by Layton Green
Stefan stepped closer, his eyes lit by an internal fire that burned more brightly than in any man Ettore had ever known. “Our brethren believe that wisdom must accompany the acquisition of knowledge. We do not disagree. Yet the world has changed, Ettore. It is no longer prudent to let humanity plot its own course. We believe knowledge must be acquired aggressively, at all costs, by a select few with a shared ideal and purpose, in order to save us all from destruction. Only then—in a future when these technologies are controlled and better understood—should they be shared with the world at large.”
Ettore absorbed what the other man was saying, working to fit it inside his worldview. “I don’t necessarily disagree. Though I would need to ponder it further, and consider each situation as it arose.”
“As you should,” Stefan murmured. “Come, I wish to show you something.”
“What?”
Instead of answering, Stefan led him down the long hallway, and Ettore saw a succession of rooms that displayed more wealth than he had ever witnessed in person. Paintings and sculptures and objets d’art from around the world, vases, urns, velvet drapes and brocaded chairs, glimpses of bedrooms fit for royalty. The style of the furnishings was very modern, in keeping with Copenhagen’s reputation as a progressive city, and the latest technologies were on display. This included an aluminum robot, standing as tall as a man, in a corner of the kitchen. Stefan stopped to issue a voice command, causing the automaton to wave its arms and waddle across the tile floor. It opened a freestanding metal box sitting on the counter beside a self-contained electric refrigerator, and began unloading pots and pans.
Ettore gawked at the display. He had never seen such an advanced model before, and certainly not in someone’s home. “But how . . .” he began, only to see Stefan smile and continue down a shorter hall, which ended at a closed door. A plum tree laden with fruit was carved and painted in exquisite detail on the polished wood.
“To become a dedicated seeker of truth,” Stefan said, “one must doubt, as deeply as one can, the nature of all things.”
After that cryptic statement, he opened the door to reveal a study lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and a marble fireplace on the opposite side of the room. Besides the hardbound books and a leather armchair by the fireplace, the only object in the room was a standing globe just inside the door.
“Who owns this house?” Ettore asked.
“We do, of course.”
“You mean the Society? But where is everyone? I thought I would be meeting others.”
Stefan approached the globe and placed his hands on the painted porcelain surface. “As you shall see, we keep many secrets in this house, and in our other residences. I’d like to show you one tonight.” He pushed with his fingers, causing two small, irregular pieces to depress on the face of the globe. The workmanship was so clever that Ettore had not noticed the interlocking pieces. Playing it like a piano, Stefan moved his hands and depressed another pair, and then another, causing a section of the bookshelves to hinge open, just wide enough for a person to slip through.
Stefan led him through the hidden doorway and into a darkened alcove. He flicked on a light to reveal a semitranslucent orb resting on a glass stand in the center of the room. About the size of a cantaloupe, the bauble was made of a rough bluish-green material, resembling quartz sprinkled with crumbled seashells.
Ettore stared curiously at the object. “What is that?”
“Our scientists believe,” Stefan said, giving the strange bauble a hungry look, “that this is a glass-blown object at least three thousand years old.”
“Three thousand?” Ettore drew closer to inspect the surface. He would not have guessed it was glass until Stefan told him. “But how?”
“Sophisticated glasswork was not unknown at the time. I’d like you to stay exactly where you are, and observe the object.”
The German closed the door and cast the alcove into darkness. Moments later, a garish purple light bathed the room, emanating from a trio of glowing tubes embedded in the room’s ceiling. Ettore had never seen a light so unusual. Fluorescent lamps, he knew, created illumination by sending an electrical current through tubes of mercury vapor. The mercury atoms exuded light photons rendered visible to the human eye by phosphor coatings, and he wondered if the glowing tubes on these lamps contained a different type of phosphor, one that allowed a shorter wavelength of light to pass.
The electric light may have been a novelty, but the inside of the glass ball made him gasp. Displayed within that ancient sphere, he saw the very room in which they very standing, reflected in varying hues of gray. He knew this because he recognized his own stooped posture and Stefan’s tall erect form standing by the wall. Ettore waved a hand and saw the gesture reflected within the shadowy world mirrored inside the bauble.
“I . . . don’t understand. Smoke particles will eventually settle. A vapor will dissipate over time . . . Perhaps two inert gases . . . But thermal equilibrium would not allow such a display to endure over any length of time.”
“All true.”
“How then? Is it a trick?”
“No trick, I assure you.”
“A mirror coated in phosphors?”
Stefan nodded in approval. “That is our best guess.”
“But how would a primitive culture understand the concept of a radioluminescent material that persists for so long, or the reaction of a phosphor to a specialized electric light?”
“We’ve no idea. It seems impossible, unless there is some type of special property to the glass or some unseen material inside that we do not understand. Perhaps breaking the glass would provide insight, or perhaps it would . . . break the spell, if you’ll forgive the pun. As I’ve said before, I believe we’ve only scratched the surface of what our forebears were able to accomplish.”
Stefan stepped away from the wall, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to pace. “I mentioned secrets, Ettore, and this is one of many. But the greatest of all—the cornerstone, in many ways, of our Society—is an enigma to which I am not yet privy.” His voice turned bitter. “Those anachronistic fools believe decades should pass before a single meek step is taken, a babe crawling on hands and knees toward a curious light. The world will burn around us while they await their precious enlightenment!”
Ettore pulled his gaze away from the glass stand. “Greatest secret?”
“There is a place . . . a higher reality, another dimension. We don’t know exactly what it is. We call it the Fold. I know only what has been whispered in the corridors of the sanctums, the lore they give us as scraps. Yet a few within the Society have seen it, Ettore. I know they have.”
“Another dimension?” Ettore said in a daze. He couldn’t seem to stop repeating Stefan’s words. “What . . . How do you know this?”
“We only know that it’s there, and reflects our reality in some way. Or perhaps our reality reflects it.” He walked slowly toward the center of the room, his gaze locked on the glass ball. “What I do know is that it looks similar to this.”
“In what manner?”
“A shadowy gray-hued world, an abnormal but deeper reflection of our own, with different physical properties. What if this three-thousand-year-old glass sphere was the original inspiration for the crystal ball? What if an ancient seer once peered into its depths to explore the Fold? Where do the boundaries of myth and legend intersect with reality? Superstition with science? We have reason to believe humankind has known about the existence of this place through dreams and other phenomena since the dawn of recorded history. No one understands it, but we all agree the Fold exists—and can be reached. Some believe metaphysics is the route to take—and perhaps it is—but I firmly believe we can reach it through science.”
As outlandish as Stefan’s claim might seem, Ettore had no problem conceiving of other dimensions and levels of reality that existed right next door to our own. In fact, they were part and parcel of his profession. What was quantum physics but proof that such m
iracles not only existed, but formed the bedrock of our physical universe? Of our very reality?
For some time, Ettore had harbored the sneaking suspicion that twentieth-century science, as advanced as it seemed, had only discovered the frothy silver tips of the waves skimming the ocean, leaving fathoms of dark water unseen.
He had to know more. “What do you mean it can be reached?”
Stefan spun on his heel to face him. “This is the reason I recruited you. Help me locate the Fold and probe its secrets before it’s too late. Imagine what might occur if a scientist in the employ of Adolf Hitler arrives first, or someone else like him.”
“I have so many questions. How does the Society know about this place? How do you know it’s real? What do you want me to do?”
Stefan strode to the wall, turned off the strange violet light, and reopened the door to the study. “Excellent questions all. Yet before I provide answers, you must officially become one of us. Due to the rapid progression of world events, and because of who you are, I’ve convinced the others to allow you to circumvent our traditional trials. You’re welcome here, Ettore. But even you must undergo our symbolic rite of entry.”
When Ettore moved to follow him across the room, Stefan told him to wait by the wall. Ettore obeyed as Stefan returned to the globe and pressed his fingers into the porcelain surface, again manipulating panels. “Sometimes we have to descend into darkness before we can see the light. Please undress, Ettore.”
“What?”
“Do it,” Stefan said softly, yet in a voice so firm and commanding that Ettore felt as if he had no choice but to obey. Feeling vulnerable and rather foolish, Ettore stripped down to his socks and underpants, then removed those as well when Stefan ordered him to finish.
“What’s going on?” Ettore asked, covering his privates with his hands. “Please, Stefan—”
“Take a deep breath and hold it.”
“Why should—” Ettore began, right before the floor dropped away.
Enveloped by a sudden darkness, Ettore did not even have time to call out before he plunged feetfirst into a well of cold water. His toes never touched bottom, and he kicked blindly to reach the surface. He doubted he had dropped farther than ten feet. Working hard not to panic, he thrust with his legs to propel himself upward, and banged his head straight into a glass wall.
Dazed, Ettore tried to regain his equilibrium as he flailed in the water. How could that be?
He thrust a palm over and over against the barrier, then swam side to side, hoping it would end but finding that it extended all the way to walls on both sides, perhaps two dozen feet across.
Now he panicked. Had Stefan brought him here to die? Was he a true Nazi after all, sent to assassinate the scientists of rival nations?
Ettore forced himself to quell his terror as he groped blindly along the walls, searching for an opening as his oxygen seeped away. He recalled Stefan’s last words before the plunge.
Sometimes we have to descend into darkness before we see the light.
He had assumed the cryptic words were metaphorical, but what if he was imparting a literal clue?
Though swimming deeper into the hole—descending into darkness—seemed counterintuitive, he realized it was the only place he had not explored. Corkscrewing his body in the water, Ettore dove into the enclosure, this time keeping his arms extended so he would not crack his head. Within three full strokes, he encountered a metal bar affixed in place. He groped around and felt another rail a few feet away, connected by shorter metal bars between them.
The horizontal iron ladder extended in only one direction. Left with no choice, Ettore propelled himself from bar to bar as fast as he could, his chest starting to spasm from lack of air. As the pressure inside his lungs mounted, the iron bars turned upward, and he spied a faint orange glow. A burst of adrenaline carried him the final dozen feet and through a hole at the top of the ladder. He groaned as precious oxygen coursed through his airways and filled his lungs with a narcotic pleasure.
Ettore climbed out of the hole with shaking hands, his teeth chattering from the cold, only to find himself staring down a constricted stone-walled passage. The golden glow he had seen was emanating from the floor of the passage, which, as far as Ettore could tell, was composed of hot coals.
The air inside the chamber was as hot and humid as a tropical jungle. He turned to face a solid wall behind him. There was only one way to go.
Across the passage of fire.
How long Ettore remained beside the top of the watery hole, naked and dripping and confused, he could not say. Debating whether to wait right there for as long as it took for someone to save him, Ettore took a tentative step forward, onto the coals. He jerked his foot back in pain. After another probe, he realized that, while the coals were hot to the touch, they did not burn as much as he would have thought. He peered closer and discovered they were synthetic, made of some unknown material. A clever illusion aided by the darkness cloaking the chamber.
Though terrified, his rational mind told him that Stefan and his people were not trying to kill him, and that this was another test.
No, not a test. What had Stefan called it? A “symbolic rite of entry.”
Surprising himself, he stopped thinking through every possible angle for once in his life and rushed across the glowing surface. The heat became unbearable very quickly, and Ettore howled in pain as he raced over the wobbly stones, working hard to keep his balance. Soon he spied the end of the tunnel a hundred feet away. So very far! The pain was excruciating. He wondered how he would survive, and how in the world he had come to this place in his life, and where that dark hole at the end of the tunnel would lead—
And then he was through, standing on a stone floor at the edge of a patch of blackness. He sank to the floor and inspected the blisters that had begun to form. After a time, he pushed to his feet and stared into the maw of the tunnel.
Feeling oddly calm, Ettore led with his hands and walked into the unknown. Almost at once, a fierce wind poured into the chamber, buffeting him from all sides. He moved carefully, afraid the floor would drop away again, but he never faltered in the face of the gale, knowing it was part of the process and symbolic of something he could ponder at a later date. The faint glow behind him disappeared, and he walked for twenty paces through utter darkness, disoriented, the wind and lack of vision spinning his senses. He did his best to move in a straight line, staggering forward like a drunkard. Soon another glow—this one silver—appeared ahead of him, and as the wind died another sound picked up, a faint and dissonant whisper that increased the closer he drew to the light. He recoiled as he walked into an invisible wall made of some filmy substance, and then he was clawing his way through a viscous veil that clung to him like the strands of a spider’s web. Ettore pushed forward, flailing, both determined and afraid, ripping at the barrier until he emerged into the freezing Copenhagen night, realizing he must have been walking on an upward slope and grateful beyond measure when he saw the moon and stars above.
Another passage stretched out before him, this one a long, snaking corridor of masked men and women dressed in evening clothes, each holding a single flameless candle that, together, emitted the silver glow he had witnessed. Stunned, Ettore estimated several hundred people awaited him, their identities obscured by beige masks covered in red markings that resembled hieroglyphs or runes of some sort.
The whispering had grown louder, emanating from behind the masks, low susurrations whose words he could not understand. A chant in an unfamiliar language, or perhaps in many languages. He looked around and recognized the domed stone huts he had seen earlier in the rear grounds of the mansion.
Lying on the snow-covered grass at his feet was a belted cotton robe. He gratefully slipped it on. The inside was dry, and standing barefoot atop the freezing ground gave relief to his blistered soles.
Ettore exhaled a frozen breath. Shoulders straight, trying not to look as bewildered as he felt, he strode down the tunnel of pe
ople. As he passed, each and every person tossed a handful of loose soil on his robe. The wet dirt stained the material and collected in his wake, marking the passage.
A lone figure, also masked, stood facing Ettore at the end of the corridor. As Ettore drew closer, the figure removed his mask, and Ettore was unsurprised by the identity of the lean and hawkish man awaiting him.
“Welcome,” Stefan said, signaling with a hand for Ettore to stop when he was ten feet away. Before Ettore could croak out a reply, the German raised his voice to address the crowd. Ettore glanced back and noticed the tunnel had collapsed as the other people, still wearing their masks and holding their candles, gathered behind him.
“Before we complete the rite of entry,” Stefan continued, “I have an announcement to make. For some time, as we all know, a schism of belief has ruptured the Society we hold so dear. We’ve attempted to coexist. Yet world events and the aggression of others have made clear the impossibility of this task.” He paused to sweep his gaze across the crowd. “As the voice of those gathered tonight, I hereby declare the Ascendants the only true faction of the Leap Year Society.”
Enthusiastic clapping erupted from the crowd, but Stefan quieted the noise with an outstretched palm. “We must pledge at all costs,” he continued, “to seek through knowledge the ascendancy of humankind over the basest, most bestial aspects of our nature, and thereby save the world from itself. Though it pains me as no wound ever has, we must also declare war with our former brethren and continue our mission as we see fit. All of us know what this will mean. The trials that lie ahead.” After another pause, in which not a single person stirred, Stefan thrust his mask high in the air. “A new future awaits, and it will be up to us, each and every one present, to determine its course. History has been thrust upon us!”