The sound of a woman crying in pain rises from the square. When Andrew peeps over the sill, he freezes. The scar-faced major is dragging Adilah by her hair. She is trying to stand but keeps stumbling. The major will not let her get her footing. He is carrying a pistol in his hand. When she trips and falls on her face, he presses the muzzle of the gun against her head and shouts: ‘Up! Get up, you bitch! Get up, or I swear I’ll put a bullet in your head!’ He pulls on her hair again, making her whimper. She crawls on for a few yards but, unable to get her balance, staggers again. She is sobbing. Andrew screws up his eyes and sinks his teeth into his fist. He looks down at the square again. Adilah is kneeling. The major is standing over her, holding the pistol to her head. He has an arm stretched out. ‘Up! Up!’
Andrew turns away, presses his back against the wall and draws his knees up to his chin to make himself as small as possible. He can still hear Adilah. To block her out, he presses the palms of his hands against his ears. He can still hear her. He looks over the sill again, down to the square. The major has his pistol pressed against Adilah’s head. At this moment Andrew knows he is going to pull the trigger. He also knows that he would rather surrender his own life than watch Adilah die. The ache of fear that has defined him for so long lifts from his heart. He understands what he must do. There can be no cowardice. He stumbles towards the stairs, half falling down them because his legs have gone to sleep. Five seconds later he is standing outside the building with his hands above his head. ‘Enough!’ he shouts. ‘Let her go.’
Keeping his arm straight, the major raises his pistol so that it is pointing at Andrew’s head. Without looking at Adilah he presses his boot against her shoulder and pushes her to the ground. As he walks towards his prisoner, his gun still raised, he puts a whistle to his mouth and blows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
London. Present day. Five months after the crash
THE LIGHTS IN THE AUDITORIUM OF THE GREAT HALL DIMMED AND simultaneously rose on Daniel standing in one corner of the stage. He was at an intricately carved walnut lectern that was as old as the college itself. When the coughing and murmuring subsided, he waited a further thirty seconds so that the silence could deepen, a speaker’s trick.
‘Some of you …’
He stopped.
This was not part of the technique. His thoughts had liquefied; could not find a grip in his mind. He felt dazed, waiting for them to cool and harden. He was aware of the students in the front row looking at one another; noticed the red light of a camera. Was it pointing at him? Yes, he remembered, this lecture was being broadcast live as a webcast. He tapped his notes. Smiled.
‘Some of you may have attended this lecture out of curiosity about its title,’ he began again, his voice amplified through speaker panels at the back of the hall. ‘Some of you, those who never check their pigeon holes, may not have been aware that this lecture had a title.’ He paused, looked around at the blank faces and thought: hmm, tough crowd. ‘Some of you may have attended this lecture because you were curious to know what a lecture is.’ There were smiles at this. Can you smile louder please? he thought. At least he had their attention. ‘The title, for the record, is “Apes or Angels: whose side are you on?” Those of you sitting your finals in a few weeks may be wondering what the hell this has to do with nematodes. Well … everything.’
Daniel clicked a button and an illustration of a nonsegmented roundworm was projected on to a large screen behind him. ‘The nematode, though lacking in biological complexity, is perfectly adapted to its environment. And I mean perfectly.’ He made a hard chopping motion, one hand against the other. ‘It cannot be improved upon. In fact, over millions of years of evolution, it has reached a peak of efficiency and perfection. A zenith. An apotheosis. If it evolved legs or ears or eyebrows it would go from being a biological success story to a biological flop overnight – species survival to species extinction in one generation. Now, what is the explanation for this perfection? The religious mind doesn’t even try to explain it. It gives all the credit to the Big Fella, to God, to Allah. In other words, it gives up, it surrenders, it regresses to childhood fantasy. This lack of explanation is then passed from religious mind to religious mind like a replicating virus. It then reinforces itself through repetition. People believe it because they want to believe it. Priests preach to the converted … And I suspect I am doing the same here.’
He paused again. ‘Is there anyone present who is not an atheist?’ No hands were raised. ‘Good. Although if there had been a believer among you I suspect they would not have raised their hand. That is how peer pressure works. That is how religion works. Our job as scientists is to save religious people from their own ignorance, their own herd mentality. We want to encourage individualism and free thinking. You cannot call yourself a true scientist if you believe in God. As a scientist it is your duty to dismiss religion as the empty, shallow and infantile propaganda it is. As Einstein put it, “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” ’
Daniel walked to the front row, feeling intoxicated by what he was about to say, about the perversity of it, the sheer, private recklessness of it. ‘Imagine I had a vision. I think I’ve seen an angel, say. My first reaction might be to think it was religious. But there are always rational explanations if you look for them. Always. It would almost certainly – we’re talking about a probability of 99.9 per cent here – have been a hallucination brought on by medical factors. You know, dehydration, exposure, sunstroke, hypothermia, medication, that sort of thing. After all, it’s not hard to have a hallucination. Such have been the advances in neuroscience, it is now even possible to reproduce visions in laboratory conditions. Mystery solved.’
A student at the front raised a hand.
‘Yes?’
‘What the hell has this to do with nematodes?’
There was appreciative laughter. Daniel joined in with it. ‘Very good. Nice timing.’ He drew himself up and stared directly at the student who had asked the question. Theatre again. ‘Though a nematode is perfectly adapted to its environment that does not mean it might not try something else, a random mutation, an experiment that will help it. Like the Madagascan frog born with an eyelid on the roof of its mouth.’ Another slide clicked in the carousel. ‘Evolution is capricious. Why else would human embryos develop gills at twenty-four days only for them to disappear almost immediately, then, later, after five months in the womb, grow a coat of hair, only to shed it straight away? Nature likes to try things on. See if they fit.’
He was talking without notes now, pacing back and forth. It felt like an out-of-body experience, as if he were high above the lecture theatre looking down. He was like a god. A zoology god with a room-filling ego. And he knew he had his students with him for the performance. ‘We can be absolutely certain we evolved from apes and that any quirks we have are the result of random mutation. We can be absolutely certain there are no such things as angels because it is not biologically possible for angels to have evolved. They have no physical dimension, after all. No corporeal presence. They are immaterial. Figments of the imagination.’
He reached the lectern again, stopped pacing and leaned forward, riding the silence. ‘You may have been reading in the papers about a ring-tailed lemur that has been born in captivity at the Wildlife Foundation in Massachusetts. It appears to have two small dark feathers on its back. In a few days I’m flying to Boston to film it, so I’ll report back on the accuracy or otherwise of this observation. The point is this – Creationists in the Midwest are hailing it as evidence of Intelligent Design, because they say it could not be explained in terms of evolution by natural selection. An “atheist’s nightmare”, they are calling it. Actually, it is a perfect example of natural selection. The feathers can easily be attributed to the Darwinian process of crafting fit organisms with no plan, no view for the future and no mechanism
s more sophisticated than random genetic shuffling. This is the “crossing over” that occurs in reproductive cells during “random mutation”. There is no intelligent designer, no supreme being, no watchmaker – and even if there was, he would be blind.’
‘I have a question.’
Daniel shielded his eyes to see who had spoken. There was a man standing at the back. He was wearing a long white shirt and baggy trousers, the traditional Muslim shalwar kameez.
‘Yes?’
‘What if you are wrong?’
Daniel looked puzzled. Slowly a smile melted his features. It turned to laughter, a splutter that mounted in intensity. He propped himself against the lectern, doubled up and wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. Eventually he caught his breath and managed to say, ‘I don’t know!’ before collapsing into giggles again. The sounds of coughing, murmuring and zipping of bags could be heard in the auditorium now and, after a couple of minutes, some of the students began leaving, their seats clattering into the upright position, their embarrassment palpable. ‘Sorry, folks,’ Daniel said into the microphone as his laughter finally subsided. ‘Let’s leave it there for the day.’
A young woman with studs in her lip, nose and brow approached the stage. She was holding a camera. ‘For the newspaper?’The raised intonation at the end of the sentence suggested she was Australian. He had forgotten he had agreed to be profiled for the college newspaper. ‘Oh right, yeah. Sure. Where do you want to take it?’
The rest of the students were now leaving. All except one, who was walking down the steps towards the lectern. ‘Salaam alaikum,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind me sitting in on your lecture.’
It was Hamdi, and Daniel could now see he was also wearing a chequered Shemagh scarf and was growing a beard. ‘Not at all. How did you … ?’
‘I just walked in. I was going to tell security that I was a friend of yours, but when I reported to the gatehouse there was no one there.’ He shrugged. ‘So here I am.’
Daniel extended his hand for Hamdi to shake. ‘Glad you came.’
‘You rushing off?’
A tap of the watch face. ‘I do have to be somewhere. But … Fancy a quick drink?’
‘An alcoholic drink?’
‘No, I meant …’
Hamdi grinned. ‘I know plenty of Muslims who drink whisky. The Koran only mentions wine by name. But as it happens I don’t drink whisky either. I could go for a coffee though.’
When they had met at the school, and again later when they had talked on the phone, Daniel had found it hard to concentrate on Hamdi’s voice. Now he noticed Martha’s teacher had a hypnotic loud-quiet, long-short speech pattern, as if his batteries were running low, or he was experimenting with an unfamiliar language. There was little consistency in the way he placed emphasis: it was always on the first syllable of a word, but the word could be anywhere in the sentence.
They walked to the refectory where Hamdi found a seat while Daniel queued up for skinny lattes and cream cheese bagels. An inchoate thought was beginning to take hold: that if he could get a sample of Hamdi’s DNA he could have it profiled in the university’s lab. It might answer a question that was nagging him. The problem was how to extract it. A hair follicle? Some chewing gum he spat out? There might be enough of a saliva trace on the rim of the paper cup. ‘I bought you a bagel as well,’ he said when he returned to the table.
‘Thank you,’ Hamdi said.
‘You don’t have to eat it. I needed something. Always feel ravenous after a lecture. Now, I didn’t answer your question.’
‘My question was ridiculous.’
‘No, it was a good question.’
‘It made you laugh.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened. I sort of lost it. Didn’t mean to be rude. God knows what the students thought.’
‘Scientists like yourself only understand the world in terms of questions that have an answer.’ Hamdi paused but did not take a sip of coffee. His androgynous face was empty of expression and a dark sheen on his eyelids made him look as if he was wearing eye shadow.
‘What if I am wrong, you asked. Well, I’m not wrong. I have certainty.’
‘Just as the believer in God has certainty? I am a believer, by the way. I raised my hand in that lecture when you asked if anyone was a believer, but you could not see me at the back.’
‘Sorry about that. I would probably have pretended not to notice you if I had. Would have ruined my pay-off. Anyway, my certainty is different to your certainty, if you will forgive the presumption. Mine is based on science and knowledge and empirical evidence. What is religious certainty based on?’
‘Belief.’
‘But not proof.’
‘Can you prove to me that there is no God, professor?’
‘I could prove there is no need for a god, which is the next best thing.’
Hamdi raised his eyebrows. ‘You can?’
‘The Big Bang is the explanation. The Big Bang followed by billions of years of evolution by natural selection.’
‘But what was there before the Big Bang?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Surely that is based on belief, too. You believe there was nothing. You cannot prove it.’
Daniel gave a soft laugh, which he intended to sound indulgent but not too patronizing. He liked Hamdi. He had a friendly face. He found his presence comforting. ‘Just as there are laws of physics, so there are laws of biology and the main one, the one which explains every living thing on the planet – and every planet in the universe, for that matter – is that all things must start simply and become complex. The complex dolphin began its evolutionary journey hundreds of millions of years ago as a simple, single-celled prokaryote. For a god to create the universe he would have to be hyper-intelligent. But intelligence only evolves over time. The argument for a god starts by assuming what it is attempting to explain – intelligence, complexity, it amounts to the same thing – and so it explains nothing. God is a non-explanation. The Big Bang followed by billions of years of evolution is an explanation.’
‘You have told me how, professor, you have not told me why.’ There was laughter below Hamdi’s surface, which was something else Daniel hadn’t noticed before. When the young man said something that amused him, he punctuated his sentence with an almost inaudible snuffle – mm – the suppression of a laugh, a hint of satisfaction at what he was saying.
Daniel exhaled slowly. ‘Everyone throws that one at me … I know why people want to believe in God. Because they are in denial. Because with God comes the comforting fantasy of life after death. Because people cannot face the fact that every living thing must die. Yet it’s natural, it’s what we are born to do. Death is part of life. It is programmed into our DNA. I can even tell you, more or less, how long you will live, barring accidents. Here—’ Daniel reached for a tub of cotton buds that he kept in his shoulder bag. ‘Dab this on your gums.’
‘Why?’ Hamdi asked, taking a cotton bud.
‘Trust me.’
Hamdi ran it around his mouth and dropped it in the plastic specimen pouch Daniel was holding open.
‘The entire genetic history of your family is in this pouch,’ Daniel said. ‘From this we can calculate your chances of contracting Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer, everything. Would you like us to find out for you?’
Hamdi shook his head. ‘No, not really.’
Daniel looked disappointed. ‘Well. If you change your mind … Hello?’ The female student with the studs and the camera was standing in front of them. ‘Sorry, I got distracted. Do you want to take it here?’
‘Here’s fine,’ the young woman said. When her camera flashed, students at nearby tables turned round. ‘Can I have one of you two together?’
Daniel shrugged and edged his chair closer to Hamdi’s.
‘And can I have some of whatever it was you were smoking in there.’
Daniel grinned and shook his head. ‘Sorry about that. Haven’t had the giggles l
ike that in ages. Don’t know what got into me.’
The photograph taken, Hamdi stared at the specimen pouch in Daniel’s hand. ‘If evolution is the explanation,’ he said, ‘I mean, supposing it is, why is a belief in God hardwired into our brains? Every culture has a variation on the same belief, so what evolutionary purpose can that serve?’
‘I suppose it keeps us sane. Stops us thinking and questioning. Stops us going mad contemplating the vastness and complexity of the universe. The nothingness. Mental health is an important part of the survival of the species … That’s why the Marxists called religion the opiate of the masses.’ Daniel put the specimen pouch in his shoulder bag, picked up the bagel and began jabbing with it. ‘Personally, I think it’s more a poison than an opiate. Poisons everything it touches. Fills hearts with hatred and prejudice. Causes wars. Divides families. Look at honour killings. A father would rather murder his own daughter than allow her to have sex with a man he thinks his god might disapprove of. That’s insane.’ He took a bite. ‘Sorry. Don’t mean to offend you or your religion.’
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