The Last Notebook of Leonardo

by B. B. Wurge

  We sat down and buckled ourselves in. Dad closed the hatch, and all the nighttime sounds of creaking trees and hooting night birds stopped suddenly. We were sealed in. I looked out the window at Noma’s tiny slate-roofed house in the moonlight. Snow was falling softly through the still air, piling up on the roof and the front steps. The night looked peaceful.

  Dad sat in the driver’s seat surrounded by about thirty levers and handles and knobs. I hoped he knew which was which. “Here goes,” he said, and yanked down on a leather strap. I gritted my teeth and waited for the blast to shoot us up in the air, but nothing happened.

  “Um, Dad,” I said, “are you sure there’s enough fuel?”

  “Of course there is,” he said. “It’s working beautifully.”

  I looked out the window and realized that we had already left the ground. Leonardo’s design didn’t involve rocket engines blasting us off the Earth. It was more sophisticated. We rose up gently above Noma’s house, through the falling snow, and soon reached the cloud cover. It looked like a giant gray amoeba looming over us, glowing from the moon behind it. We plunged into it and when we came out on top, we were in the clearest, brightest, starriest night I had ever seen.

  “There’s the moon,” Dad said, pointing out the front window. “Somebody hold the map and make sure I’m driving the right way.” He handed back a drawing of the moon with an X at our destination. All the moon’s craters and pocks and streaks were neatly drawn on the map.

  Dad took hold of the controls with his hands and feet and drove straight at the moon. It was a beautiful smooth ride, not like a bumpy car ride over a country road, and certainly nothing like the jerking, stop-and-go movement of a New York taxi. The Earth sped away behind us and the moon loomed bigger and bigger.

  “I do wish I had brought a pack of cards,” Noma said.

  We said nothing for a long time after that. We were too busy looking out the window at the stars.

  We had left at midnight, past my usual bedtime, and I fell asleep about an hour later. When I woke up we were still driving. The moon looked bigger. Dad said I had slept for about five hours and it was morning now. We ate breakfast, and then Noma took out a mystery novel, settled in one corner of the seat with her feet up on the ice chest, and read by the light of the moon. I wished I had thought to bring a book. I had nothing to do but look out the window, and although a spread of stars is an amazing thing, it was pretty much all the same. A long trip does get dull.

  “Are we there yet, Dad?” I said.

  “Oh stop it,” he said. “Not for a while.”

  “What’s the moon like? Is it hot? Should I have brought my shorts?”

  “I suppose it’s hot in the sun and cold in the shade. But it’s nothing like you ever learned about in school. I can tell you that.”

  “I never learned anything about it in school,” I said.

  “That’s not a surprise,” he said. “I don’t know what they teach you there. How to stick your brain in a blender. If it was up to me. . . .”

  I sensed another lecture on imagination coming at me, and I tried to head it off. “Tell me about the moon, Dad.”

  “ The moon?” he said. “There’s things the government doesn’t want anyone to know. I saw some of the moon files when I was working for Spork. About forty years ago, when NASA was trying to land people on the moon, the first thing they did was to send an unmanned lander. Not too many people know about that lander. It came down picture perfect, and sat on its eight feet, and started filming. But it didn’t last more than two minutes. A tentacle whipped out from behind a rock, smacked into the camera lens, and Bam! Crack! Static. Nothing more. That was it. They never got any more photos from that lander. They never found it again.”

  “Come on, Dad,” I said. “There wasn’t any tentacle on the moon.”

  “How do you know?” he said. “You never believe me, and then I turn out to be right. I’m telling you Jem, it was a tentacle.”

  “ What color was it?”

  “You’re testing me,” Dad said. “The photos were black and white, so I don’t know what color it was. But we’d better be careful up there. We’d better be ready to take off quick, if we see anything we don’t understand. And we better not get too near any big rocks if we don’t know what’s hiding behind them.”

  “Dad,” I said, “every animal I know of that has a tentacle lives in the ocean. So how many oceans are on the moon?”

  “Clever,” Dad said. “But data trumps cleverness. I saw the film, and I saw the tentacle. I hope we don’t get smacked by that thing, but if we do, you’ll see it for yourself.”

  After lunch, Noma and I played hangman and tictac-toe on the back of the moon map. She beat me almost every time. She wanted to draw out a chessboard and use little scraps of paper for the pieces, but I got the idea that she would beat me at that too, so I said I was tired, and took a nap. When I woke up, it was time for dinner and we handed out the cold chicken and raw potatoes.

  After dinner, Dad tied down the controls, which he said was Leonardo’s version of cruise control, and stretched out on the reclining chair. “Everybody get a good sleep,” he said. “ We should get there tomorrow morning.”

  When I opened my eyes, I panicked. We must have slept a long time without any regular daylight to wake us. Nobody had thought to set an alarm clock, and now the moon was gigantic, looming in front of us. “Dad!” I shouted. “Wake up! We’re gonna crash!”

  “Huh?” he said, sitting up suddenly. “I won’t! You can’t make me, Spork! I quit!”

  “Dad, hurry up,” I shouted. “Look at the moon!”

  Then he woke up all the way. “Oh right,” he said, chuckling. “Don’t worry. We have a few hours yet. But thanks. We’d better start paying attention if we want to land at the right spot.”

  For the next three hours we all three stared at the map and stared at the moon, and pointed this way and that, and argued over exactly the right direction, and Dad slowed down the ship considerably so that we could have time to maneuver. Leonardo had specified a flat spot in the middle of a gigantic crater. We lowered our spaceship down into the crater, and all we could see was the blinding white sand of the walls rising up around us. Leonardo had suggested holding up a sheet of smoked glass at this stage of the journey, but Dad handed around sunglasses instead. We set down and I could hear the sand and gravel crunching under the wheels of the wagon.

  “Now,” Dad said, “let’s drive around. Keep your eyes peeled for any sign of Leon.”

  15

  The open plain was so bright that I had trouble seeing clearly even with my sunglasses. After we had driven around for a while, I thought I spotted something nearby in the sand. “Are those rocks, Dad, or what? They look kind of regularly spaced.”

  Dad drove up closer and we could see that it wasn’t rocks. It was a row of indentations in the sand. They looked like footprints.

  “Are they tentacle prints?” Dad said anxiously. “Noma, can you recognize animal tracks?”

  Noma stared at the prints, squinting out of her old eyes, and then shook her head and said, “How strange. They look just like bear prints. The foot is elongated and ends in a set of claws.”

  “Wow!” Dad said. “I’d be surprised to find a bear walking around on the moon. But I’ve been surprised before. Bears are migratory, but I don’t see how one could migrate right off the Earth. What if it’s a man, and he forgot to clip his toenails? Let’s say Leonardo lived up here for two or three years, and forgot to bring a nail clipper with him.”

  “Dad,” I said, “that’s ridiculous. He would have invented a nail clipper out of a rock.”

  “Not necessarily,” Dad said. “Maybe he was too busy. I think we’re looking at the last footprints of Leonardo, preserved for five hundred years because there’s no weather up here to wipe them out.”

  “But,” I said, “how did he walk across the sand without dying from the lack of atmosphere?”

  “He could have been holding his bre
ath,” Dad said. “He got so bored sitting in his spaceship, looking at the moonscape through a window, year after year, that he finally climbed out to walk around. He held his breath as long as he could, and we’ll find his mummified body at the end of the trail.”

  “But the trail’s about a mile long!” I said. “Look at it! It goes right out of sight! How could he hold his breath for so long? Especially with toenails like that, he wouldn’t be able to walk very quickly.”

  “I suggest,” Noma said gently, interrupting our argument, “that we follow the trail and find out.”

  So we did. Dad drove slowly alongside the prints and we tracked them across the open plain. After a while we saw a dark blob far up ahead.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Let’s be careful,” Dad said. “It might only be his mummy. But if I see any tentacles, I’m driving straight up and getting us out of here.”

  The closer we got, the less like tentacles it looked. But it also didn’t look like a mummy. It was standing upright and looked hairy all over.

  “Do you think,” Dad said in a hushed voice, “it’s an orangutan?”

  “I think it’s a bear,” Noma said.

  “No!” I said, suddenly understanding. “Dad! Noma! Look! It’s a man in a bear suit! It’s a space-suit made out of a bearskin!”

  “By God, Jem, you’re right!” Dad shouted.

  We were close enough that we could see the person clearly, standing and waving at us. He seemed to beckon us to follow him. Then he turned and continued walking across the white sand.

  Dad drove slowly behind him.

  “Is this a good idea, Dad?” I said in a low voice. “We don’t know who’s been flying to the moon lately. That could be anybody.”

  “Don’t worry, Jem,” Dad said. “I bet he’s from the Russian space program. I hear they’ve run out of money for regular space suits. He might be able to give us information.”

  In a few minutes we reached a hill that had an open cave in its side. As soon as we had followed him into the cave, the man pulled a lever on the cave wall and a door slid down behind us, blocking the entrance. The cave had glass-covered windows that let in the light, so we could still see okay. In fact, we could see much better, because the light wasn’t too bright for our eyes anymore. The man in the bear suit pulled a second lever, and we heard a giant rushing sound like a tornado. The wagon shook around us in a blast of wind, and then everything was still and silent again.

  The man reached up and took off the bear head. When his own head came out from underneath, he was so hairy that he still looked like a bear. His head and chin and cheeks and eyebrows were covered in gray shag that shook loose from the helmet and tumbled down to his elbows. I could see his eyes gleaming far back in the tangle of hair. He seemed to be able to breathe okay.

  Dad opened the airlock of our spaceship and we climbed out. Dad stepped over to the man and held out his gigantic long arm. “Greetings, Cosmonaut!” he said. “I’m Carl! Carl Martin. Who are you?”

  “Leonardo,” the man said, reaching out to shake hands. “Leonardo da Vinci. How do you do?”

  16

  We were silent for a moment, frozen in astonishment, while the hairy man looked at each of us curiously. Dad began to stammer, “But. . . . Five hundred years. . . . Did you invent a. . . .”

  “Please,” Leonardo said, “let’s step into the living room. It’s more comfortable.”

  He walked to a door in the side of the cave and opened it for us. We still didn’t move. I was so surprised I couldn’t say a word. Finally Dad staggered toward the door, gripping his head between his hands, and I followed Dad. Noma was the only one of us who remained calm. She smiled politely at Leonardo.

  We stepped into a neatly furnished living room. The couch and chairs were made out of carved rocks and didn’t look very comfortable. They had fabrics draped over them for style. A low coffee table in the middle of the room held a plateful of cookies. I hoped the cookies weren’t carved out of rocks too, because I was hungry. On the far side of the room, a large screen TV was set against the wall. At first I thought the room was covered in wallpaper, but then I realized that it was painted. I could see at a glance that, whoever the current occupant of the room may be, Leonardo da Vinci must have actually painted those murals. Nobody else could have captured the moonscape so realistically, with the Earth hanging round and blue in the sky.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  We sat down, Dad filling up the entire couch. The man sat in a chair opposite to Dad. It made a strange combination, a giant orangutan on one side of the room and a hairy old man in a bear suit on the other side.

  “Look here!” Dad burst out angrily. “Who are you really? You’re an imposter! Da Vinci lived five hundred years ago! How can you be him?”

  The man nodded his head politely. I could see him smiling behind his beard. “True,” he said. “Very puzzling. I might say, similarly, that Sumatran orangutans do not talk. How, then, can you exist?”

  Dad stared with his mouth open.

  “Ah,” the man said gently, holding up his hand. “As I have heard the French say, touché. I would love to hear how you arrived at such an interesting state, and then of course to sketch you. As to my own longevity, it is easily explained. On Earth, it transpires, the gravitational force pulls on the body and ages it rapidly. In the lesser gravity of the moon, the human body degenerates more slowly. By my calculations, I have aged approximately five years since I arrived on the lunar surface.”

  “But,” I said, piping up. “Mr. da Vinci, I didn’t know you could speak English?”

  “A fair point,” he said. “I learned it on TV.”

  “Ah ha!” my dad shouted, thrusting out his hairy hand and pointing. “You are an imposter! If you’re really Leo, then how’d you get hold of that TV?”

  The man chuckled. “Oh, I built it, of course. About forty years ago, a spacecraft landed not too far from here. It seemed to be uninhabited. I confess, I snuck up on it and knocked it out of commission by hitting it with a whip. I did not know if it was hostile or friendly and I worried that it might harm me. When I was certain that it no longer functioned, I carried it home and built a television out of the parts. Once I was able to receive transmissions from the Earth, I learned a great deal about your current affairs, and also became proficient in several languages. It is a fascinating tool for the transmission of knowledge. Listen to this.” He tilted back his head and bellowed, “IT’S THE FLINTSTONES! MEET THE FLINTSTONES! WITH A YABBA DABBA DO ALL DAY!!!”

  I clamped my hands over my ears at that horrible noise, and Dad leaped up out of his seat and shouted, “All right! We get the point!”

  “Leonardo,” Noma said, “people call me Nomasis. Do you know what that means?”

  Leonardo stared at her in wonder. “My little grandmother,” he said. “I have not heard that language in a long time. Yes, I lived among the Mahicans. They were wonderful people. Did you find my cave and my notebook?”

  After that, I was convinced that the man really was Leonardo da Vinci and not an imposter. Dad, however, needed one more proof. He ran out to our wagon, dug through the trunk strapped on the roof, and came back with the framed sketch of da Vinci.

  The man looked at the picture in astonishment. “I know that sketch,” he said. “I drew it myself.” And although he was hairier now, and his face was more creased, he was recognizably the same person as in the portrait.

  Our quest was over. We had found the final resting place of Leonardo.

  At first we meant to stay a few weeks and then go back home. Dad and Leonardo had a lot to talk about, since they were both inventors, and they wanted to swap ideas before we left. But as time went on, we realized that we liked living on the moon.

  Noma was very old. Back on Earth, she had less than ten years to live. But on the moon, by Leonardo’s calculations, she might last another thousand years. And besides, she loved the moon. She would take the wagon out and drive around at top sp
eed, zipping all over the lunar surface like a crazy person, practicing wheelies, jumping off of natural rock ramps, and exploring new craters. Sometimes she packed supplies and went out for two or three days at a time.

  Dad wasn’t very keen on going back to Earth either, because he would have to face more discrimination against talking orangutans. He would never be able to find a respectable job or go out in public without attracting unwanted attention.

  As for me, if I went back, I would have to go to school. I liked school, and I generally liked learning new things. But in the secret lunar laboratory of Leonardo da Vinci, I could learn an incredible amount. By his estimates, I had about eight thousand more years to improve my mind.

  I was worried that Leonardo might have gotten used to living alone and might not want so much company. But he didn’t seem to mind. He and Dad spent all day in the laboratory room talking and arguing and inventing new things. The last I heard, they were going to dig out the center of the moon and start a giant bat colony.

  I have about eight thousand years ahead of me in low gravity. That’s a lot of time to explore. Maybe someday I’ll fly the spaceship off the moon and visit the rest of the galaxy, in search of aliens. As Dad says, once you free up your imagination, there’s no knowing how far you can go. We’re living proof of it.

  The Author

  B. B. Wurge began writing children’s books after leaving his first career as an entertainer in a primate house. He says, “I’ve been told the world is crazy, more now than ever. That may be true, but children should know they can navigate successfully through our crazy world if they stick to fundamental principles: loyalty to family and friends, compassion, and an open imagination.” Wurge holds degrees in hair growth and zoology. He lives in an elevator in Manhattan.