Angel City

by Jon Steele

  “Right. Lead the way.”

  And so the dog did, with a slow, flopping pace. First to the back gate hidden in the trees, where the dog waited for Harper to unhook the latch so they could pass through; then into the woods, where the cover of night had yet to be lifted. If Harper didn’t know better, he’d swear the dog halted at irregular intervals to scan the forest for danger. Each time Harper waited for the dog to listen to sounds running through the woods or sniff scents in the wind, just in case that’s what the dog was doing. Now, from the top of the pluton, Harper watched the dog sniff through the field till it found a patch of warm sun to sleep on.

  “Good boy, stay,” Harper said.

  He felt a sudden rush of vertigo, felt sick. He backed away from the cliff, took a deep breath, steadied himself. When his head stopped spinning, he climbed the wooden stairs leading to the south gate and stepped into the courtyard. Empty, quiet. He looked around. From what he recalled from the History Channel, this wasn’t the actual fortress of the Cathars. The Crusaders destroyed that one. But the Cathar fortress would have been built on the same exact ground, meter for meter. And looking at the layout, it was the smallness of the space that struck him first. He tried to imagine five hundred plus souls crammed together with no place to hide from the French catapults. He waited for something to flash through his eyes. Nothing.

  He crossed the courtyard to the north gate, looked out over the valleys and flattening land. Tried to imagine ten thousand Crusaders coming up the valley. Tried to imagine two hundred fighters standing on the walls of the fortress, watching the invaders encircle the pluton. Tried to imagine him and two of his kind knowing there were hundreds of stone-cold bad guys hiding amid the Crusaders. Still came up with nothing. He stepped through the north gate, looked northwest down the side of the cliff. He saw the ruins of the stone huts that were the homes of the Cathar civilians. Down there’s where they found the laser pointer, pointing west to east to make an artificial horizon . . . He looked back at the north gate. And that’s where the kid set the transmission rig to hack into Blue Brain.

  He looked back at the fortress.

  The gate and laser may be perpendicular to each other, but they had nothing to do with each other. Coincidence? No such bloody thing. So where are the intersecting lines of causality on this one? He scanned the surrounding hills. Each of them had a clear shot at the northern quadrant of the sky and the constellation Draco where the comet appeared. Astruc and the kid could’ve done the job from any of the surrounding hilltops, and left the transmission gear undetected for a thousand years.

  “So why here?”

  Harper answered his own question.

  “The priest was trying to make a point. So what the hell is it?”

  He walked around the fortress, careful not to look down. Coming to the west rim of the pluton, the tower was a silhouette against a rising sun. Like a stone thumb lining up a point of perspective from here to the sun, ninety-three million miles away. He went back into the courtyard, walked in circles. He stopped at the foot of the stone steps leading to what was left of the ramparts. Something whipped through his eyes. Wasn’t a flash of time; it was a feeling. The locals called it déjà vu, the closest thing they had to moving through time. Maybe it was Captain Jay Michael Harper, maybe it was Bernard de Saint-Martin, maybe it was a trace of every human form he’d occupied from the beginning . . . but just now he was getting a heavy rush of been there, seen it.

  His eyes locked on the place where the tower met the ground.

  There was a great slab of granite rising from the earth, half hidden under the tower. He walked closer to it, stared at it. Here, the rush was more intense. He lowered to one knee, touched the stone. Bits of time ripped through his eyes. Lausanne Cathedral . . . the junkie on the altar, the one his kind called Gabriel . . . standing in the midday sun pouring through the great stained glass window of the south transept, scratching the crook of his arm, desperate for a fix, telling Harper, The earth beneath these stones is sacred.

  Harper’s eyes saw it.

  Two and a half million years ago, eternal beings from another place had come to Earth bearing a spark of the first light of creation. They watched, waited, until a small band of humanoids crossed the plain. The humanoids scratched the grass and sniffed at the dirt, searching for signs of game. When night fell over the land, the humanoids took shelter in a cave and huddled together for warmth. The creatures from another place descended from the pluton and entered the cave, telling them to be not afraid. And they revealed the first light of creation. The humanoids stared at the flame, the light seeped into their eyes, and an eternal soul was ignited in the forms of men, so that mankind would one day know the truth—the universe and everything in it was part of one living being.

  “Bloody hell,” Harper mumbled.

  He got to his feet, looked around the courtyard, then out through the north gate. His eyes flashed the rooftop in Paris, the comet, the triangulations downloading into Blue Brain. Thousands per second, all from the point of perspective of an imaginary line drawn from right to left across the sky . . . This sacred earth was Father fucking Astruc’s point.

  “First contact was here. It happened here.”

  From outside the south gate, the sound of a rock tumbling down the cliff.

  Harper eased into the shadows under the south wall. He heard voices, American voices. Two minutes later, two young women stepped through the south gate and into the courtyard. They were dressed in blue jeans, hiking boots, fleeces. One of them had a camera around her neck. They looked about the courtyard.

  “Wow,” one of them said.

  “I need to tweet this to Doug,” the other one said.

  That one pulled out a mobile and began to take pictures. It was when she turned to the southwest wall that she saw a man step from the shadows, wooden staff in hand.

  “Holy fuck!” were the next words from her mouth.

  “It’s all right. Don’t be afraid,” Harper said.

  The two women looked at each other, then him.

  “Look, we know the fortress isn’t open till ten. We just wanted to see it before the tourists got here.”

  Harper smiled.

  “Actually, so did I.”

  “You’re not a security guard?”

  “No. I’m a tourist, like you. And I was just leaving.”

  The one who’d been taking pictures with her mobile said, “Do you know where the light comes?”

  Harper looked at her.

  “Sorry?”

  “Where it comes through on the summer solstice? The Cathars were into that kind of stuff.”

  Harper thought about it.

  “Today isn’t the solstice. It was months ago,” Harper said.

  “We’d still like to see where it happens. Feel the energy. It never dies, you know.”

  Harper didn’t have the heart to tell them this wasn’t the real fortress of the Cathars. And he flashed something from the History Channel: There was a bit about people coming to see the light on the dawn of the summer solstice. Light came from the east, hit the fortress at a certain angle. He looked around the place, saw the arrow slits in what was left of the tower. Got it.

  “Up there. Sun cuts directly through those slits in the stone, like clockwork.”

  The two women stared at the tower. Harper headed for the south gate and was almost through it when the one with the camera around her neck said, “Do you speak French?”

  Harper stopped, looked back.

  “What?”

  “Do you speak French?”

  “More or less.”

  “What does ‘Montségur’ mean? Is it ‘safe mountain’ or ‘safe place,’ or is it something else?”

  Harper thought about it. He looked around the fortress . . . this sacred earth. He looked at the two women.

  “Actually, Montségur is an Occ
itan word. The people that lived here before the French. It was the language of the Cathars.”

  “Really? So what’s it mean?”

  Harper smiled.

  “It means ‘Angel City.’”

  Their jaws dropped, their eyes widened. One of them finally broke the silence: “That is so the coolest thing I have ever heard.”

  Harper looked up at the sky, saw heavy clouds drifting in from the west. He looked at the young women, passed the palm of his right hand before their eyes.

  “Divulgare verbum . . . Spread the word. And don’t stay up here too long, ladies. It’s going to snow by afternoon.”

  He stared at them; they were motionless. It’d take them a few seconds to come around, and when they did, he’d be gone. But they’d have a memory of meeting someone . . . someone who appeared from the shadows and told them to be not afraid and showed them where the dawn of the summer solstice passed through the tower, told them Montségur was a word that meant “Angel City,” and that they should spread the word . . . then he disappeared. The wildest part of their imagination would want to believe the man was an angel. Then they’d really have something to tweet about. Harper laughed to himself. He stepped out through the south gate, made his way down the trail.

  He reached the Field of the Burned, followed his tracks across the grass in the direction of the house. He scanned the slope for his guide dog, Shiva. Spotted him sitting under a tree at the north edge of the field. Harper pointed southeast.

  “I think the house is that way.”

  Shiva didn’t budge.

  Harper walked toward him, saw a patch of ground that had been turned over, like a small grave. Grass had been scattered over it in an attempt to hide it. Harper brushed away the grass with the tip of his staff. He saw boot marks in the dirt, as if someone wearing a size six and a half, maybe a seven, had stomped down on the mound. Harper knelt down, touched the dirt. It was moist, freshly turned. He poked at the dirt with his staff, began to dig. A meter down, he hit something solid. He laid his staff on the ground, scooped out dirt with his hands. A rectangular shape appeared in the earth. He outlined the edges with his fingers, brushed away a thin layer of dirt. It was the reliquary box from the cavern under Paris.

  “You must be bloody joking me.”

  II

  HARPER RESTED THE WALKING STAFF NEXT TO THE KITCHEN door. He kicked dirt from his boots, went inside. Serge was sitting at the table, drinking espresso from a shot glass. Clock on the wall read 08:25 hours.

  “Bono matin. Will you take a coffee?”

  “Bono matin. And I’d love a coffee.”

  Harper set the reliquary box on the table. Serge regarded it, didn’t display surprise. He pushed himself from the table, walked to a coffee machine. He set another shot glass under the spout and pressed a button. The machine growled, and a stream of coffee drained into the glass. Serge carried the glass to Harper.

  “There is sugar in the bowl.”

  “Cheers,” Harper said, picking up the spoon on the table and dropping a healthy pile into his glass. He stirred, sipped, nodded toward the reliquary box.

  “Look familiar?”

  “No, but it sounds familiar.”

  “How’s that work?”

  “The angel who stayed under our roof carried a wooden box. A reliquary box. So goes the story.”

  “And in the story, did the angel tell your family what was inside it?”

  “The story goes that the angel showed them what was inside it.”

  Harper finished his espresso. He opened the box, unwrapped the leather cover, pulled out the sextant, and laid it on the table.

  “Is that what they saw?”

  “From what has been told to me, it could be. Where did you find it?”

  “In the Field of the Burned. It had been buried there two days ago.”

  “And you know it was buried there two days ago because . . .”

  “Trust me.”

  Serge sat back in his chair.

  “So it’s true then.”

  “What’s true?”

  Serge nodded toward the sextant. “The story.”

  “Did the angel tell your family what it was for?”

  “Not that I’ve ever heard. But the story only says it was revealed to us.”

  “Revealed.”

  “That’s the word used in telling the story.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. No one does.”

  “How was it described to you?”

  Serge looked at the sextant.

  “As it is. Old, copper, intricate drawings along the rim.”

  “It’s script.”

  “Excusatz-me?”

  “It’s script. I got a good look at it in the sun. It’s Avestan, from ancient Persia. The language of Zoroaster.”

  “You know this language?”

  “I’ve come across it once or twice. The only surviving examples are in the Yasna Haptanghaiti and the Gathas.”

  “I do not know these writings.”

  “No, but you know about the Cathars.”

  “There is a connection?”

  “Zoroaster was a religious mystic. And the first human to develop the concept of a duality in the universe. Aša was truth or light; Druj was untruth, darkness.”

  “Pure God, Evil God.”

  “That’s right. It’s all right here, in the script. And this down here, this is about a strange light in the sky that will announce that the time of the prophecy is at hand.”

  “You speak of the comet over the pluton two nights ago.”

  Harper thought about it. That’s exactly how it would have appeared from the village.

  “That’s right.”

  Serge scratched his chin.

  “So what is this prophecy?”

  “No idea, do you?”

  Serge laughed.

  “Me? How would I know? My family were simple, superstitious shepherds. Their lives were full of myths and legends.”

  Harper listened to the man’s voice. He was hiding something, but Harper couldn’t sort it. He locked on to the man’s last words: myths and legends. He sat back in his chair, watched the man study the calibration dials of the sextant. Waited.

  “These symbols on these wheels, what are they?” Serge said.

  “Constellations of stars in the north quadrant of the sky.”

  “Where the comet appeared.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And these little hammer strikes along the arc, what are they?”

  “No idea. How about you?”

  “Why should I know this?”

  “Because you’re not a simple superstitious shepherd, you’re a man with a shed packed with a small army of iron angels. Besides, those hammer strikes are the first things your eyes locked on when I showed you the sextant.”

  Serge looked at Harper.

  “More coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  “Make it yourself, I’ll be right back.”

  Serge left the kitchen, rummaged through the bookshelves in the sitting room. Harper did the deed with the coffee machine, had a double shot this time. He sat back at the table. Serge lay a dusty old book next to the sextant. The book was open to a picture of a bone. Harper stared at it. There were sets of tiny scratches etched into the bone. He looked at the hammer strikes on the arc of the sextant. They matched those on the bone. Harper looked at the lettering under the photo. Ishango Bone. He looked at Serge.

  “What the hell is an Ishango Bone?” Harper said.

  “It’s the fibula of a baboon. It was found in Africa by a Belgian archaeologist in 1960. His name isn’t important. Look at these three sets of scratches, right here. Those carved to the left and right add up to sixty. The scratches in the middle make forty-eight. At first it was
thought to be a lunar calendar or a counting tool of some kind. The bone was originally dated to be six thousand years old. Carbon testing found it was actually twenty thousand years old.”

  “Twenty thousand.”

  “At least.”

  “Somewhat early for a lunar calendar, or counting tool of some kind.”

  Serge pointed to the left column.

  “Except for this. Nineteen marks, then sixteen, then thirteen and eleven.”

  “And?”

  “Left to right, they’re nothing but scratches on the fibula of a baboon. Right to left, they form a prime quadruplet with two pairs of twin primes and two overlapping prime triplets.”

  Harper looked at Serge.

  “What did you say you did for a living fifteen years ago, before you started making angels?”

  “Textiles.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I was in charge of measurements. I’m also very good at mathematics. It’s a hobby.”

  “A hobby. Right. So what is a prime quadruplet?”

  There was a piece of paper on the table. Had a woman’s writing on it, looked like a shopping list. Serge pulled it toward him, started scribbling under les oeufs. He turned the page around for Harper to see. Harper looked at it.

  {p, p + 2, p + 6, p + 8}

  “This is the formula of a prime quadruplet,” Serge said, “where p represents the closest possible arrangement of prime numbers larger than the number 3. So, the first series of numbers is 5,7,11,13 . . . then 11,13,17,19 . . . then 101, 103, 107, 109. And on and on.”

  “What’s the formula used for?”

  “Like any mathematical formula, it’s used as a proof.”

  “Of what?”

  Serge closed the book.

  “To date, the highest prime quadruplet formula is three thousand, twenty-four digits. Curiously, the formula shows no sign of resolving, suggesting a mathematical proof of twin prime conjecture.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Infinity.”

  “Infinity.”

  Serge nodded. “And you know what they say about infinity.”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  “No?”

  “No. How about a hint?”