Pandaemonium (15 page)

Truly head-spinning was that these other universes and higher dimensions, despite being infinite in size, might be less than an atom’s width away.

One of the great questions facing physicists was why the force of gravity was so weak in comparison to the other three forces. The nuclear forces were strong enough to power suns and level cities. The strength of the electromagnetic force compared to gravity could be illustrated by pitting a toy magnet from a Christmas cracker against the gravitational pull of the entire planet and seeing which one wins the tug of war over a paper clip.

Nonetheless, the gravitational pull of our (and every other) galaxy was far larger than its mass dictated according to Newton’s laws, an effect attributed to the existence of dark matter, the invisible entity that was hypothesised to account for up to ninety per cent of the universe’s mass. However, according to M theory, gravity might in fact be as strong as the other forces, but appears weak in our three-brane world because some of it leaks into higher-dimensional space - meaning dark matter might have a more astonishing explanation than previously imagined. In M theory, because gravity was caused by the warpage of hyperspace, as well as leaking from our three-brane world into a fifth dimension, it could also pass
across universes
. A galaxy in a parallel universe would therefore be attracted across hyperspace to a galaxy in our own. Thus the gravitational pull of our own galaxy measured stronger than Newtonian physics dictated because there was an invisible galaxy behind it, floating on a nearby brane.

As Tullian put it in a letter to the now Cardinal O’Hara in 2002, the mass represented by these ‘shadow galaxies’ could equally be something more familiar. Dark matter, the missing mass of the universe, could constitute the traceable physical signature of the higher realm. Unfortunately, there was no reason why it couldn’t also signify the physical presence of the lower one too.

Throughout modern Catholicism, there was all manner of half-cocked pseudo-philosophical nonsense spouted by people who professed to believe in God and in an afterlife (which most were too gutlessly coy to call Heaven), but not in Hell, and most definitely not in Satan. Tullian would have to own up to his own historical equivocation on the matter, and his reluctance to let human individuals off the hook for their values and decisions by handing them such a get-out clause as the existence of an external, autonomous and omnipresent source of evil. Nor was he ever comfortable with the suggestion that God would condemn even the lowest of his human subjects to an eternity of suffering: the idea that something so base and fleeting as a human being could provoke an inexhaustible need for restitution from the Eternal and Almighty was sheer conceit on the part of man.

However, very few would argue with the idea that evil exists in chaos. That it is in man’s efforts to free himself and his world from chaos that he frees himself also from evil. The universe started in chaos, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictated that it would end in chaos too: entropy always increases. Therefore, if God had given man the free will to shape his own fate, was it in man’s power - was it, in fact, potentially mankind’s fate - to somehow damn himself? The existence of a darker realm, and of man’s technological advancement towards being able to verifiably detect it, opened up some very dangerous possibilities. If man could detect it, he asked O’Hara in his letter, how long before he could
access
it?

A consequence of this idea of gravity leaking between dimensions, as Tullian read in one paper, was that ‘quantum gravitational - and other - effects may be observable at energies replicable within large particle colliders, rather than at the Planck energy (10
¹⁹
billion electron volts), as previously believed’.

It was the ‘and other’ part that truly disquieted him.

The paper explained how technology was reaching the limit of how much radio frequency energy could be used to drive particle accelerators. However, a new generation of accelerators was in development, harnessing laser power to create high-velocity gas plasma that carried particles in its wake. So far, the lasers were only operable over very short distances, but even these could generate a thousand trillion watts (a nuclear power plant, by comparison, could only generate a billion). As this distance grew, so would the power available. This technology was developing by a factor of ten every five years, and would soon deliver a new breed of accelerators ‘that would make the Large Hadron Collider look like a dinosaur’.

The paper was by Lucius Steinmeyer. It was the last thing he published before dropping off the map.

Across the table in the Command Room, the esteemed physicist looks like he’s clinging on by his fingernails.

‘With respect,’ Steinmeyer says, his tone intimating that he holds anything but, ‘myths and fairy stories are not comparable to data and evidence, no matter how many thousand years old. Science isn’t a body of knowledge, it’s a meth—’

‘A method, yes,’ Havelock interrupts. ‘A method by which the true scientist has to accept what the data is telling him, even if it contradicts that which he has set out to prove. You’ve opened up a gateway and what’s come through it are some angry mother-fuckers with horns on their heads. Holy water burns their skin. They go fucking crazy if you show them a crucifix. Jesus Christ, Lucius, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck . . .’

‘It’s duck enough for me,’ says McCormack. ‘And that’s why we’re shutting it down, forthwith. What’s locked up downstairs is just what we caught when we dipped our net into the shallows. We have no idea what might be waiting in the depths. We are not ready for this, at any level. Not scientifically, not militarily and not politically.’

Steinmeyer turns towards Tullian. ‘You know, you should be on my side here,’ he says, finally talking
to
him and not merely about him like he’s not there. ‘Surely if I’ve opened up the gateway to Hell, you’re going to see business booming in the Catholic Church like it hasn’t done for about five centuries. Do you really want to close the door on a chance like that?’

Tullian can’t decide whether Steinmeyer’s making an utterly desperate final gambit or merely lashing out like a drunk who knows he’s about to be shown the door. Nonetheless, either way, he wants to get through to him, needs to make him understand. He needs to make all of them understand.

Tullian’s letter in 2002 had been merely his latest regular digest of recent scientific matters. He had thought it a little self-indulgent in its laying down of so much rather speculative thought, and thus he wasn’t even sure Cardinal O’Hara would give it more than a courteous once-over. He almost, in fact, deleted his ponderings upon dark matter as perhaps being melodramatic and lacking intellectual sobriety. Upon such tiny fulcrums do pivot the greatest turns of destiny. Before the year was out, he had been appointed a cardinal himself, such rank a prerequisite of his being granted access to artefacts and information that were among the Church’s most securely guarded secrets.

In the secular world, people were increasingly seduced by the idea that the Vatican historically hoarded and suppressed any evidence that cast doubt on the veracity of Catholic doctrine. Conspiracy theorists depicted shadowy and power-hungry cabals capable of the most ruthless deeds in order to protect the Church from the outside world discovering highly damaging truths. It made for exciting - if far-fetched - stories. In reality, this darkest of revelations - entrusted only to a select fellowship among the ‘princes’ of the Church - had been scrupulously kept hidden for centuries not for the protection of the Vatican, but for the same reason that any other state in the world would have classified it top secret had it fallen into their hands instead.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had a remit to investigate the inspiring and miraculous, seeking traces of the hand of God. It had, however, undergone what was known in modern parlance as ‘a rebranding exercise’. Prior to this, it had been charged with seeking traces of the hand of a darker power, and was known by a different name.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII had issued his epoch-making encyclical,
Humani Generis
, which shaped Catholic doctrine as it faced the world of the late twentieth century and played a large part in assuring this scientifically curious young prelate that he was on the right path. However, it also included the troubling requirement that all Catholics must regard the Devil as a person, all demons as real. This had always struck Tullian as being at odds with the bull’s forward-looking purpose in preparing the Church for the greater malleability and open-mindedness that it would need in order to adapt in a world of accelerating scientific progress.

On a chilly November morning in 2002, only a day after the solemnisation ceremony, Tullian was shown why he had been so hastily elevated to his new rank. In no dusty crypt but rather a spotless, high-tech and formidably impenetrable vault, he discovered what indeed existed in a shadow realm separated from our own by a barrier only an atom’s width thick.

‘Professor,’ Tullian says, speaking softly so that he - and everyone else - will make a greater effort to listen. ‘I have spent many years witnessing what undue import people can ascribe to the most trivial symbols, to happenstance and coincidence. Villages almost at war because a lightning strike has cloven a tree-branch and left a stump shaped like the Madonna and Child. It is apposite that you should have alluded to the Holy Inquisition. That most dark and bloody shadow upon the Church’s history is replete with instances of mistrust, suspicion and hatred sparked by the merest suggestion of supernatural forces. All it took then was a rumour, a shape or shadow mis seen in the firelight. Now think of what is being held in those containment pods. Were the world to see, as we have done, demons made flesh, living and breathing before their eyes, I fear a tide of madness and horror that no church, no army could contain. Consider in this world of - as you called them - superstitious fools: a reign of terror attended by the arrival of demons. It would itself create a self-fulfilling prophecy: people would hail it as heralding the end of the world, and in time, through the ensuing madness, it very well might be.’

‘Hell on Earth,’ Havelock says, his voice barely an awestruck breath. He sees it, McCormack too. Steinmeyer, however, remains blind; and not so much blinded by science as blinded to all but his curiosity, his quest. Possessed, Tullian might even say, and he chooses his words with care. According to doctrine, the Devil cannot possess a person unless he is invited, and if Satan needed an instrument here in this place, he could not have found a better candidate than a scientist who did not believe in him and was driven by the purest motives.

‘This is insane,’ Steinmeyer protests. ‘You’re pulling the plug on something that could fundamentally alter our understanding of the very fabric of the universe.’

‘It’s purely precautionary,’ McCormack replies, sounding as placatory as he can. ‘It’s just safest if we mothball the project at least until we know more about what we’re dealing with.’

‘Mothball?’ Tullian asks, suddenly feeling like a trapdoor has opened beneath his chair. ‘In my view it would be negligent to do anything but dismantle it.’

‘Like I said,’ McCormack responds, ‘we all need to take a step back for a while.’

Steinmeyer is pressing his temples like his skull might come apart. ‘You don’t understand,’ he says. ‘You can’t “mothball” it, because it’s not something we can necessarily resume. We don’t know what caused the Dodgson anomaly, let alone what the anomaly is. We don’t know whether we opened a door or merely found the bell.’

‘Well, a lot of folks are very worried about who’s answering,’ Havelock replies.

‘That’s the risk we’ll have to take,’ McCormack says, getting up from the table and thus signalling that the discussion is over. ‘Shut it down,’ he tells Havelock. ‘That’s an order, effective immediately.’

‘Sir, for safety reasons, we have to let the reactor complete its cycle, which will take approximately twenty more hours.’

‘Then shut it down after that.’

Steinmeyer holds up one hand in a final, futile gesture of appeal.

‘If we let this close, there is every chance it will be lost forever,’ he tells them.

Amen to that, Tullian thinks, though in truth he knows it is not something anyone would want left to chance.

She listens to Blake speaking and thinks back, beyond the awkward moment in her room tonight, to each of the encounters she has had with him. There is something perplexing about all of them, something not quite jarring but not quite fitting either. They all feel like deleted scenes: curios, sometimes interesting in and of themselves, but somehow unsatisfactory, failing to resolve anything, and therefore existing adrift from the greater narrative of both their lives. The question is, what does she want the greater narrative to be, if those deleted scenes are to make the final cut?

The bottle of single malt is probably the only thing distinguishing this gathering from the assemblies taking place right now in all of the other bedrooms. There’s an almost juvenile sense of escape about the suspension of normal rules, ranks and other formalities, an appreciative awareness of how this gathering could not be taking place under any other circumstances. Even Guthrie has started to unwind, having now managed ten minutes without visibly stiffening in response to every echo reaching them from the kids’ dorms.

‘Science doesn’t preclude the God I have faith in,’ Blake expands, ‘something eternal and transcendent that isn’t subject to humanly verifiable rules of existence. Whether you’re talking about evolution or the Big Bang, there’s nothing in science to rule out a creator, and some of us are not so arrogant as to demand that He gives us a theological handout by way of proving his existence in a manner vulgar and obvious enough for us to make sense of.’

Guthrie is nodding along sincerely, looking like he might have hope for this drink of skoosh of a chaplain yet.

Kane, though, is smiling, loving this.

‘Aye,’ he says, ‘the religious types are lapping up the beardy god in the sky right now. “Of course we don’t believe in
that
, you silly atheists. We’re down with the Big Bang, daddy-o.” So let me throw you a bone. Let’s say that the Big Bang was initiated by some kind of higher intelligence. What evidence is there that this being demands to be worshipped by its creatures? Your parents created you - do they demand to be worshipped?’

‘Parents don’t demand worship, and nor does God,’ Blake replies. ‘Parents give love, as does God, and they give guidance: they offer a way of living that will help you to live a good life. We choose to honour our parents, and we choose to honour God. You’re relying on anachronistic connotations of the word “worship” here, Kano.’

‘So what evidence is there that this being is good, or caring, or in any way motivated by a morality we might recognise? What evidence is there that this being has any interest in what is effectively a by-product, a trace element of the universe? What if this super-being is merely one of a race of super-beings, and is in fact the super-being equivalent of a teenager who created our universe one afternoon with his super-being chemistry set?’

‘It doesn’t change the fact that the existence of God is not precluded by any of the absences of evidence that you mentioned.’

‘The existence of God is not precluded by anything because it’s non-disprovable.’

‘And doesn’t that tell you something?’ Guthrie wades in, like he’s exasperatedly explaining himself to a particularly obtuse third year. ‘It can’t be disproven. It’s eternal, a thing of ultimate grace, and no matter what knowledge we arrogantly presume to bring to bear upon it, the truth of God prevails.’

Heather reluctantly decides to make her own intervention at this point, to avert the rage Guthrie is liable to fly into when he hears how this eternal grace and prevailing truth can be attributed equally to whatever bizarre deity Kane subsequently invents in order to make his point.

‘Non-disprovable is a scientific term, Dan,’ she says politely. ‘In this context it doesn’t mean quite what you’ve inferred.’

‘What: non-disprovable doesn’t mean something cannot be disproven?’ he asks incredulously.

‘It does, but it also means it can’t be proven either. For something to be provable, it must also be disprovable. It’s not enough to find evidence that supports your idea: there has to be, theoretically, a piece of evidence that would support a null hypothesis. For instance, gravity is disprovable. If I drop this glass and it doesn’t fall, I’d disprove gravity. There’s an experiment I can carry out or an observation I can make that will prove the idea either way.’

‘Okay,’ Guthrie says, taking it in. ‘That’s fine for something obvious, like gravity, but what about something more complex? What about evolution? How is that disprovable?’

‘Find a fossilised rabbit buried in a layer beneath a fossilised stegosaurus and you’ve disproved Darwin just like that. Kane is saying you can’t do that with God.’

‘Even if you could,’ Kane says, ‘it wouldn’t make a difference. If the God hypothesis was somehow disprovable, and scientists found indisputable proof that there was no God, the Church wouldn’t miss a beat. It would simply say that this emergent proof was merely a fabrication to lead man astray, thus instead proving the existence of Satan, and by extrapolation of God too.’

‘And if God showed up here tomorrow,’ Guthrie retorts, ‘you’d be asking how we know he’s not just a . . . what was it? Teenage super-being or some such drivel.’

Blake is laughing, though Guthrie wasn’t trying to lighten the tone.

‘Touché,’ Kane says, before getting to his feet and finishing off the last trickle he’s been nursing in his glass.

‘It’s coming up for midnight,’ he says. ‘I’ll go and tell them lights out, for what it’s worth.’

‘No, no, I’ll do it,’ Guthrie says, also standing up.

Heather gestures to him to remain seated.

‘With respect, Dan, that might be counterproductive. Play it canny,’ she entreats, refilling his glass by way of further persuasion.

‘Okay,’ he says, though there is a restiveness about him as he sits back down.

‘By the way, who do you all want in the sweep?’ Kane asks, stopping at the door.

‘What sweep?’