No luck.
In my room, I turned up the windows' sound insulation, and tried to psych myself into doing some work. The next morning I was scheduled to film a lecture by Helen Wu, chief advocate of the view that Mosalas methodology verged on circular logic. Before letting Munroe talk me into filming the inland divers, I'd been planning to spend the whole afternoon reading Wu's previous papers; I had a lot of catching up to do.
First, though…
I scanned the relevant databases (eschewing help from Sisyphus, and taking three times as long). The Pan-African Cultural Defense Front turned out to be a loose affiliation of fifty-seven radical traditionalist groups from twenty-three nations, with a council of representatives which met each year to decide strategies and issue proclamations. PACDF itself was twenty years old; it had appeared in the wake of a resurgence of the traditionalist debate in the early thirties, when a num ber of academics and activists, mostly in central Africa, had begun to speak of the need to "re-establish continuity" with the pre-colonial past. Political and cultural movements of the previous century—from Senghor's negritude to Mobutu's "authenticity" to Black Consciousness in all its forms—were dismissed as corrupt, assimilationist, or overly concerned with responding to colonialism and Westernization. The correct response to colonialism—according to the most vocal of the new traditionalists—was to excise it from history completely: to aim to behave, in its aftermath, as if it had never happened.
PACDF was the most extreme manifestation of this philosophy, taking an uncompromising and far from populist line. They decried Islam as an invader religion, as much as Christianity or Syncretism. They opposed vaccination, bioengineered crops, electronic communications. And if there was more to the group than a catalog of the foreign (or local, but insufficiently ancient) influences they explicitly renounced, they might have found it hard to differentiate themselves without such a hit-list. Many of the policies they advocated—wider official use of local languages, greater support for traditional cultural forms—were already high on the agenda of most governments, or were being lobbied for from other quarters. PACDF's raison d'être seemed to consist of being greater purists than anyone else. When the most effective anti-malarial vaccine on the planet was manufactured in Nairobi—based on research carried out in that well-known imperialist superpower, Colombia—condemning its use as "a criminal betrayal of traditional healing practices" sounded like sheer fundamentalist perversity to me.
If Violet Mosala had chosen to emigrate to Stateless, I would have thought they'd be glad to be rid of her. She might have been a hero on half the continent, but to PACDF she could never have been anything but a traitor. And I could find no report of a death threat, so maybe Savimbi's claim had been pure hype; the reality might have involved nothing more than an anonymous call to his news desk.
I plowed on, regardless. Maybe Kuwale's mysterious faction had revealed themselves by taking part in the other side of the debate? There was certainly no shortage of vocal opposition to PACDF—from more moderate traditionalists, from numerous professional bodies, from pluralist organizations, and from self-described technoliberateurs.
Mismatched initials aside, I couldn't quite see a member of the African Union for the Advancement of Science collaring journalists in airports and asking them to play unofficial bodyguard to a world-renowned physicist. And while the African Pluralists League organized worldwide student exchange programs, theatre and dance tours, physical and net-based art exhibitions, and lobbied aggressively against cultural isolationism and discriminatory treatment of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities… I doubted they had time on their hands to fret about Violet Mosala.
The late Muteba Kazadi had coined the term technoliberation, to mean both the empowerment of people through technology, and the "liberation" of the technology itself from restrictive hands. Muteba had been a communications engineer, poet, science writer—and Minister for Development in Zaire in the late thirties. I viewed some of his speeches, impassioned pleas for "the use of knowledge in the service of freedom"; he'd called for an end to the patenting of engineered crops, public ownership of communications resources, and a universal right of access to scientific information. As well as championing the obvious pragmatism of "liberation biology" (though Zaire had never gone renegade and used unlicensed crops), he'd spoken of the long-term need for African nations to participate in pure research in every area of basic science—an extraordinary stand at a time when such activities were deeply unpopular in the wealthiest countries on the planet, and unthinkable in terms of his own government's immediate priorities.
Muteba had had his eccentricities, his three biographers concurred, with a leaning toward Nietzschean metaphysics, fringe cosmology, and dramatic conspiracy theories—including the old one that "El Nido de Ladrones," the bioengineered haven built by drug runners on the Peruvian-Colombian border, had been H-bombed in 2035 not because the modified forest was out of control and threatening to overrun the whole Amazon basin, but because some kind of "dangerously liberating" neuroactive virus had been invented there. The act had been an obscenity, thousands of people had died—and the public outrage it attracted had quite possibly helped to save Stateless from a similar fate—but I thought the more prosaic explanation was far more likely to be true.
Learned commentators from every part of the continent stated that Muteba's legacy lived on, and that proud technoliberateurs were active across the face of Africa, and beyond. I found it difficult to pin down his direct intellectual descendants, though; hundreds of academic and political groups, and tens of thousands of individuals, cited Muteba as a source of inspiration—and many people who'd spoken out against PACDF in net debates had explicitly labeled themselves technoliberateurs—but each seemed to have adapted the philosophy to a slightly different agenda. I had no doubt that every one of them would have been horrified at the thought of Violet Mosala coming to harm—but I was no wiser as to who might have taken it upon themselves to watch over her.
Around seven, I headed downstairs. Sarah Knight still hadn't returned my call—and I could hardly blame her for snubbing me. I thought again about offering to hand back the project, but I told myself that I'd left it too late, and she'd probably committed herself to another assignment. The truth was, the more the complications surrounding Mosala mocked the fantasy I'd held of retreating into the "inconsequential" abstractions of TOEs, the harder it became to imagine walking away. If this was the reality behind the mirage, I had an obligation to face it.
I was heading toward the main restaurant when I spotted Indrani Lee coming down one of the corridors which led into the lobby. She was with a small group, but they were splitting up—with volleys of rejoinders and afterthoughts, as if they'd just emerged from a long, hectic meeting and couldn't bear each other's company any longer, but couldn't quite bring themselves to end the discussion, either. I approached; she saw me and raised a hand in greeting.
I said, "I missed you on the connecting flight. How are you settling in?"
"Fine, fine!" She seemed happy and excited; the conference was obviously living up to her expectations. "But you don't look at all well."
I laughed. "As a student, did you ever find yourself sitting for an exam where all the questions on the paper, and all the questions you'd stayed up until dawn preparing to answer… had so little in common that they might as well have come from two completely different subjects?"
"Several times. But what's brought on the déjà vu? Is all the mathematics going over your head?"
"Well, yes, but that's not the problem." I glanced around the lobby; no one was likely to overhear us, but I didn't want to add to the rumors about Mosala if I could help it. I said, "You looked like you were in a hurry. Maybe I'll bore you with all my tribulations on the flight back to Phnom Penh."
"In a hurry? No, I was just going out for some air. If you're not busy yourself, you're welcome to join me."
I accepted gratefully. I'd been planning to eat, but I still had no real appetite—and it occurred to me that Lee might have some professional insights into technoliberation which she'd be willing to share.
As we stepped through the doors, though, I could see what she'd really meant by "going out for some air": Mystical Renaissance had decided to show themselves, crowding the street outside the hotel. Banners read: TO EXPLAIN IS TO DESTROY! REVERE THE NUMEN! SAY NO TO TOE! T-shirts displayed Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Joseph Campbell, Fritjof Capra, the cult's late founder Gunter Kleiner, event artist Sky Alchemy—and even Einstein, poking his tongue out.
No one was chanting slogans; after Janet Walsh's confrontationist salvo, Mystical Renaissance had opted for a carnival atmosphere, all mime artists and fire-jugglers, palmists and tarot card readers. Tumbling firesticks cast oscillating deep-blue shadows everywhere, giving the street an oceanic cast. Bemused locals threaded their way through this obstacle course with expressions of weary resignation; they hadn't asked to have a circus shoved down their throats. So far as I could see, it was only a few badge-wearing conference members who were availing themselves of the free entertainment, or giving money to the buskers and fortune-tellers.
One of the cultists who'd stolen Albert was singing "Puff, the Magic Dragon," accompanying himself on a keyboard—a common brand, like his T-shirt; both had IR programming ports. I paused in front of him, smiling appreciatively, while I invoked some notepad software I'd written several years before, and quietly typed instructions. As we walked away, his keyboard fell silent—every volume level set to zero—and Einstein sprouted a thought balloon which read: "Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas."
Lee gave me an admonishing look. I said, "Come on! He was begging for it."
Further down the street, a small theatre group were in the middle of a compressed version of The Iceman Cometh, rewritten in contemporary MR vernacular. A woman in a clown costume tore at her hair and declaimed: "I've failed to be psychically attuned! Everyone in my net-clan would have remained closer to the healing numen, if only I'd respected their need to continue to be nourished by their imagination-driven self-narratives!" Images of tears flowed down her cheeks.
I turned to Lee. "Well, I'm convinced. I'm joining up tomorrow. And to think: I used to take the fragile beauty of the sunset and reduce it to ugly technical jargon."
"If you think this is painful, you should hear their five-minute Mahab'harata-as-Jungian-psychobabble." She shuddered. "But the original remains intact, doesn't it? And they have a right to their own… interpretation… as much as anyone." She didn't sound entirely convinced.
I said wearily, "I don't know what these people hoped to gain by coming here. Even if they disrupted the conference, all the research has already taken place; it's all going to be posted on the nets, regardless. And if the whole idea of a TOE offends them so deeply… they can just close their eyes to it, can't they? They've closed their eyes to every other scientific discovery which has failed to meet their stringent spiritual requirements."
Lee shook her head. "It's a matter of territorial defense. You must see that. A TOE effectively claims sovereignty over… the universe, and everyone in it. If a conference of lawyers in New York set themselves up as rulers of the cosmos, wouldn't you be tempted to go and thumb your nose at them, at the very least?"
I groaned. "Physics doesn't claim sovereignty. Least of all here, where the whole aim is to find the one thing about the universe which physicists and technologists will never have the power to change. Using crude political metaphors like 'sovereignty' or 'imperialism' is just empty rhetoric; no one at this conference is sending troops to annex the weak force to the strong force. Unification isn't being legislated or enforced. It's being mapped."
Lee said portentously, "Ah, the power of maps."
"Oh, stop it, you know exactly what I mean! As in a map of the sky, not a map of… Kurdistan. And with no constellations drawn in… or stars named." Lee smirked, as if she had a much, much longer list of culturally charged attributes in mind, and wasn't going to let me off the hook until I'd ruled out every one of them. I said, "All right, forget the whole metaphor! But the fact is: exactly the same TOE underlies the universe—and keeps these cultists alive, juggling, and spouting gibberish—whether the evil reductionist physicists are allowed to discover it, or not."
"Not according to the Anthrocosmologists, it doesn't." Lee offered a conciliatory smile. "But of course, yes, the laws of physics are whatever they are—and half of Mystical Renaissance would concede as much, in suitably evasive and conditional jargon. Most of them accept that the universe rules itself in some… systematic fashion. But they still feel deeply affronted by an explicit, mathematical formulation of that system.
"You say they should be satisfied with personal ignorance, rather than trying to keep the TOE out of human hands entirely. And of course, they'll go on believing whatever they like, even if a successful TOE is announced; they've never let scientific orthodoxy stand in their way before. But the very beliefs they've chosen to hold dictate that they can't ignore the fact that physicists—and geneticists, and neurobiologists—are tunneling ever deeper beneath everybody's feet, and dragging to the surface whatever they find there… and what they find will influence every culture on Earth, in the long run."
"And that's reason enough to come here and intimidate innocent people with the mutilated corpse of Eugene O'Neill?"
"Be fair: if you're conceding them the right to believe what they like, that has to include the right to feel threatened."
The play was coming to a close; one of the actors was delivering a monologue on the need to show only compassion to poor scientists who'd lost touch with the soul of Gaia.
I said, "So what do you call claiming to know the divine will of the Earth itself—if not an equally global land grab, couched in warmer and fuzzier terms?"
Lee gave me a puzzled frown. "But of course. MR are like everyone else; they want to define the world on their own terms. They want to set the parameters, they want to make all the rules. Naturally, they've evolved an elaborate strategy to try to mask that fact—such as describing themselves with words like 'generous,' 'open' and 'inclusive'—but I'm certainly not suggesting that they're any more humble, virtuous or tolerant than the most fanatical rationalist. I'm just trying to explain their beliefs to you as an outsider, as best I can."
"With your own universal explanatory scheme?"
"Exactly. That's my arduous duty: expert guide and interpreter to every subculture on Earth. The sociologist's burden. But then, who else could shoulder it?" She smiled solemnly. "I am, after all, the only objective person on the planet."
We walked on through the warm night, passing right out of the carnival. After a minute or two, I turned and looked back. From a distance, it was an odd sight, compacted by perspective and framed by the surrounding buildings: a flamboyant sideshow embedded in the middle of a city—going about its ordinary life—which had built itself out of the ocean, molecule by molecule, and knew it. The adjacent streets certainly looked mundane and colorless in comparison—full of ordinary pedestrians: no one dressed as harlequins, no one juggling fire or swallowing swords—but the memory of the afternoon's dive, and what it had revealed about the island, was enough to make all of the cult's self-conscious exotica and desperately cheerful busyness fade into insignificance.
I suddenly recalled what Angelo had said, the night before I left Sydney. We sanctify what we're stuck with. Maybe that was the heart of it, for Mystical Renaissance. Most of the universe had been inexplicable, for most of human history—and MR had inherited the strand of the culture which had doggedly made a virtue out of that necessity. They'd stripped away—or fed through a cultural blender, in a kind of mock-pluralism—the historical baggage of most of the specific religions and other belief systems which had done the same, in their day… and then inflated what remained into the essence of Big-H itself. To sanctify mystery is to be "fully human." Fail to do so, and you're something less: "soulless," "left-brained," "reductionist"… and in need of being "healed."
James Rourke should have been here. The Battle for the H-words was in full swing.
As we started back toward the hotel, I realized I'd meant to ask Lee a question which had almost slipped my mind.
I said, "Who are the Anthrocosmologists?" The term sounded as if it should have meant something to me, but—vague etymological inferences aside—it didn't.
Lee was hesitant. "I doubt you really want to know. If Mystical Renaissance raise your ire…"
"They're an Ignorance Cult? I've never heard of them."
"They're not an Ignorance Cult. And the word 'cult,' of course, is terribly value-laden and pejorative; although I use it in the vernacular sense like everyone else, I really shouldn't."