The stories, Jordi reflected, were true.
One of the men came at the priest with a large combat knife. Exceptionally trained, he danced around the priest with the grace of a ballerina, moving in and out, making various slashing motions with the knife, foreplay for the kill. The priest extended his stick and, with the same motion with which one might swing a tennis racket, took off the man’s head.
He then turned to another man who had started to rise and kicked him hard in the chest, putting a hole through it. The dead man collapsed back to the ground.
Jordi, still on the floor, scrambled for his submachine gun, lying a few feet away, and the priest spun around and, using his foot, pinned down Jordi’s arm. With his other foot, he stomped Jordi’s skull, ending him.
The priest looked around. All his assailants were down. He turned his attention to the pile of corpses in front of the stage, some of which had already caught fire. He walked over to them and lifted up Father Arroyo and moved him aside to get to the body underneath him: Father Reese.
Just then, he felt something small and light hit the back of his head. He turned around, but didn’t see anyone behind him.
At that moment, beneath the back row of pews, Diego scrambled forward on his stomach, out of breath, pistol in hand. He had just sent a bullet to the back of the man’s head, and he could swear it had simply bounced off. Diego could see the exit of the chapel, just twenty feet from where the pews ended. He stayed down another few seconds, then rose to a crouch and raced toward it. He had only been exposed several seconds when he felt something pierce through him. He collapsed on his side, convulsing, clutching the front of the bloodied walking stick, which now ran through his belly like a spear. The priest stared at him for barely a second from across the room, then turned his attention back to Reese’s corpse. He sifted through Reese’s two pants pockets. Nothing. Then, in the left pocket of Reese’s cassock, he removed the object he had been looking for, the reason why he’d come back.
He raised the crimson jewel up and watched as it reflected and refracted the surrounding flames. He wrapped his fingers around it, clutched it tightly, and then deposited it in the pocket of his own cassock.
Diego lay near the exit, coughing up blood, still clutching the front end of the stick. The priest walked over to him and pulled the stick halfway out of his stomach, while with his foot, he turned Diego onto his back. He stared down at him.
“You said you had someone else now. Who?”
Diego coughed up more blood. “I’m dead already. I won’t tell you anything.”
The priest took hold of the top of the staff protruding from Diego’s body. “Actually, you’re going to tell me everything.”
He twisted the staff. Diego screamed.
About five minutes later, the door to the church house swung open, and the priest formerly known as Father McCord emerged. He could hear sirens somewhere in the distance. He mounted the stolen Bultaco motorcycle he’d parked outside, revved it up, and rode off.
As he sped through the darkness of the N-332 highway, along the coast of the black Mediterranean and past the ancient castle ruins of Mount Benacantil, he could feel his identity as Father McCord slipping away, everything being blown off him by the wind and left behind in the road. The same thing had happened before with previous personas, and it was fine by him. He’d never really been any of them to begin with, except for Andrew Leland, and he hadn’t been him in so long, he could hardly remember what that felt like. Identity, personhood, these were liabilities he’d dispensed with long ago. To be no one, to be nothing, was so much better.
This was, of course, the exact opposite of what the rest of the world believed.
CHAPTER 12
Shawn stared at the homes, churches, and factories of Rockford, Illinois, as they whizzed by. He had been riding in the car for over seven hours, past cities and towns and farms and forests, and everything he saw was incredible to him, though nothing more so than that fact itself, that after months of being cooped up in the old abandoned college campus, the ordinary could be quite this exhilarating.
“And Evanston comes after Rockford?” he asked.
“After Elgin, which is after Rockford,” answered Rachel, at the wheel.
Shawn looked back out the window. Between two buildings, he could see the shimmering blue of the Rock River, a tributary of the Mississippi. About an hour and a half to go, he figured.
“Now don’t get all gushy when you meet him,” Rachel warned.
“Course not,” he replied, though he wasn’t so sure. The “him” to whom Rachel had been referring was Dr. Roland Burke, a legend in theoretical physics and one of Shawn’s all-time heroes. Like Shawn, Burke had studied both astronomy and physics at Brown University, before moving on to Stanford, where he received his Ph.D. in astrophysics and cosmology, and then to the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, where, together with a small band of some of the world’s greatest minds in the field, he had developed a theory for detecting dark matter. This little achievement, among other things, had landed him the revered Sakurai Prize in 2002.
He was also, as Shawn had just recently learned, one of Ambius’s primary scientific overseers. Burke and several peers had reviewed Shawn’s supposed “mirror breakthrough” and felt it just might be the real deal. Burke wanted to meet with him, so with Rachel driving, they had set out that morning from the campus in Dellwood to Northwestern University, where Burke was professor emeritus.
“Motherfucker,” Rachel growled.
Shawn looked and saw that a PT Cruiser had cut them off in traffic. Rachel grimaced at it, and Shawn smiled and returned his gaze to the window. Over the past seven hours, the two hadn’t talked much, but that was okay. And if they hadn’t kissed since that one unforgettable time in the lab two weeks earlier, that was okay, too, at least for now. Their relationship had undeniably, fundamentally changed. If they weren’t exactly an item, there was a real connection nonetheless. Whatever else they were or might become, they were close.
As Rachel pulled into Northwestern’s visitors’ lot on Sheridan Road, Shawn felt a surge of adrenaline. For the past three months, he’d been working in close quarters and near total isolation in a surreal, almost dreamlike environment. Though he’d been told repeatedly about the vast implications of the work he was doing, he had never truly accepted them. How could he? Totally cut off from reality, it was as though someone had said that if he didn’t button his shirt correctly, the universe might explode. Now, however, as he and Rachel got out of the car and set foot onto Northwestern’s Evanston campus, a scenic mix of modern and Gothic architecture nestled along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, on their way to meet one of the most important scientists in the world, it all suddenly felt so real.
“Yes, Dr. Burke is expecting you,” a smiling department secretary informed them before instructing Shawn and Rachel to have a seat in a small lounge area adjacent to the faculty offices.
A poster on the wall proclaimed in bold letters: “Students, unlike string theory, can be tested.”
After several minutes of waiting, Dr. Burke emerged from his office, a burly man with a bushy gray beard and small rectangular glasses that made him look just a little too much like Santa Claus.
“Kyle and Natasha!” the great scientist exclaimed, using the same names Rachel had given the secretary. “Always a pleasure when former students drop by!”
He embraced them lightly and hustled them into his office, closing the door behind them. Inside, Shawn and Rachel took seats across from Burke’s desk, and Shawn marveled inwardly at the adornments on the wall, the degrees and awards, the framed photos of Burke with other leading lights, plus the awesome knickknacks on Burke’s desk, including an anthropomorphic toy Higgs boson particle with a smiley face and arms and legs.
“So, the boy wonder himself,” Burke said with a wry smile. “My little Roach here has been hyping you up for some time.”
Roach. So here was the physics professor who’d brought Rachel’s inner
genius back to life.
“It’s a great honor to meet you, sir,” Shawn said. “I’ve been reading your work for as long as I’ve been studying physics.”
“Please, the honor’s mine. My colleagues and I have spent the past three weeks poring over your theory. Accelerating mirrors using electromagnets. Impressive. More than impressive. It seems obvious in retrospect, like so many good solutions, but it was never obvious, was it? Congratulations on a job well done.”
Shawn tried hard to restrain his enthusiasm. “Thank you, sir.”
“So, a Brown Bear, like myself. And then Columbia’s Lederman program? Is McDowell still stewing in his juices, working on his ‘theory of anything’?”
Shawn laughed and nodded.
“Where are you from originally?”
“Newton, Mass.”
“Parents still live there?”
“My father does. My mother passed away when I was a kid.”
“Terribly sorry to hear that.”
Shawn murmured an awkward thanks, and Burke turned to a small cooler at the side of his desk and pulled out three Heinekens.
“Brewskies?”
“Sure.”
He popped them open and handed two to Shawn and Rachel and took a long, savory sip of his own. He then put it down on his desk and let out a deep, satisfied sigh. He looked at Shawn.
“The theory you propose has some pretty big implications beyond Leland’s cosmic shield. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes. I mean, I was focusing on the immediate objective, but yeah, I guess there are all kinds of implications one could draw out.”
“And how do you feel about those implications being ‘drawn out,’ as you say? Tested and explored, down the line.”
“I mean, once we’re done with this, I would say, let’s go all the way. Why not, right?”
“Why not? How about ethical considerations, for one thing? You start messing around with the space-time continuum, and pretty soon you’re facing all kinds of dilemmas. Who gets to use this technology? What might happen if it’s proliferated? And don’t forget, our little group is not exactly regulated by any outside body. Sure, at the highest levels, there’s some knowledge and coordination, but they don’t really understand what we do. We barely do, ourselves! And we certainly don’t have to answer to any public interests, no more than the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy do. So how does that make you feel? So much immense power and zero accountability?”
Shawn thought about it for a few moments, Burke waiting patiently for his response. He could feel Rachel staring at him, but he didn’t look at her.
“I think,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately, “that we need to trust ourselves. And if we can do that, there’s nothing to be afraid of and we should move ahead with any ideas we might have. I mean, yeah, it could be that whatever we do, working in these new frontiers, there will inevitably be some element of recklessness. But we can be responsibly reckless. We just have to fully commit to not doing any harm to our world or to any other. That’s the balance, I think. We need to be ambitious, but also humble. As long as we can stick to that, I say we should move full speed ahead.”
Burke nodded and smiled. “Ambitious, but humble. Well said, Shawn Ferris. Now, if you don’t mind giving Roach and me a few moments alone, we need to speak about you behind your back.”
“Sure,” Shawn replied with a smile, and he rose and exited the office.
Shawn returned to his seat in the lounge. Two students—it wasn’t clear if they were grads or undergrads—were standing by the cappuccino machine, engaged in a heated debate about the likelihood of there being water on the newly discovered world of Kepler-186f. Imagine, Shawn thought, knowing what he knew, the banality of debating about Kepler-186f. Later, they’d probably go to some required lecture on string theory or quantum mechanics and then spend the rest of the afternoon idling away in the library or some campus coffee shop or, most likely of all, on Facebook. Not long ago, he’d been just like them. Just a few months back in another universe, one that wasn’t hanging in the balance, one that he, Shawn Ferris, hadn’t been called on by some secret society to rescue from oblivion.
Shawn didn’t ask Rachel what she’d discussed with Burke when they got back in the car to leave Northwestern. And when they crossed from Illinois into Wisconsin, he didn’t ask her then, either, nor when they crossed from Wisconsin into Minnesota. He felt he wasn’t supposed to, that it was somehow understood that he wouldn’t. But when the temptation got to be too much and it started to feel like a game of how long he could hold out and he felt ridiculous, he abruptly cut off their present conversation about midwestern drivers and asked her exactly what Burke had said in his absence.
“Six hours into the ride and now you want to know what he said?”
“Just tell me,” Shawn said, suddenly anxious.
Rachel hesitated a moment, and then smiled. “He wants you to come join him at the Docks.”
“The ‘Docks’?”
“Our main headquarters. He wants you to be involved, hands on, with the next phase of the project.”
He stared at her. “You’re serious?”
“You must have made a good impression. What with finding the key to the whole shield and everything.”
“I was pretty sure that’s where my contributions ended. Like, ‘Good work, thanks, and so long.’”
“Nope.”
Shawn looked out the window. It was nighttime now, and they were coming into Minneapolis. The day had been surreal already, but this news, that he would be collaborating with Roland Burke and who knows whom else, felt impossible to process.
He turned back to Rachel with a sudden look of concern. “Wait, but does that mean … that it’s good-bye for you and me? If I’m moving out of the campus?”
She shook her head. “You’re smart, kid, but I’m not exactly Homer Simpson myself. And they’ll need me to keep your arrogant ass in line, anyway. I’m coming, too.”
Shawn smiled and then quickly turned to face the window again. It was the second time that day he’d had to cover up bursting enthusiasm. He’d get to have his cake and eat it, too.
* * *
That night, with all the delirious excitement of the past day, Shawn struggled to fall asleep. Finally, somewhere around 1:00 A.M., he drifted off, a contented smile on his face.
About an hour later, something woke him. Before he opened his eyes, he could sense a nearby presence and, moreover, could hear breathing. He opened his eyes and was startled to find Rachel sitting at the edge of his bed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should have knocked.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice weak from having just woken up.
She gave a playful smile and shrugged. Shawn lifted himself to a sitting position and stared at her. Dressed in just sweatpants and a T-shirt, she looked more beautiful than ever. She stared back at him, and they sat there like that for several seconds, not saying anything. Then Shawn leaned in and put his arms around her, and they started to kiss.
“Shawn,” she interrupted a few minutes later. By now, they were deep into a full-on make-out session, and Shawn wasn’t exactly keen on taking a break.
“Yes?”
“I want to ask you something.”
“Yeah?” He kissed her again.
“You said today we need to be ambitious, but also … humble. What do you mean by humble?”
“I don’t know,” he answered and moved in to kiss her again, but she pulled away.
“What do you mean by humble?” she repeated. He stopped to look at her. She wanted an answer.
“I guess I mean that we have to know our place. You know, we’re just one planet in a really big universe. Whatever we do, we shouldn’t harm anyone else.”
“So what about the planet that wants to destroy us? We can’t harm them?”
“That’s different; they want to kill us. Anyway, can we talk about this a little later?”
He moved in to kiss her, and she resisted again.
“But what if they didn’t? Or what if there was some other planet that wasn’t trying to kill us but was just in our way? Maybe preventing us from getting something we wanted or needed or maybe just vying with us for the same precious resource and there’s not enough of it to go around. How humble are we supposed to be in a situation like that?”
“I’m not sure I get what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking you what happens, Shawn, when it’s us or them?”
There was an urgency in her eyes and in her voice that made him uncomfortable. Feeling the need to escape her intense gaze, he glanced over her shoulder at the door to his room and noticed that she’d left it slightly ajar when she’d entered.
Through the crack, he could see the empty window display in the hall.
“What do we choose, Shawn?” Rachel asked. She was breathing heavily, even more than she’d been when they were kissing.
“We choose us,” he answered.
“Even if that means being less than humble? Even if it means not always being so nice?”
“Yes.”
She eyed him skeptically. “Are you sure?”
“I’m … is it hot in here?”
“What?”
He pulled away from her and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“I just … I need to get some air in here. I feel like I can’t breathe.”
“Shawn?”
He had gotten to his feet and was moving toward the window. “I think I just need some air.”
By the time she realized why he was opening the window, it was already too late to stop him.
* * *
The grass below rushed up at him, and Shawn spread his arms and legs out from their locked-in positions and landed with a hard roll. He could hear Rachel calling frantically to someone else, two stories above him, as he scrambled to his feet and broke into a panicked run.
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