the Source (2008)

by Cordy, Michael

  'But you're a nun.'

  'As a nun I'm able to stay anonymous, occupying my time in performing good works around the world. Father Orlando never lost faith in God, only in those who wield power in Rome. They don't serve God, only themselves and the power of the Church. They are dangerous, Ross. Ruthless.'

  'I'm no fan of the Catholic Church but I can't believe--'

  'There are those in Rome who would do anything to protect and promote their precious church - even if it went against Christ's teachings.' Again he glimpsed desperation in her serene gaze.

  He went back to the book and carefully turned the pages. The first few were covered with drawings that made him take a sharp breath. They were crude but familiar: an oval flower unlike anything in nature and a drawing of an oddly shaped naked woman, similar to the illustrations in the Voynich. Even the neat Spanish script had echoes of its text.

  He flicked to the end, to the mismatched pages: the translation of the impossible section of the Voynich that Lauren had delayed their holiday to solve. It was also in Spanish, with many instances of 'el origen' - the source. The more he studied the book, the more his eyes told him what his head couldn't accept: that Orlando Falcon's garden might be genuine. The implications made his heart beat faster and filled him with questions: 'Where did you get this? Who gave it to you?'

  'The last Keeper.'

  'How long have you had it?'

  Again those unsettling eyes locked on his. 'Whatever I tell you won't change what you believe. Let the book be my proof. Just accept that if your wife saw it she'd know it was genuine.'

  'You want Lauren to take over as the Keeper? Is that it? How long have you been the Keeper? How many were there before you? How were you chosen?'

  She gave him a weary smile. 'No more questions. You'll discover everything for yourself in due course. But I promised to protect Father Orlando's legacy and I can't rest until I hand over his notebook to the translator of the Voynich - your wife, Lauren. Now that his prophecy has come to pass, Lauren's destiny is to be the new Keeper, but before she can fulfil her role the garden's miraculous powers must first cure her. Only then can she take over my burden and protect his legacy. Don't you see, Ross? We have no choice. We have to get back to the garden.' She reached across the table to place her hand on his. 'Ross, you and I need the same thing. You want your wife to wake. And I can't sleep until she does.'

  Chapter 18.

  Now, sitting in Lauren's office, Ross stared at the opaque plastic bag he had taken from the sleeping Sister Chantal and reflected on how she had hidden it when Torino, an officer of Rome, had appeared in the kitchen. It was clear that, whatever Ross thought, they both believed the Voynich was more than a fairytale.

  He unsealed the bag and re-examined the ancient notebook. Apart from a few damaged pages it was in remarkable condition. He retrieved a Spanish/English dictionary from Lauren's bookshelf, and studied the neat Spanish text. For some minutes he pored over the last mismatched pages, fascinated by the vague references to elorigen. Father General Leonardo Torino had also mentioned the term, using the Latin radix.

  He turned his attention to the main part of the notebook. It contained a set of directions, including landmarks, compass settings and astronomical data with charts that showed which stars to follow at different times of the year. There were pages and pages of instructions detailing how to find the garden, but no map, and there was no way of drawing a useful one from the contents: only one place was mentioned by name, the town from which the quest had started. All subsequent directions related to that point and relied on compass settings, the position of the stars and key landmarks. It was as though Father Orlando Falcon had viewed his quest into the jungle as a voyage on an uncharted green ocean and navigated accordingly. One would have to go to the starting point and follow the directions wherever they led. Though they were detailed, the few physical landmarks had vague, poetic names, including the endpoint, which Falcon called El Jardin del Dios, the Garden of God. Even if they were genuine, and the garden existed, the chance of finding it was dauntingly slim.

  Ross referred back to the Voynich translation in Lauren's notes, and compared the beginning of the story, which described the journey to the garden, with Falcon's notebook. When he looked at the general sequence of events in conjunction with the more detailed stages mentioned in Falcon's notebook they tallied.

  He went on the Internet and researched the Inquisition. Just as Sister Chantal had told him, three Grand Inquisitors had become popes in the late sixteenth century, and the second had indeed been Pius V. He searched for Orlando Falcon and found nothing, but when he checked historical references to Pizarro's conquest of the New World the chronology tallied with when Sister Chantal claimed that Falcon had undertaken his quest.

  Yet however much he wanted to believe in Orlando Falcon's Garden of God, he couldn't. Ross was a scientist, a geologist. How could such a place exist? It was too fanciful to be credible. His head ached. He was too close to this. He needed perspective, to speak to someone he could trust, and who knew something about the subject. What had Sister Chantal said? Let the book be my proof. Ifyour wife saw it she'd know it was genuine. Lauren couldn't read it, but he knew someone who could.

  He picked up the phone and dialled.

  Chapter 19.

  Many people misunderstood Elizabeth Quinn. Some called her a dyke because she didn't have a boyfriend, but she wasn't a lesbian. She just found most men uninteresting. In fact, though she professed to love mankind, she often found people uninteresting. Her lens on the world had two settings: wide angle and close-up, with little between. She cared passionately about big-picture issues, such as the fate of the planet, and she loved the honesty and purity of a detailed mathematical problem, but for an expert in linguistics and the daughter of a diplomat who had travelled the world, she cared little for the small talk of day-to-day life.

  Lean and statuesque, she looked like a warrior queen. Even when you factored in the thick glasses, second-hand jeans, hemp jacket and T-shirts proclaiming her outspoken views on saving the planet. Beneath the red curls, however, was a first-class analytical brain. And beneath her Save Gaia! T-shirts there beat a passionate heart. For all her impatience with people there was one person she did care about - idolized, even: the brilliant, compassionate, articulate and beautiful Lauren Kelly. She even forgave her for marrying an oilman.

  'This is amazing. It's definitely genuine,' she pronounced, after flipping through a few pages of Orlando Falcon's book. She had come over immediately Ross called, and had listened avidly while he told her about Torino and Sister Chantal.

  'How do you know?'

  'I helped Lauren with the computer and mathematical stuff, but I'm a specialist in linguistics and literary forensics, and I've spent a lot of time studying the Voynich. This is by the same hand. I'm certain of it. Look at the i and the tail on the g. Lauren and I often wondered if this garden could exist.'

  Ross stopped pacing. 'Even though it's impossible?'

  'Why's it impossible? Are you saying you geologists have discovered everything on the planet? Guys are finding new things all the time. Remember a couple of years ago when they found a new species of gorilla in the Congo, and those pigmy humans in Indonesia? Not to mention the countless new plants and animals being discovered in jungles all the time. Why couldn't a garden like this be hidden away somewhere?'

  'A garden of miracles? Don't you think someone would have found it by now?'

  She tapped the notebook. 'Hello. Someone did, apparently, four and half centuries ago. Orlando Falcon.'

  'But I'm a scientist.'

  'So am I. And our job's to unravel mysteries, not dismiss them. Use the scientific method, Ross. Develop a hypothesis. Here's a challenge. Let's assume the garden does exist. Can you, as a geologist, build a hypothesis to explain it?'

  'Some of it, of course.'

  'Okay, go for it.' She reached for the computer mouse and, as she scrolled through the beginning of Lauren's translation, R
oss sat down beside her and together they read what was on the screen:

  . . . Our quest was ill fated from the outset. We began in the cloud forestshigh in the mountains. The mist was so dense we could not see our feet.In the first week, seven soldiers fell to their deaths, disappearing into theghostly white void. When we eventually descended to the plain, animpenetrable jungle awaited us, pierced only by a mighty river. We builtrafts and let the current carry us deep into the green unknown.

  For days the river took us where it willed, through violent rapids androcks, until it drove us towards a waterfall. Two rafts were smashed,drowning all on board. Those craft remaining to us were propelledheadlong through the waterfall, then along a narrow waterway, inhabitedby dragon-like creatures. More of our number were taken.

  We left the rafts to cut our way through the jungle. By now theconquerors had become the conquered. Infested with beasts and disease,the forest was so dense that time lost any meaning. Day and nightbecame one. As we marched, snakes bit the soldiers' feet and legs, thendisappeared into the thick undergrowth, while unseen beasts lurked inthe viridian depths. I soon despaired of finding any city of gold. Deathwas the only thing we would discover there.

  Lost, our numbers depleted, I showed the captain my chronicle inwhich I had recorded key landmarks, compass bearings and the positionof the stars. It will lead us home, I told him. But the captain could notreturn without gold.

  'Nothing too controversial so far,' Zeb mused.

  'Carry on.'

  We struck deeper into the infernal jungle. Weary and in despair, weendured many obstacles before entering a vast cave, a cathedral of rock,seamed with gold. We followed the gold downward to a toweringchamber, as hot as any oven, lit by a single opening in the high ceiling.The gold led us lower to a river of fire bridged by a causeway of blackrock. We traversed the causeway and entered more caves. The air waspoisonous, heavy with brimstone, and the walls dripped burning rain.We covered our mouths, shielded our eyes and went on, but terrorgripped me because I feared I was about to enter Hell. Finally I sawlight. Then a sweet, eerie sound filled my ears. I rushed to the light andwas almost blinded by the beauty of what I saw. This was not Hell, butHeaven on Earth, the Garden of God . . .

  Zeb paused the mouse. 'Still okay?'

  'I think so. The seam of gold could have been either true gold or pyrites. The subterranean lava stream and sulphur caves dripping with sulphuric acid are possible geological features and often found together.'

  'Okay. A light leads them outside into a garden filled with strange plants unlike any in the outside world, and walled on all sides by steep cliffs. What about the plants?'

  Despite his scepticism Ross was responding now to her enthusiasm. 'If the enclosed garden is ringed by lava it could possibly have evolved its unique ecosystem, entirely independent of the jungle outside. A teenager recently discovered a complete prehistoric ecosystem in Israel, sealed off for millions of years. The Ayalon Cave is pitch black, two and a half kilometres long, has its own lake and lies deep under layers of impermeable chalk. Its ecosystem is powered not by the sun but by creatures that oxidize sulphur as an energy source. At least eight new species, which date back millions of years, have been found there.'

  'There you go. This ain't so hard, is it?' She scrolled down the text. 'How about the perfectly circular lake in the middle of the garden fed by a stream of glowing water from the forbidden caves at the far end of the garden?'

  'A circular lake's not uncommon: there's a perfectly round lake in the middle of the Congo rainforest. The glowing water could be phosphorescence.' Reaching over Zeb's shoulder, he pointed out a picture on Lauren's desk. 'What about these round-bellied naked women who live in the forbidden caves and sing in pure voices?'

  'Scholars have always called them the nymphs but in the Voynich they're the Eves.'

  'Okay, what are they doing there? And the other creatures featured in the Voynich?'

  'You said the garden could have its own unique ecosystem where plants and animals evolved independent of the outside world. The nymphs and other creatures may be like the pigmy humans found on the isolated Indonesian island, or those new species in the Israeli cave.'

  'I suppose it's possible.'

  Zeb shrugged. 'That's all a hypothesis needs to be.'

  He tapped the screen. 'Okay, but this is the part where I start to have problems.' He read aloud: ' "When the injured soldiers fed from the plants and drank from the lake, their wounds and broken bones healed miraculously. Even those close to death revived and recovered full health." '

  Zeb ran her fingers through her red curls. She wanted to believe in the garden. She loved the idea of its being the core of Gaia's nurturing goodness, Mother Earth's heart, within which anything was possible. But she knew that simply wishing something didn't make it so. She needed a reason to believe. 'Okay, we're still playing hypothesis. What could explain a unique, isolated garden, with its own ecosystem in which the water and plants have miraculous healing properties?'

  Ross shrugged. 'Orlando Falcon thought it was a divine place - the Garden of God.'

  'But he was a priest. You're a scientist. How do you explain it?'

  He looked up at the framed print on the wall above Lauren's desk: a centuries-old map of the world. Large swathes of the ancient chart were marked 'Terra Incognita', unknown land, and its oceans featured drawings of sea monsters with the warning 'Beware! Here Be Dragons.' As Ross studied it, a strange expression appeared on his face, as though he had seen, or thought of, something he couldn't quite believe.

  Zeb caught the excitement in his eyes. 'What is it, Ross?' she said. 'Tell me.'

  Chapter 20.

  Ross didn't answer immediately. He kept staring at the ancient map above Lauren's desk, contrasting it with Xplore's precise geological map of the globe, which showed not only the surface of the entire planet but also what lay beneath. The insight that excited him came from the last time he had used Xplore's map to present his ill-fated ancient-oil theory to Underwood and Kovacs on the day he'd resigned.

  He grabbed the mouse from Zeb and returned to the description in Lauren's translation of the lava stream and poisonous caves dripping with burning rain. It reminded him of the toxic conditions prevalent when the world was young, sparking a connection in his mind that was so outlandish it couldn't possibly be valid. Could it? Despite his scepticism, his heart beat faster. It was the one hypothesis that might explain everything. He scrolled forward to the end of the story where the soldiers die while searching for something mysterious, hidden deep within the forbidden caves at the far end of the garden, convinced it's treasure. The scholar priest tries to stop them but all are killed and the stream runs red with their blood.

  Ross grabbed Orlando Falcon's book of directions and flipped to the last pages, with the translation of the final section of the Voynich. As he scanned the text he kept seeing, again and again, the words 'el origen', the source. Everything pointed to his hypothesis - however outlandish it seemed.

  'What?' Zeb demanded again. Her eyes were huge behind her thick glasses. 'What is it?'

  He tried to organize his jumbled thoughts. 'Fact: there was a moment on Earth before which the planet was barren and after which it wasn't. And once you consider the significance of this improbable, miraculous but undeniable moment in its history, anything is possible.'

  'You're talking about the time when life began on Earth?'

  'Not just when the miraculous spark of life happened, but how it happened and, crucially, where.'

  Zeb nodded slowly. 'Okay, so we're talking about when and where life began on Earth. Go on.'

  'If, as a growing body of evidence suggests, the seeds of life came from asteroid-borne amino acids hitting the planet four billion years ago and if the place where the seminal asteroid hit the Earth's crust has been preserved - in the same way that three-point-eight-billion-year-old Issua supracrustal rock in west Greenland and four-billion-year-old crust of Acasta Gneisses in north-western Canada have been
preserved - then Orlando Falcon's Eden-like Garden of God could be the epicentre of life, the original point of impact from which all life began, somehow frozen in space and time. In the final section, Falcon even mentions something he calls el origen, the source.' He paused, but Zeb said nothing. Her face had paled. 'What's more,' he continued, ' if the garden, or its source, does exist and if it's the point at which all life began, then it might still contain the original primordial soup, the life-giving concentrate, the precursor of DNA - which might explain its strange flora and fauna and its miraculous healing properties.'

  There was a beat before Zeb spoke. When she did it was barely a whisper. 'So, like the nun said, something in the garden might cure Lauren?'

  'Yes,' he said slowly, as hope seeped through him. If - and it was an enormous if - this bizarre garden was what his hypothesis supposed it might be, not only could he save Lauren but he would uncover one of the holy grails of geology, perhaps the holy grail of all science: the origin of life.

  Zeb sat back in her chair, held her head in her hands and gave a nervous laugh. 'Fuck. The Garden of God in the Voynich is the womb of Gaia, the cradle of all life on Earth. Fuck, Ross, that's one hell of a hypothesis. No wonder that priest's got his panties in a twist.'

  He laughed with her. 'We've still got to prove the hypothesis.'

  'There's one way to do that,' Zeb said, reaching for Orlando Falcon's notebook. 'Find the garden.'

  Ross thought of Lauren and the baby and his excitement evaporated. 'I can't leave Lauren to go on a wild-goose chase. Not when she needs me most.'

  'It's not a wild-goose chase,' said a voice behind them.

  Ross swivelled round. 'How long have you been there?'

  'Long enough to hear your theory.'

  'You must be Sister Chantal,' said Zeb, standing up. 'Hello, I'm Zeb Quinn. I worked with Lauren on the manuscript.'

  Sister Chantal walked across the room and clasped Zeb's hand in both of hers, then picked up Falcon's notebook from the desk and clutched it to her chest. 'Are you both coming with me to find the garden?'