She turned at the gravelly voice. A heavy-set, intense man of around fifty was walking towards her. He was dressed in subdued, plain black robes which swished a little as he moved. This was her contact: Monsignor Boyle, a high-up in the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science.
‘Monsignor.’
Boyle eyed the bizarre artwork. ‘The works here are five hundred years old. The artists, students of Raphael, were enthused by the rediscovery of part of Nero’s palace.’ He sounded British, his tones measured and even. ‘You must forgive the Vatican its eccentricities.’
‘Eccentric or not, the Holy See is a state which has signed up to the UN’s conventions on the creation, exploitation and control of artificial sentience –’
‘Which is why you are here.’ Boyle smiled. ‘Americans are always impatient. So. What do you know about Eva Himmelfarb?’
‘She was a priest. A Jesuit. An expert in organic computing, who –’
‘Eva Himmelfarb was a fine scholar, if undisciplined. She was pursuing her research – and, incidentally, working on a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy – and suddenly she produced a book, that book, which has been making such an impact in theoretical physics … And then, just as suddenly, she killed herself. Eva’s text begins as a translation of the last canto of the Paradiso –’
‘In which Dante sees God.’
‘ … Loosely speaking. And then the physical theory, expressed in such language and mathematics as Eva could evidently deploy, simply erupts.’
Himmelfarb’s bizarre, complex text had superseded string theory by modelling fundamental particles and forces as membranes moving in twenty-four-dimensional space. Something like that, anyhow. It was, according to the experts who were trying to figure it out, the foundation for a true unified theory of physics. And it seemed to have come out of nowhere.
Boyle was saying, ‘It is as if, tracking Dante’s footsteps, Eva had been granted a vision.’
‘And that’s why you resurrected her.’
‘Ah.’ The Monsignor nodded coolly. ‘You are an amateur psychoanalyst. You see in me the frustrated priest, trapped in the bureaucratic layers of the Vatican, striving to comprehend another’s glimpse of God.’
‘I’m just a San Francisco cop, Monsignor.’
‘Well, I think you’ll have to try harder than that, officer. Do you know how she killed himself?’
‘Tell me.’
‘She rigged up a microwave chamber. She burned herself to death. She used such high temperatures that the very molecules that had composed her body, her brain, were destroyed; above three hundred degrees or so, you see, even amino acids break down. It was as if she was determined to leave not the slightest remnant of her physical or spiritual presence.’
‘But she didn’t succeed. Thanks to you.’
The fat Monsignor’s eyes glittered. He clapped his hands.
Pixels, cubes of light, swirled in the air. They gathered briefly in a nest of concentric spheres, and then coalesced into a woman: thin, tall, white, thirty-ish, oddly serene for someone with a sparrow’s build. Her eyes seemed bright. Like Boyle, she was wearing drab cleric’s robes.
The Virtual of Eva Himmelfarb registered surprise to be here, to exist at all. She looked down at her hands, her robes, and Boyle. Then she smiled at Philmus. Her surface was slightly too flawless.
Philmus found herself staring. This was one of the first generation of women to take holy orders. It was going to take some getting used to a world where Catholic priests could look like air stewardesses.
Time to go to work, Philmus. ‘Do you know who you are?’
‘I am Eva Himmelfarb. And, I suppose, I should have expected this.’ She was German; her accent was light, attractive.
‘Do you remember –’
‘What I did? Yes.’
Philmus nodded. She said formally, ‘We can carry out full tests later, Monsignor Boyle, but I can see immediately that this projection is aware of us, of me, and is conscious of changes in her internal condition. She is self-aware.’
‘Which means I have broken the law,’ said Monsignor Boyle dryly.
‘That’s to be assessed.’ She said to Himmelfarb, ‘You understand that under international convention you have certain rights. You have the right to continued existence for an indefinite period in information space, if you wish it. You have the right to read-only interfaces with the prime world … It is illegal to create full sentience – self-awareness – for frivolous purposes. I’m here to assess the motives of the Vatican in that regard.’
‘We have a valid question to pose,’ murmured the Monsignor, with a hint of steel in his voice.
‘Why did I destroy myself?’ Himmelfarb laughed. ‘You would think that the custodians of the true Church would rely on rather less-literal means to divine a human soul, wouldn’t you, officer, than to drag me back from Hell itself? – Oh, yes, Hell. I am a suicide. And so I am doomed to the seventh circle, where I will be reincarnated as a withered tree. Have you read your Dante, officer?’
Philmus had, in preparation for the case.
The Monsignor said softly, ‘Why did you commit this sin, Eva?’
Himmelfarb flexed her Virtual fingers, and her flesh broke up briefly into fine, cubic pixels. ‘May I show you?’
The Monsignor glanced at Philmus, who nodded.
The lights dimmed. Philmus felt sensors probe at her exposed flesh, glimpsed lasers scanning her face.
The five-hundred-year-old painted willow branches started to rustle, and from the foliage inhuman eyes glared at her.
Then the walls dissolved, and Philmus was standing on top of a mountain.
She staggered. She felt light on her feet, as if giddy.
She always hated Virtual transitions.
The Monsignor was moaning.
She was on the edge of some kind of forest. She turned, cautiously. She found herself looking down the terraced slope of a mountain. At the base was an ocean which lapped, empty, to the world’s round edge. The sun was bright in her eyes.
A few metres down, a wall of fire burned.
The Monsignor walked with great shallow bounds. He moved with care and distaste; maybe donning a Virtual body was some kind of venial sin.
Himmelfarb smiled at Philmus. ‘Do you know where you are? You could walk through that wall of fire, and not harm a hair of your head.’ She reached up to a tree branch and plucked a leaf. It grew back instantly. ‘Our natural laws are suspended here, officer; like a piece of art, everything gives expression to God’s intention.’
Boyle said bluntly, ‘You are in Eden, officer Philmus, at the summit of Mount Purgatory. The last earthly place Dante visited before ascending into Heaven.’
Eden?
The trees, looming, seemed to crowd around her. She couldn’t identify any species. Though they had no enviroshields, none of the trees suffered any identifiable burning or blight.
She found herself cowering under the blank, unprotected sky.
Maybe this was someone’s vision of Eden. But Philmus had been living under a Dome for ten years; this was no place she could ever be at peace.
‘What happened to the gravity?’
Himmelfarb said, ‘Gravity diminishes as you ascend Purgatory. We are far from Satan here … I can’t