Ghosts in the Machine (The Babel Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  I had another delicious glass of water, and opened the DMJ folder. A single sheet, attached to the inside front cover with a paperclip, had just a few lines at the top in a hasty scribble that must have been Mayo’s:

  THE SERAPHIM WANT TO FOCUS ON KEY VOLCANOES IN POPULATED AREAS: VESUVIUS, POPOCATÉPETL, FUJI, RAINIER, ETC. MAKES SENSE, I SUPPOSE—INCREASE THE NUMBERS, INCREASE THE POWER. GOD HELP US, AS PEOPLE LIKE TO SAY, BUT THESE “GODS” ARE HELPING THEMSELVES TO US. CLEVER IONA FOR FIGURING OUT WHAT THEY ARE AND GIVING ME A GLIMMER OF HOPE THAT THERE’S AN ESCAPE ROUTE. BUT HOW HOW HOW DID THEY DO IT, IONA? I SUPPOSE YOU DIDN’T KNOW.

  It sounded like one magician talking to another about a rival’s best trick—an impression reinforced when I saw, penciled faintly in the margin, the words Iona’s thesis. But I didn’t pay much attention to the added words at first, because I thought it must be an obscure reference to, you know, her academic thesis, the stuff about information density that she’d ditched when she started her company.

  Most of what followed was a letdown. A careful log of each “Mystery” incident. Ordinary information about Quinn and the Seraphim. A short summary of all Derek’s work on Thera and the Bronze Age Collapse. Notes about Bill, going back years, and about Iona, going back even further. Notes about me too, after the Babylon discovery. I read those extra carefully, out of vanity probably, but they only told me what I already knew: at some point, Mayo had become passionately interested in the Phaistos Disks and Shul-hura’s alternative Babel story.

  Near the end I found a long, unpublished paper by Mayo that definitely fell into the Show All This Technical Crap to Rosko category. It was all tricked out with footnotes and a bibliography, like something waiting to be submitted to a research journal—but PERSONAL FOR A. B. was printed on the title page, as if he’d put it together exclusively for his paymaster. I only skimmed: there were pages and pages on the Bekenstein bound, scanner technology, and the need for both a working quantum computer “and fundamental breakthroughs in the efficiency of the algorithms we’re using, before real emulation can get off the ground.” The title was interesting, though—it pretty much summed up what ISOC was truly about, and what Carl Bates had been trying to do when he died in that little room on the top floor: Uploading the Soul: Problems and Prospects in the Technology of Human Immortality. No mention of the Seraphim. No hint that Mayo had started to have fundamental doubts about his scientific approach; it struck me as a stereotypical “further research needed; more money, please” kind of document. But at three different points that same phrase, Iona’s thesis, had been written in the margin.

  No question, the last page in the file was last because Charlie B had placed it there. For dramatic effect. It echoed the first piece in Mayo’s writing: another single piece of white printer paper, but this time covered densely on both sides with Iona’s tiny script, as precise and uniform as a ten-point font:

  DREAMS—GOOD AND BAD. ALSO A REVELATION?

  THE GOOD DREAMS ARE ALL ABOUT NEW GUINEA. I WAKE UP JUST WANTING TO GET ON A PLANE AND GO THERE. WHY IS A PLACE I VISITED ONCE, BRIEFLY, MURMURING TO ME SO URGENTLY?

  THE BAD DREAMS ARE ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCES. THE BOLIVIAN WOMEN: NEVER MET THEM, BUT IN THE DREAMS WE’VE WALKED A HUNDRED MILES ACROSS THE ALTIPLANO TOGETHER, SISTERS IN ADVERSITY AND HOPE. WE PASS AROUND OUR BRIGHT-RED COPIES OF ANABASIS, AS IF IT’S BETTER TO HAVE TOUCHED MANY COPIES THAN JUST ONE. THERE’S AN ATMOSPHERE OF ENERGY AND JOY AS WE REMIND EACH OTHER OF THE INFINITE ADVENTURE AHEAD. THEN I COME TO MY SENSES: THEY’RE WRONG; THEY’RE BEING SEDUCED; THEY’RE WALKING TO THEIR DEATHS! I HAVE ALL BILL’S LANGUAGES, SO I BEG THEM TO LISTEN IN ENGLISH, THEN SPANISH, THEN QUECHUA. BUT THEY CAN ONLY RESPOND UNCOMPREHENDINGLY IN THE ONE LANGUAGE THAT’S LEFT TO THEM, THE LANGUAGE OF THE ARCHITECTS. IT SOUNDS INHUMAN, MACHINE-LIKE. THEY THEMSELVES ARE NO LONGER HUMAN.

  WHEN I WAKE UP, I FIND MYSELF THINKING ABOUT THE GROWING INFLUENCE OF THE SERAPHIM. BUT ALSO ABOUT DMJ AND HIS “DIGITAL IMMORTALITY.” AS IF, INSTEAD OF BEING SEPARATE EXPRESSIONS OF THE SAME DESPERATE HOPE, THEY’RE CONNECTED. AND THUS THE REVELATION.

  I FEEL LIKE EINSTEIN: IT ALL FITS SO NEATLY THAT THE THEORY HAS TO BE RIGHT.

  AND IF IT IS? WE’RE FINISHED.

  It continued on the other side:

  JULIUS ENCOUNTERS “ARCHITECTS” WHILE CLIMBING IN MEXICO. HIS VANISHED FRIENDS HAVE BEEN “TAKEN UP,” HAVE EXPERIENCED “ANABASIS,” HE SAYS, AND HE HAS BEEN GIVEN THE TASK OF A SECOND MOSES, BRINGING THE WORD OF THE ARCHITECTS DOWN TO HUMANITY. AND THE MESSAGE IS THAT WE CAN BE SAVED, CAN BECOME INFINITE LIKE THEM, IF ONLY WE PREPARE OUR MINDS. I COULD ALMOST DISMISS IT—EXCEPT FOR THE WAY SO MANY PEOPLE DON’T DISMISS IT: HIS HYPNOTIC PERSUASIVENESS IS ITS OWN KIND OF EVIDENCE.

  POOR DAVID: IN LOVE WITH ME, AND DESPERATE TO IMPRESS, AND THUS UNABLE TO KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT ABOUT √2. “THE VERGE OF IMMORTALITY!” HE SAID TO ME. “IT WILL BE THE MOST DELICATE SURGERY EVER UNDERTAKEN—USING SCALPELS MADE FROM CODE TO CUT AROUND THE MIND AND REMOVE IT FROM THE BODY.”

  I DON’T THINK YOU’RE EVEN WARM, DAVID, THAT’S MY GUESS. BUT LISTEN TO ME. SUPPOSE √2 REALLY IS POSSIBLE. SUPPOSE A ROUTE TO SOMETHING BEYOND THE HUMAN—BEYOND THE PHYSICAL—ISN’T JUST A MAD TECHIE DREAM BUT A THING WE COULD PULL OFF ONE DAY?

  SURELY, IN THAT CASE

  In that case what?

  I was exhausted suddenly, and even decided to be practical and sensible and resist the temptation to check for more messages before I went to bed. My determination lasted just long enough for me to pull a brush across my teeth.

  HE NOT SLEEP, NOT EAT, LOSE THE WEIGHT EVEN MORE ALSO. I DON’T KNOW WHERE ENERGY COME FROM. SAYS YOUR NAME A LOT.

  I SWEAR YOU, HE HAS GONE THROUGH EVERY SINGLE PICTURE FIFTY TIMES. HE IS LIKE PUZZLED, FRUSTRATED, GROWLING—LOOKING FOR SOMETHING BUT CANNOT FIND.

  “In that case what? It just ends at the end of the page. There has to be more.”

  I waved Iona’s note at Balakrishnan. He looked two shades paler than the day before and was coughing ominously. “Iona’s ‘thesis’ must be about the relationship between Route One and Route Two,” he said. “Between the religious, be-nice-to-the-gods path to eternity and David’s shinier, more modern vehicle.”

  “You don’t happen to have page two?”

  “I assure you, Morag, I’d happily swap the Voynich Manuscript for it, and throw in my Mughal ceramics collection too. Truthfully, I’d give up every single thing I own. I believe Iona knew something essential. She may even have tried to discuss it with Bill, only to have him dismiss it, and then she turned to her old boyfriend, who she thought would be more receptive. She shared with him some insight about the Architects that linked them to David’s own research on consciousness. His ISOC work on Route Two had been a sort of intellectual hobby, driven only by my money, my curiosity, and my obsession with not dying. But I suspect this note was why he started looking for the answer to Route Two in the very heart of Route One.”

  “You must have some idea what the link could have been.”

  “I’m not sure how much use my speculation—”

  “Tell me.”

  “Iona didn’t believe in any particular religion. But, like most religious people, she thought the world was made from two fundamentally different kinds of stuff. Matter and mind. Matter and spirit. Things that take up time and space, and things that are immaterial, and immortal, and don’t take up time or space.”

  “Rosko’s talked about that. From that French guy. Descartes?”

  “Yes, but the idea is much older than that. It goes all the way back to the distinction between a material world and the immaterial God who creates it. Descartes was just trying to ask the scientific question: Where is the soul? There’s a little thing like a pencil eraser in the middle of your brain, the pineal gland. He said that’s where your soul lives. Like a puff of smoke in a bottle!”

  “The ghost in the machine.”

  “Yes. Most modern scientists think that’s rubbish, of course. How can you and I be bodies, located
in time and space, but carry around inside us a thing that isn’t located in time and space?”

  “But Iona was holding out for the ghost?”

  “I was with Iona and Bill when David gave them the VIP tour of the Institute, just after it was built. He showed us the mainframe and said its capacity was comparable to the human brain’s, which, after all, was nothing but a ‘marvelously compact computer.’ Iona wasn’t impressed. She said to him, ‘Your new toy is very fine, David. But when all’s said and done, it’s just the Arnold Schwarzenegger of filing cabinets. Lots and lots of memory—but you’re forgetting that that’s only a metaphor. However good your software is, you will never, ever, be able to give this machine memories.’”

  I’d put Iona’s note on the table between us. He picked it up and held it the way a priest would hold a holy wafer. “I don’t know what this means,” he admitted, “and my cellular clock has run out, so I probably never will. But I think David changed his mind very quickly. Around the time of Iona’s death, he must have become convinced that the Architects were real, that they were a real threat to our existence, and that in fact he could pull off Route Two only by first understanding them.”

  Balakrishnan seemed to weaken even more after that second conversation, and Mrs. Chaudry began to ration access to him even more fiercely. We talked in the chairs next to his fireplace, and over a frugal meal of bread and salad in a tiny dining room below his study, and while I wheeled him around the garden—but I was never with him again for more than twenty minutes.

  In the intervals, I was kept sane by Kai’s willingness to play tour guide. He taught me some of Hawaii’s geography, history, culture, and language. He took me to his favorite beachfront shack and introduced me to that high point of Hawaiian cuisine, a roadside “plate lunch.” He even drove me and the kids down a rutted road to Kealakekua Bay so that I could see the spot where the locals had said a brutal good-bye to Captain Cook.

  “Cook was haole,” he said. “It means ‘foreigner,’ but also ‘pale skin.’ When he first arrive here, the locals are all celebrating Makahiki, which is the festival of the god Lono. At first, they think he is Lono. Then he tries to go away, and he’s driven back by a storm, and they figure, maybe he’s not Lono. So, right here in this bay, they steal his whaleboat. Big fight, boom boom, and they prove Cook is not Lono by swinging a war club at the back of his head. See guys, definitely dead! Definitely not a god! His crew buried him at sea, right out there in the bay.”

  Apparently that was the sanitized version. While Vandana waded and Kai kept an eye on her, Sunil and I walked to the end of a concrete jetty and watched pods of impossibly bright parrot fish pass among the rocks ten feet down. “It didn’t really happen like that,” Sunil said.

  “What didn’t?”

  “The Hawaiians killing Captain Cook.”

  “You mean they didn’t kill him?”

  “I mean it was nastier than that,” he said with relish. “They cut him up and ate bits of him. Then they cut all the meat off his bones and kept the bones in a box.”

  “So they didn’t bury him at sea?” I said.

  “The sailors only managed to collect bits and pieces. I think they buried those.”

  I looked down into the water again and almost jumped back when I saw a big, dark shape looming up from below. It was nothing but cloud shadow. But I quickly walked back to join Kai and Vandana.

  When I said something about burying Cook in shallow water, Kai laughed. “This island is really three volcanoes, right? Mauna Kea in the north. Mauna Loa, which is most of the island. And Kilauea in the southeast, which is growing the island as it erupts into the sea. Here on this beach, we’re halfway up Mauna Loa. Water just out there, where they bury him? Deep ocean—two, three miles deep.”

  The thought that we were standing on the sloping tip of a rock, in the middle of a bathtub three miles deep, was appalling. “Can you take us to see whatever it is the Seraphim are building farther up?” I said to Kai. “An arena or something?”

  “I was planning to show you that,” he said. “Quite a sight. We have to drive to the south side of the island to see it, though.”

  An hour later, and a couple of thousand feet higher, I learned why Sunil and Vandana took me so seriously.

  “We’re your biggest fans,” Sunil piped from the back seat, as the road rose over the south flank of the mountain.

  “Fans?” The whole idea was so ridiculous, I had to suppress a laugh. “What do you think I am, a movie star?”

  “There are millions and millions of movie stars,” Vandana said contemptuously. “Hundreds, at least. But there are only two famous Babblers. William Calder and Morag Chen. Uncle Akshay’s told us all about you. Babel. Shul-hura. We even started teaching ourselves Akkadian.”

  “But then we got bored and decided to make up more of our own languages instead,” Sunil said.

  They chattered on for a few more minutes, then fell silent as we passed a heavily guarded gate. There were serious-looking men with guns, and two signboards showing the Seraphim triangle and the famous image of Quinn. Beyond the gate, a dirt road lead north, upslope.

  “Summit’s still twenty miles that way,” Kai said, as we crested a rise. “Twenty miles and eleven thousand feet. You can’t get any closer unless you have two spare days and a backpack.”

  Again I was struck by how totally different it was from Ararat. When Mack had landed that helicopter, the mountain dominated the skyline from twenty miles away like a barn in a field. But Mauna Loa was so much bigger, so much more gently sloped, that it hardly looked like a mountain. It wasn’t an object in the landscape, because we were already on it; it was the landscape.

  “The Seraphim put together a bunch of land deals around here,” Kai explained. “They’re very, very rich, plus, they’re in the police, in the state bureaucracy, everywhere, so they get away with everything. They control this area now. There’s plenty of opposition, you’ll see. But—”

  He trailed off as we arrived at a viewpoint, where he parked on the road verge behind a small swarm of cars and tour buses. One of the buses had a banner on the side with a painting representing the mountain as the goddess Pele and the bus-length slogan: “Mauna Loa Is Sacred.” People were milling about with banners:

  THIS IS OUR LAND

  NO CONSTRUCTION

  SERAPHIM GO HOME.

  A big pair of military-looking binoculars was set up on a stand near a makeshift fence, neatly blocking the view of a sign that said, “No Entry: Private.” Sunil and Vandana charmed their way to the front of a queue, and Vandana stepped onto a box so that she could see. I joined the back of the line; when she turned around and I asked what she’d seen, all she’d say was “We’ve seen it before. But it’s twice as big now.”

  “Totally amazing,” the woman in the airport bathroom had said. She was right. It wasn’t just the scale, but the fact that it looked so different from any other structure I could think of. Alien. A silvery arc of what looked like metal had been extended out horizontally from the middle slopes. When you thought about the scale of the mountain, and the fact that you were looking at something twenty miles away, it had to be huge.

  “Bleachers,” Kai explained. “Bleachers in reverse. So that you get a view up the mountain, instead of down. There’s already space for two or three hundred thousand people, and they’re not pau yet.”

  Not finished. If Ararat was five thousand people, and—“Are they planning an event here? At a particular date?”

  “Not that they sayin’.”

  “But aren’t people afraid of what might happen?”

  He looked away. “It like climate change. A few people take it serious from beginning. Most people take a long time. When something is too big like this, sure, you get guys with signs, but most people can’t take it in. It still like, nobody believes it happenin’.”

  “According to my calculations,” Vandana said, “and math is my very best subject after French, Spanish, Hawaiian, and Urdu—”
>
  “Stop boasting,” Sunil said, and he made a big production out of yawning.

  “Stop interrupting. According to my calculations, the Big Island will be completely destroyed. Just like Thera. And the tsunamis will drown every city from Yokohama, which is in Japan—”

  “We know that.”

  “—to Valparaíso, which is in Chile.”

  Sunil ran in a tight circle around us with his arms straight out like airplane wings. “I’m a tsunami,” he roared. “A really big one. Rrrrrrrr.”

  “So what’s your next step?” Balakrishnan said, when I saw him briefly that evening. I didn’t know the answer, and said good night to him awkwardly, but the answer was handed to me half an hour later by Kit. Two messages, only a few hours apart:

  YESTERDAY, RAIN IN ROOF. THIS NIGHT, RAT IN SHOWER. ROSKO IN BAD MOOD. DANIEL IN REALLY BAD MOOD. IS ENOUGH. MY MOTHER PICKING US UP.

  And, back in Seattle:

  MAJKA YOU WILL COME HOME NOW, PLEASE? DANIEL FOUND WHAT HE WAS LOOKING FOR. HE IS FRANTIC CRAZY. HE DRAW GIANT MAP OF NEW GUINEA AND OTHER STUFF WITH BIG SHARPIE ALL OVER KITCHEN WALL. GABI TELLS MY MOTHER, “THAT BOY SHOULD BE IN PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL.” ALSO SERAPHIM IS EVERYWHERE. THEY COME TO EISLER HOUSE THREE TIMES, LIKE THEY SMELL HIM. I AM FRIGHTENED FOR HIM. NOW. PLEASE.

  Found what he was looking for? It was really Kit herself who’d found what you were looking for, though she didn’t have the chance to tell me the details until later. You’d fallen asleep on the couch, and then woken crying and struggling; trying to calm you, she’d talked you through the idea that there was something you couldn’t find. For want of any other ideas, she suggested looking through all Iona’s things, item by item, including every page of that well-scribbled copy of Anabasis we’d found in the box at the Institute. A miniature white envelope was acting as a bookmark at page 104, where a single sentence was heavily underlined. I’d read that sentence before; like about half the book, it was famous: