The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone

by Tony Abbott

  As they pushed their way into the crowd, looking for vendors, Darrell also kept his eyes peeled for Teutonic Knights. No one really looked the part, but that’s exactly what they want you to think!

  Lily poked him with her elbow. “There.”

  Next to a group of young men and women sitting on a low wall was a sign. “Tourist Maps.” No sooner had they started over than the whole group of them jumped up and trotted toward them, smiling animatedly. “You want a tour of old Roma, yes?” one guy said. “Nice American tourists. We show you Colosseum. Beautiful at night. Wild animals. Gladiators. All here. Fifteen American dollars each. Yes?”

  “Sorry,” said Darrell. “We don’t have that—”

  “Ten dollars each!”

  “No, actually—”

  “Seven. Final offer. Okay, five. My absolute lowest offer. Three?”

  Lily drew in a breath. “No. Really. We just want a map to find . . . what’s the name of that street again—”

  “Five, Via Rasagnole!” the others yelled.

  The young people looked at one another. One unfolded a giant street map. They chattered to one another in some language Darrell couldn’t identify, but Becca whispered that it was probably Romany, the language of Gypsies.

  Cool, he thought. Lost in Rome with a band of Gypsies.

  Except that’s not true. We know where we are now, and a map will tell us where to go, plus I’m not sure “Gypsies” is politically correct, so never mind.

  After a few minutes, one guy shook his head. He handed them the map. “Take it. Is free. But no Via Rasagnole. Look. Index. Look!”

  They thanked the people and stepped away to search the map privately.

  “They’re right,” Wade said, studying the streets and the index. “There’s no such street in Rome.”

  “Which makes no sense,” said Darrell. “Why would the guy at the fencing school—”

  “Carlo,” said Lily.

  “—tell us to go there if there’s no there there?”

  Wade snapped his fingers. “Hold on, hold on. I know it’s late and my brain really wants to shut off, but maybe the address isn’t real.”

  “He wanted us to get lost?” said Lily. “Why would Carlo do a thing like that?”

  “No, look. He made us memorize the address and even spelled it for us, remember? Why would he spell it, if he didn’t want us to know the exact letters? He even said the Five was a V. As if it’s a word clue. Becca, it’s what you said. Clues leading to clues. Maybe all the things we’re getting are clues. Rebuses, codes, stuff like that. And we have to be smart to figure them out.”

  “Here we go again,” said Lily.

  “Actually, it makes sense,” Darrell said. “That’s why the Guardians have been able to keep Copernicus’s secret all these years. The levels of clues go on and on, and you have to be willing to follow them.”

  “Carlo told us they’ve been doing it for centuries,” Wade went on. “It’s how they kept the Order away until now.”

  Becca nodded. “So, V, Via Rasagnole might be a word scramble?”

  Drawing them farther away from the glaring lights of the Colosseum, Lily said, “You know, there are computer programs that work out codes and word scrambles. We can’t do it on the phone because it would take too long. But I bet if we can find a real computer, like a public computer that can’t be traced, we can find out what the address really means.”

  “Smart, Lil, really smart,” said Becca. “A public computer that can’t be traced. Until then, we have to assume that the Knights of the Teutonic Order are still out there. And by ‘out there,’ I mean lurking around every single corner.”

  Darrell checked his watch. It was after nine o’clock. After the day they’d had, he wanted to lie down on the nearest flat surface, but Becca was right. They shouldn’t stay anywhere too long. And they should keep their eyes open and their ears alert.

  He located the Colosseum on the map. “We’re here,” he said. “Let’s walk until we find a public library or internet café. Then we go in or wait until morning when they open—”

  “Oh!” Lily gasped, then held up the phone. “It’s vibrating. Someone’s calling me!” She tapped it. “Hello? I said Hello?”

  She turned to Becca. “They’re all Italian and stuff . . .”

  Becca took the phone. “Pronto?”

  Everyone hushed while Becca listened. “Sì? Sul serio?” She looked at Wade and Darrell, her eyes growing moist instantly.

  “Oh no,” said Wade. “What is it?”

  “Domani? Sì! Sì! Ciao!” Even before ending the call, she wrapped her arms around both boys. “Your dad’s been released by the German authorities. He’s coming here tomorrow—”

  “Yes!” Wade practically collapsed on Darrell, who could barely hold himself up. “Dad is back. I can’t believe it.”

  “I knew he’d escape,” Darrell said. “He’s Dad!”

  “How did he get free?” asked Lily. “And who was that?”

  Becca hung up. “Carlo’s assistant. Carlo knows a lawyer who knows a lawyer, so they made the police release Dr. Kaplan—Roald—on a technicality. She said the Order will soon figure out we’re here. We need to be careful. But this is so great. Your dad will meet us at noon at a place called the Castel Sant’Angelo, near the river.”

  Wade breathed in and out. “Holy cow, awesome, yes, yes!”

  Darrell rubbed his eyes and scanned the map. “Okay, we just have to make sure we stay out of the wrong hands. Castel Sant’Angelo . . . I can’t read this thing. Who wants to lead. I’m too . . .”

  “I got it,” Becca said, taking the map. “Everybody agreed?”

  “Agreed,” said Lily. “Let’s do this.”

  “Yeah, awesome!” said Wade.

  Darrell floated after them. They’d see Dad by lunchtime. And Carlo got him out. The Guardians were helping them. It was like a shadow had lifted, not only from him but from all of them. They were bubbling.

  Becca traced her fingers over the map. With the Colosseum at her back, she looked toward another bunch of ruins. “It’s a pretty straight shot from here through the Roman Forum to the Tiber River. Castel Sant’Angelo is on the far side of one of the bridges. Segui la guida!”

  She locked arms with Lily, who held her phone light over the map, and they set off down a cobbled path. They strode away from the square that surrounded the Colosseum and into the outskirts of what she said was “once the center of Imperial Rome.”

  “The key word being once,” Darrell said.

  The shadows closed quickly around them the moment they passed under a giant arch. It was like the air had suddenly changed, he thought, like entering the deep dark past. The paths between the ruins were jammed with clusters of slow-moving tourists, but the Forum was free of motorized traffic, which, given the crazy drivers they’d seen so far, was a good thing. As Darrell expected, Becca began pointing things out.

  “This big arch is called the Arch of Titus,” she read from the map. “It’s from the first century. Titus’s brother built it to honor him. Emperors did that kind of stuff back then.”

  “I’d do that for you, bro,” said Wade with a pretend-serious face. “As long as it meant that I was the alive brother.”

  “Ha, ha. Never mind building an arch. Just give me the cash.”

  “What we’re walking on now is Via Sacra,” Lily added, reading the map under the phone light.

  “The sacred road. I get it,” Darrell said.

  “Sacred is an anagram for ‘scared,’” said Wade.

  Darrell gave him a look. “I love history, I really do,” he said. “In fact, I love it so much I want to make it history. Let’s keep moving.”

  The Forum may have been restored as a place for tourists, he thought, but there was still a ton of rubble and heaps of stone and single columns where giant temples to some god or goddess once stood.

  He thought the place needed serious work.

  On their right they passed what Becca told them was t
he Basilica of Constantine. To him, its thick black arches stared down at them like the eye sockets of a massive skull.

  “This reminds me that we’re spending another night in another graveyard,” Darrell said, keeping to the path. “Are we sure this is the quickest way to the Castel Sant’Angelo?”

  Becca nodded. “It is, but if we weren’t on the run for our lives, I could spend a few days here.”

  “The key word being days,” Darrell said. “At night, this is serious ghost territory.”

  This part of Rome was an old, dead city, a collection of crumbled stone, half columns, shattered statues, and earthen streets, leading to and away from buildings that weren’t there.

  The hair on his neck rose as they passed the imposing bulk of the Temple of Romulus. A stubby tower of thick stone, with a cupola on top, it was dense and dark and forbidding. He didn’t want to think about what used to go on behind its massive bronze doors. Sacrifices probably. They took kids from other countries and . . . never mind.

  “Darrell?”

  He turned to Wade. “Yeah?”

  “Look up there.”

  Darrell looked beyond the temples and columns to the blue-black dome of the sky and all its silvery stars. “Yeah. You and Copernicus and stars.”

  “Right,” said Wade. “He was a scientist, an astronomer like Dad. And let’s assume he figured out some modern physics. Fine. But then the question is, what is he talking about? And I think it comes down to the device in the sketch.”

  “Yeah, the sketch. I love that. I’ve been thinking about it, too.”

  They passed a grassy area with a flat stone in the middle that Darrell was certain was where ancient people sacrificed kids. A policeman wove his way past them, and he remembered that they were still hiding from the cops.

  “Whatever the thing was, it had twelve parts,” Darrell murmured. “But then what? What was it supposed to do?”

  “That I can’t tell you.”

  They were now walking up to the Capitoline Hill, which, according to Becca and Lily, was one of the seven hills that Rome was built on. It was less a hill than a big mound, but that was just fine.

  They were climbing out of the land of the dead.

  Becca stopped to study the map, while Lily slung her bag to the ground and plopped next to it.

  “I am so tired,” she said. “These hills may look like nothing, but my legs are screaming at me. I need to rest for two minutes. Five. Ten minutes, my final offer—”

  Darrell laughed and sat next to her.

  “I mean,” said Wade, standing with Becca, “I ask myself, what would be so incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands? A weapon? What could make people commit murder for five centuries—”

  “Oh my!” Becca cried, rattling the map. “Oh! Oh!”

  A policeman appeared out of nowhere, shining his flashlight over them. “Va tutto bene?”

  “Sì,” said Becca. “Sì, sì. Grazie!” The policeman nodded and walked away. “Guys, guess what I just found on the map the totally old-fashioned way?”

  “With light from Carlo’s phone?” Lily added.

  “That we’re lost?” said Darrell.

  “Nope. A museum!”

  Wade laughed. “Becca, this is Rome. The whole city’s a museum.”

  She grinned from ear to ear. “But I found a museum called . . . wait for it . . . the Museo Astronomico e Copernicano.”

  “Seriously?” Darrell said, standing up.

  “Uh-huh! And I’m pretty sure it’s all about you know what and you know who!”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “Our luck just changed!” Lily squealed. “Becca, take us there this instant!”

  “Follow me this instant!” Becca laughed, and she marched out of the Forum. “The museum is in the middle of a park a few miles from here. We can walk it.”

  A Copernicus museum?

  Their luck was changing, all right. And now that his father was on his way, Wade was surprised at how incredibly beautiful Rome was turning out to be. The old city, its winding streets, the comfortable temperature, his awesome friends, the innumerable cars—little Fiats and Alfas buzzing around like mice in a maze—everything was suddenly and astoundingly and unbelievably . . . right.

  Becca’s ponytail bounced and spun as she forged ahead, acting as tour guide, tracing her fingers animatedly on the map.

  “Right here. Left. Now straight on.”

  For the next two hours, they made their way across the city. Streets twisted and crisscrossed one another in a careless manner. Nearly every corner they came to offered a view of some piazza or fountain or church or monument. Lily was chattering again. Darrell bounced on his heels, humming a riff from Gary Clark Jr.

  Everything was good.

  Even the killers don’t know exactly where we are.

  A slow hour after that they found themselves meandering up a series of inclined roads into a quiet, forested park that might have been what was left of one of Rome’s ancient hills, or maybe not, it didn’t matter. What mattered was perched at the top of the park and lit with floodlights—a large villa with three observatory domes on its roof.

  “The Museo Astronomico e Copernicano,” Becca said when they drew close to a high wrought-iron fence surrounding it. “We could climb over and peek in the windows. Or just wait for the place to open in the morning. Any ideas?”

  “Yeah. No more climbing,” Lily said. “My legs won’t stand for it. Get it? Stand. Never mind. I’m done.” She sat on a low wall bordering the road, kicked off her shoes, and rubbed her feet.

  The park behind them was heavily treed, quiet, and sheltered, and the night air was still temperate.

  “If we have to spend the next few hours outside, this isn’t a bad place,” Wade said. “One of us could stay awake. We can take shifts.”

  “It’s pretty quiet up here, and warm,” Darrell said. “It’s after eleven. If we’re lucky, the museum will open at nine. Ten hours? I could totally sleep that long.”

  “Fine,” Wade said. “Let’s find a quiet spot in the park and hang out until morning. Sleep. Whatever. We need to get in there, but I’m tired of breaking laws.”

  “Good call,” said Becca. “We must have a rap sheet a mile long.”

  Lily tramped among the trees and staked out an area of trim grass beneath a low-hanging tree. She rested her head on her bag. “Good night.”

  Each of them picked a grassy patch—not too far from the others—and settled in. Wade’s bones ached from the inside out, but his mind was racing. No way could he sleep. “I’ll take first watch.”

  “Me, second,” said Darrell.

  They were suddenly quiet, which was fine with Wade.

  For the first hour, he found his thoughts returning to the first pages Becca had translated. Nicolaus in his tower, looking at the sky with Hans.

  Copernicus dealt with all the regular stuff people in his time had to deal with—lousy medicine, smelly houses, weird food, long travel, no plumbing—but he still needed to discover things.

  That’s what really got Wade. That one man had an idea, and it changed the world. It meant that anyone could have an idea that could change the world too. He remembered what his father had told him Einstein said:

  Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

  Right? Nobody told Copernicus to study the stars. No one made him discover a new theory about the sun, but he did. He used his imagination, and he discovered new things.

  I must know more!

  And then the legacy. What device had he invented? What did the A of GAC mean? What were the relics? Even if everyone was convinced the diary was genuine, how could Copernicus ever have come up with the wormhole metric?

  Over and over the same questions, over and over the same no answers. His thoughts were like waves crashing against rocks that refused to change their shape.

  I, too, must know more.

  By the time he finally gave up cogitating, D
arrell was snoring like a bass woofer, and he couldn’t bear to wake him. Lily, it turned out, talked in her sleep as much as she did when she was awake. Right now she was muttering a long story about an internet link that led to another and another and never stopped.

  Becca didn’t make a peep other than her slow, measured breathing, which was just shy of snoring, until sometime past two a.m, when she bolted straight up from what must have been a coma-like slumber and said, “It’s time!” And then fell instantly back, falling into the same breathing rhythm as Darrell’s.

  It wasn’t time yet. Not with the sky still sprinkled with stars. But Wade was forced to admit that if he couldn’t sleep, at least he had his friends to listen to, and he may as well finish his stint as lookout.

  “I’ll sleep after Dad comes,” he whispered to himself.

  He watched the slow turning of the dome of stars and imagined Copernicus studying the same stars five hundred years ago. People and science and history. Wade loved the old stuff more than he had before they began this crazy adventure. He imagined the vague machine in the sketch, its giant frame, the odd notations. Did the device really have levers and gears, leather straps, hinges, wheels, pulleys? And seats? What about the hole in the sky . . . what was that . . . a hole . . .

  It was only later when he felt someone nudge his arm over and over that he realized he had fallen asleep. He sat up to see Becca on her feet watching the road. There came the sound of an approaching car.

  “Everybody wake up,” she said. “The museum is open. It’s time!”

  Chapter Forty

  After tramping up the long driveway to the parking lot, they found the villa’s doors—flanked by a pair of giant palms—already open.

  A little white-haired man in a rumpled suit sat at a small desk inside. He looked them up and down, ran his fingers along his thin white mustache, and smiled.

  What began then was a strange, slow conversation in English.

  A kind of English.

  “You are Mary Cans?” he asked, smiling, inscribing the number 4 on a sheet of paper at the desk.