by Tony Abbott
“Either,” I said.
“Buying a used book doesn’t g-g-g-k-kive its author any royalties,” the man said, holding his fingers tight on the bridge of his nose.
“Then new.”
He pointed a slender finger at a teetering shelf at eye level across the room. “Over there. And Thomas More, dead as he is, thanks you for his sixpence.”
“Is that a lot?” asked Darrell.
“No.”
I scooted straight for the shelves—or I would have if stacks of old travel and art magazines hadn’t blocked my way—and before long located a new paperback copy of Utopia. As I picked my way back to the others, I read the back cover and discovered that the book was a fictional account of the island of Utopia, a perfect society that wasn’t so perfect after all. “It sounds like the book Thomas More was telling Nicolaus about.”
“I love that,” said Lily. “You and Nick on a first-name basis.”
“Eh?” said the proprietor. “Nicolaus? Nicolaus Kratzer?”
I spun around. “Kratzer? I know that name!”
“Kratzer was the king’s astronomer,” the man said. “He knew Thomas More, of course, taught his children.”
I turned to Wade and mouthed I know! then grinned.
“Does the book have the code you saw?” Sara whispered.
I flipped past the book’s introduction, and there it was, right at the beginning.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
V
X
Y
“I need this book. I have to have it,” I said.
“Oh, Becca, I hope it works,” said Sara.
“It will,” said Lily. “This is Becca we’re talking about.”
Using the Ackroyd credit card, we bought Utopia and a copy of More’s Selected Writings that Darrell found in the English history section, which happily included a bio written by More’s son-in-law William Roper, who eventually married Meg, which was fun to know. It also had some of Thomas’s letters.
After paying the sneezing guy, we ducked out and slipped into the Pret A Manger next door and pushed two tables together. I got an egg sandwich and a bottle of water and set them on the table to block Copernicus’s diary from view. It was covered in a now-tattered copy of the London Times, but was still strange enough to draw attention if people saw it too closely. I put Utopia and my notebook next to it.
“Thomas More made up an alphabet for the people on his fictional island of Utopia,” I said. “It’s basically a substitution code of”—I counted—“twenty-two characters, which means that it probably translates to Latin, with some of the characters serving as two letters, like I for J or V for U and no Z.”
I didn’t want to read the words Copernicus had written for me in the diary before I remembered the four words he had written for Meg. Because of all the other junk zooming around my head, however, I was pretty astonished that the words were actually still there, as if waiting for me.
I translated the symbols into letters. The code did turn out to be in Latin.
“The first of Elizabeth’s words is caestv, the second is horologivm, which, after you change each v to a u, are Latin for ‘glove’ and ‘clock.’ Meg’s words are ocvlos or oculos, which means ‘eyes,’ and citharae, which means ‘lutes.’”
“What did he mean by giving each daughter different words?” asked Wade.
I tried to read a tone into his question but couldn’t. “I don’t know yet. It has to do with a portrait of them.”
“Glove, clock, eyes, and lutes,” said Lily, “There aren’t any clocks or gloves in the constellations, are there?”
“No,” said Roald, “but dozens of eyes. Wade, your star chart can help.”
We had learned from searching for other relics that each was named after a constellation usually seen in the sky over where the relic was hidden. Wade carefully spread his star map on the table and began hunting.
“This reminds me of when we started our search for Serpens at the Morgan in New York,” said Lily. “We figured out that mystery. We’ll get this one, too.”
“By the way, the painter who painted Thomas More and his family,” Darrell said, “is a German. Hans Holbein. It was in 1527. Ten years later, like Nick said.”
Roald sat forward over his coffee. “What really interests me is the business of the damage Copernicus thought he did. Had he seen what the Order would do if they had the astrolabe? Or what he himself did? And what kind of horrors could a good person really do if he wasn’t forced to?”
“He told me that ‘because she lives . . . there is the evil,’” I said, “but not who or what he meant. He held back from me. I don’t know why.”
“Okay, if we set aside the clock and eye business,” said Darrell, “there’s still the code he wrote in his diary. What does that mean?”
I turned the diary pages until I found what he’d written as a clue for us.
It took me a few minutes to work out the translation, which I copied into my notebook. “Dvo mortvi vmbrae tvrrem. In other words, Duo mortui umbrae turrem. ‘Two dead’ . . . something. He said it would happen ‘after nightfall tonight.’ He didn’t say whose nightfall.”
Lily keyed the words into the translation program. “Duo and all that means ‘two dead in the tower’s shadow,’ or ‘in the shadow of the tower.’ Umbrae means ‘shadows.’ Turrem means ‘tower.’”
Two dead in the shadow of the tower. I didn’t like how it sounded, but my brain was blurring out on me. The pieces weren’t fitting. Not yet.
“Two dead in the shadow of the tower,” Wade repeated under his breath. “The Tower of London? That’s where Thomas was executed. Him and another guy?”
“Probably by that professional executioner,” said Darrell.
“Don’t start that again,” said Lily.
“Well, I just hope the relic is still around,” said Sara. “The archives in Austin have diaries about the great London fire. Hundreds of buildings were burned to the ground. And in 1940 and ’41, German air raids bombed much of the city.”
Roald looked up from his sandwich. “To me, the fact that Galina is so obsessed with the hunt, and has sent her personal archaeologist here, must mean that she thinks a relic is still around. We should presume that, too.”
His phone rang. He answered it. He didn’t put it on speaker, but he didn’t leave the table, either. We listened to bits and pieces of his conversation with someone he apparently hadn’t expected to call him, though who aside from Terence and Julian had the number, I couldn’t guess. Finally, Roald left the table, still talking, and I saw my face in the window. Wade was right. My skin was pasty, my hair a mess from the rain.
I was about to run off to the bathroom when Lily pushed a napkin at me.
“Here. Eww.”
“What?”
I put my finger under my nostril. Another nosebleed. “Sorry! Uck.” I daubed the napkin under my nose. More than a drop this time. I covered it pretty well, but all I could think of was Helmut Bern and his bloody nose.
“Maybe we should get you checked out by a doctor,” Sara said quietly.
“Or at least back to the safe flat so you can rest,” Lily said.
“What about the amber thing?” said Darrell. “Don’t we have to follow the clues—clock and glove and eye and the dead guys at the Tower of London?”
“Once we take care of Becca, sure,” said Lily. “A doctor, a nice rest . . .”
“Hey, I’m not an invalid,” I said. “It’s a bloody nose, not cancer.” Which was a harsh thing to say, but it stopped everyone from going on and on. “I’m okay.”
Roald came back to the table, off the phone now. “Listen. I, or we, have been invited to chat with a
former instructor of mine. Felix Ross was a visiting professor in Berlin. He’s a crack physicist. Time travel was his thing, as I recall. Maybe we could get him to talk about some of our different theories.”
“Dad, this is great,” said Wade, folding up his star chart. “We could use some input. He might tell us what we all need to know.”
When he said we all, he was looking exactly not at me.
“Hold on, suspicion taking over,” said Lily, tapping into her tablet. “Felix Ross, huh? And how did he happen to get your cell number?”
“Ah,” said Roald. “When I asked him about that he laughed and said he could tell me, just not over the phone. He can see us anytime.”
Sara turned to me. “Becca, we can still see a doctor. I think we should.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m good. Let’s keep moving.”
I think I upset Sara when I said cancer. After all, wasn’t radium poisoning what we suspected Andreas Copernicus had died of? Could Bern be showing the same symptoms? Could I? I stuffed a few napkins into my jacket pocket, hoping I wouldn’t need more than that.
Lily’s online search found an answer. “Felix Ross teaches the history of science in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London. Plus, he’s Sir Felix now. He’s been knighted.”
Darrell shared a look with Wade. “Is being an English knight different from being a Teutonic knight?”
“Yeah,” said Wade, “you get to have six wives.”
Lily winced. “Uck, both of you.”
The doors of the restaurant swung open and Julian stepped inside. His cheeks were red. He had been running. He pressed his hand low—stay down—and turned to look at the street, then came to our table and crouched down beside it.
“Stay seated for a moment, then go out the back,” he said.
At that moment our limo drove quickly down the street outside, followed by the black BMW, whose windows were open. Even crouching, I saw two men in the front, and the back was full, too. The driver sped up after the limo. Pedestrians jumped back to the sidewalks; then came a sudden thudding sound.
“Someone’s shooting!” a woman called out from a table. “Someone’s—”
More shots from down the street. “Now,” said Julian. “Everybody out.”
I stuffed a few more napkins into my pocket and slung my bag over my shoulder. We scurried with the other patrons out the back. From there we hurried across backyards and lots and finally into a street called Barbon Close.
Julian drew us near one of the houses. “We don’t know about the car yet. Maybe it was just cruising and spotted our limo. We can’t find Markus Wolff, either, but my dad discovered that your Umbrella Man is named Archibald Doyle. He’s a seedy character who’s likely a part of this surveillance.”
When we told him we were heading to University College London, he said, “That should be safe enough. Lots of people there. I’ll check in with Dad and meet up with you later.”
“Becca, are you up for this?” Sara asked.
I was tired and I ached all over, but I needed to hear from a time-travel expert. Besides, after our little sit-down at Pret A Manger, I felt more like myself. Calmer. More in control.
“I am if you are,” I said.
Sara nodded firmly. “I am.”
We followed Julian up to the next street, Great Ormond Street, where the famous children’s hospital was. We split up there, but not before I read the sign on the front of the building we huddled next to: Children with Cancer.
As we hurried off, I shivered all over again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We doglegged through the streets to University College, a cluster of brick, stone, and glass structures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with courtyards and walkways connecting them. Ten minutes later, we were on the third floor of the sciences building, in Sir Felix Ross’s spacious office.
He was tall and slender and beamed a great big smile at us from under his gray mustache. “Yes! Why, yes!” he said brightly, as if in answer to a question. He shook Roald’s hand firmly and gave Sara a peck on the cheek. “So good, so very good to see you, Roald and Sara, and children. Come in. Come in!”
He waved his hand at a cluster of leather chairs surrounding a big oak desk. His gray hair was longish and brushed back over his ears. He wore a bulky brown sport coat, brown pants, and scuffed brown shoes. “Please do sit yourselves down.” His voice was crisp and formal, but as soft and leathery as the old chairs.
While Roald introduced us all, I looked around. Sir Felix’s office was like the inside of a well-worn box, paneled from the floor to the ceiling with aged wood and shelving, and it smelled of the past mingled with what I guessed was old pipe smoke. Behind the desk were three old astronomical prints in frames. A large book—in German—was open on his desk as though he’d just been reading it. I remembered Lily saying he taught the history of science.
“Well, well . . .” He slouched into his desk chair, biting between his lips an unlit pipe, which bobbed up and down with each word. “Well, well. First let me say that I am utterly delighted you could make it today. And so sorry to hear of old Professor Vogel’s sad demise. You were close, I take it?”
“Very, thanks. It was quite a shock,” Roald said.
“He was Uncle Henry to me,” said Wade.
“Was he? Well, I am sorry. A tragedy. Not an accident, I hear. Dreadful.”
We all felt a pang in our chests then, I think. Wade and Roald sure did.
“Now,” Sir Felix said. “Tell me all that you’ve been up to, Professor Kaplan!”
Roald smiled. “Well, I think we’re interested first of all in how you got my cell number. As it is, not many people actually know we’re in London.”
Sir Felix laughed around his still-unlit pipe. “Oh that! It’s rather hush-hush, but I happen to have a little working relationship with MI5, the domestic intelligence service. I explain nuclear science to them; they tell me odds and ends of this and that. Your name was in a list of physicists in Britain. Don’t ask me how they got wind of you, but they did.”
Sara raised her eyebrows. “That is interesting,” she said.
“And lucky for me, no?” Sir Felix said with another laugh. “Now, tell all!”
After a bit of catch-up and chat about what he was doing professionally, Roald got to it. Or tried to get to it. He started with a few words, and I realized it was almost impossible to talk about without sounding crazy.
“Out with it, old boy!” Sir Felix chuckled.
“All right,” Roald said. “Sir Felix, what do you know about . . . it sounds ridiculous, of course, but . . . time, the science of time?”
“The science of time!” he said, drawing a long breath between his clamped teeth. “The science of time. Well, time can be said to go back some six thousand years if you take the view of some biblical scholars. Or thirteen-point-eight billion years, if you allow for the Big Bang notion. Now, if you ask me . . .”
Roald shook his head, more uncomfortable than before. “Excuse me, Sir Felix, I should have been more specific. I meant more the idea of traveling . . .”
“Traveling? You mean like from London to Liverpool?”
“I mean like from London to Londinium.”
“To Londinium . . . ?” He frowned, removed his pipe from his mouth, and stared at Roald. “Londinium . . . ah. Time travel!” He laughed without taking his eyes off Roald. “I take it you’re serious? As in practical travel forward and backward in time. Not the silly popular culture and whatnot. Well, well.”
Roald glanced at Sara as if for help when Wade jumped in. “I mean, we know that time machines don’t exist, of course. But the theories about time travel?”
“Exactly . . . ,” Sara agreed. She was holding my hand in hers.
“Well, then. Well, then.” Sir Felix stood up now. He was silhouetted against the window, as slender and tall as a reed. The sun was now beating away the last lingering clouds. I glanced at the old clock on the wa
ll over the door.
It was nearing twelve fifteen.
“To me, the most workable theory is that time is like a river. A river of thick, almost unmoving fluid. I rather like the term cosmic molasses. Normally, we only travel forward on this river. However, if the conditions are proper, if the stars, as they say, are aligned and one can produce a powerful enough jolt of energy—nuclear energy, I should think—there is a theoretical possibility of pushing or drilling against the current.”
My heart beat faster. I felt a little light-headed, but I also sensed that we were finally getting somewhere. Apparently, I didn’t look great. Sir Felix startled me.
“My dear, you look faint. Come over here, please.” And he took my bag and set it on the desk, and pulled his own chair out. He guided me around to it and sat me down. “There you are. Lean back. This will make you feel better. You look like you’ve been through it a bit. Shall I order some tea, dear?”
“I’m all right,” I said, checking my nose. It was dry. “No tea. But thank you.”
He smiled like a grandfather. “Now, then . . . oh yes. When you do force your way back—by whatever mechanism—you create a wake. A disturbance in the force, as they say. Actually, it’s a sort of trench or tunnel in the fluid of time.” He paused to let that settle in. “Some Renaissance theorists called it a sort of hole.”
A hole. Copernicus had used the same words in his diary and even said them when I’d seen him earlier. A hole. A hole in the sky.
“Oh, a tiny hole, mind you,” Sir Felix went on. “Experimental physicists today call it a microhole. A whorl in the air that circles about the path connecting one temporal location with another. The problem is that going to the past is like breaking into a locked room. Once you open that door, things can enter and leave that should not. Terrible mess.” He bit his pipe. “Of course, no one’s done it.”
I shivered. “You said nuclear energy might be needed?”
“Oh, rather,” Sir Felix said. “To create a hole of any duration would require a tremendous blast. Pinpointed to a direct spot, I would imagine.”
Somehow, Kronos had done that to me. It had zapped me just enough to cook a part of my brain. I “went back,” but only mentally, not physically.