The Lucifer Code (26 page)

Bukowski moved to the NeuroTranslator, ensuring that the soul wavelength was on screen.

Knight waited for each of the team to nod their readiness before crossing herself and turning to Accosta. 'All is in place, Your Holiness.'

Accosta sighed, with a blissful sense of release. He was so close now. Moments from his apotheosis.

'We're starting, Your Holiness,' Carvelli said. 'If for any reason-'

Accosta cut him off. 'I'm ready.' He had never felt more prepared for anything in his life.

Carvelli's face was tense. 'May God go with you.'

'God awaits me,' Accosta said quietly, as the switches were pulled and the humming grew in intensity. Gas entered the sphere and bathed the already distorted world outside it in a green glow.

To his left he could see Virginia Knight praying. He smiled. She had no need to pray.

Above the hum he could hear another sound. A deep wordless cry, a collective intake of breath, rose from the audience. He wished then that Carvelli had arranged music and, for a second, he wondered what music he would have chosen to accompany this moment.

Then the countdown started.

10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ...

To his right he saw Virginia Knight's trembling hand holding the palm pad that controlled the electrode attached to his forehead - the electrode that would release the lethal electric shock, killing him instantly. He realized then that this would be the last thing he would ever see as a mortal man.

6...5...4...

Like a spiritual cosmonaut Accosta took one last deep breath and waited for launch.

3...2...1...

At first there is a black void. Then he is aware of a light in the distance and rushing towards it. The speed is breathtaking, exhilarating. He feels no fear. The faster the speed, the quicker he will reach his journey's end.

Within the blink of an eye he is inside the cone of light, moving so fast that it seems to stand still around him like a shimmering blizzard of silver particles. He is merging with the light, becoming indivisible from the photons that surround him. He is aware of being both a discrete entity - himself- and a part of a greater whole, a greater self.

A feeling of bliss flows through him as he nears the source of the radiance. Filled with rapture he surrenders himself to the luminous host, bracing himself for the moment of revelation - for the moment when he will be at one with God and he will know all there is to know.

The instant he reaches the source, a blinding, blue-white supernova blots out everything. He is consumed in a swirling maelstrom of colour and light, a burst of energy so powerful it explodes his whole being and reconstitutes it, again and again and again.

Suddenly the blinding light-storm is gone and his vision returns - but not as it was. He can see new colours, shapes and dimensions. A host of previously unimagined sights are revealed to him. It is as if he can see everything.

Then he understands what he is seeing.

And it is at this moment that the departed soul of Xavier Accosta wishes he could speak.

But he has no voice and can only cry out in silent despair.

*

Virtual reality suite.

The blue sector

Fleming watched the glass sphere on Accosta's head as the spark of life leapt from the Red Pope's dying eyes, hit the photon-detector screen and formed the distinctive halo of light in the sphere's outer layer of optical fibre. He now understood the procedure: the beeping noise and the four columns of light coming into alignment on the unit at the base of the bed signified lock-on, enabling them to trace Accosta's soul. The barcode interference pattern displayed on the monitor next to the lights signified Accosta's unique soul signature. With these two pieces of data - the lock-on signal and the signature - they could now make contact. And with Fleming's NeuroTranslator and Amber's soul wavelength Tripp and Bukowski should be able to communicate with the Red Pope's soul.

At that moment Fleming's anger was suspended. He wasn't thinking about the morality of how this had come about: Soames's deception, the murders, and the Red Pope's ruthless, vaunting ambition were all forgotten. His only thoughts, as he watched the line between life and death being redrawn, were of his brother and Jake.

When he had first sat down in the VR suite with Amber, he had been determined not to give Soames the satisfaction of reacting to his technical wizardry or the Red Pope's circus act. But it was impossible not to be consumed by the spectacle, not to be awed by the import of the event unfolding before his eyes. His helpless fascination went beyond mere scientific curiosity or even his concern for Rob's soul. It was more primal. All his life he had assumed that there was no afterlife and certainly no interventionist God. Even the recent events had been tantalizingly inconclusive, yielding more questions than answers. Soon, however, he would no longer be able to choose what to believe in: he would know the truth and the thought terrified him. But still he couldn't turn away.

The light had dissipated from the glass head-sphere when Knight and an independent doctor checked the Red Pope's life signs and declared him officially dead. Carvelli seemed preoccupied with the black equipment to the right of the scanner, focusing on the black circular disc on the floor, checking its infrared connection to the NeuroTranslator.

'Watch the KREE8 holopad,' Amber whispered in his ear, and Fleming understood what was intended to happen next.

Not only were Soames's people going to use the NeuroTranslator to allow Accosta's soul to speak to the world, they were also going to control a hologram of him in the same way that Fleming controlled Brian. What was about to take place was nothing less than the virtual resurrection of the Red Pope. He shifted his gaze to the black pad and a shiver ran down his spine.

Seconds later the KREE8 holopad hummed into life. The halo reappeared in the glass head-sphere on the Red Pope's corpse and Fleming imagined the soul wavelength on the NeuroTranslator split-screen monitor starting to spike.

Then it began.

Horizontal line by horizontal line, an apparition appeared before his eyes. Accosta seemed to solidify out of thin air. To all intents and purposes, the Red Pope was standing not ten feet from his own corpse. Every detail was perfect, down to the expression on his face.

Then his head turned, as if to survey the crowd, in a slow, deliberate movement, like a newborn child flexing a hand. His face looked grave and the mesmerizing dark eyes seemed to address each member of the audience individually. Fleming didn't need to imagine the effect on the billions watching around the globe. His own palms were sweating and his heart was pounding in his chest.

There was a moment's silence and then Accosta's lips moved, saying the words that would for ever divide human history into two. The time before this moment. And the time after.

'I am a servant of the Lord. I have seen His power and I know His will. He has ordered me to return to you and reveal the Soul Truth.'

Another pause, and Fleming strained forward in his chair.

Accosta's deep voice was uncannily the same as the voice he had had in life. 'I have always believed in God,' he said solemnly, 'my God, who created mankind in His own image to worship Him. An all-powerful, all-knowing, compassionate God.

'When I was younger I was troubled by what the philosophers call the Problem of Evil. Given all the evil in the world, how can an all-powerful, all-knowing, merciful God exist? Either God knows about evil, cares about it, but can't do anything about it - in which case He is not all-powerful, or He cares about it, can do something about it, but doesn't know about it - in which case he is not all-knowing, or he knows about it, can do something about it, but doesn't care about it - in which case he is neither merciful nor compassionate.'

Fleming felt goosebumps on his forearms. It was if the Red Pope was speaking directly to him, directly addressing his own argument against God and religion.

'I have always squared this inconsistency,' continued the Red Pope, 'by believing that my powerful, omniscient, benign God allowed evil in the world to give us, his greatest creation, the gift of free will. To trust us with the ability and opportunity to choose between good and evil, even in the face of our harshest trials and tribulations. I now know the truth about good and evil. And now I know this truth it seems so obvious to me. After all, what God would create man simply to worship Him? What Supreme Being could be so vain, so petty?' He spat out the last word, as if it were a bitter taste in his mouth.

'There is no Problem of Evil because our Lord did not create us to worship Him. I always assumed God created a perfect ordered world - an Eden - then introduced the serpent of evil to test us. But this isn't true. Our Lord created an evil world then introduced good. The natural state in this world and the next is chaos - entropy. Evil is the normal way of the world, and good was only introduced as a capricious whim. The Lord only created us to enhance his amusement. That is the sole reason for our existence.

As a child builds a stack of bricks only to knock it down again, our Lord allows us to climb higher and higher, believing in virtue and goodness and honour, only to dash us down with random acts of evil.

'There is no heaven, only arbitrary suffering. Life beyond death is as cruel and random as life on earth - except that it is eternal. There is no escape. There is no karma. No justice. No Elysian fields where the good may find peace after a hard life. There is no divine order, just chaos. The Soul Truth, which I can reveal to you now, is that God -the God to whom I dedicated my life on earth - doesn't exist.'

Accosta's face seemed to sag, the hologram capturing with sickening accuracy the horror and despair etched in his features. 'I am a soul in torment. The Lord I have willingly served all my life, and the Lord I am now condemned to serve for all eternity, is not God. There is only one Lord and he is the Lord of chaos and darkness. He is the Devil. Satan himself.'

A gasp rose from the audience. In any other context, Accosta's words would have sounded deranged, but now they sounded anything but. Fleming could feel Amber searching for his hand and gripping it.

The Red Pope raised his arms. 'Our Lord Satan will prove there is no God by using an agent on earth to reveal four signs,' he rasped, in the tones of an Old Testament prophet. 'These four horsemen of the Apocalypse will be unleashed upon this blighted world to spread terror before them and despair in their wake. The first will ride this night. The second will follow two days hence. On the next day, the final two horsemen will appear together, riding side by side.'

Accosta paused, and his face looked more lifeless than his corpse. His very soul seemed saturated in despair. 'Forgive me. I took my journey full of hope but I have returned with none. There is no hope. There is no God. I cannot even pray for you.'

A moment of shocked silence followed.

Then Accosta's image disappeared and the world was plunged into darkness.

Stunned and frightened, Fleming blinked, searching for light in the sudden blackness.

Seconds later, a sound broke the unearthly hush but it brought Fleming no comfort.

It was the sound of wolves howling outside, in the dark.

*

Like the shadow of an eclipse moving across the globe, electricity fled from city to city as night fell, only returning with the dawn. Starting from the west coast of America, the darkness followed the setting sun west across the Pacific, hitting Honolulu in Hawaii at sundown, 6.53 p. M. local time. For the next twenty-four hours, as the earth completed its revolution around the sun, virtually every major city throughout the world experienced a power cut from sundown to sunup.

The darkness inspired an extreme range of emotions, from panic to denial to anger. A small minority joyously celebrated what was understood to be the first sign, the first horseman of the Red Pope's apocalypse. It was as if humanity had regressed to a pagan time when it worshipped the power of the sun, believing that it alone pushed back darkness and brought forth all that was good in the world.

Many cowered in their homes until the dark angel passed. Others rushed out into public places to gather together, seeking comfort in numbers.

By midnight in Australia most of Sydney was teeming with hysterical people waving candles, trying to fend off the darkness. This was echoed across Asia and Europe as the setting sun moved across the world. The international media tracked the passage of darkness, reporting on how their regional bureaux were going off the air, literally powerless, as darkness fell.

Some tried to counter the panic, arguing that this was an insignificant fluke; that the Red Pope's revelation had been staged and the darkness was coincidental. But as the extent of the phenomenon became evident, fear turned to terror and then anger. A growing majority felt the need to make someone accountable for their despair and disillusionment.

During the night of darkness, widespread looting was rife. Large areas of London's East End, Paris and New York City's Lower East Side were vandalized by roaming mobs. But the greatest violence occurred in the main centres of worship. The principal targets of the mob's anger were the robed priests, who had lied to them about heaven and God. The Churches had been their spiritual advisers, demanding that they invest in them all their faith, holding themselves up as God's sole agents. But the Red Pope's revelation had wiped out the value of faith.