Galapagos Regained (41 page)

When Chloe announced these flourishes, her companions were quick to praise them, including Princess Akawo, who'd evidently grasped the strategy behind the masquerade. “Six of our tribe will set off for the Encantadas with Professor Cabot, who is really Señor Dartworthy, and Lady Omega, who is really Señorita Bathurst,” she said, fingering the crucifix Hernando de Valverde had given her the day before he died: a wondrous silver artifact, complete with a sculpted Christ the size of a dragonfly. “After reaching the islands, Señor Dartworthy will tell the English shaman Señor Hallowborn that these Huancabambas are Hebrew
ribeirinhos
. Because Señorita Bathurst knows the mind of the One True God, Señor Hallowborn must listen when she tells him not to harm the animals.” Akawo squeezed Chloe's palm. “This Lady Omega, she is rather like the Galilean rabbi of whom poor Padre Valverde so often spoke—am I correct? I hope your enemies do not nail you to a tree.”

“Crucifixion is not in the present draft,” said Chloe drily, “nor will it appear in the next.”

Shortly before noon on the
Lamarck
's third day aloft, the wind lost its vitality. Undaunted, Léourier engaged the propellers. Like some immense aerial puffer-fish, the flying-machine swam above the Andean foothills, formations so massive that back in England they would have been called mountains. As the
Lamarck
ascended, the temperature plunged, the bitter air sowing a ragged crop of icicles along the engine struts and carriage ropes. In their quest for warmth the passengers embraced one another, stomped their feet, and reached through the roof vents to thaw their hands in the heat of the kerosene burner.

Chloe did not so much fall asleep that night as allow the cold to stun her brain and numb her flesh. At dawn she roused herself. Climbing over the oblivious bodies of Akawo, Solange, and Mr. Chadwick, she stood before the glass observation port. An epic panorama met her gaze: the ice-capped Andes, a thousand times more wondrous than the grandest set ever erected at the Adelphi Theatre. The helmsman of the moment was Ralph, singing a ribald chantey as he steered the ship amongst the crags. Seated at the chart table, Léourier looked up from his map of Peru and cautioned Ralph not to let the
Lamarck
climb above the summits, for at that altitude the air became so thin that “whoever attempts to breathe it will soon grow faint, lose consciousness, and die.”

Hour by hour, mile by mile, the balloon negotiated the misty cliffs and snowy slopes, propellers churning, engine grinding. On all sides the Peruvian peaks rose like gigantic teeth, so that Chloe imagined herself as Jonah peering down the gullet of the whale. This notion so beguiled her that she revisited the original biblical narrative, finding herself deeply moved by the hymn Jonah had sung from his fishy prison.

“‘I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and He heard me'!” Chloe recited aloud. “‘Out of the belly of Sheol cried I, and Thou heardest my voice'!”

“Being willing to rescue somebody whom you yourself rammed down the throat of a sea monster does not strike me as the quintessence of compassion,” said Solange.

“In France these days, God is practically illegal,” noted Léourier. “I cannot decide whether we're better off without Him, or worse.”

“We Huancabambas tell ourselves no such stories,” said Akawo, pointing to Chloe's Bible. “When we wish to be with our gods, we walk along the river.”

“I must ask you a question,” said Ralph to Akawo. “If you opened the door and stepped into the clouds, would your gods protect you?”

“Probably not. Our gods are—what is English word?—capricious.”

“Then what good are they?” asked Ralph.

“In truth, no good at all,” said Akawo. “Ah, but you see, they know themselves to be useless, which makes them so very grateful for our songs and sacrifices.”

“I think the God of Abraham might profitably take instruction from Akawo's pantheon,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Hear me, O King of the Universe. Stop making covenants you don't intend to keep. Promise nothing, and expect nothing in return.”

“A perfectly sensible arrangement,” said Solange.

“
Nihil pro quo,
” said Ralph.

Chloe kept her thoughts to herself. Fond though she was of her friends, she wished she might occasionally render them mute—much as Papa, having placed a talkative kettle, loquacious candle, or voluble clock at the center of a puppet play, could on a whim banish it to the country of the dumb, where the creature would remain in splendid silence until he once again gifted it with a tongue.

*   *   *

Hand on the helm, face pressed against the observation port, Malcolm surveyed the valley, the lambent shafts of noonday sun piercing the Rio Jequetepeque like the javelins wielded by the indigenous fishermen. On all sides the dwarf hills and shallow gorges testified to a gratifying fact: the
Lamarck
had traversed the Andes. If the company's luck held, they would reach Akawo's village ere the day was out.

Even as he contemplated the equatorial vistas, Malcolm pondered the equally mottled terrain of his soul, not only the marks left by the murder of the mercenaries but also the stain caused by his newfound and gnawing desire to win the Great God Contest. Now that he'd defrocked himself, he dreaded his eventual return to Wroxton: no parsonage, no larder, no income—problems that the Byssheans' gold promised to dissolve like sugar in hot tea. True, netting the Shelley Prize would entail difficulties he could barely begin to imagine, but for a cut of the £10,000 Dartworthy and Miss Kirsop would doubtless be happy to help him collect illustrative specimens and somehow get them to England.

Malcolm winced strenuously. He gritted his teeth, thinking,
Get thee behind me, Mammon.
If he were an honorable man, he would not try to acquire that tainted purse, lest he thenceforth prefer supping with swine to living with himself.

No sooner had he won this duel with his cupidity than a more immediate threat arose. Directly ahead, a squadron of four condors rode the lofty currents, bound for the
Lamarck.
Even at this distance, Malcolm believed he could infer the flock's collective opinion of the balloon. From a condor's perspective the thing was a rival creature in the struggle for existence.

“
Mon Capitaine,
I think we're under attack!” cried Malcolm.

Elbowing his way to the helm, Léourier shouted, “Hard right rudder!”

Malcolm spun the wheel, thus inadvertently steering the
Lamarck
into a second, larger condor flock. Caws and squawks filled the gondola, followed by a ghastly ripping noise, as if some heavenly tailor, having made a botch of God's trousers, were tearing them apart at the seams. The observation port displayed the whole catastrophe, the hideous bald birds sinking their talons into the marauder, shredding the silk bladder, and releasing its heated vapors into the cool coastal air.

“Christ!” wailed Miss Kirsop.

“Damn!” yelled Dartworthy.

Léourier seized the burner control and shut off the flame—a sensible tactic, Malcolm decided: if they were destined to meet the ground, the collision would be terrible enough without the
Lamarck
becoming a pillar of fire. For a brief instant the wounded balloon buoyed the gondola, but then gravity prevailed, and the flying-machine plummeted towards the valley floor. The passengers loosed a choral scream, discharging blasts of hot breath into the carriage, though not in quantities sufficient to arrest the ship's fall.

Malcolm was surprised to discover that contrary to conventional wisdom his life did not flash before him, no mother weeding her vegetable patch, no father selling nostrums in the family apothecary, no boyhood spaniel chasing rabbits into the bracken. He was aware only of the sickening descent and the
thump-thump-thump
of the gondola scudding along the crests of the trees. An instant later the
Lamarck
made calamitous contact with the nation of Peru, the shock-wave tearing open the larboard hatch and hurtling Malcolm backwards through the portal, so that before blacking out he judged himself a loser in the great evolutionary lottery, bested by some fitter cleric.

*   *   *

Shortly after The Reverend Granville Heathway finished painting
The Eye of God,
his austere rendering of Father Teilhard's Omega Point, he realized he'd not exhausted the subject. The dot in question was the very wink of infinity, worthy of multiple interpretations. Taking up his brush, he dipped it in white pigment and once again jabbed a blank canvas with a quick darting motion, thus bringing
The Second Eye of God
into being.

Other such devotions followed.
The Third Eye of God
begat
The Fourth Eye of God
, which led to
The Fifth Eye of God,
which occasioned
The Sixth Eye of God,
and there would have been a seventh had Granville not run short of canvas. For a full hour he brooded on the deficit, but then Catullus swooped into the cell, landing atop the dovecote. Granville banished the canvas crisis from his mind. What mattered at the moment was the fate of the man his son had called “this cosmically inclined
curé
.”

Dearest Father,

Yesterday morning Mustafa Reshid Pasha invited me to his private suite in the Topkapi Palace, where we shared strong coffee and an even stronger camaraderie. I told him that I had thus far met two alleged time travelers in Yusuf Effendi's establishment: Abbot Mendel and Père Teilhard. The Grand Vizier admitted that, as a devotee of reason and mathematics, he was inclined to explain these encounters in reference to the hashish.

“Being a practical man, untutored in metaphysics, I would say that those two worthies were probably—you will forgive my little joke—hookahlucinations. On the other hand, they might have been angels sent by Allah to impart a few minor cosmic secrets to a deserving infidel. Pay close attention to your water-pipe companions, Bertram Effendi. You may learn something of value.”

Now Reshid Pasha bent closer and in a whispered confidence told me of his exasperation with the Sultan. Two weeks earlier, Abdülmecid had signed a treaty with Louis Bonaparte whereby the Vatican would become the protector of all Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land, whether Catholic, Protestant, or—an inclusion certain of antagonizing the Tsar—Eastern Orthodox. Naturally I asked Reshid Pasha if these developments portended difficulties for the Ararat expedition. Assuming that the Diluvian League recovered the Relic of Relics, could we still count on the Turkish government to reprovision the
Paragon
and grant both Deardon's brig and Noah's ark safe passage through the Bosporus?

“Were Russia to attack us tomorrow, destroy our army, and force the Sultan to sue for peace, then the answer is no,” the Grand Vizier replied with frigid candor. “Such a disaster would render moot our scheme to have your Reverend Dalrymple petition the Archbishop of Canterbury on our nation's behalf. But I am guardedly optimistic. Last week Prince Menshikov arrived in Constantinople to persuade the Sultan to renounce this preposterous treaty. I believe he will succeed, thereby delaying the war by a year at least.”

I decided to celebrate Reshid Pasha's prediction by patronizing the hookah-den. No sooner had I filled the hashish bowl than Père Teilhard approached, explaining that he'd traveled by coach all the way from the Rome of 1950. We embraced. He slumped onto a divan, then retrieved from his valise a fat and battered manuscript called
Le Phénomène Humain
.

When last we sat down to share a pipe, Teilhard had seemed to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders, the Holy See having forbidden him to publish any speculations concerning Adam's fall or Peking Man's rise. Today he looked even sadder, as if sustaining the infinite mass of the Omega Point itself.

Seeking to cheer him up, I indicated the manuscript and exclaimed, “Hoorah—you finished your book!”

“Vraiment
, despite malaria, heart troubles, and Rome's insistence on exiling me to China again,” said the priest, inhaling
Cannabis
. “In these pages I have articulated my theory of orthogenesis. Evolution is purposeful, Bertram. Higher consciousness is the human destiny.”

As my friend continued to summarize his book, he grew sublimely animated, his fingers fluttering as if to make a marionette dance. The Gospel according to Teilhard, I soon learned, begins in the domain of prelife, the lithosphere, our planet's inert shell. Over the aeons, the lithosphere becomes surmounted by the miracle of self-replicating molecules, the biosphere, with primitive “viruses” ascending towards bacterial “prokaryotes” that in time evolve into nucleated “eukaryotes,” a process that culminates in mammals, including our own simian ancestors. Eventually the biosphere is itself encapsulated by a uniquely human realm, the noosphere, the mantle of thought that enshrouds the world. But the process does not end there. Beyond the noosphere lies the Cosmic Christ, that divine crucible in which all minds will one day meld to form the supreme consciousness towards which
le Tout
was heading from the moment God declared, “Let there be light!”

“What are the prospects of your thesis seeing print?” I asked.

“Like a sinner standing before Hell's portal, I have abandoned hope,” said Père Teilhard, grimacing. “Last year I met with the superior general. He told me if I published
Le Phénomène Humaine
in any form whatsoever, it would automatically appear on the Index of Forbidden Books. I was not entirely surprised, given the order's reflexive hostility to Monsieur Darwin. The general also explained that if I didn't leave Europe posthaste, the Vatican would again be obliged to exile me. So here I am on a trip to Africa, where Louis Leakey has invited me to inspect his excavations at Olduvai Gorge.”