into the sand. He leaned in, whispering into the prone bully’s ear.

“If you ever, ever, follow me again, you or any of your buddies, I’ll put you in hospital. And in school … any smart remarks from any of your posse and I’ll wait till I get you alone. You got that?”

Maartens said something in a pleading, sand-muffled voice and Fabian stood up and back from him, ready to strike again if the bigger boy made any move. But he could see not only was there no fight left in Maartens, there never really had been any. Like most bullies, Maartens was a coward. He was crying, his face a paste of sand and tears and blood.

“You got that?” Fabian yelled at him, taking a threatening step forward.

Maartens nodded vigorously before turning tail and running back along the beach. Fabian watched him run, then looked down at his hands: skin reddened and puffed, blood from a split on one knuckle. Shaking.

Where had that come from? Where had that terrible rage been hidden? He sank back onto the sand, sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, his hands loose and fingers still trembling.

He felt vaguely sick and dizzy, his heart pounding in his chest. He remembered the feeling he had had, the feeling just before Maartens had arrived. Like déjà vu, but stronger, deeper.

Fabian closed his eyes and sank back onto the beach, looking up once more at the sky, digging his fingers deep into the sand. He closed his eyes. The pain in his hands faded more quickly than he thought it would, the nausea and the panicky feeling in his chest disappeared with equal suddenness.

It was then that he was jolted by a sharp push in the ribs. He sat up, shielding his eyes as he peered up at the shadow above him.

“So this is where you hide, is it?” Henkje Maartens sneered. His face was unbruised, unbloodied, unmarked.

Fabian stood up, dusting off the sand from his jeans. He looked at his own hands, suddenly healed: no redness, no swelling, no splits. It made no sense at all. But it made perfect sense. In that moment, Fabian knew he was visiting his own history.

He balled his hands into fists and launched himself at Maartens with an inhuman scream.

“The Abrahamic tradition is revelatory,” Josh Hoberman said. “All Judeo-Christian religions, Islam included, believe in a God whose presence is parallel to the world of Man and a Truth that will eventually be revealed to the faithful. Interaction between Man and his God – every biblical theophany – takes the form of visions: burning bushes, pillars of smoke …”

“And your point?” President Yates walked beside Hoberman, her eyes pathward, her expression serious as she considered the psychiatrist’s words. It was for all the world like two friends combining a philosophical debate with a leisurely stroll through the park; except they were not friends and this was no park but Camp David and they were followed, at something short of a discreet distance, by Bundy, the secret-serviceman with the strangely dual-colored eyes.

“Just that you define yourself very much through your faith. It could be that the nature of your faith, your belief in revelation through visions, is making you susceptible to these episodes.”

“You think that because God has revealed himself to others I’m deluding myself into believing He’s revealing himself to me?” Yates shook her head. “Then why am I not seeing something dramatic or majestic? Visions of President Taft in his shirtsleeves or of a nineteen-seventies White House intern are hardly divine revelations.”

“But you
have
expressed to me your belief that the visions are perhaps divine in origin …”

“I know that you’ll probably hold my beliefs in contempt, but they are my beliefs. More than that, they are the truth and, like you said, that truth will ultimately be revealed. You worry that I maybe think the Lord has a special message for me and this is His way of communicating it. But that’s not what I believe. All things that happen in this universe happen at the Lord’s command. All of Nature and all in it is of God’s creation, these visions included. But I know that they are not a message directly for me, but for everyone. There have been more reports – visions happening all over the world. I’ll make sure you’re given access to them …” She cast a commanding glance over her shoulder at Bundy. “One in particular, a girl in France, has very interesting overtones.” She stopped walking and turned to the psychiatrist. “You see, if it’s not me … if it’s everyone who’s having these visions, then
that
is what I would take as the hand of God in our affairs. If that’s the case, then I know we may be facing a time of final judgment. If that is the case, then I tell you this, Professor Hoberman: I shall not be found wanting.”

There it was again: that focus. And that uneasy feeling in Hoberman’s gut.

During their discussions over the preceding days, Hoberman had been able to glimpse something of what lay behind Yates’s commanding authority and homespun sagacities. And what he had seen had terrified him. To start with, it had been like trespassing on a movie set, peeking behind the building façades to see that there was nothing there other than support beams: Elizabeth Yates was a woman completely, absolutely, astonishingly devoid of personality. Hoberman had sat in on meetings, observed her with others, and seen how her demeanor changed subtly according to whomever she interacted with. He realized that she had mastered the projection of attributes that were not there. She was clearly not a stupid woman, but Hoberman had soon come to realize that her intellectual gifts were modest. It was just that she somehow managed to simulate what was
not there and magnify what was, depending on the context and what she wanted to get out of it.

But it hadn’t been Yates’s lack of intellectual or personal depth that had terrified Hoberman. He had kept their talks informal, general, conversational: but in each discussion he had sneaked in a seemingly innocuous question or observation, each a disguised diagnostic tool. The picture that had emerged was of a woman of singular vision, of unshakeable will, of adamantine faith; all potential virtues in a world leader. They were also potential indicators of something darker.

If there was one thing about the President that was exceptional, it was her focus; and that focus was firmly fixed on a mission founded on the shifting sands of narrow nationalism, superstition and righteous bigotry. In describing her world view, Yates repeatedly used the pronouns ‘us’ and ‘we’, ‘they’ and ‘them’. The first person plural extended no farther than the frontiers of the United States, and he got the idea that many within its borders fell into the category ‘them’ – a subset Hoberman suspected he himself belonged to.

They walked on. Apart from a helipad and a couple of more modern and functional buildings tucked out of view, Camp David was a spread-out collection of timber lodges and cabins set in thick oak and hickory woodland, looped and connected by intersecting forest trails. Not for the first time Hoberman felt strangely claustrophobic in the open air, as if hemmed in by the dense Catoctin forest.