Biblical (17 page)

“I take it you have no faith?” Yates asked him after twenty yards of silence.

“I’m a Humanist. I don’t share your faith, but that doesn’t mean I lack belief.”

“But you don’t believe in God?”

“No. I think the universe is too wonderful and mysterious to be explained away so simplistically. Glibly, almost. If you don’t mind me saying, Madame President.”

“Everyone is entitled to their opinion, Professor Hoberman.”

“Are they?”

Yates looked at him for a moment. “So your beliefs are founded in science, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Science is a tool,” said Yates. “A facility given to us by God. Science and technology are means to an end, not an end in themselves, yet so many treat science as a religion. There are high priests, evangelists and bigots in science, just as there are in every religion.”

“I don’t see science in that way. I believe it is the
only
way of understanding ourselves and our universe. But my belief or lack of it isn’t the question. It’s yours that’s important and whether it’s in any way linked to these visions.” Hoberman paused for a moment. He watched a Broad-winged Hawk traverse with a single beat of wing the span of blue between the swathes of hickory. “What concerns me most is how you may interpret any future hallucinations. Attribute some meaning that isn’t there.”

“Are you saying that I’m unfit for office?” Yates stopped again and held him in her professionally honed gaze. “It strikes me that you are commenting on the beliefs and personality that were in place before these episodes began.”

“The phenomena and your personality are inextricably linked; it’s impossible to evaluate one without considering the other. As for your fitness for office, I can only comment clinically – anything else is for others to decide.”

“Indeed it is, Professor Hoberman. It’s for the American people to decide, and they have already made their will known. I have been charged with steering this great country, perhaps the only nation that knows the Lord’s blessing, through the trials that lie ahead.”

Again something sparkled cold and dark in the bright blue of her eyes. She broke the gaze, smiled and continued their walk.

“The weather seems to be smiling on us,” she said conversationally, switching mode as he had seen her do so many times in the last few days.

“It does indeed,” said Hoberman, looking into the sky above the path, where the Broad-winged Hawk again appeared briefly as it performed a beatless arc, scouring the forest for prey.

The priest died the next day.

Macbeth was browsing in the big bookstore on Harvard Place, wondering – as he passed the huge display of e-readers – how much longer books would be books; things you could touch page by page, when his cellphone rang and Pete Corbin told him the news.

“He wouldn’t have lived so long if it hadn’t been for you, John. You gave him the best chance of making it.”

“Not a good enough chance, obviously,” said Macbeth. “By the way, Casey did know Gabriel – not well, but he knew him.” Macbeth relayed to Corbin what his brother had told him about the young doctoral student. As physicians, both Macbeth and Corbin had learned to encounter death dispassionately, but there was something about their experience on the roof that was different. Macbeth guessed Corbin was struggling as much as he was to make sense of it.

“How much longer are you staying in Boston?” Corbin asked.

“Till the end of next week. I’m spending Monday and Tuesday at the Schilder Institute – that’s my official reason for being here. Why do you ask?”

“There’s a patient at Belmont I want you to see. I’ve done all of the clearances … I think you’d be very interested, given your research work. When would suit you?”

“I’ve got dinner with Casey tonight, but other than that I’m free till Monday.”

“Friday morning then. Ten-thirty. That okay?”

“Sure, I’ll be there.”

“See you then. And John?”

“Yeah?”

“I really am sorry Mullachy didn’t make it.”

*

That evening, Macbeth met Casey for dinner in a purposefully jocund, mahogany-paneled, beer-garden-type place close to the Common. As he waited a beer’s length for Casey to arrive, Macbeth cast his eyes around the restaurant: waiters, dressed in waistcoats and long white aprons and carrying trays singlehanded and shoulder-high, wheeled and weaved between the tables delivering steins of bier and heavily laden plates. Again Macbeth reflected on the comforting absurdity of a simulation of another culture, another country and another time, but somehow the compulsory cheeriness was welcome. Necessary.

Casey arrived at the door and scanned the hall, grinning across the cluster of tables when he spotted Macbeth. The smile was uniquely Casey: boyish, mischievous, bright and ingenuous; a smile that Macbeth knew he had grown up seeing, that had been a constant accompaniment to their play together, but it bothered him to the point of small panic that he could not remember any single incident of that smile; that his memory of it, like his memory of almost everything, was general rather than specific.

“I thought we were having dinner, not planning a putsch,” said Casey with a wry smile as he looked around before responding to Macbeth’s offered handshake with a hug.

“I felt in need of some
Gemütlichkeit
 …” Macbeth waved to attract a waiter’s attention and ordered a pitcher of beer.

“Tough day?”

Macbeth told Casey about the priest’s death and asked if he’d been able to find out any more about Gabriel Rees’s recent history.

“There’s not much to tell,” Casey explained. “Everybody says the same thing: Gabriel was so wrapped up in his work with Professor Gillman that he hadn’t done much in the way of socializing, but any that he did, he seemed fine. No hint of him being in any way troubled.”

“How well do you know Gillman?”

“Well enough, I suppose, but I haven’t seen him for a while. Gillman isn’t the most approachable of people. Spiky, is the best way of describing him. That or a bit of an asshole. He’s traveling to Oxford with me for the Blackwell symposium.”

“Really? If you get a chance ask him about Gabriel, see if he knew anything about him being disturbed.”

Casey frowned. “God knows how many patient suicides you must have had to deal with over the years, what is it about this one that’s got you so curious?”

“Firstly, thanks for the vote of confidence in my clinical skills – it may surprise you that only one of my patients killed himself. And he was my last patient in clinical practice.”

“Shit, I’m sorry, John. That was a crass thing for me to say. I forgot about him.”

“That’s okay. Truth is, something about Gabriel reminded me of that last patient at McLean. Not that their delusions were in any way similar – my patient was suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, or at least that was
my
diagnosis, even if I got my ass in a sling for it. There was no hint of Gabriel believing he was anyone other than himself.” Macbeth shrugged. “I don’t know, there was just something about Gabriel’s calm that reminded me of that case. Maybe that’s it. I really don’t know.”

They sank into silence for a moment.

“Did you bring your laptop?” asked Casey.

Macbeth reached down and lifted the small case that rested at his feet.

“I’ll have a look when we get back to my apartment … see what I can do.”

“I’ve never really gotten into computers, despite the work I’m doing on the Project.”

“Sometimes I think you were born into the wrong decade. The wrong century.”

“I’d be weird whatever century I was born in.” Macbeth shrugged. “Go back too many centuries and they’d have burned me at the stake.”

“I can see this is going to be a fun evening,” Casey said over his beer.

“Sorry. It’s been a trying couple of days.”

Casey nodded, then looked around again at the beer hall. “How did you find this place? It’s not your usual speed.”

“Melissa brought me years ago. I think she was trying to be ironic. That was before she discovered I didn’t do ironic.”

“I was sorry when it didn’t work out with you and Melissa. She was good for you.”

“It doesn’t seem to work out with me and anybody.” Macbeth took a sip of his beer and looked at his glass contemplatively. “Do you know what Melissa said to me? That she was tired of me not being there, even when I was.”

“What was that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Casey, you know exactly what she meant. We both do. There’s something missing with me, some tiny gap that seems to become a chasm when people get to know me. What Melissa meant was she was tired of coming home to an empty room, even when I was in it.”

“Jesus … you are in a great mood tonight.”

“Sorry. Like I said, I—” Macbeth broke off mid-sentence, a strange feeling seizing him: the same powerful feeling of déjà vu he’d felt in the Common. But even more intense this time, and accompanied by a feeling of being off-balance. He gripped the edge of the table, staring at his pressure-whitened fingertips. This was happening too often. This wasn’t déjà vu; this wasn’t one of his typical episodes. He was having some kind
of cerebral incident: a TIA or something similar. He needed medical attention.

And then he saw Casey’s face.

Casey was looking directly at Macbeth but wasn’t seeing him. He was frowning in concentration, trying to make sense of some experience personal to him. Macbeth realized that whatever was happening to him was happening to Casey too.

It went very quiet.

The restaurant had been bustling and noisy, the sounds of the diners’ conversations and laughter, the clinking and ringing of delivered and collected porcelain and glass resonating in the high-ceilinged room. But now the restaurant had fallen silent.

Macbeth looked past Casey. Everyone was still, each in his or her private universe, trying to make sense of what had happened. Slowly, people returned to conversation, their voices low and quiet, concerned, as they shared their experiences.

“You all right?” he asked Casey.

“What the fuck was that?” Casey looked scared and something protective, almost paternal, sparked in Macbeth.

“Did you feel like really strong déjà vu?” asked Macbeth. Casey nodded vigorously, relieved his experience had been shared. “Exactly like …” He looked around. “Shit … everybody?”

“Everybody, as far as I can see.”

The buzz of conversation picked up in the restaurant. Urgent exchanges; desperate sharings.

“There’s something still not right,” said Casey.

“Like something’s changed? The temperature or the air quality?”

“Have you had this before?”

Macbeth nodded. “There’s more, Casey, Pete Corbin told me—”

It started as a tinkling. The glasses and bottles behind the long mahogany bar, as if rattled by a heavy truck or a train
passing. Except there were no rail tracks anywhere near, and the streets in this part of Old Boston were too narrow for anything much bigger than a cargo van.

Again the restaurant fell quiet as everyone turned to the bar. A young, fresh-faced barkeeper stared back, white-faced and confused. The rattling ceased and there was an eternal second of stillness, a near-total silence broken only by the ticking of the huge, round Victorian bar clock. Macbeth was struck at how sharp and clear each measured tick was, as if his hearing had suddenly become enhanced.

Screams.

It was as if the whole world shuddered, trying to shrug them off its shoulders. Macbeth reached for Casey but was thrown from his chair, landing heavily on the polished wooden floor. He tried to get up but his balance was impossible to find as the floor shuddered and shifted beneath him. He fell again, this time his cheek and the side of his head slamming even harder onto the floorboards. He lay stunned for a moment, his ear pressed to polished oak, his newly acute vision picking up painfully sharp detail on the sparse flecks of dust and grime on the sedulously swept floor. And through the floor, he could hear the Earth. He heard it bellow and moan, crack asunder deafeningly. He felt every vibration, from the minutest to the most momentous, resonate through his body.

An earthquake. A major earthquake. They had to take shelter. He began to crawl around the table to Casey. When he found him, his brother was lying on his side, as Macbeth had been, bleeding from a head wound. Macbeth elbow-shuffled across the floor to his brother and checked the wound: it was superficial and Casey was conscious but confused.

“Casey!” Macbeth shouted over the clamor of other shrill voices. “Casey … We’ve got to get under the table!” He grabbed his brother by his jacket and pulled him towards him and into the shelter of the table.

“Shouldn’t we get out of here?” Casey yelled back. “If the building comes down, we’ll be buried!”

“We’re safer here. If we go out into the street we could be hit by falling masonry. We’ve got to sit tight. Wait it out.”

Casey nodded but didn’t look convinced. Everything around them shook and shuddered, but there was no sound of anything falling onto the table. The shaking intensified, the vibrations resounding in Macbeth’s skull, in every inch of bone.

It stopped. Again the restaurant was filled with desperate, terrified gasps and cries. But the shaking had stopped.

He felt the floor beneath them drop, as if they were in an elevator whose cable had snapped. Macbeth and Casey were thrown upwards and he simultaneously grabbed hold of his brother and the single central column leg of the table. They smashed into the floor as the direction was reversed and the world seemed to lunge viciously back at them. All around them there was renewed screaming.

The movement stopped. There was no more shaking.

His fingers biting protectively into his younger brother’s arm, Macbeth lay with his bruised cheek against the floor, trying to catch his breath.

It was over. Not just the earthquake.

Macbeth got to his feet, easing Casey up, righting his chair and sitting him down. His forehead was bleeding freely, but again Macbeth could see it was more abrasion than laceration. He took his pocket handkerchief, folded it, and guided Casey’s hand up to hold it in place.