11

by James Phelan

  Jedi cut in, ‘Excuse me, Doc. I think we can help you out there. My Renaissance Italian might be a bit rusty but we’re pretty sure we’ve found numerous mentions in the journal to something called “the Dream Gate”.’

  ‘I knew it!’ Dr Dark exclaimed.

  ‘Don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves, Dark,’ the Professor cautioned.

  ‘Dream Gate?’ Sam said. ‘A gate into the dream world? To tap into more of our minds?’

  ‘I see you’ve got to him, Professor,’ Dr Dark said. ‘Well, that is one possibility, Sam, one interpretation.’

  ‘And it is as good as any,’ the Professor replied.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Dr Dark said. ‘But what’s important at the moment is finding the last 13 in order to build this machine. Correct, Professor?’

  ‘Yes,’ the Professor replied, his voice wary. ‘It is important, there’s no denying that.’

  Eva looked at the Professor. He suddenly looked much older. Everyone looks so serious now, even Gabriella.

  ‘So there are thirteen pieces, scattered around the world, hidden even, or perhaps in plain sight, such as the piece in Rome,’ Eva said.

  ‘Who put them there?’ Lora asked.

  ‘Well, that we may never fully know,’ the Professor said, ‘especially if they have moved more recently. But we know who made them, who invented this machine, and what its purpose is.’

  ‘So we put the Bakhu together, with all these Gears and the key,’ Eva said, joining the dots, ‘and it will show us where the Dream Gate is.’

  ‘And whatever lies beyond,’ the Professor concluded.

  ‘Exactly,’ Dr Dark replied, and Eva saw the Professor and Jedi nodding.

  ‘Get the Gears, build the machine. Build the machine, find the Gate,’ Eva said.

  ‘Find the Gate,’ Sam said, ‘save the world.’

  22

  SAM

  Sam and Xavier sat at one end of an enormous dining table with Dr Dark seated next to them, reading over some notes. Dinner was soon brought out on silver trays and served table-side by the butler.

  ‘Ah, if only you two were old enough to appreciate this fine wine,’ Dr Dark said, sipping his glass of merlot. Xavier and Sam raised their juices in a mock salute.

  Sam waited until Otto left, and then said, ‘So this machine with the thirteen pieces—does it means that da Vinci knew about the prophecy?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the only logical explanation,’ Dr Dark said. ‘Unless … well, what exactly he knew about the last 13 is unclear, but we always knew he had collected information about the prophecy.’

  ‘So we have a key and a Gear,’ Sam said. ‘Now we have to find the other Dreamers—in order to find the other pieces through their dreams.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘It was Gabriella who led me to the Rome Gear,’ Sam said. ‘So, where’s the piece that Xavier leads us to?’

  Xavier’s face creased in disappointment.

  ‘At the right time,’ Dr Dark said, looking to his son, ‘the dream will come again and you’ll remember. You can’t force these things.’

  ‘You said to the Professor that tapping into the mind,’ Sam said, ‘entering into the dream world, was just one interpretation of the ultimate goal?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dr Dark said, his eyebrows raised. ‘Good to see you were listening.’

  ‘But it’s not your interpretation?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Well … yes and no,’ Dr Dark replied. ‘It goes deeper than that.’

  ‘What is it?’ Xavier added.

  ‘The prophecy and all related writings say it will lead to a treasure so great that it will eclipse all others.’

  ‘Treasure?’ Sam said.

  ‘Beyond what you can imagine,’ Dr Dark said.

  ‘Dessert, sirs,’ Otto said, magically appearing back at the table and placing an apple strudel and a selection of ice-cream in front of them.

  ‘Thank you,’ Dr Dark said, ‘but I don’t think we could fit in another thing.’

  ‘I could,’ Sam said. ‘Easily.’

  ‘Me too,’ Xavier said, patting his bulging belly. ‘I’m not scared of a little post-dinner gas.’

  The two of them cracked up laughing.

  ‘Very well, leave it here, thank you,’ Dr Dark said to the butler. ‘We won’t be needing anything else this evening. Goodnight, Otto.’

  ‘And a good night to you and the young sirs,’ he replied, closing the door as he left.

  ‘I so need a butler one day,’ Sam said, digging into a slice of strudel with ice-cream. ‘How good is this?’

  ‘I know, right?’ Xavier said through a mouthful. His dad just shook his head and chuckled.

  ‘So what’s next for us?’ Sam asked.

  ‘We get you back to the Academy in the morning,’ Dr Dark said. ‘It’s the safest place for you to be until we know where to go next.’

  ‘So we stay here for the night?’ Xavier asked. ‘This place is cool, but it’s a bit creepy if you ask me.’

  ‘It’s safer this way,’ Dr Dark replied.

  As Sam began to feel too full to move, he was grateful for this little reprieve. He looked at Xavier and wondered if they’d find out where to go next that very night.

  ‘Well, let’s call it an evening,’ Dr Dark said, standing up from the table, yawning. ‘It’s been one hell of a day for everyone.’

  ‘You’re sure we’re safe here?’ Sam said as he followed Xavier and his dad from the room and up the stairs.

  ‘Of course,’ Dr Dark replied. ‘Only the Academy know we’re here.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel too safe anywhere at the moment,’ Sam said. ‘What with my recent brushes with the German Guardians and all.’

  They were silent as they walked down a long carpeted corridor.

  ‘Is this our room?’ Xavier asked as they stopped by the open door a few paces further down the hall. There were two luxurious single beds, the blankets turned down and the reading lamps on.

  ‘Yes, Otto prepared your room earlier, and I’m just across the hall if you need me,’ Dr Dark said. ‘Goodnight boys, try to sleep well.’

  Sam and Xavier settled into their beds in the guest wing of the house. Sam turned off his lamp and turned to face Xavier. He was perched on his own bed, reading about something on his tablet.

  ‘Hey, Sam, tell me about your dream, the one you had before we came to Berlin,’ Xavier said.

  ‘My dream?’ Sam said. ‘Well, it was more a series of snapshots, a bunch of little scenes.’

  Xavier was quiet for a while, and Sam noticed him put down his computer.

  ‘So, how does it work?’ Xavier asked. ‘When you have these dreams, or premonitions or whatever . .?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ Sam shrugged.

  ‘Do you know when you’re going to dream like that?’

  ‘No, it’s exactly like any other dream—only it comes true very soon after,’ Sam said. ‘They seem to be leading me to the next step, to the next of the last 13. And I’m guessing that their job is to find whatever it is we need to win the race—some piece of the Bakhu, by the sounds of what Eva and Jedi were telling us.’

  ‘What did the piece of floor you took from Italy look like?’ Xavier asked.

  Sam thought about it. ‘Kinda like a gear from a bike, only it was brass, and the teeth were much smaller.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound very Egyptian. Maybe da Vinci being the creator does make more sense. Although, the Egyptians did make some amazing stuff—’

  ‘I’m pretty familiar with their pyramids,’ Sam smiled.

  The two laughed as they remembered their climb up the Great Pyramid of Giza.

  ‘That feels like ages ago already. Huh. You know, Ahmed took me on tours of some ancient Egyptian sites,’ Xavier said, ‘and through museum collections that he’d helped put together—researchers believe they may have even had power, like electricity, for lights and stuff.’

  ‘Really?’ Sam said.

  ‘Yep. T
hink about it—there aren’t any torch marks inside the pyramids and tombs. The guys building them didn’t use flaming torches when they were working in there, but something like the Baghdad Batteries.’

  ‘The what?’ Sam’s eyebrow’s knit together in confusion.

  ‘Here, like this,’ Xavier picked up his tablet and flicked to an image. He held it up for Sam to see.

  ‘Cool.’

  They were silent then, and when Sam started drifting off to sleep from sheer exhaustion, he was sure that Xavier was already talking in his sleep.

  23

  EVA

  Eva lay awake, glad that Gabriella was asleep. Eva listened to her quiet snoring across the room, and she slipped on her robe and shoes and crept out of the door.

  The hallway was dark, lit by a few small night-lights set low in the walls. She went downstairs to the study rooms and through behind the gym to the science labs. There, beyond a ‘staff only’ door at the end of a corridor, was another set of stairs leading down. These were carved into the stone, and the air down there was a lot cooler.

  Despite the cold, the person she saw was wearing his trademark Hawaiian shirt and shorts. This was the one person she was sure would still be up at this hour—Jedi.

  ‘Well, hello there,’ he said, standing in the kitchen area outside of his office. ‘I was just fixing myself an espresso. Want one?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Eva replied, shutting his office door behind her as they walked in. ‘I’ll need to sleep at some stage tonight.’

  ‘Ah, sleep, I remember that,’ he said, taking his little cup over to his massive tri-screened workstation linked to an array of supercomputers in a vast room beyond a glass wall.

  ‘How long have you been here, Jedi?’ Eva asked after a while.

  Jedi looked at his watch. ‘Oh, um, about twenty-one, twenty-two hours,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Eva laughed, ‘I meant, how long have you been at the Academy? How did you end up here?’

  ‘Um, I didn’t come by what you might call the “traditional” route,’ Jedi hesitated and Eva nodded, silently urging him to go on. ‘My parents weren’t Dreamers, or if they were, I didn’t know it. My dad was a bit of a deadbeat and Mum wasn’t much more use. So I started hanging out with other kids whose parents didn’t care where they were. I skipped a lot of school, too much in the end, and got into all kinds of trouble, especially when it came to computers. Luckily the Academy found me in time.’

  He smiled and Eva was relieved to feel the tension in the room ease. ‘They showed me I could use my talents in other ways—even managed to make school cool!’ He pretended to gasp in horror. Now he was laughing. ‘Stop looking so serious, Eva, my story has a happy ending and now I’m king of all I survey. Ah, Betsy …’ Jedi swung his arms expansively around him.

  Eva looked out the glass wall in front of her and gestured to Jedi’s homemade supercomputer—his cluster of gaming consoles.

  ‘And that would be Betsy?’ Eva guessed.

  ‘Yep! Isn’t she a beauty?’ his face beamed. ‘Over five thousand of them in there now, and for the next three hours we’ll get our biggest worldwide connect of the day.’

  ‘I still don’t know how that works,’ Eva confessed.

  ‘And if the government ever asks you, that’s your answer,’ Jedi said with a smile.

  ‘Which government?’ Eva said.

  ‘Exactly!’ he said, laughing. ‘That’s the way. Now, watch this …’

  He typed in some commands and there was a whirring sound as bank after bank of linked machines came online. Eva wasn’t sure, but she thought the ceiling lights may have flickered—just a little.

  ‘Hmm, she’s chuggin’ a bit of power,’ he said, sliding across on his chair to another console and tapping away furiously. ‘That should increase the Academy’s geothermal energy output enough.’

  Eva settled into a chair as he slid back to his own console and started running programs.

  ‘Right now, I’m tapped into millions of gamers online, running their consoles with my own …’ Jedi’s hands typed over the keyboard as fast and efficient as the most accomplished concert pianist. ‘That, in turn, makes Betsy a supercomputer with enormous crunching power.’

  ‘What are you searching for?’ Eva asked.

  ‘Right now, all things da Vinci—archives, collections, documents and even just random mentions, just in case,’ Jedi tapped in a few more commands and chuckled to himself. ‘That’s one of about two thousand searches I’ve set up to run tonight. Another focus is looking for anything we can use to help us understand more of the journal so we—hang on—ohhh …’ A small bleep from another desk had stolen his attention.

  He slid across to a lone computer, an ordinary looking laptop, and, in under two minutes, tapped in a page or so of type, mostly numbers and symbols. He then swivelled back to his command and control console, laughing and saying, ‘That’ll keep him occupied for the next day or two.’

  ‘Him?’ Eva raised a tired eyebrow.

  ‘Matrix, my nemesis—I’ll tell you about him another time,’ Jedi said, then sipped his coffee and kept chuckling to himself as he typed search queries.

  ‘Are you able to identify any of the last 13 through your computers?’ Eva asked.

  Jedi shook his head as his eyes scanned his screens and he typed and clicked. ‘Nope,’ he said, taking another sip. ‘Could probably make a list of a thousand or so known Dreamers in the right age bracket, but there’d be no telling who the other remaining ten of the 13 are. That’s what we need Sam for.’ Jedi coughed. ‘Would you like some water?’

  ‘Please,’ Eva replied.

  Jedi went over to his water dispenser and poured water into a couple of paper cups.

  ‘Ten more to find, hey? Thank you,’ she said, accepting a cup and taking a sip. ‘You’re counting Xavier with Sam and Gabriella? But Sam knows him from school. That doesn’t make him the next of the 13, does it?’ Eva said.

  ‘Sam seems pretty determined to run around Germany with him, so I’m betting he’s number three,’ Jedi reasoned.

  ‘Has he dreamed of Solaris or anything specific for the prophecy?’ Eva asked.

  ‘Well, I mean—no, or maybe he has and he doesn’t know it yet.’

  He’s beginning to look uncomfortable with this conversation. What does he know?

  ‘Do you have information on him?’ Eva persisted.

  ‘Who?’ Jedi asked innocently.

  ‘Xavier,’ Eva sighed.

  ‘Oh yes, and his dad,’ Jedi said. ‘Especially his dad.’

  ‘Dr Dark, the psychiatrist?’ Eva said slowly.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He was my psychiatrist too,’ Eva said. ‘But you knew that, right?’

  ‘Um, yeah,’ Jedi replied. ‘I might have read that someplace.’

  ‘Where? Do I have a file?’ Eva asked.

  ‘We all have files.’

  ‘Can I read it?’

  ‘His file?’ Jedi said. ‘Or your file?’

  ‘His. And Xavier’s. Mine—well, I don’t know if I’m ready for that just yet, about my parents I mean.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about a student accessing files …’ Jedi hesitated.

  ‘Or you could just tell me what you know about the last 13.’

  ‘I’d tell you that anyway,’ Jedi smiled.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’s Sam, Gabriella, Xavier.’ Jedi crossed his arms in front of him. ‘Could be we know more of them …’

  ‘I know what you’re suggesting,’ Eva said, meeting his gaze.

  ‘Alex, and you.’ Jedi did not flinch.

  Eva shook her head. ‘We’re like the other kids here. Nothing makes us part of the last 13.’

  ‘No, you’re not like the others,’ Jedi said. ‘I’m not that big on coincidences and I don’t believe it was just chance that the three of you were picked up by the Enterprise on the same day. And that Sam went to school with Xavier and you were seeing his dad, the shrink. Sorry,’ he adde
d, seeing Eva wince at his last comment.

  She looked away, conflicted and caught up in her thoughts. ‘Besides, Alex is dead—he was right underneath Sebastian’s jet when it was shot down in New York,’ she said.

  Jedi smiled again.

  ‘What now?’ she asked. ‘Tell me what that grin is for!’ She started smiling herself, without even knowing why.

  ‘It’s because just before you got here, I found out,’ he said, tapping away and bringing up a photo of Alex date-stamped from the day before, ‘that Alex is still very much alive.’

  24

  XAVIER’S NIGHTMARE

  When I open my eyes, I’m swinging above a sea of green. Am I in a jungle?

  I look down and realise I’m precariously balanced on the branch of a tree. Sam lies on the ground below me, moaning quietly.

  Before I can call out to him, I hear a growl. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

  There is movement in the shrubbery beneath me. A flash of orange, then it’s gone.

  What was … was that a …

  Sam lifts his head and follows my gaze, staring fixedly toward the thick bushes. He forces himself up and limps to the tree, scrambling up to the first branch. I reach down to help him but as I look past him, I see huge yellow eyes watch us with savage curiosity.

  It’s a tiger. A big one. Where are we?

  ‘I’m pretty sure they can climb trees,’ Sam whispers to me.

  There is a noise, a grating sound, and the tiger turns its attention elsewhere. It’s watching something unseen through the foliage, sniffs the air, and with a bound into the shrubbery, it’s gone.

  ‘Feeding time?’ Sam says.

  ‘Time to go,’ I say, forcing resolve into my voice.

  ‘Xavier!’ A voice is shouting from far-off.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ I ask Sam. ‘Sounds like—’

  ‘Xavier!’

  ‘My dad!’

  ‘Over here!’ Dad calls out. He dangles a rope over an edge of the enclosure. We slide and drop our way down the tree and run the short distance to it. There are people yelling to us, urging us to climb. Hands reach out to help but they’re too far above us to reach.