Blasphemy

“How do you know?”

Ford faltered. “Come on! God would never contact us in this crazy way.”

“You think it’s less crazy for God to impregnate a virgin who produces a son who then brings the message to Earth?”

Ford could hardly believe his ears. “I’m telling you, this is not God.”

Corcoran shook her head. “Wyman, don’t you realize what’s happened here? Don’t you get it? We’ve made the greatest scientific discovery of all time: We’ve discovered God.”

Ford looked about the group. His eyes ended up locked into Kate’s, standing next to him. For a long moment they looked at each other. He could hardly believe what he saw: her eyes were brimming with emotion. She squeezed his hand, dropped it, and smiled. “I’m sorry, Wyman. You know Melissa and I don’t always see eye to eye. But now . . . well.” She reached out and clasped Corcoran’s hand. “I agree with her.”

Ford stared at the two adversaries suddenly together. “How could a rational human being possibly think that . . . thing ”—he pointed at the screen—“is God?”

“What surprises me,” Kate said, her voice calm, “is that you don’t see it. Review the evidence. The space-time hole. It’s real. I did the calculations. It’s a wormhole or a flux tube into a parallel universe—a universe that exists right next to ours, incredibly close, almost but not quite touching, our two universes like two sheets of paper that have been balled up together. All we did was poke a hole through our piece of paper to expose a tiny piece of the one next to us. And that parallel universe is where . . . God lives.”

“Kate, you can’t be serious.”

“Wyman, forget everything else and just listen to the words. Just the words . This is the first time in my life that I’ve actually heard the simple truth spoken. It’s like the pealing ofbells after years ofsilence. What this . . . what God is saying is just so incredibly true.”

Ford looked around the circular room and fixed on Edelstein. Edelstein, the ultimate skeptic. The man’s dark, triumphant eyes returned the look.

“Alan, help me out here.”

“I’ve never shopped around for God,” Edelstein said. “I’ve been a resolute atheist all my life. I don’t need God—never have, never will.”

“At least someone agrees with me,” said Ford with relief.

Edelstein smiled. “Which makes my conversion all the more telling.”

“Your conversion?”

“That’s correct.”

“You . . . believe ?”

“Of course. I’m a mathematician. I live and die by logic. And by logic, this thing speaking to us is some higher power. Call it God, call it the primum mobile, call it the Great Spirit, it doesn’t matter.”

“I call it a fraud.”

“Where’s your evidence? No programmer has ever written code that survived the Turning test. Nor is there a computer built—not even Isabella’s supercomputer brain—capable of true AI. You cannot explain how it knew Kate’s numbers or Gregory’s names. Most importantly, I, like Kate, recognize the profound truth it propounds. If not God, it’s a highly intelligent entity from this or another universe, and therefore preternatural. Yes, I take it at face value. The simplest explanation obtains. Occam’s razor.”

“Besides,” said Chen, “that output was coming straight from CZero. How do you explain that?”

Ford looked at the others, from Dolby’s fine ebony face, wet with tears, to the shaking delirium that seemed to be taking hold of Julie Thibodeaux’s body . . . . Unbelievable, thought Ford. Look at them all. They all believe it . Michael Cecchini, his normally dead face suddenly alive, radiant . . . Rae Chen . . . Harlan St. Vincent . . . George Innes . . . all of them. Even Wardlaw, who in this impossible security crisis ignored his security feeds and instead gazed on Hazelius with slavish, sycophantish adoration.

Clearly he’d missed a dark and alarming dynamic in the team all along. Even in Kate,especially Kate.

“Wyman, Wyman,” said Hazelius soothingly. “You’re emoting. We are thinking. That’s what we do best.”

Ford took a step backward. “This isn’t about God. It’s just some hacker telling you what you want to hear. And you’re falling for it.”

“We’re falling for it because it’s the truth,” said Hazelius. “I know it in my intellect and in my bones. Look at us: me, Alan, Kate, Rae, Ken—all of us. Could we all be wrong? Scientific skepticism is in our blood. We’re steeped in it. No one can accuse us of credulity. What makes you more prescient than us?”

Ford had no answer.

Hazelius said, “We’re losing valuable time.” He turned calmly to the screen and spoke. “Continue, please. You have our full attention.”

Could they be right? Could it be God? Ford turned back to the next message on the screen with grim foreboding.

58

FROM HIS HILL AT THE EDGE of the staging area, with Doke at his side, Eddy watched the stream of vehicles arrive. In the last hour, several hundred of them had poured up over the lip of the Dugway, first dirt bikes, ATVs, and Jeeps, and then pickups, motorcycles, SUVs, and cars. The arrivals brought tales of hindrance and obstruction. State police roadblocks had gone up on I-40, Route 89 through Grey Mountain and Route 160 at Cow Springs, but the faithful had found ways around on the warren of dirt roads that crisscrossed the Rez.

The vehicles were parking in a disorganized mass just beyond the top of the Dugway, but, Eddy mused, it didn’t matter how they parked. Nobody would drive home. They were heading home another way—via the Rapture.

At times the oncoming horde seemed anarchic: loud voices, wailing toddlers, drunks, even people on drugs. But those who had arrived early greeted and organized the newcomers with prayer, Bible verses, and the Word. At least a thousand worshippers massed in the open area in front of his hill, waiting for instructions. Many carried Bibles and crosses. Some carried guns. Others had brought whatever weapon first came to hand, from iron skillets and kitchen knifes to sledgehammers, axes, machetes, and brush hooks. Boys carried slingshots, BB guns, and baseball bats. Others brought two-way radios, which Eddy requisitioned and distributed to a small group he had selected as his commanders, keeping one for himself.

Eddy was surprised at the number of children—even mothers nursing babies. Children at Armageddon? But it made sense when he thought about it. These were the End Times. All would be raptured into heaven together.

“Hey,” said Doke, nudging Eddy. “Cop car.”

Eddy followed his gesture. There, in the line of traffic coming up the Dugway, a lone police car was inching along, its lights flashing.

He turned back toward his new flock. The gathering crowd surged and flowed, their murmuring voices mingling like rain. Flashlights flickered, and he could hear the clink of metal on metal, slides being racked, shotguns pumped. One man was making torches out of bundles of dead pinon branches and passing them around. The discipline was extraordinary.

“I’m trying to think what to say to them,” Eddy said.

“You gotta be careful, talking to cops,” said Doke.

“I mean my sermon. To the Lord’s army, before we set out,” said Eddy.

“Yeah, but what about this cop?” said Doke. “There’s only one car, but he’s got a radio. This could be trouble.”

Eddy watched the flashing lights, surprised that some people were actually pulling over at the turnouts to let the squad car pass. Old habits of obedience to government, to authority, were going to die hard. That was what he’d talk about. How, from now on, their only obedience was to God.

“He’s coming up the Dugway,” said Doke.

The sound of the siren soon reached the mesa top, faint at first, then louder. The seething crowd grew