‘Yes. That’s when the transformation began into the new Adam you see today. It doesn’t always happen overnight. But sometimes you do experience intense feelings of what in olden times people would describe as seeing the light.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘in ancient times people weren’t as dumb as I thought, worshipping all these weird and wonderful gods.’
‘No, they weren’t stupid at all. What they were doing was experiencing a gut feeling that there was a powerful but invisible being that could affect their lives and thoughts. They looked very hard for this being, so hard in fact that they began to believe they saw him in the stars or the oceans or forests. The gut feelings were right, it’s just they were looking in the wrong places.’
‘I don’t know if I’m talking a load of crap,’ I said, ‘but it’s just come to me now that for thousands of years there’s been this urge, maybe an instinct, to communicate with this supernatural being. A being who we believe, deep down, has an important message for us. One that, if we could only receive it would allow us to live happily ever after.’
‘You’ve hit the nail on the head, Nick. In all cultures believers look for guidance from the gods in the form of signs – astrology, palmistry, reading tea leaves, they’re all part of the same thing. It all points to the hereditary belief that someone OUT THERE desperately wants to speak to us. And, deep down, WE desperately want to speak to them. And it’s not only ancient people. Scientists feel it too, but they try and rationalise it. They try and communicate with dolphins, or try to teach chimpanzees our language. Billions were spent on radio telescopes and research programmes like SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. They hoped they could tune into the transmissions of alien life forms. Scientists, too, believed these beings out there in space would have an important message that would transform humankind. Doesn’t that, too, have a religious feel to it?’
‘So in effect ordinary people, priests, mystics, even scientists, have been striving and striving to contact a being who they instinctively know exists. Who wants to speak to man, and to help man. But instead of looking outward to heaven and the cosmos they should have been looking in here.’ I pointed to my head.
‘And you don’t need a billion dollar radio telescope, or a gaggle of holy men. You only need to go to sleep at night and to listen to your dreams.’ She smiled. ‘And remember: don’t ignore the old mind. After all, he’s the friend inside.’
Midnight. Bernadette sat on the bed looking tired but satisfied. Getting the truth through my thick skull had been hard work.
I wanted to sleep now but there were still some loose ends. ‘So I’m right in thinking this. Fifty thousand years ago the new mind took control, pushing the old mind into the back seat. Neanderthal man then changed into us. Ancient people dimly remembered what happened and it became religious myth?’
‘Yes. For thousands of years men could talk easily to the old mind. Gradually they forgot how, and they began to believe that the old one they’d talked to long ago was god.’ Her eyes, sleepy and huge, looked up at me. ‘Yes, Nick. Now you know – like you’ve always known deep down.’
‘And that eight months ago this battle between the two minds erupted again?’
‘That’s right. Although we didn’t know it, humans were already moving into a chain of events that would lead to their eventual extinction. Humankind was beginning to lose its way, its drive for development had turned into a drive for self-destruction. Nothing spectacular like nuclear war. Just a slow rot from the inside. A cancer of the species. We’d lost our faith in ourselves; people believed they had no real reason for even existing … What’s it all for? they’d ask one another.’
‘And no one could supply them with a plausible answer.’
‘And even though instinctively we knew there was a being who could help us, we could not find it. In fact we were becoming more and more divorced from our second wise old mind.’
‘So, last April, in a desperate attempt to save the species mother nature kicked our conscious mind out of the driving seat, then she put the old animal mind back in charge again.’
‘That’s about the size of it. The adults are in the grip of something that seems like madness now, but the next phase will see them settling down to establish themselves as the new superior species on earth. Homo Superior. They will be alien to us. You see, the unconscious mind is identical in everyone. The new species will behave collectively like ants. Individuals will be of no importance. Only the hive will matter.’
‘Then we’re wasting our time. The adults will take over anyway.’
‘Perhaps. But I don’t want to die, do you? Also mother nature has got it wrong before. The new species may turn out to be an evolutionary dead end – doomed to extinction.’
‘But if we survive it will only be because we learn to co-operate with the second mind in our heads? The unconscious?’
‘Yes. We must or die. It’s as simple as that.’ She smiled and rubbed her neck. ‘It’s already beginning to happen to you. You listen to your intuition. You’re ready to follow a hunch even though you don’t know where it’s taking you. You told me about finding the generator and then, after the massacre, the baby.’
‘Just a couple more loose ends … I understand now why you are creating this religious community. Having a faith will unite the children, give them a sense of security. Then when they’re old enough the big secret is revealed, like you revealed it to me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why not just stick with the religious stuff? It’d be simpler to let them grow up to be God-fearing folk.’
‘Because it won’t wash anymore. Even those children know enough about biology and astronomy to work out by the time they’re fourteen that they’re being told a white lie. After all, you can easily persuade a young child to believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, but how many teenagers do you know who still believe Santa slides down their chimney every Christmas Eve?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m doing what adults should have done for the last thirty years. They should’ve bitten the bullet and created a faith that even hardened scientists and ghetto kids can believe in.’
‘But what I still don’t understand is why you drugged me, and … well, climbed into bed with me?’
‘Adam’s celibate.’ She pointed at her stomach. ‘And every new religion needs a messiah.’
She stood up. ‘It’s late. I’m going to bed. But I want you to do me one last favour tonight.’ She smiled, her dark eyes locked onto mine. ‘I want you to make love to me one more time.’
Chapter Fifty-One
Ghost Music
4 a.m. I stood outside on the apartment’s private balcony and looked out over the lake. The night was clear. A full moon poured light, as white as a ghost, onto the water.
It was cold. But I needed that air.
Bernadette lay asleep in bed, her face smiling. I knew she was dreaming. That second mind in her head, the wise old unconscious one, was talking to her. Something good that she was pleased to hear.
A sound came from behind me. It was familiar but I’d not heard it in years. The sound of someone tuning a guitar so quietly it wouldn’t even disturb a sleeping baby.
‘Uncle Jack.’ I turned round to see him sitting on the guard rail between the platform and the water, his electric guitar across his lap – and then I knew I was really asleep beside Bernadette and softly dreaming too.
‘Hello, Nick-Nick.’ He used the old upper-class joke voice again. ‘I say, old boy, am I alive?’
Jack Aten was long dead.
He smiled knowingly and angled his head to one side as he waited for an answer.
I nodded, the beginnings of a smile on my lips. It felt so good to see him. ‘You’re alive, Jack. You’re alive.’
‘I’ve been listening to your conversation with Bernadette. If this second mind, the unconscious bit, is plonked intact into our brains in the womb, then that means my unconscious mind is the same as yours, so in effect, part of me is the sa
me as part of you.’
‘And that means, part of you will live forever.’
‘Fancy that. There I was dying of cancer, miserable as sin, and all along part of me is flaming immortal.’ He grinned. ‘You grew up a lot like me. Bit of a rebel, eh, kidda? A taste for the beer and the ladies …’ He looked serious. ‘But you’ve grown bigger than I ever could, or your dad, for that matter. You know what you’ve got to do now?’
I nodded. ‘Go back to Eskdale. Take charge.’
Jack began to play softly on the guitar, the electric notes humming around us like fireflies.
‘Another thing, Nick. Listen carefully to Bernadette, very carefully – you know deep down she’s right.’
He hit a guitar string.
A single, brilliant note – and sustained it. The sound was tremendous, vibrating the planks beneath my feet, it seemed to hang suspended there, and although the note never altered in pitch, music ran through it, singing of a deep yearning of something or someone you have loved but lost.
The note faded slowly into the distance.
Jack did not move, his face remained turned up to the sky, glowing in the moonlight.
Then came the echo of the sound as it kicked back from the mountainside. It came howling across the snow, the forest, the valley and the lake like some great spirit that had once been lost in the depths of the universe.
As the sound rushed back on us, Jack hit a string, giving birth to another note of pure sound.
The echo merged with the new note, then it went soaring out across the lake, like a god moving across the face of the water to shake the mountains and the moon and the stars.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Out of the Dark
‘Here, catch.’
‘What’re these?’ I shook the box.
‘Ammunition.’ Bernadette handed me another box. ‘They go with this.’
‘A pistol. I’ve already got the rifle.’
‘Believe me, Nick, you’re going to need all the protection you can get. It’s a long walk back to Eskdale. Those are dum-dum bullets. If those Creosotes get in close to you, you want something that will stop them dead with one shot.’
‘Thanks. Thanks for the survival gear as well.’
‘Don’t mention it. Every single one of us is precious now.’ Her dark eyes fixed me. ‘You more than most. Three hundred lives depend on you, Nick Aten. And if my intuition serves me right, and it always has done, you’re going to be more important to our people than you realise.’
‘Bullshit, Bernadette.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
Adam had called into the apartment to tell me that yesterday he’d been as far as the mountain road. The snow hadn’t gone completely but at least it was passable. Now it was six in the morning and the moon was setting behind the mountains. Within the hour I’d paddle a canoe to the shore, then I’d be burning a trail back home. What I’d find there Christ only knew. But I was itching to start.
As Bernadette packed my rucksack she listed what was essential for the survival of humankind.
First: Find a safe haven from the Creosotes.
Second: Ensure you can feed your community.
Three: Adequate shelter.
Four: Believe in that new faith of hers. Stage one: Give young children religious instruction as had been done in the past. Second stage: Re-acquaint teenagers with the wise old one that lives in your head. The one ancient people identified as their god. ‘If scientists and doctors can believe in it, so can anyone. Particularly if you can prove to them the practical benefits. As the saying goes: Two heads are better than one. In this case it’s: Two minds are better than one. Remember, if you can get to know the god that lives inside your head, you can work the real miracle and save your life.’
Bernadette, smiling, squeezed my hand as I loaded the pistol. ‘I’m sorry to bang on about it like this. Even though it sounds highbrow, it is a matter of life and death now.’
‘Don’t apologise. It’s a miracle you got the truth through my thick skull at all.’
‘There’s another thing I haven’t had a chance to mention yet,’ she said. ‘We’ll call it number five on your list. For a while these small communities will, if they can defeat the Creosotes, survive. But the gene pools will be small. Soon there will be inbreeding which will one day wipe out the communities as effectively as the Creosotes. Communities on remote islands are going to suffer from this quite quickly.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘There are several solutions. For example, ensure social contact between settlements: this way boys will marry girls from other communities. Another way could be a more deliberate mixing of genes. You know how they used to have wandering minstrels in days gone by, going from village to village playing their songs. What we could have is men who are basically wandering studs who go from village to village impregnating women to keep the gene pool fresh.’
‘Sounds like nice work.’
‘See, even with the collapse of civilization some people are going to enjoy satisfying careers.’
We laughed. I suppose it was tension as much as anything but we laughed and laughed until tears ran down our faces.
When I could speak properly I wiped my eyes and said, ‘One thing, though, all this you’ve told me, about the second mind in your head, actually being, when it boils down to it, the thing we once called a god, well … how do you know all this?’
‘It wasn’t in any book, but the information was lying about for anyone to see, even in any school library. All it needed was to put these bits of information into the right order to make a clear picture.’
‘But this is your own theory, right?’
‘I can’t claim it as my own. Look, this is how the … revelation, if you like, happened. At school a basic psychology course was on the curriculum. I did it, learning about Freud and Jung, all that stuff about the ego, subconscious, collective unconscious, super releasers, archetypes, etcetera, etcetera, and to me it was just another lesson on the timetable. What really interested me was civil engineering. Then six months before that big DAY 1 something clicked in my head. I rushed back and read my old notes. Then I read every book I could on the human mind; next I had this interest, call it passion, to read about world religions, mythology, even stuff by mystics like Richard Rolle of Hampole; next I studied human evolution. It got to the point where I thought I was going mad.
‘Then a few weeks before the sanity crash I lost interest in it, I thought I’d just had a bee in my bonnet and now it was all over. BANG. Civilisation went out the window. For the first week I was too busy surviving. Then again, BANG! I was fetching water from a spring and suddenly it hit me. Eureka. The answers came streaming into my head. It was like a computer booting up a new program or … or throwing the pieces of a jigsaw up into the air and it all coming down complete in one piece.’
‘In short. Your second mind, the unconscious one, had been working on the problem in partnership with you, then delivered the answer in a flash of inspiration.’
‘You’ve got it in one, love.’
The word ‘love’ must have slipped out accidentally, because she blushed and turned away from me.
‘Of course I thought I was nuts,’ she said. ‘It was only when I began to speak to people around the world on the radio that I found another five people who’d reached the same sudden conclusion. It’s a bit like the discovery of the evolution theory. Darwin got there first. But others all around the world were reaching the same conclusions independent of one another. It was as if the time was right.’
‘So. The information was lying about like the parts of a model. It just needed someone to realize all these funny little parts would fit together to make, say, a car.’
‘Exactly. Remember when I spoke to Abraxas in Egypt the other night? He was the first one who told me he’d reached the same conclusions. It was a big relief to him, too. He though he’d gone insane. Now all of us exchange information so we can increase our knowledge abou
t what happened and what will happen.’
‘And what will happen?’
‘Marvellous things. Abilities that today would seem like miracles. It won’t cure all the world’s ills but it’s a start. Pretty soon we’ll be using the mind to heal the body. There’s a girl in Argentina who’s talking about immortality. Frankly I find that scary – but that’s because deep down I believe her.’
‘Immortality. Live forever? But how—’
‘I’ve told you the truth about what happened, any more and we’ll be going headlong into wild speculation.’ She slipped a plastic envelope into the haversack. ‘Everything I told you, plus a guide to educating your people is in this document. When you get the chance, study it. You’ll see I say that perhaps the only way to defeat the Creosotes is by all the little communities banding together to form a single nation. I hope they’d do it democratically but in the end it might need a single powerful leader to unite them.’
‘An Alexander the Great?’
‘Exactly. Whoever it is, they’re going to have to be ruthless. It doesn’t matter how he, or she, unites the communities, whether it be by persuasion, coercion or even invasion.’ She looked up at me. ‘Nick Aten. Do you think you’re up to it?’
‘What, me? Alexander the Great? Conqueror of empires?’ I laughed. ‘No … not me, Bernadette.’ I slung the haversack onto my shoulder.
‘We’ll see.’ She smiled. ‘Come on, you have to go before it gets light … and before I think of an excuse to make you stay.’ She kissed me, then patted her stomach. ‘At least you’ve left me a permanent reminder of your stay.’
I felt myself blushing as I kissed her and wished her luck.
Adam came and helped me load the canoe which was tethered to Bernadette’s private landing stage. The lights from the open doorway sparkled on the dark waters.
‘As soon as you’re on your way, we’re going to have to switch off the light,’ said Bernadette. ‘We can’t risk anyone spotting the Ark from the shore.’
I nodded. ‘I’m ready, anyway. Good-bye, Adam. Thanks for everything.’ I used the paddle to push the canoe away from the Ark. ‘Good-bye, Bernadette. I hope we’ll get a chance to talk again.’