“Let me convert you, Jim, come to the Mother Church before it’s too late.”
“Let me down from here, I want a drink.”
“Drink?” Omally tugged on the brakes and sent Jim sprawling. “Drink did I hear you say, my son?”
Pooley looked up bitterly from the deck. “Popes don’t drink,” he said. “Such is well-known.”
“A new Papal bull,” his Holiness replied.
“All right then, but no ring-kissing, it’s positively indecent.” Pooley unearthed the hip-flask and the two plodded on, sharing it turn and turn about.
“It’s getting bloody cold,” Pooley observed, patting at his shirt-sleeves. “And the pong’s getting a lot stronger.”
“What do you expect?” Omally passed him back the hip-flask. “Roses round the door?”
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?”
“The passage is going down, isn’t it? Would the Pope put you on a wrong ’n?”
“Listen, John, I’m not too sure about this Pope business. I thought you lads had to be elected. White smoke up the chimney or the like?”
“As last Catholic, I have the casting vote. Please don’t argue about religious matters with me, Jim. If you let me convert you I’ll make you a cardinal.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. God, it stinks down here. Couldn’t you issue another Papal bull or something?”
Omally halted the infidel in mid-step. “Would you look at that?” he said, pointing forward.
Ahead of them loomed a great door. It seemed totally out of context with all they had yet seen. At odds with the bland modernistic corridors they had passed down on their abortive journey of escape. It rose like a dark hymn in praise of evil pleasure, and hung in a heavily-carved portico wrought with frescoed reliefs.
Omally parked his bike, and the two men tiptoed forward. The hugeness and richness of the thing filled all vision. It was a work of titanic splendour, the reliefs exquisite, carved into dark pure wood of extreme age.
“Fuck me,” said John Omally, which was quite unbecoming of a Pope. “Would you look at that holy show?”
“Unholy show, John. That is disgusting.”
“Yes, though, isn’t it? And that.” Jim followed Omally’s pointing finger. “You’d need to be double-jointed.”
“There’s something inscribed there, John. You know the Latin, what does it say?”
Omally leant forward and perused the inscription, “Oh,” said he at length, his voice having all the fun of herpes about it, “that is what it says.”
“Exit does it say?”
Omally turned towards the grinning idiot. “Give me that hip-flask, you are a fool.”
“And you a Pope. Drink your own.”
“Give me that flask.”
“Well, only a small sip, don’t want your judgement becoming impaired.” Pooley began to hiccup.
Omally guzzled more than his fair share. “It’s in there,” he said, wiping his chin and returning the flask to Pooley.
“What is?” Jim shook the flask against his ear and gave the self-made Pope a disparaging look.
“The big It, you damned fool.”
“Then next right turn and on your bike. We don’t want to do anything silly now, do we?”
Omally nodded gloomily. “We must; stick your tattooed mitt up against it.”
“I can think of a million reasons why not.”
“And me. For the Professor, eh Jim?”
“For the Professor, then.” Jim pressed his hand to the door and it moved away before his touch.
Omally took up his bike, and the two men stepped cautiously through the opening.
“Oh, bloody hell,” whispered Jim.
“Yes, all of that.”
They stood now in the vestibule of what was surely a great cathedral. But its size was not tailored to the needs of man. It was the hall of giants. The two stared about them in an attempt to take it in. It was simply too large. The scale of its construction sent the mind reeling. The temperature had dropped another five degrees at least, yet the smell was ripe as a rotten corpse.
“The belly of the beast,” gasped Pooley. “Let’s go back. The utter cold, the feeling, the stench, I can’t stand it.”
“No, Jim, look, there it is.”
Ahead, across an endless expanse of shining black marble floor, spread the congregation, row upon regimental row. Countless figures crouched before as many flickering terminal screens, paying obeisance to their dark master. For there, towering towards eternity, rising acre upon vertical acre, spreading away in every direction, was the mainframe of the great computer. Billions of housed microcircuits, jet-black boxes stacked one upon another in a jagged endless wall. Upon giddy stairways and catwalks, minuscule figures moved upon its face, attending to its needs. Feeding it, pampering it with knowledge, gorging its insatiable appetite.
I AM LATEINOS, I AM ROMIITH.
The Latin, the formula, words reduced to their base components, stripped of their flesh, reduced to the charred black dust of their skeletons; to the equations which were the music of the spheres, the grand high opera of all existence. Omally slumped forward on to his knees. “I see it,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes starting from his head. “Now I understand.”
“Then bully for you, John. Come on let’s get out, someone will see us.” Pooley fanned at his nose and rubbed at his shirt-sleeves.
“No, no. Don’t you understand what it’s doing? Why it’s here?”
“No. Nor why I should be.”
“It is what the Professor told us.” Omally struck his fist to his temple. “Numerology; the power lies in the numbers themselves. Can’t you see it? This whole madhouse is the product of mathematics. Mankind did not invent mathematics nor discover it. No the science of mathematics was given to him that he might misuse it to his ruin. That he might eventually create all this.” Omally spread out his arms to encompass the world they now inhabited. “Don’t you understand?”
Jim shook his head. “Pissed again,” said he. “And this time as Pope.”
Omally continued, his voice rising in pitch as the revelation struck him like a thunderbolt. “The machine has now perfected the art. It has mastered the science, it can break anything down to its mathematical equivalent. Once it has the formula it can then rebuild, recreate everything. An entire brand new world built from the ashes of the old, encompassing everything.”
“But all it does is churn out the same old stuff over and over again.”
Omally clambered to his feet and turned upon him. “Yes, you damn fool, because there is one number it can never find. It found the number of a man, but there is one more number, one more equation which never can be found.”
“Go on then, have your spasm.”
“The soul. That’s what the old man was trying to tell us. Don’t you see it, Jim?”
“I see that,” said Pooley, pointing away over John’s shoulder. “But I don’t believe it.”
Omally turned to catch sight of a gaunt angular figure clad in the shredded remnants of a tweed suit, who was stealing purposefully towards them.
“The Saints be praised.”
“Holmes,” gasped Pooley. “But how…? It cannot be.”
“You can’t keep a good man down.”
Sherlock Holmes gestured towards them. “Come,” he mouthed.
Jim put his hand to Omally’s arm. “What if he starts clearing his throat?”
Omally shrugged helplessly. “Come on, Jim,” he said, trundling Marchant towards the skulking detective.
Holmes drew them into the shadows. There in the half-light his face seemed drawn and haggard, although a fierce vitality shone in his eyes. “Then only we three remain.” It was a statement rather than a question. Omally nodded slowly. “And do you know what must be done?”
“We do not.”
“Then I shall tell you, but quickly, for we have little or no time. We are going to poison it,” said Sherlock Holmes. “We are going to feed it with death.” The cold determination of his words and the authority with which he spoke to them seemed absolute.