Exit Alpha (14 page)

Cain braked the LandCruiser near the remains of the first bridge and switched the concealed FLIR to 360 scan. He checked the readout on the slide-out interactive display. A PROCEED cue showed that parameters had been met. Satisfied, he touched a square at the side of the screen and, in front of him, the centre of the bridge rose smoothly out of the torrent to form a dripping but drivable surface. Once he’d crossed, it sank back into the stream. Five kilometres on, the second bridge did the same. Further on still, the fallen tree rose, levered by hydraulics deep in the earth. It disturbed an echidna which, spines bristling, waddled across the road. The small creature paused between the ruts as if determined to stay there. Cain waited, watching its heat signature on the display and wondering if it had an egg in its pouch. When the monotreme left the track he drove on.

As he neared the ‘mine’, hidden active arrays and cameras observed his progress. He keyed in the day’s code, waited for clearance. Finally the ancient doors, the facade of a blast-rated, vault-like entrance, slid into the rock.

He drove down the dimly lit ramp as the doors rumbled shut behind him. The tunnel, a kilometre long, took him under the bluff and under the next valley — a valley surrounded by steep, heavily wooded slopes, ringed by security fences, sensing devices and 24-hour patrols equipped at night with IR aimers only visible through night vision goggles. On the perimeter fence were signs: HYDRO ELECTRIC COMMISSION FACILITY. KEEP OUT.

In the valley were rows of barrack-like buildings several storeys high — featureless and painted to blend with the surroundings from the air. They had no doors and windows only at the top. One had a flat roof with concealed lights to assist night helicopter landings. A fenced-off gravelled area enclosed cooling boxes and vents.

Cain left the wagon in the transport bay and walked to Verification. Half an hour later he was cleared and in the lift heading for B4 — one of the seven underground floors. He now wore a metal wristband with a transmitter that tracked him and transmitted the codes that allowed him to enter each section.

‘Welcome back, Mr Cain,’ the duty surgeon on the B4 desk said with deference. ‘A message from 2IC.’

Cain took it. Pat’s handwriting:

Dear One,

I’m flat out like a lizard drinking. And Ronnie’s not back yet. So settle in and visit Detainment. John knows you’re coming today — been asking about you all week. We’ll sort you out ASAP.

Love

P

He dumped his things in his berth on B6 and rode the lift down again to B7.

In the ‘guest wing’, as Detainment was called, not even a rat could move unseen. The level crawled with surgeons, surgeon instructors and cadets. The only creatures unchallenged were brown and had six legs.

He passed Zia’s suite, not wanting to make contact, surprised they hadn’t shipped him south.

He passed Stern’s lab, still wondering what the guy was doing. The history of most of these people was ‘need to know’. Stern was a likeable type. He went in.

Stern’s domain was now an Amazon of drooping laboratory hoses. There was a spectrometer and so much test equipment it took him a moment to spot the scientist. ‘Still at it?’

Stern, a small-boned Jew with a pleasant expression, looked up from the bench. ‘I know that face.’ He brushed through the festoon and shook Cain’s hand. ‘Been years. What have you been up to?’ The standard joke. As if anyone would tell you. The man had a funny bone, a valuable quality for those robbed of their lives.

‘I’m retired.’

‘So why are you here?’

‘They need a babysitter.’ He waved at the tubes. ‘What’s this?’

‘Same old shtick. It’s a pilot plant. Just needs scaling up.’

‘And it does what?’

Stern cackled. ‘Ah, I have a secret too.’

Cain walked further down the corridor past the doors of more ‘originals’, preparing for the next encounter. He wasn’t ready or worthy. But, as with most events in life, one rarely was.

He paused outside the pope’s door.

A Grade One duty surgeon crept up to him as if confronting an icon. ‘He’s in the library, sir — alone.’

He nodded, continued to the originals’ library, a long thickly carpeted room with a central row of tables, each with its brass reading lamp. John sat in an alcove, reading a book. He looked older, shrunken, but still wore a neat cassock and a cross. A good sign. He’d always been scrupulous. Cain stared at the grey face, feeling a stab of affection and concern. How old was he now? He’d been born in 1912. Almost eighty.

The old man looked up. A beautiful smile of delight. And Cain, authorised assassin, product of every religion and none, fell in front of him, bawling, grasped his hand and pressed it to his cheek.

The pope stretched forward, touched his shoulder. ‘I knew you’d come.’

Cain remained on the floor before him.

The pope blessed him. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

‘I didn’t know if I’d see you again.’

‘But we’re here.’ A twinkling smile.

Cain grimaced, ‘Oh God,’ mopped his face with his handkerchief. ‘So how the hell are you?’

John smiled again in his disarming, timid way. ‘Not terribly
ex cathedra
today. I have a cold. The legs are bad.’ He had phlebitis. ‘And the Hound of Heaven kept me awake all night.’

He laughed. The old man knew when to keep it light.

‘And — I’ve been waiting for you.’

That started him bawling again.

The pope patted his shoulder. ‘What you must have gone through.’

Cain pulled himself together. ‘Your English has improved.’ The priest’s painful English — learned from a Linguaphone course — was much better.

‘But my French has gone and my German and Spanish are rusty. My Latin still remains. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’

He wiped his eyes again. ‘What’s the book?’

‘Something that speaks to me very much —
To Live Within
. Have you read it?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve ordered several copies for the others. Such depth. So clear.’ He licked his finger, turned the pages for a moment. ‘Ah yes. Here. “Awareness is freedom to see without entering into anything . . . this awareness is called in the
Upanishads
‘knowing without content’.”’

Cain nodded slowly.

‘There are marvellous things here. I’ve marked many of them. Like this: “I am that I am!” It comes to that formula for which the Christ was crucified, the Sufi murdered. Only Buddha escaped that destiny, though he had many antagonists in his lifetime and still has.’ He passed the book across. ‘I want you to read this. To ponder it, absorb it. So,’ he smiled, ‘let me look at you. How have you been?’

He took the book with care. ‘The “being” is the hard bit.’

John nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Because it needs energy. But life bleeds us. Every thought, emotion, tension is a wound.’

‘And I’ve had to kill more people.’

‘Like Arjuna — without rancour?’

‘At times there was anger — at what they’d done. As for Krishna and Arjuna . . .’ He remembered the extraordinary passage at the beginning of the
Bhagavad Gita
. ‘Isn’t it a metaphor for overcoming reactions?’

‘Each reaction claiming to be “I”. Yes. I’m glad you came to that. Of course, there will be several meanings. No scripture should be taken literally.’

‘Can I quote you?’

‘No. Or some fool will turn it into scripture.’

Cain laughed.

‘But to stay with the field of Kurukshetra.’ The pope, for all his meekness, was a persistent and methodical man. ‘Everything we do has consequences. But we make the mistake of believing our acts are consequential. I don’t know if you see the distinction?’

A Department D cadet had approached them and was now standing a short distance away, waiting to be addressed — too in awe to venture further forward.

Cain turned to him. ‘Yes?’

‘The CO’s back on base, sir, requires you on G4, sir. She said only when you’re through, sir.’

‘Okay. Thanks.’

The youth backed away, as if from royalty.

Cain smiled, remembering how he’d venerated the great ones as a trainee. No wonder the lad was gobsmacked. He’d remember this all his life. The great Grade Four, cheeks wet, kneeling at the feet of the pope.

He turned back to his friend. ‘Pat tells me you have morning sessions here.’

‘Yes. The people are simple but genuine. Would you care to join us?’

‘Very much. What do you try with them?’

‘Basically the inner look. I want them to come to a sensation of themselves — as a beginning. Then of course, the relaxing from thought.’

‘The breath?’

‘Not yet. Well, not directly. One can’t hurry.’

‘So — energy . . .’

‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘The energy eventually. And how it finds you. That book you have says much about it. But of course, there’s really no approach. Each technique distorts. There are no methods.’

‘One forgets.’ He shook his head. ‘Every moment.’

‘So you need to begin every moment. Dogen-zenji’s lecture on Being-Time. Remember?’

‘Yes. Fantastic.’

‘All true traditions are one.’

‘You mean there’s only one Void?’

The pope shook his head slowly, shut his eyes and a tear rolled from beneath one lid. He whispered. ‘There is — only — Void.’

Cain’s every pore was alive now, trying to absorb what was being given. It was amazing this, as if they’d never been apart, as if their relationship had simply paused.

The beautiful smile. ‘I’m talking shorthand. I’m too much by myself.’

Except at EXIT Beta, Cain thought, you were never by yourself. All of this was being recorded as they knew. Just as they knew that no one at the consoles would comprehend.

The pope leaned forward, still intent on following the line. ‘When I abandon myself utterly — there’s an intensity, isn’t there?’

‘An energy.’

‘You have it now?’

‘A little.’ He felt naked inside, and then the sweet deluge began — he was flowing with warmth, liquid gold. How had this come? From the pope’s atmosphere that charged the room? ‘But what . . . knows . . . this?’

‘What can be said? The Substance knows the Substance. That’s all.’

‘There’s no logic to that.’

‘Truth can only be expressed as paradox.’

He nodded, intensely grateful for what had been said and what he was experiencing now — able from that to catch the insight. It wasn’t the words. Only experience conveyed these things.

‘You feel it?’

He nodded again, not wanting to disturb it with speech.

‘Good. To quote the opposition, remember St Seraphim of Sarov? “God is a fire that warms the heart and the vitals.” The motionless mind sunk in breath — flowing warmth right to the belly.’

‘Are you sure he said all that?’

‘I’m sure he meant to,’ John chuckled.

That broke the spell. It was intentional. The old man knew there was just so much at any one time you could absorb.

Cain propped back on his arms. ‘Phew.’

John laughed. ‘Glad to be back?’

He shook his head as if getting water out of his ears. ‘Hope I can stand the pace.’

The pope smiled. ‘You better go and see her. We’ll have plenty of time to try again.’

He grasped the aged hands, tearful once more. ‘Thank you.’

John nodded, tired now. The effort had cost him as well.

Rhonda’s den was worse than he remembered it. Despite modern furniture and communications systems it looked like the dispatch department of a correspondence school. All flat surfaces including the floor were covered with files, maps, manuals, lost coffee cups and scraps of food. She advanced to greet him through it all like a hippo learning hopscotch.

‘
Anima mia
.’ A perfunctory hug. She looked worn out.

‘You okay?’

‘Stuffed. The Great Dane’s turned into my Caliban — more than Zuiden ever was to you.’

He picked his way forward. ‘How’s the worm in the apple?’

‘Still there. But so are we. Curious, isn’t it?’

He disinterred two chairs. It was safe to talk here. The room was electronically clean at least. ‘Did Karen tell you about Murchison?’

‘Yes.’ She fiddled with a crushed pack of fags.

‘And?’

‘Forget it.’

‘He wasn’t assigned to her?’

‘No.’

‘Then . . .’

‘Ray, I’m on it.’

‘I just want to help.’

‘And you will. I’ll inform you when. It’ll be the biggest Blue Card job of your career.’

They sat and she lit a cigarette as if she barely had the energy to function.

‘Oh — congratulations on Germany. Fantastic!’ He shook her hand.

That pleased her. ‘And now we’re getting somewhere in South Africa. Quite enough to justify a life.’