by P. B. Kerr
Professor Sturloson unlocked the rust-colored gates and opened the main doors.
“The other institute,” he explained, “the modern institute, is lower down the slope. But I much prefer this place. Please. Go inside.”
“This looks more like a villa than a scientific institute,” observed Philippa.
“True,” said the professor. “But I sometimes think that everything in Italy looks better than it should. Even this volcano. After all, who would expect a volcano to be covered in so many beautiful flowers, and to smell so sweetly?”
“It is rather fragrant,” said Nimrod. He walked straight over to the rock saw and switched it on.
“Then again,” said John, “it’s not much of a villa that doesn’t have any windows. These ones look like they have been filled in with concrete.”
“That’s just one of the reasons that the building is able to resist the seismic and eruptive activity of the mountain,” said the professor. “For example, during the 1872 eruption, the director of the observatory, Luigi Palmieri, although surrounded by incandescent lava, stayed to observe the electric phenomena that resulted from the large amounts of ash in the sky.”
“That’s a comforting thought,” said John. He looked up at a picture on the wall. “Is that him?”
“No, that’s Vittorio Matteucci,” said the professor. “Sadly, he was killed here. As a result of his rather too close observation of Vesuvius and its related phenomena.”
John pulled a face and looked at another portrait. “And him?”
“Umm,” said the professor. “That would be Giuseppe Mercalli. He was killed here, too, I think.”
“I’m beginning to suspect that volcanology is much more dangerous than you’d have us believe,” Philippa told her uncle.
“Me, too,” said John. “To have one dead director is unfortunate. But to have two dead directors — well, that looks even more unfortunate than having just the one who’s dead.”
Nimrod was too busy with the rock saw, cutting a section from the golden lava sample, to answer Philippa’s or John’s remarks.
“There’s no getting away from the fact that volcanoes are dangerous,” said Axel, who was helping him. “But by trying to understand them we hope to make them more predictable and, as a result, make them less dangerous.”
John look at the rock saw with curiosity. “What kind of saw is it that can cut through rock?” he asked.
“One with industrial diamonds in the blade,” said his uncle.
The telephone rang and the professor answered it. As soon as he finished his call he turned on the TV, which was how everyone learned that several other countries and regions throughout the world were reporting new volcanic activity — not just Italy, but Russia, the United States, New Zealand, Iceland, and South America. The situation appeared to be worst of all in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Nyamuragira, Africa’s most active volcano, had just erupted with devastating effect. For half an hour they watched dramatic television pictures of two fiery craters throwing glowing molten rock thousands of feet into the air, and several dozen villages on the Rwandan border being evacuated.
And some of the people who had witnessed the eruption were reporting that pieces of the solidified lava resembled nuggets of gold.
“This is looking much more serious than I had thought,” said the professor.
“Is this normal?” asked Philippa. “That all these volcanoes become active at once?”
“There’s no reason why they shouldn’t all be active at once,” said the professor. “Much of the volcanic activity that occurs on the seabed usually goes unreported. But, no, it’s not normal.”
He looked anxiously at Nimrod, who had finished with the rock saw and was carrying his section of the golden lava to a large, white microscope that was attached to a small computer screen.
Nimrod sat down in front of the microscope, switched it on, and then placed the slide section under the lens. For several minutes he peered through the viewfinder while he fiddled with the focus knobs and the light-intensity control.
“This section of rock is now thin enough so that we can shine a light through it,” explained Nimrod. “A special polarizing light that will enable us to identify its various chemical properties. And which will explain the unusual golden color.”
Gradually, the picture on the screen grew sharper. And so did the professor’s interest.
“There seems to be an extraordinarily high level of silica here,” he said.
“More than eighty-five percent,” said Nimrod. He switched the view to a powerful lens. “There we are. A normal silicon tetrahedron, as you might expect.”
“What’s a tetrahedron?” asked John.
“Four triangular faces,” said Philippa. “Three of which meet at each point.”
“Only there’s something else,” said Nimrod.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” observed the professor. “A silicon tetrahedron with four oxygen atoms at the corner of the tetrahedron and, in the center, one silicon atom and something else closely attached to it that looks like gold, which probably accounts for the lava color.”
Nimrod typed some instructions into the computer. “Let’s see if it is gold,” he said.
They waited for a second before the computer came back with an answer.
UNKNOWN ELEMENT.
“There must be something wrong with the computer,” insisted the professor. “Try again.”
Nimrod retyped the instructions but the answer that came back was the same.
UNKNOWN ELEMENT.
Nimrod began typing again. “Let’s try to narrow it down,” he said. “It’s not oxygen or silicon; and it’s not aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, magnesium, or potassium, which, together, account for all but half a percent of the elements in the earth’s crust. We will get the computer to take a closer look in that half percent, and see if it doesn’t resemble one of those other elements. And —”
Nimrod pressed the return key and waited for a second.
“It doesn’t,” said the professor.
“No,” agreed Nimrod. “However, according to the computer, this mystery element does share one particular characteristic with the following list of minerals: barringerite, brezinaite, brianite, buchwaldite, carlsbergite, daubreelite, farringtonite, gentnerite, haxonite, heideite, kosmochlor, krinovite, lawrencite, lonsdaleite, majorite, merrihueite, niningerite, osbornite, panethite, ringwoodite, roedderite, schreibersite, stanfieldite, and yagiite.”
“And what characteristic is that?” asked Philippa.
“These are all non-terrestrial minerals,” the professor said quietly. “Found only in meteorites.”
“So maybe a meteorite fell into a volcano,” said John. “Wow. I can see that causing a few problems.”
“Maybe,” said the professor. “But unlikely. One meteor falling into Vesuvius would hardly affect all of these other volcanoes. Besides, there’s no trace in this lava sample of any of these other non-terrestrial elements. Just this unknown one that’s the color of gold.”
Absently, the professor began to tap the edge of his black mask with a fingernail, which prompted John to wonder exactly how it remained on his head. There was no string or elastic holding it in place that he could see. Really, it was most peculiar, almost like it was actually sticking to his face.
“If only,” said Axel, “we knew more about its properties.”
“We don’t have time to isolate it.” Nimrod started to type again. “To analyze it properly. However, we can construct a computer simulation of how it might behave in the laboratory. In other words, how it would react if we were to put it in water, cool it, heat it, or bombard it with radiation. And most important of all, to see how it reacts within a lava flow.”
“Good idea,” said the professor.
“You mean like a pretend experiment?” said John.
“Yes, John.”
Once again Nimrod started to type on the computer keyboard.
Philippa didn’t kn
ow which was the more impressive: all of the scientific information Nimrod seemed to carry within his head and that he fed into the computer, or the speed with which he typed it. Even so, he was typing for almost half an hour before he announced that “the experiment” was ready. Everyone came away from watching the television news and some pictures from the island of Bali, in Indonesia, where one of the three interlocking craters on Mount Batur had suddenly started emitting ash and smoke, to watch Nimrod’s computer simulation.
When the element was heated, it seemed to become more fluid, and at the same time dramatically more explosive. When added to lava the mystery element seemed to make the lava behave much more violently than might have been expected.
“I think it’s reasonable to assume,” said Nimrod, “that it’s the mystery element that is affecting the behavior of all of these volcanoes.”
“I’m obliged to agree with you, Nimrod,” said the professor.
“Then perhaps you’re also ready to admit the possibility that this might just have something to do with the Fu Xi legend,” said Nimrod.
The professor nodded. “I’m beginning to think it does,” he said.
“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned this legend,” said Philippa. “Would someone mind telling me what it is?”
“I’m not entirely sure myself,” admitted the professor.
“Well, now,” said Nimrod. “Where to begin? It’s been a while since I told anyone this story, which, since it’s almost eight hundred years old, is largely dismissed or forgotten by most modern scholars of Mongolian and Chinese history. Although not by me. Many years ago, after university, I wanted to travel somewhere really remote, and Mongolia seemed about as remote as one could get. So I learned the language and read some books. Although to be honest, there’s really just one book that matters when it comes to Mongolia.
“The Secret History of the Mongols is the oldest surviving book about the Mongols, although it is more of a history of the rise and death of Genghis Khan in particular than of the Mongols in general. This is hardly surprising since he’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to the Mongols. It was written sometime near his death in the early thirteenth century. Around A.D. 1227. After he had conquered the largest contiguous empire in recorded history.”
“What does contiguous mean?” asked John.
“It means ‘connecting without a break,’ ” said Nimrod. “Within a common boundary. The Mongol Empire stretched from the Black Sea to North Korea. It was truly vast. And what’s more, it took a little over seventy years to conquer. Compare that to the Roman Empire and the British Empire, which took much longer to bring together and you can understand just how great a warrior Genghis Khan really was.”
Philippa drew her uncle aside for a moment so that she could speak without being overheard by the professor and Axel; John followed.
“Wasn’t he a djinn?” asked Philippa.
“Part djinn,” said Nimrod. “Almost certainly.”
“Well, that would help explain why he was such a great warrior, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, but the Mongols didn’t know that. You see, Genghis preferred to conquer countries the old-fashioned way. He wanted to measure himself and his own conquests against great heroes like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. And his military conquests would hardly have been the same in his own eyes if he’d relied on djinn power to bring them about. It’s these conquests that The Secret History largely deals with.”
Nimrod strolled nonchalantly back to the professor and Axel to continue with his story.
“However, no Mongol-language versions of this book — The Secret History — have come down to us today and all surviving versions derive from Chinese translations dating from the end of the fourteenth century. Only one of these — itself now lost — mentioned a secret weapon called Fu Xi that the Xi Xia Emperor Xuanzong threatened to deploy against the Mongols when Genghis Khan threatened to invade his country. The Xi Xia Empire was the largest province in ancient China.”
“Isn’t Fu Xi a kind of dragon?” said Philippa. “In the I Ching?”
“Very good, Philippa,” said Nimrod. “Yes, that’s quite right.”
“So was that his weapon? A dragon?”
“Metaphorically speaking, yes,” said Nimrod. “Which means it was not a real dragon. But as a figure of speech, something that was like a dragon. You see, it was said that with his dragon weapon the Emperor Xuanzong would bring ten thousand days of fire down upon the heads of not only the Mongols but the Xi Xia, too. What he called yi wàng nián de huŏ zâi. A kind of extreme scorched-earth policy in which one country destroys itself in order to deny it to the enemy.
“As it happened, the speed of the Mongol cavalry tribesmen was such that the Xia were completely overrun before Xuanzong could deploy his weapon; and the ‘dragon’ fell into the hands of the Mongols. Just like a lot of other weapons — gunpowder and siege engines and better swords. Genghis Khan was fascinated with new weapons, which partly explains his success in conquest. And he was especially interested with this ‘doomsday’ weapon of the Emperor Xuanzong.
“Having said that, there’s little known for sure about the true nature of the weapon. Some people think it was just gunpowder, which the Mongols took from the Chinese and learned to use, but other contemporary Chinese sources mention a dragon that came out of the Yellow River and which some people have speculated may actually have been a meteorite — and more specifically some crystals from the meteorite that had the power to turn lava to gold.”
“Maybe that’s what turned the river yellow,” offered John.
“I never thought of that,” said Nimrod. “Anyway, these crystals were called Ho Tani Ya Chin Shi, , which means ‘fire medicine crystals,’ and it was probably them that gave the medieval alchemists the idea of the philosopher’s stone that would turn base metal into gold.
“But that was just one of the properties of the Hotaniya crystals. Incidentally, Hotaniya is Chinese for ‘gunpowder.’ Legend had it that using these Hotaniya crystals, Xuanzong could actually stir sleeping volcanoes into life, and that he had actually intended to bring about these ten thousand days of fire by bringing back to life the Emeishan volcano of southwest China.”
“Never heard of it,” said Axel.
“Me neither,” said John.
“Perhaps not,” said Nimrod. “But if you want to know why the name of Emeishan is important, then here’s a fact that might interest you: There are some scientists today who believe that it was not a meteorite that destroyed the dinosaurs and all life on earth, but a catastrophic eruption of Emeishan some two hundred and sixty million years ago.”
Nimrod paused for dramatic effect.
“Holy smoke,” said John. “It’s all beginning to make sense. And you think that someone has gotten hold of these Hotaniya crystals and may be deliberately making all of the world’s volcanoes simultaneously active? Is that it?”
“As usual, you cut straight to the heart of the matter, John,” said Nimrod. “But, in a nutshell, yes, I do think it’s a possibility.”
“Holy smoke,” repeated John.
“My theory is not without its problems, however,” admitted Nimrod.
“To put it mildly,” added the professor.
“For someone to have gained possession of these ancient Hotaniya crystals,” said Nimrod, “they would first have to have found the tomb of Genghis Khan, which has been lost ever since his death in A.D. 1227.” He shook his head. “Over the centuries many people have looked for it, and failed.”
“But is it such a big deal if a lot of volcanoes become more active?” said John. “After all, back at the hotel, you said yourself that there are at least fifty eruptions every year. And six or seven hundred volcanoes that are active today.”
“He’s right,” said Philippa. “You made it sound like we have learned to coexist with volcanoes. In fact, I think you actually said that.”
“Perhaps I did,” admitted Nimrod. “And in
a way, that is true. However, underneath what anyone including myself says about volcanoes and man coexisting on our planet, there must always be a strong note of caution. Eruptions like the one at Mount St. Helens, in Washington State, back in 1980, remind us all of the incalculable destructive power of the planet we live on. That was the deadliest and most economically devastating volcanic event in the history of the modern United States. If all of the earth’s major volcanoes suddenly became active at the same time and erupted with the power of Mount St. Helens, we would face a cataclysm beyond human imagination.”
“What your uncle says is no exaggeration,” the professor told the twins. “That amount of volcanic ash in our atmosphere would affect everything. It would blot out the sun, and cause huge electrical storms. Transportation, communication, and energy systems all over the planet would be paralyzed. The world’s weather patterns would be severely affected and affect the growth of crops. Millions of people would starve. Or die of thirst from lack of clean water. That might sound like science fiction, but it isn’t.”
“So,” added Nimrod, “if there’s one chance in a hundred that all this new volcanic activity is man-made, then I have to do something about it. We all do.”
The professor was nodding but the twins knew their uncle’s words were really meant for them and them alone. Neither had forgotten the gist of what he had said earlier in the morning: that in some frightening and predestined way it was down to them as djinn, and to their tribe in particular, to save the world.
CHAPTER 8
KIDNAPPED
Two men stepped out of the second ice-cream van. Neither one of them looked particularly friendly.
One, smoking a cigarette, jostled past Bruno and ducked into his van. There he inspected the ice-cream drum, which was full of vanilla flavor, switched it off, and then, as if to make sure that it was spoiled, tossed his cigarette inside.
Groanin thought this was a bit unnecessary. All the same, he smiled and tipped his bowler hat to the other, larger Italian walking toward him. The man was carrying Bruno’s shotgun, which was the main reason Groanin felt an extra obligation to be courteous. In Groanin’s opinion it always paid to be polite to a man carrying a gun, especially in a foreign country.