The Gods Look Down Page 5

  Queghan said, pleasantly enough, ‘I think so, Dr Dagon.’ His face was pale and narrow above the penumbra of lamplight. ‘If you want the experiment to succeed.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s as well,’ Dagon said as if following some inner line of thought. The breath rasped in his throat. ‘You’re not trained in linguistics I take it.’

  Again it was no more a question than an assertion.

  ‘I think I could probably grasp the essentials. If you explain them to me very slowly.’

  Blake smiled behind his hand and looked into the shadows.

  Dagon nodded. ‘Very well.’ His hand stole across the page and made a few squiggles in the margin. Quegan could hear the faint gasp of breath as he prepared to speak again. ‘I would appreciate it, if we are to work together, that you refrain from indulging in what passes for sarcasm. It can be very tedious.’

  ‘As can boorish behaviour,’ said Queghan, unsmiling, though his tone was not harsh.

  It wasn’t a promising start to the collaboration. Queghan wasn’t prepared to be accepted under suffrance – implicit in Dagon’s attitude. The project interested him but not enough to be treated with such brusque indifference, nor to have his intelligence called into question. He had entered worlds Dagon had never dreamt of.

  Dagon seemed to overcome his sour disposition, for he took the trouble to explain in considerable detail what he hoped the experiment would achieve. It was a complex story, and began, as Blake had said, when Dagon had first come across the name Dagon ben Shem Tov, author of the 13th century text Sepher-ha-Zohar. This comprised three books of ancient knowledge which were part of the esoteric teachings of Judaism as contained in the Kabbalah – a word derived from the Hebrew QBLH meaning ‘that which is received’. Further research revealed a whole series of texts which together made up a corpus of traditional knowledge: the Aramaic Cremona Codex, the Latin Kabbalah Denudata and the much later English translation, Kabbalah Unveiled, published in 1892 Pre-Col.

  Queghan began to understand the immensity of the task Dr Francis Dagon had set himself, and he was impressed. The linguist had had to translate and transcribe the texts of five different languages: Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, Spanish and English. They all dealt with roughly comparable periods, dating from 1000 years before the birth of Christ up to and including the 13th century. Much of the material was religious dogma and propaganda but there were certain passages in each of the texts which made reference to a god called the ‘Ancient of Days’. What intrigued Dagon was the fact that this god consisted of a male part and a female part and that, according to the description, it could be broken down into pieces and reassembled again. What kind of god was this, Dagon asked himself, whose ‘body’ was divisible and could then be put together again like a do-it-yourself assembly kit?

  So he began a painstaking line-by-line investigation of the 2173 verses of The Book of Splendours, based on the Latin and Aramaic texts, and found in the book called HADRA ZVTA QDIShA (the Lesser Holy Assembly) a detailed description of the god ‘Ancient of Days’. In part it read:

  ‘The top skull is white. In it there is no beginning or end. The hollow thing of its juices is extended and is made to flow. From this hollow thing for juice of the white skull the dew falls every day into the small-faced one. And his head is filled, and from the small-faced one it falls to the field of [untranslatable]. And all the field of [?] flow from the dew. The Ancient Holy One is secret and hidden. And the upper wisdom is concealed in the skull which is found and from this into that the Ancient One is not opened. And the head is not single because it is the top of the whole head. The upper wisdom is inside the head; it is concealed and is called the upper brain, the concealed brain, the brain that appeases and is quiet. And there is no son of man that knows it. Three heads are hollowed out: this inside that, and this above the other. One head is wisdom; it is concealed from that which is covered. This wisdom is concealed, it is the top of all his heads of the other wisdoms. The upper head is the Ancient and Holy One, the most concealed of all concealed ones. It is the top of the whole head, the head which is not a [untranslatable] head, and is not known. And because of this, the Ancient Holy One is called “nothing”. And all those hairs and all those cords from the brain are concealed, and are all smooth in the carrier. And all of the neck is not seen. There is one path that flows in the division of the hairs from the brain. And from this path there flows all the rest of the paths that hang into the small-faced one.’

  Comparison with other texts wasn’t much help. Dagon showed Queghan a similar passage from the Kabbalah which began:

  ‘Macroprosopus has two skulls, one above the other, enclosed within an outer skull. The upper skull contains the upper brain, which distils, and the lower contains the heavenly oil. Macroprosopus has four eyes. The hairs are soft and the holy oil runs through them. There is fire on the other side and air on the other …’

  The mythographer was totally perplexed. ‘Is it supposed to make sense? What’s all this about heads and skulls and brains? And what’s this “holy oil” it refers to? Blood?’

  Dagon said in his soft hissing voice, ‘I think the god they speak of as the “Ancient of Days” is a machine. What kind of machine, or what its purpose is, I don’t know. Perhaps you, Queghan, can discover the secret. Blake tells me that Myth Technology is a wondrous science.’

  He even speaks like an ancient text, Queghan thought. He was completely bemused by it all. He said, ‘Which period are we talking about exactly?’

  ‘One thousand BC, give or take two hundred years.’

  ‘So the texts were written over two thousand years after the events they describe.’ He shook his head hopelessly. ‘There could be a dozen explanations. Over that length of time the simplest, most commonplace occurrences could be made to seem miraculous. What credence can we give to ancient rumour and superstition?’

  Dagon said, ‘None at all – if the several texts didn’t happen to agree. There are five independent sources which all mention the god “Ancient of Days”. Are they all the result of rumour and superstition?’ He unrolled a scroll of parchment and pointed to a row of symbols which Queghan couldn’t decipher. ‘What do you make of this: “She is conjoined to the macroprosopus. On the Sabbath a trance falls upon the macroprosopus and the woman is removed from his back. The parts are laid separately and washed.”’

  Queghan squinted into the light. ‘I don’t know what to make of it. But a machine one thousand years BC … where did it come from?’

  ‘I’m hoping that you will tell us that, eventually,’ Dagon said, allowing the parchment to roll itself up with a hollow rustling snap. He inspected his white hairless hands under the light; it seemed to Queghan that the wrinkles in them had been made artificially. ‘Perhaps you will also be able to tell us what kind of experiments my namesake was conducting.’

  ‘Blake tells me he was an alchemist.’

  ‘A philosopher-scientist would be more accurate. Elsewhere in the Sepher-ha-Zohar he speaks of transmuting base metal into gold by the “master principle of nature”. Unfortunately he doesn’t say what methods were used. I do know that it derived from Islamic alchemy and that the process was divided into seven stages: calcination, putrefaction, sublimation, solution, distillation, coagulation, and tincture. In those times the natural sciences were regarded as an extension of philosophy and metaphysics. No proper distinction was made between them because it seemed there was a unity in all things, a symbolism which permeated the physical, mathematical and spiritual disciplines. Truth was indivisible and they believed in a precise and exact correlation between macrocosm and microcosm – “As above, so below” to quote the belief.

  ‘They had also a penetrating view of the cosmos. The Islamic text The Quran specifies a model of the universe which, although it employs religious symbolism, is a highly sophisticated intellectual concept: a medieval cosmology which moves through a number of ascending levels until it reaches the throne of God. We shouldn’t brush aside these hypotheses as being
naive or misguided: the mystics and philosopher-scientists of the time were perhaps in closer touch with the elemental forces of the universe than we may realize. Dagon ben Shem Tov was not a credulous fool.’

  ‘Is there any evidence that he succeeded in transmuting base metal into gold?’ Queghan asked.

  ‘Only his own testimony. But we must remember that his description of the process wouldn’t be in terms of our own advanced technology. Such terms would be unknown to him, so instead he would use anthropomorphic words – “brain” in place of computer, “hairs” in place of tubes or pipes, “skull” in place of vessel, “fire” in place of nuclear power source.’

  ‘But if I understand this correctly he was transcribing folklore which had been handed down over many generations. The machine he describes existed hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.’

  ‘It was part of the body of ancient knowledge,’ Dagon agreed. ‘However I think it possible that he was able to reconstruct the machine using the texts as a guide and blueprint; then he would be able to set up an experiment which succeeded in changing the atomic number of lead from 82 to 79 and thereby produce gold.’

  Blake said, ‘But to do that he’d require a particle accelerator the size of CENTiNEL and a power source equivalent to 400 thousand million electron volts.’ He glanced at the mythographer. ‘That’s a pretty tall order even for a medieval alchemist.’

  ‘Wouldn’t such a device have survived?’ Queghan said. ‘Old Earth was excavated until there was hardly a rock left unturned. A machine like this couldn’t have escaped detection after several thousand years of intensive archaeological surveys.’

  Dagon pushed the lamp aside and stared into the surrounding darkness. ‘Perhaps it didn’t escape detection,’ he said calmly. ‘Records could exist which we’ve failed to interpret correctly. The ancient peoples of Old Earth were non-technological and they would have attributed the machine to God and described it in religious terms.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer the question,’ Queghan said. ‘Where are the physical remains of the machine? It would have to be constructed of super high-grade alloys and such materials do not decay for centuries. If the device existed someone must have come across it and made a record. It can’t have just vanished into thin air.’

  ‘It might have done precisely that,’ Dagon said, gazing into the shadows. ‘Whoever brought it to Old Earth took it away when its purpose was fulfilled. Mission accomplished.’ He was smiling faintly at some private inner vision.

  ‘Whoever brought it?’ Blake repeated. ‘You mean it was put on Old Earth by an extra-terrestrial intelligence?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘But who?’

  Dagon turned the ceramic spheres of his eyes to look up at them. The electronic sensing arrays inside the pupils caught and reflected the lamplight. ‘The gods,’ he said, his breath rasping in the prosthetic implant. ‘Gods from space and time.’

  4

  Transmission

  Milton Blake explained: ‘We’ll put you into deep trance and feed in the information. That should take five, perhaps six hours. Then we’ll take you into the transmission area and induce the dreaming phase by means of an Indexer. When dreaming starts you’ll be linked neurologically to NELLIE and, hopefully, we should get something through on the display. We’ll tape everything so that you can see for yourself when you return. How does it sound?’

  ‘So long as you don’t slip in a dose of STP to ginger me up.’

  ‘No STP,’ Blake said. ‘At what point will you be going into mythic projection?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Perhaps I won’t,’ said Queghan. ‘It isn’t an electric light you can switch on and off.’

  ‘I realize that – though it’ll be a pity if you don’t. To achieve the optimum effect we need to combine neuron processing and mythic projection. Your brain patterns will be monitored during transmission and the system is capable of accepting every level and fluctuation of electrochemical activity.’

  The mythographer said, ‘Let’s hope I am.’

  Blake was about to smile and changed his mind. ‘Is there a risk?’

  ‘There’s always a risk.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I might not come back. The Neuron Processor won’t be much help if I’m stuck on the other side of the interface in noman’s-land. Mythic projection will get me there and it has to get me back.’

  ‘We could bring you round quickly enough.’

  ‘Thanks for the offer but it won’t do any good. Nothing on Earth IVn is going to get me back if I don’t do it myself.’

  Blake frowned and said after a moment, ‘But physically you’ll still be here – your body will remain in the transmission area.’

  ‘My body will be,’ Queghan said, ‘but I won’t.’

  ‘Look, Chris, suppose there is a problem getting you back, a delay of some kind; how long do we keep you linked to the Processor? I mean …’ he fumbled for the best way to express himself ‘… will it be safe to move you from the transmission area?’

  ‘It won’t matter. Mythic projection doesn’t operate in the normal spacetime continuum. On my time-scale I might be away hours, days, months, even years, while in the transmission area only a few minutes will have elapsed.’ His face was austere, almost cadaverous; suddenly he smiled and the network of creases at the corners of his eyes deepened. Blake had the uncomfortable feeling that Queghan could read his innermost thought, as if in those pale eyes the substratum of reality was plainly to be seen. The mythographer said, ‘I’ve been into mythic projection before, Milton. I’m aware of the risk.’

  ‘I don’t want a corpse on my hands,’ Blake said with a kind of mournful mock humour.

  ‘You won’t have a corpse. The body will be alive though permanently in coma. If I don’t get back.’

  Blake thought, He speaks of his body as if it didn’t belong to him. I don’t know if I really like this man: it’s hard to like someone you don’t understand. I wonder if he understands himself?

  Queghan said, ‘I see now what you meant about Dagon. Single-minded, keen intelligence, filled with purpose.’

  ‘He’s a cold fish. No sense of humour.’

  ‘But he’s on to something.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Blake said, alerted. ‘You didn’t sound altogether convinced. You don’t think this machine of his is just a fanciful invention?’

  ‘I’m not sure about the machine. But Dagon’s namesake, the medieval alchemist, is a pure mythic figure: scholar, philosopher-scientist, lexicographer and a nuclear physicist into the bargain. It wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t a geneticist on the side.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Then the parallel with Dr Francis Dagon would be perfect. Dagon combines linguistic studies with molecular biology and it would complete the picture nicely if Dagon ben Shem Tov enjoyed tampering with genetic structure.’

  ‘Rather a lot to ask of a 13th century alchemist, philosopher-scientist or not.’

  ‘So is changing lead into gold,’ Queghan pointed out. ‘If he had the ability to construct a particle accelerator from instructions that had come down through the ages by word of mouth he must have been the greatest genius of all time. Newton and Einstein and Hawking wouldn’t even rate.’

  Something occurred to Milton Blake and he laughed. ‘Perhaps he wasn’t of Old Earth – maybe “a god from space and time” as Dr Dagon believes.’ He chuckled at such a preposterous notion.

  ‘That’s always a possibility,’ the mythographer said quietly.

  ‘Chris, this is pure fantasy.’ Blake continued to smile. ‘Dagon wasn’t serious when he made that suggestion.’

  ‘You think not?’ Queghan stood up. His lean angular body and the rake of his shoulders were uncompromising in their severity; the spirit of the man seemed to burn like a cold clear flame. He turned to look at Blake and his eyes were so pale that they appeared to be transparent. ‘We shouldn’t rule out any possibility until it’s bee
n fully investigated. I don’t know how much of Dagon’s thesis is historically valid and how much is religious dogma and superstition. Perhaps there really was a machine in Biblical times, somewhere in the ancient past.’ Then he said, ‘But which one?’

  ‘Are there more than one?’

  ‘Many more. An infinite number of mythical pasts,’ Queghan said.

  *

  The transmission area was bathed in a greenish glow. The patient had been wheeled in and lay on the padded table in a closely-grouped nest of consoles which were strung together by a spaghetti of multi-coloured cables. The squat grey Indexer unit on its trolley was attached by greased electrodes to the patient’s wrists and temples and a portable EEG scribbled out his heartbeat on a moving ribbon of paper. Nearby, holding clipboards to their chests, two technicians stood watching the instrument panels and noting any fluctuation in cardiovascular and respiratory functions. Everything seemed to be in order.

  Milton Blake was in the observation room sitting in front of three-dimensional display. The room was above the transmission area so that it was possible to look down through the angled observation window and keep a close watch on the patient’s condition and changing reaction. Blake hid his nervousness by making continual minor adjustments to the display controls, knowing quite well that they were properly set, and then checked again that the VTR facility was on-line to record picture and sound. Something nagged at him with infuriating persistency and he kept thinking, If anything goes wrong how the hell do I get him back? He’s here at my request – I made the decision and he takes the risk …

  Dagon came silently into the observation room in his para-chair, controlling it by means of a small joystick in the right arm of the chair. His body was held rigidly upright in the harness, incapable of independent movement. He was smoking a long thin cigar, holding it lightly in his hairless fingers. He positioned the chair in front of the display and looked down into the transmission area. He drew breath. ‘The subject seems comfortable. Are we ready to start?’