“We could stop somewhere—”
“No. Drive. Just drive. Big Bear’s so far…” She closed the glove box but remained sitting forward, as though that position gave her relief. “Anyway, physics and biology are the disciplines that most fascinate Pollack — especially molecular biology.”
“Why molecular biology?”
“Because the more we understand living things on a molecular level, the clearer it becomes that everything is intelligently designed. You, me, mammals, fish, insects, plants, everything.”
“Wait a second. Are you tossing away evolution here?”
“Not entirely. Wherever molecular biology takes us, there might still be a place for Darwin’s theory of evolution — in some form.”
“You’re not one of those strict fundamentalists who believe we were created exactly five thousand years ago in the Garden of Eden.”
“Hardly. But Darwin’s theory was put forth in 1859, before we had any knowledge of atomic structure. He thought the smallest unit of a living creature was the cell — which he saw as just a lump of adaptable albumen.”
“Albumen? You’re losing me.”
“The origin of this basic living matter, he thought, was most likely an accident of chemistry — and the origin of all species was explained through evolution. But we now know cells are enormously complex structures of such clockwork design that it’s impossible to believe they are accidental in nature.”
“We do? I guess I’ve been out of school a long time.”
“Even in the matter of the species…Well, the two axioms of Darwinian theory — the continuity of nature and adaptable design — have never been validated by a single empirical discovery in nearly a hundred and fifty years.”
“Now you have lost me.”
“Let me put it another way.” She still leaned forward, staring out at the dark hills and the steadily rising glow of the sprawling suburbs beyond. “Do you know who Francis Crick is?”
“No.”
“He’s a molecular biologist. In 1962, he shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Maurice Wilkins and James Watson for discovering the three-dimensional molecular structure of DNA — the double helix. Every advancement in genetics since then — and the countless revolutionary cures for diseases we’re going to see over the next twenty years — spring directly from the work of Francis Crick and his colleagues. Crick is a scientist’s scientist, Joe, to no degree a spiritualist or mystic. But do you know what he suggested a few years ago? That life on earth may well have been designed by an extraterrestrial intelligence.”
“Even highbrows read the National Enquirer, huh?”
“The point is — Crick was unable to square what we now know of molecular biology’s complexity with the theory of natural selection, but he was unwilling to suggest a Creator in any spiritual sense.”
“So…enter the ever-popular god-like aliens.”
“But it totally begs the issue, you see? Even if every form of life on this planet was designed by extraterrestrials…who designed them?”
“It’s the chicken or the egg all over again.”
She laughed softly, but the laughter mutated into a cough that she couldn’t easily suppress. She eased back, leaning against the door once more — and glared at him when he tried to suggest that she needed medical attention.
When she regained her breath, she said, “Loren Pollack believes the purpose of human intellectual striving — the purpose of science — is to increase our understanding of the universe, not just to give us better physical control of our environment or to satisfy curiosity, but to solve the puzzle of existence God has put before us.”
“And by solving it to become like gods ourselves.”
She smiled through her pain. “Now you’re tuned to the Pollack frequency. Pollack thinks we’re living in the time when some key scientific breakthrough will prove there is a Creator. Something that is…an interface with the infinite. This will bring the soul back to science — lifting humanity out of its fear and doubt, healing our divisions and hatreds, finally uniting our species on one quest that’s both of the spirit and of the mind.”
“Like Star Trek.”
“Don’t make me laugh again, Joe. It hurts too much.”
Joe thought of Gem Fittich, the used-car dealer. Both Pollack and Fittich sensed an approaching end to the world as they knew it, but the oncoming tidal wave that Fittich perceived was dark and cold and obliterating, while Pollack foresaw a wave of purest light.
“So Pollack,” she said, “founded Infiniface to facilitate this quest, to track research worldwide with an eye toward projects with…well, with metaphysical aspects that the scientists themselves might not recognize. To ensure that key discoveries were shared among researchers. To encourage specific projects that seemed to be leading to a breakthrough of the sort Pollack predicts.”
“Infiniface isn’t a religion at all.”
“No. Pollack thinks all religions are valid to the extent that they recognize the existence of a created universe and a Creator — but that then they bog down in elaborate interpretations of what God expects of us. What’s wanted of us, in Pollack’s view, is to work together to learn, to understand, to peel the layers of the universe, to find God…and in the process to become His equals.”
By now they were out of the dark hills and into suburbs again. Ahead was the entrance to the freeway that would take them east across the city.
As he drove up the ramp, heading toward Glendale and Pasadena, Joe said, “I don’t believe in anything.”
“I know.”
“No loving god would allow such suffering.”
“Pollack would say that the fallacy of your thinking lies in its narrow human perspective.”
“Maybe Pollack is full of shit.”
Whether Rose began to laugh again or fell directly victim to the cough, Joe couldn’t tell, but she needed even longer than before to regain control of herself.
“You need to see a doctor,” he insisted.
She was adamantly opposed. “Any delay…and Nina’s dead.”
“Don’t make me choose between—”
“There is no choice. That’s my point. If it’s me or Nina…then she comes first. Because she’s the future. She’s the hope.”
Orange-faced on first appearance, the moon had lost its blush and, stage fright behind it, had put on the stark white face of a smugly amused mime.
Sunday night traffic on the moon-mocked freeway was heavy as Angelenos returned from Vegas and other points in the desert, while desert dwellers streamed in the opposite direction, returning from the city and its beaches: ceaselessly restless, these multitudes, always seeking a greater happiness — and often finding it, but only for a weekend or an afternoon.
Joe drove as fast and as recklessly as he dared, weaving from lane to lane, but keeping in mind that they could not risk being stopped by the highway patrol. The car wasn’t registered in either his name or Rose’s. Even if they could prove it had been loaned to them, they would lose valuable time in the process.
“What is Project 99?” he asked her. “What the hell are they doing in that subterranean facility outside Manassas?”