Blasphemy

to take down a crack FBI Hostage Rescue Team.”

“Is that so?” came the president’s skeptical reply. “Are they trained to fire on civilians?”

The FBI Director shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “They’re trained to respond to all contingencies.”

The president turned to the head of the Joint Chiefs. “Is there any way to get troops out there sooner than in two hours?”

“Excuse me, sir?” the FBI Director interrupted, his face pale. “I’m just now getting reports of an explosion and fire . . . a very large fire . . . at the Red Mesa airstrip.”

The president stared silently at the director.

“What do these people want?” Lockwood burst out. “What in God’s name do they want?”

Galdone spoke for the first time since they had arrived in the Situation Room. “You know what they want.”

Lockwood stared at the odious man. Soft and fat, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded as if asleep, he sat in his chair studying them placidly.

“They want to destroy Isabella,” he said, “and kill the Antichrist.”

62

FORD, GRIPPING THE EDGE OF A table, read the new message on the Visualizer. Isabella was running flat out, at full power, and he could feel the entire Bridge trembling and keening like the cockpit of a jet plane locked in a death spiral.

Religion arose as an effort to explicate the inexplicable, control the uncontrollable, make bearable the unbearable. Belief in a higher power became the most powerful innovation in late human evolution. Tribes with religion had an advantage over those without. They had direction and purpose, motivation and a mission. The survival value of religion was so spectacular that the thirst for belief became embedded in the human genome.

Ford had moved away from the others. Kate, with a quizzical and, it seemed to him, somewhat regretful glance at him, was now helping Dolby at his workstation. The team running Isabella—Dolby, Chen, Edelstein, Corcoran, and St. Vincent—were intensely focused on their jobs. The rest stared at the Visualizer, transfixed by the words appearing there.

What religion tried, science has finally achieved. You now have a way to explain the inexplicable, control the uncontrollable. You no longer need “revealed” religion. The human race has finally grown up.

Wardlaw spoke quietly from his security station. “They’ve sent in a demolition team with wall-breaching kits. They’re going to blow the door.”

“How many?” Hazelius asked sharply.

“Eight.”

“Armed?”

“Heavily.”

A ripple of panic swept the group. “What are we going to do?” Innes cried.

“We’re going to keep listening,” said Hazelius, his firm voice raised over the humming of Isabella. He pointed at the screen.

Religion is as essential to human survival as food and water. If you try to replace religion with science, you will fail. You will, instead, offer science as religion. For I say to you, science is religion. The one, true religion.

A sob escaped from Julie Thibodeaux, standing next to Hazelius. “This is wonderful.” She rocked, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “This is so wonderful . . . and I’m so frightened.”

Hazelius put a steadying arm around her.

It was incredible, Ford thought: he had witnessed their conversion right before his eyes. They believed.

Instead of offering a book of truth, science offers a method of truth. Science is a search for truth, not the revelation of truth. It is a means, not a dogma. It is a journey, not a destination.

Ford could keep silent no longer. “Yes, but what of human suffering? How can science make ‘bearable the unbearable,’ as you put it?”

“The magnetic coil’s redlining,” said Dolby quietly.

“Juice it,” murmured Hazelius.

In the last century, medicine and technology have alleviated more human suffering than have all the priests in the last millennium.

“You’re speaking of physical suffering,” said Ford. “But what about the suffering of the soul? What about spiritual suffering?”

Have I not said that all is one? Is it not a comfort to know that your suffering shudders the very cosmos? No one suffers alone and suffering has a purpose—even the sparrow’s fall is essential to the whole. The universe never forgets.

“I can’t hold it without more power,” Dolby cried. “Harlan, you’ve got to give me five percent more.”

“I’m tapped out,” St. Vincent said. “Push it any more, and it’ll cascade the grid.”

The machine was now screaming so loudly that Ford could hardly hear himself think. He read the words on the Visualizer, his mind in turmoil. Twelve of the most intelligent people in the country thought this was God. That had to mean something.

Do not stoop to diffidence! You are my disciples. You have the power to upend the world. In one day, science accumulates more evidence of its truths than religion in all its existence. People cling to faith because they must have it. They hunger for it. You will not deny people faith; you will offer them a new faith. I have not come to replace the Judeo-Christian God, but to complete him.

“Wait!” Wardlaw barked out. “Something else is going on up top!”

“What is it?” Hazelius asked.

Wardlaw peered urgently at his wall of screens. “We’ve got—a whole bunch more perimeter alarms going off. There are people coming out of nowhere . . . some kind of mob . . . What the hell?”

“A mob?” Hazelius half turned, his eye still on the Visualizer. “What are you talking about?”

“No shit, a mob . . . Jesus, you won’t believe this . . . . They’re assaulting the security fence . . . tearing it down . . . We’ve got some kind of riot going on up there. Unbelievable—a full-blown riot—out of nowhere.”

Ford turned to the main security feed. The high-angle camera atop the elevator furnished the main screen with a broad view of the action. A mob, carrying torches, and flashlights and brandishing primitive weapons streamed down the road from the Dugway and piled up against the perimeter fence, forcing it down by sheer weight of numbers. In the direction of the airstrip he heard a dull explosion and saw flames suddenly leaping above the trees.

“They’ve set fire to the hangars at the airstrip,” Wardlaw yelled. “Who are these people—and where in hell did they come from?”

63

WOLF WATCHED THE MEN ALIGN THE demolition kits along the titanium door, then run the wires back to the detonator. They seemed disconcertingly calm, almost confident, as if they blew up mountains every day of their lives

Wolf walked toward the edge of the cliff. A pipe fence, cemented into the rock, ran along the rim. He grasped the cold steel and looked out into the vast deserts, ringed by mountains, ten thousand square miles with hardly a light breaking the undifferentiated dark. A cool wind wafted up from below, bringing with it the smell of dust and the faint scent of some night-flowering plant. He felt preposterously proud of rappelling down the cliffs. This was going to be a hell of a story to tell people back in Los Alamos.

Behind him, he heard the abrupt hiss of radios and a burst of inaudible words. He turned to see what was happening. The men working the charges had stopped. Huddling with Doerfler, they talked urgently on the radios. Wolf listened but made out nothing. Something unusual was going on.