August (17 page)

‘Ten years ago a series of secret experiments were carried out, crude things in my opinion. We assembled a group of children of the night and showed that under certain circumstances we were able to predict their behaviour well in advance of the children believing they had made any choices.

‘In the most telling example we used electrical impulses to guide them through simple mazes. Unaware of these external signals, the children created elaborate stories to explain the paths they had taken. We found we could move them quickly to the maze's heart or trap them in hopeless circles, and either way the children would explain in detail the invented causes of their success or failure.

‘This was taken to the Holy Council, which took it as final evidence that the people of the night were nothing more than automatons, trundling through life dressing their trajectories in
post hoc
narrative. The council embraced the finding, for it appeared to support the Doctrine of the Soulless. It was reasonable to conclude that the people of the night, having no will, possessed no souls. Science had given support to lumbering prejudices. This is what believers do: ask only those questions that cannot hurt them.

‘Of course there were voices of dissent. Ours is a community well trained in logic and the experiment was clearly flawed. I am sure you can tell me why.'

Tristan nodded. It wasn't difficult. ‘There were two mistakes. The first was in the leap from the specific to the general. To show that in a particular circumstance will can be an illusion does not establish that the same is true in every circumstance. It is well known that by creating the right conditions of light and line our eyes can be deceived, but no one uses this to imply that all we see is false. We cannot assume that because the children did not notice the absence of will in this case, that the will is always absent in them.'

‘And the other mistake?' the rector asked.

‘There was no control,' Tristan continued, sensing at once the gap into which he had been thrown. ‘Even if they could establish the absence of will in children of the night, it still falls upon them to show that under the same circumstance those possessing souls do not suffer the same reduction.'

The rector nodded his approval, turning to pace in his theatrical manner. He stopped suddenly, as if puzzled by his thoughts.

‘If you are right, then the Holy Council, made up as you know of our deepest and most respected thinkers, was quite wrong. How could it be that you have out-thought our finest minds? Is not what you are suggesting foolish arrogance?'

‘It may well be,' Tristan said, hearing in his answers thoughts he barely knew were forming. ‘But we all have blind spots, and perhaps it is the role of the arrogant to ensure that we are not all looking in the same direction.'

The rector laughed, a deep and gratifying boom that warmed the boy.

‘Other arrogant minds approached me,' the rector said, and the satisfaction in his voice rang clear. ‘They also believed the council's enthusiasm stemmed not from evidence but from doctrine. Together we devised a further experiment, one that could serve as the control. We presented it to the council for their approval. They raised no objections, for dogma had made them blind. They fully expected to see me fail today, Tristan. They found it inconceivable that a young man like yourself, baptised and schooled in theology, could be reduced to an automaton.'

He gazed down his long nose at Tristan as one might look at the first fruit of a well-tended orchard.

‘I am glad we found you, Tristan. You have done more good than you can imagine.'

‘You didn't find me,' Tristan reminded him. ‘Circumstance delivered me to you. I chose to defy the church. I presented you with the opportunity to punish me.'

The rector's eyes clouded with sadness, an emotion so ill suited to his features that his face became that of a stranger.

‘You see how stubborn our beliefs are, Tristan? After all of this, you still believe in choices. I brought you to the naked girl because I knew how it would pain you. I provoked your rebellion and sent Brother Kevin to lead you further. It was important you thought that you were being punished. It was important you saw me as your enemy. I needed to be able to convince the council you wished for nothing more than my defeat.'

‘I wished for the girl at the church more,' Tristan reminded him. ‘Or was she a lie too? Did you pay her to act that way?'

‘No, Grace came as a surprise. But not one I couldn't utilise.'

‘So she's real?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you can take me to her?'

‘You will have your prize.'

It should have been all that mattered. He would see her again, and this time he would not hesitate. This experiment would fade to a dream in his memory. It should have been that simple. And yet anger rose up in him: an ambitious, certain fury. He would not allow his soul to be erased. Not like this.

‘But you are wrong!' Tristan shouted. ‘Your reasoning is incorrect. They will see that.'

He advanced on the rector, his fists trembling at his sides, the adrenaline surging again. The rector's stance was as steady as his stare. He didn't yield a centimetre.

‘I know what you are going to say.'

‘Are you mocking me?' Tristan had screamed in rage before.

Still the rector was unmoved. ‘You think I cheated.'

‘Of course you cheated. You had been watching me, through the walls of my room. You observed my meditation. You blocked my method by introducing her, by making it impossible for me to take my mind from the game.'

‘That is true,' the rector said.

‘Then you proved nothing!' Tristan felt the triumph as his argument grew solid. ‘All you have shown is that under the right circumstances I can be anticipated, but put anyone under enough pressure and they become predictable. Set light to their house and they will flee it. That's all that happened here. It establishes nothing more than how badly I wanted to see her!'

‘So you are claiming that under other circumstances you might have foiled me?'

The rector's calm caused Tristan to hesitate. He felt his certainty leaking from him, leaving his anger to tremble unsupported.

‘Yes.'

‘And how would you have done that?'

Tristan's mouth opened but the words were blocked by understanding. The truth appeared with sudden clarity and his legs grew unsteady beneath him.

‘It is all right, Tristan.'

‘It is not. You have taken it all.'

‘It was never there to take.'

The rector put his hand on Tristan's shoulder. He eased his shaking body to the ground. ‘Kneel with me, Tristan.'

‘And do what, pray?'

‘Yes, we shall pray for God's grace.' There was no irony in the rector's voice. They faced the completed puzzle together, the symbol of the greatest martyr, stolen by the Christians for their own macabre ends. They had knelt side-by-side like this once before, at the time of his father's death. This time Tristan felt his loss might take him under.

The rector spoke gently, as if reciting a prayer. ‘Free will is an illusion, Tristan. You see that now. It is an illusion because the very concept is contradictory. You might have been able to find within yourself a kind of randomness that I could have not anticipated. I am not sure, but I admired your efforts and I cheated to block you. But that is what freedom must look like. It must be random, it must float free of every cause.

‘I was younger than you when I first encountered this. I was walking towards a beggar with a coin in my pocket, and I knew I faced a moral choice. He was only a child and looked up at me, pleading. I stopped and thought,
God is
watching me, and He wants me to do what is right
. So I looked within myself, hoping to discover His will.

‘But you know what I found? What we all find when we try to pick apart our decisions. A collection of desires, expectations and prejudices. The jumble from which we construct every choice. I had been told by my parents never to give to beggars, that it only encouraged them and made their problems worse. I had heard a priest say the same thing. I had earnt that coin, and knew just how I wished to spend it. And yet, against this were those eyes, the hunger in the way he held his body, the great feeling of empathy welling up in me. All of these things mattered. They all needed to be considered.

‘But then what happens? How do we move from influence to decision? We all know how it feels. It is as if some other self, some soul, weighs up these factors and then chooses the best path. But this is incoherent. Either we weigh the factors by instinct—a kind of algorithm, which is what I used to predict your actions—or we do what you tried to do, and open ourselves to randomness. We can have freedom, or we can have will, but it makes no sense to speak of having both.'

It was true. And now that Tristan understood, he found it impossible to believe it hadn't always been obvious.

‘What did you do?' Tristan asked. ‘With the beggar.'

The rector smiled.

‘I could not decide so I let the coin decide for me. I flipped it in the air. Heads he would have it; tails it was mine.'

‘And which was it?'

‘Neither. He snatched it from the air before it hit the ground and ran off with his prize.'

They sat in silence, Tristan as much a part of the room as the walls that surrounded him, nailed to his future, unable to wriggle, or even protest.

‘So why the test?' Tristan asked. ‘Why not just explain this?'

‘An argument has no force when it runs against our deepest intuitions. The council might have understood the argument, but they would not have believed it. They needed to see the demonstration. Just like you did.'

‘How can you do this? How can you take it all from us?'

‘I have taken nothing.'

‘You have taken our belief,' Tristan said. ‘What are we without it? We are nothing.'

‘You are wrong,' the rector replied. ‘There is still God's grace. And remember, if none of us is responsible, then none of us is past forgiveness. Augustine understood this, even though he resisted it.'

Tristan's head began to spin and his stomach gave a threatening lurch. Perhaps it was the shock of the game's violence. It was possible that he had taken a blow to the head. Or the greater shock of realising that whatever he did now, he could no longer claim to be the architect of his future.

‘You need to stand now, Tristan. There is very little time.'

‘To do what?' Tristan allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. The spinning turned to a wobble and the cross before him split into two and then four.

‘To get you to the girl, and then both of you out of the City.'

‘Why would we leave the City?'

‘The Holy Council will not accept defeat easily. It will want you to confess that you were working to a script.'

‘But I wasn't,' Tristan said.

‘No, and you will not lie easily. I don't wish to be responsible for your torture.'

‘Where will we go?'

‘To the heathen settlements.' The rector handed him an envelope. ‘There are papers in here, and instructions on how to find the people who will help you.'

Tristan said nothing. He stood gormless before his teacher.

‘Quickly,' the rector said.

‘If they come for me, won't they also come for you?'

‘I would never have come this far without powerful friends, Tristan. The council knows that.'

But there was fear in the rector's voice; he could not hide it.

‘Hurry,' he urged again. ‘I am offering you freedom.'

‘No,' Tristan replied as the truth bubbled to the surface. ‘There is no freedom. Remember.'

‘Be slow to judge that,' the rector warned. ‘The question is more subtle than you can imagine. God's grace goes with you, Tristan. Wear your fate well. It is what He asks of us.'

Again he offered his hand, and this time Tristan gripped it tight, tears blurring his vision further.

‘Thank you,' he replied, although he couldn't say why he felt gratitude.

It was two years since Tristan had breathed the outside air and its sharpness threatened to overwhelm him. He stumbled on a raised paving stone and Simon caught him at the elbow.

‘Careful, we must not draw attention to ourselves.'

The City was caught in the gloaming. Tristan felt the colour fading from his body as the aches of combat took hold. He was led to the workers' quarter, where he had not walked since childhood. His past presented itself as a stranger. Tristan had grown used to the meagre comforts of St Augustine's, and here the iron roofs and ill-fitting walls seemed built to the scale of children. The smell of the streets rose up in Tristan's nostrils, the stench of hopelessness. Simon stopped and pointed to a window yellowed by the dim glow of a single candle.

‘That is it,' he said. ‘That is her room. The rest is up to you. Go well.'