Chapter Three
Chapter Three
“Who?” asked Jason and Rutherford in unison.
“He was a Priest of the Ordo Sancti Benedicti—the Benedictine order—who lived from 1925 to 1994.” Casinde had gotten past his unwillingness to speak, but he still seemed less than enthusiastic about doing so. “He was an eminent musicologist, specializing in archaic music. He was also renowned throughout Italy as an exorcist.”
At first Jason wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “Did you say, ‘exorcist’?”
“Indeed. Thousands of people made the journey to the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice where he resided, in order to be freed from demons.”
“Uh . . . somehow I didn’t think the Catholic Church was still doing that sort of thing in the second half of the twentieth century.”
“Oh, but it was. So were certain other Christian denominations. The Anglicans, for example, codified exorcism rites as late as 1972. Admittedly, starting in the nineteenth century its scope had become more limited, with the emergence of psychophysical explanations for numerous cases of what had once been attributed to possession. And efforts were made to restrain the enthusiasm of ignorant country priests and restrict the practice of exorcism to qualified specialists trained in the Rituale Romanum, thus minimizing the risk of contagion.”
“Contagion?” Jason echoed faintly. Casinde had spoken in tones of unmistakable seriousness and utmost earnestness.
“Oh, yes. Exorcism is not without risk to the exorcist and others. Demonic possession is unfortunately communicable. In fact there have been veritable epidemics of it, especially in nunneries. However,” Casinde concluded firmly, “Father Ernetti was without question one of those qualified specialists, and practiced with great success. In fact, in the mid-1970s the Conference of Bishops in Rome commanded him to set down his techniques. The result was a book, La Cateschi di Satana, or Satan’s Catechism.”
“Well,” said Rutherford briskly, after a moment, “this is all very interesting. But I fail to see how this Father Ernetti’s distinguished career as an exorcist could have had any possible connection with time travel.”
“No, it wasn’t that. The connection grew out of his other field of expertise: musicology.”
Jason’s bewilderment was now complete.
“As I said earlier, he was a recognized authority on archaic music, which means the ‘prepolyphonic’ music—a succession of single sounds—prevailing in the Western world from the tenth century B.C. to the tenth century A.D., and therefore including the Gregorian Chant, which emerged in the sixth century A.D. In fact, he held what was probably the world’s only endowed chair in the subject, at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory of Music in Venice. He also taught the subject at the music institute of the Giorgio Cini foundation, on the same island as the abbey, and wrote a number of definitive books on it. He also had some writing credits on scientific subjects in related fields—an article on the electronic oscilloscope, for instance.”
“Clearly a multitalented individual,” Rutherford intoned. “But I’m still unclear on the relevance of any of this to time travel.”
All at once, Casinde’s palpable unease was back in full force. “So far, everything I’ve told you is biographical fact. And I’ll continue to speak in straightforward narrative form, for the sake of clarity. But from now on I am going to be recounting what might most charitably be characterized as ‘urban legend.’” He drew a deep breath, as though about to plunge into murky waters. “The story goes that in 1952 Father Ernetti was working with Father Agostino Gemelli, one of the founders of the Catholic University of Milan and president of the Pontifical Scientific Academy in Rome, at the latter’s electro-acoustical laboratory. They were using oscilloscopes and electronic filter systems in an attempt to remove stray harmonics from recordings of Gregorian chants, producing clearer singing voices. In the course of recording a chant on one of that era’s very crude tape recorders, they picked up the voice of Father Gemelli’s father.”
For a moment, Jason and Rutherford looked blank.
“His long-deceased father,” Casinde added.
Something began to dawn in his listeners’ eyes.
“Afterwards,” Casinde continued in the same matter-of-fact way, “the two went to Rome and reported the incident to Pope Pius XII. The Holy Father took it very calmly and told them that whatever they might have discovered was a scientific fact, without any disturbing theological implications, and might even lead to evidence that would strengthen the faithful’s belief in the afterlife. Father Gemelli was totally reassured, and said no more about it. But Father Ernetti began to think intensely. His studies of music had led him to suspect that the classical notions of Pythagoras and Aristotle that sounds and other harmonics never really cease to exist were true . . . and that he had recorded a voice, not from the afterlife, but from the past.
“Over the next few years, he made contact with a very distinguished group of scientists—including Enrico Fermi, of whom you undoubtedly know, up until Fermi’s death in 1954. With their help, and working in great secrecy, he developed a device he called a ‘chronovisor’ which could focus on any of these harmonics—not just of sound but also of light—from any time in the past, and make audio and video recordings. The device consisted of—”
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Stop right there!” Jason came surging up out of his chair. “Are you telling me that four hundred years ago some Italian priest invented a means of observing the past without having to be physically displaced in time?”
“And if so,” added Rutherford, seeming like Jason to finally realize that he was actually hearing what he thought he was hearing, “then why have we never heard about it? The implications for the Authority’s activities—!”
“As I explained,” said Casinde with a touch of asperity, “I’m only telling you the ‘consensus’ version of this story. A great deal of it is based on a conversation the French theologian Father François Brune said he had with Father Ernetti in the early 1960s. According to him, Father Ernetti disclaimed individual credit for the invention, which he attributed to the help of his colleagues and to sheer luck. At any rate, if I may continue, they tested out the machine by viewing and hearing a speech by Benito Mussolini, who was—”
“—An early twentieth century Italian dictator,” said Rutherford, an authority on history, rather testily. “Yes, yes, I know.”
“He was so recent that they felt that they could check their recording against contemporary footage of him for confirmation of its authenticity. Having satisfied themselves that it was actually him they were viewing, they tried for the more remote but still fairly well documented figure of Napoleon, and were able to observe him proclaiming Italy a republic. Then, growing more ambitious, they leaped back to Roman times. After catching a glimpse of a vegetable market in Trajan’s time, they narrowed their focus to the first of Cicero’s speeches against Catiline in 63 B.C. The speech has been preserved, so it was possible to verify it. It also proved possible to record part of a performance, in 169 B.C., of a play subsequently lost save for fragments: Thyestes, by Quintus Ennius, the ‘father of Latin poetry.’ Father Ernetti was quite fascinated by the musical accompaniment, just as he had been by the divergences between Cicero’s Latin pronunciation and what had always been taught in modern times. The ‘ae’ ending, for example, turned out to have been sounded in one syllable, as a long ‘a’ . . .” Seeing the looks on his listeners’ faces, Casinde dropped the subject. “Subsequently, in 1956, Father Ernetti decided to try to focus on the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.”
Jason and Rutherford simply stared.
“And did he make a video recording of all this?” Rutherford finally asked in a hushed voice. “Including . . . the resurrection?”
“So he claimed to Father Brune, although the film was black-and-white and lacked much of the fine detail.” The Jesuit took on a thoughtful look. “The funny thing is that his description of the events surrounding the crucifixion—in particular, his denial that certain legends like that of Veronica and the veil had any basis in fact—accords with subsequent scholarship.”
After a moment, Jason found his voice. “Wouldn’t the Church have, uh, taken an interest in this?”
“Undoubtedly. According to Father Ernetti, he showed the film to Pope Pius XII, the President of Italy and members of the Pontifical Academy. Afterwards, he said he dismantled the chronovisor as too dangerous. But at this point the story starts to unravel. Over the next couple of decades, contradictory reports kept appearing in the tabloid press about his activities, and in 1972 a couple of them printed what purported to be a photograph of Christ’s face, from the film. But after 1986, after talking about the chronovisor at a conference of people associated with ESP and astrology, he fell silent about it—until 1993, when he admitted to a Spanish reporter that the ‘photograph of Christ’ did not come from the chronovisor—it had been a photograph of a sculpture by a Spanish sculptor, based on a certain nun’s description of visions she said she’d had. And yet, that same year—the year before he died—he told Father Brune that he went to the Vatican with the last two surviving members of his team and gave a presentation of the chronovisor to Pope John Paul II, with four cardinals and an international committee of scientists in attendance.” Casinde shook his head. “All very perplexing. Just to muddy the waters still further, in the year 2000 someone describing himself as a distant relative came forward—anonymously—and claimed that in 1994 the dying Father Ernetti had confessed to him that in fact the chronovisor hadn’t worked . . . almost, but not quite. According to this same source, he also admitted that he himself had composed the Quintus Ennius segment, from the surviving fragments of the play. In the course of this admission he rambled about ‘past lives’ of his, something so foreign to Catholic belief as to seem almost bizarre, coming from such a source.”
Casinde fell silent. Rutherford cleared his throat.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” he quoted. “But surely, Father, you don’t believe there is anything to all this.”
Casinde gave a tight, rather grim smile. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure there isn’t.”
Rutherford lifted one frosty eyebrow. “Only ninety-nine?”
“Well . . . it’s just that the whole thing seems so utterly out of character. Why would a man like that—a distinguished expert in other fields—have come up with such an implausible fabrication? It’s . . . perplexing.”
Jason spoke slowly. “These Pythagorean and Aristotelian ideas of ‘harmonics’ . . .”
“Yes,” Casinde nodded. “It’s a concept related to the idea of ‘akashic records’—a kind of steady etheric accumulation of all events that have ever happened, if only they could be accessed.”
Jason turned to Rutherford. “Is there any possibility that these notions could have some kind of basis in quantum physics?”
“I’m sure I’m not qualified to say.”
“I’m even less so. But if there is anything to it, it might very well explain the Transhumanists’ interest. I’m beginning to think that, since we’re going to 1978 Italy anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to drop in on Father Ernetti.”