by Nicholas Lim
Christmas listened to his shallow breathing. His head ached. He stopped the track. He was too tired to make the trip.
He shifted on the pebbles and scanned the beach below. Cold tickled his spine where sweat cooled. His time of trial was close now. Maybe perform his Dues? He didn’t need so much concentration for that; or his player. He closed his eyes. Some things you know by heart.
Breathe in, deeply and smoothly. Now breathe out. Just watch. With complete acceptance, without judgement. These are the Dues of Awareness.
He felt the threat of heat as the last light from the sun reached under the pier. He remembered a sunny morning back in the Valley, in the House of Healing. Arshu had brought them together in the great Greenhouse. Just the Five: he had spoken to them alone. Five chosen for glory. Five men of faith who would change the world. It had been hot, the sun casting rainbows through the glass. Arshu had stood on a raised bed of flowering grasses and told their future. Only then had Christmas truly realised his destiny. With the memory of that sing-song voice a chill trickled down his back.
“Let us pray. Come with me now! Put your hands together before we start.”
“You stand here, on this day, this hour, filled with light and laughter. Why? Because today we start something wonderful. Something beautiful. Something the world has been waiting for.”
“A parasite which was once holy has spread like a rash to cover the face of our Great Soul, Mother Earth. She is sick, sick to death. She cannot breathe, her children are disappearing, she has a fever – she is dying from a pestilence that breeds without ceasing, billions upon billions, day after day. That Great Soul – she needs our help.”
“Brothers! The time has come to face our responsibility. Each of you has been prepared. You have trained hard. Now you must act: with one mind, heart, faith – pray with me a moment!”
“Thank you. Today we go where none can follow. Many will try. None can stop us! Many will try. All will fail if we remain true to each other. Will we be thanked? No. We will be hated. It does not matter.”
“Let us talk of death. Do not fear that great illusion. Today I make you this solemn promise: when the journey is over, I will be your guide and for a thousand lifetimes your feet will not err! Think! You lose one life and win a thousand with me.”
“We step out onto a forgotten road. Our destination lies in shadow, in the silence of fallen stones, of empty cities and broken nations. Choose your shoes wisely. Ready your hearts for loss. Pack as if you will never return.”
“Go now. Do your duty. And you will live with me forever.”
The first of the Five had already shown the way with a martyr’s footsteps. Where was he now? Jakarta? Beijing?
Christmas opened his eyes again. His legs ached like he’d run a marathon. Cross-legged, he tried to settle more comfortably on the stony ground.
Up under the eaves of the pier, almost out of sight, a man and woman nestled half-naked in a pebbled dell of their own making. Christmas watched the couple shift position, stomach to back. The woman’s dark hair made him think of Fiona and Lizzie. Girls girls girls. He grinned despite his aches then shook his head. Jade. Her jealousy had been poison. It was wrong thinking. People were not possessions.
His fingers searched for the buttons of his music player.
Chapter 14
Mark Boorman lived in a vicarage on the edge of a small village on the South Downs, barely ten miles inland from Brighton. As she queued with the early morning commuter traffic, Garrett remembered Dr. Prenderville's words. Asari tried out all their new ideas on the South coast. New ideas. Like dividing children from their mothers.
Boorman's mother was not what Garrett had expected. A severe-looking woman, neatly dressed in a green twin-set and with an old-fashioned manner.
“Won’t you please take a seat?”
Garrett was shown into a sunny high-ceilinged drawing room. Tall French windows opened onto a paved terrace. A clarinet was propped against the arm of a striped green-and-white sofa, like a mislaid walking stick. On a pedestal stand beside a piano was a wide-throated glass vase with an arrangement of Madonna lilies.
“Mark will be down in just a moment.”
Mrs Boorman behaved as though Garrett were a client come for an appointment, and left her waiting alone.
Garrett walked around the room. Framed pictures on the piano showed a growing boy, at his youngest posing in a white suit with his mother, titled ‘First confirmation’; a little older, he was a uniformed schoolboy surrounded by monks; and much taller and older still, in a caftan.
“Christine Garrett? I’m Mark.”
A thin man in loose cords and a baggy jumper stood in the doorway, one bare foot resting on the other. Dr Prenderville had said he was in his early thirties.
“Hello Mark. Thank you for agreeing to meet me.”
They sat down together.
“You wanted to talk about Skyler?” Boorman's voice was soft, educated.
“Jason. Yes. Did you know him?”
“We were friends.”
Garrett nodded quickly. “How is he?”
“I haven't seen him since March so I can't give you any recent information.”
“Was he well–?”
“Last time I saw him we were in a vegetable garden weeding and digging a trench.” Mark didn’t smile. “We were trying to find a break in a water line.”
“Gardening? Jason was gardening?”
“Everyone takes a turn in the gardens. Self-sufficiency is one of the principles of Asari.”
“He never showed any interest in our garden at home. We grew vegetables too. I'm sorry – I'm just trying to understand.”
“That's all right. Understanding Asari is not easy, even if you've been there.”
“What did you talk about when you last saw him?”
“We argued.”
“About what?”
“He'd just done a meal run. He’d been asked to leave food outside a locked room in the science block. We were arguing about something he'd seen. It had disturbed him.”
Boorman looked around the room, frowning. He went over to the piano and came back with a glass ashtray. He took a packet out of a pocket and tapped out a cigarette. Garrett controlled her impatience. She waited until Boorman looked ready to speak again.
“What had disturbed him?”
“He was concerned about the woman and child he’d seen inside the room.” Boorman exhaled smoke. “He'd noticed them there a week earlier and they were sitting in exactly the same places, as if they hadn’t moved. He said they looked trapped. I told Skyler they shouldn’t treat Sikanda’s family that way.”
“Who?”
“Sikanda. I don't know his real name. He came to Asari Valley two years ago. We were told he was some high-powered scientist working with Osei – our Head of Healing – on a special project. Something big, a secret project, that's what they said, all the Sanyasins and the House leaders.” Boorman sucked hard on his cigarette. “You have to understand Asari is riddled with secrets. There are secrets within secrets. But in this case some of the people that do know what they're about – Osei for one – were saying it too. He said that we must have faith in the Leadership. He said a time of great change was coming, a Cleansing, a Transformation that would give Arshu his proper place in the world. It was probably all rubbish. Anyway the last year I was there that project became an obsession. We were making preparations as though there were a flood coming. There was even talk of leaving the Valley.”
“This special project – was Jason involved?”
Boorman shrugged. “I don't know. He had become more senior than me so he wouldn’t have told me everything, not because we argued, that’s just how it works.” Boorman contemplated the glowing end of his cigarette.
“Why did you argue?”
“I said that it looked like the rumours were true. That Sikanda and his family had become prisoners, after trying to leave. I thought it was wrong for us to imprison anyone. Your son accuse
d me of not having faith, of doubting Arshu. He spoke of higher causes, said the end would justify the means. I disagreed with him.”
Garrett sat back slowly, like a collapsing balloon. What was Jason mixed up in? Where was he now? What was he doing? Whatever it was, he was beyond her help.
A memory returned of a long winter filled with three-year-old fevers; for two months he had slept only if within reach of her. Through the sleepless nights she had listened to the sounds he had made. When he had become disturbed she had placed a hand on his hot back and waited till he had grown calm. For a moment she let herself hate Boorman, for not being Jason here with her. She tempered her will with the cooling anger, with a need to understand.
Boorman waited in the opposite corner of the sofa. Garrett stared at the rainbow reflections cast on his feet from the vase on the piano.
“Do you mind my asking, how you became involved with Asari?”
“Through the London Spiritual College. I was studying for a doctorate in Psychic Healing. A guy called Kirtananda came to speak a few times. I got to know him. He was hip and tough, not like the usual goons. I could see he’d been around the block, knew what was what. I respected him. And he gave out a lot of free drugs; he said his acid was fast food enlightenment, a short cut for Westerners lost in their materialism. I don’t think they were his words – he spoke a lot about his Teacher. He invited me to a free retreat. I went with him to Asari Valley and didn’t leave for two years.”
“Why did you stay?”
Boorman stared at the carpet. His cigarette dangled forgotten from a limp hand. Birdsong and, farther off, the seashore sound of a lawnmower being pushed and pulled, drifted in from outside.
“At the start it was good. Free meals, free booze, free sex, free drugs, amazing parties. We had fun. There was a real community, shared understandings, lots of lame jokes. You have to imagine a place without television, the Internet, advertising, telephones. We made our own music, food, clothes, stories – world really. I liked the rituals, early morning, lunchtime, evening. And at first, I loved Arshu. I fell for the spiritual line.” He shivered then snorted. “Of course I did.”
Boorman stopped again. Peace and domestic silence rushed in.
“I was always religious. From school I went straight into the seminary. By the time I got to the Spiritual College I could pray my way into believing just about anything.” Boorman looked down at himself, his face full of disgust, his voice bitter.
“What do you mean, anything?” Garrett cast her question low, just in front of him.
“Have you read G.K. Chesterton? He said, ‘When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing – they believe in anything’. Well it sounds true, and clever, but he was wrong. The truth is the exact opposite, and not as pretty. When people stop thinking for themselves, stop being sceptical or critical – when they choose or are brought up to believe in things without a shred of evidence, that’s when they can believe in anything. And that anything can be searching for you. It comes knocking. Because it wants you for its own ends.”
Boorman stabbed out his cigarette in the glass ashtray. “Don’t think these people are superstitious idiots. Far from it. They know exactly what they’re doing. Especially the Instructors. They understand the ‘journey’ you must make. Every step is managed, calculated in careful order.”
“What journey?”
Boorman sat up. “First thing, they get you to write these autobiographical essays, about what you believe, your childhood, your problems. The more confessional, the more guilty, the more you are congratulated and rewarded – and the less you are left with. Before you realise, you have given away all your privacy. Of course they don't tell you that.”
Boorman spoke now with a sneer of open anger. “They start by honouring your ‘faith tradition’ – whatever it is, Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu… When you are ready, they invite you to ‘transcend’, to see the limitations of your old ways of thinking, suggest you act out your progress by performing rites of deliberate sacrilege. I burned a bible. It was at a full moon party. Jesus! We made a fire on the beach. I remember the smoke smelled of glue. It nearly made me sick.” Boorman shook his head. “That’s when I began to stop communicating with my family and my friends back home. I was doing it all willingly. Guilt, continual confession, hard labour penance, the rewards of approval, sex, drug ecstasies – believe me, it's hard to compete with Arshu’s lessons and gifts and revelations. And of course you’re isolated out there. Everyone around you is conforming like mad.”
Garrett could smell cut grass through the open French windows, and under that, the heavier smell of the lilies.
“It’s a joke, isn’t it? I thought Asari was revolutionary, would give me new freedoms. But it was the most reactionary, conservative place on earth. They don’t tolerate a word of dissent. It’s a dictatorship of faith. Total belief.”
“Of course they encourage humility. I understand why now.” A clenched hand twisted inside another. “It is an overrated virtue, and cultivated a certain way can rob you of independent conviction. Of course that’s why it’s so useful.”
“Have you heard from anyone since you left?”
“They sent me a card. With this in it.”
Boorman stood up. He took a saffron-orange slip of paper from his wallet and handed it to Garrett. A single sentence had been written on it.
“The story is not yet ended, it has not yet become history, and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me.”
Gershom Scholem
“Do you know what it means?”
Boorman looked as though he were about to spit on the carpet. “Did Dr. Prenderville tell you about Nilesh – Oliver Weightman?” Garrett nodded. “They never let go. And neither can you. I saw it while I was there. People who had left, coming back, sometimes after years away. That scares me.”
“I’m frightened too. For Jason.”
“It's – it's difficult to adjust, outside.” Boorman scuffed his foot. “When you are there, everything is done for you. Even your thinking. It runs deep. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely free of the place. Of what happened to me.”
Boorman looked out of the window. “I think there is a part of human nature that wants to be a slave. In some ways it’s easier. To be told by a priest or a guru, a mullah or rabbi what is true, what to believe in. Unfortunately, those people mostly do it for their own reasons and interests, not yours. Whatever they say, usually the influence or power they want is not in the hereafter or in heaven, it's right down here on Earth.”
Chapter 15
The blood droplet trembled as it grew. The scarlet of strawberries, it ripened over seconds into a single three mille sphere. Touched to the centre of a glass slide, it began to spread out from the end of the needle. Garrett used a cover slip to drag a red smear. Her gesture was deft, practised, creating a faint single-celled layer.
The sample was from the missing persons – Lizzie, as they were calling her. Garrett had driven on to Porton Down after visiting Mike Boorman. She worked with troubled concentration and in silence, alone in the lab. Bryce was in level four. Skinner and Zahra had gone to a meeting on the Cuito case.
The PCR work required accurate preparation and after an hour she took a break. The others were still not back and she wandered around the lab. The thought of negotiating airlocks and lifts to reach fresh air was off-putting.
It was quiet, the circulating air in the underground room chilled and odourless. She stopped at Bryce’s desk. A docking station, keyboard and mouse were lined up on a clean uncluttered surface. There were no sentimental family photos, no fluorescent sticky notes or half-drunk cups of tea. The only other objects on the desk were a spare laptop battery and a small potted orchid; a spray of tiny open-mouthed orange flowers hung from a single jointed green stem. Garrett bent forward. There was no scent.
A set of printouts was tacked haphazardly to the wall beside a large wall-mounted projector screen.
They were pictures of the Cuito pathogen. Garrett stretched her neck and shoulder muscles. The images had been the subject of heated debate between Zahra and Skinner. Beside them was a poster depicting Mendel’s Law of Independent Assortment. In the upper right corner, a gold-edged portrait of the Augustinian monk, gardener and mathematician glowed like the icon of a saint. Garrett remembered undergraduate lectures on the father of genetics, descriptions of how he had divined his inheritance laws through cultivation of twenty-nine thousand pea plants in his Abbey garden.
“Isn’t he just the picture of innocent contemplation?”
Garrett wondered if Bryce had intended to startle her. He stood at her back, so close she half-expected to feel his words as breath on her neck. Perhaps he just disliked formality.
David had. Meeting him at the airport after a three-week field trip he had held up a finger and said, “All right, we'll ask your father first,” replying to her parting suggestion as if he’d never been away.
Garrett considered Bryce's question. She remembered what Skinner had said. A little intense, but you get used to him. Rheinnalt is Rheinnalt.
“Most people would say that’s what he was.”
“Then most people would be wrong.”
“Why?”
“You forget where you are Christine. This place is built on Mendelian genetics and it's anything but innocent. It's true, we've not yet destroyed cities – unlike physicists – but our power is greater.” Garrett remembered the men at Skinner's funding lecture; overfunded boys with dangerous toys. “The diseases we hold in our freezers threaten more destruction in one test tube than any bomb. These cells adapt and reproduce indefinitely. Your malaria strain is part of a family that’s almost three million years old. Its ancestors have been dividing by binary fission every fifteen minutes for over two billion years. Most people are naïve.”
Garrett did not immediately reply. She had read up on Porton Down. Whistleblowers. Covert programs. Anthrax experiments on servicemen, poison gas, weaponized smallpox. Official denials together with Whitehall justifications of secrecy, capability, national security. The implied uses of her sciences had appalled her. Reading the reports, she had thought of her science and felt a hot shame. Science. Reason. The grail words receded, like upheld light before the grasping fingers of an imperfect knight.