the Source (2008) (31 page)

Chapter
73.

As they headed for the glow of the antechamber, a throng of nymphs appeared, silhouetted against the light. Ross heard an electronic crackle and a man's voice. He gestured for the others to be quiet and pushed them into a recess. Although they were together again, united behind a single purpose, he still wasn't sure how they could stop four trained, armed killers and a fanatical priest convinced he was on a mission from God. Peering out, past the nymphs, he saw a soldier talking into his short-wave radio. He was alone, laden with a flame-thrower and a bulging backpack. 'There are about ten of them,' the soldier was saying. 'Probably more in the tunnels behind them. Over.'

'Disperse them with the flame-thrower, Gerber, then place the charges,' said a crackly voice. 'Don't worry. So long as you have the flame-thrower, you're safe.'

'I can handle them,' said the soldier, curtly. 'Over.'

'Then handle it. Out.'

There was a click, then a roar of flame. The man laughed as the nymphs turned and ran. The one with the red flowers tore past Ross in a blind panic, heading for the dark tunnels. The soldier followed, throwing out bursts of flame. 'Run, you fuckers,' he shouted. 'Pest Control's here. You can run but you can't hide.'

Ross and the others pressed themselves deeper into the recess. As the soldier passed, Ross held his breath. He didn't allow himself to think about what he was going to do next. He just acted. He leapt on the soldier's backpack and pulled back with all his weight and strength. The other man was strong and for a few seconds he supported Ross's weight as well as the cumbersome backpack and the flame-thrower fuel canisters.

Then he grunted and fell on to his back.

Hackett leapt on him and wrestled the flame-thrower nozzle from his hands. Zeb grabbed for his radio and pulled it from his fingers. Even Sister Chantal held down one of his legs. Between them they peeled off the backpack and flame-thrower. The soldier struggled and cried out but when he saw Ross take his gun he froze. 'You're dead.'

Ross levelled the pistol at the man's head. 'Apparently not.'

'But the Superior General saw you die. He said the nymphs took you to the worms.'

'You can't trust everything he says. By the way, where is the Superior General, Gerber? And where's Marco Bazin and the other soldiers?'

Gerber spat at him. 'You're all going to die.'

Zeb kicked him hard in the genitals. He doubled up and she cocked her leg ready to kick him again. He pointed to the tunnel.

'They're up there?'

A nod.

'All of them?'

Another nod.

Ross saw the nymphs closing in. There were more than before. Many more. His friend with the red flowers was in the vanguard. 'Can you defuse the incendiaries in the garden, Nigel?'

'If you tell me how.'

Ross took a yellow parcel from Gerber's backpack and pointed at two pegs sticking out of it. 'Just remove these detonators. It takes an incredibly high temperature to activate this mixture and without the detonators the stuff 's pretty inert. But you'll need to remove them from every parcel in each stack. Only one needs to go off to generate the necessary heat to ignite the others.'

'I'll come with you,' said Zeb.

The nymphs were pressing closer and Ross felt something touch his arm. The nymph with the red flowers pulled at him and pointed away. Nymphs were shepherding the others away too. When he and Hackett grabbed Gerber the nymphs reacted angrily, exposing their razor-sharp teeth - the same powerful teeth Ross had seen chewing through crystal rock.

'I think they want us to leave him to their tender mercies,' said Zeb, as two nymphs pushed her and Sister Chantal away.

'We can't do that,' said Ross.

'I don't think we've got much choice, unless you want to start firing at them,' said Hackett. 'And considering they saved your life I wouldn't recommend it.' The nymphs reached for the terrified soldier and began to drag him away.

'Help me!' Gerber begged. 'I was only doing what the Superior General told me to.'

'Just obeying orders, eh?' said Hackett, gathering up Gerber's backpack and the flame-thrower. 'Where have I heard that before?'

Ross held on for a moment longer but the red-flower nymph and others kept pushing him until he had to release his grip. He weighed the pistol in his hand but knew he wouldn't use it against them. For a long while, he stared into the dark, listening to Gerber's screams echoing in the tunnels.

Hackett was the first to speak. His face was pale. 'Ross, what are you going to do while Zeb and I defuse the incendiaries?'

Ross pointed back to where they had come from. 'I'm going to stop the Superior General carving up the Source.'

'I'll come with you,' said Sister Chantal.

Ross was about to protest until he saw the look in her eyes. She had as great a stake in this as he did - if not greater. 'You sure?'

'I'm sure.'

As they wished each other good luck and prepared to go their separate ways, Zeb gripped Ross's hand and kissed his cheek. 'Lauren would be proud of you,' she said.

'I hope so,' he said.

As Hackett and Zeb set off for the garden, Ross and Sister Chantal retraced their steps into the dark recesses of the antechamber, grateful that Gerber's screams had finally stopped.

Chapter
74.

Torino was convinced he was about to touch the face of God. As he stood in the crystal chamber and reached for the Source his hands trembled. The fizzing static round the monolith was so strong that the air had acquired a palpable texture. He pushed harder and encountered more resistance until, six inches from its surface, his fingers seemed to meet an invisible barrier. The harder he pushed, the stronger the resistance. When he pulled his hand back and thrust it at the rock, it was deflected with such force that the air seemed to ripple outwards. The hydra shook and the ground trembled.

He studied the falling water. It made direct contact with the Source so why couldn't he? It was as if his body shared the same polarity as the magnetic rock. He tried again but this time he moved his hand slowly towards it. He still sensed resistance but the less he pushed the weaker it became until, finally, he felt the rock beneath his fingertips. He pulled his hand away: the smooth surface was hot and live with electricity. The feeling of power was overwhelming. His whole body shook and his fingertips were inflamed.

'Is everything okay, Father General?'

Fleischer and Petersen were waiting at the entrance with the two bound nymphs. 'Everything's fine, Feldwebel. Please hand me the rock hammer.'

'You need any help?'

'No.' Suddenly he felt self-conscious. 'Wait outside in the tunnel. I'll call if I need you.'

He waited till he was alone, then slowly pressed the sharp end of the hammer to the stone. The contact point sparked and again he noticed the disturbance beneath his feet. He raised the hammer and gently tapped the surface. The monolith pulsed, the hydra writhed like an angry serpent and a shock went up his arm. The two nymphs outside screamed at a pitch so high it hurt his ears.

'Shut them up!' he shouted to Fleischer.

He studied the surface of the monolith, found a raised slab of crust where the hydra grew out of the rock and angled the tip of the hammer against it. A few firm taps should chip it off. He took a deep breath, spread his legs for balance, then raised the hammer.

'I wouldn't do that if I were you.' The stern, familiar voice stopped him mid-blow.

He turned slowly to the far end of the cave, to the dark exit. Sister Chantal stood in the shadows watching him, but the voice that had raised the hairs on the back of his neck belonged to the ghost in front of her.

'You're dead,' Torino stuttered, throat dry. 'I saw the blood. I saw the bullet hit you.'

Kelly pointed to the hole in his bloodstained shirt directly over his heart. His eyes burnt with anger. 'It did hit me. I was dead.' He gestured at the Source. 'But that brought me back.' Torino didn't move as Kelly walked over to him, reached for his right hand and placed it on his chest. 'If you doubt me, feel my wound.' He turned to reveal an even bigger hole in the back of his shirt.

Torino dropped the hammer and put his finger through the holes in Kelly's shirt. There was no wound in his chest or back. Not even a scar. It was as if he had never been shot. Yet Torino had seen the high-velocity bullet pierce his chest and Bazin, the professional killer, had sworn it was a death-shot. 'I saw the nymphs take you--'

'They brought me here.' Kelly pointed to the pool at the foot of the monolith. 'They immersed my body in there and fed me from the Source.'

'You drank directly from it?' For all the miracles he had seen in the garden this was something infinitely more significant. Kelly hadn't merely been cured of some fracture or illness. He had been resurrected. Despite his shock, Kelly's appearance excited him: it confirmed the ultimate power of the Source. 'God is merciful, Dr Kelly. He gave you a second chance. You must appreciate His power now, and understand there's more to life than science.'

Kelly expressed a small, humourless laugh. 'You must understand there's more to life than religion. This rock - the Source - is far more important than any church.'

Torino was appalled by the man's arrogance. 'More important than the Holy Mother Church?'

Kelly stepped forward. He held a pistol in his right hand. 'Of course it's more important. About four billion years ago the biggest miracle on Earth, perhaps in the entire universe, happened here. This monolith, the Source, was born of a unique life-sparking impact. Before that seminal moment, this planet was an unremarkable, charred rock bombarded by meteorites in a remote backwater of space. The seeds of life were sown on this exact spot. This is as close to sacred ground as it gets. But it's got nothing to do with religion or God. For most of the last four billion years, life evolved quite happily without religion or us. Then, in the last hundred thousand years or so, we arrived and our consciousness hungered to explain the things we couldn't understand, including our own existence. So we created religion. We created God.

'First, we worshipped the sun and the moon. Then we made our gods up. The Greeks and Romans had one for everything. Finally, a few thousand years ago, Abraham had a revelation: there was only one God. But even this single God seeded three distinct religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Each divided again, with each subdivision claiming that they, and they alone, worshipped the one true God. If that doesn't sound man-made then I don't know what does.

'Father General, your Christ appeared on the timeline a mere two thousand years ago, less than a microsecond in the context of the history of life on this planet.' He pointed at the monolith. 'Yet you put your religion before something that's not only been here since the dawn of life, but was its genesis. Its powers are greater than any invisible god's. If anything's worth worshipping, this is it. So don't tamper with it or exploit it. Respect it. Protect it.'

Torino was incensed by the scientist's blinkered arrogance. 'How can you understand the power of faith and the need for religion?'

'I do understand. My religion was Big Oil. I had total faith in its power: without it there'd be no fuel, no plastics, computers, paints, golf balls - everything vital for the prosperity of modern civilization. My dogma was simple. Find more oil at any cost. Nothing was more important. I didn't care about the consequences - even though my wife continually challenged me. I didn't care that oil, which had taken millions of years to create, would be consumed within a few hundred years of man's discovering it. After all, man had total dominion over the world. Our God gave it to us to do with it as we wished. Isn't that what all religions claim?'

Torino was growing weary of this. 'You're a hypocrite. You talk about protecting the Source, Dr Kelly, yet you're happy to exploit it to save your wife.' He glanced at the tunnel and shouted, 'Feldwebel, I need your help.'

When Fleischer appeared and saw Kelly he did a double-take and raised his submachine-gun. Kelly, however, had already levelled his pistol at Torino's head. 'Perhaps I was a hypocrite,' he said evenly. 'But I have a proposal for you.'

Chapter
75.

Ross tried to ignore the black barrel of Fleischer's Heckler & Koch and keep his own gun steady. He had forced himself to remain calm while trying to reason with the man who had done so much harm to his wife and friends. However, he needed to summon all his reserves to voice what he needed to say next.

He kept thinking of when he had died, when everything had been stripped away and Lauren had appeared before him. 'Ross,' she had said, frowning in that intense way of hers, 'you must protect the garden and the Source, whatever the cost. Not for mankind but from mankind.' She had then told him exactly what he must do and made him promise to do it.

'So what's your proposal?' Torino asked.

'Before Marco shot me, you told me I couldn't take one of the crystals with me because this place was more important than saving my wife.'

'Yes.'

'Perhaps you were right. I'll accept that this place might be more important than what I love most in the world. But only if you're prepared to do the same.'

Torino said nothing.

Ross swallowed. 'I vow to leave this place, take nothing from it and never speak of it to anyone ever again - even though it means my wife and child will die.' He heard Sister Chantal exhale sharply behind him. 'And you must vow to do the same - even though it means you and the Church can never exploit its miracles.'

Torino laughed. 'You're seriously comparing your wife's life to the Holy Mother Church? You really think they have the same value?'

'No,' said Ross. 'Lauren's life is infinitely more valuable than any church. But I know you intend to destroy everything here except the Source, and I know Lauren would value this place above everything. If we leave this garden untouched, undiscovered, it need pose no threat to your precious doctrine.'

Torino frowned. 'You must understand something, Dr Kelly. Not only is it my legal right to shape this place so it brings glory only to the Church, it's my duty. This is God's gift to the world, and it can only be fully appreciated through the Holy Mother Church. Ever since Rome established the Institute of Miracles to show the hand of God in the world, the Holy Mother Church has been waiting for a gift like this. This sacred stone will allow us not only to validate miracles but create them. By controlling miracles we'll make the entire world believe in God. There'll be no reason not to. This will bring salvation to every single person - unite them under the one true God. Don't you understand, Dr Kelly? This sacred stone may have given life to this planet. It may have given birth to every one of God's children. But now it'll do something even more important. It will save their souls.'

Torino's blinkered need to twist everything to suit the Church reminded Ross of Pizarro's arrogant chaplain who had helped subdue the last Inca emperor in Cajamarca by asserting that his only hope of salvation was to surrender his empire, swear allegiance to Jesus Christ and acknowledge himself a subject of Charles V.

'Haven't you heard a word I've been saying?' he said. 'You're going to destroy the garden, and kill every living creature here, simply because it contradicts your church and your infallible pope. Don't you see how irrational that is? How ludicrous?'

'It's not ludicrous to protect faith. Purging this place is a small price to pay for saving the souls of all humanity. This garden - including its living creatures - is an unfortunate aberration that encourages meddling scientists like you to make irrelevant and confusing pronouncements on evolution and creation. It creates distracting white noise that can and must be removed. Nothing must be allowed to give succour to our enemies. Even if you don't agree with my mission, you must understand it.'

'All I understand is that your faith must be very weak if it can't handle the truth.'

'My faith isn't the issue. It's the faith of others I must protect.'

'When you say "others", you mean those who prefer to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions, based on evidence. Hell, if a person's faith is strong enough they're not going to let this put them off. They'll just interpret it differently. Sister Chantal's faith is intact because she doesn't believe in the rigid way that you do.' Ross could no longer control his anger. The man was beyond reason. 'But, of course, that's why you can't trust your flock to see this. Your goddamn doctrine isn't about nurturing faith. It's about controlling exactly how and what people believe.'

Torino's two-way radio crackled in his backpack and as he reached in to retrieve it Ross saw a black box: the detonator control for the incendiaries. The priest put the radio to his ear.

Bazin's voice: 'I can't reach Gerber. But I can see Hackett and Quinn in the garden. They've got Gerber's stuff and they're heading for the incendiaries. I think they're trying to sabotage your contingency plan.'

Torino's eyes never left Ross's. 'Stop them, Marco. Shoot them if you have to. I'll be down soon.' He clicked off the radio.

Ross kept his gun levelled at Torino's head. 'You've told Marco it's a contingency plan? He still doesn't know what you intend to do?'

Torino shrugged. 'We've talked enough.' He reached for the hammer and levelled it at the monolith.

'That's not a good idea,' said Ross. He remembered how the nymphs had kept their distance from the Source and used the pitch of their voices to break off a fragment. He dreaded to think what would happen if brute force was used on it. 'Don't do it.'

'Why?' Torino sneered. 'Are you going to shoot me? Do you honestly think God has led me here and entrusted me with this sacred rock only to let you kill me?' He turned to Fleischer. 'Shoot him and Sister Chantal if he tries to stop me.' Then, in a fluid movement, he brought the hammer down on the monolith, chipping off a slab of crust by the trunk of the hydra.

As it broke away from the Source, it set in train a series of events so fast they seemed to happen at once. A violent tremor rippled from the hydra's trunk, through its branches and throughout the chamber. The nymphs screamed. Ross leapt at Torino and pushed him to the floor. Fleischer fired at Ross - or where Ross had been standing - and missed. Ross rolled off Torino and shot Fleischer.

Suddenly everything slowed down. Ross watched Fleischer crumple, finger still on the trigger, the Heckler & Koch spraying bullets as his body fell twisting to the ground, pointing the gun at the monolith. When the first bullet hit the Source, all Hell broke loose.

A high-pitched scream rose from deep inside the cave system, as if every creature within it had been wounded by the attack on the Source. Ross clutched his head in agony, blood pouring from his ears. The hydra's trunk rippled and its tentacles flexed, fracturing the latticework of crystal encrusting the walls, shaking the cavern. As the flailing tentacles broke free they prised off chunks of the crystal, exposing dark apertures in the rock walls and ceiling. The remaining soldier, Petersen, appeared in the entrance and pointed his gun at Ross. For a second, Ross thought he was going to shoot, but when the soldier saw the flailing hydra, he ran back to the tunnel, into a swarm of nymphs rushing up to protect the Source. Ross watched him fire into them, cutting them down like barley, then disappear into the tunnel.

The floor began to shake and when Ross looked back at the Source he saw why the soldier had run: red-eyed worms protruded from the dark recesses. It took him a second to register that they were part of the hydra, which he suddenly realized was one massive organism that extended throughout the whole cave system. Not only were the worms part of it, but so were the tubular growths that ran through the caves behind the antechamber. The pods that nurtured the nymphs and the worms that devoured them were merely different parts of the same entity: Father Orlando's Tree of Life and Death, embodying life in all its diverse forms. The colossal creature, whose roots lay deep in the Source, was probably as old as life.

A chunk of crystal fell beside Ross, then other rocks, which had been supported by the crystal lattice, tottered and fell. Amid the chaos, protected by the hydra, the monolith itself stood serene and inviolate - but for the fragment on the floor by Torino. As Torino reached for it, Ross threw himself at the priest, knocking him down, and picked it up. It glowed and shimmered in his hand as he looked towards the exit. Despite his vow to Lauren, the temptation to take it with him was overwhelming.

Torino struggled to his feet and lunged at him. 'Give it to me. It belongs to God and the Church.'

As Ross wrestled with him, trying to prise his hands off the stone, he heard his name: 'Ross!' Sister Chantal lay on the ground, clutching her belly. Ross glanced from the fragment in his hand to the exit, then back to Sister Chantal. It took him only a second to decide.

He surrendered the fragment to Torino and rushed to her. She had been shot in the stomach by one of Fleischer's stray bullets. Blood oozed through her clasped hands, and more trickled from the side of her mouth. Oblivious of the chaos and her pain she stared at the glowing monolith. 'It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful,' she kept saying.

Crouching, he lifted her and carried her through the falling debris to the healing pool. She began to struggle. 'No. Take me to the garden. Take me to Father Orlando's grave.'

He glanced back at the Source, searching for Torino. He had disappeared - with the fragment and Fleischer's gun. The path to the tunnel of blood was blocked with debris and rocks were falling in his path. A spear of crystal fell from the ceiling, missing him by inches. He had to get Sister Chantal out of there fast. He turned and left the way he had come, chanting to pacify the rock worms. As he negotiated the dark tunnels, cradling the dying nun in his arms, he kept thinking of Torino, holding the fragment in one hand, the detonator control in the other.

His only hope was that the priest wouldn't make it down the tunnel of blood alive.