‘We like, in our Christian inheritance, to think that God made us in His image. It’s more certain that we made Him in our image.
‘And where does that image live? Beyond matrix, beyond time, beyond space-time. Was it intuition that dreamed up such a place, which scientists now believe might exist?’
‘You make,’ I replied, ‘religion sound like a unitary matter. In its many sects, in fact, it has proved divisive throughout Earth’s history, a perennial cause of war and bloodshed.’
‘But we are creating Mars’s history now,’ said Crispin, smiling and allowing a glimpse of his gold tooth, while Belle, scowling radiantly, said, ‘Tom, let me quote a phrase Oliver Cromwell once used: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken!”‘
I let myself be persuaded by their eloquence. ‘As long as you don’t start sacrificing goats,’ I said.
‘Heavens,’ Crispin said. ‘Just show me a Martian goat!’
The discussion then turned to other subjects, on which agreement was reached with unique ease, and – with everyone’s assistance – Adminex accordingly drew up and put on record our laws.
As Arnold Poulsen was about to depart as silently as he had come, I caught his sleeve and asked him what he made of the debate.
‘Despite wide divergence of opinion, you were agreeable together, and so able to come to an agreeable conclusion. Did you not find that a little unexpected?’ He brushed his hair back from his forehead and scrutinised me narrowly.
‘Arnold, you are being oblique. What are you saying?’
‘From my childhood,’ he said, in his high voice, ‘I recall a phrase expressing unanimity: “Their hearts beat as one”. Perhaps you agree that seemed to be the state of affairs here just now. Even Feneloni was amenable to a point…’
‘Supposing it to be so, what follows?’
He paused, clutching his mouth in a momentary gesture, as if to prevent what it would say. ‘Tom, we have difficulties enough here, Upstairs. You have difficulties enough, trying to resolve the ambiguities of human conduct by sweet reason.’
‘Well?’
Smiling, he sat down again and, with a gesture, invited me to sit by him as the hall was clearing. He then proceeded to remind me of the extract from Wallace’s Malay Archipelago that Crispin Barcunda – ‘very usefully’, as Poulsen put it – had read to the company. Poulsen had thought about the passage for a long while. Why should a community of people, those islanders characterised by Wallace as ‘savages’, live freely without all the quarrels that afflicted the Western world? Without, indeed, the struggle for existence? Such utopianism could not be achieved by intellect and reason alone.
Was there an underlying physical reason for the unity of these so-called savages? Arnold said he had set his quantputer to analysing the known factors. Results indicated that the communities Wallace referred to were small, in size not unlike our stranded Martian community. It was not impossible to suppose – and here, he said, he had consulted the hospital authorities, including Mary Fangold – that one effect of isolation and proximity was that heartbeats synchronised, just as women sleeping in dormitories all menstruated at the same time of the month.
On Mars we presented a case of all hearts beating as one.
The result of which was an unconscious sense of unity, even unanimity.
Poulsen had established a small research group within the scientific community. Kathi had referred to it. To be brief, the group had decided that an oscillating wave of some kind might serve as a sort of drumbeat to assist synchronisation. In the end, adapting some of Mary Fangold’s spare equipment, they had produced and broadcast a soundwave below audibility levels. That is to say, they had filled the domes with an infrasound drumbeat below a frequency of 16 hertz.
‘You tried this experiment without consulting anyone?’ I demanded.
‘We consulted each other.’ He spoke in the light, rather amused tone into which he frequently slipped. ‘We knew there would be protests from the generality, as there always are when anything new is introduced.’
‘But what was the result of your experiment?’
Arnold Poulsen laid a thin hand on my shoulder, saying, ‘Oh, we’ve been running the beat for six days now. You saw the benevolent results in our discussion. All hearts beat as one. Science has delivered your Utopia to you, Tom … The human mind has been set free.’