The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(68)

“Join or die?”

“Harry.” He tutted. “Don’t use the words of linear mortals in arguments with me. The idea that their philosophy, their morals, can be applied to either of us isn’t merely absurd, it’s intellectually weak. I do not say we must live without standards, merely that the adoption of mortals’ rules is almost as feeble a choice as living with no rules at all.”

“The laws of mortal men, the ethics, the morality of living, have been formed over thousands of years.”

“The laws we live by, Harry, have been forged over hundreds, and are not enforced by fear.”

“What happens here when you’re done?” I asked softly. “What happens to the men and women of this place, to our… colleagues?”

His fingers rippled round the edge of his glass, just once. Then, “I can see that you know what the answer must be, and that it distresses you. I’m sorry, Harry, I didn’t realise you were becoming so reflective.”

“Do you not say it out loud,” I asked, “because you’re ashamed or simply too much of a delicate flower?”

Another ripple, just once, like a pianist warming his fingers for a concerto. “People die, Harry,” he breathed. “It is the fundamental rule of this universe. The very nature of life is that it must end.”

“Except for us.”

“Except for us,” he agreed. “All this–” a gesture with the end of his little finger around the room, a flicker of his eyes “–when we are dead, will no longer be. Will not have been. Loved ones we have watched die will be born again and we will remember that they were loved, but they will not know us, and none of this will matter. Not the men who lived or the men who died. Only the ideas and memories they made.”

(Are you God, Dr August? Are you the only living creature that matters?)

(There is a black pit in the bottom of my soul that has no limit to its falling.)

“I think we need to stop,” I said.

Now he set down his glass on the table and leaned back, one leg folded over the other, hands tucked into his lap, a troubled schoolteacher trying not to let his anxiety show to the distressed pupil. “All right,” he said at last. “Why?”

“I’m scared that we’re going to eat our own souls.”

“I didn’t ask for a poetical answer.”

“This… machine,” I said carefully, “these ideas we’re exploring, memories we’re making, if you want. This theory of everything, answer to all our questions, the solution to the problem of the kalachakra… it is a beautiful idea. It is the greatest thing I have ever heard, and you, Vincent, are the only man I’ve met with both the vision and the will to pursue it. It is majestic, and so are you, and I am honoured to have worked on it.”

“But,” he prompted, the tendons standing up around his windpipe, the soft hollow of his wrist.

“But in the name of progress we have eaten our souls up, and nothing else matters to us any more.”

Silence.

I watched the thin lines of his tendons grow whiter against his skin.

Then, in a single motion, he downed the rest of his glass, laid it with a chink on the tabletop.

Silence.

“The world is ending,” I breathed at last. “This message has been passed down from child to dying old man, whispered down the generations. The idea is too big to comprehend–much like the ideas you seek to answer. But there are people behind it, lives that are being destroyed, broken and lost. And we did that. The world is ending.”

Silence.

And then, as abruptly as he’d drained his glass, he stood, paced once across the room, spun on the spot, hands behind his back like the schoolteacher he should have been, and proclaimed, “I question your use of ‘the’.” I raised my eyebrows at this, inviting the inevitable explanation. “We are not destroying the world, Harry,” he chided wearily, “only a world. We are not scientific monsters, we are not madmen out of control. It is undeniable that we will affect the course of temporal events–we have no choice but to affect the course of temporal events–but it is only one world which may be changed. We live and we die, and all things return to how they were, and nothing we did before matters.”

“I disagree. We are changing people’s lives. It may not matter to us; it may be… irrelevant, in the grand scheme of things. But in the grand scheme of things there are billions of people in this century alone who believe it to be very relevant indeed, and though we may have more time than they do, they still have the greater mass. Our actions… matter. We have a responsibility to consider the small as well as the big, merely because that is what the whole world around us, a world of conscious, living beings, must exist upon. We are not gods, Vincent, and our knowledge does not grant us the authority to play the same. That’s not… not the point of us.”

He puffed in exasperation, throwing up his hands and then, as if the rest of his body had to join in, prowled round the small room. I stayed still, watching him move. “No,” he said at last. “I concur, we are not gods. But this, Harry, this is what will make gods, give us the vision of the creator; this research could unlock infinity. You say that we are causing harm. I do not see it. A message passed down through the Cronus Club? It means nothing, and you and I are both aware that no permutation of mathematics nor analysis of history could possibly suggest that our devices have led to this end, the factors are too great and varied. Do you assume that humanity must destroy itself with knowledge, is that your implication? For a man who advocates the value of short-term life, I find that a highly pessimistic view.”