The Concurrencies - part II
Tensions rise as the party sit for dinner, but is it a truth or a betrayal of trust?
Eriks led the Mountjoy party to their table in the restaurant, which lay behind a heavy brocade curtain in the private alcove off to one side. They made sure they booked well in advance to ensure they would be seated here, as the muffled stillness the curtain brought when it was drawn across lent a special atmosphere to their proceedings.
They sat round the table in silence for a while, looking at each other with an air of expectancy until finally, Charlemagne broke the silence.
“So! My dear friends, we gather here … again, for the sixth time,” he said, with a beaming smile.
“But will it be the final time, Anne?” asked Peter, brusquely ignoring Charlmegane and facing Anne, directly “That is what we want to know.”
“Yes, will it, Anne? We prayed before dinner, and Peter heard something, didn’t you, Peter,” said Hilary “Tell them, Peter.”
“Well, I felt something, I’m sure of it. He spoke to me, in his way. I couldn't make it out, of course, just a feeling, you know how it is, when you have it.” There were nods around the table “But it was strong. A strong sense of…of direction; that I…we…are on the true path.”
Anne, sensing all eyes upon her, looked down and very deliberately unfolded her napkin, before laying it across her lap, before looking up to meet their collective gaze. She liked to choose her words carefully. “I always look forward to our gatherings, and it means a great deal to me that we have continued to meet, here, in this same place, eight dear, old friends that we are. But more important than our fellowship is what brought us together at the start.”
“It was mateus rosé wasn't it?” said Charlemagne.
“For goodness sake, Charlie!” admonished Letitia, swatting at him with her napkin.
Anne went on. “What I mean is that first, it was our faith that brought us together, but it’s been our belief, above all else, that has kept us together, on our most particular path, and our scholarship and dedication have lit the way.” Murmurs of ascent went round the table.
“And where do you think we are, today, Anne? “asked Letitia “I do so love our little secret mission, and it would seem such a shame to no longer be on the way somewhere, with you all, but every journey must have an end?”
“I was thinking the very same thing, Letitia, on the way here. Geoffrey and I discussed it at length. Because we have always had a goal, haven’t we, we of the Novus Septuaginta?” said Anne.
“The clue is in the name” interjected her husband, “The new translation.”
“We know what it means, dear,” said Anne tersely “We’ve known for forty years.”
“Well, I can never remember, so thank you Geoffrey,” said Letitia.
“That’s not quite right though is it Geoffers, old man,” said Charlemagne, leaning into the table slightly. “Translating isn't exactly what it’s about, is it?”
“And there’s rather fewer than seventy two of us either!” said Alan.
“Poetic licence, I think. Isn’t that right Geoffrey?” said Charlemagne.
“I think you will find that translation is the key to what we have been working on, Charlemagne. How else could we prove a concurrency without translating the source texts first? It's just logical.” Geoffrey looked around the table.
Charlemagne held up his hands “Geoffrey, regardless of what the name actually means, when you proposed it, we all loved it. It’s Latin; it’s biblical, it’s … perfect.”
“It actually means what it actually says, Charlemagne,” retorted Geoffrey, pulling out the dog-eared Latin dictionary he carried everywhere with him.
Anne had closed her eyes, the lids flickered slightly with the tension of keeping her impatience in check. She interrupted the two men. “If I might just finish? What I have been trying to say is, simply, that now a chance may have come to achieve what we set out to do, we cannot shy away from it, even if it means that we come to the end of our journey together.”
“And do you think we have come to the end, then Anne?” said Letitia “I shall be very sad if this is the last time that we all meet, of course, but all the same…”
“I jolly well hope it is the last time,” said Charlemagne, grinning “because I won't be able to carry all that bloody gadgetry when I'm in my 70s, if we have to come back again. And Christ knows we won't be able to afford another crack at it, eh Anne?” Hilary let out a quiet gasp of displeasure at Charlemagne's blasphemy and Anne went on
“Whether we succeed or not - and of course, I do hope that we shall - of course we will see each other again. It won't be the end of everything; perhaps we should think of it as being a change and not an end.”
“It will be the beginning of a new understanding,” said Geoffrey, with enthusiasm, “an end to millennia of the religious obfuscation of the religions. The truth of everything, and one which we shall have brought to light!”
“Don’t be so melodramatic, Geoffrey,” said Anne. “The way the world is, we may barely cause a ripple.”
“I don’t think it's melodramatic, Anne, to be on the cusp of something this important!”
“Oh, Geoffrey, please, we agreed not to raise hopes unnecessarily.”
“But the calculations, Anne!”
“It's probabilities, Geoffrey, statistics, not certainties.”
Geoffrey turned away from Anne with a snort of exasperation “Two years!” he said looking at the faces around the table in turn “She’s had me wait two years, you know, so that we could do this together. This is my vocation, my life’s work. The rest of you are just dabbling … no offence meant, of course, but the wait has been absolutely maddening!”
“What do you mean, two years, Geoffrey? Anne? What does he mean?” said Peter. Everyone stared fixedly at the pair. Anne fumed.
Geoffrey blinked. “Er.” he said, much subdued. “Well, it’s er… what I mean is that, er, Anne refined the, er, process, you might say, and we, that is, Anne and I, together, we, and especially Anne, really. Well, Anne, in fact, calculated that we had sufficient source texts to, er…”
“What Geoffrey is trying to say,” interrupted Anne “is that two years ago, I perfected a new methodology which, my calculations indicate, will give us our answer but I felt it would only be right to wait until we all met to share it with you, at a meeting of the Novus Septuaginta.”
“So, let me get this right, you’ve cracked it, but you’ve kept it to yourself for two years?” said Alan.
There was a long pause. “Yes, very probably. And yes,” said Anne “but I did think you would prefer that we were all together, given everything?” Anne surveyed the faces of the others.
“I think we might have brought forward the agenda, Anne, if we’d known you’ve been sat on it all this while. If you had bothered to ask us.”
“Yes, Anne. Alan and I postponed our honeymoon for this,” said Elizabeth.
“Didn't sound like it earlier, Lizzie.” said Charlemagne. Alan glowered, Elizabeth looked confused, and Letitia shuddered.
Anne placed both hands down on the table slowly and firmly before addressing the group. “The proceedings of the Novus Septuaginta have a very special meaning for all of us, and it was in that spirit that I chose to wait until now. I’m not going to apologise for doing what was right. What’s done is done. Now that we are here, as tradition intends, can we please focus on the positive?”
“But Anne, you know what this means to us. How could you not tell us?” said Peter, who had taken tight hold of Hilary’s hand. “The Word, Anne! The Word of God! You shouldn't have waited. It’s far too important!”
“I told you,” said Geoffrey, quietly, shaking his head.
“Thank you, Geoffrey, you've said enough! If you had said nothing, like we agreed, then nobody would have had cause to be upset!” Anne bridled.
“And have we been wasting our time, then, these past two years Anne? Because Lettuce and I, between us, have brought out half a dozen concurrencies this time, haven't we Darling?” said Charlemagne.
“Yes, we have indeed,'' confirmed Letitia as she reached beneath the table into her bag and brought out a leather-bound volume and laid it on the table. “And I don't mind telling you that the cuneiform has been frightful hard work. Just the worst.”
“So, Anne, have we been wasting our time? And I don't need to remind you that none of us is getting any younger!” Charlemagne asked again, joining Alan and Peter with folded arms. At this point, the other couples also began to bring out their workbooks. Each was a sombre looking black tome, embossed with the initials “NS - V” within a circle of 8 stars. Hilary opened her and Peter’s book and flicked through some pages, whispering to him. Charlemagne, Letitia, Elizabeth and Alan stared at Anne and Geoffrey.
“Not like you, Geoffrey old stick, to forget the book,” said Charlemagne, nodding towards the empty space on the table in front of him and Anne.
“We didn’t forget it, exactly,” said Geoffrey after a few uncomfortable moments. “It’s just... you see, we just, ahh. That is, Anne… well, Anne didn't think we would need it. Not with the, er, the quantum device.”
Anne’s eyes began to glisten as she suppressed tears, not of sadness, but of frustration at her thoughtless, insensitive stupid husband. Even if he had said nothing about what she had achieved, the fact he had not brought their book with him would have got the rest of them asking questions, just the same; and then to make it seem that she had told him not to bring it? How could he not see how dismissive of the others’ efforts this would make her appear!
Letitia, mistaking the reason for Anne’s glistening eyes, began to feel a little sorry for her and tried, as she always did, to diffuse the situation. “Oh Anne darling! It must seem that we’re all ganging up on you. How awful of us when you’ve done so much. Everyone, please, let's not squabble. It doesn't matter if Anne has worked it all out already, does it? I always thought she would, anyway, I mean, she’s the cleverest one among us, we all know that.”
“It depends on your definition of intelligence, but I agree with you Letitia” said Peter with a sigh “We have to put aside our pride and think about what’s most important, and if she really has got there, well…”
“It's very kind of you, Letitia,” interrupted Anne “but I have not worked it out. I have - probably - found a way to our goal. And even that is not quite the right way to describe it. We still have a way to go and that is why I haven't said anything sooner. It’s something I want all of us to do together, just as we intended from the start. Look, all of you, all of our efforts, your efforts, over the years. All the time we have spent, teasing out the concurrencies…it's all been invaluable…essential. Even what you may have done during the last two years…it's all fed into the mix. It's all part of the collective human knowledge of the Word, now that it is known. Whether you wrote it in your books, sent me an email, or even if we just discussed it over our meal, as we normally do, it’s all source. Don’t you see?”
There was silence, then Letitia spoke “I don’t think I really do follow you Anne. And this expensive computer thing we’ve brought with us…if you already have the answer, why did we have to bring all of that along? I mean, what is it for?”
Anne pressed her fingers to her temples. “I don’t think I can explain what the quantum interface is - and people far more clever than I struggle to explain how it works. But I can tell you what it will do. What it might do. Hopefully.”
“And can you tell us why it cost so bloody much while you’re at it?!” chided Charlemagne.
“Charlie, can you just for once fucking shut up!” Letitia snapped at him. The expletive had precisely the effect she wanted; she seldom swore, and it was always to good effect. “Now, Anne, please do go on.”
“Well, to put it as simply as possible… it will find concurrencies far more quickly and thoroughly than we can.”
“But we’ve not done a bad job of that ou, have we? I mean, wasn't it nearly a thousand, at the last count?” said Alan.
“No, Alan, it will find all of them. All possible concurrencies. From every source, every language, every religion and belief that has passed into human knowledge. Every word of everything we have experienced as being of the Divine. All of it. We mortals haven't scratched the surface.”
“Wait a minute…what do you mean… it will find them all? I thought, from what Geoffrey said, that you had found it already?”
“Well, that’s just it you see, Peter. That’s why I waited for us to be together. Even with the modern computers we’ve been able to use recently, finding concurrencies has taken years.”
“You’re not wrong there Anne” said Peter “and do you remember when we were doing it all pen and ink!
“That's right, Peter, and that first concurrency, the one that set us off, well we were lucky in a way to find that at all. Since then we have hardly got anywhere, not in a statistical sense. The quantum device changes everything. It does all of the calculations - makes all of the comparisons in our case - effectively at the same time. So once we start my program, it will be, well, theoretically it could be virtually instantaneous. And I wanted all of us to be there when it does. When the Word is revealed.”
Anne looked round the table at the variety of different expressions on their faces as they tried to assimilate what she had said before she went on. “And we can't do that round the dinner table like we have done before, comparing Sumerian and Aramaic translations from our workbooks over a glass of wine and a tiramisu. We have to do it properly. With reverence. There must be ceremony. We must make a sacred place, somewhere fitting for the true words of God to be spoken and heard. And that's what we’re going to do tomorrow.”
At that moment, almost as if on cue, the curtain was drawn back with a swish and chime of metal curtain hooks on the rail, and their starters arrived together with a bottle of champagne.
“Perfect timing, young man.” said Charlemagne, as Eriks began to pour, inexpertly, into the flutes. “I propose a toast” said Anne, when each of them had a glass.
“Let us all propose a toast!” said Charlemagne.
“Very well”, said Anne “Here’s to … tomorrow!”
“To the Truth!” said Geoffrey “to the beautiful Truth!”
“To knowing God!” said Peter
“Oh I don’t know!” said Hilary, flustered “you go next, Lizzie”
“To Love!” Elizabeth said, without hesitation, gazing at Alan.
“To …the new future!” said Alan, smiling back at her.
“To us, the Novus Septuaginta! May God bless us and all our good works not be in vain!” said Charlemagne, raising his glass the highest.
“To absent friends!” said Letitia. Alan and Elizabeth looked at each other, more seriously this time, before raising their glasses again “Yes, to our absent friends”, they said, everyone else joining in.
And then all eyes were on Hilary again, who still looked in a fluster but finally, she stood up, pushed her glass forward and said “Amen.”
“Ahh-bloody-men indeed!” said Charlemagne, after a moment, standing up smartly to join her and almost breaking his glass as he struck it against hers. Then the rest all stood at once with a chorus of Amens, glasses chinking musically together and Hilary smiling rapturously, her eyes wet with sudden tears.
The next part will be available here soon: The Concurrencies Part III
I love the mystery and tension you're developing here. Great job!