by James Morrow
Evidently the Jesuit missionaries had established a tradition of literacy amongst the Huancabamba pagés, for Princess Akawo began her letter by explaining that she’d dictated it to the village shaman. Despite its orthographic irregularities, Chloe easily apprehended Akawo’s heartening message. Not only had Princess Ibanua and the liberated seringueiros arrived safely in the Jequetepeque valley, but Prince Gitika had appeared shortly thereafter with the remaining Indians, the Marañón valley campaign having played out exactly as planned.
After securing the letter in her rucksack, she continued excavating the barrel. Alas, no word from Algernon. Inevitably an unnerving question popped into her brain. If the scheme to free her father had gone awry, and if by some quirk of circumstance Duntopia versus Cabot and Quinn persuaded the jurors to disavow their Creator, would she then be obligated to visit Alastor Hall, recapitulate her disproof, and win the £10,000 on Papa’s behalf? This imagined scenario was surely amongst the most disturbing ever visited upon an apostle of the Presence, and she spent the remainder of the day attempting, though without success, to evade its contemplation.
* * *
It was on the vast and sumptuous Galápagos isle of Albemarle that Chloe Bathurst, galvanized by her previous night’s study of Charles Darwin’s essay and her inability to imagine an event more calamitous than the public execution of her friends, at long last found her Tree of Life.
Her revelation occurred at noon, heralded by perfume, the Lamarck having touched down in a flowery depression between the dormant Sierra Negra and Mount Azul volcanoes. Spun from some trade wind or other, a vagrant breeze wafted through the larboard window, cooling her brow and filling the carriage with the scent of orchids and hibiscus.
Bamboo birdcages fashioned by Orrin Eggwort’s harem jammed the gondola floor to ceiling. Chloe selected four cages, wrapped her arms about them, and, taking leave of Capitaine Léourier, strode towards the valley in search of ornithological ripostes to the Jehovah hypothesis. According to her bestiary, the defense exhibits must ultimately include the three Galápagos varieties of flycatcher, the four distinct kinds of mockingbird, and at least six species of finch. Presumably the task would prove simple, Encantadas birds being so famously tame.
And suddenly there it was, rising from the island’s heart, a towering plant with glowing ivory limbs and fragrant white blossoms. In his travel journal Mr. Darwin had identified this species as the palo santo, the “holy wood” tree. The name was at once pagan and Christian, tracing not only to an alleged efficacy against mala energía, “bad energy,” but also to a familial relationship with frankincense and myrrh.
She knew her Tree of Life not by its fruits but by its tenants. At that moment the palo santo hosted three sorts of bird. Sprightly descendant of the South American grassquit (or so the transmutation sketch averred), a male woodpecker finch exhibited a characteristic behavior, using a prickly-pear cactus spine to pry an insect larva from a branch. Evolutionary offspring of a long-tailed songster still thriving on the South American continent, a male short-billed mockingbird, wreathed in gray feathers, gave voice to a serenade. Creamy of breast, brown of wing, and boasting (like her fellow palo santo occupants) a genealogy tracing to the mainland, a female broad-billed flycatcher stared directly at Chloe. For anyone who’d read The Voyage of the Beagle the bird’s intentions were readily discerned. The creature meant to abandon the tree and plunder Chloe’s scalp, human hair being amongst those materials with which flycatchers were pleased to build their nests.
She set down the bamboo cages. Woodpecker finch, short-billed mockingbird, broad-billed flycatcher: three distinct species descended with modification from a common ancestor that had in turn descended with modification from a creature that had likewise descended, so that if you applied your imagination fully to this Tree of Life, making a fanciful pilgrimage downwards along its twigs and branches, you would find that the avian families represented here were connected not only to all the world’s other birds but also (in some astonishingly long-ago era) to the domeshelled tortoises now shambling through the dale, to the terrestrial iguanas sunning themselves on the rocks, to the prickly-pear cactus (here the wayfarer needed to visit a time before Professor Owen’s dinosaurs) from which the woodpecker finch had taken his tool, and even to the very palo santo where the birds were presently perched. Eyes welling with tears, she apprehended the whole tapestry, an immense and magisterial network binding together everything that now lived, had ever lived, and ever would live—and so it was that she became once again a devotee of the theory of natural selection: a loyalty that would long endure, she suspected, woodpecker finches, short-billed mockingbirds, and broad-billed flycatchers being such incontrovertible conjunctions of beaks and claws and feathers, such irrefutable incarnations of flight and song and reproductive success.
“When the defense makes its case next week,” she told the uncomprehending birds, “the Covent Garden Transmutationist will testify.”
Having found the object of his quest, the woodpecker finch took wing, bearing away the delicious insect larva and the God of Chloe’s epiphany. Next the mockingbird flew off, leaving behind a bracingly profane absence. Finally the flycatcher quit the palo santo and soared straight for her. Landing atop Chloe’s head, the bird snapped at her scalp, then delivered the hair to an emergent nest in a nearby catclaw tree. An instant later the flycatcher, returning, stole a second hair, adding it to her nest, and then she claimed a third such strand.
“I saw the bird attack you,” said Léourier, arriving on the scene. “By your tears I know she caused you pain.”
“I felt no discomfort,” said Chloe, retrieving the topmost cage. “Attendez, mon ami. The angels have molted and died. There is no God.”
“Mademoiselle, je suis désolé.” Léourier placed a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “I remember when I first understood that life lacks a supernatural meaning, a traumatic event for me, très triste. The loss of faith is always an occasion for weeping.”
“But these are tears of joy.”
“Larmes de joie?”
“Because today it was my privilege to befriend a broad-billed flycatcher,” she explained. “No, not simply to befriend her, but to secure her family’s prosperity. At this particular moment I ask nothing more of the world.”
13
The Tortoises of the Encantadas at Long Last Have Their Day in Court, as Do the Land Lizards, Marine Iguanas, Mockingbirds, and Finches
What most pleased Malcolm Chadwick about Miss Bathurst’s latest change of worldview was that, this time around, she’d embraced Charles Darwin’s theory not for monetary gain or personal aggrandizement but because she believed it to be true. On first hearing of her return to the transmutationist fold, Malcolm enacted within his heart a private carnaval de la victoria, as well as a scene of Miss Bathurst and himself connecting with a kiss. Until that startling moment he’d certainly regarded her as a worthy person, but now it seemed his attitude also partook of Aphrodite’s domain. He decided to tell Miss Bathurst nothing of this development, as any romantic protestation on his part would surely distract her from the daunting task at hand.
“I hope your inverse Road to Damascus has not pained you intolerably,” he said.
In an absent tone Miss Bathurst replied, “My emotions are not unlike those that attended my long-ago miscarriage—exhilaration mingled with bereavement.”
“I see,” said Malcolm, though in fact he did not.
“And now, Reverend, having made that paradoxical observation, I would ask that we speak no more of the matter.”
He nodded and said, “The world is already too full of words.”
Whilst preparing the case for the defense, Malcolm soon realized that Capitaine Léourier’s perspective on the Tree of Life would prove indispensable. Though a man of scientific sensibility, the aeronaut found the idea of non-Lamarckian evolution far from self-evident, which made him the ideal critic of the team’s intended strategy.
After listening t
o Léourier’s analysis of their rehearsals, Malcolm and Miss Bathurst concluded that, during the phase of her testimony concerning birds, she should refrain from naming any living South American species that might have given rise to a Galápagos variant, lest Eggwort demand that exemplars be brought before the jurors. (Instead she must aver that the continental forebears of all Encantadas birds were extinct, their fossilized bones still awaiting discovery in Ecuador, Peru, or Chile.) Equally vital was Léourier’s anticipation of an argument with which the chief prosecutor would surely attempt to rattle Mademoiselle Bathurst. Why should a scientifically inclined Christian not insist that the principle of natural selection had originated in the mind of God?
“One need merely assert that the Almighty put this process in place on the eighth day of Creation,” said the aeronaut, “so that his newly formed animals and their descendants could adapt to future changes in their environments, and—voilà—the atheist position crumbles.”
Malcolm recalled how, back in Manáos, the naturalist Alfred Wallace had proclaimed that God was the author of evolution. At the time Malcolm had found the young man’s stance untenable. (“Mr. Wallace is merely saying that the universe exists, something I already knew.”) Today, however, as articulated by Léourier, this alternative to a wholly materialist view of evolution seemed formidable indeed.
“You are advancing an argument that might be called … well, I’m not sure what to call it,” Malcolm told Léourier.
“Evangelical Deism?” suggested Miss Bathurst.
“Very good,” said Malcolm. “When in doubt, devise an oxymoron. In the beginning God the Father created the laws of Nature and proceeded to dwell within them, whilst Christ the Son and his associate the Holy Ghost set about securing eternal life for the more pious members of their favorite species. Should Darwin’s theory ever become ascendant, we may be confident that some form of evangelical Deism will rise along with it.”
“Then let us toast the theologians of the future,” said Léourier in a sardonic tone, “who will appropriate the bread of science even as they devour the wafers of salvation. Such clever apologists. They will have their Host and eat it, too. But how do we dismantle their argument?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” said Malcolm.
“At the eleventh hour we shall formulate a riposte,” said Miss Bathurst. “We may never overpower Mr. Darwin’s antagonists, but we can certainly out-think them.”
On the morning that the trial was to commence, Malcolm and Léourier escorted their expert witness from her Hood’s Isle shack to the moored Lamarck. Dressed in her pirate regalia and Panama hat, she clutched the boxed transmutation essay and an equally crucial document, the bestiary, its pages now arranged to indicate the order in which Eggwort’s concubines must bring each exhibit on stage. Under clear skies the defense team flew to Charles Isle, landing in Post Office Bay. Sorting through the contents of the Colnett barrel, Malcolm determined that no letter had arrived from Algernon Bathurst, nor had Bishop Wilberforce sent a message concerning the disposition of the Shelley Prize. How weirdly poetic it would be if the recently resurrected Albion Transmutationist Club brought atheism to Duntopia on the very day the Mayfair Diluvian League sailed a gopher-wood proof of God up the Thames.
After negotiating the foothills of Mount Pajas, the defense team entered Minor Zion, whereupon Miss Bathurst presented the eldest of Eggwort’s concubines with the bestiary. “Yesterday our high-spined lizard went a-missin’, but I’m happy to report he showed up this mornin’,” said Rebecca Eggwort, leafing through the dramatis personae. “’Fraid we lost track of them two little black iguanas from Tower, but we got everythin’ else you need, includin’ the puffer-fish and the pirate skeleton.”
“You must find those lizards posthaste,” Miss Bathurst insisted.
“Might a couple extra Duntopian reds suffice?” asked Mrs. Eggwort. “Or maybe we could sail across the bay and catch us some Indefatigable multicoloreds.”
“Thank you, Rebecca, but I require varieties, the more the better.”
The defense team proceeded to the plaza, where scores of shackled men, quite likely the penal colony’s entire English-speaking population, occupied themselves with scratching their armpits and spitting into the dust. Dressed in burlap tunics so tattered they would have embarrassed a scarecrow, their heads covered with burlap skullcaps, the inmates fidgeted beneath the stern gazes of a dozen armed guards commanded by the same strapping officer who’d taken the convicts in hand five months earlier. A lanky Duntopian with watery eyes and an Old Testament beard approached Malcolm, introducing the commander as Capitán Machado and himself as “Associate Emperor Jethro Tappert, the Latter-Day Saint who’ll be representin’ the Divine Plaintiff in this here case.”
“I must say, you look the part of God’s attorney,” Malcolm observed.
“I think of myself more as Satan’s bane,” said Mr. Tappert, wiping his brow with a red kerchief. He wore pristine dungarees and a green-and-black checked cotton shirt. “So tell me, Mr. Chadwick, why does so distinguished a gentleman as yourself decide to defend the slimy likes of Cabot and Quinn? In my view the gallows is too good fer such varmints. I would sooner see ’em boiled in oil or quartered by giant tortoises, but our charter don’t allow it.”
“Good sir, have you forgotten the most sacred principle upon which Anglo-American jurisprudence is founded?” asked Malcolm. “I refer to the presumption of innocence.”
“Presumption of innocence, hah—I knew you’d try some sleazy lawyer trick! Maybe it works with the hoity-toities, but here in Duntopia we don’t coddle blasphemers. Right now Orrin wants us to pick the jurors, a task fer which we’ll be needin’ the wisdom of Solomon and the forbearance of the martyrs.”
“I have neither,” said Malcolm.
“Truth to tell, I don’t see how we’re gonna manage it.” Tappert guided the defense team towards the White Horse Prophecy Tabernacle. “I’ll be hopin’ to plant twelve God-fearin’ believers in the jury box, and you’ll settle fer nothin’ less than a dozen libertine atheists.”
Now Miss Bathurst spoke up, explaining that her team would be satisfied to put but a single question to each prospective juror. “It’s a mere ten words long,” she told Tappert. “Quote, ‘Do you think it possible dogs were bred from wolves?’ Unquote.”
“Wolves?” said the chief prosecutor. “There ain’t no wolves in Galápagos.”
“Attend my testimony carefully, Mr. Tappert,” said Miss Bathurst. “Thou shalt learn whence thou came and whither thou goest.”
As Malcolm entered the building, pieces of his past came flooding back—his oft-repeated experience of walking into a rustic church and finding himself deeply moved by its holy simplicity. With its bronze candlesticks instead of gold and its windowsills supporting not stained-glass mosaics but vases of modest yellow cactus flowers, the Mormon tabernacle was precisely the sort of place God would have been pleased to visit back in the days when He existed. Someone had rearranged the furnishings, pushing aside the pulpit, piano, and baptismal tub, giving preeminence to a mahogany altar. On Sunday this appointment would again perform a sacred function, but for now it was a judge’s bench. Balanced on an adjacent stool, wearing a solemn black suit that would have served him equally well for conducting a funeral, Orrin Eggwort scanned the Book of Mormon. A few yards away, seated at a table bearing a sign reading PROSECUTION TEAM, a corpulent Latter-Day Saint dressed in striped blue overalls pored over the same consecrated text.
“Meet my deputy, Assistant Emperor Linus Hatch,” Tappert told Malcolm. “Linus, this here’s the chief counsel.”
“Tell me, Mr. Hatch,” asked Malcolm, “what is your opinion of the presumption of innocence?”
“As a fallen man,” the deputy prosecutor replied in a gravelly voice, “stained by Adam’s sin though redeemed by Christ’s blood, I would never go around presumin’ anyone’s innocence, includin’ my own, and certainly not the innocence of guilty folk like Cabot and Quinn.”
/> Malcolm rolled his eyes and faced the bench. “Emperor Eggwort, do you concur with these peculiar views?”
“It’s Judge Eggwort today.” The chief magistrate snapped his Book of Mormon shut. “Like my fellow Duntopians, I’m disinclined to hold any person blameless. Noah was blameless. Job was blameless. It’s a short list.”
“Permit me a second question,” said Malcolm. “It concerns arithmetic. Because my clients are accused of a capital crime, the jury must reach a unanimous verdict, correct?”
“Unanimous, yep,” said Eggwort. “Convince all twelve that God don’t exist, and I’ll cancel your clients’ appointments with the hangman.”
Malcolm suddenly found himself back on the pitching deck of the Equinox, the gale howling all about him. “By the norms of English justice, we need to convince but one juror!”
“If you’ve got an itch fer English justice, Padre, I suggest you take a trip to England. That said, I’m not averse to compromisin’. If eight jurors cast ‘not guilty’ votes, both defendants will walk free.”
“Make it four.”
“No,” said Eggwort.
“I implore you, sir, four. Or else five.”
“Six.”
“Very well, six,” growled Malcolm. He exchanged dismayed glances with Miss Bathurst and Léourier, then approached a table on which a sheet of foolscap displayed the words DEFENSE TEAM. “Judge Eggwort, I suspect you’re about to be hoist by your own petard. Once word of this trial gets out, the world at large will call for your abdication.”
“We ain’t keen on the world at large around here, and the same goes fer petards,” Eggwort replied. “Mr. Hatch, go fetch us the first candidate.”
Thanks to the elegance of Miss Bathurst’s membership criterion, whereby a man might join the jury merely by allowing that dogs may have descended from wolves, the selection process proceeded apace. Of the twenty prisoners interviewed that morning, Tappert rejected one on grounds of professed atheism, two in consequence of imbecility, and a fourth for being as deaf as a clam. Malcolm, meanwhile, eliminated two who claimed that dogs were designed by God, plus one who thought the defendants Satanists who’d accidently burned the Covenant in a human sacrifice gone awry. Thus it happened (in an irony of the sort Miss Bathurst savored) that a panel of twelve accomplished lawbreakers were empowered to bring justice to Duntopia. The arsonists’ destiny lay in the dubious hands of Joe the poacher, Ben the horse thief, Jake the fornicator, Harry the panderer, Tim the anarchist, Pete the highwayman, George the train robber, Dick the swindler, Walter the forger, Nathan the pickpocket, Amos the sodomite, and Clarence the usurer.