The Source - Michael Cordy [119]
They must, he concluded, as his mind drifted back to the Source, to when he had died and looked down upon his body . . .
He feels no pain or grief as, from above, he watches the nymphs strip off his clothes and lower his naked body into the small pool beneath the monolith and the hydra. He floats in the mineral-rich water, like a bather in the Dead Sea, as the bullet wound on his chest and the larger exit wound on his back bloom rose-red in the milky water.
The nymphs, at least twenty, form a semicircle round the monolith, as though in worship. Some of its facets remind Ross of the metallic, phosphorous-rich Schreibersite meteor-stone he gave Lauren after his last trip to Uzbekistan – but every other aspect of it is unique, unlike anything he has seen in all his years of geology.
The nymphs begin a new chant, high and pure, which makes the monolith vibrate. Then a small section of its crust cracks and shears off to reveal clear crystal, which quickly clouds, like metal oxidizing. As the segment falls into the pool and breaks into perfectly regular shapes the nymphs step back. The water fizzes and bubbles like a witch's potion and, as Ross's head sinks below the surface, his perspective changes. He is no longer in the chamber looking down on himself: he is staring out at an endless horizon, unlimited by space or time. He had read once that a dying man's life flashes before him in his last moments, but in this instance the curtain of time draws back and the history of all life flashes before him. He sees everything – from the birth of the planet 4.5 billion years ago to the present – with godlike intuition.
He can see hundreds and thousands of meteorites raining down from the heavens, scarring and deforming the Earth's barren crust. Until one seminal meteorite with exactly the right amalgam of amino acids hits a section of crust containing the perfect complementary mix of chemicals, heat and water. The massive energy generated by this unique marriage of amino-acid-rich meteorite and receptive Mother Earth fuses the donor amino acids into peptides – only a step away from lifegiving proteins – and creates a miraculous progeny: the monolith.
They say that water plus chemistry equals biology. In this instance, water catalyses the monolith's life-giving properties, seeding bacteria, germinating the hydra, and helping spread the spores of life across the globe. He sees the hydra begin as a single-cell bacterium then evolve to encompass all life forms – fauna, flora and mineral – in one organism, in one epic lifetime. He now understands why Father Orlando called it the Tree of Life and Death: it embodies every facet of existence.
He witnesses the moment, millions of years ago, when the Source and its garden are eventually cordoned off by lava and sealed in volcanic rock. By then, however, the genie has escaped from the bottle. The last outpost to benefit directly from – and need – the Source's miraculous power is the fountain in the doomed lost city. All other life on earth has long since learnt to adapt outside its orbit, upgrading its original genetic instructions to the more self-sufficient DNA. Only the garden and its inhabitants now depend on the Source's concentrated life force to survive.
Time rushes forward to Pizarro's conquest of Peru half a millennium ago. Ross sees the conquistadors and the Church lay claim and waste to the jungle and its inhabitants, exploiting what they can. Then he witnesses the loggers and the oil companies follow in their destructive footsteps. When Ross considers how he has served the oil companies, without thinking or caring about the consequences to the planet, overwhelming shame washes through him.
So this is what happens when you die, he thinks. There's no God or Devil, no Heaven or Hell, only a final reckoning with your conscience, when all lies are stripped away and you feel the collective pain of all those you've wronged and the collective joy of those you've helped.