Origin: (Robert Langdon Book 5) Page 38

  Ambra leaned forward, looking down intently at the source of Langdon’s excitement. The block behind the palace was formed by four well-lit streets, intersecting to create a square that was orientated north–south like a diamond. The diamond’s only flaw was that its lower-right border was awkwardly bent—skewed by an uneven jog in the line—leaving a crooked perimeter.

  “Do you recognize that jagged line?” Langdon asked, pointing to the diamond’s skewed axis—a well-lit street perfectly delineated against the darkness of the wooded palace grounds. “Do you see the street with the little jog in it?”

  All at once Ambra’s exasperation seemed to disappear, and she cocked her head to peer down more intently. “Actually, that line is familiar. Why do I know it?”

  “Look at the entire block,” Langdon urged. “A diamond shape with one strange border in the lower right.” He waited, sensing Ambra would recognize it soon. “Look at the two small parks on this block.” He pointed to a round park in the middle and a semicircular park on the right.

  “I feel like I know this place,” Ambra said, “but I can’t quite …”

  “Think about art,” Langdon said. “Think about your collection at the Guggenheim. Think about—”

  “Winston!” she shouted, and turned to him in disbelief. “The layout of this block—it’s the exact shape of Winston’s self-portrait in the Guggenheim!”

  Langdon smiled at her. “Yes, it is.”

  Ambra wheeled back to the window and stared down at the diamond-shaped block. Langdon peered down too, picturing Winston’s self-portrait—the bizarrely shaped canvas that had puzzled him ever since Winston had pointed it out to him earlier tonight—an awkward tribute to the work of Miró.

  Edmond asked me to create a self-portrait, Winston had said, and this is what I came up with.

  Langdon had already decided that the eyeball featured near the center of the piece—a staple of Miró’s work—almost certainly indicated the precise spot where Winston existed, the place on the planet from which Winston viewed the world.

  Ambra turned back from the window, looking both joyful and stunned. “Winston’s self-portrait is not a Miró. It’s a map!”

  “Exactly,” Langdon said. “Considering Winston has no body and no physical self-image, his self-portrait understandably would be more related to his location than to his physical form.”

  “The eyeball,” Ambra said. “It’s a carbon copy of a Miró. But there’s only one eye, so maybe that’s what marks Winston’s location?”

  “I was thinking the same thing.” Langdon turned to the pilot now and asked if he could set the helicopter down just for a moment on one of the two little parks on Winston’s block. The pilot began to descend.

  “My God,” Ambra blurted, “I think I know why Winston chose to mimic Miró’s style!”

  “Oh?”

  “The palace we just flew over is the Palace of Pedralbes.”

  “¿Pedralbes?” Langdon asked. “Isn’t that the name of—”

  “Yes! One of Miró’s most famous sketches. Winston probably researched this area and found a local tie to Miró!”

  Langdon had to admit, Winston’s creativity was astonishing, and he felt strangely exhilarated by the prospect of reconnecting with Edmond’s synthetic intelligence. As the helicopter dropped lower, Langdon saw the dark silhouette of a large building located on the exact spot where Winston had drawn his eye.

  “Look—” Ambra pointed. “That must be it.”

  Langdon strained to get a better view of the building, which was obscured by large trees. Even from the air, it looked formidable.

  “I don’t see lights,” Ambra said. “Do you think we can get in?”

  “Somebody’s got to be here,” Langdon said. “Edmond must have staff on hand, especially tonight. When they realize we have Edmond’s password—I suspect they will scramble to help us trigger the presentation.”

  Fifteen seconds later, the helicopter touched down in a large semicircular park on the eastern border of Winston’s block. Langdon and Ambra jumped out, and the chopper lifted off instantly, speeding toward the stadium, where it would await further instructions.

  As the two of them hurried across the darkened park toward the center of the block, they crossed a small internal street, Passeig dels Til·lers, and moved into a heavily wooded area. Up ahead, shrouded by trees, they could see the silhouette of a large and bulky building.

  “No lights,” Ambra whispered.

  “And a fence,” Langdon said, frowning as they arrived at a ten-foot-high, wrought iron security fence that circled the entire complex. He peered through the bars, unable to see much of the building in the forested compound. He felt puzzled to see no lights at all.

  “There,” Ambra said, pointing twenty yards down the fence line. “I think it’s a gate.”

  They hurried along the fence and found an imposing entry turnstile, which was securely locked. There was an electronic call box, and before Langdon had a chance to consider their options, Ambra had pressed the call button.

  The line rang twice and connected.

  Silence.

  “Hello?” Ambra said. “Hello?”

  No voice came through the speaker—just the ominous buzz of an open line.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said, “but this is Ambra Vidal and Robert Langdon. We are trusted friends of Edmond Kirsch. We were with him tonight when he was killed. We have information that will be extremely helpful to Edmond, to Winston, and, I believe, to all of you.”

  There was a staccato click.

  Langdon immediately put his hand on the turnstile, which turned freely.

  He exhaled. “I told you someone was home.”

  The two of them hurriedly pushed through the security turnstile and moved through the trees toward the darkened building. As they got closer, the outline of the roof began to take shape against the sky. An unexpected silhouette materialized—a fifteen-foot symbol mounted to the peak of the roof.

  Ambra and Langdon stopped short.

  This can’t be right, Langdon thought, staring up at the unmistakable symbol above them. Edmond’s computer lab has a giant crucifix on the roof?

  Langdon took several more steps and emerged from the trees. As he did, the building’s entire facade came into view, and it was a surprising sight—an ancient Gothic church with a large rose window, two stone steeples, and an elegant doorway adorned with bas-reliefs of Catholic saints and the Virgin Mary.

  Ambra looked horrified. “Robert, I think we just broke our way onto the grounds of a Catholic church. We’re in the wrong place.”

  Langdon spotted a sign in front of the church and began to laugh. “No, I think we’re in the exact right place.”

  This facility had been in the news a few years ago, but Langdon had never realized it was in Barcelona. A high-tech lab built inside a decommissioned Catholic church. Langdon had to admit it seemed the ultimate sanctuary for an irreverent atheist to build a godless computer. As he gazed up at the now defunct church, he felt a chill to realize the prescience with which Edmond had chosen his password.

  The dark religions are departed & sweet science reigns.

  Langdon drew Ambra’s attention to the sign.

  It read:

  BARCELONA SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER

  CENTRO NACIONAL DE SUPERCOMPUTACIÓN

  Ambra turned to him with a look of disbelief. “Barcelona has a supercomputing center inside a Catholic church?”

  “It does.” Langdon smiled. “Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.”

  CHAPTER 81

  THE TALLEST CROSS in the world is in Spain.

  Erected on a mountaintop eight miles north of the monastery of El Escorial, the massive cement cross soars a bewildering five hundred feet in the air above a barren valley, where it can be seen from more than a hundred miles away.

  The rocky gorge beneath the cross—aptly named the Valley of the Fallen—is the final resting place of more than forty thousa
nd souls, victims of both sides of the bloody Spanish Civil War.

  What are we doing here? Julián wondered as he followed the Guardia out onto the viewing esplanade at the base of the mountain beneath the cross. This is where my father wants to meet?

  Walking beside him, Valdespino looked equally confused. “This makes no sense,” he whispered. “Your father always despised this place.”

  Millions despise this place, Julián thought.

  Conceived in 1940 by Franco himself, the Valley of the Fallen had been billed as “a national act of atonement”—an attempt to reconcile victors and vanquished. Despite its “noble aspiration,” the monument sparked controversy to this day because it was built by a workforce that included convicts and political prisoners who had opposed Franco—many of whom died from exposure and starvation during construction.

  In the past, some parliamentary members had even gone so far as to compare this place to a Nazi concentration camp. Julián suspected his father secretly felt the same way, even if he could never say so openly. For most Spaniards, the site was regarded as a monument to Franco, built by Franco—a colossal shrine to honor himself. The fact that Franco was now entombed in it only added fuel to the critics’ fire.

  Julián recalled the one time he had been here—another childhood outing with his father to learn about his country. The king had shown him around and quietly whispered, Look carefully, son. One day you’ll tear this down.

  Now, as Julián followed the Guardia up the stairs toward the austere facade carved into the mountainside, he began to realize where they were going. A sculpted bronze door loomed before them—a portal into the face of the mountain itself—and Julián recalled stepping through that door as a boy, utterly transfixed by what lay beyond.

  After all, the true miracle of this mountaintop was not the towering cross above it; the true miracle was the secret space inside it.

  Hollowed out within the granite peak was a man-made cavern of unfathomable proportions. The hand-excavated cavern tunneled back nearly nine hundred feet into the mountain, where it opened up into a gaping chamber, meticulously and elegantly finished, with glimmering tile floors and a soaring frescoed cupola that spanned nearly a hundred and fifty feet from side to side. I’m inside a mountain, young Julián had thought. I must be dreaming!

  Now, years later, Prince Julián had returned.

  Here at the behest of my dying father.

  As the group neared the iron portal, Julián gazed up at the austere bronze pietà above the door. Beside him, Bishop Valdespino crossed himself, although Julián sensed the gesture was more out of trepidation than faith.

  CHAPTER 82

  ConspiracyNet.com

  BREAKING NEWS

  BUT … WHO IS THE REGENT?

  Evidence has now surfaced proving that assassin Luis Ávila was taking his kill orders directly from an individual he called the Regent.

  The identity of the Regent remains a mystery, although this person’s title may provide some clues. According to dictionary.com, a “regent” is someone appointed to oversee an organization while its leader is incapacitated or absent.

  From our User Survey “Who Is the Regent?”—our top three answers currently are:

  1. Bishop Antonio Valdespino taking over for the ailing Spanish king

  2. A Palmarian pope who believes he is the legitimate pontiff

  3. A Spanish military officer claiming to be acting on behalf of his country’s incapacitated commander in chief, the king

  More news as we have it!

  #WHOISTHEREGENT

  CHAPTER 83

  LANGDON AND AMBRA scanned the facade of the large chapel and found the entrance to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center at the southern tip of the church’s nave. Here, an ultramodern Plexiglas vestibule had been affixed to the outside of the rustic facade, giving the church the hybrid appearance of a building caught between centuries.

  In an outer courtyard near the entrance stood a twelve-foot-tall bust of a primitive warrior’s head. Langdon couldn’t imagine what this artifact was doing on the grounds of a Catholic church, but he was fairly certain, knowing Edmond, that Kirsch’s workplace would be a land of contradictions.

  Ambra hurried to the main entrance and pressed the call button at the door. As Langdon joined her, a security camera overhead rotated toward them, scanning back and forth for several long moments.

  Then the door buzzed open.

  Langdon and Ambra quickly pushed through the entrance into a large foyer that was fashioned from the church’s original narthex. It was an enclosed stone chamber, dimly lit and empty. Langdon had expected someone would appear to greet them—perhaps one of Edmond’s employees—but the lobby was deserted.

  “Is there no one here?” Ambra whispered.

  They became aware of the soft, pious strains of medieval church music—a polyphonic choral work for male voices that sounded vaguely familiar. Langdon couldn’t place it, but the eerie presence of religious music in a high-tech facility seemed to him a product of Edmond’s playful sense of humor.

  Glowing in front of them on the wall of the lobby, a massive plasma screen provided the room’s sole light. The screen was projecting what could only be described as some kind of primitive computer game—clusters of black dots moving around on a white surface, like groups of bugs wandering aimlessly.

  Not totally aimlessly, Langdon realized, now recognizing the patterns.

  This famous computer-generated progression—known as Life—had been invented in the 1970s by a British mathematician, John Conway. The black dots—known as cells—moved, interacted, and reproduced based on a preordained series of “rules” entered by the programmer. Invariably, over time, guided only by these “initial rules of engagement,” the dots began organizing themselves into clusters, sequences, and recurring patterns—patterns that evolved, became more complex, and began to look startlingly similar to patterns seen in nature.

  “Conway’s Game of Life,” Ambra said. “I saw a digital installation years ago based on it—a mixed-media piece titled Cellular Automaton.”

  Langdon was impressed, having heard of Life himself only because its inventor, Conway, had taught at Princeton.

  The choral harmonies caught Langdon’s ear again. I feel like I’ve heard this piece. Perhaps a Renaissance Mass?

  “Robert,” Ambra said, pointing. “Look.”

  On the display screen, the bustling groups of dots had reversed direction and were accelerating, as if the program were now playing backward. The sequence rewound faster and faster, backward in time. The number of dots began diminishing … the cells no longer splitting and multiplying but recombining … their structures becoming simpler and simpler until finally there were only a handful of them, which continued merging … first eight, then four, then two, then …

  One.

  A single cell blinked in the middle of the screen.

  Langdon felt a chill. The origin of life.

  The dot blinked out, leaving only a void—an empty white screen.

  The Game of Life was gone, and faint text began to materialize, growing more pronounced until they could read it.

  If we admit a First Cause,

  the mind still craves to know

  whence it came and how it arose.

  “That’s Darwin,” Langdon whispered, recognizing the legendary botanist’s eloquent phrasing of the same question Edmond Kirsch had been asking.

  “Where do we come from?” Ambra said excitedly, reading the text.

  “Exactly.”

  Ambra smiled at him. “Shall we go find out?”

  She motioned beside the display screen to a columned opening that appeared to connect to the main church.

  As they stepped across the lobby, the display refreshed again, now showing a collage of words that appeared randomly on the screen. The number of words grew steadily and chaotically, with new words evolving, morphing, and combining into an intricate array of phrases.

  … growth … fresh bud
s … beautiful ramifications …

  As the image expanded, Langdon and Ambra saw the words evolve into the shape of a growing tree.

  What in the world?

  They stared intently at the graphic, and the sound of the a cappella voices grew louder around them. Langdon realized that they were not singing in Latin as he had imagined, but in English.

  “My God, the words on the screen,” Ambra said. “I think they match the music.”

  “You’re right,” Langdon agreed, seeing fresh text appear on-screen as it was being sung simultaneously.

  … by slowly acting causes … not by miraculous acts …

  Langdon listened and watched, feeling strangely disconcerted by the combination of words and music; the music was clearly religious, yet the text was anything but.

  … organic beings … strongest live … weakest die …

  Langdon stopped short.

  I know this piece!

  Edmond had taken Langdon to a performance of it several years ago. Titled Missa Charles Darwin, it was a Christian-style mass in which the composer had eschewed the traditional sacred Latin text and substituted excerpts from Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to create a haunting juxtaposition of devout voices singing about the brutality of natural selection.

  “Bizarre,” Langdon commented. “Edmond and I heard this piece together a while back—he loved it. Such a coincidence to hear it again.”

  “No coincidence,” boomed a familiar voice from the speakers overhead. “Edmond taught me to welcome guests into my home by putting on some music they would appreciate and showing them something of interest to discuss.”

  Langdon and Ambra stared up at the speakers in disbelief. The cheerful voice that welcomed them was distinctly British.

  “I’m so glad you’ve found your way here,” said the very familiar synthetic voice. “I had no way to contact you.”

  “Winston!” Langdon exclaimed, amazed to feel such relief from reconnecting with a machine. He and Ambra quickly recounted what had happened.