Enter the Core

by Peter Lerangis

  Max quickly put in a video call to his home number. After a few seconds, Dad appeared, his face tight with concern. “Is everything all right?”

  “Niemand escaped,” Max said.

  “What?” Now Mom was squeezing into the frame.

  “We think Bitsy helped him,” Alex said. “So they’re together, with the serum. But maybe you can help us. The name on the bottom of the Jules Verne portrait is a code. It translates to ‘over please.’ There’s something we need to see on the back of the painting. Can you turn it over?”

  Max’s dad looked doubtful, but he went back to the wall and pulled down the painting. Maneuvering it into position, he turned the back of it to the screen.

  The backing was a mottled yellowish brown. “Nothing here, Max,” Dad said.

  “Maybe it faded,” Alex suggested.

  “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Tilt, I’m Alex’s friend Rod from Canada.” Rod was peering closely at the screen. “OK, you are looking at the portrait’s backing. When the painting is mounted into a frame, they put protective layers behind it. Sheets of paper and cardboard and stuff. I’m thinking over means the other side of the actual painting. So you’ll have to take it out of the frame.”

  Dad examined the frame. “Looks like we’ll have to pry it off with a screwdriver.” He disappeared for a few moments, and it took him and Mom a few more moments to separate the frame from the painting. Finally Mom held up the portrait. Old Jules Verne looked more fragile now, on a wavy canvas free of its frame, glass, and backing. Max’s parents were behind it, snooping at the other side.

  “There’s something here,” Mom said. She and Dad turned the painting around toward the phone. Max, Alex, and Rod nearly banged their heads together looking at it. The canvas was speckled with small raised dots, like pimples.

  “Is that mildew?” Alex murmured.

  “They’re more like little bubbles,” Mom replied, running her finger over them. “I guess the canvas didn’t age very well. But check out what’s on the very top.”

  She moved the phone upward until they could see a word written in bold capital letters:

  YIZROOV

  “Yizroov?” Alex repeated.

  “Gesundheit,” Rod said.

  “Ha,” Max said. “I didn’t think you had a sense of humor.”

  “I’m wicked funny,” Rod replied.

  “Modest, too,” Alex added.

  As Max scribbled down the word YIZROOV on a sheet of paper, Alex looked over his shoulder. “What do you think, Sherlock?”

  Max shrugged. “I just see one word. Nothing else. If it were a different code, he’d give something extra, like a new key. So I’m hoping that means we’re supposed to use the same reverse-alphabet code as the one we used for Levi Hek.”

  “Y becomes B . . .” Rod murmured. “I becomes—”

  Glancing back and forth to his alphabet key, Max substituted letter by letter. When he was done, they all stared at the result, stunned:

  “Those dots?” Max said to his mom. “We need to read them. Yesterday.”

  7

  “IT’S kind of worn out,” Rod said.

  “It’s solvable,” Max pointed out.

  “It’s French.” Alex groaned.

  The first Braille screenshot glowed from Rod’s iPad:

  “How can you tell it’s French without translating it?” Max said.

  The sun was setting, and outside Rod’s dorm room window, groups of kids were throwing Frisbees. Alex looked up wearily from Rod’s laptop, where she was doing online Braille research. “You can tell by the first character—see those two dots that are stacked like a colon? In English Braille, it means decimal point. In French Braille, it’s a way of saying that the next letter is a capital. And Jules Verne definitely begins his sentences with capital letters. Because that’s the kind of guy he is.”

  “Definitely,” Rod said. “But I’m looking at the Braille alphabet, and it looks like that first character is a K. One dot over the other.”

  “You have to imagine that each character is in a grid,” Alex said. “I’ll show you. This program lets me toggle the imaginary grid. It puts boxes around each dot, so you can see how they’re positioned in relation to one another.”

  “So look at the first character in that message,” Alex continued, her fingers clicking on the keys. “The boxes show you where the two dots are positioned. Now check out the K in the French Braille alphabet.”

  “The K is two dots, but the dots are stacked on the left. In Verne’s message, the two dots are stacked on the right—and that’s sort of like a code. It indicates ‘the following letter is a capital.’ Is that right?” Max said.

  “Exactly,” Alex said. “So, the top part of the message is pretty clear. But it gets worse as you descend. Parts of it have flaked off and decayed. So we’ll do the best we can.”

  Together, Max, Alex, and Rod transcribed the top lines of Jules Verne’s message, letter by letter:

  En ce qui concerne

  le voyage au centre de mon âme

  et mon échec ultérieur

  “What the heck does that mean?” Max asked.

  “‘Concerning the voyage to the center of my soul,’” Alex read, “‘and my ultimate failure.’”

  “That doesn’t sound promising,” Rod said.

  “There’s a lot more,” Alex reminded him. “If it’s anything like the first two books, Verne is going to tell us where to go. He won’t be clear about it. He’ll make us figure it out. But if you give me some quiet, I’ll do the best I can. It’s really degraded.”

  Max began pacing. It was not easy to smell cat pee and mint at the same time, but that’s what happened when he was both scared and excited. “Do you think Bitsy knows about this message?” he asked. “Or Spencer Niemand?”

  “If they do,” Alex said, “we’re in trouble.”

  “Guys, there had to be a reason this Bitsy sprang her dad from jail,” Rod said. “Would she have done that if they didn’t know where to go?”

  “No, no, and no,” Max said. “How could they possibly know? We’re the ones with the portrait. It’s been in the attic for ages. So that means we’re also the only ones with the info.”

  Alex looked up from her work. “Unless they got the info from another source?”

  “Or maybe they’re coming after you for your info,” Rod suggested.

  “If that were true, then why would Bitsy have stolen from us?” Max asked. “We trusted her. She could have just hung with us until we all figured out what to do.”

  “With Niemand, anything is possible,” Alex said. “I’m worried she’ll do whatever crazy, irrational thing Niemand tells her to do.” She sighed and looked out the dorm window. “Rod, promise to keep everything we do here a secret. And if you see any old guys with skunk-striped hair, and a blonde girl with a British accent . . .”

  “I’ll report them to the Harvard campus police,” Rod said.

  “Somehow,” Alex said, “that does not comfort me. Now everyone be quiet and let me work. This could take all night.”

  8

  THE statue of John Harvard, at the center of Harvard Yard, turned toward Max and grinned. Fire drooled from the left corner of its mouth, and a group of tourists ran to try to catch it. “Don’t mind me, Maxxxxxxx,” the statue said, “just eavesdropping on all your silly secret plans. Don’t let me stop you.”

  “Wait,” Max said, fighting back the smell of fish. “You can’t do that. You’re not alive.”

  “Ohhhh?” The statue’s bronze skin was growing lighter, creaking like a rusty hinge as the statue turned. Its bronze hair was turning black, except for a streak down the middle that was silver-white.

  “That was great fun in Greenland, Max, old boy . . .” the statue hissed. As it rose, its chair exploded into stone fragments. A group of tourists in front shrieked with joy, taking selfies. “But you thwarted my brilliant plan. I needed your help. We would establish underwater cities. We would save the population after the coasts are flo
oded. I would have set you up with a good life. A position in my government. Now I believe you owe me something. . . .”

  “A-A-Alex?” Max squeaked.

  The statue leaped off the pedestal, planting its feet on two tourist heads, and crouched. “Give me that translation no-o-o-o-owww!”

  “N-N-Nooooo!”

  Max felt a thud. He awoke on a dusty wood floor with an old sock over his forehead and crushed Doritos under his shoulder. As his eyes blinked open, he could see the lawns of Harvard Yard through the window, washed to bright yellow green in the rising sun.

  He bolted up, sending the sock flying. The John Harvard statue was sitting in its place, one foot shining gold where tourists had rubbed it. The threats were a dream.

  A dream.

  As he caught his breath, Max spotted Alex slumped over in her chair. Rod lay openmouthed on an old sofa, arms and legs akimbo. They looked dead. The entire night had gone by, and they were still in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  “If you’re alive, wake up!” Max shouted, running over to the desk. “We weren’t supposed to sleep! Every minute counts.”

  Groaning, Alex slowly lifted her head. “Easy for you to say. Sorry, dude, translation is hard. This took a long time.”

  Rod let out a couple of snorts and a fart, startling himself awake. “Need more coffee?” he blurted.

  “We finished, Rod,” Alex said. “About two hours ago. Max is looking over our work.”

  Max was staring at the translation:

  * * *

  Concerning

  the voyage to the center of my soul

  and my ultimate failure

  THE LOST TREASURES

  A MEMOIR

  By Jules Verne

  –PART III–

  With thanks to the printing facility of my editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel,

  who retains the original copy

  Dearest reader, to encode this final plea, Hetzel and I humbly employ the system of my dear friend Louis Braille, whose ——— w—— gives vision to the sightless. If you are reading this, yet have not found Part I of The Lost Treasures, then sadly —————urge (you?)——————————————— this account will have no meaning.

  If you have indeed read Book I and found the buried bounty, my deep(est?) congratulations. May you use your wealth for the betterment of humanity. That, my friend, is where —————————— journey begins. The most difficult yet.

  For hidden in that bounty, of course, was the beginning of The Lost Treasures Part II. This message is for the intrepid soul who has attained all five ingredients extracted from the rarest waters of the world, ————————————— (proper?) proportions with the sea coral Isis hippuris.

  But if you have constructed the serum, then you stand here trembling, knowing the glorious power —————————————————————. Perhaps you also know the horror.

  My nephew and I envisioned a healed, prosperous, peaceful humanity. A prosperity ————— since the Garden of Eden. But we found the serum to be short-lived and —————. To that end, we discovered the work of the ————— (philosopher?) S————usse——, who insisted that only by ——————— the serum into a large body of properly salinated water would it propagate ——————————— this most unusual property.

  We had our chance to change the course of ——————————————— cruel and horrific. What we unleashed must be ————— (overcome?). The Lost Treasures will not be complete until this mission is accomplished. I hope to write it before I die. But if ————— the task is yours.

  It began, quite inauspiciously, as I was researching a novel that the ancient hiéro (?)——————————voyage volcano—————————— land whose nomenclature, like its opposite, Greenland, belies the topography—————————— theories attributed to —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————leading us into——————————smoldering———————————S AE LL.

  We——————————————difficult to notate ————————————descent

  ——————————

  —————————hope and

  Jules Verne

  * * *

  “Is this it?” Max said. “I see a lot of blank lines, and squiggles at the bottom. How does this help us?”

  “Curb your enthusiasm,” Rod said.

  “It’s the best I can do,” Alex said. “Parts of the message are worn smooth.”

  “Dude, it’s all about the serum,” Rod said. “He did something with it. There was this whole elaborate plan.”

  Alex rubbed her eyes. “Which is nice to know, I guess. I mean, if we had the serum, we could try to follow the clues. But we don’t. Bitsy does. Max has a point. This information is useless to us.”

  “Well . . . maybe not . . .” Max said, his eyes darting all over the page. “Look what this says . . . ‘Hetzel, who retains the original copy’ . . . So this isn’t the only one. There’s another out there.”

  “Well, there was another,” Alex said.

  “How do you know it doesn’t still exist?” Max said. “OK, remember when Niemand first captured us in his sub? He went through this whole PowerPoint thing. It was about his great-great-grandfather, remember?”

  Alex nodded. “Right. Oliver Niemand . . . or Oscar. He was a collector. And at some auction, he bought artwork from the estate of Jules Verne’s editor—the guy Gloria Bentham mentioned, who died on the Titanic. So old Oliver or Oscar brings the artwork home, and voilà, hidden inside the frame he finds some of Jules Verne’s secret plans! Verne had given it to his editor for safekeeping.”

  “The editor’s name—the guy who died in the Titanic—was Hetzel!” Max stood and began to spin around with excitement. “So if Verne’s original copy went to Hetzel, maybe it still exists!”

  Gloria Bentham’s words came back to Max:

  Spencer insisted those notes were not complete. He suspected Hetzel had more information. He was obsessed with the idea that Verne had buried secrets in other books, not only Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. . . . I would not be surprised if he believes that your discovery—the completed serum—is now connected to some other crazy science-fiction story.

  “Niemand knew there were more clues,” Max said. “He suspected Verne’s novels were real. And he also suspected Hetzel had clues to other information. That’s what Gloria Bentham told us.”

  Rod nodded, listening closely. “So if Bitsy springs her dad from jail, maybe that’s what they go looking for. Those other clues.”

  “You think Niemand and Bitsy are going auctionhouse hopping for more of Hetzel’s stuff?” Alex asked.

  “Maybe,” Rod said. “But after all these years . . . what’s the likelihood it hasn’t all been auctioned off?”

  “Unless they’re not at an auction house . . .” Max’s thumbs were already flying on the screen of his phone. “Maybe a real house. A house with an attic. Like where we found our hidden messages. Like a house belonging to some descendant of Hetzel!”

  Rod snorted. “So what’s your plan—contacting everyone in the world named Hetzel and asking them if Niemand stopped by?”

  “Do you have any better ideas?” Alex asked.

  Max’s search turned up a few social media accounts, which seemed like a good start. But his eyes fixed on one link, a new item only an hour old, which he’d almost missed:

  Massachusetts Nursing Home Resident Suffers Heart Attack, Is Robbed

  [AP] The Brick Hollow Residences for the W
ell-Lived is prepared for the sudden illnesses of its elderly residents, but not when they are accompanied by a theft of personal property, as in the strange, sad case of ninety-one-year-old Martin Hetzel . . .

  “Oh. Oh. Oh wow. Mercaptan attack,” Max said.

  “What?” Rod said.

  “That’s anxiety,” Alex replied, pulling Rod around so that they could both read over Max’s shoulders.

  “Martin was a bit of a loner,” said Rosalie Hughes, vice president of facilities, “so we’re always happy when he has visitors, but we couldn’t help noticing how agitated he was.” She went on to describe a young woman who spoke in a European accent and a ruddy-faced older man, “both wearing wide-brimmed hats indoors, which we found unusual,” Hughes said.

  Shortly after meeting them, Hetzel collapsed. In the confusion that followed, no one thought much about the two visitors. And it wasn’t until hours later that anyone noticed the open door on storage locker #23, belonging to Martin Hetzel, with a key hanging from its hole and a box of personal papers missing . . .

  9

  NIEMAND knew.

  Max was sure of it. While the crafty old guy was in prison, his daughter was working behind the scenes. Maybe she was the one who tracked down Martin Hetzel’s location. She might have done that research while she was a guest at Max’s house. Right under their noses.

  The intensity of the cat pee smell made Max throw open all Rod’s windows. Outside, an a cappella singing group was drawing a small crowd, but Max barely noticed, staring at the text of Jules Verne’s message.

  If Bitsy and her father were following these instructions, Max and Alex would have to go after them.

  “Agghh, do we have to listen to that singing?” Rod moaned, his hands over his ears.

  Ignoring him, Max read aloud from the text. “‘Land whose nomenclature . . . belies the topography . . .’ What does Verne mean by that?”