by Trevor Hoyle
But first God had to give him a sign.
9
Machine from the Future
As with most of Johann Karve’s intuitive insights – he had a success rate of sixty per cent and over – this particular one solved the mystery of the Biblical machine with annoying ease. Queghan couldn’t understand why no one, especially Dr Francis Dagon, hadn’t thought of it before. The cyberthetic print-out, when it appeared, contained a complete technical specification along with blueprint, operating and maintenance instructions, descriptions of the likely power source, raw material input and average daily output; in fact almost everything they needed to know with the exception of the identity of the intelligence which had designed and built the machine in the first place.
When extended the print-out measured 5.3 metres in length and Queghan was lost in admiration for the ingenuity of the transcriber, Dagon ben Shem Tov, who had been able to write out the specification for a protein fermentation plant from nothing more than an oral tradition handed down through centuries. It was an incredible feat of scholarship, for not only had he included every detail of construction but also the operating instructions: ‘On the Sabbath a trance falls upon microprosopus’ – which when processed cyberthetically came out as: ‘Every seventh day in continuous cycle the unit ceases to function automatically for the purpose of maintenance. It is taken to pieces, cleaned, reassembled and put on-stream for the next six days.’
There were some areas where the text was open to differing interpretations and here the cyberthetic system had extrapolated the known data and made what could best be described as an educated guess. The heat source, for example, being beyond the semantic grasp of a primitive people lacking a technological background, had been described thus: ‘Macroprosopus (upper skull) has four eyes, one of which is self-luminous … and below this the subtle air is whirled about from side to side, and the subtle fire is whirled about from side to side.’ From such scant information it wasn’t possible to deduce with absolute certainty what the heat source comprised or how it functioned, but by taking the known features of the unit – refrigerated water condenser, heat exchanger, irradiation chamber – the cyberthetic system had narrowed down the options until it arrived at the conclusion that the source was most likely to be a form of high intensity, high frequency light – in other words, laser optics.
So what was the machine’s purpose? Here was the most startling revelation of all and one that the mythographer still hadn’t fully taken in: using a single beam of optically pure light to irradiate a bacterial culture the unit was capable of producing a balance of protein, carbohydrate and fat which was fed through a series of pipes (to allow an exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide) and then drawn off into a lower vessel where it was heated and dried and passed into two smaller vessels for collection. The end product of this complex fermentation process was described in the print-out as ‘Single-cell protein possibly based on Chlorella type algae’. The unit could make 1.5 cubic metres a day – enough to provide sustenance for several thousand people over an indefinite period of time. Nutritional analysis had shown that the basic essentials of a healthy diet were all there in the balanced constituents of protein, carbohydrate and fat, and that it was possible to vary the food value by altering the conditions of growth of the bacterial strain.
Queghan was convinced that the print-out contained a complete working specification for a Manna Machine; it was this sophisticated piece of equipment which had been responsible for the Biblical ‘manna from heaven’, saving the tribes from extinction during their forty years in the wilderness. The Judaeo-Christian account was vague about the precise nature of manna and where it had come from, simply stating that the tribes ‘did eat Manna for forty years until they came to a land inhabited’. But what was there to eat in the desert? What foodstuff could sustain a tribe of several thousand people throughout all the seasons of the year? Here for the first time was an explanation which was scientifically plausible: the full technical specification lay in front of him on 5.3 metres of cyberthetic print-out.
Yet having solved one mystery led inevitably to the next. Who could have designed and built this advanced piece of equipment? The ancient peoples didn’t have the capability to understand the technological concepts involved, much less the ability to carry them through. The superalloys necessary for its construction didn’t exist, laser optics hadn’t been invented, and solar fuel cells were still three thousand years in the future. Queghan had to consider the various alternative solutions, no matter how bizarre they might seem. The first was that an extra-terrestrial life-form had brought the fermentation unit to Old Earth, and he could only speculate as to their motives in wanting to interfere with a primitive people at an early stage in their history. Presumably there must have been a reason – he couldn’t see why a species of such high intelligence would want to disrupt the evolutionary cycle for the fun of it or out of perversity.
There was another possibility: the machine had come from the future.
Somewhere in time an advanced civilization had developed the Manna Machine and transported it back through millennia – but in heaven’s name why? This solution, Queghan realized, raised more questions than it answered. Who would want to aid a handful of people on an obscure planet on the rim of an average galaxy? Why was it necessary? What was the ultimate purpose?
He sat back in the hard upright chair in his room on Level 17 and looked at the print-out which lay across his desk and cascaded in concertina folds on to the floor. Knowing the purpose of the Manna Machine hadn’t brought him any nearer a real understanding of the central dilemma; even supposing the whole thing to have taken place in an alternative past – an acceptable concept in mytho-logical terms – didn’t shed any light on the agency responsible.
Queghan lit a Nexus-T tube and took the synethetic drug deep into his lungs. The chemical was mind-expanding but on this occasion it only seemed to magnify the problem and compound his annoyance that it wasn’t really his problem at all. He’d been called in to ‘assist’ in the neuron processing experiment, to act as a neurological go-between, and now he found himself fretting over a mystery that had nothing to do with his work at MyTT. Naturally Johann Karve was keen to pursue it because it might add to the body of knowledge which would one day make Myth Technology a ‘respectable’ scientific calling. The Director still smarted at the jibes of hardliners even as he dismissed them as hidebound and years behind the times. Which was all very well, Queghan reflected, but where did he go from here?
The Nexus-T had distorted reality so that the ordinary contents of the room seemed remarkable. The shaft of sunlight through the angled window was a solid beam of gold and in his mind’s eye he saw it as the central golden rod connecting the planet to the sun, the spoke from the hub to the wheel. His heightened perception roamed further and he saw all the planets as the points of a matrix linked by slender filaments of light, the whole assembly held rigidly in position and wheeling in space so that the links seemed to intersect each other like searchlight beams. Somehow, in a way he didn’t comprehend, the universe was held together by some such system of interconnecting ley-lines, not only in an astrophysical sense but also metaphysically as well: spiritual action at a distance. And so he was certain that the events which had taken place on Old Earth many thousands of years Pre-Colonization were of direct and pertinent consequence to the here and now. They were separated only by time and space, elements which were themselves arbitrary and subjective, having no a priori meaning of objective significance.
He accepted Karve’s theory that Dr Francis Dagon was a recurrent figure throughout history – a ‘heteromorphic manifestation’ in the jargon – but just how far did that take him? If only Milton Blake could persuade Dagon to undergo neuron processing perhaps the picture would sharpen into focus. The drug was affecting him strongly now and he perceived with frightening clarity the impedimenta of his existence: the physical prison of his body, the humming molecules in the air around him, the pyramidal structure with the
flattened apex which contained him … And it struck him as ironic that his gift for mythic projection, which some saw as a blessing and regarded with awe, depended in the final analysis on his total lack of belief in himself as an individual human being. He was a phantom presence inhabiting an electrochemical machine; there was nothing actually there at the centre of consciousness, nothing he could recognize as being irredeemably of himself. So he was able to drift through time and space, an area of vacuum seeking substance and form with which to be filled and shaped, a mimic man who could adapt himself to any period.
The Director was one of the few people he felt really comfortable with; a private semiological code operated between them so that what was actually said constituted the lesser part of what was communicated. As usual he took the problem to Karve, who listened as he fiddled with his long-stemmed pipe (he had seen Einstein smoking one like it in the Archives’ newstapes) and then said through a barrage of smoke, ‘A Manna Machine from the future. What will they think of next?’
‘That’s one possible interpretation. There are others.’
‘I like the sound of this one,’ Karve said, smiling. He removed his pipe and ejected a dense rolling ball of smoke which rose slowly to the ceiling. ‘The more improbable it sounds the more likely it is to be right.’
Queghan regarded him dubiously.
‘No?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘It isn’t like you to be so cautious.’
‘I’m cautious because I’m not sure. Do you think I should inform Dagon?’
‘You did promise to help.’
‘And wasn’t too much appreciated.’
‘Ah well,’ said Karve, sucking on his pipe, ‘that’s the nature of the beast. Take the print-out along, I’m sure he’d be interested. Between the two of you you might come up with a viable theory.’ Not looking at anything in particular he said, ‘Have you decided on an injection point?’
‘No,’ the mythographer said, somewhat brusquely.
‘You’ve changed your mind.’
‘I haven’t done that either. It won’t be a picnic.’
The Director agreed.
‘I’m not going until I’m as sure as I can be.’
‘I wouldn’t let you.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘No.’ Karve looked at him, unsmiling. ‘Myth Technologists don’t grow on trees.’
Queghan relaxed slightly. ‘I need to narrow it down to a specific datum point: a thousand years is too wide a sweep.’
Karve rubbed his dry flaking palms together. In spite of cosmetic surgery his flesh was starting to go. Queghan wondered abstractedly how much of Karve was genuine and how much reconstituted flesh, muscle and bone. They could perform miracles these days. The mythographer said:
‘You know how it is when something just eludes your grasp, Johann. You reach out for it and your hand closes on nothing. Something isn’t right here, it isn’t fitting together. Dagon has been feeding Blake only half the story but Milton is such a trusting soul he probably doesn’t know he’s being conned. I know it’s not right and yet I can’t see the flaw – what is it I’m missing?’
‘You have a strong feeling about this.’
‘I have a feeling but no explanation.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘It’s like knowing the answer to a crossword and trying to figure out the clue.’
‘The answer being …?
‘The Manna Machine. Now you tell me the clue.’
‘Seek and ye shall find.’
‘Don’t go all Biblical on me, Johann.’ Queghan began pacing in long rangy strides. The room seemed charged with his nervous energy. ‘We have a number of mytho-logical elements without any apparent connection: Angel, the Christ and Anti-Christ, Dagon ben Shem Tov, the Aleph, genetic mutation, and now the Manna Machine. How do they fit together? There must be a link somewhere that we’ve overlooked.’
‘Or haven’t found,’ said Karve. ‘You’re assuming we have all the elements when in fact we may know only a few of them. Let’s face it, Chris, you aren’t going to be presented with a neatly wrapped package containing all the bits and pieces and all you have to do is slot them together. That would be too easy – and if it was that easy I’d be damn suspicious.’ He took in more smoke and allowed it to trickle from his nostrils. ‘You don’t have much of a choice, it seems to me. You’re going to have to talk to Dr Francis Dagon again, like it or not. Tell him about the Manna Machine and see if he can’t come up with an explanation. After all, he is the expert on Biblical texts.’
‘With a blatant distrust of Myth Technology.’
‘There are more scientists on his side of the fence than ours. Could be that you might even convert him.’ Karve raised his straggle of grey eyebrows and smiled engagingly. He had this talent for viewing a problem calmly, of putting it in perspective, and Queghan was appreciative and truly grateful.
*
This time he travelled to PSYCON along the controlled M-grid, riding in a litter which was programmed to find its destination by the shortest route. ‘Litter’ was the popular name for LST – Light Steam Transport – a small, noiseless, non-pollution vehicle with a closed energy system which recycled its own waste material. The terrain was flat and uninteresting: semi-desert scrubland with just the occasional homestead marked by the spidery aluminium scaffolding of a power platform with its omni-directional windmill and solar energy panel. The terra-formers had based the landscape on the Arizona of Old Earth, their brief having been to give Earth IVn as much geophysical variation as possible. There had been some opposition to this plan of deliberately creating inhospitable areas on the planet, the view taken that it was a waste of resources and no one would want to live in the back of beyond. But some people did. Human beings took a perverse pride in their awkwardness and unpredictability, refusing to be regimented like factory farm animals. Even out here in the desert wilderness, Queghan was pleased to see, human life had established for itself a bearable – some might even say desirable – existence.
Blake was pleased though mildly surprised to see him; Queghan told him what cyberthetic analysis had revealed about the Biblical machine and Blake said, ‘A machine for making manna? That’s incredible.’
‘We haven’t added to Dr Dagon’s information or altered it in any way. It’s simply an interpretation in terms of present-day technology. The hardware isn’t a problem, working from the blueprint and specification.’
‘You mean it’s possible to actually make one?’ Blake said, his broad dark handsome face crinkling sceptically.
‘Manufacturing a single-cell protein plant isn’t too difficult providing we calculate and set the laser optics to the correct frequency of emission.’
‘I wonder where the hell it came from,’ Blake mused.
‘So do we. That’s one of the reasons I’m back here. We could get only so far with mythological analysis and then we ran out of inspiration. Maybe Dr Dagon has an idea or two.’
Milton Blake smiled. ‘It got under your skin,’ he said.
‘Next time I’ll spend my vacation at the bottom of the ocean, out of harm’s way.’
‘You know, Chris, at first I thought of this as straightforward linguistics research but then I began to suspect there was something deeper: Dagon knows more than he’s prepared to reveal.’
‘You didn’t mention this before.’
‘It was a suspicion, nothing more. I had no evidence.’
‘Have you now?’ Queghan asked.
‘No,’ Blake said. His gaze was direct. ‘Except that we share the same feeling.’
‘Do we?’
‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’
It was evident that Dr Francis Dagon was excited by the result of the cyberthetic analysis. Despite the outward show of bland indifference Queghan noted small physical signs of tension in the faint though unmistakable trembling of his hands and the beat of the pulse in his temples. They found him hard at work in the dusty cluttered room, his small hunched body strapped
in the parachair, an almost furtive figure amidst the leather-bound books and curling sheets of yellowed manuscript. The mythographer thought, A mythic symbol, and his own heartbeat quickened at the realization.
‘It seems I was wrong. Myth Technology has more to contribute than I had supposed or given it credit for,’ Dagon said, looking at the blueprint.
Even this, to Queghan’s critical eye, was a pose; it was as though Dagon had been waiting, expecting something like this, and was now required to voice grudging approval. His manner was that of an adult complimenting a child on a simple task which the child has found extremely difficult. Queghan felt exploited and vulnerable. He said:
‘Then you accept the cyberthetic analysis as genuine?’
‘It would appear to be. I have no reason to believe that you would deliberately falsify the results.’
The mythographer ignored the condescension implicit in the remark. He said, ‘Myth Technology played little part in the interpretation: any cyberthetic processing terminal would have produced the same result if the program had been correctly set.’
‘There we have it,’ Dagon said, his voice sounding distant and soft in the electro-synthetic larynx, activated by the respiratory implant. ‘You were able to program the system to interpret the text into technical data. I could not have done that.’
‘Is it of value to you?’
‘You don’t know how much, Queghan.’ His blank dead eyes moved like marbles in their sockets. ‘Sit down, I have something to show you. You too, Blake.’ He operated the parachair and returned to the desk with a dark green vinyl folder. Queghan saw the title and it gave him an odd twinge of apprehension. It read: THE DAGON FILE.
Dr Francis Dagon opened the cover and glanced at the first page. He suddenly reached down and adjusted one of the controls in the base of the chair and there was an answering gurgle of fluid in one of the pipes. He said, ‘This is an account taken from the First Book of Samuel in the Old Testament of the Judaeo-Christian Bible. You’re both aware that my namesake, Dagon ben Shem Tov, lived in the 13th century, but you probably don’t know of a god called Dagon who lived several hundred years before the birth of Christ. If we look at I Samuel Chapter 5 we read: “And the Dagonites took the Ark of God and brought it from Eben-ezer unto Ashdod. When the Dagonites took the Ark of God they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon”. Since I came across that reference – I’ve been researching the various texts which deal with that period of history and the degree of similarity between them is remarkable. It seems that between 1000 and 800 years BC – it’s difficult to be more precise – a nomadic tribe of the desert was visited by a physical manifestation of God. There are several versions of this but they all refer to “a pillar of fire” and “a pillar of cloud” which appeared suddenly before them in the desert. At about this time the tribe established a settlement and it was ruled over by a man named Kish who became known as the First of the Prophets. A temple was built and it was in the temple that we first hear of the “Ark of the Covenant of the Lord”. The Biblical accounts never specify precisely what the Ark is or where it came from, and it wasn’t until I came across a reference to the Ark in The Book of Splendours – where it’s known as the “Ancient of Days” – that I was able to build up a more complete picture.