Gruber’s breathing sounded shallower. The once robust publisher now delivered his thoughts in shorter sentences, all designed to fit into his diminished capacity. But, everything he said still had power. Power because of who he was. Power because of the legacy and power because of the resources at his command, which included the muscle to manipulate thought.
“Take the measurement of a cubit. How big?” McCauley asked.
“One point five feet. Basically the distance between the fingertips and the elbow. That’s what’s generally accepted,” Jaffe said
“What if you’re wrong, Al? What if translations were imprecise?”
The younger man nodded. He realized he had accepted dogma as truth. But McCauley insisted that his students look beyond simple explanations for answers that would define the position.
“What if a cubit was really more like eight, nine, or ten feet? Wouldn’t Noah’s Ark be bigger? A lot bigger?”
“A lot,” Jaffe agreed.
McCauley extended the hypothesis. “So that would mean that instead of fitting on a boat some four hundred and fifty feet long by seventy-five feet wide by forty-five feet high, as Genesis claims, the ark could have been a great deal larger.”
Jaffe put his hands a foot apart as if holding a small ship. Then he moved them apart creating a space ten times bigger. “Maybe 4,500 feet long,” he exclaimed. “Nearly a mile. You’d sure get a helluva lot of creatures booked on that sailing.”
“Have you ever thought of a cruise, Mr. Gruber? Maybe the ocean air could help.”
“I’ve never found the idea of a burial at sea appealing.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Kavanaugh tried to sound sincere.
“No cruise. I will die at my desk or in my bed. I am prepared to accept my future. I ask the same of you. Are you, my boy? Are you?”
Kavanaugh was amazed how Gruber could so quickly pivot on a word and turn a discussion around. He’d have to do better himself. There really are things to learn from the old man, he thought.
“I am, sir.” Kavanaugh framed it as a promise more than a casual reply. He felt that Gruber needed assurance. If he equivocated, then Gruber would somehow find another replacement. Colin Kavanaugh would not let that happen. Not for Martin Gruber, not for his teachers at the seminary years earlier. Not for his own commitment to The Path.
Leslie Cohen jumped deeper into history. “Come on, there are unadulterated facts. The Big Bang occurred fourteen-plus billion years ago. The earth is 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old. It took early forms of life a couple of billion years more to emerge. Way before the dinosaurs came and went. Way, way, way before our ancestral hominids yelled ‘fire’ around 100,000 years ago. Hell, dinosaur fossils I uncovered this week could be carbon dated back some sixty-five million years.”
“But believers in a Young Earth claim the planet is only five, six, maybe seven thousand years old,” McCauley countered again. “Same bones, just different conclusions.”
“What about natural selection?” Rodriguez proposed. “The food chain. We look at carnage of natural selection and see it as the process of adaptation. One species survives, another doesn’t. Speciation.”
“And?” McCauley challenged.
“And what?”
“And the answer is simply survival, not evolution. The good make it. The bad don’t. In this universe of thought, science and creationism coexist. It’s a powerful argument backed by powerful people.”
“And are you prepared?”
“You have prepared me, Mr. Gruber.”
“I have taught you. But are you prepared? They are two different questions.”
“They are two questions with one answer. You have taught me. I am prepared.”
Trent slammed his bottle on the table. “People have been trying to reconcile this for ages. And no one will ever succeed!” He was letting emotion get the better of him. “Hell, modern geology goes back to Steno.” He was referring to Nicolas Steno, a Dutch cleric who published a treatise of fossils in 1669. Steno proposed the principles of rock strata formation. He claimed that fossils in the sedimentary rocks were the remains of animals that died in the Noachian Deluge — a flood, not necessarily the Flood, but maybe.
Trent summarized the history for the group explaining that the opinion gained traction with support from Englishman Thomas Burnet in his 1691 publication, A Sacred Theory of the Earth, in John Woodward’s 1695 book An Essay Toward a Natural Theory of the Earth, and William Whiston’s A New Theory of the Earth, which was published a year later.
“Very interesting, Mr. Trent. How about Comte Buffon?” Katrina Alpert asked.
No one recognized the name.
“Good person to add to the discussion. In the mid-eighteenth century, Buffon sparked to the notion of evolution. Like Darwin, he was a naturalist. He wrote Natural History, maybe the first real argument in favor of variation of the species.”
“And what happened to him?”
“He was slapped down, discredited and belittled by theologians at the Sorbonne in Paris.”
“Though it’s not in any record, our work goes as far back as the debates on evolution. And earlier. You recall the recantation of Comte Buffon, Mr. Kavanaugh?”
“I’m familiar with it,” the younger man replied.
“Become completely conversant with it. Study his denial. It established the fundamental response for years to come.” Gruber now quoted from memory: “‘I declare,’ said Buffon, ‘that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture, that I believe most firmly all therein related about creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses.’”
Kavanaugh was surprised by the retraction, but it reminded him of another, more famous example.
“Sounds familiar,” Cohen observed.
“Certainly not the first to cave to theological arguments,” Dr. Alpert added. “Perhaps he did so in order to quietly live out his life and continue his work.” She took another sip of the local brew. “Sometimes you do what you have to do.”
“Like Buffon, you will face obstructionists,” McCauley stated. “Religious, political, corporate, academic. They’ll question your hypotheses. They’ll reject your proposals. They’ll dismiss your research. They’ll pull your grants. They’ll shove every ‘saurous up your sore ass and test you to kingdom come. They push paper, but they don’t get their own hands dirty. They stay inside while you’re out baking in the sun. They live in the present. You make the past relevant. They say no and don’t even consider maybe. But I do have something to hang your hat on. The rejoinder of all rejoinders. Get this fundamental down and you’re set for life.”
Alpert didn’t know where McCauley was going.
“Here’s to the great British paleontologist — well, not really, but he sure said things right. William Shakespeare.”
They laughed.
“Come on raise your glasses. Do it.”
They complied.
“To William Shakespeare who put it best. ‘Past is prologue.’”
Tamburro reacted first. “Past is prologue!”
“Past is prologue!” the team responded bringing their glasses together. “Past is prologue,” they said again.
Dr. Katrina Alpert smiled. Maybe for the first time in years, she felt she’d come to the right place.