Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven

by Anthony Bartlett

  5. ARCHITECTURE

  Nothing in the Holo-casts came close. Below Danny and Charlize, as far as the eye could see, were sports fields and running tracks, golf courses and swimming pools, surf pools and yachting lakes, rock climbs, polo fields, ski slopes and kayaking streams, everything melting together in a dream of green and earth and water. But this only served as a frame. What drew the eye was a central zone in the same pattern as the Agora, but now on a far grander scale. In the spaces formed by the intersections was a succession of magnificent buildings, palaces, pyramids, pagodas, ziggurats, stupas, towers, Greek temples, Gaudi spires, coliseums, cathedrals, colonnades and cupolas, the architectural triumphs of humanity reproduced on a single canvas. They were covered in many places with ceramic tiling and the glittering colors had the effect of binding them together, an iridescence of purple, jet, gold, opal and crimson. Light cirrus cloud floated in a perfect sky and the unstinted sun seemed itself in awe of everything its light fell upon. The eye was bedazzled and time came to a skidding stop. Cable cars carried tiny figures to the higher structures, their robes fluttering like the wings of mayflies. Along the roads more figures could be seen, in groups and seated at tables where the smoke of small fires suggested open-air cooking. The single vista had the effect of eternity, a pure dreamlike moment of light and happiness and peace.

  After the mind had adjusted a little, the attention drifted upward from the temples, across what looked like a great park and equestrian track beyond. It alighted on an enormous globe set in a turquoise lake at the end of the valley. It was this spectacular feature which truly unified everything. The sphere was at least twenty times bigger than any other building, colored blue and white with little rainbow prisms appearing here and there. It seemed somehow to gather all the other structures into itself. It was open at its cusp, like an egg with its top sliced off, and it exercised an intense wonder and attraction. It was like a magnet pulling them in toward itself.

  As Cyrus saw their eyes focusing he said, “Ah yes, Il Font Eterno, the eternal fountain, the great mysterium of our Homeland. It is utterly fascinating, isn’t it, there at the heart of the scene? It is unparalleled. But you know, there is something about it that also reminds me of a particular painting I once saw. I am struck by the resemblance now even if I cannot recall the painting to mind!”

  Continuing his line of thought he turned to his assistant, “Jonas, you did not mention all the fine art we have in the galleries, from Lascaux to Dali! I have spent days on end wandering those halls and salons. I have always found them so instructive, so illuminating!”

  Cyrus paused, looking pensive, and then gathered himself. “Well, anyway, I know you are dying to ask me what that wondrous structure is, but as I said, it is a mystery, and it must remain so for a little while yet, until you are ready. Indeed I think your souls have had all that they can take in and it is time now to minister to the body. Let us tear ourselves away and find a place to eat.”

  ***

  It was shortly after midday when they sat down to eat herb-flavored pastries with radicchio salad, followed by fruit compote with fresh cream, while drinking glasses of mint tea. Again the two young people were not used to this kind of food and they ate with dazed relish. They had entered the Forum on foot and found a food vendor below a replica of the Kaiyuan pagoda with blood-colored tiles and branching eaves. People were cooking and eating, some were gently sweeping or putting things in order, all with an attitude of benign good-humor. Charlize and Danny did not feel out of place. The sun beamed down on their near-naked limbs and it felt the whole world permanently afforded the sensations they once enjoyed briefly and poorly in the swimming baths. Their minds were buzzing but the buzz was receding as a quiet pleasure took its place. They felt indeed like gods among the gods. Charlize curled her legs up and smiled. Danny stretched out his hand to hold hers, looking around with a satisfied air. Cyrus pushed his chair back and regarded them with his contemplative demeanor.

  “So tell me what questions do you have for me?”

  Charlize remembered there was something which had struck her forcefully during Cyrus’ explanations. Although, now, it didn’t seem quite so urgent. However, it seemed impolite to say nothing.

  “I was wondering how you all chose. I mean at the beginning, how did you chose who would be an Immortal, and who would have to live in the cold of the Northern Homeland?”

  “Of course,” responded Cyrus at once. “The who-gets-a-place-in-the-lifeboat question. Although in this case there are in fact two boats, very different, yes, a luxury liner in a warm sea and a freighter in the arctic, but both lifeboats. It’s important to bear that in mind, Charlize. A berth on the freighter is better than a grave in the ocean. For that is what awaited everyone unless something was done.”

  “There was always a list of “essential people” who should be kept alive, stemming from the threat of all-out nuclear war in the 20th century. They were politicians, soldiers, scientists, engineers, that kind of people. But this time, with the promise of immortality, there were new priorities, things like maintaining a racial mix, plus a greater emphasis on artistic and religious sensibilities. So probably there were many more film-stars, entertainers and gurus, alongside athletes, painters, and musicians. I’m also sure a few individuals who knew the right people had them pull strings, and got themselves put on the list, even though the whole thing was top-secret. So, all in all, we’re probably a fairly average mix of humanity. Maybe even more than those in the frozen Homeland—because your ancestors, Charlize, had to be very carefully selected. They had to be healthy, hard-working, resilient. A strong traditional religiosity was imperative. There was a theological training school or seminary for the original leaders at the same time as the icefields were being constructed. Only those who could believe a religion of earthly discipline for the sake of heavenly salvation were selected.”

  Danny burst in suddenly with surprising fervor. “You knew you were all going to get the real thing, this, here, and you palmed the rest of us off with stupid fairy tales!”

  Cyrus was slightly taken aback, but he regained his composure quickly. “How do you know they are fairy tales, Danny? Our philosophers still discuss the question with an open mind. Anyway you can’t take that approach. We have created an organic system the same as any organic system. The Immortals depend on the mortals the same as the head depends on the feet. And to counter any sense of personal unfairness we regularly bring in people from the North. You, Danny, represent the equaling out of the system. You are now an Immortal and that means basically the system works for everyone: because someone like you from the Northern Homeland has the chance to become a god. It is true we don’t take older people, but that is because older folk have a very difficult time adjusting. With a young person like you that shouldn’t be a problem at all, should it?” And he gazed meaningfully at Danny.

  The swimming star of Sector Three recanted his outburst as quickly as he’d made it. He lowered his eyes and said, “No, no, definitely not.” Charlize, however, pursued something that was now actually bothering her.

  “We are the ones who show the system works but there are still people we have left behind. We have family and friends in the Northern Homeland. Won’t we ever see them again?”

  “To be a god, Charlize, you have to be prepared to leave everything. Your existence proves the whole thing works, and, more than that, it becomes an end in itself. You now have the perfect life, perfection itself, and that must override any personal considerations. Your loyalty is to that perfection, above all else. However, I am glad that you did ask this question, because there is one arrangement we do have and that you should both know about. Gods should leave the past behind but they can bring just one bit of it with them! You may perhaps remember, back in the North, when star athletes were given special colony status sometimes they were allowed to have someone with them, a sister or brother, boyfriend or girlfriend. So here’s the thing: we allow you each to choose one other person from your old
world and we will bring that person here. It can be a friend or a family member, the only exclusion, for the reasons I stated, that person cannot be old.”

  Danny was remembering. “Yes, Dad say something like that once.” Charlize interrupted him.

  “You’re saying that we can bring a friend here, someone our age?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Oh, I so want Esh to come, she’ll love it here,” said Charlize, clapping her hands at once. “Danny, who would you bring?”

  Danny’s face broke into an unhesitating smile, “Cal of course. She’s the one who should really be immortal. This place is totally Cal!”

  With the sudden excitement of this last revelation, Danny and Charlize abandoned any lingering doubts and gave themselves over to immortal existence. They thanked Cyrus and Jonas for all they had shown them and said they thought they now understood everything very well. Cyrus and Jonas laughed and hugged them, and because it was getting late they told them they would now bring them to their lodgings. They were to stay with the philosopher Zeno and his companion, Xanthippe. The villa where these two lived was one of the most famous in the Homeland. The almost nightly dinner parties there were legendary both for food and conversation. The two of them, Zeno and Xanthippe, were marvelous thinkers and talkers. Thus the newcomers’ orientation in the ways of Heaven would be perfected under their care. There would be one final formality to be completed which was a recorded interview to be broadcast back in the North, telling the Teppers of the sports stars' reward of happiness in a special colony. The camera team would come tomorrow to make the recording. It would be conducted only in general terms, with any sensitive details edited out. Meanwhile arrangement would be made to send a rocket transport to the Northern Homeland to bring back Esh and Cal.

  They drove back along the Appian Way with the sun going down in front of them, a red ball in a shot-silk sky. Not long after they left the city they turned off on a road that wound gently up into the surrounding hills. Scarlet light bounced off their faces as they navigated the bends. The air gave off a sweet scent of pine. They arrived at the villa in the last glimmer of day. The car drew into a central courtyard surrounded by cottages covered in climbing flowers. Happy Immortals stood in their doorways to applaud their coming. Zeno and Xanthippe came out to the car to greet them, the oldest people Charlize and Danny had seen in this new world, but extraordinarily vibrant. They opened their arms wide to embrace the newcomers.

  “Come, come, you beautiful young people. We are so blessed by Lady Fortune to have you in our midst!”

  “Are they not Titania and Oberon?” commented Cyrus, leaning out from the car. “Until tomorrow then, when I return with the camera team!”

  He sat back, his hands folded contentedly on his lap. Jonas slipped the car into drive and the two guides disappeared into the perfumed dark, while the latest additions to Heaven basked in the approval of gods and goddesses.

  ***

  Poll, sitting in front of his computer screen, had not needed long to figure out the access code. He remembered when they first arrived Dogg had called the prison “Camp Conquest” although none of the prisoners had ever referred to it that way. The phrase had stuck in his head as just the kind of official title a camp would be given. Guest did not return to help him with suggestions, so he set himself to entering permutations on the screen. Both the public nature of the original construction and its extreme conditions encouraged him to think the code would not be that complex. He set about entering variations of the name and after a couple of score of tries he got to “Conquest04.” The screen flickered, blanked and flashed up “Code Accepted.”

  His problems, however, were only just beginning. He had been granted access to a world much more baffling than the search for a single password. The welcome screen simply read “System Data” and gave an endless list of live links as incomprehensible strings of numbers and letters. There were occasional recognizable terms like “megawatt,” “coefficient" and “cycle” but nothing relatable to any hard feature. He wanted to get information on the original design but whenever he returned to it he lost the live connection. When he clicked on the live links he got screeds of data with further protocols he could not grasp. For the first time he felt defeated. He spent his time clicking aimlessly on links, looking for something, anything. The prospect of recording the numbers and letters and trying to guess connections between them struck him as futile. He supposed Guest might recognize some of the data but he wanted to find answers himself without depending on the Iceman more than he absolutely had to. Then again, without knowing where he was in the system none of the information meant anything. The overall map was of no interest to the individual operators in the Sectors. All they did was keep track of the functioning in their own area. And everything had surely been set up that way, so that no one person would have a complete picture. It only reinforced the conviction that there had to be a program with integrated information for the eyes of the other world only, and connected there by a secure radio link. The transmitter was probably in the same place as the exit transport to the other world. But how to find this all-important site?

  In the end it was Guest who broke the impasse. He arrived soundlessly as ever.

  “I see you got the access code. What else have you found?” He was standing right behind him, looking over his shoulder.

  “Uh, yeah, that’s right. It wasn’t all that hard, but I don’t know how to continue. I can’t recognize any of this.”

  Guest peered in closer and held out his hand to stop Poll’s random clicking. “Stop! Some of this I know, some of those numbers. Yes, that one, it’s a serial number for a condenser fan. And that one there, that’s a fan for an exhaust tunnel. I know because those things break down frequently and the numbers come back with the replacements.”

  Poll straightened up. “That’s crucial information, sir. I suppose I guessed some of those numbers were machinery parts, but I had no way of identifying anything.”

  “Well, now you know, and I can get you a list of other parts too. But..,” Guest checked himself. “I would have thought with your smarts you would have figured all this out. You’re not going slack, are you? Remember, you’re looking for on/off switches, for electrical relays. You need to figure that out and be quick about it. I’m not leaving you down here in the warm forever.” And he was gone, exiting like the restless phantom he had become for Poll, haunting the empty spaces of his searching.

  Poll tried to think logically. He now knew what a couple of the formulae meant and he could perhaps build a list of others related to them. But without being able to place them in the system he was not much further forward. If he could only connect them with a symbol on the map then he’d have some point of reference. He realized that he had not continued his initial copying of the symbols, distracted as he had been by the live screen. The discovery of the screen had essentially proven that the map was organized in a logical manner. He decided it was just a matter of continuing patiently to figure it out. The next few days he feverishly went through the white dots one by one, documenting the symbols and sub-symbols they led to. Yet once again he could not discover any key ones. They all appeared many times and at all levels of the map. Again he was getting nowhere. If he only knew the meaning of just one symbol!

  “Still on that useless map? Get back to the live screen, I’ve something to show you. This is going to work, I’m sure of it.”

  Guest was right behind him and Poll had to make a physical effort not jump out of his skin.

  “Right, sure, of course. What have you got?”

  “There’s a fan broken in the perimeter tunnel, one of the ceiling relays, and I know the code for it. I’m willing to bet it’s going to show up on one of those screens.”

  He read out the serial number and Poll began to trawl through the live links looking for it. It didn’t take long to find a list with the basic sequence and scrolling down there it was, the exact number, and what’s more i
t was flashing an alert. Poll clicked the link and at the head of the screen with a long list of numbers a message appeared: “Perimeter relay breakdown S.W. 2 k. from Turbine 4.”

  “And there she is! That’s a hard bit of machinery and all those numbers have to be related to it. Find which one is the switch and we’ll have a basic code which will appear everywhere!”

  Guest was triumphant. The secrets of his fiefdom were falling before him, almost within his grasp.

  “That’s something, it really is, sir. I suppose any function that stopped flashing with the component itself could be a switch, but then how would you control it?”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Guest snarled. “If I can get that information I can handle the rest too. Your job is to isolate the component. Tomorrow we’ll radio the Sector that we’re replacing the fan and they’ll cut the power. I can’t use this radio link obviously, so I’ll be elsewhere. But you’ll be sitting here glued to the screen. And you better get that switch number as it comes back on line!”

  But Poll was not affected by the Iceman’s threat. He was not really listening. He could hardly restrain the excitement he had suddenly begun to feel. He nodded obediently, “Yes, yes, of course, sir,” and started writing down the numbers while he waited for Guest to do his standard vanishing trick. After about a minute he looked round and saw no one. Still he got up and checked the room to make sure Guest really had gone. Then he returned to his seat. There was something on the screen beside the breakdown message and he was certain Guest had not noticed it in his moment of triumph. It was the faint image of a small string of symbols which he recognized from his copying, a kind of screen ghost suggesting another program which might even connect the screen to the map. He’d already guessed from the access code that the number four probably stood for the turbine and its related camp. That was now confirmed by the message and with a compass direction added, so here was solid data he could work with. He clicked on the symbols. After a moment another screen appeared and Poll bit his lip. It displayed large letters reading “System Disabled.” But right there again was another ghost of an outline, this time a box and table. As he stared at it he thought he could see the trace of a message and word by word he copied it down. “Segment 10, Condenser Hall Main Fan, Twenty Four Relays, Exhaust Manifold.”