Quest for the Ark

by Taggart Rehnn

  “Well,” retorted David, putting his hand on Haim’s shoulder, “to Earth, we’re all married. And if She divorces us, we’re all screwed, with or without champagne. And thanks for calling me a geek. I much prefer scientist, but I’ll take what recognition I can get. As for all of this, empirically we have two choices: pretend this is isn’t happening, as psychos do with environmental collapse or…”

  Then, the boom of three massive thunderbolts rattled the windows at Tony’s condo, interrupting his tirade. “…Or face reality,” Severian continued, signaling the window. “While you gentlemen were quibbling over which treasure hunters you want to be in the good books of, I was reading across the glass of the nitrogen bottle. Inside it, there is a silver cylinder, an old cylinder, inscribed in Hebrew…”

  “Can you read across all that glass and the hood’s Plexiglas…?”

  “My eyes can indeed see things human eyes would miss, yes,” Severian replied.

  “What does the inscription say…?” anxiously asked Tony.

  “Some of it, I cannot make heads or tails of, but what I can read speaks about someone very powerful, very ancient, someone who might or might not be one we recognize as our Common Mother, a sort of Eve of all us undead, and a prophecy, a prophecy who speaks about…about…חופשי יותר של נשמות…?” said Severian.

  “חופשי יותר של נשמות…? The…freer of souls…?” mumbled Haim.

  “Yes. Makes sense! Whoever that ‘freer’ is, should he die, those souls would remain slaves, enslaved to open the gates of Hell, unbeknownst to them, and they would willingly do it; deceived into believing that, by so doing, they would save all others, redeeming all others…by yet another…sacrifice.”

  “You’re talking about the Moschiach?” asked David.

  “The Messiah we Christians believe was Christ? Is this some trickery to create a new neo-Nazi inspired ‘Crusade’? Should we just bury this under a mountain and forget this mess?” hyperventilated normally calm Tony.

  “The word משיח I don’t see anywhere. And that is a word even I would recognize. There had been a few on every century since the first, people who they themselves, or their disciples, had claimed was the משיח and didn’t die when the supposed משיח did, and was supposed to usher in the Olam Ha-Ba,” replied Severian. “There is no such claim in anything I could read on the silver cylinder inside the bottle. Do you want to risk opening it the wrong way and losing part or all of the information in it, or would you rather let Sól and Siegfried take a crack at it?”

  At that precise moment, the crack of thunder outside raised to a deafening peal, really like cannon detonations outside the building, rattling the triple glass panes, and they all went to watch the uncommonly angry storm. Clouds, dark as death, covered the sky. The Pacific shore turned into a furious clash of angry waves against the beach. Lighting intensified, pummeling the spiky surface of the ocean, their reflections shining cobalt, pink and gold on the rare moments of calm. Discharges crisscrossed the skies, giant electric spiders battling one another, while roiling black clouds with fluorescent silvery rims seemed to grow denser and denser by the minute. SoCal was experiencing yet another thunderstorm the likes of which one would expect in Assam, India, where air above the Gulf of Bengal, laden with enormous amount of water vapor, has collided with the towering Himalayas during the summer monsoon for millions of years, not Los Angeles.

  “There!” said David, pointing at the horrid storm outside, “Earth is asking us all if we want a divorce. She can go on perfectly fine without us.”

  “Alright, before we get divorced,” sighed Tony, “I will irritate my bosses once more and ask permission to bring Severian’s ‘freelancers’ here.”

  “Here?” jumped Haim. “I’m very new to all this high-flying criminal-vampire-mafia battling neo-Nazi-archeology-thievery world, but I’d say that, for the sake of discretion, it would be easier to take the bottle to them, so they don’t show up at such short distance, as the vampire flies, from your ‘esteemed helper’ in Long Beach.”

  “He has a point,” added Severian. “Also, no matter how sophisticated your glove box…”

  “It’s an argon hood…” Tony corrected him.

  “…Your argon hood, if there are any more sophisticated instruments required to examine this artifact, or references they need to check as they read, or what not, they probably would have them handy at their laboratory or at some university where they work…” jumped David.

  “That is true,” seconded Severian. “Most likely, they have all they could possibly need at the castle. Countess Chloé is a superb host, fear not—or so I am told. I have it from good references, since of course I am never available for receptions where humans gather to consume food and drink. The ones I drop into, to drink from humans, usually gather people issued from other social circles,” he said winking.

  “Can you please stop it?” said David, waving his hands forward in protest.

  “Sorry, I’m enjoying this strange association with humans, perhaps a tad much. In any case, aside from the entire family having been my clients in financial matters—and that, for many decades—since the Countess is a very discriminating host, she buys many of my gourmet specialties for her receptions. She would be delighted to chat you up, Tony. She’s very Catholic, but enlightened enough not to believe in idiotic fabrications like the ‘Toledoth Yesu’ or the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, so no need to worry, David and Haim. Tony and the Countess might first go burn candles at her rather old ‘basilica’—technically it isn’t one—while the rest of the group, minus I, go study the cylinder. Hopefully, when I visit at night, candle vigil duty should be over, and the investigation, well underway.”

  Tony shook his head, smirking, desperately trying to exorcise anything outrageous from his mind. “Alright. Let me talk to my bosses. This should take a couple of days. If I succeed, we should be able to be back in Paris in three to four more days. Direct flights are problematic, I know. Where do you want to refuel this time, Severian?”

  “Now, that’s the spirit. Let’s refuel in New York, since we’re at it,” replied Severian chuckling. “Hunts Point, right across from Riker’s Island, looks very promising.”

  14—Siegfried and Sól study the Scroll

  Eventually, David could convince his boss he wasn’t moving to Europe. Mildly reassured after Tony took upon himself—with his bosses’ approval—to provide protection for Becky, the children and the synagogue, Haim agreed to join the quest as well. Seeing Deborah and Becky by now becoming like sisters, also helped both husbands breathe a bit easier taking the ‘assignment’. With everyone cramming a long laundry list of things to do in an impossibly narrow schedule— plus two unexpected additional days for preparations that obstinately resisted the cramming—the four of them finally flew to New York, where Severian had five pimps for dinner at Hunts Point, in the Lower Bronx. He then returned to the Order’s safe house a bit buzzed, wept and ranted for an entire hour, and went to slumber only around dawn.

  He also had a terrible gash in one arm—which was, slowly, but steadily enough, healing. Asked about it, right before abruptly falling fast asleep, he mumbled: “Apparently local vampires are a bit territorial, and vampire scratches are real bitches to heal.”

  Next night at JFK, while worrying that hail might delay their flight to Paris so long they could be arriving after dawn, Severian kept milling about, trying to get the latest flight updates. Unexpectedly, by so doing, he discovered two odd characters, doggedly but stealthily, following Tony. From their minds, Severian learned that someone within ‘the Order’ wanted to find what had been ‘stolen’ from the building in Long Beach—suspecting Tony may know—and have this done behind Tony’s back.

  Having discovered such plot, Severian immediately went to Tony. Shortly after, the two odd characters would appear strangled, at one of the airport’s restrooms. Tabloid press first reported that, after shooting one another with poison darts, fired by plastic guns, th
e two men, dressed identically, had also strangled each other. The yellow press then went to town over this, for almost a week; but by then, our travellers were already safely installed at the château, in Northern Provence.

  Towering over a beautiful hilly landscape, the sprawling building was a lovely place, teeming with vineyards, peach and orange orchards, manicured gardens dotted with numerous gazebos, superb stables, all set in a ‘Domaine’ surrounded by pine, mimosas, eucalyptus, beech, and oak forests, and perfumed by endless fields of gardenia, lavender, and rosemary. Their base of operations was, indeed, a castle with an enormous marble and granite swimming pool, its own very ancient church, and an immense, dark and gold mausoleum, where many generations of the lineage had been lain to rest.

  A deep cave (‘la Grande Grotte’, with shelves and stalactites and stalagmites, and even a tiny underground lake, after which the castle had been named) and a small, but extremely pleasant waterfall on the back section of the Domaine, overlooking a meandering river’s valley, added to the beauty and serenity of the place.

  Secluded, getting there had required leaving the highways (the “autoroutes nationales”), an “autoroute provinciale”, and then, to follow a very long, private road (“chemin d’accès”). The castle proper rose where an endless line of pines and cypresses seemed to lead first to a valley, and then, to a glorious promontory, overlooking the river valley at a bend—so sharp it almost made actual the castle’s site an island. From the main building, the vineyards, the many orchards and vegetable gardens, and the stables and forests and the nursery and sheds and warehouses, and fields of lavender and rosemary and the waterfall, could all easily be surveyed by climbing the spiral staircase inside a very prominent circular tower.

  “Seems we’re coming to one of those exclusive holiday resorts, to be away from it all,” said David upon arrival, his eyes wide with undisguised wonder.

  “Well,” quipped Tony, “don’t tell that to my bosses. We should keep this ‘holiday’ as short as possible; and also, avoid interfering with our experts’ handling of the manuscript, scroll, papyrus, or whatever may be inside that cylinder—but, at the same time, be ready to provide any and all assistance they might require. Those were my last orders, almost verbatim,” he explained.

  “Almost…?” repeated David.

  “Of late, my bosses are acting a bit oddly. I will try to limit my contact with them as much as possible. That’s my problem. Ours is to do things as quickly as humanly possible, so I know what we’re dealing with when I am forced to contact them again,” confessed Tony.

  “In other words,” said Haim, “don’t disappear exploring caves and such unless you’re told to; and don’t start taking soil samples and such unless authorized to, I guess. Despite our European friends’ assurances, I’d just be happy if the very Catholic countess were not noticeably…you know…anti-non-Catholics.”

  “Well, for one, Haim” commented Tony, “for many years I lived in London, Paris and Rome, but I’m also Venezuelan, and, needless to say, ‘very Catholic’. That aside, there seemed to be someone associated with our very Catholic Order who is not necessarily being very…hmmmm…kosher in his dealings with us. So, maybe, you will find that Catholics, like most people of most faiths, come in all sorts of flavors. This Countess has had very big problems of her own with the…let’s say, extreme right-winger people of her Faith. Do you know the history of Montmartre’s Sacré-Cœur?”

  “No, not really,” admitted Haim.

  “On September 4, 1870, when the Third Republic was proclaimed—we’re now on the Fifth—Bishop Fournier essentially said France had lost the Franco-Prussian war because society had become too positivist, too left leaning, too ‘progressive’. In short, the loss, he insisted, was divine punishment for having abandoned the most reactionary rules of the Catholic Church. In 1870 also, Napoléon III had withdrawn the French garrison protecting the Vatican to use them at the Franco-Prussian front. And, in 1870-71, came the Paris ‘Commune’: the Prussians having captured Napoleon III, with Paris surrounded for four months, the capital was moved to Tours. Paris capitulated to the Prussians at the end of January 1871. In February 1871, Thiers, the new prime minister, signed an armistice with Prussia disarming the army—but not the National Guard. On March 18, the National Guard killed two French generals, and refused to recognize the Thiers government. Then, the ‘Commune’ governed Paris for two months. That ended after a week of bloodbath—seven thousand confirmed killed, unconfirmed up to twenty thousand—when the ‘Communards’ were defeated by the regular army.

  Now, the Montmartre Basilica is supposedly dedicated to the almost sixty thousand who died during the Franco-Prussian war—but the decree of the National Assembly leading to its construction, by request of the Archbishop of Paris, specifically says that it was built “to expiate the crimes of the Commune”. Even the Christ inside the Sacré-Cœur looks very angry.

  Reactionary Catholics in France love this site. In Montmartre, the Commune executed the previous Archbishop, who the French Church then made a martyr.

  All this to say that this lady, the Countess, is a very devout Catholic, but has no sympathy whatsoever for reactionary elements in the Church such as those. For all her faith, she is a firm believer in the separation between church and state. So, in short, she is hardly an anti-Semite, if that is your concern. That, I can assure you,” Tony took a gulp of air. “And now, gentlemen, since we’re arriving, please try to be on your most diplomatic behavior. She might be also a bit eccentric, but Countess Chloé highly prizes good manners. ”

  After that mouthful, everybody was little tense and guarded after exiting the limousine.

  Notwithstanding their initial apprehension, they were treated to a genuinely warm welcome awaited them. The matriarch, mistress of the place, a rather recent widow, was clearly a kind, refined, yet implacable organizer. She had everything planned to the minutest detail for the arrival of her guests. Her personal valet, viceroy in the Countess’ kingdom, commanded a disciplined army of servants, tasked with lodging, feeding, helping the newcomers resolve every conceivable issue—from choosing the flavor of toothpaste in each one’s bathroom to shooing some of the unduly forward maids. One of them in particular obviously didn’t mind the ring in David’s left ring finger, and kept bending forward, often—and unnecessarily—retrieving imaginary objects on the floor, to show her new favorite guest what he was missing.

  Unperturbed by the castle’s maids’ flagrant ‘open extremity policy’, after a short conversation with Haim involving music—Schubert’s in particular—as a very special tribute to their guests, that night, for the first time since her beloved husband’s passing, the Countess attacked her favorite piano again, starting with Rachmaninoff’s ‘Moment Musical’ Op. 16, No. 4, so deeply felt tears were rolling down her eyes. Despite the long hiatus, that evening she didn’t play one fausse note, not one. When she was done, she took a very deep breath and nodded, clasping her hands, visibly relieved. “It is time I end my mourning. This castle and our family need a strong foundation to stand on,” she said when even the help did stop doing what they had been hired to do, to applaud her performance and her resolve. “Merci infiniment à vous tous, mais il y a encore beaucoup à faire. À vos affaires, s’il vous plaît!” she said, waving her hand softly but tellingly. At once, everyone castle employee evaporated and returned to work.

  Most assuredly, Sa Grâce, Madame la Comtesse, was back.

  Dinner was delicious, refined, sumptuous, like a superbly choreographed ballet—one where the Countess’ every finger movement was, for everyone serving the table, as pregnant with meaning as those of a seasoned Balinese dancer; and one where not a movement was missing or missed by the servers. Only after desserts, coffee and liqueurs did the Countess relax her iron grip on anything happening at the castle, allowing first Siegfried and Sól to go to the basement; and, minutes later, having her valet—in a sense, the place’s ‘viceroy’—escort Haim, David and Tony to the laboratory to join th
em. Since Severian arrived just a few minutes after everyone else had left, she personally escorted him to join the rest of the group.

  “Well, this laboratory is getting a bit overcrowded,” she joked. “Pierre, have you released the dogs? Now that everybody is in, we should.” Pierre immediately pressed a command in a tablet he carried in his pocket. “You see,” she continued, addressing the group, “aside from boars and wolves from the park and ecological reserves nearby, lately we’ve been having an unusual number of uninvited visitors. In a sense, it’s a good thing: it provides supplemental protein to our mastiffs’ diet, locally sourced and free-range also.

  Now, let’s go, Pierre. We should leave the experts and our guests alone so they can study whatever this thing is. Good night, everyone!” And saying that, without waiting for any acknowledgement beyond a few nods and smiles, she disappeared, escorted by Pierre and imparting a long list of additional instructions as she walked away.

  Only then some of the visitors fully realized how technologically advanced the castle’s underground laboratory was. It seemed to contain every conceivable machine. The argon box there, was fitted with both special rubber gloves for human manipulation, and robotic arms, controlled by both screen and voice commands, illuminated with lights of variable wavelength and intensity, including a sectional beam that could be displaced following eye movements, to minimize the time any part of any fragile text sample would be exposed to light. David and Haim kept nodding as Siegfried described it.