Biblical (36 page)

It can be the smallest of things that bring the seriousness of a situation home to you, thought Macbeth, as they pulled up at traffic lights in Belmont. The lights changed to green but the queue of traffic didn’t move. The usual blasting of horns was less emphatic than usual and the queue of cars, in a quiet and
orderly fashion, pulled out and passed the station wagon that sat immobile, three cars’ lengths from the lights. As the taxi passed, Macbeth saw the woman driver in profile as she sat perfectly still, hands on the wheel, mouth slightly agape and her gaze through the windshield unfixed.

Macbeth leaned forward and asked through the small window in the Plexiglas: “Shouldn’t we stop and help?”

The second driver turned. “Sorry, pal … there’s so many of them these days. We see two, maybe three each fare. If we stopped for every one we’d never get anywhere.”

Macbeth didn’t protest but sat back again in the taxi. Despite his efforts to put them out of his mind, the emails from Poulsen nagged at him. He took out his cellphone and called the airline. The female Customer Services voice answered his question with a public-affairs prepared script.

“As you know, sir, there are always two pilots on every flight, as well as a flight engineer. But, to ensure your complete safety and peace of mind, all of our transatlantic flights will have a complete backup crew and a medical officer on board until such times as public concern has abated.”

Macbeth thanked her and hung up. He didn’t ask what happened if everyone on the plane had the same hallucination at the same time; how multiplicity could possibly be a precaution against a syndrome that was known to affect hundreds of people simultaneously.

He keyed a second number: an international call. After a while he was put through to the person he had asked for in Danish.

“I’m glad you’ll be back tomorrow,” said Georg Poulsen. “All teams, except yours, are ahead of milestone delivery targets. You have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Professor Poulsen, I’m forced to remind you once more that I am not here on vacation, but representing the Project. On your behalf. And you may be aware that there has been a lot happening over here since I arrived.”

“I heard,” Poulsen said without emotion or expansion. “Can you attend a meeting in the Project briefing room tomorrow at, say, three-fifteen p.m.?”

“No, I can’t. I don’t get into Copenhagen until the small hours and, not even allowing for jetlag, I wouldn’t be ready for a meeting in the afternoon. And anyway, I’m not sure that I should be flying back at all. There have been major transportation accidents caused by this outbreak or whatever it is.”

“I’m aware of that. As, I imagine, are the airlines. I’m sure they have taken all appropriate safety measures.” There was a pause. When Poulsen spoke again, the imperiousness was gone from his tone. “John, I’m sorry that I push so much. It’s just that we are so, so close to a breakthrough. I need you here … Can you try to make it?”

Macbeth sighed. “I’ll be there. If the pilot doesn’t hallucinate that he’s captaining a submarine.”

He hung up just as the taxi reached the main entrance to the hospital, but was stopped at a roadblock improvised with two police cruisers. It was only after Macbeth’s ID was checked, and the young female cop had called the hospital to confirm his appointment, that the taxi was allowed through.

*

Unlike the last visit, the skies over the parkland grounds of McLean Hospital were leaden. After the taxi dropped him off outside the main administration building, it turned and headed back down the drive. He watched it go and felt strangely abandoned. A man in his thirties, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, stood at the foot of the steps and slightly to one side, watching him. Macbeth’s attention was drawn to him because of the strange intensity of the man’s gaze. Disinhibited frankness, Macbeth had learned over the years, was something that came with a whole range of mental disorders. The man was clearly a patient and not a visitor or staff.

Macbeth smiled as he walked past him but was halted by his grip on Macbeth’s arm.

“Is
this
the substrate?” The man leaned into Macbeth and whispered conspiratorially.

“What?”

“Is
this
the substrate reality? I’ve gotten confused.” Looking into the distance, he frowned. He turned back to Macbeth with the smile. “I didn’t think you’d ever come back. I didn’t think you’d risk it …”

“Well, I’m back now …” Macbeth smiled at the man. It was such a forgettable face that he could have been a patient during Macbeth’s time at McLean, but it was more likely that he was just spieling his delusion.

“I didn’t know what to do …” The patient, anxious again, furrowed his brow. Macbeth looked around for an orderly. “It has started. It has started. It has started. It has started and I don’t know what to do because you haven’t told me what to do. You went away and didn’t tell me what I’d to do when it started like you said it would. We all need you to tell us what we have to do; what you need us to do. We’ve been waiting for you.”

“It’s all right,” Macbeth said soothingly, easing the man’s grip from his arm. “I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”

“No, I know who you are. I know exactly who you are. You have to tell me what to do, Mr Astor …”

An orderly appeared from nowhere and gently but firmly guided the patient away before Macbeth could answer. As he was led away, the patient called out urgently over his shoulder.

“Don’t forget, Mr Astor. Don’t forget about Clarke’s Third Law.”

*

Corbin was in the main reception area when Macbeth came in. An unusual quiet and restraint hung over the McLean psychiatrist the same way the clouds hung over the hospital.

“Brian Newcombe asked me to remind you that he’s here to talk with you whenever you’re free,” Corbin said as he led Macbeth into the meeting room.

“Sure … Everyone wants a piece of me today.”

As they entered the room, Macbeth was taken aback by the physical presence of the tall, dark-haired and brutal-looking man waiting for them.

“This is Sergeant Walt Ramirez, of the Californian Highway Patrol,” Corbin explained.

Macbeth shook hands with Ramirez.

“We spoke on the phone.” Macbeth recognized the quiet baritone. Ramirez was wearing a dark suit with the unconvinced discomfort of someone who spent most of his time in uniform. “Thanks for making time to meet me.”

“Anything I can do to get to the bottom of what happened to Melissa, although you do understand that you’ll have to stop the interview if Dr Corbin says so. Deborah’s treatment and rights as a patient override all other considerations.”

“I understand that Dr Corbin’s already gone through the ground rules. Are you sitting in on this?”

“If you don’t mind …”

“Fine by me.” Ramirez shrugged huge shoulders. “Dr Corbin tells me you’re something of an expert in this field.”

“So he keeps telling me.”

“How’s Casey?” said Corbin. “I take it he’s all right?”

Macbeth nodded. “But he’s shaken up by the whole thing.” He turned and explained to Ramirez, “My brother is a physicist at MIT.”

“I see …” said Ramirez. “That was a terrible thing. That and the thing at Caltech.”

“Caltech?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Corbin frowned. “During the night three bombs exploded in the Annenberg Center. The target was a research project.”

“What kind of research project?”

“Computing. Information technology,” the Californian cop answered. “Something to do with artificial intelligence research.
And those people who threw themselves off the bridge worked with that kind of stuff. I know it was gaming, but it was pretty far-out-there stuff, as far as I can see.”

“You think there’s a link between the mass suicide of gaming researchers and these attacks on science establishments? I can’t see the connection.”

“There’s a lot of things that don’t seem to be connected, but are. After I’m through here I’m flying to New York. Did you read, a couple of months or so back, about a guy who starved himself to death at home in a swanky New York apartment building? Until recently Tennant was involved with Melissa Collins.”

“I only just found that out,” said Macbeth. “You’re investigating this in the belief that Melissa somehow persuaded Tennant to commit suicide too, by starving himself to death?”

“No, no … Not at all. They had gone their separate ways some while before. And Tennant was doing anything but committing suicide, at least deliberately. Melissa Collins and Samuel Tennant were both Transhumanists. I guess you know what that means?”

Macbeth nodded distractedly. Something was beginning to form a picture, but it was still too far out of focus for him to make sense of it.

“The NYPD are still investigating his death,” said Ramirez. “Not that they think it was murder or even suicide, as such, but just before his death, Tennant electronically transferred half a million dollars to an offshore account, apparently in payment for some rare manuscript or other. There’s no trace of the money or of the manuscript. It may not even have been in physical form.”

“That’s an expensive download,” said Corbin.

“As for his death – from what the NYPD found out, Tennant was obsessed with calories. He didn’t eat proper food, but this supplement crap all the time. He thought it would make him live longer. He got that wrong, that’s for sure.”

“Calorific intake,” said Macbeth. “There’s evidence that if you exist on an extremely restricted calorific content, you can extend your life by as much as a quarter. But if you overdo it …”

“Exactly,” said Ramirez. “He was obsessed with something called the Singularity, which he thought would happen sometime in the next ten to fifty years. I don’t understand that much about it, but he had some wild idea that he could achieve immortality if he managed to live until the Singularity. As for the group, that’s why I’m going to New York. But I came here to talk to Deborah. To see if she can cast any light on the whole thing.”

“This group,” said Macbeth. “Did they call themselves the Simulists?”

Ramirez looked at Macbeth. For the first time it was a cop’s look: assessing, weighing him up.

“How did you know that?”

“Bundy told me.”

“The FBI man you said spoke to you?”

“Yes. He said Tennant was involved with the Simulists but didn’t say anything about Melissa being connected.”

“I haven’t been able to locate Agent Bundy to ask him,” said Ramirez. “In fact, the FBI were less than cooperative and said they don’t have an Agent Bundy. I was hoping Deborah Canning could help.”

“Then I suggest we ask her,” said Corbin, extending his hand to indicate the door. “Shall we?”

“Just one thing,” Macbeth said, halting Ramirez as they made for the door. “This manuscript he paid five hundred thousand for … do you know what it was?”

Ramirez nodded. “
Phantoms of Our Own Making
, by someone called John Astor.”

Ari Livnat had the strangest feeling: as if someone, somewhere at the extreme edge of his hearing, was drawing fingernails across a blackboard.

He was hot and tired and bored, which was normal for this type of detail, but underlying the tedium was a nerve-jangled itchiness. Even this close to the sea, the air was desert air: skin-and lip-crackingly hot and dry. But Ari had the feeling that there was something odd, something extra in the air.

Ari stood beside Benny Kagan and the others of his platoon, hunch-shouldered in combat olive, scuffing the sand with his boot, rifle hanging muzzle-downwards in his grasp, watching the protestors. It struck him that these young men, all of whom were pretty much the same age as Ari, were going through the motions with the same lack of enthusiasm that he was. Maybe some of them had been coerced to be there too. Conscripted into compulsory protesting. Or maybe just because history demanded it.

History was something Ari despised; mainly because, having been born where and when he was, he’d had too much of it foisted upon him at birth. History had been the music he had grown up with and he was sick of the sound of it ringing in his ears. History defined him, more than if he had been born Italian or Finnish or Greek or American. And, at that moment, Ari would have given anything to have been born with any of those historically unencumbered nationalities. For as long as
he could remember, he had been compelled to wear his perceived history – Masada, blood libels, anti-Semitic canards, pogroms, the Holocaust, the Wars of Independence and Attrition – like a yellow star. And he wanted no part of it.

Ari was a most reluctant soldier – a conscript. He had thought of refusing to serve, but he had no religious or political justifications for refusal, he wasn’t a swimsuit model or other celebrity with a legal dodge to pay for, and then there was Ari’s father to think about. There were many things in life that Ari was cynical about, but his father was not one of them. Ari’s father had fought in both the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars, having been taken prisoner in the latter and thrown into the hell of al-Mazzeh prison. Joe Livnat was a gentle, quiet man, to whom his son was devoted. His father had never discussed his treatment at the hands of the Syrians, but Ari had learned from other sources about the filth and disease, the torture and beatings that almost all captured IDF prisoners had endured. The thing that had upset Ari most was the way his father always withdrew into silence whenever questioned about those times – a quietness, Ari suspected, that had something to do with the shame of the surrendered.

And that was what Ari hated most about history: no matter how hard you tried, some of it was simply inescapable. He knew his father would have understood, perhaps even supported him, had he decided to dodge his draft, but Ari had felt the need to go through the motions for his father’s sake, as if refusing service would have confirmed a family trait, somehow, and compounded his father’s quiet shame.

So now Ari stood in IDF olive drab under a desert sun. And now that the worst of the conflict between Jew and Arab seemed to have passed, he could hope that the only thing the State of Israel would expect him to kill was time.