The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone

by Tony Abbott

  Keep walking, and don’t stop until you find the blue hand.

  The first drops of rain slapped through the upper branches.

  Wind thundered in and seconds later the rain fell like bullets. They rushed ahead into an area of low growth and gnarly coral. There, hidden among the thick green, were black splotches, the entrances to the volcanic caves that the native people had discovered and occupied centuries ago.

  Leaves shredded behind them.

  Connor swung on his heels and went into a crouch. Down! he mouthed, waving his arm low. He handed Roald the map. “I’ll distract them. Keep going straight over this rise and down to the cliffs. There may be a few caves sharing the same aerial coordinates. I hope you know what you’re looking for—” He scurried off, quietly at first, then making as much noise as he could.

  The shooting began then—a quick series of dull, barking noises that whipped through the leaves, thudding into tree trunks in Connor’s direction. The kids shared a frightened look. Lily’s face was ghostlike.

  The Order’s hunting us like animals! They want us dead!

  The passage from Moby-Dick came swimming back to Becca.

  . . . that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths . . .

  “This way!” Dr. Kaplan whispered. The kids hustled after him down a rocky path to the cliff’s face while Connor kept drawing fire.

  A sudden thwack tore the leaves and Becca swore an arrow whizzed past her face. She fell flat on the ground. The others found shelter in a grove of thick-leaved bushes. She rose to her knees and peered over the growth. She was cut off. Her heart was thundering. The ground pounded with footsteps hurrying toward her.

  I have to run—

  “Stay down.”

  Wade crouched ten feet away. Had he come for her? Had he been trapped too? Stupid questions! He’s here.

  “Your dad’s far ahead,” she said. “I didn’t see where Lily went.”

  “She’s with him. Darrell jumped away somewhere.” He peeked over the high grass. “We can crawl to the bluffs. The cave’s got to be close. We need to make our way down the cliffside.”

  She nodded. “You start.”

  He cracked a sudden smile.

  What a smile! Probably the last one I’ll ever—don’t go there!

  As they plunged into the growth, Becca tried to replace everything that usually swirled in her brain with only one thing. Vela.

  The sail in the Argo Navis constellation was vaguely rectangular, but the vela Latina made a triangle a possibility, too. A triangle with a curve on one side. That kept her moving forward in the mud.

  Blue hand. Vela.

  Two muffled rifle shots burst through the leaves to her left. She froze. Another shot. Wade was flat on the ground, his eyes wide in fear. A fourth shot echoed and a familiar voice cried out.

  “Darrell?” Wade gasped. “Becca, they got Darrell!”

  Chapter Fifty

  As he lay with his face in the mud, hoping no one heard him scream, Darrell wondered if he could take back the last seven days and start over. Reset to last Sunday morning, when he and Wade had goofed around in the Painter Hall observatory, wondering what to eat. Well, he’d been wondering what to eat, but then he almost always was. That was a situation he could wrap his head around.

  But you can’t really go back in time, can you?

  Oh, wait. That’s what this was all about.

  Zipping around in time. Machina tempore.

  For a brief moment, a large astrolabe whisked across his mind, its wheels turning slowly in different directions like gears. Was the old sketch what an ancient time machine might actually look like? He imagined a series of wide brass rings surrounding a comfy cushioned seat—his—and three smaller seats—theirs. Positioned around the innermost ring equidistant from one another were the famous twelve relics. Vela and . . . the other eleven.

  The Copernicus Legacy.

  A time-traveling astrolabe.

  He would adjust his goggles, tug on his leather traveling gloves, push a big brass lever and—

  Thud-thud-thud! The dull barking started up again and Darrell’s astrolabe vanished into nothing.

  Wishing he had goggles just then to keep the rain from stinging his eyes, he peeked through the dense growth. Black shapes moved like ghosts through the watery trees on his left. The jungle swished and bent on his right, where more black shapes moved. He couldn’t tell how many there were, but clearly he was surrounded. It was a matter of seconds before he was discovered. He laid his head on the muddy ground. The coolness of the earth felt good. Is a mud bath like this? Never mind that now! Hey, I wonder if I can distract the Order like they do in movies. Wade says I distract people all the time.

  Two, maybe three Knights fanned out, each one heading toward a different cave. The Order didn’t know which one the relic was in. They didn’t know about the blue hand.

  Can I use this information? Can I . . . trick them?

  Searching on the ground beside him, he found three rocks half the size of his fist. He could fling them in different directions, where they were sure to make noise crashing through the leaves. Put them off the scent. This might actually work! He rolled over onto his back and threw one of the rocks as hard as he could. It crashed through the trees far on his left.

  “Là-bas, vite!” yelled a voice. “Go, go!” Two goons on his left swept away through the jungle.

  Yes!

  He did the same on his right, following one stone with another, and more goons veered off after them. He rose to his hands and knees. No one was moving. He had done it. He had cleared the way for his friends. He could run to them now—

  Snap . . . crunch . . .

  Someone was crawling stealthily through the jungle behind him. He stared into the ocean of green. Movement. Crunch . . .

  He flattened his face in the mud again. No more stones nearby. Hand to hand? Crack . . . crunch . . .

  “Now I lay me down to sleep . . .”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  “. . . And if I die . . .”

  Wade slapped his hand over Darrell’s mouth. “Quiet!”

  “And come with us,” whispered Becca, scanning the growth around them. “For some reason the Order has lost our trail.”

  Darrell wiggled out of Wade’s grip. “For some reason? For me reason! Me and my pitching arm! I’m signing with the Astros if we ever make it out of here.”

  Wade knew they had seconds before the Order saw them. He tugged Darrell by his pitching arm and pulled him up. “Now!” They rushed through the tangled trees as quietly but as quickly as they could.

  “If we find the right cave before the Order sees us, we can lose them. They won’t be able to follow,” Becca said. “Let’s try them all.”

  They crawled under sagging tree limbs and jumped over fallen trunks. The fierce downburst was flooding the ground, making rushing little rivers every few feet. Vines whipped in the wind, crisscrossing wildly. Then, behind the green, a black space. The mouth of a cave. They hustled to it. On the wall beside the opening, a red hand.

  “Keep going,” Becca whispered, pushing on.

  Another cave. No handprint at all. A third. A blotchy red hand. A fourth, papery wasp nests lining the mouth, clinging to the walls. They pushed on again. The Order was out there, but not on to them yet.

  They scrambled up a jagged coral creek, and Becca made a sudden noise. Just inside the narrow opening into the rock was a faint handprint. It was upside down and terribly faded except for one finger.

  The finger was blue.

  “Wade—”

  Holding his breath, he tugged the photo from his pocket. It was the same print. “We found it.”

  He shielded his eyes from the rain and studied the ancient pictogram. In what he knew was a rare flash of perfect insight he noticed how similar the shape of the outspread hand was to a sea star. Asterias. The fingers made their own kind of glowing star.

  “The Order has doubled back and they’re co
ming this way,” said a small voice behind them. It was Lily. She and his father stumbled to the entrance to the cave.

  “This is it, Dad,” Darrell said. “We found Magellan’s cave—”

  Something traveling roughly half the speed of a bullet struck the cave wall with a loud ping.

  It was an arrow.

  Moments earlier—just as Ebner von Braun was about to say that particle physicists don’t do jungles—Galina hissed over her shoulder.

  “More arrows!”

  Wrapped in custom form-fitting hunting gear that concealed a diving suit, the sleek creature pushed her way through the thick growth without caring for anyone tagging behind her.

  Ebner followed her every move, the sodden jungle branches slapping his face with every step. If the burning of his fingers had subsided over the last few days, the bruise the old man had given his forehead with the paperweight stung and ached more than ever. It was now oozing some kind of yellow pus that even the bullet-like rain didn’t wash away. His earpiece crackled.

  “Galina, our divers have found the underwater entrance to the caves,” he said, handing her a replacement quiver. “They are climbing up from below. We will join them and the relic will be yours within the hour!”

  “If it is not . . .” She trailed off and reloaded her crossbow.

  Ebner wasn’t sure he liked it when Galina didn’t finish her sentences. On the one hand, it might mean she believed he was smart enough to understand her. On the other, it might mean she couldn’t waste her breath on him.

  I will do something about that, he thought. Galina will see my value to the Order—and to her, personally. If I survive. He pawed his head with his burned hand. There is no end to what a Teutonic Knight will do.

  As visions of ancient astrolabes swam about in his mind, Ebner glanced into that pair of miscolored eyes and wondered if Galina Krause, even in the midst of this stinking jungle, was pondering the astrolabe, too.

  Galina Krause was pondering the astrolabe. In fact, her mind tingled with nothing else. Or almost nothing else. Her thoughts shuttled between the astrolabe, the jungle, and those strange days when her younger self was lost in the rooms of an ancient castle far away among the cold forests of Northern Europe.

  The echoing laughter. The screaming.

  In her mind, it all surrounded her.

  Strange antique weapons ranged along a quivering wall of trees. Cold air spinning suddenly—light, dark, light, dark, then all dark. Portraits hung in opulent golden frames. The woman there. The man here. He in ermine, silk, and gold, the hilt of his saber, the ruby kraken of his crest. She, her pale dying face. The drenching rain flooding the marble floor. The coiling air.

  The cold. The stone. The silence. The noise.

  Galina’s scar stung and the jungle blurred. Had something moved in the growth? Was it only the heat and rain? Or the centuries past? The mystery of time? Was it the closeness of the first relic?

  “Arrows,” she said softly, holding out her hand.

  “Excuse me,” said Ebner, pausing among the strangled green growth. “You have already loaded the crossbow.”

  She turned her eyes down to the gleaming shaft with its triangular point. Yes. Yes. I have loaded it. Releasing the silencer—speed was more important than silence now—she lifted the bow to her shoulder.

  How long it was before the trees twitched with movement, she couldn’t say. The Grand Master’s dark brow, his beard and mustache, his fiery eyes staring down from the cold, coiling air. The jungle moved again. What was this strange light-headedness? The astrolabe whirled in space. She squeezed the trigger.

  Thhh—

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  —Wack!

  For a fraction of a second, Lily thought the arrow passed directly through the silver hoop dangling lightly from her left ear.

  She doubled over, shrieking.

  “Lily!” Becca scooped her up and dived into the cave entrance.

  “Dad? Get in here!” Wade yelled.

  Bullets ricocheted off the cave wall. Lily looked out; Roald was pinned down ten feet outside the entrance. “I’ll be right behind you,” he whispered. “I’m going to lead them to another cave. Get inside. Go!”

  Roald scrambled around and hustled back into the dense trees toward the previous cave. Lily watched with horror as the Order changed direction and followed him. Her throat tightened.

  This isn’t supposed to happen. You can’t use yourself as bait!

  She felt a tug on her shoulder.

  “Come on, Lil,” Becca said. “We’re out of time. Come on.”

  Jagged rocks hung at odd angles from the low ceiling, not a problem so much for her, but everybody else had to hunch over as they moved carefully forward into the cave. It was eerie how instantly the light of the day, even rainy light, vanished behind them. Five, six steps inside, and the darkness was complete.

  “Hold up.” Lily tugged Carlo’s phone from her pocket. “There’s no signal, but it has battery.” Carlo. Bologna. It feels like a previous life.

  And there was only some battery. The cave floor went dull blue-white under the app. It was clear from the first that they were going down. Rainwater poured in from the entrance and down from the ceiling and trickled past their feet in channels—more than trickled. Their feet were soaked anyway, but the downward incline made progress dangerous and slow-going. Darrell slid to his knees. “Whoa! Careful.”

  After some minutes, the meandering passage widened, but they still had to follow one another in single file. Outside were shouts and occasional muffled shots. Would Connor go back to his Jeep? Call his military buddies? Chink, chink. That horrible woman’s arrows.

  “Uh-oh . . .”

  Wade stood over a ledge hanging some ten or twelve feet over . . . nothing. No, not nothing. The phone light reflected off a still surface of black water at the bottom of the drop.

  “Do you think it’s rainwater?” said Becca. “Or a deeper pool?”

  “We’ve traveled down since the cave opening,” Darrell huffed, leaning on the wall. “Water must collect during storms like this. Maybe the pools never really dry up. I hope the relic isn’t underwater.”

  While they gazed down into the murky darkness, the last of the phone light faded. “Battery’s gone,” Lily said. “Now what do we do?”

  “This can’t be the end of the line,” said Becca.

  A burst of gunfire echoed in from the entrance. Wade and Darrell shared a dark look. Then came a shout. Not a scream. A shout.

  Roald had to be okay. He just had to be . . .

  Wade’s stomach dropped to his feet when he heard the close gunfire. “Darrell—”

  Then more shouting. A gunshot farther away.

  “We have to believe he’s okay,” Darrell whispered, shaking his head from side to side like he didn’t want to hear any argument. “Keeping those thugs from the cave. We’re so close to finding it now.”

  Wade bit his lip. “Yeah. Right. Too close to stop.”

  Becca had said the end of the line. He knew what that felt like. He had sensed it at the cemetery in Berlin, and at the train station when his father was arrested. At times he’d felt hopeless wandering around Bologna, and again in Rome.

  Yet each time something happened to get them out of the mess. And now a flooded cave? An underwater pool? No way. They’d gone too far to be stopped by a little water.

  “Hey.” Lily was staring into the black water that suddenly wasn’t so black. Rippling through the water from the bottom was a vague brightness. “Where’s the light coming from?”

  “Somewhere under the surface,” Darrell said.

  “This is good,” Wade said, his heart thundering. “The pool must connect with another cave that has an opening to the outside. That’s the only way there could be light. We can follow it.”

  Without thinking, he sat and tugged his sneakers off. “Who’s going with me?”

  “Wade, you’re not going down there,” Becca snapped.

  “Yes, I
am. This is the cave! You know it is. Shoichi knew it. Laura Thompson knew it. They all knew it. Vela is down there. I’m going in—”

  Becca clutched his wrist tight. “You are not.”

  “Look, the Order will find Vela if we don’t. Or kill us all. Or both. Either way, we have nothing to deal with if they find it first. I’m going down there!”

  Becca tore off her sneakers and tossed them next to his. “Not alone, you’re not.”

  Lily stared at Darrell. “Oh, I have a bad feeling about this. What if there’s no outlet? You guys could drown trying to find your way back. This is super nuts.”

  “If there’s no way out, then we’ll come back up. Simple,” said Becca.

  So. She’s thinking, too, Wade thought. At least one of us is!

  “Keep watch,” he said. Which he realized was dumb, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He climbed down over the ledge to the rocks as far as he could, then dropped straight into the pool. The water was colder than he expected. He felt Becca splash next to him. He surfaced. She surfaced.

  “Fresh water,” he said. “Rainwater. You’re right, Darrell.”

  “Omigod, if you don’t come back, I’ll kill you!” said Lily.

  Wade gulped in a mouthful of air, plunged his head down, rolled over in the water, kicked his feet, and swam downward toward the source of the light. As he hoped, the passage opened into a brighter space. Turning his head to the dark water behind him, he couldn’t see anything, felt only the cold. He hoped Becca was there, but he didn’t know how long his lungs would hold out. He had to keep swimming forward. The passage was longer than he thought it would be. Deeper. The light dimmed suddenly. Had he taken a wrong turn? There was no opening. He kept swimming. Then his lungs began to tighten and burn. They screamed to take in air.