Lucifer (aka the Lucifer Code) (2001)

by Cordy, Michael

  'Excellent,' said Accosta. Her dark hair was splayed out on the pillow, her olive skin glowing against the white linen, her long lashes flickering on her cheeks. As Accosta watched the sleeping Amber Grant, her ethereal beauty pleased him.

  She was more than simply beautiful, though: she was a gift from God.

  The drugs blurred Amber's already muddled sense of what was and wasn't a dream. Opening her eyes, she discovered that she was lying in an unfamiliar room, with her wrists strapped to a strange bed. Her heart raced when she saw the intravenous drip and monitor. Was this real or another nightmare? A sudden movement in her peripheral vision made her turn her head towards the small circular window to the left of the bed. Through it a pair of dark eyes stared at her. The hunger in that intense stare unravelled her courage far more than the wrist straps and the drip. The man's face was disconcertingly familiar, but in her post-drugged state she didn't recognize the aquiline nose and chiselled cheekbones. Then the face moved back an inch from the glass so that his whole head was framed in the window, including his scarlet skullcap. With a stab of fear so intense that it made her gasp, she realized who he must be.

  This has to be a dream, she told herself. A nightmare.

  For he was the Devil, come to take her soul.

  *

  The black sector conference room.

  VenTec

  The lighting was muted and Accosta sat at the head of the long, rectangular table. Flanking him were Monsignor Diageo and Bradley Soames. Soames's wolves sat behind him, still and silent as grey statues. Bukowski and Tripp were further down the table, hands resting in front of them.

  On one of three holographic plasma screens facing Accosta, Frank Carvelli could be seen, absently fingering his unnaturally black ponytail. The head of KREE8 Industries, and member of the Truth Council responsible for media presentation and public relations, was dressed in his trademark black, including a cashmere jacket and roll-neck sweater.

  However, for all Carvelli's media contacts, today's breakthrough hadn't come through him. It had come through the third member of the Truth Council who, to Accosta's annoyance, still hadn't come on-line. 'You said they'd all be here?' he said, turning to Soames.

  The Doctor shrugged. 'They should be, Your Holiness.'

  Accosta frowned and looked over Soames's shoulder. Behind him, through the two-way mirror that acted as one of the walls of the conference suite, Accosta could see into the gleaming white splendour of the main laboratory. The glass head-sphere lay with its visor open in a protective transparent cabinet beside the laboratory couch, at the foot of which was a battery of ancillary monitors and apparatus.

  'Let's start,' Accosta said abruptly. 'Tell me again why Amber Grant is so important.'

  Carvelli craned forward on screen and Soames smiled, revealing his perfect white teeth. 'I've known Amber Grant for many years as a business partner and have always admired her abilities,' he said, 'but I'd no inkling of her real talents till we started the first soul-capture experiments nine months ago. Of course, she was unaware of these experiments but it was about then that she began to experience unusual migraines. As time progressed it became apparent that her headaches coincided exactly with the experiments.' He explained Amber's unusual medical past. 'Ever heard of entanglement, Your Holiness?'

  'No.'

  'It's a ghostly, almost telepathic link between quantum particles that have interacted at some time in the past. The connection is instantaneous and works even if the particles are on opposite sides of the universe. Because of her unique medical history I think Amber is entangled with her dead twin. I've already explained how particles in the double-slit experiment change their state when observed, as if conscious of the set-up of the experiment. Well, I'm convinced that when we conduct a soul-capture experiment we collapse the particle wave duality of the soul, causing a disturbance felt instantaneously throughout the universal boson system connecting all souls.'

  On screen Carvelli nodded. 'And because of her entanglement with Ariel, Amber feels the disturbance as a phantom migraine.'

  'You got it,' said Soames, and went on to tell Accosta about Fleming and the NeuroTranslator. 'What Miles Fleming unwittingly discovered was that Amber's the perfect lab rat for the Soul Project.'

  'Why?' demanded Accosta, still unsure of the relevance of the complex quantum concepts.

  'As I said once before, Your Holiness, what we really need is an impossibility, someone who can die more than once. Amber Grant possesses part of the living brain of a dead person, and if her neural signals are suitably stimulated when she enters REM her subconscious tries to contact her dead twin, and mentally she leaves her mortal body. By inducing the dream state we can track her mind's - soul's -journey each time she leaves and returns to her body. And because we can repeat her dying again and again we can run iterative loops to lock on to the holding frequency'

  'How can you be so sure of this?' Carvelli said, from the screen.

  At that moment the second plasma screen fizzed into life and the third member of the Truth Council appeared. She wore a navy suit with the obligatory scarlet cruciform brooch on her lapel. A qualified medical doctor, she treated only one patient nowadays: Accosta. In addition to managing a major clinic in Britain she also held a number of other posts, and had overall strategic responsibility for the Church of the Soul Truth Hospices around the world. She was the source of the secret flow of untrace-able terminal patients to Soames's soul-capture experiments. Apologies for being late, Your Holiness, but I had to attend to matters affecting this meeting.'

  Before Accosta could say anything, Soames gestured to her. 'We were just wondering how we can be so sure that Amber Grant has a unique talent, Virginia. Perhaps you could explain.'

  Virginia Knight looked at Accosta. 'I heard her soul cry out, Your Holiness. And I've seen all Fleming's data. The evidence is compelling.'

  Accosta tried to keep his excitement in check -the project had already yielded a bounty of disappointments. 'Thank you, Dr Knight.' He turned back to Soames. 'But how do we keep Dr Grant here without alerting the authorities?'

  Soames smiled again. 'No problem. She's formally signed out of Barley Hall and Optrix aren't expecting her back for a month. Our only real area of exposure is her mother.'

  And I've seen to that,' said Virginia Knight crisply. 'Since Gillian Grant is in one of our hospices it was relatively easy to arrange.'

  'In that case,' said Soames, I guess we've got about a month before Amber's disappearance starts raising difficulties.'

  Knight coughed. 'What about Miles Fleming?'

  'What about him?' said Accosta. 'I thought he'd been isolated, suspended from Barley Hall.'

  'He has, Your Holiness, but Dr Fleming's determined. He doesn't like things he can't explain, feels compelled to understand them - particularly as it was his brother's death that alerted us to Dr Grant's abilities. That's why he's so good, and that's why we've got to watch him.'

  'Sure we'll watch him,' Soames chipped in. 'We need him. Take a look at the stages of the project so far.' He began to tick off points on his fingers. 'We've detected the existence of the human soul, made it visible to the human eye and identified each soul's individual signature through the photon-detector screen. Now we've got Amber Grant we ought to be able to capture its tracking frequency. But for the Soul Project to succeed in its entirety...' Soames looked meaningfully at Accosta '. . . and for your destiny to be fulfilled, we must complete the final stage.' Soames turned to Carvelli. 'Frank, though your particular expertise is undoubtedly key in making this final stage happen, Miles Fleming's contribution will be of critical importance, particularly as our earlier attempts to replicate his technology haven't been entirely successful and it'll take too much time to perfect it ourselves.'

  'So we just watch him and wait?' Knight asked.

  Soames grinned as though this was a game he was enjoying immensely. 'We use his determination to find answers to make him help us.'

  'That'll be dangerous,' C
arvelli said.

  Soames's grin became broader and Accosta had to suppress his distaste for the man. 'Of course it'll be dangerous. Especially for him.'

  PART 2

  THE SOUL TRUTH

  *

  Rome. Four days later

  The Eternal City was unseasonably warm and humid for October and Fleming's shirt clung to his back as he wove his way through the tourists in St Peter's Square. In the ha2y sunlight he squinted at his watch, noting he had twenty minutes before his two o'clock appointment.

  In the last few days he had tried in vain to contact Amber Grant. He didn't have her private cellphone number, and her home phone at Pacific Heights in San Francisco was on answer-machine. When Optrix had informed him she was on leave of absence for a month, he explained that he was her doctor but was told that they could not provide him with a contact number: according to the Barley Hall authorities, he was under investigation for malpractice.

  When he called the hospice in Marin County to inquire about Gillian Grant and leave a message for her daughter, the receptionist was similarly tight-lipped, which made him realize that Virginia Knight was subtly undermining his reputation. Unsubstantiated reports of him as 'brilliant but ruthlessly ambitious' and 'sacrificing his own brother in the pursuit of glory' were already appearing in the press. And when he'd called his office yesterday even Frankie Pinner had sounded nervous, cutting him off apologetically: she wasn't allowed to talk to him, she said, until 'everything had been sorted out'.

  Finally, after every avenue had closed, he had come to Rome.

  Despite the heat, fumes and noise that filled the stifling air, St Peter's magnificent dome shimmered against the sky. The outstretched arms of Bernini's flanking colonnades seemed to draw him into the bosom of the Mother Church. As Catholicism had declined this fortress of faith had become little more than a stunning theme park, a museum to a once great empire. Few of the crowds who thronged here were pilgrims; most were tourists attending the cultural equivalent of Disneyland. The final humiliation was that many wore the red crucifix of the Church of the Soul Truth.

  As he entered the quiet cool of the great cathedral and looked up at Michelangelo's vast dome, Fleming felt no instinct to gloat. St Peter's ageless beauty was humbling, the fabric of the place so saturated with its past that he had only to press his ears to the pillars to hear its secrets. Rome had existed as a city for over twenty-five centuries, and for fifteen of those this had been the centre of the Christian faith.

  He lit a candle for his brother and watched the flame send curls of wispy smoke high into the air. Whatever he thought about religion, scholars here had been studying matters of the soul for centuries. Fleming was an atheist embarked on uncharted seas with only some scientific certainties to guide him.

  But that wasn't why he had contacted Father Peter Riga. He had called him because Amber had cited him as next-of-kin on her Barley Hall admission form. He was Fleming's only remaining link with her. Although Riga had been guarded on the telephone he had agreed to see him.

  He left St Peter's and went into the sweltering streets to the nearest taxi rank. The cab took only a few minutes to cross the Tiber and deposit him outside the world headquarters of the Society of Jesus: the begrimed baroque splendour of Borromini's Collegio di Propaganda Fide.

  He entered the building - and stepped into a different world, away from the bustle, glare and noise of the Roman streets. Inside, all was marbled stillness. He identified himself at the reception desk and was led up the grand staircase by a young man in black robes.

  Father Peter Riga's office was on the top floor at the end of a long, dark corridor, and Fleming could tell by the deference with which the younger Jesuit knocked at the door that Riga was of high status within the Society.

  'Come in,' boomed an American voice.

  The room was simple yet comfortable: a desk with a brass reading lamp and a laptop computer, crammed bookshelves, two high windows, a worn rug on the marble floor, and two simple chairs flanking a small table. Each item was beautiful in itself - the bookshelves were carved with arabesques, the books bound and tooled in leather - but the antique walnut desk was exquisite.

  Sitting behind it, framed in the golden light from one of the high windows, was a broad-shouldered man with close-cropped curly grey hair, a strong, weathered face and piercing blue eyes. When Fleming entered he stood up: he was short, no more than five foot six, with a barrel chest like a wrestler. He had to be about seventy but he looked in good shape. Beside him on the desk was a simple silver frame containing two photographs. One showed a younger Riga standing beside a smiling couple with two small girls apparently embracing. The other, more recent, picture was of Riga with Amber Grant and her mother. In both, as now, he was attired from head to toe in black.

  'Welcome, Dr Fleming,' he rasped. Riga wasn't the classic soft-spoken priest - but then Jesuits, the intellectual Special Forces of the Catholic Church, rarely were. His accent reminded Fleming of a friend at Harvard, a scholarship boy from the streets of New York. Fleming shook his hand firmly.

  Riga's intelligent eyes fixed on his, appraising him. 'So, how's my goddaughter?' he demanded, a protective note in his voice.

  'I rather hoped you could tell me.'

  Riga nodded slowly but his expression didn't change. 'Saw her a few days ago in San Francisco. Said you were testing her for phantom headaches and that she'd had a dream of dying - a dream she didn't believe was a dream. She believed Ariel's soul was somehow tied up with hers. Last thing she said was she was going to see what you and your technology made of it. You discovered something?'

  Fleming studied Riga's face but couldn't fathom how much he did or didn't know. The Jesuit would probably have discovered by now that he had been suspended from Barley Hall so he'd better start at the beginning. He explained about the Neuro-Translator and the experiment with his brother. He told Riga about the night he had heard Amber's disembodied scream in the Think Tank, and that he had been suspended, pending an investigation into his brother's death.

  Riga's poker face gave away little, but when Fleming explained about the soul wavelength he thought he caught a flicker of something cross the Jesuit's impassive features . . . something that looked like fear.

  'And she left before you could explain all this to her?'

  'To go to her mother, yes.'

  Riga nodded. 'Yeah, Gillian's real sick. So you ain't spoken to Amber since you left your clinic?'

  'No.'

  Riga narrowed his eyes. 'Okay, so how come this soul wavelength of Amber's has got you so fired up?'

  'Isn't it obvious?'

  'But what's it to you, Dr Fleming? Amber didn't figure you for a religious type.'

  'I'm not. I'm a man of science. I don't believe in God or an afterlife and don't want to believe in one. But I'm also someone who likes to understand things and this has given me an itch I can't scratch. It's put me in a position where 1 need to reassure myself that I'm right. For my own peace of mind I've got to prove that this wavelength is some kind of aberration - a mental last gasp or trace signal of the dying physical brain. And I can't do that without Amber.'

  'What if you're wrong? What if you find there is an afterlife? What if your scientific questioning finds proof of it? What then, Mr Atheist?'

  'I'll deal with that when I come to it. The point is, with Amber's assistance I might be able to help answer mankind's biggest question - and that's something I can't walk away from. I thought you'd understand that. You Jesuits are famous for your intellectual rigour and curiosity, your desire to know.'

  'It's more a desire to understand,' Riga said. 'We don't want knowledge for knowledge's sake.' He flashed a wry smile. 'That's why mankind got thrown out of Eden in the first place. The Society's motto is ad majorem Dei gloriam - to the greater glory of God. Everything we do is aimed at revealing His glory, not ours.'

  'What are you saying? That there are some things God doesn't want us to know?'

  'What I'm saying, Dr Fleming, is
that some knowledge is dangerous and easily abused. Particularly nowadays.' For the first time the Jesuit's rock-like calm deserted him and his words were laced with controlled anger. 'My Church is at risk of extinction. And the threat doesn't come from atheists, Jews or followers of Islam, but from fellow Christians, inside and outside the Mother Church. Our current pope is weak and the right-wing factions within the Holy See cling to their power and wealth by ignoring necessary reforms and becoming even more controlling and dogmatic as the Church erodes around them. All the time the Red Pope's Church gets stronger. I knew Xavier Accosta when he was a cardinal in the Vatican, and there was a lot to admire. He was a bright, passionate guy. He'd have made a good Jesuit. There were many parallels between him and our founder St Ignatius Loyola - both Hispanic, highly charismatic, warriors whose wounding in battle converted them to devote their lives to God. But where Loyola strengthened the Mother Church from within, Accosta had no qualms about leaving it and exploiting its weakened state.