by Dean Koontz
Indicating the posters of George Washington, Flannery O’Connor, and Harper Lee, I said, “The sister has a riddle, sir. What shared quality does she most admire in those three people?”
He didn’t have to ask who the women were. “Fortitude,” he said. “Washington obviously had it. Ms. O’Connor suffered from lupus but refused to let it defeat her. And Ms. Lee needed fortitude to live in that place at that time, publish that book, and deal with the bigots who were angered by her portrait of them.”
“Two of them being writers, you had a librarian’s advantage.”
When I switched off the lamp and opened the drapes, Romanovich said, “It is still a total whiteout. We will be disoriented and lost ten steps from the school.”
“Not with my psychic magnetism, sir.”
“Do they still include prizes in boxes of Cracker Jack?”
With a twinge of guilt, I opened a couple of Sister Angela’s desk drawers, found a pair of scissors, and cut off six feet of drapery cord. I wrapped one end around my gloved right hand.
“When we’re outside, I’ll give you the other end, sir. Then we won’t be separated even if we’re snowblind.”
“I do not understand, Mr. Thomas. Are you saying that the cord will act as some kind of dowsing rod leading us to the abbey?”
“No, sir. The cord just keeps us together. If I concentrate on a person that I need to find, and drive or walk around awhile, I’ll almost always be drawn to him by my psychic magnetism. I’m going to be thinking about Brother John Heineman, who is in the Mew.”
“How interesting. The most interesting part, to me, is the adverb almost.”
“Well, I’m the first to admit that I don’t live rent-free in Eden.”
“And what does that mean when you admit it, Mr. Thomas?”
“I’m not perfect, sir.”
After making sure that my hood was firmly fastened under my chin, I raised the bottom half of the double-hung window, went out into the roar and rush of the storm, and scanned the day for signs of cemetery escapees. If I’d seen any shambling bones, I would have been in big trouble, because visibility was down to an arm’s length.
Romanovich followed me and closed the window behind us. We were not able to lock it, but our warrior monks and nuns could not guard the entire building, anyway; they were even now retreating to the second floor, to defend that more limited position.
I watched the Russian tie the loose end of the cord to his wrist. The tether between us was about four and a half feet long.
Only six steps from the school, I became disoriented. I had no clue which direction would bring us to the abbey.
I summoned into mind an image of Brother John sitting in one of the armchairs in his mysterious receiving room, down in the Mew, and I slogged forward, reminding myself to be alert for a loss of tension on the cord.
The snow lay everywhere at least knee-deep, and in places the drifts came nearly to my hips. Wading uphill through an avalanche couldn’t have been a whole lot more annoying than this.
Being a Mojave boy, I again found the bitter cold only slightly more appealing than machine-gun fire. But the cacophony of the storm, combined with the whiteout, was the worst of it. Step by frigid step, a weird kind of open-air claustrophobia got a grip on me.
I also resented that the deafening hoot-and-boom of the wind prevented Romanovich and me from saying a word. During the weeks that he had been in the guesthouse, he’d seemed to be a taciturn old bear; but as this day had unfolded, he had become positively loquacious. I was enjoying our conversations as much now that we were allied in a cause as when I had thought that we were enemies.
Once they have exhausted the subject of Indianapolis and its many wonders, a lot of people have nothing more of interest to say.
I knew we had reached the stone stairs down to John’s Mew when I stumbled into them and nearly fell. Snow had drifted against the door at the bottom of the steps.
The cast-bronze words LIBERA NOS A MALO, on the plaque above the door, had mostly been obscured by encrusting snow, so that instead of reading Deliver us from evil, it read simply evil.
After I unlocked the half-ton door, it pivoted open smoothly on ball-bearing hinges, revealing the stone corridor bathed in blue light.
We went inside, and the door closed, and we disengaged ourselves from the tether that had kept us together during the slog.
“That was most impressive, Mr. Thomas.”
“Psychic magnetism isn’t an earned skill, sir. Taking pride in it would be like taking pride in how well my kidneys function.”
We brushed snow from our coats, and he took off his bearskin hat to shake it.
At the brushed stainless-steel door with LUMIN DE LUMINE embedded in polished letters, I knocked one foot against the other to shed as much caked snow as possible.
Romanovich removed his zippered boots and stood in dry shoes, a more considerate guest than I.
Translating the words on the door, he said, “ ‘Light from light.’ ”
“ ‘Waste and void, waste and void. Darkness on the face of the deep,’ ” I said. “Then God commanded light. The light of the world descends from the Everlasting Light that is God.”
“That is surely one thing it means,” said Romanovich. “But it may also mean that the visible can be born from the invisible, that matter can arise from energy, that thought is a form of energy and that thought itself can be concretized into the very object that is imagined.”
“Well, sir, that’s a mouthful to get out of three words.”
“Most assuredly,” he agreed.
I flattened the palm and fingers of my right hand against the plasma screen in the wide steel architrave.
The pneumatic door slid open with the engineered hiss intended to remind Brother John that in every human enterprise, no matter with what good intentions it is undertaken, a serpent lurks. Considering where his work apparently had led him, perhaps in addition to the hiss, loud bells should have rung, lights should have flashed, and an ominous recorded voice should have said Some things men were never meant to know.
We stepped into the seamless, wax-yellow, porcelain-like vessel where buttery light emanated from the walls. The doors hissed shut at our backs, the light faded, and darkness enveloped us.
“I have no sense of motion,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s an elevator, and we’re going down a few floors.”
“Yes,” Romanovich said, “and I suspect that surrounding us is an enormous lead reservoir filled with heavy water.”
“Really? That thought hadn’t occurred to me.”
“No, it would not.”
“What is heavy water, sir, besides being obviously heavier than ordinary water?”
“Heavy water is water in which the hydrogen atoms have been replaced with deuterium.”
“Yes, of course. I’d forgotten. Most people buy it at the grocery store, but I prefer to get the million-gallon jug at Costco.”
A door hissed open in front of us, and we stepped into the vestibule bathed in red light.
“Sir, what is the purpose of heavy water?”
“It is used chiefly as a coolant in nuclear reactors, but here I believe it has other purposes, including perhaps, secondarily, as an additional layer of shielding against cosmic radiation that might affect subatomic experiments.”
In the vestibule, we ignored the plain stainless-steel doors to the left and right, and went forward to the door in which were embedded the words PER OMNIA SAECULA SAECULORUM.
“ ‘For ever and ever,’ ” said Romanovich, scowling. “I do not like the sound of that.”
Pollyanna Odd, surfacing again, said, “But, sir, it’s merely praising God. ‘For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever, amen.’ ”
“No doubt that was Heineman’s conscious intention when he chose these words. But one suspects that unconsciously he was expressing pride in his own achievements, suggesting that his works, performed here, would endure for ev
er and ever, beyond the end of time, where only God’s kingdom otherwise endures.”
“I hadn’t thought of that interpretation, sir.”
“No, you would not, Mr. Thomas. These words might indicate pride beyond mere hubris, the self-glorification of one who needs no word of praise or approval from others.”
“But Brother John is not an egomaniacal nutbag, sir.”
“I did not say that he was a nutbag. And more likely than not, he sincerely believes that, through this work, he is devoutly and humbly seeking to know God.”
Without a hiss, For ever and ever slid aside, and we proceeded into the thirty-foot-diameter chamber where, at the center, standing on a wine-colored Persian carpet, four wingback chairs were served by four floor lamps. Currently, three lamps shed light.
Brother John, in tunic and scapular, with his hood pushed back from his head, waited in one of those three chairs.
CHAPTER 50
In the coziness of honey-colored light, with the surrounding room in shadows and the curved wall darkly lustrous, Romanovich and I settled in the two chairs to which we had clearly been directed.
On the tables beside our chairs, where usually three fresh warm cookies would have been provided on a red plate, no cookies were in evidence. Perhaps Brother John had been too busy to bake.
His hooded violet eyes were as piercing as ever, but they seemed to reveal no suspicion or hostility. His smile was warm, as was his deep voice when he said, “I have been inexplicably weary today, and at times even vaguely depressed.”
“That is interesting,” Romanovich remarked to me.
Brother John said, “I am glad you came, Odd Thomas. Your visits refresh me.”
“Well, sir, sometimes I think I make a pest of myself.”
Brother John nodded at Romanovich. “And you, our visitor from Indianapolis—I have only seen you once or twice at a distance and have never had the pleasure of speaking with you.”
“That pleasure is now yours, Dr. Heineman.”
Raising one large hand in genteel protest, Brother John said, “Mr. Romanovich, I am not that man anymore. I am only John or Brother John.”
“Likewise, I am only Agent Romanovich of the National Security Agency,” said the assassin’s son, and produced his ID.
Rather than lean forward from his chair to accept and examine the laminated card, Brother John turned to me. “Is he indeed, Odd Thomas?”
“Well, sir, this feels true in a way that librarian never did.”
“Mr. Romanovich, Odd Thomas’s opinion carries more weight with me than any identification. To what do I owe the honor?”
Putting away his ID, Romanovich said, “You have quite a vast facility here, Brother John.”
“Not really. The vastness you sense may be the scope of the work, rather than the size of the facility.”
“But you must need many specialists to keep it functioning.”
“Only six brothers who have had intense technical training. My systems are all but entirely solid-state.”
“On occasion, tech support comes in from Silicon Valley by helicopter.”
“Yes, Mr. Romanovich. I am pleased but surprised the NSA would be interested in the work of a spiritual seeker.”
“I am a man of faith myself, Brother John. I was intrigued when I heard that you have developed a computer model that you believe has shown you the deepest, most fundamental structure of reality, even far below the level of quantum foam.”
Brother John sat in silence, and finally said, “I must assume that some of my conversations with former colleagues, which I allowed myself a couple of years ago, were reported to you.”
“That is correct, Brother John.”
The monk frowned, then sighed. “Well, I should not hold them to blame. In the highly competitive secular world of science, there is no expectation of keeping a confidence of this nature.”
“So you believe you have developed a computer model that has shown you the deepest structure of reality?”
“I do not believe it, Mr. Romanovich. I know that what the model shows me is true.”
“Such certitude.”
“To avoid a bias toward my views, I didn’t create the model. We inputted the entirety of substantive quantum theory and the evidence supporting it, allowing the computer array to develop the model with no human bias.”
“Computers are creations of human beings,” said Romanovich, “so they have bias built in.”
To me, Brother John said, “The melancholy I’ve struggled with today does not excuse my bad manners. Would you like some cookies?”
That he offered cookies only to me seemed significant. “Thank you, sir, but I’m saving room for two slices of cake after dinner.”
“Back to your certitude,” Romanovich said. “How can you know what the model shows you is true?”
A beatific look overcame Brother John. When he spoke, his voice had a tremor that might have been inspired by awe. “I have applied the lesson of the model … and it works.”
“And what is the lesson of the model, Brother John?”
Leaning forward in his chair, seeming to refine the silence of the room to a hush by the force of his personality, he said softly, “Under the final level of apparent chaos, one finds strange order again, and the final level of order is thought.”
“Thought?”
“All matter, when seen at its root, arises out of a base web that has all the characteristics of thought waves.”
He clapped his hands once, and the previously dark, lustrous walls brightened. Across them, around us, floor to ceiling, intricate interlacing lines of numerous colors presented ever-changing patterns that suggested layers like thermal currents in an infinitely deep ocean. For all their complexity, the lines were clearly ordered, the patterns purposeful.
This display possessed such beauty and mystery that I was at the same time mesmerized by it and compelled to look away, struck both by wonder and fear, by awe but equally by a sense of inadequacy, which made me want to cover my face and confess all the baseness in myself.
Brother John said, “What you see before you is not the thought patterns of God that underlie all matter, which of course we have no way of actually seeing, but a computer representation of them, based on the model I mentioned.”
He clapped his hands twice. The astonishing patterns faded, and the walls went dark again, as though the display had been controlled by one of those devices that some elderly people use to turn the room lights on and off without having to get out of bed.
“This little exhibition so profoundly affects people,” Brother John said, “resonates with us on some level so deep, that witnessing more than a minute of it can result in extreme emotional distress.”
Rodion Romanovich looked as shaken as I suppose I did.
“So,” said the Russian, after regaining his composure, “the lesson of the model is that the universe—all its matter and forms of energy—arises out of thought.”
“God imagines the world, and the world becomes.”
Romanovich said, “Well, we know that matter can be transformed to energy, as burning oil produces heat and light—”
“As splitting the nucleus of an atom produces the nuclei of lighter atoms,” Brother John interrupted, “and also the release of great energy.”
Romanovich pressed him: “But are you saying that thought—at least Divine thought—is a form of energy that can shape itself into matter, the reverse of nuclear fission?”
“Not the reverse, no. This is not merely nuclear fusion. The usual scientific terms do not apply. It is … imagining matter into existence by the power of the will. And because we have been given thought, will, and imagination, albeit on a human scale, we too have this power to create.”
Romanovich and I locked eyes, and I said, “Sir, have you ever seen the movie Forbidden Planet?”
“No, Mr. Thomas, I have not.”
“When this is all over, I think we should watch it together.”
&nb
sp; “I will make the popcorn.”
“With salt and just a pinch of chili powder?”
“So shall it be.”
Brother John said, “Are you sure you won’t have some cookies, Odd Thomas? I know you like my cookies.”
I expected him to make sorcerous gestures toward the table beside my chair, conjuring chocolate-chip treats from thin air.
Romanovich said, “Brother John, you said earlier that you have applied the lesson of your computer model, the lesson being that all matter as we know it has arisen out of thought. The universe, our world, the trees and the flowers and the animals … all imagined into existence.”
“Yes. You see, my science has led me back to faith.”
“How do you mean you applied what you believe you’ve learned?”
The monk leaned forward in his wingback chair, his hands fisted on his knees as if he were struggling to contain his excitement. His face appeared to have shed forty years, returning him to boyhood and the wonder thereof.
“I have,” he whispered, “created life.”
CHAPTER 51
This was the California Sierra, not the Carpathian Mountains. Outside, snow flew rather than rain, without thunderclaps or bolts of lightning. In this room I found a disappointing lack of bizarre machines with gold-plated gyroscopes, crackling arcs of electricity, and demented hunchbacks with lantern eyes. In the days of Karloff and Lugosi, they really understood the demands of melodrama better than our mad scientists do these days.
On the other hand, it is true that Brother John Heineman was less mad than misguided. You will see that this is true, though you will also see that between the mad and the misguided, the line is as thin as a split hair that has been split again.
“This chamber,” said Brother John with a curious mix of glee and solemnity, “isn’t merely a room but is also a revolutionary machine.”
To me, Rodion Romanovich said, “This is always trouble.”