by J. G. Kemp
“Mary,” said Elliot from behind, with her big, wide eyes and innocent smile. “Good luck.”
Mary smiled back. “Thanks Elliot.”
“Mary Andromeda, The Un-chained Princess,” announced Julee, and winked. “Better you than me.”
Mary winked back, and then suddenly, Ben grabbed Mary’s hand. “Come on, let’s get that treasure,” he said. He held the flashlight with one hand, and Mary’s hand with the other, and gently pulled her into the tunnel. Mary felt a sudden thrill of courage and excitement and then stepped with him, slowly, holding hands in the dark.
Ben pointed the flashlight up and down and left and right, scanning the walls and ceiling and floor of the tunnel as they walked forward. They turned a corner, and another, and Mary looked behind her—the fluorescent lights of the cave were gone. The sound of the river in the valley was gone. She imagined the flashlight going out, and groping hopelessly in the dark, wandering deeper and deeper into the maze of tunnels, not knowing which way was out, lost forever in the absolute blackness and silence of the cave. “Are you sure that flashlight won’t go off?” she asked uneasily.
“Yeah… pretty sure,” said Ben. “If it does, I’d be able to get us out though. Hey, here’s that first tunnel on the left.” He aimed the flashlight into it—it looked exactly the same as the tunnel they were in. “I’ll have to come back and explore that,” he said excitedly.
They continued down, past the second tunnel on the left and one on the right. The slope of the tunnel was getting steeper. “I wonder where those bats live,” said Ben, “they have to be down here somewhere. Hey wait a second. Mary, do you mind if I turn the light off, just for a minute. I think I see something up there.”
Mary didn’t want him to, but she was also curious. “Sure… okay… but just for a minute.” Ben held her hand tighter and turned off the light. There was something glowing, just ahead, in a crack on the cave wall. They walked slowly towards it.
On the other side of the crack, which was just big enough to slip through, was a huge cavern; its ceiling was glowing. Long strands of greenish-blue glow-in-the-dark thread hung down from it, and glowing dots filled its cracks and crevices. It almost looked like the night sky.
“What is that?” marveled Ben.
Mary was speechless. How could it be? How could there be a glowing ceiling in the darkness of the cave? There was a chittering sound nearby and something scurried out of the crack. “Look, the mouse,” said Mary. She watched it run along the wall of the tunnel and disappear around a corner.
“Glowing mice… glowing ceilings… this island is crazy,” whispered Ben.
“Crazy awesome,” added Mary, grasping Ben’s had tighter. “Come on, let’s get to that X.”
Ben turned the flashlight back on, and they continued down the tunnel, eventually turning at the second right. Mary’s ankle was hurting more with every step, but she tried not to notice it. Soon, she heard something that sounded like the hum of a motor, like when the observatory ceiling opened. The sound got louder and louder—as they seemed to be walking towards it—and before long, the tunnel ended and they emerged into a room and there was daylight coming in through a series of small windows high up on the wall.
Ben turned the flashlight off. The room was long and skinny, with a high ceiling, and it had a slight curve to it, like a bow or a crescent moon. The humming sound, along with the sound of rushing water, was coming from a large rectangular object in the middle of the room.
“Look, the walls are cement, not rock,” Ben said. “I know where we are. We’re inside the dam. That’s the generator, that’s what’s making electricity for the observatory, and the lights in the cave.” He let go of Mary’s hand and ran forward, pointing at a bundle of pipes and wires that ran along the floor and into another tunnel at the opposite end of the room. “I bet that tunnel goes up to the House of Andromeda. These are access tunnels! I bet they connect everything. What if each tunnel goes to a different house? We could find them all!” He looked at Mary, beaming.
“Is this where the X is?” asked Mary. She glanced around. There were shelves filled with big wrenches and nuts and bolts along one wall, and a stack of pipes and coils of wire in the corner.
“Yeah, it was in this room,” said Ben. “I know it.”
They searched briefly and found nothing but motor parts and more tools and a control panel covered with switches and gauges. “Henry would love this,” commented Ben.
Mary glanced up at the ceiling and down at the floor. In the middle of the room, set into the floor, were six squares, each about two feet wide, and not made of cement but made of stone. Each stone was carved with a different letter.
“Hey look at these,” Mary said. There was a ‘K’ that had straight edges and looked like it was made out of rulers, there was a ‘W’ that looked like it was made out of mechanical arms, there was a ‘K’ with an extra line in the middle that made it look like a plus sign or a cross, there was a ‘D’ with circles behind it, there was a cursive ‘W’ that had leaves coming off of one end, and there was the spiral letter ‘A’ of the Andromeda House.
“I bet those are all the houses,” said Mary, “of the Royal Fellowship Society. Each house has a different letter, just like mine.”
“Hey, I think these stones lift up,” exclaimed Ben. “See that thin crack around them, they’re not attached to the floor, and there are small holes here.” He crouched down and squeezed his fingers around the edges of the stone with the spiral letter ‘A’ and lifted. The stone moved. He pulled hard and brought the stone up, out of the floor, and slid it off to the side with a grunt. Underneath the stone was a black box.
“X marks the spot,” said Ben.
Mary pulled out the box easily and sat on the floor and opened it. On top of some papers and journals were two computer memory sticks, a video disc, two cassette tapes, and a small plastic case that had wires sticking out of it. “We’d need the computer for these,” Mary said and set them carefully aside. She pulled out the top sheet of paper. It was a note, from her grandfather to her mother, written in the same scribbled handwriting as the riddle from the book about nebulae.
Dearest Vera,
The truth will set you free.
Use it wisely.
Your loving father,
-Galileo Andromeda
“The truth will set you free,” said Ben, nodding. “I like that.”
“It’s for my mom,” said Mary, puzzled. “My grandpa hid this for my mom, not for me.” She set the note aside.
“Look, the next one’s about an explosion,” said Ben. Mary pulled out the paper—it was a newspaper article. The gray newsprint was damp from the moisture in the dam. It was dated eight years ago, when Mary was three years old.
She read it aloud:
Tragic Explosion Kills 6 Scientists
The deaths of six scientists, members of the preeminent community of scientific nobility, The Royal Fellowship Society, shocked the world yesterday. Astronomer sisters Cecilia and Anne Andromeda (of the famous Andromeda Family), Albert and James Kelvin (sons of the mathematician and engineer Archimedes Kelvin), J.J. Dalton (oldest son of chemists Democritus and Marie Dalton), and Richard Ki (renowned biologist and author), were pronounced dead Monday from an explosion that occurred at an undisclosed location. The direct cause of the explosion is unknown but is reported to have been accidental.
“Our community of science will never be the same,” commented Alfred Watt, engineer, businessman, and co-founder (with Isaac Kelvin) of the Institute, an elite science and technology school in Port Oceanside. “This immeasurable loss of genius is a severe blow to scientific research. It is a tragic, tragic loss. The discoveries of these six great minds will be remembered forever as some of the greatest and most profound in all of science.”
Albert Kelvin, perhaps the most notable of those deceased, and the youngest of the great Kelvin brothers, is well known for transforming the fields of Physics and Astrono
my with his revolutionary theories concerning space, time, and the power of the imagination. He is survived by his mother, Emmy Euler; older brothers Isaac and Michael; wife, Vera Andromeda; and two young daughters, Maria Estelle and Cassiopeia Nova Andromeda. He was 29 years old.
“Wow,” whispered Ben, “sounds like your dad was awesome. Only 29 years old and he did all that?”
“Yeah… it sounds like they all were. Some of the greatest discoveries in all of science, it says.”
“… and the famous Andromeda family,” Ben added, in an impressed voice. “Hey, isn’t that Henry’s last name—Kelvin?”
“Yeah,” answered Mary, “Elliot said his family started the Institute. His father must be Isaac Kelvin, my dad’s older brother.”
Ben thought for moment. “But that would mean you two are—”
“Cousins,” said Mary. “I know.”
“Wow,” exclaimed Ben, “I did not see that coming. You and Henry are cousins?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Mary continued, “and look at this name, Richard Ki, that’s Elliot’s last name, remember, she said it sounds like the word key but it’s spelled K-i. Maybe they’re related. Maybe Elliot’s here for a reason too. And it says here the explosion was an accident, and that it occurred at an undisclosed location. That has to be Evergreen Isle, remember how the RFS promised to keep it a secret? I haven’t seen anything that looks… exploded, have you?”
Ben looked at Mary curiously. “Wait, so you and Henry are cousins? Your dad and Henry’s dad are brothers? You have the same grandparents?”
Mary pushed her glasses farther up her nose. “Yeah,” she shrugged. She imagined shaking hands with Henry after a pretend sword-fight, in a friendly truce. She looked back in the box and pulled out a stack of photographs. “Here, shine the light over there, I can’t see from the glare.”
Ben adjusted the light so that the photographs were visible and Mary flipped through them. “They look like… photographs of the cave,” she said, “before it was all destroyed. See, here are those long tables, and the bookshelves, and the cages, and there’s the tunnel in the background.”
“I wonder what all that equipment was for,” said Ben, “and where it went… there’s tons of it.” The photos showed the cave filled with computers and glass beakers and machines.
Behind the pictures of the cave was one other photograph that was different. It was on older-looking paper, and it was of five boys, standing on the dam, wearing shorts. They looked like they had just gone swimming. The lake was behind them, and the massive cave doors were in the background, to the right. They were young, around Ben’s age or a little older, and they were smiling and had their arms over each other’s shoulders. Mary turned the picture over. It was labeled in Galileo Andromeda’s scribbled hand-writing:
Alfred Watt and the Kelvin brothers: Isaac, Michael, James, and Albert. Upon completion of the Kelvin and Watt Dam and Laboratory.
“Your dad lived here too?” asked Ben.
Mary flipped the picture back over and looked at the boys. “They all lived here. They grew up here, just like my mom.”
“Maybe the tower was his house,” said Ben. “The Kelvin House?”
“Or this other boy’s, Alfred Watt,” said Mary. “He’s the same one from the article, that started the Institute with Henry’s dad.”
Mary placed the photographs aside and pulled from the box a packet of blue-lined graph paper.
“Those look like blue-prints,” said Ben.
Mary flipped through them. They were covered in drawings and equations. Some of the drawings looked like plans for rockets or buildings, and some of them looked like maps, but Mary couldn’t tell for sure. She set the blueprints aside and pulled out the last object, a journal. “The Journal of Isaac Kelvin and Alfred Watt,” she read. She flipped through it. “It has something to do with… weapons… and…” Mary gasped, “…explosives.” She looked up at Ben. “Maybe they caused it, Alfred and Isaac, this must be the evidence that proves it. They’re the ones my mom needed to expose.”
Ben looked puzzled. “Henry’s dad caused the explosion that killed your father, and your aunts, and all those scientists? But Isaac Kelvin was your dad’s brother, why would he—”
“Shhh,” Mary said, “did you hear that?” She cocked her ear towards the tunnel entrance. The sound of the generator and rushing water were loud behind her but there was a faint voice, echoing down through the tunnel, from far above.
“Mary… Help…”
Mary knew that voice. It wasn’t Julee, or Elliot, or Henry. It was her sister’s voice. It was Cassie!
“Mary… Help…”
“That’s my sister!” She quickly refilled the box, stood, and took off towards the voice, limping and clutching the black box under her arm.
“Mary… Help…”
“What is Cassie doing here? This doesn’t make sense.” Mary entered the tunnel. “Ouch!” Her left ankle twisted and a sharp throbbing pain shot up her leg. She took another step and stumbled and leaned up against the cold, wet rock.
“Here, let me help you,” said Ben. He took the box and put Mary’s left arm around his shoulder and gave her the flashlight. “Put as little weight on it as you can.”
“Mary… Help…” Cassie’s voice was getting louder.
“Come on!” Mary said, frantically. They hobbled up the tunnel together. “I don’t understand. This doesn’t make sense. Why would Cassie be here?” They turned a corner… and another… and were back in the main passage.
“Mary… Help…”
Mary limped faster. She imagined the serpent behind her, slithering closer in the dark as she limped in slow motion, its mouth open, its fangs unsheathed, ready to strike, but she couldn’t move fast enough.
“Mary… Help…”
As they turned the last corner, Mary saw the fluorescent lights of the cave at the end of the long tunnel. A figure was silhouetted there, backlit from the light behind.
“Mary!” shouted Cassie, and then another figure pulled her away, out of sight.
Mary let go of Ben and hopped forward, on one foot, as fast as she could go—up, up out of the tunnel. She burst into the open cavern and collapsed, exhausted, on all fours. Cassie was standing there, in the middle of the room, a terrified look in her eyes. Elliot and Julee were cowering against the wall. And Henry was sitting at the computer table, arms crossed, with a satisfied look on his face.
“What’s this?” said a calm, cold, heartless voice from the corner.
Chapter 19
The Union of Power
It was Uncle Edwin, in his gray suit and silver tie, grinning smugly.
“Mary, I’m sorry,” Cassie said, fighting back tears. “He made me call for you. I—”
“Silence girl,” spoke Edwin calmly. He turned to the black box in Ben’s hands. “Bring that to me, boy.”
Ben gulped and looked at Mary, as if he was asking for her permission. Mary nodded, and Ben walked across the room and gave the box to Uncle Edwin and then returned to Mary’s side. Uncle Edwin opened it, sifted through its contents, and then chuckled and smiled wickedly. “Well done Mary,” he said. He fixed his eyes upon her. She couldn’t stand—her ankle hurt too badly. She sat on the cold stone floor, motionless, as if she were chained there. “I’m impressed… we’ve been searching for this box for years. Perhaps you’re more like your parents than I gave you credit for. But then again, I knew you would serve a purpose someday.”
“Where’s my mother?” said Mary angrily, “and my grandmother? Where are they? Tell me!”
Uncle Edwin merely laughed. “Girl, your mother hasn’t been seen in six years. She left you and disappeared. And your grandmother died before you were born.” Uncle Edwin grinned and seemed to relish in the puzzled and defeated look on Mary’s face. “Oh, I knew about your little fantasy—your pretend Grandmother Caroline. How convenient for me that an elderly stranger worked in a bookshop named Caroline’s C
orner, and that you found a journal with your grandmother’s hand-writing. You should never have opened that door, Mary.” He laughed again. “Oh I knew you couldn’t resist believing that she was behind it all, that it was all for you, that you were meant to be here, to learn the truth. Ha. Silly girl. You have quite the imagination, don’t you Mary? We knew your grandfather hid this for your mother, he told us before he died. We just needed someone from the famous Andromeda family to track it down for us. To follow the clues.” He chuckled. “Clever little girl you are. Now the Union of Power is unstoppable. Now we can—”
“Edwin—” came a voice from outside, a man’s voice that was deep and rich and not at all unpleasant. Its speaker was just out of sight, just behind the massive doors. “Do you have the box… or not?”