The Veritas Conflict (49 page)

“What?”

“A faculty list from the 1700s.”

“No kidding!”

“Well, that’s what it looks like, anyway.” Claire hurried over to the bookshelves on the far side of the room. She disappeared into one row, her voice floating back to Ian at his table. “You can never tell with these things until you actually find the document.”

Ian turned back to his ledger.
Preston … Pierce … Pryce…
He heard rustling and saw Claire returning, a stack of books in her hands.

“I think these might have some faculty lists.” She set the stack down across from Ian and flipped open the first cover, looking at the table of contents.

“Aren’t you supposed to be looking for more Pike donations?”

Claire’s head shot up, her mouth open in consternation.

Ian chuckled. “Just kidding.”

“Not funny, Ian!”

“Sorry. I’m sure Mansfield will approve.”

“I hope so.” She bent back to the book.

“Claire …” When she looked up, Ian smiled reassuringly. “Mansfield may be famous, but he’s a brother in Christ and a very kind person. You’ve already impressed him, which is unusual for someone he hasn’t known long. If you work hard for him, you could have a great opportunity to continue in the future. You don’t need to worry. Just be yourself.”

He picked up the magnifying glass and looked back at the yellowed page. And there it was … 
Bertram Pike
. He started and bent closer to the page. “I think I have another one. This ones really faded, but … oh, man! I’m sure it says something about Pike Fellowships!”

Claire set down her book and came around the table behind him. “Let me try?” Claire took the offered magnifying glass. “I can’t read the first three words, but that … yes … it says something about some amount of sterling for the Pike Fellowship at … um … Harvard College.”

“Can you read the city where Bertram lived?”

“The first letter is S. its not Cambridge.”

“Somerville?”

“Could be. Right next door!”

“Was
there even a Somerville in the 1700s?”

Claire shrugged. “I have no idea. But even if there wasn’t, that’s another Pike and another note about these Fellowships.” She walked back around the table. “This is amazing. You know, given how hard this sort of research is, we could’ve looked for weeks and not found a thing. I kind of feel like God is setting this up.”

“Yes. Thank You, Lord, and if there’s more to be found, help us find it!”

“Amen.”

Claire sat down and began flipping through the books, again muttering softly to herself as she worked.

Ian glanced over at her once, amused. She was kind of cute. Too bad she was so young.… He returned to his task, the soft rustling of pages a nice background noise.

After a while the rustling stopped. He glanced up. Claire was bent over a slim book with a navy cover, reading something intently. There were half a dozen books just like it beside her elbow. She pulled another book off that stack and opened it to a particular page. He started to return to the ledger.

“You’re not going to believe this.” Claire’s voice was soft.

His head snapped up, and he raised his eyebrows.

She flipped the two books around so he could see the covers. “These are the printed documentation of decades of Harvard instructors and classes and board members and officers, all that sort of thing.” She held the books open, showing him several pages. “See here, and here—two other Pikes, one of them on the board.”

Ian slowly sat back in his chair. He stared around the quiet room then across the table at her solemn expression. “I’m getting the creeps.”

“Me, too.” She pulled the books back. “Can we pray for a minute?”

“Gladly.” Without thinking, he reached across the table and grabbed her hand. He felt her tight grip, the tension in her hands. “O God, we don’t know What’s going on here. But, Lord, You do. Please guide us and protect us. We’ve asked You to help us find anything there was to find. Well … now we’ve found something. And we don’t know what it means or what to do with it. Help us, O Lord.”

He paused, and Claire picked up the prayer. “Father, thank You for the opportunity to work for You. Thank You for being with us. I also pray that You would send Your angels to surround and protect us. And please, Lord, help us dwell in the shadow of the Most High, as Psalm 91 says. Amen.”

Claire looked up. “I think we need to be praying about this a lot more.”

“I agree. There’s something going on here—”

The door creaked suddenly, and both students jumped.

Mansfield stared at their expressions and laughed. “I didn’t mean to frighten you!”

“It wasn’t you that frightened us.” Ian gestured Mansfield over. “Take a look”

Mansfield took a seat and looked over the documents. After a moment he grew very still. “We need to pray about this.”

“We did.”

“I’ll bet.” He pushed his chair back from the table and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. For a long moment, he rested his forehead in his hand, his eyes closed. Ian and Claire waited respectfully.

“First of all,” his voice was quiet, and he didn’t lift his head, “I don’t know what all this means, but I feel like we’re seeing the patterns of an intricate web being woven behind the scenes. And it doesn’t give me a good feeling.” He sighed and straightened in his chair. “I think we’d better look for the modern-day Pike Fellowships as soon as possible.”

Ian glanced over at Claire. “This is actually a pretty good week for me. I could do it tomorrow after class. Next week things start to get much more dicey.”

“Tomorrow and Wednesday would be sort of hard with my schedule,” Claire said. “I could go during lunchtime, but that would only give me about an hour. But please go without me if you need more time.”

Mansfield chuckled. “No, my dear. Clearly, you have a gift for this sort of thing.”

“How about you and I go Thursday after history class lets out?” Ian looked at Mansfield for confirmation. “
If
Claire can spend a few days digging around to find the right office and contacts beforehand so we don’t have to waste any time. Then we can grab lunch after class and head over to the appropriate place as soon as we’re done.”

“I think lunch is a good idea,” Mansfield said, “and it will give us a chance to discuss this more thoroughly. And Claire, I agree with Ian. You need to do the advance work to find out the right office before you all go over there.”

“I don’t think I can until after my philosophy class on Wednesday.” At Mansfield’s raised eyebrow, she said, “I know you asked me to be available for this job, and I
could
do it earlier if I had to. But we’re debating abortion during Wednesday’s class, and I really want to make sure I’m well prepared.”

“Ah, understandable. Well, just make sure it gets done. There’s something going on here, and I have a feeling we need to move quickly. And one other thing. Will you be prepared for my test on Thursday?”

Claire straightened abruptly in her chair and slapped a hand to her forehead.

“I was afraid of that.” Mansfield grinned and glanced over at Ian. “Why doesn’t my TA here give you a quick review of the material once you’re done here? I’ve seen from
your class participation that you’ve kept up well with all of the readings, and I don’t want your test performance to suffer simply because you’re working for me.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Mansfield stood up, and both students rose to their feet as well. “Thank you both for your dedication. I think we’re on God’s trail, and I look forward to seeing where it takes us.”

FORTY-FOUR

T
HE BROWN GRASS CRUNCHED UNDER HER FEET
as Claire hurried across Harvard Yard. She was eager for the shelter of Emerson. Like everyone else who had to be out on such a bitter day, she had her parka hood pulled tight over her head.

She smiled as she remembered Ian’s comment from the night before, as he walked her back to her dorm through the biting wind:
“Maybe this weather is why some Bostonians always look grumpy.”

Their review session last night had been a surprise; he had spent much more time on it than she expected. Not that it wasn’t an appropriate thing for him to do, she thought hastily, being such a conscientious TA and all. She had spent so much time on Mansfield’s project; it was nice of him to recognize that she hadn’t had much time with her history books.

Their time in one of the secluded booths at Loker Commons had gone so quickly that neither of them had noticed the sky growing dark outside or the clock ticking past the time the food court closed. Naturally, they had figured they should have a pizza delivered while they continued studying.

Naturally
. Claire giggled, even as her mind grappled with the surprising events of the previous night. Ian had been the perfect picture of reserve; friendly but polite. Even the matter-of-fact pizza dinner had been somewhat businesslike. But then he had insisted on walking her back to her dorm. What was
that all
about?

Boys
, she thought,
are a different species
.

She reached the imposing facade of Emerson and wrenched the heavy doors open just enough to slip inside. Several people were hurrying quietly through the echoing hallway. The eleven o’clock classes had already started.

Nuts. Of all the classes to be late for…

She slipped into the back of the giant auditorium. Ian was down on the stage in front, going over arrangements for Thursday’s test. Mansfield was turning around from writing on the whiteboard. She tried to steer her eyes away from the podium as she cast around for an empty seat.

The room was packed. No one wanted to miss the last class before the test. Where on earth was she going to—

In a frozen moment, she saw the one empty seat. First row center, right in front of
the podium. She groaned slightly and slunk down the steps to the ground row, sure that every eye was focused on her.

As she hurried to her seat and slid into the chair, her backpack brushed the books and papers on her neighbors desk. They fell to the floor with a crash, and papers went skittering across the tiled floor to the base of the stage. She jumped to retrieve the materials, dropping her own half-open backpack with a bang. She apologized under her breath and sat back in her seat, wincing as she looked up at the stage.

Mansfield and Ian were standing side by side right at the edge, their arms crossed, looking down at her.

“Well, well, Miss Rivers,” Mansfield drawled in his best Southern accent, “how nice of you to join us.”

Her face red, Claire stood up slightly and sketched a half bow to the class, which broke up into good-natured laughter.

“So as we can see, the close of the Middle Ages saw a gradual but inexorable shift from a theologically based paradigm to a science-centered paradigm.” Mansfield was in the last ten minutes of his lecture, wrapping up the Middle Ages before Ian’s test review. “From a day in which the idea of God was paramount and people would believe something simply because the church said it was so, to a day in which something had to be demonstrated and proven to the peoples satisfaction.

“Prior to that change, discussion and argument—and fiat—were the only ways to defend a set of beliefs. But with the advent of the scientific method, theories were hypothesized and then proven by scientific testing. The scientific method—” he turned briefly to the class—“I would write that down, by the way—is still the one we use today.

“As you’ll remember from your reading, the last gasp of the previous system came in 1634, when Galileo was condemned by the pope and forced to recant—under the threat of torture—his scandalous contention that the earth revolved around the sun. In 1600 another unfortunate astronomer, Giordano Bruno, had been burned at the stake for sticking to that theory. Galileo, under the same threat, was forced to declare that the earth was, indeed, the center of the universe. He then lived under house arrest for the rest of his life.

“Then, in 1687, Sir Isaac Newton wrote his masterpiece,
Principia
.” The professor walked back to the podium and briefly held up an old tome. “Using mathematical physics,
Principia
provided an accurate working model of the planetary systems and proved—contrary to what the church was declaring—that the earth was not the center of the universe.

“That was the beginning of the end of the church’s dominance over every area of
peoples thoughts and lives. Before Newton, the church—remember, a weighty, all-encompassing institution since the conversion of Constantine—would say ‘X is true,’ and the people accepted it. After Newton, the church said ‘X is true,’ and the people said ‘Prove it.’

“This one shift brought about the end of the Middle Ages. The Catholic church lost much control over the intellectual and cultural life of Europe. And as people began to question long-held scientific ideas, philosophers arose to question long-held moral notions as well. Descartes—’I think, therefore I am—in his philosophy of rationalism proposed that our human
reason
was now the only reliable source of knowledge. Spinoza suggested applying mathematics to understand the world. And so on.

“The first of these philosophers—like Newton himself—were devout Christian believers trying to delve deeper into the mysteries of Gods moral laws. But as the years progressed from the Newtonian discrediting of the church, each succeeding generation went from producing philosophers of faith to producing openly skeptical atheists. The first such philosopher of that new age was David Hume, the self-titled ‘extreme skeptic.”

Mansfield wrote a few notes on the board. “In the mid-1700s, Hume coined the philosophy of empiricism, which basically says that human reason is important, but since it is based on the input of our faulty human senses, we can never really
know
anything for certain, including about our own existence and especially about the existence of the supernatural.” Mansfield looked back at the busy pens of his audience and grinned. “You don’t need to write this down; its context only. I’ll leave the memorization of the specifics to your philosophy classes.”