The War of Immensities (77 page)

“But if so, it
will be at a great cost. At this location, the earth’s crust is
more even and generally thinner than anywhere else on the planet.
There are no nearby volcanic regions, nor tectonic plate
boundaries, nor other major faults. But the impact will be bigger
that of California, about 10.0. And there will be nowhere for it to
let off steam.

“The nearest
major volcanic outlets are in Kenya, 1700 miles away, and some in
the Cameroons, 600 miles away. We can expect these to erupt, but
history has taught us that the Thyssen Bubble will find its own way
out. We expect that at the Lake Chad location, the earth will crack
open and be swallowed in a lava flood, much as previously happened
at Lake Baikal.

“There will be
a very great area of devastation. And all of the pilgrims will be,
of necessity, at the centre of that area. Right now there are
thirteen million pilgrims in total—4 million Americans in
Bakersfield or Brazil, 4 million Indonesians mostly gathered in
North Australia, 3 million Iranians now in the hands of United
Nations forces, and one million others, mostly Africans, some
Japanese, Italians, Tahitians and Brazilians, plus we are expecting
around one million or more volunteers from around the world who are
presently positioning themselves in the Hawaiian Islands with a
view to becoming sleepers. We plan to gather all of them, or as
many as possible, at the Lake Chad site. If all this is so, then we
can expect that all or most of them will die at Lake Chad.

“The danger
they face is great, therefore. As these eminent gentlemen will tell
you, there is no certainty of the danger. But, I am here to tell
you this. If Harley is right in every respect, then the singularity
will be destroyed, the earth will be saved, but perhaps at the cost
of the lives of all of the pilgrims.

“I believe the
strain of that knowledge, and the fact that he needed to keep it
secret and carry the burden of it alone, was the reason why Harley
Thyssen collapsed. It was too much for one man to carry alone. Now,
we must carry it for him.”

It was a
testament to the power of make-up artists that the television
persona of Lorna Simmons could be created so perfectly. Only hours
ago, Brian had seen the wraith that haunted Green Palms Hospital
when he arrived in Honolulu the evening before. It shocked him,
rather more than did the comatose figure of Harley Thyssen.

In the studio,
as she came by him, Brian was astonished. There was no trance of
the distraught and bedraggled person of a few hours earlier. The
cosmeticians and hairdressers had been given the opportunity to
show their talents to be limitless. Lorna was every bit her radiant
self. They must have clipped her ears together behind her head to
so completely rid her of the black bags that had been under her
eyes.

Still, as she
came by, he asked her. “Are you all right?”

“Of course.
Come on. Something just came in on the satellite that you ought to
see.”

They went to
the editing suite when the tape was set running immediately. There
was the figure of Kevin Wagner, in something more like a safari
suit than his usual military garb but the style was still the same.
He stood at a rostrum, addressing a room full of people, but it was
plainly the television cameras to which his words were
directed.

“Man is not the
final outcome of evolution. Evolution is a process, ongoing, for
all time, and humanity is only the most recent stage of that
process. There will be higher beings in the future, evolved from
our primitive selves, beings more appropriate to the tasks that lie
before us.”

“What the hell
is this?” Brian asked.

“I thought you
might be interested,” Lorna said obliquely.

“What tasks lie
before us? Once man believed it impossible to sail across the
oceans. They believed that the horizon was the edge of the world
and if they sailed beyond it, they would fall off. But really, the
limitation was that they did not have ships capable of open ocean
voyage, and, more importantly, they didn’t have sufficient belief
in themselves to try.”

They talked
over the top of him, but that didn’t mean they weren’t listening to
what he said.

“Do we know
where he is?” Brian asked, still incredulous.

“He’s on my
turf. Addressing the pilgrims that still remain in Bakersfield. But
I understand he gave the same address to the pilgrims in Brazil two
days ago. And it went out to all other pilgrim locations,
translated into the appropriate languages.”

“Eventually,
the ships evolved from the minds of more advanced men and they did
conquer the open oceans and find the great continents beyond.

“And now we
confront the universe, and the impossibilities of travel to the
worlds out there. Voyages in time beyond the span of human life,
voyages impossible with our present technology. But if we know
anything about science and technology it is that they will find a
way. The spaceships that make these voyages possible will be
created, just as the unimaginable aeroplane of the time of Columbus
would make spanning the continents an everyday event.”

“This isn’t
Wagner. Someone else must have written the speech for him,” Lorna
said dismissively.

“All very
inspirational, isn’t it,” Brian replied grimly.

“But there are
other problems barring our exploration of the universe. The
prolonged time periods for such journeys, and the fact that zero
gravity and other aspects of that hostile environment inflict
deterioration upon the bodies of astronauts to an unacceptable
level. After just a few months in space, a man must be taught to
walk again, and build up his deteriorated bones and muscles in
normal gravity.

“New great star
voyaging space ships will evolve, perhaps using the time
distortions of near light speed, perhaps seeking out worm holes,
but more likely by some means presently unimaginable to us, our
ships will sail to the stars. But to do so, new men will have to
evolve as well, men better equipped for such journeys. And
more.”

“I wonder where
he got it all from?”

“Yes, Brian. I
wonder,” Lorna said, eyeing him ironically.

“We will not
just voyage to the stars and come back and say, that was fine. No
more than Columbus and the other great explorers did. We will go
there and inhabit these places permanently, and make our homes
there, and live our lives out there. And when, millions of years
hence—or perhaps much sooner if the environmentalists are right—the
earth is destroyed or rendered uninhabitable for us, it won’t
matter, for we must by then be denizens of the galaxy, and
eventually the entire universe.

“Don’t smile
and say it won’t happen. It is the smile of the flat-earther. It is
our nature to go forth and multiply and we will. Of that there is
no doubt.”

“Now that you
mention it,” Brian admitted reluctantly. “It does sound familiar at
times.”

“Men look at
this small planet and say, why have we wondrous creatures evolved
on this small out of the way place, this tiny speck of dust in the
vast cosmos. The answer is because the centre of anywhere in the
cosmos is so hot that nothing can evolve. Life can only be nurtured
in the quieter corners of the galaxy.

“But all that
is to look at it the wrong way around. It doesn’t matter where you
came from. That’s history. That is past. It’s where we’re going
that counts.

“Civilisation
did not evolve on Manhattan Island, nor in London nor Paris. That
was where we carried it from the insignificant places of our
origins. The plains of southern Africa, if the prevailing guesses
are correct, is the place where humanity first arose. But those
savannas are insignificant in terms of modern civilisation—still
the domain of the chimpanzees and baboons that we were there before
we evolved. We have moved on, and made our great societies at
journey’s end, not at the place where we began.”

“I knew this
would happen,” Lorna murmured.

“But of course
that lies thousands, maybe millions of years in the future. It
won’t be humans like us who will do these things, any more than it
was a Neanderthal who went to the River Thames and established
London. It will be the beings into which we will eventually evolve.
Beings appropriate to life in space, on other worlds, adapted to
light speed travel, whatever it needs.”

“I think he’s
got a roo loose in the top paddock,” Brian declared.

“But it sounds
good,” Lorna said.

“Too bloody
good,” Brian replied.

“For that’s the
way that evolution works. The needs arise, and the creatures that
will survive are those that adapt to meet those needs.

“Oh yes, but it
all lies in the impossible future and will take care of itself, you
say. Evolution doesn’t work like that either. Just as the roots of
modern humanity and modern civilisation lie millions of years in
the past, so the roots of the future lie in the present.”

“We really
don’t need this,” Lorna said, looking at Brian as if it was all his
fault.

“The evolution
of the new humanity of the future does not lie in the future.
That’s happening now. We see it, here and now, before our very
eyes, in ourselves. Evolution occurs not gradually but in sudden
leaps and in the Shastri Effect, we see the latest leap of
evolution. The link of the subconscious mind—the power of
collective intelligence. The next short but vital step along the
road to our destiny.”

“This bit is
his own idea,” Brian said, as if washing his hands of it.

Lorna just
hissed in reply.

“We have been
given a new birthright. For this brief moment, we have been placed
face to face with our destiny. Do we hang onto this gift of unity
of minds with which we have been fortuitously provided? Or do we go
back to where we were by accepting the cure, and so-called
normality.

“This is what
they are asking of us. Go back to Africa. Return to you primate
origins. Take a backward step in evolution. Ignore the benefits of
the Shastri Effect. Come here and be made primitive again.”

“You have to
admit it’s a pretty persuasive argument,” Brian said lamely.

“And disaster
for us,” Lorna replied bitterly.

“The next step
along the road of evolution has been taken. It is against nature
now to turn back. Let us take this gift of greater intelligence and
unity and go forward. Do not go to Africa. Stay here and be a part
of the future of humanity.

“The Shastri
Effect is ours. Don’t let them take it away from us.”

Harley Thyssen
was removed from intensive care on the tenth day after his collapse
and, being something of a celebrity guest, was placed in a ward on
the top floor of the hospital. He found no reason to protest. There
Lorna found him when she made a rushed trip to Hawaii.

Lorna had come
to shoot some scenes for a television film that would, plainly and
simply, explain the whole situation to the world. She prepared the
program wisely, offering a full history of the project and the
Shastri Effect in a documentary that she hosted and narrated
herself. For greater impact, she said, the top and tail was filmed
in Hawaii, where within days proof of Thyssen’s theory would take
place. “All that you see around me will be destroyed,” she was able
to say. No one suggested she had an ulterior motive for being
there.

“You shouldn’t
be here,” Thyssen grumped at her. “You have far too much to do to
allow this sort of dalliance.”

“I’ve come to
rescue you,” Lorna said, kissing him firmly on his bloodless
lips.

“And take me
where?” Thyssen asked sceptically.

“There are
plenty of other hospitals.”

“I belong here,
Lorna. And you know it.”

“I’m taking you
somewhere safe.”

“Nowhere is
safe anymore.”

“You know what
will happen here.”

“Yes. And I’ll
have the best seat in the house.”

“You bloody
vulcanologists and your death wishes. Wasn’t Jami’s suicide
enough?”

That was going
too far. A tear appeared in Thyssen’s eye but he managed to keep
his voice level. “Lorna. The young and fit and healthy people are
having enough trouble getting off the island. I’m staying.”

“I’ve arranged
everything.”

“Un-arrange it.
I’m not the sort of man to accept privileges—you know that. It’s
hard enough staying alive in my present condition without having to
live with the guilt that I took someone else’s place on an
aeroplane and they got left here and died. It just wouldn’t be any
good. And with all this medical junk that would have to come with
me, you could fit a dozen skinny people in my place.”

“Harley, we
need you.”

“No you don’t.
It’s just like joining the dots from here.”

“Oh yes, the
great Harley Thyssen master-plan. Everything will just fall into
place.”

“Anything that
happens from here won’t happen any better or worse because I’m
there.”

“Harley, you
just don’t know…”

But he put his
fingers over her lips. “Didn’t the nurses tell you that you aren’t
allow to get me excited by arguing with me?”

Lorna sighed.
She backed off immediately, knowing that was true. Obviously she
would have to come in on a more subtle tack.

“You knew this
was going to happen, didn’t you?”

“Which of my
many wise or foolish predictions are you referring to now?”

“The heart
attack. That was why you arranged for all of us to be able to take
over without you.”

“No, I didn’t.
I knew I had health problems and it was a reasonable assumption
that the stress would get to me in the end. That’s all.”

“You can’t fool
me, Harley. I remember that little experiment of yours when I was
the guinea pig. You expected me to die.”