by Layton Green
The gondolier was a perfect gentleman as he extended his hand to help her onto the limestone walkway. A man in an ankle-length overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat stepped out from one of the darkened archways of the loggia, bearing a handheld copper lantern. His face was obscured by a creepy ivory mask that tapered down to his chest like the snout of an anteater. The mask had eyeholes but no openings for the nose or the mouth. He swept a gloved hand toward the interior, signaling for Andie to proceed.
The gondola had already slipped into the inky waters of the canal. Andie swallowed and turned to face the man in the mask. “Who are you?” she asked, realizing it could be a woman behind the disguise.
It could even be her mother.
In response, the figure beckoned again, then turned and disappeared into the loggia. Andie clenched her fists and followed, walking beneath one of the towering archways, footsteps swishing on stone as they approached an ornate wooden door with a brass handle.
A deep male voice behind the mask startled her. “Your phone, please.”
“Why?”
“Protocol demands.”
“Whose protocol?”
No answer.
“And if I refuse?”
“You won’t be allowed to enter.”
With a smirk meant to hide her growing unease, Andie dug in her pocket and handed him the prepaid phone she had purchased in Egypt. She thought he would refuse and ask for the Star Phone, but he accepted the burner phone with a nod, took a black scanner out of the inside of his coat, and ran it over her clothes. It beeped outside her other coat pocket. She removed her pocketknife and handed that over as well.
The scanner did not go off again, and he reached for the pull ring. Andie breathed a sigh of relief. She had lost the tracking software on her cell, and what little protection the pocketknife offered, but at least she was going inside.
One step closer.
The open door revealed a flight of marble steps. Light spilled down from above. In the background, she heard distant laughter and the faint sound of classical music.
On either side of the stairwell hung dozens and dozens of elaborate masks. Interspersed among the Venetian Carnival–style pieces were masks of a more macabre variety, some of them similar to her guide’s, some depicting Death in its many incarnations, some depicting an eerie blank face with no markings at all.
“Choose any you like,” the man said, as he led the way up the steps.
“I’m fine.”
“As you wish.”
“What are these . . . other masks . . . for?”
“The ball is a prelude to the Redentore Festival, which marks the end of the plague in Venice.”
“Is anyone going to tell me whose party it is? The Ascendants? The Leap Year Society?”
Again, there was no response. Andie seethed in frustration, hating that she had to play their game, growing more and more doubtful she would ever see her mother. Cal was right. I don’t know how they did it, but they impersonated her somehow. I’m never going to see her, and they’ll never let me leave.
Yet the possibility that she was wrong kept her going, and she knew her internal debate was pointless. She had come this far. She was seeing it through. Who the hell are you people? What have you done with my mother and my mentor?
They emerged into a foyer with an enormous hanging lantern suspended from the ceiling, greeted by a stone knight with a coat of arms carved on a shield. French doors opened onto an interior courtyard. A hallway beckoned on either side, and a staircase wide enough for a team of horses led into the higher reaches of the mansion. The sounds of revelry steadily increased as they climbed to the second story, exited into another foyer, and passed into a grand ballroom the size of a gymnasium, filled with hundreds of people.
Andie tried not to gawk at the scene. Greek and Roman statues lined the perimeter, interspersed with busts, vases, and other decorative art set on pedestals. Stunning Renaissance frescoes with a pink-and-silver theme adorned the long side walls from top to bottom, mostly sensual nudes performing a variety of tasks in ancient centers of learning. The floor was white marble, and a domed ceiling soared far overhead, punctuated by a stunning blown-glass chandelier. On the higher levels, revelers gazed down on the festivities from interior balconies. Andie didn’t know much about classical music, but she thought it was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons playing through the hidden speakers.
The majority of partygoers wore masks and formal evening attire. Yet some of the guests—including all of those carting silver trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres around the room—wore racy and outlandish carnival outfits, designed to showcase their incredible physiques. Not ten feet from her, a young woman wearing a feathered headdress and covered in gold body paint, which left nothing to the imagination, was offering champagne to a crowd. A bare-chested man wearing silk pantaloons and a jester’s cap trailed behind her with a plate of langoustine tails.
Maybe only the gorgeous ones were allowed to forego masks. Or maybe they had hired a bunch of supermodels to cater, or they all had incredible genes. Andie didn’t know and didn’t care. Being perfect had never appealed to her.
It’s a good thing, because I’ve got a long hill to climb.
Despite her general disdain for the scene, she felt more awkward than she ever had in her life—standing on the edge of the ball looking in, with tired bags under her eyes and in dire need of a wash, dressed in travel-worn jeans and a green hoodie as the cream of society swirled about her, pairing off to dance to the music or just wandering confidently about the room, sipping champagne and nibbling on caviar. No one was using the high-backed ebony chairs carved with red roses that lined the walls, and she debated disappearing into one. After several minutes, when no one had spoken to her or even glanced her way, she began to wonder if she was invisible. Maybe the entire ball was a grand illusion, or behind a pane of one-way glass that cordoned off the section in which she was standing.
But then someone stepped out of the crowd and began to walk Andie’s way. Though wearing a creepy mask similar to the man who had brought her in—a number of people had them on—Andie could tell it was a woman by the sway to her walk, her shimmering silver dress, and the delicate turn to her wrists. As she passed one of the servers, she set her wineglass on his tray without missing a beat, started walking faster, and whipped off her mask as she approached Andie, revealing a smiling face with an undeniable similarity to her own.
“Mom?” Andie managed to croak, just before her mother dropped her mask on the floor and swept her up in her arms, pressing her tight to her breast and sobbing as she stroked her hair. “Little Mouse,” she kept repeating. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Despite the danger and Andie’s resolve to stay calm and focused, despite the looming question of why this woman was standing there of her own free will but had waited twenty years to contact her, Andie couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. She clutched her mother tight and gave in to the moment, shuddering as years and years of pain and self-doubt poured through her: the silent suffering as a child when she had watched her friends’ parents drop them off at school, the struggle of being a teenager with only an alcoholic father to guide the way, the ever-present dagger in her heart from the belief that she was not even worthy of the unconditional love of her own mother.
“Andie, oh Andie.”
Oddly, no one seemed to be paying attention to the scene they were making. Andie didn’t care. She wasn’t there for anyone else. “Mom, I’ve . . . I’ve got so many questions.”
“I’m sure you do. You look like you could use a drink too.”
“Yeah, I could.” Andie hesitated. “You’ve barely aged.”
“Thank you, dear. I’m afraid I can’t say the same of you, since the last time we met! But you’re as beautiful in person as I knew you were from all the photos I’ve seen.”
“Photos? What photos?”
“Do you think I haven’t followed your every move? Wished every second of every day that things were d
ifferent? But all that can change now. Come. Let’s see about that drink.”
Reeling, confused and wary and dizzy with happiness all at the same time, Andie followed her mother across the room to a window overlooking the Grand Canal, showcasing the magical glow of Saint Mark’s Basilica. When Andie broke off her gaze, her mother extended a glass of amber-colored wine. “This varietal is only produced on a single hectare in the entire world, on our private island nearby. This is the wine the doges used to drink, Andie. It was lost to time until our viticulturists revived it.”
Andie started to take it, but at the last second, she grabbed a glass of red wine off the tray of a passing server.
With a sad smile, her mother slowly retracted her offer. “That’s fair.”
Though Andie’s heart felt ready to burst, she had not forgiven a lifetime of abandonment in a moment, or forgotten why she had come.
“Why, Mom? Why did you leave?”
“We’ll talk about that soon.”
“No. I want to know right now.”
A look of infinite weariness and regret passed across her mother’s visage, quickly consumed by a fire in her sapphire-blue eyes as she swept her gaze across the room. “This, Andie. I wanted to give you all of this. But I couldn’t do it from home, in our situation. It isn’t that kind of organization.”
“But I don’t want any of this. I never did. I just wanted you.”
Her mother’s mouth quivered with emotion, and she worked to regain control. “That’s because you don’t understand. Not yet. But I promise you will.”
“What do you mean?”
“I asked you here to join us. Become one of us, stay with me forever, hold the world in your hands.” The spark in her eyes returned to flare even brighter. “The world and even more.”
Andie was stunned. “Join you? Why now? I have a career, a life…” She put a hand to her temple. “Mom, what happened to Dr. Corwin?”
“I’ve no idea,” she said, “and I’m as devastated as you must be. I was very close to him once.”
Andie looked her in the eye. “You don’t know? You swear that?”
“I admit our organizations are rivals—that’s a very long story—but all I know is that he disappeared. We’re hardly murderers, Andie. Our goal is to eradicate such evils of society.”
“Then why all these weird masks? Why was someone trying to kidnap me? ‘Deliver’ me, as he called it?”
“Omer was only trying to bring you in to talk. If he was armed, it’s because a dangerous game is being played, Andie. One with the highest stakes imaginable. But as I said, all will be revealed in good time.” She took a drink of wine, picked up her mask, and smiled. “I assume you must have felt a little disturbed, if you’ve never seen this style of mask before. The full costume represents the clothing worn by the plague doctors, intended to protect them from the horrible disease ravaging the city.”
Andie was trying to process what her mother had told her about Omer, who she assumed was the dark-haired man. But why hadn’t someone just approached her in a normal manner? Or were they so afraid of Zawadi—whoever she was—they had to take extreme measures?
“Plague is the ultimate expression of the cycle of nature we desire to escape,” her mother continued. “Our masquerade ball is a paean to death and human frailty, meant to remind us that, despite all we’ve accomplished, we still have far to go to fulfill our aims.”
“Which are?”
“To conquer death, for one. To transcend our humanity.”
“Good luck with that one.”
Her mother’s gaze bored into her. “We are in the Anthropocene age, Andie. We humans have transformed our world, our environment, beyond all recognition. We are more in control of our destiny than has ever been dreamed. We’ve raised electric buildings to the sky, split the atom, created artificial intelligence to do our bidding, begun to explore the stars, unraveled the skein of life, gained the ability to ignite life. We’ve come far, but the ultimate journey has just begun.”
“Not much for home and family in that philosophy, huh?”
“On the contrary,” she said quietly. “We desire those things very much. Love and life itself are our most precious gifts. But why settle for scraps? What if we could enjoy our loved ones in full health until their deathbed, or for decades longer than is currently possible? Centuries even? What if there were higher dimensions to explore together, where time does not exist as we know it, where we could live in our minds forever once our bodies crumble into dust?”
“What are you talking about? This Fold place?”
Her mother blinked. “Where did you hear about that?”
“Drawings,” Andie said after a moment. “Historical accounts of a shadowy realm like ours but different. I saw it in Dr. Corwin’s journal after he died. I went through his things in his office. I know he’s searching for it.”
“And what has he found?” her mother said, with a catch in her voice.
“I have no idea. What do you know about it? What is it?”
“I’ve only heard rumors . . . There’s someone among us called the Archon, Andie. Our leader. That’s who encouraged me to reach out to you.”
“The Archon? Does this person have a real name?”
A flicker of fear passed across her mother’s visage. “It’s kept secret for a reason.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”
“There’s a lot of symbolism involved—everything we do has meaning. But mostly, the hidden identity is meant to inspire loyalty and discourage backstabbing and political intrigue. The Archon is the most accomplished among us, and when he or she is ready for a successor, then a committee of high-ranking members—I don’t really know who, I’m not that high in the organization—names a successor.”
“Why does it seem like you’re a little bit afraid of this person?”
Andie’s mother took a long drink of amber wine. “The principal aim of our society is to acquire knowledge at all costs. To better humanity and ensure we do not destroy ourselves before we ascend to the beings we are destined to become. The higher one rises in the organization, the more of our knowledge, accumulated throughout history, one is given access to. The Archon knows things the rest of us . . . do not.”
“What kind of knowledge?”
Andie’s mother squeezed her arm. “Let’s not talk about that. Not now. I’m curious: What else did you find in Dr. Corwin’s office?”
“A photo of the two of you in a city I’ve never seen before.”
Her mother opened and closed her mouth. “I suppose there’s a lot for us to discuss,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
“Yeah. There is. How about we start right now? First question: If you wanted me to join you, why did you wait so long?”
Her mother stepped so close their faces were almost touching. Her smile dazzled more than ever, but behind the eyes Andie could see the fear had returned. “To make sure I could protect you,” her mother whispered as she leaned in to kiss Andie on the forehead. To anyone watching, it would appear as if she had never spoken.
Her mother pulled away and said, “Why don’t we go someplace a little more private to catch up? I’m afraid it may take all night!”
“Let’s,” Andie said, unnerved by her mother’s behavior.
After slipping an arm around Andie’s waist, her mother guided her back into the crowd, toward a hallway across the room. The scent of her mother’s hair from when she had kissed Andie’s forehead still lingered, and Andie felt as if she were a child once again, loved and protected, secure in her mother’s embrace.
As they neared the center of the ballroom, her mother said, “There’s only one thing we have to do before we leave.”
“What’s that?”
“You did bring the Star Phone, as I asked?”
Andie stopped walking and turned to face her. “I’m afraid not.”
Her mother’s arm fell away, her face slowly crumbling. “Please tell me you did.”
“Why, Andie? Was I not clear how important it was?”
“You were clear. I chose not to bring it.” All of a sudden, Andie noticed that a circle of masked revelers had surrounded her and her mother. Andie looked side to side as she backed away. “What’s going on?”
Her mother shook her head, eyes pleading. “I can’t protect you without it. Why didn’t you listen?”
Someone grabbed Andie from behind. She gasped and tried to jerk away. When she couldn’t free herself, she twisted and saw two people in cow’s-head masks holding her by the arm. Andie felt a prick in the back of her neck, as if someone had jabbed her with a needle. “What was that? Let me go! Mom!”
“Andie, I’m so sorry. I never wanted this to happen.”
“Sorry? You’re sorry? Get these people the hell off me!”
“Give them what they want, and you won’t be harmed. I promise, Little Mouse.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Stay strong, Andie,” her mother said in a soft voice. “It’s out of my hands now. Remember what I said, give them what they want, and we can be together. I swear it.”
Her captors dragged her through the crowd as the music and the party continued unabated around them. Andie continued to struggle but felt the enervating effect of the drug start to overwhelm her as the other guests sidestepped the two people in cow’s-head masks and their prisoner without a word, reaching for more drinks and pretending not to notice. Only her mother was watching, standing in the center of the room with a forlorn expression, and as Andie screamed for her to intervene with a failing voice, twisting in her captor’s grip, a single tear fell from her mother’s eye and slid unhindered down her cheek.
Rome
1934–1938
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
Enrico Fermi, director of the Physics Institute on Via Panisperna, had said this to Ettore after his return to Italy. “Even you, Ettore. The problem with you—with almost always being right—is that you never see the big one coming.”