The Book of All Things

by David Michael Slater

  “It’s a ramp,” Dexter said. “We’re going underground.”

  And sure enough, the car began to move forward, down a slope that wasn’t there when they pulled in.

  The car leveled out, and the twins could see that they’d entered something considerably more dignified than what they’d expected. They were on a wide street, like any city street, except spotlessly clean, utterly silent, and lit by soft lights mounted on tiled ceilings. But it was a street, a street crossing other streets in some kind of underground city. The walls were stone, but set into them periodically were bronze doors. Five minutes later, the car pulled up alongside one and stopped.

  The driver’s door opened, so Daphna quickly stashed the Aleph away. Then the back door opened to reveal Dead Face standing there, waiting in silence. Maybe he couldn’t talk.

  While the twins got out, he opened the bronze door they were facing and motioned them inside, into what turned out to be a small room with an elevator door. To their great relief, he did not follow them in. He simply closed the door between them. A few moments later they heard the car drive off.

  Dex shrugged and pressed the elevator button. There were two buttons, but the lower one had a keyhole in it. The doors opened immediately, so the twins stepped inside and rode it up. It took a while, but the doors opened again, into a long, unadorned hall, at the end of which was a fancy wooden door. Dex and Daphna walked the bare floor to the end, opened the door, and passed through.

  It was like stepping into another world.

  They were in some kind of museum, in a massive gallery with soaring vaulted ceilings, nearly every inch of which was painted with magnificent frescoes. Dex immediately thought the place couldn’t possibly be more different than Durante’s house of horrors. The colors were sumptuous, warm, regal. The floors looked like marble. Main lights were off, but secondary ones shed a soft glow over everything. Without realizing it, the twins were walking forward, turning their heads every which way. The place was absolutely breathtaking.

  “What is this?” Dexter asked, stopping at a display case. Inside was a giant, ancient book of some kind.

  “Look,” Daphna said, moving toward a row of six huge pillars running down the center of the gallery, supporting the vault. Each one had ancient and Renaissance-looking men painted on their sides. The first had a plaque, so Daphna went over to it.

  “These are all inventors of world alphabets,” she said. Then she read, “The Alphabet is the symbol of complete knowledge because it contains the letters that form the words that form our knowledge.”

  “Daphna,” said Dex looking up at the image of a bearded, longhaired man with upturned eyes on the first pillar. He was holding a staff of some sort in one hand and an apple in the other.

  Daphna took it in. Neither twin commented that the picture looked nothing like their father.

  “I guess he’d be first,” she said, “since he knew the first language—the First Tongue.”

  “What are we here for?” Dex asked, shaking off burdensome thoughts of things long gone. “Where are we?”

  Daphna couldn’t answer. She just led on. The twins wandered in and out of rooms and galleries, all of which seemed part museum and part library. The depictions on the frescoes and tapestries they encountered varied. There were rustic landscapes, narrative scenes, and debating councils, but nearly all of them had books: under arms, stacked on tables, held aloft in upraised hands.

  Books. It seemed everything came down to books.

  The twins looked closely to see if any of the councils might be the one that met to decide the fate of the Book of Nonsense, but it was impossible to tell.

  Two tapestries did not feature a book, and so they stood out. One was of the crucifixion. It showed a man standing next to the cross, catching a stream of blood from a wound in Jesus’ side in a golden chalice. It was a disturbing image. The other was of The Last Supper—Jesus standing at the center of a long table, informing his disciples that one of them was going to betray him. Underneath was a plaque with a quote:

  For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, this cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.

  Dex and Daphna moved on with no comment. There were many ancient tomes on display, but other treasures as well, including dozens of sculptures and vases. They saw a giant granite basin, a table of black and white stone supporting a triumphant sculpture of bronze figures holding a green flower, which in turn held a pair of angels.

  Angels were everywhere: on the walls, in the display books, carved into panels. They were frolicking, flying, hoisting festoons. A church/library/museum? The twins encountered a gold sculpture of a shepherd, antique globes, and scientific instruments. In one room, they found an ancient map with bright spots all over it, almost like pinpoints of light.

  “Dex,” Daphna said when he saw it. “It looks like the Book of Maps.”

  “It’s like everything is here,” Dex said, feeling the weight of all they’d seen and done bearing down on him. “It’s like the museum of our life.”

  Daphna nodded and led them into a new room. Immediately, she approached a row of inlaid wooden cabinets running along the lower half of the far wall. They were filled, end-to-end, with old books. She couldn’t help but ooh and ahh.

  “Our library is one of the oldest and most significant in the word,” declared a deep, sonorous, somehow familiar voice.

  The twins turned to find a tall, middle-aged man in a long shiny silver nightshirt and fuzzy gray slippers. They’d certainly never seen him before. He had a wizardly look, bald on top but with full white brows and long tufts of white hair falling down from the back of his otherwise bald head like a curtain. His face was a bit baggy.

  “It is home to over 75,000 ancient texts and over one million books,” the man added, “not to mention the 150,000 items in the Secret Archives.”

  “Where are we?” both twins asked.

  “I apologize for being detained just now,” the man said. “But let me be the first to welcome you to the Vatican Library.”

  “The Vatican? Are—are you,” Daphna stuttered, “the Pope?”

  The man laughed.

  “No,” he said, “I’m just the guy in charge of his secrets. Even the secrets he doesn’t know.”

  CHAPTER 31

  thirty-six

  The old man had a slight limp that made him dip a bit to the left with every other step as he led the twins through the library. He stopped at a door, opened it, and ushered them into a room. It was a study full of books, but space had been made for a hospital bed. In the bed was another man, asleep or unconscious. His head was bandaged, though tufts of unruly hair poked free from under it, refusing to be restrained.

  “My young friends,” said the Secret Keeper, for this is how the twins immediately thought of him, “this is why I was detained. I was tending to this dear, dear man. He has very little time left, I fear.”

  “Azir!” Daphna gasped. Her hand shot to her mouth. “Is he—?”

  “He is dying,” the Secret Keeper said. “He was savagely beaten and has been raving in many languages ever since. But he did make a few things quite clear, one of which was that he wanted to be brought here to die, to the Vatican Library. He and his family have served the Church well for many generations, so it was the least we could do.”

  Daphna understood why they’d been summoned, or kidnapped, now. “And why did you want to talk to us?” she asked, anyway.

  “This library is the repository of a great many secrets,” the Secret Keeper replied. “But there is one too important even for this place. Azir was the guar
dian of this secret. It was hidden in the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo, which you may know was attacked and, for the most part, razed. As a result that secret—a document—is missing. It is quite possible that certain parties used the unrest resulting from the construction of all those ridiculous towers to gain access to the building in a way that was never possible before.”

  “By blowing it up,” Dex said, glancing at his sister. They couldn’t communicate by thought, but both grasped the fact that Azir hadn’t told anyone that he’d lost the secret to Lilit. That surely explained the distress they’d found him in. He said that he’d lied. And they both had the sneaking suspicion that he was really here because they’d hoped he’d recover enough to tell the truth.

  The Secret Keeper nodded. “It is possible the document was destroyed in the attack,” he said, “but we do not think so. It was in a bombproof box, which was recovered—empty.”

  “The towers,” Daphna said, considering once again just divulging everything they knew. She needed time. “What do you think they are?”

  “Folly,” the Secret Keeper replied, “the folly of religious fanatics. There is a group, a secret organization called The Cartographer’s Guild, who believes they have found entry points to Heaven. It is a sad but predictable consequence of the extraordinary stress caused by life in modern times. This plague has not helped, of course. History is positively strewn with similar reactions to eschatological fears—fears, that is, of the end of the world.”

  “You don’t have that fear?” Dex asked.

  “Indeed I do,” said the Secret Keeper, taking a seat in a large desk chair on wheels sitting next to the bed. “And that is why this document must be recovered at all costs.”

  Azir made a choking noise, so the Secret Keeper swiveled around to face him. When the dying man settled down, he turned back.

  But it was too late. The twins had seen the back of the giant red wingback chair. And now they recognized the giant black and white desk.

  “No one has ever before even guessed at the existence of this secret,” the liar said.

  “Not even Roberta Fludd?” Daphna snapped.

  The Secret Keeper’s face froze a moment. “How could you—?” But then he shook this off. “No,” he said, “not even Roberta Fludd.”

  “But I bet she was close,” Dex challenged.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” Daphna demanded. “It was you who threatened her! To kill her and her loved ones! Of course it was! Dead Face is your killer! How stupid of us!”

  The Secret Keeper regarded Daphna with sad and droopy eyes, but then conceded.

  “It was necessary to frighten her, yes,” he said. “An unfortunate necessity. I see you don’t approve of our methods, but she was preparing to go down a dangerous path, one we simply could not allow. I wonder if you don’t already know that drastic times call for drastic measures.”

  “What was she going to tell people?” Daphna demanded. “What was so dangerous about it?”

  To this, the Secret Keeper did not respond. He merely added a sad smile to his sad eyes.

  “So, this document,” Dex said, trying to keep focused on why they were there, “it’s connected to the plague?”

  “Only in that it threatens to unleash a similar—no, a worse, disaster,” replied the Secret Keeper. “Dr. Fludd deals with diseases of the body. I am concerned with diseases of the mind. I see from your T-shirts,” he added, “that you know certain knowledge, sacred knowledge, might best be forbidden.”

  “I hope you don’t think we know where the scroll is,” Daphna said. “Because we don’t.”

  The Secret Keeper rolled his chair back to put his hand on Azir’s shoulder. “My poor friend here,” he said, “has spoken a good deal of gibberish and suffered terrific hallucinations. He has talked at great length about having seen angels. And he said two names: Dexter and Daphna Wax.”

  “False angels!” Azir suddenly cried out, but then fell silent once again.

  The Secret Keeper looked him over with concern, but then turned back to the twins. “It seems, children,” he said, “that you are at the very heart of many significant events. It is absolutely critical that this secret be secured, much more critical, I assure you, than the need to find a cure for this deadly plague. So forgive me for wondering what you know about this document—which, I might add, I never mentioned was a scroll.”

  Daphna’s face went beet red. She’d slipped up.

  Dex didn’t care. He decided to lay their cards on the table. “The scroll wasn’t taken in the attack,” he said. “It was taken before, earlier, by—by a creature called Lilit. We know you know about Lilit because we know you gave Azir a talisman. He tried to stop it, but he had no chance. We’ve used two of them and killed parts of it. But the third one, Virgil Durante’s, didn’t work. We don’t know what to do now, unless his was a fake and you know where the real third one is.”

  The Secret Keeper’s bright green eyes narrowed at the mention of Lilit’s name. “Please,” he said, “tell me more.”

  “Please,” Daphna said back, relieved Dex had done what she couldn’t, “can you tell us what this scroll is?”

  The Secret Keeper did not reply. He leaned back into his great chair, closed his eyes, and crossed one leg over the other. He was apparently thinking it over.

  The twins both noticed his slipper when the nightshirt rose over it. It was the open kind, so it fell away from his foot a bit. The bottom was stuffed with a stack of those soft, foot-shaped pads. The other one wasn’t.

  His legs were different lengths.

  Dex and Daphna looked at each other. Now they knew where else they’d heard that voice. They’d seen those green eyes, too—through a mask.

  That one sneaker with the platform sole.

  The Secret Keeper opened his eyes and saw the twins staring at his foot. It took a moment to process their furious expressions, but he put his foot down as quickly as he could.

  “You’re the leader of the Cartographer’s Guild!” Daphna shouted.

  The Secret Keeper was on his feet. “Children,” he said, “please.”

  “You already knew Lilit was out there!” Dex snarled. “You were there, at the abbey and at the lodge!”

  Azir jerked in his bed at the outbursts.

  “You,” Daphna said, amazed, “you really do care about this secret more than stopping Lilit, or the disease!”

  The Secret Keeper seemed to reach a decision. “I will tell you what it is,” he said, taking his seat again. “And you will understand that they are inseparable problems.”

  Dexter and Daphna waited.

  The Secret Keeper looked at each of them. Then he said, “The scroll reveals how to identify the Tzadikim Nistarim.”

  “The what?” Daphna asked. “It’s not about where Lilit’s children are trapped?”

  “The Tzadikim Nistarim are a much greater concern.”

  “Let me guess,” Dex said. “That’s Hebrew.”

  “Indeed,” the Secret Keeper confirmed. “It means ‘Righteous People,’ but it refers specifically to a belief in mystical Judaism that at any given time there are thirty-six truly righteous people in the world who, by their mere existence, sustain the world. Some believe that if even one were lost, the world would end. Others believe this would be the case if all of them were lost.”

  “And you—Christians—believe this, too?”

  “We do. Our religion grew from theirs. It is our foundation—and thus you might say our frustration. But that is neither here nor there. What you must understand is that the Tzadikim Nistarim rarely ever know who they are. I think you can see the danger posed by someone, anyone, knowing how to identify them.”

  “What a minute,” Dex said. “You said thirty-six?” He turned to his sister. “The kids Dad first recruited to learn the First Tongue—they were supposed to be the thirty-six most intelligent children in the—”

  Just then, Azir bolted upright in his bed. His eyes bugged out impossibly far when he saw the twin
s. “Les Angellus!” he cried. “False Angellus!”

  Daphna approached the poor man. “It’s okay,” she assured him. “It’s—”

  With a sudden movement that belied his condition, Azir shot a hand out to Daphna’s head. He grabbed her hair and pulled her to him. She cried out in protest. “Los halos?” he cried. “Donde?”

  “Azir!” the Secret Keeper demanded. “Let her go!” He set to prying the dying man’s hands loose from Daphna’s hair.

  Azir did not resist. “Gone?” he added when she’d been freed. He put his hands on his bandaged head. “No halos al ha rosh?” Then he laid back down, quietly.

  “Dex!” Daphna cried, rubbing her head.

  Dexter heard it, too. Those were the words Lilit had said while reading the scroll. He spun to the Secret Keeper and asked, “Al-ha-rosh? What does that mean!”

  The Secret Keeper looked surprised at the intensity of the question, and he was still looking alarmed at Azir, who’d closed his eyes again.

  “It’s Hebrew,” he said, turning to Dexter. “It means ‘on the head.’”

  “Oh, my God,” Dexter said, turning to Daphna again. “Do you remember how dad chose the thirty-six kids?”

  Daphna had to admit she didn’t.

  “Ruby told us it was mysterious, but in her case, she had to solve a riddle.”

  “So?”

  “And when she solved it, he ruffled her hair and said she’d been accepted. And we saw Dad ruffling lots of kids hair—in the Aleph.”

  “Dex! Lilit! He grabbed us by the heads! He’s looking for them! He’s looking for the thirty-six!”

  “Wait a moment,” the Secret Keeper interrupted, looking grave. But the twins didn’t even hear him now.

  Daphna wheeled around, searching the room. She rushed to the desk, tore open a drawer and scrambled out a piece of paper and a pen. “Have you ever seen the number seventeen, drawn this way?” she asked, doing her best with a shaking hand to reproduce what they’d seen the Spanish-speaking policeman draw in that unspeakable hotel room: