The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone

by Tony Abbott

  Unable to stop herself from continuing to dig into the encyclopedia site, Lily said, “Magellan died in the Philippines, attacked by natives, so he didn’t finish his voyage. It’s pretty well written about. Curious fact. After the attack, his body was never found.”

  “Wade, I need your dad’s notebook,” said Becca. “For the cipher.”

  Giving it to her, Wade stepped back from the computer, his mind still clicking and swirling with questions about the Guardians of the Astrolabe of Copernicus. “Magellan’s body was never found? So the relic was lost?”

  Lily traced the text farther down the page. “Ha! No! There’s a legend that Magellan’s servant, a native by the name of Enrique, spirited the body away.”

  “Enrique.” Darrell frowned. “Where did he take it?”

  Lily began jumping in her chair. “Oh my gosh, listen to this! Their previous stop? The island they visited just before Magellan was killed in the Philippines?”

  “Yes? Where was it?” said Becca.

  “Guam,” said Lily.

  Wade wasn’t sure what that meant. “So . . . ?”

  Lily was still jumping. “Guess what Magellan called Guam and its smaller islands? Guess! Never mind, I’ll tell you. Islas de las Velas Latinas.’ Islands of the Lateen Sails!”

  They hushed once more. Wade’s head went silent, too, then he had to say it. “Guys, Vela is the relic, and it’s in Guam.”

  “So we need to go there,” said Darrell. “Right?”

  “Um . . .” Becca frowned over the diary. “Wade, I have one of your impossible things here. This passage seems to hint at what the device actually is, but it’s in code like the email. It says ‘Hytcdsy lahjiua.’ I decoded it using the key on the star map, but this time it didn’t decode into English words. They’re in Latin.”

  She raised her face to them. “Machina tempore.”

  Lily wrinkled her nose. “Mechanical tempura?”

  “No,” said Wade, his knees shaking suddenly. “Time machine.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The sound of footsteps on an iron stairway always bothered Ebner von Braun. They were loud and grating and sad. Either they were his footsteps, in which case everyone would know he was approaching, or they were someone else’s and—since he trusted no one—they could mean he was about to die.

  Why should he be terrified of footsteps on stairs? That was simple. For the last four years he—a physicist of great esteem even in the tiniest upper circle of the greatest theoretical astrophysicists in the world—had worked exclusively for Galina Krause.

  Galina Krause, the mysterious young woman who had appeared on the doorstep of a castle in northern Poland, an urchin in the storm, an orphan to time, a dishrag that had been wrung out once too often, but a dishrag with hypnotic eyes.

  And why had Ebner been at the castle that night four years ago? For the same reason that his father and father’s father and great-grandfather’s great-grandfather had been there. A secret meeting of the Knights of the Teutonic Order of ancient Prussia, the vast global society built on old royal power and great wealth.

  Little did Ebner know then—little did any of them in that room know—how brilliant this ragged young woman was. How uncannily knowledgeable she was about the Order’s deepest secrets. How thoroughly she understood the most intricate mathematics, temporal physics, and theoretical astronomy. Not to mention where the Order’s legendary treasures lay buried, as if she’d possessed a direct link to its long-lost royal vaults.

  And all at such a tender age! How old was she that stormy night four years ago, fifteen? Yet how she mesmerized them all with her brilliance! Later came the silent vote, and Ebner himself was chosen to accompany her to the dark wastes of Russia for her treatment. In the secret years since that night, he had only bowed before her increasing knowledge, the scope and speed of her mind, the wisdom that seemed utterly impossible for one so young.

  Impossible?

  The Order had lost track of many of the Guardians by the eighteenth century. Yet after four short years, Galina Krause had brought the Knights back from the brink of extinction to within reach of the first relic. Galina was proving daily that the word impossible had lost its meaning.

  Ebner reached the top of the stairs and paused, breathing a long, slow breath to steady his nerves. He glanced down at the small bronze casket he cradled in his hands. What would she say when she opened it?

  “Will you mention that I have brought it personally?” a voice said at the bottom of the stairs below him.

  Ebner half turned. “If the moment arrives. Stay outside the door. I will call for you. Perhaps.” He straightened his bow tie in the reflection of the aluminum door and keyed in a seven-digit code.

  A whisper of air, the door slid away, and he was standing on the threshold of a penthouse overlooking Milan, Italy, that had the feel of a mountain lair decorated by Versace. Galina was dressed in black, a svelte, catlike silhouette against the glittering window.

  “Well,” she said, not bothering to turn.

  Ebner’s knees trembled. Another breath. Another straightening of the tie. He stepped forward. “The Le Monde story has died. It seems the journalist pressing the murder angle has vanished.” He paused. No reaction. He glanced around the room. No crossbow, either. “In other business, we are monitoring every airport and train depot on the continent. The children must have picked up a new cell phone, or been given one. It appears to be scrambled. Though not for long.”

  “They now have the help of the Guardians in Bologna,” Galina breathed. “I do wonder if the children know what this means for them.”

  Ebner bowed slightly, apparently to himself. “The fencing school could not be taken in the first attack. By the time our reinforcements arrived, it had been abandoned. Its armory and library were empty.”

  “The Guardians will re-form elsewhere. The Protocol demands it . . .”

  “The children will not escape our grasp—”

  “As they did twice in Berlin?” Galina snapped. “At the Austrian border? And again in Rome?” Her words were icicle sharp.

  “You have my word. The Crows have been mobilized once more,” Ebner said, mustering as much calm as his trembling voice could manage.

  “And the Spanish Experiment?” Galina asked, finally turning her head, but not far enough to see what he was holding.

  The delicate trail of the scar on her neck was more visible than usual, he thought. Did her anger bring it out? He cleared his throat.

  “Certain elements of the equation have proved . . . unstable,” he said. “It was our most successful experiment to date. Only . . . not successful enough. In fact, it is still unfolding.”

  “There is no way to trace it to our laboratory?”

  “Absolutely not. The Spanish authorities are baffled,” Ebner said, adding, “But then, they are often baffled.” He thought this was amusing. Galina’s expression did not change. “What shall we do with the Italian professor? Mercanti?”

  “She will be useful to us for a later relic,” Galina said, walking slowly over to the window and looking south. Toward Rome, Ebner thought. We’ll be going there soon, perhaps.

  She turned abruptly. “Is there anything else?”

  Ebner swallowed hard. “I have saved the best for last, Miss Krause.” Holding the bronze casket against his stomach, he unlatched it and slowly opened its lid.

  With the measured steps of a jungle cat, Galina strode slowly toward him, her expression somewhere between ecstasy and rage. She stopped inches away, her eyes riveted on the inside of the box. It was lined with rich black velvet. Lying on the shimmering fabric, coiled around itself three times, was a leather strap. On the strap was a single ruby in the shape of a sea monster. A kraken.

  Galina gently removed the strap from the box and stepped back. Ebner grinned. “It was retrieved on the plains of North Prussia, exactly where you said it would be. Professor Wolff brought it to me personally. Professor?”

  The door slid aside once more
, and a white-haired man in a leather overcoat stood waiting. He nodded slightly at Galina.

  Ebner, wondering whether she saw Markus Wolff at all, stepped forward. “Miss Krause, if I may—”

  “Leave me. Both of you.” Galina held the strap to her cheek and kissed the ruby kraken over and over.

  For a fraction of a second, Ebner wished he were an old red jewel. Still, her intensity was odd. It scared him. Like iron stairs.

  Stepping backward to the door, Ebner caught sight of a glassy tear, sliding down Galina’s exquisite cheek to her scar. It originated, he noted, from the damp lashes of her silvery gray eye.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “A time machine.”

  Darrell’s voice sounded somewhere between utter disbelief and drooling desire.

  “Copernicus discovered an astrolabe that could travel in time?” he said. “That thing in the sketch? I don’t think so. I mean, of course it would be cool, flying around the years, the sinking of the Titanic, Lincoln’s assassination, chatting with MLK and Jeff Beck—well, Beck’s still alive—or sitting in the dugout of game three of the 2005 World Series between the Astros and the White Sox, all five hours and forty-one minutes of it—”

  “Except it’s incredibly not possible,” Wade said.

  “You’re kidding, right?” said Lily. “A time machine is so possible. I want one. I’m only amazed it took so long to invent one.”

  “No, look,” Wade said. “If you don’t believe me, there’s something called the grandfather paradox. Say you go back in time and kill your grandfather. There would be no you in the future to go back in time in the first place. It’s just logical.”

  “Maybe,” Becca said. “But what if we only know the kind of logic that works in one direction, past to present to future.”

  Where was she going with this? “Uh . . . okay . . . and . . .”

  “People only go forward in time, like boats going the same direction on a river,” she said. “We’ve learned to think in only that one way. But, Wade, what if there is another kind of logic? One that controls moving in two directions, back and forth in time? Maybe only when you actually do travel back in time, do you discover how logical that is.”

  She stared at him as if he had the answer.

  “It’s . . . it’s . . .” He didn’t finish.

  When he was young, Wade would have loved a time machine. To go back before his parents split up and, somehow, fix things between them. But time travel was a fantasy, unreal, a dream.

  “It’s what?” asked Becca. “You’re the scientist.”

  The museum had begun to fill with more tourists, and he didn’t like the look of some of them. He lowered his voice. “It’s late. If Dad’s been released, it can’t be long before the Order knows we’re in Rome. I say we hightail it to the Castel Sant’Angelo, find somewhere to hide, and wait for him. As for the time machine, we need to reread the diary.”

  “Actually, good ideas. Both of them,” said Lily, erasing her computer searches. “Let’s get moving.” They packed up their stuff and headed through the rooms toward the entrance.

  “Hello!” the white-haired man said, standing at his desk near the door. “I never hope you will leave us again very soon!”

  “Lo stesso con noi,” said Becca with a smile. “Us, too.”

  They wound their way quickly down the hill from the museum, out of the park, and onto Via Trionfale, which ran straight for a long while, then doglegged to Via Leone IV, toward the Tiber River and the Castel.

  At the intersection of the two streets, they stopped at a café. Earlier, they had passed a McDonald’s and several outdoor sandwich stands, but Becca convinced them to eat a true Italian breakfast of fruit, coffee, juice, and stuffed pastries. It was their first real meal since the picnic basket in the car the day before.

  “I feel pretty good that our luck is turning,” Lily said, munching the remains of a pear as they started down Via Leone. “We found out so much there. Don’t ask me to explain it all or how it’s possible.”

  “Only Wade could do that,” said Darrell, laughing. “Right, bro?”

  Becca glanced at him.

  “I’ll leave that for Dad,” he said.

  Besides, Lily had put her finger on it. Something was changing for them, and it was much more than their luck. They had discovered things. If he was too logical to accept that a time-traveling astrolabe was strictly possible—he was too rational for that, wasn’t he?—he loved the idea of a quest for relics, and they were getting closer.

  The clues, codes, dagger, diary, all of it was exciting, smart, and even—discounting that killers were after them—fun, and what made the quest that way was simple: being with these three people.

  By noon the crowded sidewalks on Via Stefano were hot, the traffic snarling, fast, and busy. When a blue motorbike whizzed between jammed cars, bounced up onto the sidewalk past them, and raced back into the street, Lily screamed, “We’re going to get killed by accident!”

  “The next street is just as good,” Becca said. She led them down to Via Plauto into a series of smaller streets and alleys nearer the river.

  A few minutes later, Wade spotted the same blue motorbike idling two blocks behind them. Its helmeted driver was on his cell phone.

  “Guys, that Vespa . . .” His hand went instinctively to his side, the dagger under his shirt.

  “The Order?” said Lily.

  “Could be,” Darrell said. “I say we don’t take chances. I say we run.”

  They took off to the next corner and zigzagged down the next two side streets as they had done in Berlin. Lily jerked suddenly through a door on her left, a clothes shop, where they slammed into customers until they found a way out on the next street over. They crossed a busy intersection against the light, then hurried down a narrow cut-through into a small, deserted piazza.

  The motorbike roared in seconds later.

  With a quickness that surprised even himself, Wade unsheathed the dagger, went into a crouch, and growled, “Leave us alone—”

  “Put that back!” Becca shouted. She tugged him toward an open door. It was a grocery. They stumbled through to the next street over, when Lily’s phone started ringing.

  “What? Becca, it’s the lady driver. What’s a tuber?”

  “Tiber? The river. This way—”

  They entered the park surrounding the Castel. The banks of the river were visible ahead. The motorbike bounced over the sidewalk toward them. Wade turned, the dagger still in his hand. It was a reflex now. Crouch and show your weapon. Even if he didn’t know what he was going to do with it. The bike roared at them, the driver’s hand went inside his jacket—

  There came a sudden shriek of tires, and the motorbike flew up in the air and flattened into a low wall. The biker was hurtled over the wall, where he landed with an awful sound on pavement.

  The vintage Maserati spun completely around the kids. A voice cried out.

  “Kids, get in!”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Jamming themselves into the Maserati, the kids screamed, “Daaaaaad!” and “Roaaaald!” and fell all over him.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, hugging them as much as possible while the driver settled into a swift spin along the ancient river. “Is everyone all right?”

  “Yes!” Lily said breathlessly. “Tell us how you escaped!”

  “Hardly an escape,” he said. “The police arrested me at the train station. I was in a cell for a day on a charge of something ridiculous, breaking into a cemetery. Luckily, your friend Carlo contacted a lawyer, suddenly there was bail, and I was out. We drove down here overnight.” He glanced at the driver. “That’s an adventure I’ll tell you about sometime.”

  Darrell tried to catch his breath. “We have an adventure for you, too, Dad. Wait’ll you hear.”

  “You can tell me on the plane. We’re flying home before anything else happens.”

  Wade shared a look with the others. “Dad, we can’t really go home, I mean, n
ot yet. We discovered, we think we discovered, some amazing stuff. Incredible stuff. Unbelievable—”

  “Uncle Roald, Copernicus had a machina tempore!” Lily blurted out. “Which is the Latin way of saying ‘time machine.’ We even have a picture of it. In his ancient diary. Which we also have!”

  Dr. Kaplan’s jaw dropped. “Copernicus wrote a diary? There’s no record of that.”

  “It was in Carlo’s fencing school in Bologna,” said Darrell. “Copernicus discovered an ancient time machine, an astrolabe so big you can sit in it. The details are real sketchy, but Becca can show you.”

  Wade nodded. “Yeah, plus the Knights of the Teutonic Order, the ancient organization of evil villains—”

  “—are still around,” Darrell went on, “and working with the evil Berlin police. They’ve always wanted the time machine—”

  “And still do,” said Becca. “But Copernicus—”

  “Took the astrolabe apart,” Darrell interrupted, “that’s the time machine. And he gave twelve pieces of it to people called Guardians to hide wherever they wanted. That was sometime after 1514. A whole army of other Guardians have been hiding the pieces ever since. That’s who Uncle Henry was. But even after five hundred years the Order still wants the pieces. They’re the creeps after us.”

  “The motorbike guy was one of them,” Lily said.

  “And the lady with the hair,” Darrell said breathlessly.

  He knew the others wanted to tell it, but he couldn’t seem to stop talking until he got it all out. He finally couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he glanced around and said, “You guys take it from here.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Wade grumbled. “It’s just that the twelve relics in Uncle Henry’s message are the pieces that supposedly made Copernicus’s astrolabe work.”

  “And we think we’ve discovered what the first one is and where it’s hidden,” Lily added. “The island of Guam. It was taken there by Magellan on his voyage around the world!”