The Gods Look Down (23 page)

All these things and many more Benjamin had seen that day on the plain at Aphek, which he would relate to Eli, including the most terrible thing of all: that the Ark of God had been taken from them.

*

While the people of Shiloh lamented, the god Dagon in his temple at Ashdod rejoiced in his great and glorious victory. The Dagonites bore the Ark in triumph through the streets and brought it to the temple and set it before him. Though he still didn't understand its purpose (and was uncertain of its power) the vision of the Ark standing there was the fulfilment of all his dreams. He possessed the symbol of their god and would use its magic to rule over all the desert world. Nothing was beyond his grasp now that they had been vanquished. Everything was as he had wished and planned—

From her womb Meria would bring forth a child to extend his line: a mating of the gods with woman to produce the newly-created man: the Protoplast. ‘He will bear the name Dagon and my descendants will be blessed for all time with the absolute power of divinity. In this way I too will become divine.'

He sat through the night, musing pleasurably over these thoughts, at peace with himself, and in the morning when the temple was opened was found prostrate before the Ark of God,
his head and hands cut off so that only the stump of Dagon was left.

*

The Ark was once again in the silent inner chamber of the temple at Shiloh. The Dagonites had hastily returned it along with gifts of appeasement for the great and powerful god who could smite his enemies in the dead of night even in their own dwelling-places. The gifts comprised five golden emerods and five golden mice, representing the plagues which had afflicted the Dagonites after the death of their god: Ashdod had been overrun with vermin and each and every Dagonite had been sorely afflicted between the legs in his most secret part. So it was decided that the Ark should be returned and only then would the plagues of mice and emerods vanish from the city, and so it proved.

Qābal studied the markings on the body of the Ark, recognizing them as symbols of an advanced civilization, but still not able to identify them or say where the machine had come from. The paradox was simply that a civilization of the far-distant future had visited this planet in the remote past and chosen a particular tribe, out of all those wandering in the desert, upon whom to bestow the gift of sophisticated technology.

He called the boy Samuel and pointed out the inscription.

‘The Ark has written upon it the sacred Word of God. It is your preordained duty, Samuel, to rule over your people, to be as a father to the Tribe. These holy words must be set down in the Scriptures and preserved for all the generations which are to follow.'

‘I understand, Lord, but I don't know what is written on the Ark. What does it say?'

Qābal cleared his throat and glanced away. ‘Never mind that now – one day it will become clear to you. It's enough that you set down a faithful copy and keep it safe within the temple.' He looked keenly at the boy. ‘The ways of God are mysterious, Samuel, beyond the comprehension of mortal men,' and added, ‘Even angels have difficulty sometimes.'

‘Surely you know its meaning, Lord?' Samuel's eyes were bright and inquisitive and yet it seemed to Qābal that they contained a child's innate shrewdness.

‘The symbols represent a concept of reasoning which would be meaningless to you. I can't explain them, you wouldn't understand.'

‘But what do the marks stand for?' Samuel insisted.

Qābal traced them with his pale hand and read them out:

L. I. F. F. E. (∑).

‘Do they mean anything?' Samuel asked, his eyes following the configuration of symbols.

‘One day it will be revealed to you,' Qābal said, frowning slightly. He began to descend the steps of the catafalque and Samuel skipped quickly after him: he didn't like to be left alone with the Ark, especially if the rumours of what it had done to the god Dagon were true. The boy stumbled, Qābal turned, and quite effortlessly and without hesitation saved him from falling. He picked him up and held him in his arms.

Cradled there, terrified and yet thrilled at being carried by an angel, Samuel said impetuously, ‘Do you sometimes forget who you are?'

Qābal was amused. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘The mark on your shoulder. I thought perhaps God had put it there to remind you who you are. Does He put the names of all His angels on their shoulders so they won't forget?'

‘Not all of them,' Qābal said, setting the boy down on the floor of the temple. ‘Only the chosen ones.'

They turned on to the vinyl path which led to the artificial lake in the centre of the campus. A grove of plane trees spread their branches over the water's edge and further out the sun sparkled in a swathe of tiny glittering crescents. The Director said, ‘Have you considered the implications? There are still a few scattered sects who take Biblical scriptures as gospel. How are they going to react to the idea that one of their most revered objects was a plant for making protein?'

‘What about the fact that it was capable of killing people? And did do more than once.'

‘I don't see how they can square that with their beliefs.'

‘They won't bother,' the mythographer said. ‘If they read the survey at all they'll reject any evidence which conflicts with accepted religious dogma. You can't argue with faith, Johann; it might even serve to strengthen their conviction that the Almighty works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.'

‘Yet we know the machine existed: we now have positive proof.'

‘They're not interested in mytho-logical proof, only the religious kind.'

They had reached the lake and stood together looking out across the sparkling water. It was pleasant here, with just enough of a breeze to make it cool without feeling chilly. Queghan's height wasn't as noticeable out of doors, but walking with Karve always made him feel slightly uncomfortable: the old man was diminutive in comparison.

‘We never did solve the central problem,' Karve said, leaning on his stick.

‘You mean about the Ark?'

‘Where it came from. How it got there. Who built it.' He shook his head. ‘I find that irritating.'

‘I find it bloody annoying.'

‘The symbols have to mean something.'

‘I'm sure they do but I can't decipher them. Perhaps they stand for “Life”. Maybe it's as simple as that.'

‘Then why the double “F”?'

Queghan breathed out slowly and said reflectively, ‘I have the nasty suspicion we've been out-foxed, out-guessed, out-thought.'

‘By Dagon?'

‘Yes, by Dagon. But which one?'

Karve smiled suddenly and his eyes behind the polarized bifocals held a wicked gleam. ‘I suppose it's occurred to you, Chris, that other Biblical texts might benefit from mythological interpretation?'

‘No it hadn't.'

‘It would be a lifetime's labour and you'd have hardly scratched the surface: the burning bush, the parting of the Red Sea, the healing of the sick, the resurrection of Christ … the Bible is a fascinating source of mytho-logical study.' The Director chuckled and gazed across the water, the breeze catching stray wisps of his long grey hair and blowing them over his ears. Out here in the sunlight he looked older and more vulnerable, a tired fragile man leaning on a stick.

‘I don't suppose there's any record of a surviving race of Dagonites,' Queghan said, skimming a pebble across the low choppy waves.

‘Not as far as I know. Why do you ask?'

‘The survey contained the implication that Dagon's line didn't end with his death – his daughter Meria was with child, remember. What became of it?'

‘You should ask Dr Dagon. He's the expert on Biblical texts. If the line continued he should know about it.'

Queghan was sceptical. ‘Do you think he'd tell us?'

They were both silent for a while, then Karve said, ‘Remember how we talked about the possibility of cytoplasmic mutation: the deliberate malformation of cell nuclei? There's a research paper in the current
Inter-Disciplinary Review
dealing with cytogenics, written by Professor Mulder of the Department of Genetics. I'll let you have it.'

‘I can't see how that will help us.'

‘Neither do I,' Karve said frankly. ‘But there's still a mystery waiting to be solved and I don't know where to go next. Do you?'

Queghan skimmed another stone. He was thinking of the structure analysis and the equation which had predicted that a Saviour on one side of the spatio-temporal interface would balance out with – on the other side in Minus Time – the Anti-Christ. Had Meria's child been that mythical figure? If so it would reconcile, in a curious sense, some of the contradictions which till now had baffled them. For if the Christ and Anti-Christ were brought into close alignment in the same historical context the end result would be – nothing. They would cancel each other out just as a particle and its anti-particle equivalent would do were they to collide, in a burst of radiation. And this would quite neatly explain why in Dagon ben Shem Tov's transcription of the Biblical texts there was no Saviour at all: plus one/minus one = zero.

But the price of accepting such a hypothesis was a heavy one, even if it did seem to fit the known facts. It led to the inescapable conclusion of there having been at some time in the remote past the baleful figure of the Anti-Christ. Dagon's line, just as he had prophesied, had carried on, and this presented the mythographer with a new set of questions. How and where and in what form had the Anti-Christ become manifest on Old Earth? Many thousands of years ago there had been a severe disruption of the historical process which the texts hinted at but never made explicit. The mysterious presence of the Ark and who had placed it there were part of the enigma, as were the hypothetical descendants of the god Dagon. So what did it all
mean
? Was the vital piece of missing information to be found in
The Book of Splendours
or the
Kabbalah Denudata
or even in the Bible itself? Queghan was reaching helplessly and hopelessly into the dark.

Karve turned and squinted into the sunlight. ‘Which thread are you following, Chris? Dagon ben Shem Tov's alternative version of history or the offspring of Meria's unholy union?'

‘My own intuition mostly. Have you ever stopped to wonder, Johann, what would have happened if Dagon had succeeded in founding a new religion?'

‘History would have followed another course.'

‘And?'

‘Christ would never have been born.'

‘Wouldn't He? Are you sure about that?'

The Director glanced at him, frowning. Strands of grey hair stood up in the breeze.

‘Wasn't it Dagon's intention all along to create a Saviour?' Queghan said. ‘Isn't that what Dagon ben Shem Tov tried to do by means of the Aleph?'

‘He tried and failed,' Karve said.

‘Did he?' Queghan picked up a pebble and tossed it from hand to hand. ‘How do we know that he failed? If we follow Dagon's world-line on the structure analysis chart we find that it extends into a region of probability – events which might or might not have taken place. In a region of indeterminacy anything is mytho-logically possible.'

‘But, Chris, what you're suggesting is …' Karve tapped his stick on the vinyl path; he wasn't prepared to entertain the notion.

Queghan said, ‘We can't prove or disprove that Meria's offspring actually existed – but if it did and the line continued what became of them? How and in what way did they affect history Anno Domini?'

He tossed the pebble into the lake and watched as it plopped below the surface leaving a pattern of concentric circles spreading ever outwards.

*

Professor JND Mulder stepped down from the cyberthetic scanner and removed the blueprint from the retaining clips. He looked at it critically for a moment, lips compressed, two deep vertical lines extending from the bridge of his nose to intersect with those on his forehead. His face had so accustomed itself to this habitual frown that he seemed to be sternly concentrating even when he was relaxed and in repose. He was a fairly tall man, in his early fifties, with a pale unhealthy complexion which the deeply etched frown lines did nothing to improve. Professor Mulder was an expert in cytology, the study of the structure of living cells.

Queghan had waited several minutes already while the Professor looked at the blueprint in the scanner, viewing it in plan, elevation and isometric projection. Now he folded
his arms and said quietly, ‘What do you think? Can it be done?'

Professor Mulder scratched his chin, an operation which brought more deep furrows into play and froze them like hieroglyphs chiselled in stone. He said, ‘Short answer, yes. Theoretically.'

‘The good old standby qualification.'

‘Must be, mustn't it? Never made one of the blessed things.' He put the blueprint on top of the console which housed the cyberthetic input terminal and scribbled something in the corner. ‘Where did this come from?'

‘It was cyberthetically processed from an old manuscript.' This evasive explanation would have to satisfy: he wasn't prepared to relate the whole story chapter and verse. ‘So it is feasible. And is there enough information to work from?'

Professor Mulder led the way across the laboratory to a bench near the window on which several sheets of the written specification were scattered; it had now been transferred from the print-out and resembled the more familiar engineers' working plan. ‘I should think so. Why do you want to build it?'

‘To see if it will work.'

‘To produce single-cell protein? What on earth for?' Professor Mulder ran his finger down one of the sheets and made another notation. The backs of his hands, Queghan noticed, were lightly freckled.