Earth Cult (23 page)

He moved a further step forward, partly blocking the way to the measuring equipment. Was this deliberate – did he know very well who Frank was and what he was trying to do – or was he genuinely lost in visions, his head filled with the plasma of madness?

Frank said, ‘But if your prophecy comes true, won't the members of the Faith also lose their lives? If the mountain splits open and the waters rise up, then surely everyone will perish. Isn't this so?'

‘Everyone will perish,' Friedmann agreed, almost dreamily. He seemed to relish the notion. ‘Everyone except the Tellurians.'

‘You mean the members of the Faith?'

‘No, no. You do not understand. The Tellurians awaiting the signal.'

He meant the babies. The babies were the Tellurians.

Friedmann went on, his voice quite gentle now:

‘They have been endowed with the intelligence of the Cosmic World. They are to become the true inhabitants of the planet Earth. From them will spring a new species of human being that will live in harmony with Tellus.'

It seemed that Professor Friedmann, even in his madness (or perhaps because of it) had perceived the significance and purpose of the galactic intelligence which had directed the stream of antineutrinos towards the Earth. There was to be an awakening not only of the planet but also of a species which would inherit the Earth.

From deep underground another tremor shook the chamber and the gantry creaked, like the sound of metal in pain. Frank looked past Friedmann's shoulder to the recording consoles and saw the needles swinging wildly, registering the high rate of particle interaction. He knew it was
too late: the concentration of argon-37 in the tanks had reached the critical level. There was nothing anyone could do to prevent a massive leakage of radiation that would act as a device to trigger the
antitrimuon
events – which would in turn contaminate the interior of the mountain and everything trapped there.

Friedmann came a sudden step nearer. His manner was intimidating. As if reading Frank's mind he said:

‘You can do nothing to alter the destiny of the Cosmic World. Very soon the signal will be released and the Tellurians will become the true and rightful inhabitants of Tellus. The time of awakening is with us at last…'

His head was bent to one side, as if he were listening for the signal, and the light fell on his neck. There was something there, attached to him, and it took Frank a moment to realize that it was a growth, of some kind, a scaly eruption of scabrous tissue. Friedmann was physically decomposing, giving off the evil smell that permeated the entire mountain. He was decaying as the needles of radiation penetrated his flesh and infected the cells with a creeping malignant tumour.

And Frank thought: It must be happening to me too. The radiation from the tanks is filling the chamber, an invisible yet deadly stream of particles infiltrating brain and body and infecting them with a cancerous growth.

There was the feverish light of pure madness in Friedmann's eyes. He raised his arms high in a gesture that was half worship, half supplication, and Frank saw that his hands were flaking away to reveal the raw musculature and skeletal structure beneath. His skin had the dead white powdery texture of chalk.

‘The way is open, the path has been made straight, the Earth awaits you! Cabel hears and obeys the message from the Cosmic World – let the waters rise up and the mountain split asunder and let Tellus return to its former consciousness and the full glory of cosmic life!'

The mountain, it seemed, had heard his exhortation, and was about to heed it, for a fierce shock ripped through the sub-strata
and the floor of the chamber split open in a series of jagged diagonal cracks. The concrete foundations on which the gantry rested crumbled away to dust and the entire steel edifice tilted and heeled over towards the tanks so that they were both thrown against the rail, like passengers clinging to the stern of a sinking ship.

The tanks too had been disturbed, their stainless steel sides creaking and buckling as the floor of the chamber shifted, and with the sound of a screeching live thing caught in a trap the metal was torn apart and 600,000 gallons of radioactive perchloroethylene poured from the shattered tanks and rose up in a green tide.

Frank held on to the rail as the foaming flood raced towards the leaning gantry, bracing himself for the shock of impact, and from the corner of his eye saw Professor Friedmann's mad staring face infused with an expression of joyous exultation, almost one of rapture as if in anticipation of the moment of fulfilment.

The structure tilted even more as the wave hit and rushed between the struts so that the two of them were suspended above the swirling green fluid, looking down on it with only the metal rail to cling to, separating them by no more than a couple of feet. But Friedmann – even had he wanted to – couldn't hold on: his hands had atrophied to raw peeling flesh and crude bone claws which were no longer able to maintain their grip, and he slithered between the rail and the angled floor of the gantry. In less than a second he was gone, his black one-piece overall ballooning in the manner of a comic cartoon figure, his grey razored head soon lost in the swirl of green fluid which lapped at the supports. The last image Frank had of him was a skeletal hand clutching uselessly at nothing before it was sucked under; there was a final eddying slurp as the perchloroethylene claimed its first victim, the self-proclaimed prophet of the Telluric Faith.

He's fulfilled his mission, Frank thought, and brought about the awakening of the planet. Either by design or accident he's unleashed the radiation which will trigger the antineutrino
-antitrimuon
interaction – like placing the electrode
in the vital spot in the human brain and generating enough electrical energy to stimulate a violent seizure.

He looked at his own hands gripping the rail, expecting to see them deteriorating from the radiation which must now be filling the chamber – penetrating everything with needles of pure energy – and was amazed that they were still recognizably his own, apparently suffering no adverse effect. This couldn't be: it was plainly impossible: it was like being inside the core of an atomic reactor, the level of radiation so high that living tissue couldn't withstand for more than a few minutes this sustained attack on its cellular structure. Yet he was still (he thought he was) thinking rationally, aware of his surroundings, knowing that Professor Friedmann was dead and he remained alive and in possession of his faculties.

There was only one possible explanation – an intelligence beyond his comprehension was exerting a greater force to counteract the intense storm of radioactivity caused by the release of argon-37.

And it could only be the same intelligence that had communicated to him during his mysterious ‘fall' towards the inner void, when the voice had entered his mind and spoken of the secrets of the Galaxy: a conscious being amongst thousands of millions of others in the Universe.

The perchloroethylene was draining from the chamber, its green frothing surface sinking away from him as it poured deeper into the Earth through the fissures which had been opened up by the tremor. Gradually the shattered tanks were revealed and the buckled leaning structure of the gantry, poised at a precarious angle as if defying the law of gravity. The recording equipment lay in a mangled heap, wedged against the rail, its weight threatening to overbalance the spindly framework of twisted girders.

Moving slowly from strut to strut, Frank descended to the floor of the chamber, now covered with a sticky green substance that reminded him of the mouldering decay on the barks of trees. There was no sign of Professor Friedmann's body, which must have been swept underground and was by
now several miles deep within the mantle of the Earth. The cracks which had split the chamber were too wide to cross; the only way out, as far as he knew, was through the main tunnel which led to the shaft, but he couldn't get to it; after all this, was he to be trapped in the depths of the mine amidst the wreckage of the solar neutrino research experiment? It seemed the ultimate point of futility that so much had happened, so much had been revealed, and yet everything had finally conspired to place him in this seemingly impossible situation.

The mountain began to shake. It was like a huge prehistoric beast coming alive after millions of years, a slow grinding awakening as one by one its senses became alerted. He felt it move, and again he experienced the feeling that he was inside the body of a living animal, a tiny parasite in the stomach sac of something too huge to notice it.

He thought: Supposing Friedmann was right? What if the Earth had coalesced out of ‘conscious' plasma and was now, five billion years later, regaining its awareness? But he didn't know what to think any more. The rationality of his thought processes, in which he had taken so much pride and smug satisfaction, was no longer able to cope with the sequence of fantastic circumstances, the apparent irrationality of the Telluric gospel, the existence of vibrating mirror-like black rocks …

He had forgotten the black rock. It was sealing the main tunnel, shutting off the detection chamber from the outside world. Or had it fulfilled its purpose in allowing Friedmann to prepare the way? Now that the mountain was alive had it returned once more to the inner depths, the Ultimate Void?

The ground lurched beneath him and he was jerked off his feet and sent sprawling in the odious green slime. The jagged gaping cracks were widening, crumbling away at the edges, the entire floor of the chamber pattered with them like a pool of splintered green ice. He was marooned on a diamond-shaped piece of rock whose surface was smooth and slimy, providing no purchase for his slithering arms and legs. It seemed that the mountain had saved him twice in
order that he might witness its final cataclysmic triumph – and now it was done with him and he was to follow Friedmann as the next sacrificial victim.

Above him the roof of the chamber began to disintegrate. The arc-lights swung crazily, like revolving searchlights, flickered and went out. He was in complete and utter darkness, spreadeagled on a splinter of rock, feeling the vibrations of the Earth in every part of his body as if he were joined to it; his body and the living Earth were as one, the same substance, the same flesh, the same rock.

And he knew that this was so. The molecules and atoms and subnuclear particles throughout all creation were made up of the self-same constituent parts. The matter in the stars was identical to the matter in his own body – the ingredients for life had been formed within stars, so he himself and every other living creature was a product of star-stuff. I came from the stars, He told himself, experiencing a strange, an almost wondrous, excitement. The stars live through me, they find their living form and consciousness through my being. We are all the same throughout the Universe: all matter and energy emanating from the same source. The Sun and the Earth and my body are all living entities in the sight of the Conscious Universe.

He felt like weeping. The rock shook against him like a release of emotion. There was a strange sense of relief as if it didn't matter any more how or in what form his consciousness found expression. Why should it make any difference when everything was of the one indivisible substance, each after its own fashion alive and equally sacred? And just as the stars lived through him, he would live through the Earth, become part of its sentient being.

They were all one: as above, so below.

The calm he now felt seemed infinite. The blackness all around soothed him, and He thought: When Friedmann spoke of the Ultimate Void he was referring to the still small centre which exists inside every living thing. Every creature. Every plant. Every stone. There is a secret inner place which even science can't penetrate, no matter how
deeply it probes into the subnuclear world. An area of stillness at the centre of all things.

He lay on the rock. It was very quiet. Looking upwards he saw a shape picked out in pinpricks of light: the seven stars forming The Plough, their pointers marking the position of the Pole Star. And further beyond the great spangled W of Cassiopeia, situated in the Milky Way.

Then the sky was ablaze with stars, from horizon to horizon, more than he could recall ever having seen before. They were spread across the dark heavens like a million eyes looking down on him, even as he watched them; and when a faint chill breeze touched his face he knew that he was gazing into the Universe from the Mount of the Holy Cross.

The fierce tremors had ravaged the townships along the Roaring Fork Valley from as far east as Malta through Eagle to Rifle in the west – and worse, had opened up the fault line which ran parallel with Eagle River and underneath the great Eagle Dam. But so far the Dam had held. During the night the tremors continued, inching apart the two mountain ranges, topped by the Mount of the Holy Cross on one side of the Valley and Mount Powell on the other.

Radium had been unaffected, though the tremors had been felt with sufficient vigour for many of the townspeople to pitch tents in the fields and spend the night wrapped up in sleeping-bags.

It was cold on the granite heights of the mountain but even so Frank waited for the dawn with a kind of stoic forbearance that amounted almost to fatalism. It seemed that he was alone on the top of the world, with the vivid
stars near enough to touch, and below him the dark Earth shaken and trembling by the forces at work in the inner core of the planet.

The starlight was brilliant, coating the rising granite peak with a soft silvery sheen. He thought about how that light had travelled for thousands of years to bathe the mountain in its radiance; it had begun its journey when the Universe was young, before the Earth had been born, and had survived those countless light-years with the sole purpose of expending itself here on the mountain. He wondered if the light from the stars knew this, knew of the purpose planned for it so long ago, and decided that light was selfless and therefore wouldn't care what it was used to illuminate. But he was glad to be there to perceive the beauty of the light bathing the mountain; somehow it made the journey seem worthwhile that a sentient creature had seen and appreciated the starlight's effect on this speck of matter circling in the void. His senses told him it was beautiful, and this was reason enough.