The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone

by Tony Abbott

  The car fell quiet as Roald took the diary, which Becca had opened to the page with the sketch of the machina tempore. “So . . . Uncle Henry died trying to keep the relics away from those men.”

  “He was a Guardian,” Becca said.

  Roald studied the picture—his brow furrowing, his head shaking, all the while murmuring to himself, “Heinrich . . .”—and Wade realized that whatever doubts he’d had about the diary were vanishing.

  If his dad believed it, he did too.

  “Copernicus somehow figured out the theory of the wormhole,” Wade said after a few minutes. “Something like Kip Thorne’s equations is in the diary, too.”

  His father nodded slowly. “I see it.”

  “Wade thought it was impossible,” Lily said, “but there it is in black and white. Well, sort of brown and white.”

  Becca and Lily alternately filled him in on the attack in Bologna and their discovery of the Copernicus museum.

  “Carlo from the fencing school called me as we were driving down here,” Roald said. “He said Uncle Henry deliberately contacted me for help. The Order has never been this close. The relics have never been in such danger as now. He said the Guardians have begun—”

  “The Frombork Protocol,” Becca said. “Carlo told us.”

  “And you’re saying you know what the first relic is?”

  “Vela,” Lily said. “We’re not sure exactly what it is, except that Copernicus gave it to Magellan. We put about a thousand clues together to narrow it down, and we’re pretty certain it’s hidden in Guam.”

  “Dad,” said Wade. “I know you said we’re going home, and I get that, but . . .”

  “We’re not going home,” Roald said. “Not yet. Take me through this, every step of the way. I have to understand it.”

  Darrell tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  “Sì?”

  “Museo Astronomico e Copericano, per favore.”

  She laughed. “Sì!”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  For the next two hours, the kids detailed what they had found out that morning, what piece of information led to what fact that then led to which guess. Roald consulted his student notebook constantly, arguing at first with the notion of a time machine, but not as strongly as Wade would have imagined. He couldn’t explain the modern formula’s appearance in a sixteenth-century diary, but set that aside as a question to be solved later. He rightly said that it didn’t affect the fact that the Order was after the relics.

  Beyond his own notes, Roald studied Wade’s additions carefully while the language-challenged museum docent opened the display cases for “Dottore Kaplani” (but really Becca) to consult the documents inside.

  The evidence invariably produced the same result.

  When Lily related that Magellan had called the Guam islands las Velas Latinas, Roald just stared into space for minutes, shushing them when they tried to tell him more. At last, he wandered away from the kids and dialed his phone.

  Wade and Darrell tried both to listen and not listen, then heard, “Sara, I know you won’t get this until the weekend, but we’ll be traveling for a few more days . . .”

  It was all they needed to hear.

  Fifty-seven minutes later, their wispy-haired driver laughingly announced, “Siamo qui!” and slowed in front of a busy airline terminal. She revved the Maserati louder and louder until the kids and Dr. Kaplan got out. Then she fishtailed away exactly as she’d done so many times before.

  “She’s a wee bit strange,” Lily said.

  “She is,” Roald said with a smile. “But Carlo told me she’s part of the reason the Order isn’t on our tails this exact moment.”

  Inside the terminal the mayhem was a hundred times worse than the Berlin train station—oceans of passengers, families, security, airline personnel moving in every direction, while shrill announcements in Italian, French, and English overlapped in a storm of noise.

  “Be careful with everything you do,” Roald said, huddling them together. “We lay low, we do not separate. Two of us stand outside the bathroom while the others are in there. The Order will be on our tail before we know it. The Guam Air counter is over there. Come on.”

  As it turned out, there was only one flight from Rome to Guam. Dr. Kaplan negotiated with the airline representative, using a credit card drawn on a Bologna bank, which Wade guessed Carlo had given him.

  “It’s a twenty-five-hour flight,” Roald said, handing boarding passes to each of them. “Two stops. We’ll be in Guam the day after tomorrow.”

  “Maybe the Order doesn’t even go there,” said Darrell.

  “We can’t count on that,” Wade said. “We should act as if they’re right behind us.”

  “I’ll bet the Order goes everywhere,” Lily said as they hurried into security. “Your home in Austin, remember?”

  Wade remembered. He couldn’t forget.

  After finding their gate, Roald paused. “I should tell you that something happened while you were on the run. A school bus vanished in the mountains of Spain.”

  “Really?” said Darrell. “Do you know how many times I wished my school bus would disappear?”

  “It was filled with children,” said Dr. Kaplan.

  Darrell blushed. “Sorry.”

  “If Uncle Henry predicted it, it means the Teutonic Order is behind it,” Wade said.

  “Of course they are,” Becca added. “They know we’re getting close.”

  “Boarding Flight Thirty-Seven to Dubai, continuing to Narita and Guam.”

  “Time to fly,” Lily said, hooking her arm through Becca’s and heading to the Jetway.

  As Roald nudged the boys after them, Darrell turned. “How do we know that the Order won’t make our plane disappear?”

  Wade felt suddenly queasy. “I guess we don’t.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Time is a crazy thing, Becca thought.

  When you can’t sleep—and naturally she couldn’t sleep, no matter how exhausted she was—a twenty-five-hour flight halfway across the world lasts three months. Each second drags out to thirty, each minute becomes an hour, each hour a week. A jet is nothing but a big metal box of noise. Lights are always on. You’re squashed upright in a teeny seat, your stomach is pinching and rolling, your temples are thudding, your eyes are on fire—and then they serve you plastic food!

  It reminded her of nights at the hospital after her sister’s surgery. There was always something happening, lights, sounds, machines thunking and whining, strange smells, voices chattering, whispering.

  She hadn’t slept a wink there, either.

  And to lose a day of your life in the process! She hated to lose anything, but losing time—time—was one of the worst things you could do. Time was all you had, wasn’t it?

  On the other hand, Copernicus had discovered a time machine. And some kind of “traversable wormhole.”

  What would she do if she had a machine like that? Where—when—would she go? What would she change?

  Could you change anything? Should you? Wasn’t there something called the butterfly effect? Altering one tiny thing, like where or when or if a butterfly flaps its wings, can change the future in huge ways, like eventually producing a hurricane.

  Opening Moby-Dick at random, she found herself reading, of all things, about the moment the crew of the Pequod spots a giant squid in the ocean. It was described as a monster with . . .

  . . . innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas . . .

  She closed the book. The kraken was just such a monster, and those words only drew her back to Copernicus’s diary.

  As difficult as it was to decipher some pages, it was strangely comforting, and Hans Novak, the Magister’s young assistant, seemed like one of their friends, a part of their team in a way, and riding on the journey with them.

  She set the diary on the tray table and studied its cover carefully for the first time since Bologna. It was as beautiful as
it was plain: dark red leather, tooled subtly around its edges with a design of intersecting geometric shapes—diamonds, triangles, circles linked with circles—that met at the brass guards in the four corners.

  The daggers on the corner guards, she now noticed, converged at a single spot in the center of the cover. Her heart quickened.

  They met in the center of the line that read, in German, Seine geheimen Reisen auf Erde und im Himmel—His Secret Voyages in Earth and Heaven—at the word im—in.

  It was then she noticed that, while the whole title was imprinted in gold leaf, the gold of the word im was nearly flaked off.

  As if it had been touched often.

  She ran a finger over it. Surprisingly, the wooden board beneath the leather pushed in with the pressure, as if the board itself had a small circle cut into it just under that word.

  She lifted the cover of the diary and watched the inside endpaper as she pressed the cover word again. The endpaper bulged slightly, and its upper left corner lifted slightly away from the board.

  “Oh!”

  No one woke up. They were dead to the world.

  Setting the cover flat on the tray table, Becca shifted the book around so that the upper corner faced her. Pressing the cover a third time, she pried the endpaper up enough to see that a slip of parchment was hidden beneath. She dug in her bag and removed an emery board. Pressing it under the flap, she tugged out the parchment until it fell free of the book.

  “Wade,” she whispered, elbowing his arm gently. “Wade?”

  In a dark, uneven, and unfamiliar hand, were several lines in German with the English title,

  Legal Man

  Becca jumped in her seat. “Wade! Look what I found.”

  He grumbled, lifting his head to her. “Are we there yet?”

  “This wasn’t written by Hans Novak. Look. A piece of parchment. And the handwriting is different. It’s about Magellan. Listen.”

  The engines roared around them as she translated.

  I bow as the great explorer strides across the dock.

  “Magister Nicolaus!” he says. “You travel so far alone.”

  “My assistant is away.” I lean close and explain my purpose.

  The captain responds, “Upon my life, I will!”

  “It’s the moment Copernicus and Magellan meet,” said Wade, blinking his eyes wide open.

  I reveal the contents of my palm and unwrap the velvet cloth. The sail-shaped stone lies shining in the moonlight.

  “Aquamarine,” the captain says. “How fitting for a mariner.”

  “Holy cow, Wade. Vela is a stone! A blue stone, small enough to hold in your hand!”

  From a leather pouch I withdraw one of Achille’s daggers and present it to the Captain. “The first shall circle to the last,” I tell him.

  With thanks, he goes with the morning tide.

  Upon my life, I will. I shall never forget the words of the very first Guardian.

  Becca looked over at Wade. His eyes were glistening, studying the handwriting. “Becca, you got it. This is the best clue so far! We have to tell them—”

  “Wait.” She paused. The engines roared, but she found herself whispering. “I just want to . . . I mean, you kind of weren’t sure at first. About the time machine. Do you . . . I mean . . . now . . .”

  He looked her in the eyes, and the cabin dimmed as more lights went off, almost shrouding them. “I guess I do. Maybe I’ll never be able to wrap my head around time travel. Dad knows way more. All the contradictions, you know? But I look at Uncle Henry and how he died. And the Order. And Dad. The Guardians. All of it. So, I think so, yeah.”

  They didn’t wake the others. There wasn’t going to be any rest once they arrived in Guam, so they may as well sleep, she thought. She and Wade talked together for a while until she felt herself getting drowsy and closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  Hours must have gone by before Lily rustled noisily next to her. “The plane is descending to the first layover.”

  Darrell stretched his legs out. “Is the pilot controlling the descent?”

  “We can only hope!”

  “Guys, Uncle Roald,” Becca said, rousing herself. “Guess what?”

  “Read it to them,” Wade said.

  They all listened spellbound as she read what she’d discovered.

  “Vela is a small blue stone in the shape of a sail,” Roald said in a breath. “Becca, this is amazing.”

  “It’s one more clue,” she said.

  “A giant one.”

  Darrell slapped Wade’s shoulder. “We are getting so close. From the whole giant world to one little island. The first relic is half a day and two more hops away. Unbelievable!”

  After a brief stay in Dubai, the flight to Japan seemed a new kind of interminable. The flight from Japan to the islands was more of the same. Becca read and reread the Magellan encounter until she memorized it, struck by the different handwriting and wobbly lettering, wishing she had a sample of Copernicus’s handwriting to compare it against.

  Finally, Lily reached across her to lift the window shade. The row of seats turned golden in the light. It was an hour before dawn, but the sky was already brightening over the great blue Pacific. It was like flying into the very first days of the world. Back to the creation. The start of everything.

  And there it was again.

  Time.

  “Less than an hour and we land,” Wade said.

  His eyes blinked into the orange sunlight.

  She took a breath. All right, then. A new day.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Because it was one of the first flights of the morning, the jet was able to taxi to the gate without delay. Twenty minutes after touchdown, they were in the terminal, while Dr. Kaplan made a quick call.

  “We’ll be picked up by one of my contacts at the University of Guam,” he told them. “They have great researchers to help us determine where Vela might be hidden—”

  “They’re here,” said Wade.

  A black van was parked on the tarmac near a small private jet. Several men waited in front of it. They stiffened as if suddenly called to attention. The young woman from Berlin stepped out of the jet, sliding a slim duffel bag over her bare, toned arms to her shoulder. She was down the stairs in a moment, and the men gathered around her like players around a quarterback. She spoke, and they each nodded once. One of the men slid his right hand into his open jacket and patted the area under his left armpit.

  “They’re armed,” said Darrell. “Dad—”

  “I’m on it,” Dr. Kaplan said, his phone out. After a minute of low talking, he pulled them close. “Our ride will meet us outside the cargo area. Here comes our escort through customs now. Let’s move.”

  Becca turned to go with the others when she touched Wade’s arm.

  The pale man with the bruise on his head emerged from the jet with a small computer in his hands. He spoke to the woman, and she whirled her head around to the terminal. “Go!” she yelled, and the van took off, while the woman herself entered the terminal at a sprint.

  “That’s how they know,” Becca said. “They’ve already unscrambled Carlo’s phone.”

  “Come—on!” Wade pulled her away from the window and they ran for customs. They were whisked through in no time and pulled into a small beat-up Honda driven by his father’s contact from the university. The kids crouched on the floor of the backseat, while Dr. Kaplan did the same in the front. They were able to squeak out of the airport parking lot without stopping. As their car slid past the van, Wade and Becca peeked out to see the young woman staring motionless through the terminal door. She was startlingly beautiful up close, but the expression in her eyes was not really human. As if she were a species of rare animal. A dangerous one.

  The driver, a short middle-aged man with thin brown hair and sunglasses, jammed his car into top gear before turning completely sideways to Dr. Kaplan. “Your reason for coming here, to learn about Magellan’s time on the island . . . I must
say, it’s rather common knowledge. Can you explain your research a little?”

  Dr. Kaplan cleared his throat. “Actually, I . . . it’s complicated.”

  “Mysterious!” he said. “Well, you’re in luck. We’ve arranged for a hotel, but first, we’re heading to Janet Thompson’s bungalow. Her grandmother was, of course, Laura Thompson.”

  The kids shared a look. Of course? Lily mouthed.

  “I saw that!” the driver said, turning around.

  “A truck!” Darrell yelled.

  The driver spun the wheel almost completely around while branches on the roadside snapped against the car.

  “Maybe drive now and talk later?” Dr. Kaplan asked.

  The little man laughed as he swerved back onto the road. “I’ve been driving on the island for thirty years without a real accident.”

  Darrell nudged Wade, whispering, “Define real—”

  “I heard that!” the driver laughed. “I mean no fatalities.”

  He sputtered onto a broad road that skirted the southeastern shore of the island. On one side was the vista of the Pacific Ocean in the morning, thousands of miles of nothing but bright blue water. Looking straight east toward home, Becca could almost see the gentle arc of the horizon. To the south of the island stood a handful of low mountains.

  “We’re getting close,” Becca said. “I can feel it.”

  “Me, too.” Darrell nudged Wade. “It won’t be long now, bro.”

  “Do you think it’s just the one van?” Wade asked. “Or will they have more?”

  “If we’re as close as we think we are,” his father said, “we have to believe they’ll have more. If we need to get into the jungle, we’ll have help, right?” he asked the driver.

  “A retired Navy SEAL is the most knowledgeable guide to the island. If you need to go deep, he’s your man.”

  Becca stared inland at the vast sea of beautiful tangled green that seemed as giant as the ocean itself. The seashore was sprinkled with villas and hotels, but the island’s interior melted into a dense world of thick vegetation that looked as forbidding as it must have back in Magellan’s time. As if the jungle would swallow right up anyone who entered. The sun bore down, and a heavy mist coiled from the interior like smoke.