Maxwell's Demon by Steven Hall

Author:Steven Hall [Hall, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802149206
Google: naOoDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0802149200
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2021-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

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I dreamt, and in the dream, I woke up on the sofa at home.

Andrew Black was in our flat, sitting cross-legged on the living-room floor, fiddling with the various nativity figures we’d inherited from Imogen’s grandma.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. ‘Andrew. I’m sorry about all of it.’

No response.

As I watched, he turned the little pottery ox over in his hands, pressing on one small, specific location at the back of its neck. To my surprise, the animal’s head came loose with a well-engineered clunk. Next, he took the angel, turned it around and clicked the ox head onto the back of the smiling, human one. Finally, he began to rotate the combined heads, which made the well-oiled ticking sound of a bank vault’s safe as they turned, until the ox’s head pointed forwards. As soon as it did, the angel’s wings separated as if spring-loaded, and two additional pairs sprang out, clicking into place both higher and lower than the originals.

‘You never asked – what does it do?’ Andrew said, holding up this six-winged, ox-headed angel. ‘What’s it for? What does it drive?’

Oh my God.

I jumped awake, sitting bolt upright with a gasp and rifling through my pockets for my phone almost before I knew where I was. I practically hummed with off-kilter certainty, that irrational sense of knowing – and needing to act on that knowing – that can occasionally spring fully-formed from a dream. I yanked out my phone and tapped open the browser.

Why an ox and an angel in Bethlehem?

What if the ox isn’t an ox at all?

Ranks of angel. Search.

As it turned out, there were nine.

The most detailed article I could find ran through them from lowest to highest – from the two-winged human-looking angels on the bottom rung of the ladder, to the identical but superior archangels, one place above them, then up through ‘Thrones’ and ‘Powers’ and ‘Principalities’, to the second-highest rank, the cherubim.

Now, when you hear the word ‘cherub’ you probably imagine one of those little fat babies with wings, but let me tell you – that isn’t a cherub. That’s a putti, an adorable, chubby creature from Renaissance art that’s somehow found itself confused with the real deal over the past few hundred years. No, true cherubim are something else entirely. I scrolled down through the description – terrifying creatures covered in eyes, with four wings and four faces: the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an eagle . . . and the face of an ox.

Gotcha, I thought.

Fear not, said he, for mighty dread had seized their troubled minds.

Dream-fuelled and fierce, I forced myself to take a moment – to map waking logic over my sleeping certainties: why an ox and an angel in Bethlehem? Could the question really be driving at the fact that we include a separate ox and angel in modern nativities, when really, we shouldn’t . . . because they’re actually the same character? If

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