The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories Part 44

Darwin Anathema.

Stephen Baxter.

Trailed by a porter with her luggage, Mary Mason climbed down the steamer's ramp to the dock at Folkestone, and waited in line with the rest of the pa.s.sengers to clear security.

Folkestone, her first glimpse of England, was unprepossessing, a small harbour in the lee of cliffs fronting a dismal, smoke-stained townscape from which the slender spires of churches protruded. People crowded around the harbour, the pa.s.sengers disembarking, stevedores labouring to unload the hold. There was a line of horse-drawn vehicles waiting, and one smoky-looking steam carriage. The ocean-going steams.h.i.+p, its rusting flank a wall, looked too big and vigorous for the port.

Mary, forty-five years old, felt weary, stiff, faintly disoriented to be standing on a surface that wasn't rolling back and forth. She had come to England all the way from Terra Australis to partic.i.p.ate in the Inquisition's trial of Charles Darwin, a man more than a century dead. Back home in Cooktown it had seemed a good idea. Now she was here it seemed utterly insane.

At last the port inspectors stared at her pa.s.separtout, cross-examined her about her reasons for coming to England - they didn't seem to know what a "natural philosopher" was - and then opened every case. One of the officials finally handed back her pa.s.separtout. She checked it was stamped with the correct date: 9 February 2009. "Welcome to England," he grunted.

She walked forward, trailed by the porter.

"Lector Mason? Not quite the harbour at Cooktown, is it? Nevertheless I hope you've had a satisfactory voyage."

She turned. "Father Brazel?"

Xavier Brazel was the Jesuit who had coordinated her invitation and pa.s.sage. He was tall, slim, elegant; he wore a modest black suit with a white clerical collar. He was a good bit younger than she was, maybe thirty. He smiled, blessed her with two fingers making a cross sign in the air, and shook her hand. "Call me Xavier. I'm delighted to meet you, truly. We're privileged you've agreed to partic.i.p.ate in the trial, and I'm particularly looking forward to hearing you speak at St Paul's. Come, I have a carriage to the rail station ..." Nodding at the porter, he led her away. "The trial of Alicia Darwin and her many-times-great-uncle starts tomorrow."

"Yes. The s.h.i.+p was delayed a couple of days."

"I'm sorry there's so little time to prepare, or recover."

"I'll be fine."

The carriage was small but st.u.r.dy, pulled by a pair of patient horses. It clattered away through crowded, cobbled streets.

"And I apologise for the security measures," Xavier said. "A tiresome welcome to the country. It's been like this since the 29 May attacks."

"That was six years ago. They caught the Vatican bombers, didn't they?" Pinp.r.i.c.k attacks by Muslim zealots who had struck to commemorate the 550th anniversary of the Islamic conquest of Constantinople - and more than 120 years after a Christian coalition had taken the city back from the Ottomans.

He just smiled. "Once you have surrounded yourself with a ring of steel, it's hard to tear it down."

They reached the station where the daily train to London was, fortuitously, waiting. Xavier already had tickets. Xavier helped load Mary's luggage, and led her to an upper-cla.s.s carriage. Aside from Mary everybody in here seemed to be a cleric of some kind, the men in black suits, the few women in nuns' wimples.

The train pulled away. Clouds of sooty steam billowed past the window.

A waiter brought coffees. Xavier sipped his with relish. "Please, enjoy."

Mary tasted her coffee. "That's good."

"French, from their American colonies. The French do know how to make good coffee. Speaking of the French - have you visited Britain before? As it happens this rail line follows the track of the advance of Napoleon's Grande Armee in 1807, through Maidstone to London. You may see the monuments in the towns we pa.s.s through . . . Are you all right, Lector? You don't seem quite comfortable."

"I'm not used to having so many clerics around me. Terra Australis is a Christian country, even if it followed the Marxist Reformation. But I feel like the only sinner on the train."

He smiled and spoke confidentially. "If you think this is a high density of dog-collars you should try visiting Rome."

She found herself liking him for his humour and candour. But, she had learned from previous experience, Jesuits were always charming and manipulative. "I don't need to go to Rome to see the Inquisition at work, however, do I?"

"We prefer not to use that word," he said evenly. "The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, newly empowered under Cardinal Ratzinger since the 29 May attacks, has done sterling work in the battle against Ottoman extremists."

"Who just want the freedom of faith they enjoyed up until the 1870s Crusade."

He smiled. "You know your history. But of course that's why you're here. The presence of unbiased observers is important; the Congregation wants to be seen to give Darwin a fair hearing. I have to admit we had refusals to partic.i.p.ate from philosophers with specialities in natural selection-"

"So you had to settle for a historian of natural philosophy?"

"We are grateful for your help. The Church as a whole is keen to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings. The purpose of the Congregation's hearings is to clarify the relations.h.i.+p between theology and natural philosophy, not to condemn. You'll see. And frankly," he said, "I hope you'll think better of us after you've seen us at work."

She shrugged. "I guess I'm here for my own purposes too." As a historian she'd hope to gather some good material on the centuries-long tension between Church and natural philosophy, and maybe she could achieve more at the trial itself than contribute to some kind of Inquisition propaganda stunt. But now she was here, in the heart of the theocracy, she wasn't so sure.

She'd fallen silent. Xavier studied her with polite concern. "Are you comfortable? Would you like more coffee?"

"I think I'm a little over-tired," she said. "Sorry if I snapped." She dug her book out of her bag. "Maybe I'll read a bit and leave you in peace."

He glanced at the spine. "H. G. Wells. The War of the Celestial Spheres."

"I'm trying to immerse myself in all things English."

"It's a fine read, and only marginally heretical." He actually winked at her.

She had to laugh, but she felt a frisson of unease.

So she read, and dozed a little, as the train clattered through the towns of Kent, Ashford and Charing and others. The towns and villages were cramped, the buildings uniformly stained black with soot. The rolling country was cluttered with small farms where people in mud-coloured clothes laboured over winter crops. The churches were squat buildings like stone studs pinning down the ancient green of the countryside. She'd heard there was a monument to Wellington at Maidstone, where he'd fallen as he failed to stop Napoleon crossing the Medway river. But if it existed at all it wasn't visible from the train.

By the time the train approached London, the light of the short English day was already fading.

As a guest of the Church she was lodged in one of London's best hotels. But her room was lit by smoky oil lamps. There seemed to be electricity only in the lobby and dining room - why, even the front porch of her own home outside Cooktown had an electric bulb. And she noticed that the telegraph they used to send a message home to her husband and son was an Australian Maxwell design.

Still, in the morning she found she had a terrific view of the Place de Louis XVI, and of Whitehall and the Mall beyond. The day was bright, and pigeons fluttered around the statue of Bonaparte set atop the huge Christian cross that dominated the square. For a historian this was a reminder of the Church's slow but crus.h.i.+ng reconquest of Protestant England. In the eighteenth century a Catholic league had cooperated with the French to defeat Britain's imperial ambitions in America and India, and then in 1807 the French King's Corsican attack-dog had been unleashed on the homeland. By the time Napoleon withdrew, England was once more a Catholic country under a new Bourbon king. Looking up at Napoleon's brooding face, she was suddenly glad her own home was 12,000 miles away from all this history.

Father Xavier called for her at nine. They travelled by horse-drawn carriage to St Paul's Cathedral, where the trial of Charles Darwin was to be staged.

St Paul's was magnificent. Xavier had sweetened her trip around the world by promising her she would be allowed to give a guest sermon to senior figures in London's theological and philosophical community from the cathedral's pulpit. Now she was here she started to feel intimidated at the prospect.

But she had no time to look around. Xavier, accompanied by an armed Inquisition guard, led her straight through to the stairs down to the crypt, which had been extended to a warren of dark corridors with rows of hefty locked doors. In utter contrast to the glorious building above, this was like a prison, or a dungeon.

Xavier seemed to sense her mood. "You're doing fine, Lector."

"Yeah. I'm just memorizing the way out."

They arrived at a room that was surprisingly small and bare, for such a high-profile event, with plain plastered walls illuminated by dangling electrical bulbs. The centrepiece was a wooden table behind which sat a row of Inquisition examiners, Mary presumed, stern men all of late middle age wearing funereal black and clerical collars. Their chairman sat in an elaborate throne-like seat, elevated above the rest.

A woman stood before them - stood because she had no seat to sit on, Mary saw. The girl, presumably Alicia, Darwin's grand-niece several times removed, wore a sober charcoal-grey dress. She was very pale, with blue eyes and strawberry hair; she could have been no older than twenty, twenty-one.

On one side of her sat a young man, soberly dressed, good-looking, his features alive with interest. And on the other side, Mary was astounded to see, a coffin rested on trestles.

Xavier led Mary to a bench set along one wall. Here various other clerics sat, most of them men. On the far side were men and women in civilian clothes. Some were writing in notebooks, others sketching the faces of the princ.i.p.als.

"Just in time," Xavier murmured as they sat. "I do apologise. Did you see the look Father Boniface gave me?"

"Not the Boniface!"

"The Reverend Father Boniface Jones, Commissary General. Learned his trade at the feet of Commissary Hitler himself, in the old man's retirement years after all his good work during the Missionary Wars in Orthodox Russia ..."

"Who's that lot on the far side?"

"From the chronicles. Interest in this case is world-wide."

"Don't tell me who's in that box."

"Respectfully disinterred from his tomb in Edinburgh and removed here. He could hardly not show up for his own trial, could he? Today we'll hear the deposition. The verdict is due to be given in a couple of days - on the twelfth, Darwin's 200th anniversary."

Xavier said that the young man sitting beside Alicia was called Anselm Fairweather; a friend of Alicia, he was the theological lawyer she had chosen to a.s.sist her in presenting her case.

"But he's not a defence lawyer," Xavier murmured. "You must remember this isn't a civil courtroom. In this case the defendant happens to have a general idea of the charges she's to face, as a living representative of Darwin's family - the only one who would come forward, incidentally; I think her presence was an initiative of young Fairweather. But she's not ent.i.tled to know those charges or the evidence, nor to know who brought them."

"That doesn't seem just."

"But this is not justice in that sense. This is the working-out of G.o.d's will, as focused through the infallibility of the Holy Father and the wisdom of his officers."

The proceedings opened with a rap of Jones's gavel. A clerk on the examiners' bench began to scribble a verbatim record. Jones instructed the princ.i.p.als present to identify themselves. Alongside him on the bench were other Commissaries, and a Prosecutor of the Holy Office.

When it was her turn, Mary stood to introduce herself as a Lector of Cooktown University, here to observe and advise in her expert capacity. Boniface actually smiled at her. He had a face as long and grey as the Reverend Darwin's coffin, and the skin under his eyes was velvet black.

A Bible was brought to Alicia, and she read Latin phrases from a card.

"I have no Latin," Mary whispered to Xavier. "She's swearing an oath to tell the truth, right?"

"Yes. I'll translate . . ."

Boniface picked up a paper, and began to work his way through his questions, in Latin that sounded like gravel falling into a bucket. Xavier whispered his translation: "By what means and how long ago she came to London."

Mercifully the girl answered in English, with a crisp Scottish accent. "By train and carriage from my mother's home in Edinburgh. Which has been the family home since the Reverend Charles Darwin's time."

"Whether she knows or can guess the reason she was ordered to present herself to the Holy Office."

"Well, I think I know." She glanced at the coffin. "To stand behind the remains of my uncle, while a book he published 150 years ago is considered for its heresy."

"That she name this book."

"It was called A Dialogue on the Origin of Species by Natural Selection."

"That she explain the character of this book."

"Well, I've never read it. I don't know anybody who has. It was put on the Index even before it was published. I've only read second-hand accounts of its contents ... It concerns an hypothesis concerning the variety of animal and vegetable forms we see around us. Why are some so alike, such as varieties of cat or bird? My uncle drew a.n.a.logies with the well-known modification of forms of dogs, pigeons, peas and beans and other domesticated creatures under the pressure of selection for various desirable properties by mankind. He proposed - no, he proposed an hypothesis - that natural variations in living things could be caused by another kind of selection, unconsciously applied by nature as species competed for limited resources, for water and food. This selection, given time, would shape living things as surely as the conscious manipulation of human trainers."

"Whether she believes this hypothesis to hold truth."

"I'm no natural philosopher. I want to be an artist. A painter, actually-"

"Whether she believes this hypothesis to hold truth."

The girl bowed her head. "It is contrary to the teachings of Scripture."

"Whether the Reverend Charles Darwin believed the hypothesis to hold truth."

She seemed rattled. "Maybe you should open the box and ask him yersel' ..." Her lawyer, Anselm Fairweather, touched her arm. "I apologise, Father. He stated it as an hypothesis, an organizing principle, much as Galileo Galilei set out the motion of the Earth around the sun as an hypothesis only. Natural selection would explain certain observed patterns in nature. No doubt the truth of G.o.d's holy design lies beneath these observed patterns, but is not yet apprehended by our poor minds. Charles set this out clearly in his book, which he presented as a dialogue between a proponent of the hypothesis and a sceptic."

"Whether she feels the heresy is properly denied in the course of this dialogue."

"That's for you to judge. I mean, his intention was balance, and if that was not achieved, it is only through the poor artistry of my uncle, who was a philosopher before he was a writer, and-"

"Whether she is aware of the injunction placed on Charles Darwin on first publication of this book."

"That he destroy the published edition, and replace it with a revision more clearly emphasizing the hypothetical nature of his argument."

"Whether she is aware of his compliance with this injunction."

"I'm not aware of any second edition. He fled to Edinburgh, whose Royal Society heard him state his hypothesis, and received his further work in the form of transactions in its journal."

Xavier murmured to Mary, "Those Scottish Presbyterians. Nothing but trouble."

"Whether she approves of his departure from England, as a.s.sisted by the heretical criminals known as the Lyncean Academy."

"I don't know anything about that."

"Whether she approves of his refusal to appear before a properly appointed court of the Holy Office."

"I don't know about that either."

"Whether she approves of his non-compliance with the holy injunction. "

"As I understand it he felt his book was balanced, therefore it wasn't heretical as it stood, and therefore the injunction was not applicable ..."

So the hearing went on. The questioning seemed to have nothing to do with Darwin's philosophical case, which after all was the reason for Mary's presence here, but was more a relentless badgering of Alicia Darwin over the intentions and beliefs of her remote uncle - questions she couldn't possibly answer save in terms of her own interpretation, a line Alicia bravely stuck to.

To Mary, the trial began to seem a shabby epilogue to Darwin's own story. He had been a bright young cleric, with vague plans to become a Jesuit, who had signed on to a s.h.i.+p of discovery, the Beagle, in the year 1831: the English never a.s.sembled an empire, but they remained explorers. On board he had come under the influence of the work of some of the bright, radical thinkers from Presbyterian Edinburgh - the "Scottish Enlightenment", as the historians called it. And in the course of his travels Darwin saw for himself islands being created and destroyed, and island-bound species of cormorants and iguanas that seemed obviously in flux between one form and another . . . Far from the anchoring certainties of the Church, it was no wonder he had come home with a head full of a vision that had obsessed him for the rest of his life - but it was a vision fraught with danger.

All this was a long time ago, the voyage of the Beagle nearly 200 years past. But the Church thought in centuries, and was now exacting its revenge.

Alicia had volunteered to partic.i.p.ate in this trial as an honour to her uncle, just as Mary had. Mary had imagined it would all be something of a formality. Yet the girl seemed slim, frail, defenceless standing there before the threatening row of theocrats before her - men who, Mary reminded herself uneasily, literally had the power of life and death over Alicia. Once, during the course of the questioning, Alicia glanced over at Mary, one of the few women in the room. Mary deliberately smiled back. No, I don't know what the h.e.l.l we've got ourselves into here either, kid.

At last it ended for the day. Alicia had to glance over and sign the clerk's handwritten transcript of the session. She was ordered not to leave without special permission, and sworn to silence. She looked shocked when she was led away to a cell, somewhere in the crypt warren.

Mary stood. "She wasn't expecting that."