Kill The Monster, Chapter 12

X. THE TEN BASIC TRUTHS

The building had originally made components for some of the very first motor cars. Now it was making some of the very last. Built of stern, schoolmarmish Victorian brick, it stared out through busted glass eyes across the remains of an old oval proving track, a Brooklands in miniature. The very first company to come her, Forsyte's Superior Steam Cars, still had one of their very first models, entombed in perspex, in the lobby. Or had had; Sean was currently watching it being winched into a packing crate stamped WITH CARE TO TORONTO. Things were being winched and forked and personhandled into containers all around him. An aero engine produced by the little-known Poyle Aviation Company in between the wars vanished into an articulated lorry as he looked on. And of course, everywhere, long-nosed cars of unthinkable value were being driven, burbling softly, onto attendant transporters.

"Where is the transmitter?" said Sean. The filter mask vibrated against his nose like a comb and paper.

"In back", said Wilson, through his own mask. "It's the last thing they're unplugging. There's already another one, a smaller model, operating in Edmonton as a temporary measure. But only this one can send me back thirty years forward." He watched the lines of deferential Hirondellers filing feudally past like diligent termites, less human than ever in their paper masks. "Uh, do you want to see it?"

"I've seen one already. Been through one, if you recall."

"Oh, that was only one of the little five-day-back field jobs. They're all calibrated to t minus one hundred and eight hours, won't go anywhen else. Safe and solid, but they've had everything that isn't absolutely essential hacked out of the design. Have to have, or we wouldn't be able to fit them onto a truck. We just use them for Essential Ops. That's mostly murder, to you."

Sean nodded. "Every time a police inspector arrives to investigate Hirondelle, you go back in time and cut his investigation out from underneath him."

To the East, the fallout plume from London rose into the sky like a pillar of cloud by day. By night, it was a pillar of green and ghostly fire. The downwind parts of the capital had been evacuated. Upwind, residents were being advised to duct-tape their doors, windows and fireplaces and stay inside until most of the radioisotopes had been rained out of the air. Ice crystals were being fired into the plume by the Royal Artillery in an attempt to make it rain as soon as it passed over the Thames Estuary. This policy had already accidentally irradiated parts of Essex, but after all, as most of the population concurred, it was only Essex. Moslems had already been blamed for the explosions, and the US State Department and the British Foreign Office alike were scouring the world for oil-rich Moslem states that might be invaded as a consequence.

"We can only actually change time after the point when we first discover the problem", said Wilson. "I am beginning to understand how these things happen now. If a police inspector arrives at those gates over there", he pointed, "with papers to search the premises, we can immediately dispatch a team back in time to discover how and where the man became suspicious, how he obtained his warrant, which senior officers and judges approved it. And we can make that warrant go away in the blink of an eye. We can, for example, have a squad car scream up ten seconds later to arrest the good inspector for drug possession, paedophilia, or cannibalism. We can have a British Nuclear Fuels truck overturn on a road half a mile away, necessitating the evacuation of the entire area. And so on. You'll get used to it."

Sean nodded. "Have you signed both copies of the share transfer?"

"All stock in Hirondelle is now yours, at a price of one pound total. Both copies are with the company secretary, Mrs. Speight."

Sean solemnly held out a pound coin, which Wilson accepted.

"Do you have your copy of the Mysteries?"

Sean felt the slim volume nestling in his inside pocket. "Certainly do."

"I'm only familiar with Mysteries One Through Fifteen. And I'm only a Level Thirteen in any case. I'm learning Fourteen - it's over two thousand words long - and I scribbled down as much of Fifteen as I could remember from a black market catechism I bought in Toronto -"

"It'll be enough to start a church with. Do you have your letter?"

Wilson breathed in deeply. "I do."

"And the blood sample? They won't believe you unless you have a sample of my blood. Especially if it isn't infected with turannonovirus. That means you got it in the here and now, rather than stealing it in 2035."

Wilson tapped his pocket. "I do."

Sean smiled and extended a hand. "Then good luck."

Wilson looked at the hand rather than shaking it.

"One more thing", he said. He rummaged in his pocket and brought out a claspknife, unhooked the blade, and drew it hard across his open palm. Blood welled out.

he held the knife out to Wilson, handle end first.

"You'll have to cut your own hand", he apologized, looking round himself at the suddenly watchful Hirondellers. "If I cut your skin they might kill me."

Sean took the knife and, grimacing, slit a similar hole in his own palm. Then, he shook hands with Wilson.

"Lamb is the only man who was born with the ability to synthesize turannone", explained Wilson, shaking vigorously. "That's the Eleventh Mystery, by the way. Rubbing wounds with a man who already has turannonovirus in his blood will pass on the infection, I guess. Good luck, Pastor Lamb. Sounds funny when I came back in time to kill you."

"Good luck, Mr. Wilson. I'll see you in a little while."

Wilson smiled and walked off into the buildings. Hirondellers stood aside to admit him.

Sean pulled the little booklet out of his breast pocket and turned to the first page.

"'There is one God", he read, "who is both man and woman, who is life and death, who is all and nothing, and this God made the cosmos.' Can't see any harm in that."

He turned on his heel and strode off down the avenue of pines towards the great wrought iron gates standing open to admit truck traffic. His new car was already rolling out of a trailer on the main road. Hirondelle were using both carriageways. There was no other traffic on the road; it led to London.

The wind would stand firm from the west for another seventy-two hours, long enough for a complete evacuation of the factory to be completed. Heathrow had been evacuated by all the major airlines; all its runways were available for Hirondelle's use. The plan had worked admirably.

There was a sound like aluminium foil tearing from the main building. The lights flickered on Wilson's Volvo as it sat with its engine running, preparing to be driven to a dealer.

Sean sat Wilson's Little Book of Mysteries on top of a handy packing crate, and pulled out The Book he had been generously given at Lang's cult meeting in Westminster. Leafing through The Book, he found, on page thirty-five, the text he had been looking for. Page thirty-five was headed THE TEN BASIC TRUTHS. These had, the text claimed, been arrived at mathematically from first principles.

"God exists", read Sean. "God is both male and female. He is zero and infinity, being and not-being; he/she is the Prime Mover, the original creator."

"You bloody plagiarist", he said. "I ought to sue."

He flicked past the rest of the Mysteries. The next chapter was entitled The History Of Our Church Of The Book.

He read down several sentences and gawped at the page.

"I have to do what?"

***

He had to get back to see the family. But first he had to see a man about a god.

Hirondelle had paid off the overdraft and his mortgage immediately with a banker's draft. He had thought about asking for the deed to be sent to his home address for Sam to open as a surprise, but had thought again and, he imagined, better. Instead, he had arranged to collect the deed from the building society personally the following day. It would involve a trip up the motorway to Northampton, but he would know where the deed was. That might be important in forthcoming negotiations.

He had been upset to find, on paying a flying visit to High Acres, that his mother was dead. He had, in fact, discovered her body personally. Lilianne One had been older by her husband by ten years, and had suffered from osteoporosis for some time; she seemed to have tripped in the hallway whilst attempting to leave the house, and had broken her leg. She had lain in the porch, under the beautiful stained glass, for three whole days, and died of hypothermia and dehydration. It seemed certain that she had been attempting to evacuate the house as the broadcasts on the TV had told her after the London blasts; he had found her lying next to her jewel box and two framed photographs of himself and his father. For the first time in his life, he had thought she looked like an old lady. She had also been intending to take the dogs, who had been separated from her by the heavy, burglar-resistant front door, and had bloodied their teeth and claws trying to gnaw through it to get to their mistress. The hallway had been full of dogshit. The funeral was tomorrow. He would get to it if he had time.

He had been attempting for several days now to find out where Lang and his proto-Church currently were; whether their operation had been stopped by the London bomb, whether Lang himself was still alive. Lang's website had been down for two days, but had resurfaced with a different URL, announcing that, following the 'difficulties' of 28 December, they would be trading from new premises in Cambridge. The word 'trading' had actually been used. He had been given a residential address for John Lang in a Christian refugee centre set up in one of the Cambridge colleges. Sean remembered dimly that Cambridge University had been one of Lang's previous employers.

Sean had been advised by his RDS not to attempt to M25 or M11, both of which were blocked by refugees attempting to escape the capital, but instead to take minor roads north towards Aylesbury or Milton Keynes and cut across country. Nevertheless, the London exodus was unavoidable. Travelling in heavy refugee traffic with the Hirondelle - a vintage Auriga de Chasse runished and upholstered almost entirely with extinct mammals - felt like unicycling through a crowd of trainee club jugglers with a priceless Ming vase on his nose. However, the Auriga would probably stub any car unlucky enough to rear-end it like a discarded cigarette. Where most cars had crumple zones, the Auriga was a battering ram on wheels.

A radio, telephone, and multimedia entertainment centre had been installed for his convenience, with not a hint of complaint that this was a sacrilegious violation of a treasure of the past. He had, in fact, felt more upset by it than the Hirondelle engineers had seemed to be.

The British and Americans were invading Chad, which had been identified as a potential hotbed of Islamic extremism, and incidentally also newly discovered natural gas deposits. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe had announced that it had acquired fissionable materials from the Congo, and nobody had yet expressed an opinion.

Mr. Darcy was dribbling over his left shoulder, simultaneously being affectionate and trying to watch the traffic. Mr. Knightley, meanwhile, was whimpering in the back seat, perhaps realizing by some sort of dog telepahty that the car was about to stop and allow him to get out.

Cambridge was oddly quiet this early in the morning. He'd picked a minor road in on the north side, and cruised through deceptively sleepy suburbs betraying only by a vast number of double-parked SUV's that they were swollen to the gunwales with London refugees. The centre of town was even quieter, though it appeared he would have to cruise about to get a parking space.

There were some types of people, though, who could be relied on to be on the street at any hour of the day or night.

He stopped the car, but had to wind the window down manually. Blast! He was nearly getting away!

"Excuse me!" He leaned from the driver side window with Mr. Darcy's head poking out alongside his own like some inter-special Cerberus. The dirt-encrusted gentleman he'd spoken to, who had been on the verge of vanishing into a side alley as if the Hirondelle had been a police car, looked back uncertainly.

Sean let him see the money. The tramp fixed Sean with his undivided attention.

"I have a hundred pounds here. You can have it if you agree to take care of these two guys -" he jerked a thumb at Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightley - "for, oh, let's say eight hours." He began fishing in the Hirondelle's glove compartment. "Here are some plastic bags for the poop -"

"It's all right, sir", grinned the tramp, showing one gold tooth. "I have plastic bags of me own." He was Irish, and stank vilely. Mr. Knightley and Mr. Darcy took to him immediately. What use he had for plastic bags of his own, Sean could only guess.

"I'll be back here at", Sean glanced at his watch, "three thirty. There'll be another hundred pounds for you then if my dogs are still alive and dog-shaped. I'll meet you over there by that big building with the lawn."

"Oh, that's not a big building with a lawn, sir. That's King's College, sir. That's where I got my degree in Philosophy, sir."

Sean blinked, but managed to show no further surprise. "Jolly good. I'll be here at three thirty. What's this street called?"

"King's Parade, sir."

"Here at three thirty, then."

"Aye aye, cap'n. That's a fine car you've got there."

"It is. It certainly is."

The Hirondelle changed direction more shrewdly than a British foreign secretary, reversed into Bene't Street, and nosed out again into Trumpington street, where Sean again picked up the trail of signs, only slightly more reliable than Hansel and Gretel's trail of breadcrumbs, that purported to lead to the city's parking facilities.

***

The college was one of the ones adjoining the river. A private wooden bridge, in fact, crossed an arm of the river which divided the grounds in two. The buildings on one bank were considerably more modern than those on the other, made of white-painted concrete rather than Renaissance brick. The left bank housed what Sean's Handy Visitor's Guide to the Colleges described as a 'porter's lodge'. Sean had only ever encountered porters in trekking expeditions in Nepal, hospitals, and Macbeth. Instead of some gurney-toting Shakespearean sherpa, however, he encountered a stiff little man dressed as a Nazi hotel commissionaire.

"I'm here to see Dr. Lang."

The iron sherpa's eyes glittered. "Don't have any Dr. Lang here, I'm afraid, sir."

"Are you sure? Can you check?"

"Don't need to, sir."

"He's not a member of the College staff. He's a refugee from London."

"Ah!" The porter smiled. "Sorry sir, force of habit. The 'fugees are mostly in Cripps' and Old Court, in the big tents. It's driving the groundsmen to distraction. I'll see if I can find his name for you. Friend of his, are you?"

Not knowing whether this was lying or not, Sean nodded.

"He's in Old Court, in the big marquee, bed ten."

Bed ten. They're living in dormitories. Of course, it was only natural that they would be. Somehow, the thought of middle-aged, middle-class Britons forced to sleep in lines of beds in one single room brought home the scale of the London disaster to him in a way that no mere pile of dismembered bodies could. He had seen the huge crowds of unwashed, tired, sad-looking people sitting on the grass toting bundles of greasy laundry in bin bags, or simply standing in crowds in the courts without any apparent purpose, but he had assumed that they were simply students. He took directions to Old Court from the porter, crossed the wooden bridge, and found his way to the tent in question.

Dr. Lang was busy mending a shoe by forcing a beermat over a hole in the sole. He looked up momentarily at Sean. "Oh, it's you. Hello again."

Sean's suspicions were aroused. "Are you with the Committee?"

"I'm sorry? I don't think I remember being on any Committee."

"You remembered my face so easily."

"Yes, yes." Lang forced the mat into place and began fixing it there permanently, apparently with thumb tacks. "I'm afraid I'm cursed with a photographic memory. I can, for example, remember every face in Margaret Thatcher's cabinets from 1979 to 1990, and tell you exactly what I was doing on the night of February 14th, 1987." He shuddered.

"And yet you can't pay for a new pair of shoes."

Lang grinned. "Silly old world, ain't it? But a photographic memory can be a curse as well as a blessing. For much of my childhood, I was convinced that a man with a mole on one cheek was following me around, possibly with intent to grind my bones to make his bread. It took a whole team of psychiatrists a year to get me to tell my family he wasn't."

"That must have been terrible."

"Yes it was. I hate lying. He still follows me around. Hangs around in the refectory a lot. Damnedest thing is, he never gets any older. What can I do for you?"

"I'm interested in your religion."

"Seriously?" Lang noticed the copy of The Book in Sean's hand. "It's the most dreadful tripe, you know."

Sean had difficulty with this. "You're telling me the book you wrote claiming to reveal the precise nature of God is tripe?"

"It's a good first stab at the subject." Lang used a tin cup to hammer the tacks in his shoe soles flat. "The majority of scientists seem to think that scientific method should be used only for the piddling little questions in life. How does a bird fly, how long will a kettle take to boil, that sort of thing. They seldom set their sights on the infinite. Einstein, Wickramasinghe, Heisenberg, and the like are exceptions that prove the rule. The majority of scientists worldwide spend their working lives tryin to ascertain how much Max Factor Peach Sunrise No. 3 will blind a hamster. We used to be High Priests; now we're whores." He began firking in the cupboard next to his bunk, which Sean realized was an ancient filing cabinet stamped PROPERTY OF CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY OLD SCHOOLS. "If you see a little flat tin of Kiwi, do shout. The boot polish, not the flightless antipodean bird."

"What do you want to do with your religion?" said Sean, settling on a tea chest opposite.

Lang shrugged. "Get out there and tell it to as many who'll listen. I'm convinced of the logic. What we need, particularly in view of the events of the last five days, is a world faith capable of networking many different faiths, don't you agree?"

"I want to help you do that", said Sean, handing the boot polish over.

Lang nodded and began to buff his slip-on. "Well, we always need people to distribute leaflets, and overhead projectors don't work themselves. We have jobs for everyone."

"I mean a rather different sort of help", said Sean. "I am, or will be very shortly, a millionaire many times over. I would like to put these millions to work for you. I did read the book, you know. Cover to cover."

Lang looked up sharply. "Really? Many don't bother. They rely on faith, which is perfectly acceptable. Did you really read all of it? Even the mathematical proofs in the appendix?"

"I certainly did. And I believed those I could understand to be highly suspect."

Lang held Sean's gaze for only a second, then burst out laughing. "They're all suspect! Dear boy, suspect as hell! I do hope you haven't got a tape recorder on your person, or I'd be sunk. Suspect as flaming hell, oh yes." He chuckled to himself in great satisfaction.

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"Why should it?" Lang held up a single chalk-worn finger. "Look round the world today, all the squabbling and killing over a dwindling store of resources. What would the best thing be for that world?"

"Cooperation", said Sean. "For Christian to work with Hindu, Jew and Moslem."

"Then does it really matter how that end is achieved? Look at all the world's major religions. Most of them did much, much worse than simply play a few simple mathematical tricks on people with limited educations. In ancient Babylon, they made prostitutes out of their priestesses. The Christian church sold free passes into heaven to murderers, sodomites and thieves. Even today, young men are told they'll be guaranteed a place in Paradise at the right hand of Mohammed if they strap on some C-4 and take a one-way trip on the London Underground. Is it so bad to tell a few white algebraic and geometric lies, when you compare those lies with what other faiths have done?"

"Your faith is small now", said Sean, "but soon it will be large. Doesn't a small sin committed now imply a large one when the faith it supports is larger? Lying today, holy war tomorrow?"

Lang grimaced. "You're hurting my head. Between you and me, religion is only a hobby of mine. I bet a friend, back in the Y2K, that I could start a major world religion inside ten years. We were drunk at the time. Most people were. I argued that all that was needed was belief in your own bullshit accompanied by such contempt for it that you were prepared to manufacture more. Doublethink, basically. Christianity, communism - they're both opiates. Like a Las Vegas card game, only the dealer wins." He felt along the base of the mattress of his bunk, pulled out a slim metal flask. "Do you drink heavily at all?"

Sean shook his head.

"All the more for me." He took a gulp. "Ah, absinthe. It's what fuelled the Romantic Poets."

"That and opiates, I believe."

Lang stared bleary-eyed at Sean. "You still think I'm worth wasting millions on?"

"I think you've started something as a joke. I think you're a more intelligent man than the average prophet, which is why you can see your religion as a joke. But I think that intelligence also makes you more moral than the average prophet. Think about the planet yourself a minute. If nothing is done to that planet, what do you see as its fate inside, say, the next thirty years?"

Lang was unhesitating. "Energy crisis, world famine, global climatic cataclysm and thermonuclear war."

"Well, then", said Sean, "doesn't something need to be done? It's a sad fact about our age that the truly great men, the Einsteins, the Tolkiens, and the Shakespeares, seldom run for public office. Either they know they'll never achieve it because the dice are loaded in the favour of lesser men, or they regard politics as an occupation which is beneath them. Occasionally we see a Gandhi or a Gorbachev, but such things are as rare as cockerel's eggs, and as a result the most powerful nation on Earth, the United States of America, is run half of the time by doddering lunatics whose brains are dissolving slowly from the inside, and the other half of the time by sharp-suited simians whose organ-grinders lie elsewhere. Don't you want to change that?"

Lang took another hit from his absinthe flask. "Are you aware of just how few the numbers of our faithful are?"

"Yes, and I'm also aware of the fact that, right now, you don't have access to television."

Lang stared at Sean as if looking for hidden antennae. "Who are you?"

"My name is Sean Agnello. I am thirty-five years old. Until recently I ran a private company clearing landmines in Africa. My father has recently died and left me a large amount of money." That was a vanishing micro-truth, but Lang would, of course, not have believed the full truth if told it. "I want to use that money to do good, rather than just recycle it into more money and more misery for the people who end up toiling for the big corporations who are funded by it." That sounded good. Let it ride.

Lang stared at the groundsheet underfoot, then looked up again with tear-filled eyes. "Mr. Agnello, I doubt you know who you're dealing with. I use my position in the Church of the Book to do some pretty horrible things."

"But you feel sorry for them. That's all that can be expected of a human being. Besides, some of those things are necessary for the advancement of the Message."

"Not all of them!" Lang hammered on his own knees with both fists, like a small boy. And with this, I am supposed to conquer America?

It didn't matter. He'd hammered less promising material into shape. "So you lure a few young girls into bed now and again. Maybe the odd young boy for all I know. Aren't those just the same evils every religious leader has faced over the centuries? Remember David and, uh -"

"Bathsheba", said Lang.

"The point is", said Sean, "that your temptation is greater than the common man's, and there is no personal shame in having given way to it. But it is your duty to show more responsibility than the common man. Church leaders should be punished more harshly for such transgressions, not because the Church is more ashamed of them, but because the leaders themselves voluntarily subject themselves to more rigid strictures."

"That sounds good", said Lang. "In principle." It had sounded good to Lang because Sean had quoted it verbatim from chapter two of the Book of Mysteries, which its publication data page identified as having been written by one Dr. John Ewan Lang.

"I wonder if I'm strong enough to do it", said Lang, staring at the floor, lips pursed.

Sean knelt down and took Lang's hands in his, feeling like an actor in some hackneyed Mormon mumming video.

"You are strong enough", he said. "Believe. Only believe."

Then he stood up and began searching Wilson's jacket for his wallet. "Now, I'm going to need the Church's IBAN number for an international money transfer. Also", he said, "you're doling out your truth too readily."

Lang's jaw dropped open like a metal mouth boxer's. "I beg your pardon?"

"Truth", said Sean, "sells. Far more effectively than sex, in fact. In your book, you identify ten truths and give them out fro the cost of only a suggested donation. How much more lucrative would it be to reveal one truth, and promise to reveal nine more after the contribution of further good works to the Church?"

Lang blinked helplessly, like a rabbit staring down Jagannath.

"A mystery cult", he said, open-mouthed. "Mithras. Attis. Isis."

"And Scientology", warned Sean. "Think about it, at any rate."

"I have more Absolute Supreme Truths", said Lang. "I formulate them daily. It passes the time."

"Think how much more books, how many more seminars, how many more television and cinema advertisements you could pay for with such a strategy."

Lang licked his lips, evidently gazing at far pavilions only he could see.

"In that case, Mr. Whitmore, could I tempt you to a revelation of our next truth?" he said. "In return for a contribution of further good works to the Church, of course. We are going to be distributing leaflets to the University Science Fiction Society at Itsacon in New Hall college this afternoon and evening. I'd be honoured if you could come along, as a show of your faith in our message."

Sean grimaced. This evening had been planned as his Triumphant Return, when he waved bank statements, property deeds, and share certificates in the faces of Sam's demonic parents and hoisted Mickey aloft on his shoulders to proudly stride once more across the threshold of his own home.

Okay. Maybe the Triumphant Return can wait another day.

"These leaflets", he said. "How many do you have, exactly, and how were they printed?"

As Lang answered his question, Sean looked up out of the flaps of the marquee. Standing in the sunlight outside, staring fixedly into the tent, was a man with a mole on one cheek. All of a sudden, he noticed Sean's attention, jerked his head away guiltily, and hurried off; Sean heard his footsteps growing fainter on the flags.

Committee.