The God Machine (51 page)

Franklin reached out and placed his hand on the rain-slick balustrade overlooking the plaza below. He was cold now. It was so cold. But the tempest had moved on; the storm had finally exhausted itself. He had many regrets, Franklin pondered, not the least of which was his marriage to Deborah. Though successful by nearly all standards, it had always been more of a business agreement than a marriage; he had been abroad so many years, had had so many surrogate families. In the end they were safer, and another saying from
Poor Richard's
coalesced in his mind:
Let all men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly: Men freely ford that see the shallows
.

He had always been this way, he thought. He had always felt a little bit distant, set apart from the world by his intellect. Even now, after all these years, even with Mme. Helvétius, he had retreated behind his wit to wrestle with his newfound emotions. Franklin sighed. He had never been able to get very close, not to Deborah, nor William, not Sally, even. While most of the letters from his French lady friends began
“Cher Papa,”
those from his daughter invariably began,
“Dear and honored sir.”
He had never treated Sally like a daughter. Indeed, he had always pushed her away, exhorting her to do or to be something else. Someone else. He shook his head sadly. In truth, he had always felt more comfortable with, and closer to, his ersatz families in England and France. Ever since Franky.

Franklin pushed himself back from the lip of the railing. He looked up at the sky and, unexpectedly, started to weep. Tears coursed like rain down his face. He
sobbed, and the piteous sound was carried aloft like a kite by the wind.

In the end, he had been the same with Franky, he realized. He had never addressed his son's untimely demise. Not really. Instead of leveraging the rituals of religion to put his child's death behind him, he had spent more than half of his life on this pitiless enterprise, chained to the wall as the eagle picked away at his liver. He looked down at the Basse Coeur, where his machine lingered stillborn within. It had been this obsession alone that had kept Franky alive for him. And now that it was over, after all of these decades, now that his map had proved worthless, Franklin realized he'd been in search of a chimera. He smiled bitterly. Perhaps that was the point.

He stared down at the city.
“Turn away,”
Brother Price had once told him, on that far distant day at the Tun.
“Turn away or you'll waste your whole life on a dream.”
Price had been right, Franklin thought, and he found himself laughing at the wonderful irony, despite the great hole in his heart.

Some future mind, he considered, would have to continue the quest, in some far distant age. He was done with the God machine. Franklin turned and headed back toward the door to the staircase below.

And besides, it would not be long now. Soon, he would see Franky the old-fashioned way—in the grave.

T
HERE WAS A BLINDING FLASH OF WHITE LIGHT AND
K
OSTER
appeared on the far side of the portal. It seemed to take but an instant. One second he entered the doorway, then he was through. Robinson powered down the machine.

Koster stood there, quite still. He was obscured by the frame of the portal and Robinson had to rush around the device to see his face clearly. Koster was staring down at the floor of the clean room.

“Joseph,” said Robinson. “Are you okay?”

At first, Koster didn't respond. Then, slowly, he lifted his head. He glanced over at Robinson with a look of such intensity that Robinson took a step back.

“Joseph?” he said. Robinson reached out and took Koster's hand, and was immediately thrown backwards by an electrical charge. It ripped through his body. Robinson fell to the floor. His heart seemed to stop for a moment. He struggled to breathe.

Koster held out a hand but Robinson ignored it. He
scrambled away. “Did anything happen?” he demanded. “You were only gone for a second.”

Koster looked down. There was a faint smile on his lips. But still, he didn't reply.

“Answer me, damn it. Did it work? What did you
see?”
Robinson's voice was shrill.

Koster shrugged. “More than I wanted to.” He closed his eyes and said, “Everything.”

“God. You saw God?” Robinson climbed to his feet.

“Everything.”

“What the hell do you mean, everything?”

“What can I tell you, Nick? I don't have the words. It's like describing color to a blind man.” He laughed softly. “I can prove the Goldbach conjecture now. But once you know how to do it, what's the point?”

Robinson strode toward the console. “I'm going in, too.”

“I wouldn't advise it.”

Robinson stopped in his tracks. “Why not?”

“Because you're going in for all the wrong reasons, Nick. Remember what happened to Archbishop Lacey.”

Robinson hesitated. He looked down at the console, then back up at Koster again.

“What did you see, Joseph?”

“I saw Savita,” said Koster. “She's in desperate trouble, Nick. We have to give Rose what he wants. The final piece of the map. If we don't, he'll kill her.”

“What else did you see, Joseph?”

“Father Patrick O'Toole got approval for his Youth Gang Music Festival. And Tom Moody won the lottery. He's fishing in Florida as we speak.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know where the Gospel of Judas is hidden.”

“You do? Where?”

“At the Glenmont estate. Tesla found it underneath Carpenters' Hall, but Edison took it away from him.

And something else… Oh, yeah. I saw that you plan to betray me.”

Robinson stiffened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You have no intention of helping me, do you?” said Koster. “You never did.”

Robinson put his hand in his jacket. He pulled out his Glock 19 pistol. He raised it, leveling it at Koster. “Get away from the God machine.”

“This was not meant to be,” Koster said.

“Get away.”

“I could reach down now, while you're standing there, and destroy the
phi
chip.”

Robinson's eyes flicked toward the console. It was just a few feet away, but Koster was closer.

Koster glanced at the line of computers at the back of the room. “But the pattern is locked in the system,” he said. “You could create a new chipset in just a few hours.”

Robinson started to inch toward the rear of the chamber.

“I could try to destroy the computers,” added Koster. “But by the time I got over there, you'd be on top of me. And you're bigger and stronger than I am. You always were, Nick. And you have that gun.”

Robinson hesitated.

“So there's only one thing I can do,” said Koster. “I'm going to go out there and rescue Savita. By myself, if I have to. And there's only one way you're going to stop me. And that's by killing me, Nick. Are you ready for that?” He looked down at the gun in his friend's hand. “Are you ready to kill me, to put a slug in my brain? Because that's what it's going to take. Is the God machine worth that much to you, Nick? And afterward, when it's over. When you step through that door. What will you say to
Him?”

Robinson looked at the portal. “Do you really believe
Michael Rose is going to just hand Savita over to you? Even if you give him the fragment.”

Koster didn't reply.

“Or will he wait to be sure that the God machine works first? And what about you, Joseph? Do you really think Rose will just let you walk out of there? You're carrying the final piece of the map in your head.”

“I'll have to take that risk,” replied Koster. “Are you with me? Will you help me, Nick?”

“Why should I? Why jeopardize both of our lives to save her? You don't know who she really is, Joseph. You think you do, but you don't.”

“Number one, because it's the right thing to do,” Koster said. “Number two, because of our friendship. Number three, because you promised to help me.” Then he laughed. “And number four, because if you don't, if you don't stick to our bargain, Nick, I'll make sure the final fragment ends up on every blog on the Internet by lunchtime tomorrow. With a map to this temple, and a full inventory of your personal collection of gospels.”

Robinson's face darkened. “You sound just like Franklin when he threatened to publish The Gospel of Judas. Rook takes king,” he said sourly. “And I thought you weren't much of a businessman.”

“We've been able to program supercomputers to beat us at chess,” Koster said, “but we can't program them to beat us at poker.”

He took a step closer to Robinson, until the gun was but a few inches away. It was aimed at his belly. “Either shoot me or help me, Nick. But get out of my way.”

T
HERE WAS A WHITE PEACOCK IN THE GARDEN BESIDE THE
cathedral, Koster noticed as he headed up Amsterdam Avenue. First he saw the statue at the heart of the park. It was the so-called Peace Fountain, with the forces of good—embodied in the figure of the archangel Michael—triumphing over Satan, whose decapitated head dangled off to one side.
Nothing like a good decapitation in the name of peace
, Koster thought. That's when he saw the white peacock. It was standing so still that at first he mistook it for some kind of sculpture. He had never seen a white peacock before. Usually they were the very symbol of color, the full spectrum, and not this moon monochrome. Then the bird, with its ghostly white plumes, turned and looked at him, and he thought back to Chartres, to that evening so long ago when he had gone into another cathedral, with the woman he loved at his side.

Mariane had never come out. Not alive, anyway.

Koster stared up at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It had been fifteen years since he had stepped
foot in a church. Now he regretted selecting this venue. He took a deep breath and climbed the steps.

As he approached the stone portico, Koster lingered to examine the stonework. The Portal of Paradise depicted Saint John as he witnessed the Transfiguration of Jesus. There were traditional sculptures of biblical figures, as well as contemporary designs—a baby emerging from a granite vagina and a lattice of particles in subatomic relief. The stonework had been carved in the late 1980s. The saints and apostles were colored in muted pastels, light greens, purples and ochre. The medieval cathedrals of France had once featured the same comic-book coloring, back in the thirteenth century. But since then, through the years, all the color had faded. It felt strange now to witness these statues in bloom.

“Joseph,” said Robinson.

Koster looked over. Nick Robinson and Robert Macalister were waiting for him by the doorway.

“Are you sure you still want to do this?” asked Nick.

“I'm sure,” Koster answered. He patted his jacket, felt the crisp edge of the envelope. “But thank you for asking,” he said. “And for coming. I couldn't have done this without you. You, too, Robert.”

“Thank me,” said Robinson, “when we're out of here in one piece. I still intend to take my turn through the God machine. And this time, I'd appreciate some assistance. Do you remember the address of the safe house, in case—”

“Fourth Street and Avenue B. The chapel near Tompkins Square Park.”

Koster skirted the bronze double doors with relief castings of biblical scenes. They had been molded by Barbedienne, the same man who had fashioned the Statue of Liberty. But these doors were unlocked only three times a year, for special occasions, so Koster was forced to go around to the side entrance. He was just
about to slip through the door when he was elbowed aside by a teenager with a great hulking backpack. A tourist, he thought. The boy had long hair and a beard. Well, the hint of a beard. And his eyes were the same color as Koster's—a wistful pale blue.

As the teenager barreled by Robinson, Koster suddenly realized that Zane would have been just about the same age, had he lived. And for a moment, he wondered: Had Franklin envisioned his own son grown-up? Had he looked for him in the features of strangers?