Bible of the Dead (37 page)
Authors: Tom Knox
She repeated, ‘There is something we can do. But there are dangers. Colin told me, a few days ago, that is why I asked Soriya to spare him.’
Fishwick kneeled beside Jake, and spoke. He was hesitant, repressing a stammer, or deep emotions.
‘The operation we did on you was cryosurgical
.
Stand please . . . Let me
explain
.’
Jake allowed them to guide him to the terrace. He sat down and gazed out at the village. It was apparently deserted. No doubt the locals were hiding, frightened by the gunshots. The hideous scene enacted on the cliffside. And yet, now everyone had gone, the guards, the lab workers, Sen and Tyrone and Soriya – all gone – it was eerily peaceful. A deceptive serenity enveloped Balagezong. The mist drifted in and out of the heaven villages.
How could he have let them do that to Tyrone?
Fishwick explained:
‘It took us many years. To . . . perfect the surgery. Eventually we realized that the solution was conceptual: the God module should be treated as a difficult and in accessible
brain tumour.
You can imagine Sen was pleased with the metaphor. The analogy. Religion and guilt as a malignant cancer, in an otherwise
healthy
organism.’
Fishwick shrugged, and continued:
‘But I haven’t got time to explain it all, the Chinese authorities will
surely
be here soon, with the Chinese army – and if my operation is to succeed I have to work
immediately
.’
Jake was bewildered. Julia and Chemda were sitting together in silence. Like sisters. He said:
‘Operation?’
Fishwick explained:
‘The God module isn’t just a little blob of tissue in one part of the human brain . . . Using ultrasound, PET scans, MRIs of Tibetan monks, and
many
other analyses, we finally established that the God module was an extremely complex system centred in the frontal cortex, but linked to the hip pocampus, the amygdala, the thalamic nuclei, and elsewhere, like a vicious, octopoidal
tumour
. The . . . the best way of treating these invasive and complex tumours is cryosurgery: the use of extreme cold produced by liquid nitrogen, or argon gas, to destroy abnormal tissue.’
‘You froze my fucking soul?’
‘If you like. The nitrogen is circulated through a hollow instrument called a cryoprobe. A ball of ice crystals forms around the probe, freezing the unwanted cells. So
yes .
. . We freeze the soul to
death.’
The snow on the Holy Mountain glittered in the afternoon sun, crystalline and prismatic. Fishwick continued, his mild faced aged with remorse:
‘But there is a problem. Although we have,
theoretically,
perfected the surgery, that is to say: we have created stable and functioning minds, anatomically incapable of spiritual belief, or religious delusion . . . I have noticed that the outcomes are still . . .
suboptimal
. There is often something missing, which cannot be adequately defined. A flatness of the emotions, or a lack of psychic music. A kind of deafness. I have concluded that many humans are probably meant to believe. They have evolved to believe. Consequently, taking away this possibility, in some patients, is a grave error . . .’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps you too, Jake, were meant to believe. You have merely repressed this belief for many years, because of the traumas of your youth. Hm? As I understand? You are angry at God, but you still believe in Him, deep down. At least you did believe, until we did what we did. The
surgery.’
Jake blustered. Helpless.
‘But what’s the relevance. Now. How does this help me?’
Chemda said:
‘Reversal. It can be done.’
‘What? You’re gonna reverse the surgery? You thaw my brain?’
Fishwick assented.
‘Somewhat crudely put, but essentially . . . yes. Over the years, as my doubts have developed, even as we got the procedure right, I have been theorizing and experimenting on . . . the possibility of
reversal
. I have never tried it on live human subjects, just animal tissue. But I believe it is quite practicable. Your neurones are frozen, in a few hours they will die. But if I thaw them with the same probe,
right
here and
right now
, it is possible I can undo the procedure. But there is also a chance you could end up . . . cognitively deficient, very badly damaged. You might even . . . not survive. I am sorry. I simply
don’t know
. I think it will work, but I cannot be sure.’ He sighed. ‘It is a leap of faith.’
Silence returned.
No one spoke.
Jake stared at the mountain, wisping snow from the summit. The mountain he had no desire to recreate, to mediate, to photograph. He remembered the blood on the grass. The blood and the shattered bone.
Then he gazed at the black-throated gorge, down which they had hurled Tyrone. His friend. His flawed, greedy, ambitious, cynical and selfish friend. But his friend. Who had saved him in Anlong, who had arguably tried to save him here. The friend Jake had casually chucked to his death.
And now he turned to Julia. She had been silent all through this; but she responded to his gaze. Lifting her phone, she said:
‘I can get us out of here. I’ve been in touch with Rouvier. When we reached Bala, there was finally a signal. I spoke to him several times. He has been working for us; he’s spoken to his superiors – who have spoken to European governments, he thinks the Chinese government probably want this over, hushed up. They might do a deal. Just expel us.’ She shook her head. ‘But the army are coming. So if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen soon. You really don’t have much time. You need to decide.’
Jake’s gaze, rested, finally, on Chemda. The face he could no longer love.
He lay back on the neurosurgeon’s table, which was more like a tilted throne. Bright lights shone down on his scalp, a silent nurse sorted through a cutlery of steel tools. The nurse was the only other staff member who hadn’t fled.
‘I will have to do the anaesthesia myself,’ said Fishwick, from the far side of the room. He offered Jake a melancholy smile. ‘Don’t worry, I do know what I am doing. It’s the surgery that is problematic. Potentially.’
Jake stiffened with anxiety. He gazed around the empty, white, laboratory-like chamber. Chemda wasn’t present; she had told him she couldn’t bear to watch. Jake wondered if he could blame her for this.
‘How long will I be under?’ ‘Two hours. We need to work fast.’
Two hours
, Jake thought. Just
two hours
. And then what?
The terrors were gathering at the door of his future. Was he going to wake up? If he woke up, would he still have a mind? Did he even want the guilt to return?
The silence in the room, while Fishwick washed his hands at a metal sink, was unbearable.
‘Talk to me,’ Jake said. ‘Please. Talk to me.’
‘Of course.’
‘Just talk. Tell me what are you going to do, after all this?’
Fishwick sighed.
‘I would maybe like to make some repayment . . . for what I have done. Perhaps I could work in Chinese hospitals, treating epilepsy with neurosurgery. The procedure is
similar.
Religious visions and spiritual epiphanies closely mirror the neural process of epileptic seizures.’
Staring into the bright white light of the surgery lamps, Jake absorbed this thought.
‘So you think religion is just
a kind of epilepsy
?’
Fishwick gazed at the paper towel in his hands.
‘Well . . . As I implied, before, over many years, I developed doubts about the
whole concept
.’
‘Doubts. And?’
‘I was once, as you know, a hardcore Marxist. But as I investigated the links between Marxism and social structure and religion, it struck me that . . .’ Fishwick allowed the nurse to snap some rubber gloves on his wrists. Then he continued: ‘It struck me that the worst societies are nearly always the atheist societies. Hitler’s Germany. Mao’s China. Stalin’s Russia. And the Khmer Rouge of course, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the most brutal of all, the most violently atheist. The land of the prophecy, hm? The land without religion. And so much
blood.
’
‘So?’
‘In just a hundred years atheist communists and atheist Nazis killed hundreds of millions . . . comprehensively more than any religion. And yet they did it for ideological and philosophical reasons, they did it for reasons which were themselves
quasi religious.’
‘And what does that mean?’
The tools of Fishwick’s business twinkled in the overbright lights; the stainless silver scalpels, the exquisite cranial drills.
‘This is the real reason that they are going to close down the lab, Jake, why even the hardcore communist Chinese lost interest in Sen’s work. It turned out that the people who had the surgery, the
Godectomy
, here, they ended up with as little interest in communism as they might have had in Islam . . . or Zoroastrianism.’
‘Why?’
‘
Because communism is just another belief system.
Hm? Another irrational belief system that uses the
same neural structures
. Communism relies on faith and devotion and revelation, it has sacred texts –
Das Kapital
, the little Red Book – it has saints, prophets and priests. It believes in a heaven, a Utopia, it’s just a heaven on earth in their case. And Marxism is just as illogical as the
craziest
faith: everywhere that communism has been tried it has failed, dismally.’ The neurosurgeon leaned to check an oval glass dial, on one squat and glinting machine. ‘Yet still the true believers believe, they are sure we shall see heaven on earth. So it’s just another religion.’
‘Except an even more destructive one,’ Jake said. ‘A savage and Godless faith. Right?’
‘Yes. A religion with no morals. Quite lethal and disgusting, leaving millions killed. If communism is their Koran, if Marx is their Bible – then it is a Bible of the Dead.’ He paused, for a long second. ‘And many of our
patients
were proof of this equivalence: following the operation it turned out they were all
deeply
sceptical of communism, just as sceptical of communism as they might be of Mormonism or horoscopes. And when the Chinese realized that Sen’s laboratory was churning out people with no faith in the orthodox stupidities of Marx and Mao, that’s when they lost interest.’
Jake was sweating now. Hot and sweating.
‘Ironic.’
Fishwick agreed, with a pensive smile. And stood close.
‘We’re nearly ready Jake . . . The temperature levels of the thawing process are vitally important. There’s just a few moments to go . . .’ A quiet word was swapped with the nurse.
Jake said:
‘Keep talking. Before I change my mind.
Please
?’
Fishwick obeyed. ‘As it happens Cambodia also provides the most interesting
counter example,
on which I have often reflected. Indeed, a year or two ago I began to vigorously re-examine all the ancient history. For instance, I went back to Jar Site 9 in Laos – they preserved just one site intact for researchers. And crucially I also visited Angkor
.
’ He was staring into his own surgical lights. ‘Ah,
Angkor Wat
. Perhaps the greatest and most beautiful pre-industrial society we know:
exquisitely
advanced, enchanted, a kingdom where government was truly united with the image of the divine, of the Godhead –’
‘The faces of the Bayon.’
‘Yes.’ The American tilted one of the vast surgical lights a fraction of a centimetre. ‘You know, the builders of Angkor even left a sign, to show that they knew this importance of proper faith to civilization.’
‘The diamond – in the forehead of the great Bayon faces.’
The light was shining on Jake’s forehead. Fishwick answered:
‘Yes. Perhaps instinctively, the builders of Angkor knew the
preciousness
of true religion. They even guessed where it might lie, the God module, in the head. They certainly remembered the terrors of the Black Khmer, trepanned, lobotomized, and Godless . . . on the Plain of Jars.’ There was another murmured conversation with the nurse. The surgeon swivelled, and explained: ‘Jake, this is it. In approxim ately ninety seconds, the cryoprobe will be the correct temperature. So if you want to turn back, you need to speak up
now
.’
Jake’s heartbeat was chaotic: skipping with fear. He quelled his terror with another question:
‘No. I want to know, why you carried on with the surgeries, if you had these doubts.’
Fishwick nodded, his face a shadow behind the lights.
‘Because I kept
convincing
myself . . . against the growing evidence. After all, there are
so many
good, solid, Darwinian explanations for why religious faith has evolved. And yet I also had evidence of the necessity of faith. People who have faith are healthier, happier, they live longer, they even have stronger immune systems. This is scientific fact. So I became . . . very confused.’ The nurse was calling Fishwick to scrutinize a larger machine, which resembled an ECG monitor. The surgeon softly spoke to the nurse, and returned to his theme. ‘Then, one day, quite recently, I discovered another very curious fact during my research. It’s Parkinson’s disease. People who have Parkinson’s, even the mildest form .
. .
are less likely to be believers.’
The nurse was standing with the rubber mask, ready to hand it over.
‘And that means?’ Jake grasped at the last shreds of this reality. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It is therefore at least arguable that
atheism is a form of dementia
. Consider that!
Atheism is a kind of psychosis, a mental illness
. The healthy mind is, very very truly, a mind that believes.’ An electronic chime rang across the room. ‘OK Jake, that’s the signal. The temperature is now right, we need to do this . . .
Right now.
We can’t wait any longer.’
‘Wait, I want to know.’ Even as the rubber mask of anaesthesia was clamped over his mouth, Jake felt the cry of a question in his Godless mind. ‘I still don’t know
why? Why are we meant to believe?’
But his question was met by the black silence of unconsciousness.