Old Earth (35 page)

“I told Sister Cynthia that my esteemed colleagues had come all this way to compare signatures on some letters they brought from their respective colleges’ collections. Very old, very rare, but if authentic, would add significantly to history of seventeenth century science.” He smiled. “You did bring some letters or did I explain things incorrectly?”

“Father Eccleston,” McCauley observed, “you told Sister Cynthia a bold-faced lie.”

“Oh dear me. Did I misstate anything? I will surely have to apologize at some later date.”

With that, they moved on. The priest took them past the public shelves, into a corridor where they settled into an empty long wooden table.

“Please, sit, but we will have to keep our voices very low. We’re actually supposed to work in complete silence.”

“Okay,” McCauley whispered. “But I’m curious. How do you square your religious beliefs with your research?”

Father Eccleston grimaced. “That has the sting of a no-win declaration from a cardinal. And I would describe my beliefs as faith.”

“I’m sorry,” McCauley said, “but it’s important.”

“May I ask why?”

“You can see why.” The professor cocked his head to Alpert. “Katrina.”

Alpert picked up the backpack she’d been clutching and removed a manila envelope. She slid it across the table to Eccleston.

The priest opened it and saw the copies Kritz printed in London. Katrina waited for him to review the content. “They’re pages from a book we found,” she said. “An old priest’s book written 150-plus years ago in…”

“In Denisova,” Eccleston volunteered. “St. Denis’ cave. I heard such a memoir exists. However, I’ve never seen it. Where did you find it?”

“Wait,” McCauley said. He held up two fingers. Time for the second envelope. “Here are the translations of those pages.”

The priest read them with great interest; his engagement growing with every paragraph. “Remarkable,” he whispered. “Tell me where…”

“We have a friend in London to thank,” Katrina said. “At Oxford.”

“The Bod?”

“Yes,” she added.

“That’s odd. It should have come up on Google Book Search. The Oxford Library is part of their resource community.”

“I can explain,” McCauley replied. “After locating the book, quite by accident, I checked the catalog. It wasn’t in the system. So officially, it didn’t exist and as a result—full confession Father—I felt I didn’t have to sign it out.”

“You realize this could very well be the only edition around.”

“We’re checking on that.”

“Perhaps the fact that it
was
on the shelves was an oversight. Maybe it was supposed to be removed or someone thought it had been. Doesn’t that raise interesting possibilities?” Eccleston offered.

“Perhaps. How did you know about the book?” McCauley inquired.

“Rumors in the seminary that were told in the dark. Old tales that never went away. The things that priests whisper, mostly to scare young students. The kind of stories that you hope aren’t true.”

At that point, Katrina carefully removed the precious book from her backpack and handed it to Eccelston.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Is this…?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe it. May I?”

“Of course.”

He held it with genuine reverence. “Father Mykhailo Emilianov’s actual memoir.” He slowly turned the pages, and though he couldn’t read it, he felt like he was absorbing the meaning.

He stopped on the page depicting Emilianov’s sketch of the cavern interior and the deep black wall. “What is this?”

McCauley removed an envelope from his sports jacket. “The same as this photo I shot.” He handed Eccleston a photograph.

“You’ve been there,” he predictably replied.

“No, as a matter of fact.” McCauley smiled. “Interested in talking more?”

• • •

They shared a taxi for the three kilometer ride from the Vatican to Eccleston’s neighborhood restaurant on Via Antonio Salandra.

“You’ll like the food,” he said pointing out the chalkboard menu of the day posted to the left of the door. The choices did look delicious.
Pasta e Lenticchie, Polenta con Salsicce, Fettuccine Agnolotti, Filetto o Lombata
, and more. Inside, they took a corner seat with Eccleston intentionally placing himself with his back to the wall so he could see everyone who entered and where they sat.

A young waiter automatically placed a bottle of the house wine at the table.

“
Perfecto
,” he said in thanks. “
Grazie
.”

It felt like a warm, welcoming, inviting family restaurant with wood-lined walls that were adorned with candlesticks, plates, photographs, and paintings; all likely meaningful to the owners.

“We’ll order, then talk. Trust me, you’ll be well fed.”

McCauley and Katrina decided to share the
tagliolini cacio e pepe
, a pasta with pecorino cheese and black pepper. Fr. Eccleston chose the filet.

A few bites into the meal, Eccleston returned to their earlier discussion.

“The book is a treasure. But the old priest’s sketch of the interior confused me. Much clearer in your photographs, but still…”

“Father, the pictures aren’t from Denisova. We took them in Montana, in a cave we discovered while exploring for fossils, a half a world away and more than a century apart.”

Eccleston struggled for the right response. It finally came to him. “This isn’t natural.”

“No, it’s not,” McCauley replied. “We thought you might have some sort of theory.”

“We’d also like to see if you can find out anything about Father Emilianov,” Katrina added.

“Like what?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“Well, in the old days the kind of theory I’m working on would have seen me burned at the stake. Fortunately, no one does that anymore.”

McCauley thought back on Bakersfield. “I’m not so sure.”

• • •

For the next thirty minutes, Quinn and Katrina recounted their experiences and how they came to get in touch with Eccleston. It led the priest to what at first seemed like an intellectual discourse.

“Throughout history holy wars have been fought in the name of multiple deities and others justified by a leader proclaiming the word of a single god. Faith has been used as a tool by religious groups, not necessarily under the auspices of the religion itself. And rogue governments have equally persecuted believers they quite simply considered too dangerous to live. Territories have been claimed in the name of trade, where the spoils were measured in gold or a slave’s worth. And to protect their bounty, to hold their borders and to insure their power, churches and institutions alike have relied on fear, lies, hatred, patriotism and fundamentalist principles.”

“It’s as true today as ever,” Katrina stated.

“But with greater fragility,” McCauley added. “News spreads so quickly through social media. Information is so accessible virtually anywhere in the world that words and thoughts, multiplied and amplified by hitting
send
on a cellphone can topple a regime. We’ve seen it in the Middle East. I’m not so sure it couldn’t happen elsewhere.”

“I’m afraid you’re right. We tread on the thin ice of critical beliefs,” Eccleston replied. “The weight of any social, political, or moral argument can do us in.”

McCauley considered the issues, not just in America, but in an increasingly polarizing world. Each side espouses its positions as God-given rights, whether for or against. Without even realizing it, he started listing the extremes that fuel heated debates on any given day. “Reproduction, guns, immigration, medical insurance, gay rights, food stamps, welfare. It’s all just up or down,” McCauley said. “You’re part of the solution or part of the problem.”

And then he thought of another volatile subject, debated for centuries, more contentious than ever.

“Evolution.”

“Yes,” the priest agreed. He rested his hand on the envelope containing McCauley’s photographs. “It’s still on the table, isn’t it?”

Seventy

“Have you ever heard of “Gap Theory?” Fr. Eccleston asked.

“Yes,” Katrina responded. “Pseudo-science. Dismissible. An explanation that covers ancient geological ages in support of biblical belief.”

“Ancient doesn’t begin to describe it,” the priest said.

Katrina looked confused. McCauley wasn’t certain why the priest was bringing up the subject. It was hardly discussed anymore and seemingly not on point.

“If I may?”

“Go right ahead, Father. Chapter and verse,” McCauley replied.

The priest poured another glass of the house wine from Castelli Romani, south of Rome. He held it to the light to examine the rich reds, drank some, and continued.

“Gap Theory proposes that a span of time existed between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. From a strictly theological point of view, Gap Theory maintains that a cataclysmic judgment was prescribed as a result of the fall of Lucifer. For the sake of keeping you in the discussion, let’s put aside the religious construal. I’ll simply call it a line of reasoning.”

“Appreciated,” McCauley said.

“The argument can be traced to the early nineteenth century. As the science of geology gained, pardon the expression,
ground
, some theologians were at a loss how to counter the scientific claims that the formation of the earth’s surfaces occurred at imperceptibly slow rates. They needed an explanation that supported the biblical record. You might call it scriptural enlightenment: a way to describe the vast geological periods before Adam. Conveniently perhaps, a place was found between the two verses of Genesis.

“It was proposed by a Scotsman, theologian Thomas Chalmers, in 1814. It was further espoused by two American ministers, Cyrus Scofield and Clarence Larkin, and evangelist Harry Rimmer in the twentieth century. Each wrote books on the subject, trying to justify the gap between ruin and reconstruction.”

The priest took another satisfying sip of the wine. He saw that his guests needed more. He gave them each a liberal refill and signaled the waiter for a new bottle.

“Now to specifics. Follow me.”

“We are,” Alpert said.

“Genesis 1:1 expresses the creation of the universe. Then, in geological terms, five billion years presumably came and went, producing ages you’re well aware of with its various life forms. Gap Theory then seeks to explain that all life on Earth was destroyed.”

“The meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs,” Alpert stated.

“Yes, leaving fossils for you to uncover. This cataclysmic event, according to the theorists, is what’s described in Genesis 1:2. This solved the biblical problem of
time
, and helped to square natural history with the scriptural interval, described as
days.
”

McCauley interrupted. “Yes, but…”

“Wait,” Father Eccleston said. “It gets better. Gap Theory rests on the need for re-creation. It holds to the paleontological record that has produced dinosaur fossil beds on every continent. It also allows for the sudden transformation of the environment. In a word, it works.”

“But…”

“Not yet, Dr. Alpert,” the priest chided. “I have one other point for you to consider.”

She leaned back in her chair and listened.

“What if…” Eccleston paused. He wanted the full attention of his companions. “What if we dismiss the theological justification? After all, it never gained much support. Strip away the religious argument and stay with the basic idea. Can we accept a gap between life forms? From trilobites through the dinosaurs to the evolution of man?

“Of course,” Katrina replied.

McCauley remained at the table but left the conversation, thinking,
Gap.
He repeated the word to himself. Definitions rushed forward from his years of study. General usage, medical, mathematical, geographic.
An empty space; an interruption in continuity; a divergence; a difference; an interval. Disparity in attitudes, ideals and actions.

If the priest was still talking, McCauley didn’t hear him.

Etymology: gapa – a hole in a wall, a break or pass in a long mountain chain.

Impossible possibilities were coming together. Quickly.
The cave. The discovery. The conversations. The attack. The book.
And still another notion. It was a dialectic he’d had with his grad students in Montana.

“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.”

“What?” Katrina asked. McCauley hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud.

“What?” she repeated. “You said, ‘The absence of evidence…”

“Is not the evidence of absence. A gap.”

Katrina was still confused. “The gap?”

“Not
the
gap. A gap.
Before.
”

“Before? Before what?” Katrina wondered.

“Before what is described in Genesis.”

“Or part of it,” Eccleston said. “We better leave.” He signaled for the check. “Let’s move this to my apartment.”

McCauley paid the tab. On the way out, Katrina pulled him close and asked the inevitable follow up while the priest walked a few feet ahead. “What were you talking about? It obviously scooted us out of there.”

“An epiphany. Or,” McCauley admitted, “a wild ass assumption. I’ll explain.”

Father Eccleston bounded up the three flights with Quinn and Katrina in tow. He asked forgiveness for the mess they’d face and the reason: “My roommates. I’ll keep the lights down. You’ll hardly notice. Even in full daylight there isn’t much to see except the simple residence of three priests, two of them slobs.”

He directed them to the couch. “Sit down. We’re alone. Fr. Densey and Fr. Santiago left on sabbatical. So we’ll be able to speak openly. I’ll be right back.”

As Eccleston went through his cabinets, McCauley glanced around the apartment. Eccleston’s description of Spartan was completely accurate. White walls, few chairs, low wood coffee table, lamps that didn’t match, an old throw rug, and no living room curtains. Apparently good enough for a trio of priests living off-site on limited Vatican stipends, right down to the three wine glasses Eccleston returned with that didn’t match.

“Sabbatical. An interesting word in itself, wouldn’t you say?” Eccleston noted while pouring. “From Greek
sabbatikos
and Latin
sabbaticus
. And, of course, Hebrew
Shabbat
. From Genesis 2:2-3. On the seventh day God rested after creating the universe. Described in Leviticus 25 as a commandment to cease working in the field the seventh year, reiterated in Deuteronomy 5:12-15.”