by A. G. Riddle
“It’s a G5. Over six thousand nautical miles, roughly twelve thousand kilometers. It’s fast, too—up to six hundred and seventy miles per hour. Ninety percent the speed of sound.”
Adams eyed her suspiciously, as if she were kidding.
“Rubicon used to own one,” she explained.
They fueled it up and transferred their gear. The inside of the craft was worn; Peyton estimated that it was probably twenty years old. But it started immediately and felt surefooted on the runway.
As soon as they were at altitude, Avery engaged the autopilot and walked back into the cabin, where her five passengers were gathered. “All right,” she said. “What did I miss?”
“The freezing part,” Nigel muttered.
Lin ignored him. “As we said at camp, we found bones on the Beagle, but not nearly as many as I expected.” She waited for everyone to focus on her. “We did find a clue, however.”
Avery pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay. I’ll bite. I’ll take Cryptic Things You Found on a Sunken Submarine for a thousand.” She leaned in theatrically. “Please tell me it’s a Daily Double.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, Avery,” Lin said. “We lost a lot of people back there, so it’s not as easy for us.”
The statement stopped Avery cold.
Peyton was amazed at her mother’s ability to control the situation. In a single breath, she had focused everyone and made them feel what she wanted them to feel.
Lin continued without looking up. “In an office deep inside the Beagle, Peyton and I found a picture of a cave painting.” She drew it out and passed it around. “Read the back.”
When it reached Peyton, she read it again.
Do fidem me nullum librum
A Liddell
Avery handed the page back to Lin. “I took Latin in the eleventh grade, but I got a B. So… gonna need a little help here.”
“Only the first part is Latin,” Lin said. “It’s the beginning of an oath. A very old one. Do fidem me nullum librum vel instrumentum aliamve quam rem ad bibliothecam pertinentem… It’s an oath I took. For almost a thousand years, it was a covenant agreed to by some of the greatest humans who ever lived. And by those who had the potential to join them.
“The people who have spoken or signed this oath have won fifty-eight Nobel prizes. In every category. Twenty-seven prime ministers of the UK have signed or said the words. Margaret Thatcher. Tony Blair. David Cameron. Theresa May. The prime ministers of Australia and Canada. Sir Walter Raleigh. Lawrence of Arabia. Einstein. Schrödinger.”
“Impossible,” Avery said.
“It’s true. The list is even longer when it comes to writers. T. S. Elliot. Graham Greene. Christopher Hitchens. Aldous Huxley. J. R. R. Tolkien. Phillip Pullman. C. S. Lewis. Even philosophers like John Locke and William of Ockham.”
“As in Ockham’s razor?” Avery asked.
“The same,” Lin replied.
“What kind of oath?” Nigel asked.
“One to protect knowledge.”
“How?”
“By not burning books.”
Lin’s statement drew silence from the others.
“It’s a vow that was required before admittance to a library.” Lin folded the page and tucked it away. “One of the oldest libraries in Europe, built nearly a thousand years ago. It’s the largest library in the UK, after the British Library. Under British law it can request a copy of every book printed in the UK. Irish Law gives it the same rights in the Republic of Ireland.”
“The Bodleian,” Nigel said. “Oxford University’s main library.”
“Yes.”
“What’s the oath?” Peyton asked.
“Not to carry a flame inside the library. In the centuries before electricity, the Bod closed at sundown. No candles allowed. No cigarettes. No chance of burning the stacks of priceless books inside.”
“What's the second part? Nigel asked. A Liddell?”
“It’s a reference to a work by an author who took the oath. A professor at the university. He first originated the term ‘Looking Glass.’ The Citium took inspiration from him in their great project. He wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll to protect his true identity. I believe his book is what we’re looking for: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
Chapter 20
The night he saw Peyton at the restaurant in San Francisco, Desmond barely slept. He kept replaying the moment in his mind, the look on Yuri’s face as they stood outside on the street in the falling snow. Something was wrong about it. The thought gnawed at him. There was a connection—there had to be. But he couldn’t see it.
He got up, splashed water on his face, and exited his condo. He expected to see Jennifer sitting at the desk in the lobby off the elevator, but a young Asian man sat there instead, studying a laptop screen.
At the sight of Desmond, the man stood. “Morning, sir.”
“Morning …”
“Huan.”
“Nice to meet you.” Desmond paused. “Is Jennifer off today?”
“Who?”
“Jennifer. Nelson. She usually works the day shift.”
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve never met her.” Huan paused. “Can I get you anything?”
“No. Thanks, Huan.”
Desmond once again sat at the long table next to the towering window in the library, pondering the question of why early humans, during their march across the world, had wiped out Neanderthals, Denisovans, floresiensis, and every other hominin species, but had allowed primates like chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos to live.
Yet try as he might, Desmond couldn’t focus on the question. His mind kept drifting back to the scene in the restaurant. Peyton’s face. Lin, sitting there, placid, almost a mirror of Yuri. Focus.
Desmond stood, climbed the winding metal staircase to the library’s third floor, and stopped at the archives of the Citium conclaves. He pulled out a volume from the late sixties, scanned it, then pulled out another. He found the presentation he needed.
It was a piece.
On the second floor, he found the expedition logs from the Beagle. Multiple volumes. He carried the books down five at a time, stacked them high on the table, and pored through them.
Two days later, he had found the answer to Yuri’s question.
The echo of the voice in the tall room startled him. “You look like a man who’s discovered something.” Yuri walked to the table and sat. “Let’s hear it.”
Desmond cleared his throat. “Our species is the greatest mass murderer in the planet’s history.”
“Motive?”
“Calories and protein.”
Yuri gave a rare smile, but it was quickly gone. “Explain.”
“The other human species—Neanderthals, Denisovans, floresiensis—were competitors for calories. The primates in the jungle, not so much. The apes consume far fewer calories than we do. Chimpanzees and bonobos need about 400 calories a day, gorillas about 635, and orangutans 820. That’s despite them being far larger than us. The reason is our brains. A pound of brain tissue uses twenty times the amount of energy a pound of muscle does.
“But more importantly, those other primates are mostly herbivores—bananas, nuts, et cetera. That meant they weren’t competitors for the ultimate fuel our bigger brains needed: meat. And especially cooked meat. Our pursuit of meat is what drove us out of Africa and all the way to Australia. And it had a huge impact on the planet—nothing less than a global extinction event.”
“Extinction of what?”
“Megafauna—large animals. Every time behaviorally modern humans moved into an area, the megafauna went extinct. It happened 45,000 years ago when those ancient humans reached Australia. When they arrived, they found thousand-pound kangaroos, two-ton wombats, twenty-five-foot-long lizards, four-hundred-pound flightless birds, three-hundred-pound marsupial lions, and tortoises the size of a car. And then, in a very short amount of time, more than 85 percent of the animals weighing over a hundred pound
s went extinct. This wasn’t an isolated incident.”
Yuri’s face was expressionless. “Go on.”
Desmond opened one of the expedition logs from the Beagle. “All around the world, the researchers found remains of species we killed off. This global die-off is called the Quaternary extinction event. And they proved,” he pointed to the book, “definitively, that our ancestors caused it. A global holocaust, not just of other humans, but of every large mammal on earth, with only a few exceptions. Even today, we humans account for 350 million tons of biomass on this planet. That’s three times the biomass of all the sheep, chickens, whales, and elephants—combined. This planet has become an ecology almost completely dedicated to fueling our massive calorie-hogging brains.”
“And what happened when the megafauna were gone?”
“Crisis. Our population receded. And then we kept going, expanding—that’s what drove our ancestors across the Bering Strait, to the far edges of South America and the Pacific Islands, and all the way to Hawaii and Easter Island. Food.
“When it was gone, human populations stagnated. That’s the answer in Australia. They got there, killed the large game, and settled into an equilibrium. They missed the great innovation that swept the rest of the world, the next major calorie boost: agriculture. The agricultural revolution—growing grains like rice and wheat—provided an almost unlimited source of calories. And we didn’t even have to hunt it down. Which is why, starting around 12,000 years ago, the first cities emerged—they were all centered around agriculture. Human civilization exploded from there. Trade. Writing. Laws. Coinage. Agriculture paved the way for all of it. And it’s all about powering our massive brains.”
Desmond paused. “And that’s what the early Australians missed. They were still hunter-gatherers when the rest of the world found them. They never developed agriculture, which meant they never developed cities, or city lifestyle, which was conducive to thought and research and invention.”
“Good, Desmond. Very good work. But you’re still missing a piece.”
Desmond leaned back in his chair.
“Why us?” Yuri said.
“Us…?”
“Why aren’t we Neanderthals? They had larger brains than us. Bigger bodies. Stronger muscles. And they were very well adapted, having survived for half a million years on at least two continents before we wiped them out. Now that’s something.” Yuri pulled the stack of books closer and flipped through them one by one, scanning the tables of contents. Finally, he opened one and turned it to face Desmond. It was a log of an expedition to Germany in 1973.
Desmond was surprised. “You’ve read these books?”
“I have studied these books more than any person alive.” Yuri looked down at the black-and-white pictures of an archaeological dig, of the bones uncovered. “It was a dangerous expedition. East Germany was very difficult to get into at the time. And even harder to get out of—especially if you were transporting something. I had to use my contacts in Russia to get us in.”
“You were there? On the Beagle?”
“The day she launched… and shortly before she sank.”
“Your name—”
“Isn’t in these logs. Or the conclave archives. The names have all been changed. If our enemies found this library, it could be dangerous for us.”
Desmond opened his mouth to ask another question, but Yuri cut him off.
“Focus on the mystery at hand, Desmond. Not the Citium’s history.” He pointed to the page. “On this expedition, we found caves inhabited by Neanderthals fifty thousand years ago. Evidence of stone hearths. Ritual burials. Stone tools. We saw evidence that elderly members of the tribe—some of whom were sick, likely had been for years—were cared for. This species was very much like us. The mystery is why we had such an overwhelming advantage over them.”
“Behavioral modernity—”
“Is the answer, but what specifically, Desmond? Think about it. If you didn’t know the answer, if we were standing on a hill fifty thousand years ago watching a tribe of our ancestors in one valley and a tribe of Neanderthals in the next, which would you bet on to take over the world? We know who wins—because we’re here to talk about it. But back then, both groups looked behaviorally advanced. Dig deeper. The answer is here.”
When Yuri was gone, Desmond sat for a long time, thinking. He opened the expedition log and read the report, trying to determine Yuri’s code name in the books. Dr. Nilats? Yes—that was it. He could tell by the tone of the man’s reports. And the name, Nilats—it was Stalin backwards. Yuri had grown up in the Soviet Union in the years after World War II, so Stalin was a man who no doubt had caused him a lot of pain. He was a man Yuri wanted to be the opposite of.
Desmond skimmed the rest of the expedition report, which contained accounts from archaeologists, geneticists, and biologists. On the last page, his mouth went dry. He read the next expedition report, then the next. His mind flashed back to that night on the sidewalk, to Peyton and her mother sitting in the restaurant. It couldn’t be.
He read every log again, not stopping, like a man possessed. Finally, he pushed his chair back and rubbed at his eyes. He needed some fresh air, and to calm his nerves. He put on a jogging suit and marched to the elevator.
Huan stood as he approached. “Sir, can I get you anything?”
“Just gonna get some fresh air, Huan. Thanks.”
He ran toward the sea, the air crisp and cool in his lungs. The smell of fish grew stronger as he approached the wharf. The crowds changed from locals to tourists, pointing and taking pictures of Alcatraz and the sun setting over the Golden Gate Bridge. And with each step, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. He slowed to a walk, glancing behind him and all around.
It was past eight o’clock when he returned. The run had helped clear his mind. He was almost certain of his theory now. But he had to know for sure.
He showered, dressed, donned his coat, and grabbed his wallet.
He walked several blocks from the building, checking over his shoulder periodically. Why was he being so paranoid? His theory would explain how Yuri knew that Peyton and Lin were at the restaurant—but that didn’t mean they were watching him.
He hailed a cab on Bay Street.
“Menlo Park. Windsor Drive.”
The man typed the address into a TomTom navigation unit hanging from the inside of the windshield, then pulled away into the night.
It was almost an hour later when the cab stopped at the address on the quiet residential street. Desmond paid the cabbie, told him to wait, and walked to the front door, his heart beating fast, a lump in his throat. He almost turned back. He’d be humiliated if he was wrong.
He knocked. A light flicked on. Footsteps. The peephole darkened as an eye peered out. The door swung open, revealing Lin Shaw, dressed in a pantsuit, as if she had only recently arrived home from work.
“Desmond.”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
Desmond had only been to Lin’s home a few times. It was neat, and decorated in a neutral, almost generic way, as if it were staged for sale. He knew Lin spent almost all of her time at Stanford and her company, working on her genetics research.
“The name changes threw me off,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“You were on the Beagle. You’re a member of the Citium. I read the reports. It was subtle, but I could hear your voice in them. And the dates coincide with what Peyton told me about you—and her father. Was he on the Beagle when it sank? The dates match.”
Lin sat in an armchair by the bay window and motioned for Desmond to sit on the couch.
He remained standing.
“Sit down, Desmond.” Her voice was flat, commanding.
He sat down and leaned forward, elbows on his thighs.
“Why are you here?”
Desmond had always liked that about Lin: she cut to the chase.
“I assumed that Yuri recruited me because
I had been asking questions about the Citium. I found the organization while working at a startup. SciNet.”
He waited, hoping Lin would volunteer information. She simply stared at him.
“But I don’t think that’s true,” he continued. “I think you told him to recruit me.”
Desmond searched her face. She gave away nothing.
“I want to know why.” He paused. “I think I deserve that.”
Lin finally looked away. She sighed. “Before Yuri recruited you, we removed all the photos from the logs—of him, me, and Peyton’s father. I assumed you wouldn’t put it together. I rarely underestimate people, Desmond.”
“Why? Why me?”
“Peyton.”
“Peyton?”
“You broke her heart.”
The words hit Desmond with the force of an elephant rifle. “I never meant—”
“I know you didn’t. What happened… was circumstances beyond your control.” Lin’s voice fell to a whisper. “I know about that. I know what it’s like to lose the love of your life. She hasn’t been the same since you left.”
“I—”
“Listen, Desmond. She never will be. And neither will you. But you can be. The Looking Glass can heal those wounds.”
“So it’s true, what Yuri promised me?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you had me recruited.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
“What every parent wants: for my daughter to be happy. For her life to be better than mine.”
They sat in silence then. Finally, Desmond spoke. “Should I tell Yuri… that we talked?”
Lin exhaled through her nose. “Don’t bother. Yuri Pachenko is always a step ahead—of everyone. I suspect he already knows you’re here. And I don’t know this for a fact, but I’d bet he’s listening to us right now.”
“So what do I do?”
“Go back and finish. If you give up, you’re giving up on her.”
Chapter 21