“Freezing cold,” complains a second soldier. “Lousy British weather. That’ll keep the Germans away.”
They sound close. I roll onto my back and lift my head a half-inch. The soldiers patrol past the cloakroom window, giving it a cursory glance. I crawl back into the bushes, letting branches reshape over my face.
A sharp, broken stick pierces my back. I bite my lower lip, and wait for the soldiers to move away. Once they’re out of sight, I pull myself off the spike. Tough, naturally sharp… that branch could be useful. I break it off its root, rip off the smaller twigs, and clean the sharp end in the grass while I heal.
After my wound seals, I crawl to the edge of the bushes, wait until the right moment, and make my move. The guards don’t alter their patrols, and I reach the hut without incident. I’d best avoid the electric light, so I approach the side window. I’m about to pry the frame open when I realise a glass panel has been smashed, and the catch sprung.
I climb inside, and crouch low as I survey the room. There are many desks with measuring equipment neatly laid on top: rulers, set squares, compasses, Vernier callipers. Illuminated blackboards are filled with equations. This is a mathematician’s workspace.
There’s a masculine grunt from behind the desk. I move sideways with my back pressed against the wall – as Kostis taught me - so I won’t be surprised from behind.
I get a good look at the man. He’s wearing a worn, brown suit with a white shirt underneath. There’s a bald patch in his blond hair, and he’s shaved off his beard and moustache. But it’s him. Ernst. Someone’s roughed him up, and I’ve a good idea who.
“Don’t move,” I say, pressing the branch point into his neck. “What did my sister want?”
“What the British wanted,” he answers in English.
Ernst reaches out. I lean forward, digging the branch in. I ease off as he slides a cardboard folder toward me. The ripped beige cover is empty, stamped with a title in red.
“Project Rosetta,” I read. “Like the stone. So you are working on translations.”
But translating what? Ernst’s clearly not a prisoner. Why would the British trust a German? The enemy?
“I was here before the war started,” says Ernst, “working with a colleague I knew from Trinity College. He is an expert in cryptography, the study of code breaking. There was no way for me to return to Germany, but it did not matter. It was a mistake to think I could solve this problem alone. If we work together, we… My loyalty has always been to science, not my country.”
“The British wouldn’t trust you without a good reason,” I think aloud. “They wouldn’t even have let you near this place. Unless you offered them something big. Big enough to alter the course of the war.” Then it comes to me. “You showed them the vessel, didn’t you? You’re trying to translate the symbols, turn them into pictures. Why? We already found the tomb.”
“There will be more to find. I am convinced of that, and so is your sister. I wanted her to join me in England, but she insisted on staying with Zennler. He is obsessed with the idea of the German master race. Since she came here to steal my research, it is likely they have found more symbols, perhaps a scroll like the one you destroyed in Berlin.”
But that would mean…
“There’s another vessel.” I pull the branch away. “Were you able to translate them?”
Ernst rises to his feet, standing tall and proud. He did it. He’s found a way to read the symbols without me.
Chapter Fifteen: Written in Stone
The poor choices we make in life can’t be altered, only regretted. For me – a girl able to relive her every mistake – that’s especially true.
“Do you think it’s over?” Kostis asks me. “That because the tomb is gone they’ll stop looking for others? Looking for you, the one person who can read the symbols?”
“Who cares about symbols? Do you know what’s happening out there?” I point at the dust-choked window shutter. “We’re about to go to war! I might not look old enough, but I remember the last time. Millions dead. Wounded lying in hospital corridors because there weren’t enough beds. I can’t do a thing while I’m in this stupid house!”
Kostis sits down on the wooden stool – the only one we haven’t broken in training - and rests his back against the tabletop. Freckly face, unevenly-trimmed beard, cracked lips. The last three years haven’t been kind to my mentor.
“Why are you so keen to help the British?” he asks.
“Because I am British.” Saying that feels odd. I haven’t been back to England for… Fifteen years? Has it been that long?
“Loyalty can make men blind. That also applies to women, and to impulsive girls.”
“Impulsive!?” I cry. “Why did you train me? To fight, or to sit and watch?”
Kostis sighs with disapproval. Three years, and he still views me as an irresponsible student.
“To protect yourself,” he says with a tired sigh. “When people learn that you can heal, that you remember everything you see, it will make no difference whether they are German or British. They will desire what you have. It was the promise of power that turned your own sister against you.”
“Not everybody is like her,” I say. “If that’s what you think, then you’ve nothing more to teach me. I’m going home. To my people.”
I return to the present haunted by those final parting words. I’m in Buckinghamshire, the county I grew up in. Except it doesn’t feel like home. While the hut is compacter and less grandiose than Ernst’s laboratory in Berlin, the interior layout is the same. Blackboards fixed to the wall, desk in the centre, trays of scientific apparatus. In classical literature Faust was German, but it’s the British who’ve made a deal with the devil.
Ernst stands by the central board admiring his work: an accurate, to-scale recreation of the hollow city diagram that led us to Alexandria. Most chalk lines are white, but some have been drawn in different colours, a roughly even split between lime green and magenta.
Below the picture is the matching set of framed symbols. Each square is labelled with a Greek alphabet letter and cross-referenced in a table. Four columns are filled with measurements to four decimal places. The conversion method seems extremely complicated, and I’m sure Ernst will baffle me even more with his explanation.
“So much information encoded in simple patterns,” he says. “At first the translation appeared impossible, until I realised each square can be defined by four numbers. Two to denote the position of its centre, one for vertical and one for horizontal. A third number for side length, and a fourth for the angle of rotation. The outer squares…” Ernst indicates the frames surrounding the symbols. “…are there for reference, and denote one hundred arbitrary units of length. Think of them as a scale, to allow interpretation from any viewing distance.”
While Ernst is preoccupied, I slide the broken branch up my sleeve. “Which line in the picture matches square alpha?” I enquire, keeping him focused on the blackboard.
Ernst uses a metre rule to indicate a green line, one of three on the ‘Sun’. “This one.” He swings his pointer to a magenta stretch of coast. “Perhaps this, and perhaps more. Each of the square measurements can be subdivided into two digit parts. An x co-ordinate, followed by a y co-ordinate. Values between zero and ninety-nine that map onto a grid. When co-ordinate pairs from the first column are matched with the second, and then joined together, it creates the lines. And the same principle for the third and fourth columns. I would have discovered the method sooner, but it took time to realise that a right angle equates to a hundred units on their scale. Why did we choose ninety degrees? It is not logical.”
I pull down my cloth sleeve, covering up the branch. It’s uncomfortable walking about with a wooden stick scratching my arm, but I’d rather keep both hands free. And have a weapon ready in case Ernst tries anything.
“So the green lines are…” I leave my question hanging.
“Matching lines I have identified,” says Ernst. “They ar
e determined by the first co-ordinate pairs in the measurements. The magenta lines are my best estimates for the second set of lines, that would be determined by the next pairs using the same procedure. The method is simple once you know it. But to draw squares accurate to millionths of a metre… That is incredible.”
“Is this method simple enough for my sister to understand?” I ask.
Ernst nods. He drags aside his desk, blows sawdust off a wooden floorboard, and inserts his finger in a hole that’s far too neat to be natural. I reach underneath my shirt and itch my wrist - a ploy to grab the branch. I move closer, raising my eyebrows as if curious.
“They insisted I keep it hidden.” Ernst lifts up the plank. “I attempted to decipher the symbols, tried every possible combination with no success.”
His fingers aren’t twitching, but if Ernst is planning to betray me, I’m the one in a backstabbing position. Metal bumps wood as he withdraws his hand. He’s holding the vessel, and there’s not a speck of dust on it. My sketches – the six I drew on the Aegir – are stored in the dark hidey hole. If my father’s diary is down there, it can rot with them.
I wait for Ernst to replace the floorboard before I stop ‘itching’ myself. “The symbols on the vessel don’t have squares around them,” I point out. “They’re not pictures. And don’t even think of touching me with that thing.”
“I do not want to hurt you,” Ernst says unconvincingly. “I want to help you find the other metal ball before your sister.”
“Help yourself, you mean.”
Ernst ignores my insult. “The metal woman would not leave her instructions in a single place. It is likely she recorded the symbols from the papyrus elsewhere to maximise the chances of them being found. Perhaps there are also duplicates of the symbols your sister has. Did Lydia say anything when you with her?”
“Before she died?” I say abrasively. “No.”
“There must be more records!” Ernst slams his palm on the blackboard, smudging a green line. He’s never been this angry before. “Have you ever seen the symbols anywhere else? Think!”
Ernst wants me to search my memories. It’s a waste of time. I’ve never… Wait. I have seen the symbols before, and it wasn’t on the vessel, papyrus, or tomb column. It’s risky closing my eyes, but if Irene really does have another scroll…
I go back seventeen years, to the night this all began. I pursue the ‘man’ in black cloth – Lydia, but I didn’t know that at this point – through the basement of the British Museum, up the spiral staircase, and into the exhibit hall that contains the Elgin Marbles.
The thief stops, bathed in blue light. I chase ‘him’ but quickly lose ground. I stop to rest on the glass case, turn, and see… A glowing symbol! Framed by an incomplete square, burning within the slab.
I awake to see an expectant Ernst. He knows I remember something, but do I tell him the truth? Or a believable lie?
“I’ve seen them. The symbols. They were on the…” I stall, looking through the side window. A guard patrol passes the cloakroom, and I suddenly realise time’s not on our side. “The typist! I knocked a woman out in the house. If they find her…”
I’m dressed in black, trespassing on a secret military base, and collaborating with a German scientist. Even if he is working with the British. Damning evidence, and there’s a witness to identify me. Acting the innocent little girl won’t get me out of this.
“We should leave while we can,” Ernst says. “The British have never fully trusted me. When they learn my research has been stolen, they will think that I was involved. I will fetch a car. Stay in the hut. When it is clear to come out, I will sound the horn.”
While Ernst is gone I ponder whether to tell him about the symbols. He won’t be able to translate them quickly without my help – if at all - so it might make sense to…
The horn! That was quick. I head outside, immediately on the lookout for soldiers. They’re all patrolling other huts, and it’s a short run to the open car door.
Ernst’s Austin is a relic from the 1920s, with peeling brown paintwork, worn down tire treads, and a rusty manufacturer’s mark on the grille. Any modern vehicle – and certainly those the military use - will outperform it.
“I should hide,” I suggest as I climb through the door. “If the guards see us together, they’ll get suspicious.”
“Crouch down low,” Ernst advises me. “They will not see you.”
Easy to say, but a lot harder to actually do. While Ernst drives I slide off the leather seat, crunch my knees to my chest, and curl up on the hard metal chassis. I’m no contortionist, and I wish I’d had the foresight to lie the other way around. Then I wouldn’t have to smell Ernst’s sweaty feet, or dodge his foot every time he presses the accelerator pedal.
When we reach the open country, my legs are paralysed with cramp, and I have to drag myself onto the passenger seat.
“You said you saw the symbols before,” says Ernst while I’m still recuperating.
We pass the village pub with the red lion sign. This is the lane Lydia drove me along in 1924, but I’m not the helpless child I was then.
I’ve learned a few things in the interim years: to fight, deceive, better control my memories, and not to trust other people unreservedly. But I may need Ernst’s help to interpret pictures – if we find any - and I’m more than capable of defending myself should the need arise. I take a breath, and briefly summarise what happened at the British Museum.
“The Parthenon of Athens,” Ernst says when I’m done. “And a scroll in the Great Library of Alexandria. Both were culturally important locations, likely to be preserved over time. That is why the traveller chose them, to ensure the information would survive.”
“Then she chose badly,” I say, not swayed by his argument. “The library burned down, and the Parthenon was damaged when an Ottoman powder magazine exploded in the seventeenth century, during an attack by the Venetians. And then the British removed the marbles.”
I recall all that from memory, without blinking once. Kostis was – hopefully still is - a proud traditional Greek, and often told me stories of Athens’ history over supper.
“And the hidden symbols with them,” Ernst says. “The marbles are here in England. Perhaps they will lead us to a second crash site.”
“Crash site? You mean the tomb.”
Ernst used that terminology in Egypt. Does he think the black metal saucer was an aeroplane? My father had the same crazy idea.
“Remember the purpose of the vessel.” Ernst looks at the metal ball stowed between his legs. “A protective shell for the liquid inside. The metal woman was also a shell, likely a suit of armour to shield a living host. Our aircraft and submarines are shells, sealed air bubbles that allow us to travel in hostile environments we otherwise could not.”
“You believe it was a plane.” That’s what Ernst is getting at… I think.
The car headlamps illuminate a crashed aircraft, half-buried in a ploughed field. It’s the wreckage of a German Dornier bomber. I can tell from the distinctive two-finned tail. The left wing has broken off the fuselage, charred and jagged where the engine should be. It reminds me of the breach in the ‘tomb’ wall. Was that caused by an explosion, too? Suddenly Ernst’s theory doesn’t seem so crazy.
“A plane that was shot down from the sky,” I say, thinking aloud.
Ernst negotiates a sharp bend. He’s driving too fast, and we skid dangerously close to a concrete lamppost.
“No,” he says, maintaining his high speed. “Not from the sky. If the metal woman was part of some advanced ancient civilization on Earth, we would have found evidence of their existence before now. That leaves only one feasible possibility. The traveller did not come from this world.”
“So, you’re… saying… Athena…” I stammer, “was a Martian?” Has Ernst been reading The War of the Worlds? He’s come up with bizarre theories before, but this is preposterous.
“It is unlikely to be Mars,” Ernst says with a perfect
ly straight face. “It is too hostile an environment to support life. More likely she came from a world beyond our solar system. Do you understand now why it is so important we find the crash site? An understanding of the traveller’s technology could advance our own by decades, perhaps centuries. The greatest discovery in human history is within our grasp, and we are fighting one another over petty ideology.”
The metal woman came from another world? There’s life out there in space? I find the idea disturbing, but Ernst – much like my father – will do anything for a great find. I’d better hold onto that sharp branch I retrieved earlier, and hope he’s not carrying a firearm.
We’re coming into London… or what remains of it. The German Blitz has left the city in chaos. Few streets have escaped undamaged. Homes, businesses, schools, even a church… all reduced to rubble. Uniformed men in white armbands – service volunteers - search for survivors. Solemn-faced citizens tread past in the dark. They know it’s a futile endeavour. In his radio broadcasts, the Prime Minister always lauds the spirit of the British, but if this goes on much longer…
“Maybe you should have stayed in Germany after all,” I say, downbeat.
“Have patience. The British will win this battle.”
How can Ernst be so certain? He slows down, allowing a garbage truck through an intersection. Its skip is filled with broken bricks, bent metal signs and… Is that burnt toy at the back a girl’s doll?
“The Germans hope to break the will of the people.” Ernst analyses the bombing campaign like an abstract mathematics problem, with no empathy for what Londoners are going through. “It is a weak strategy, almost certain to fail. Luftwaffe bombers will deplete far quicker than British morale. If the German commanders were more intelligent, they would attack the airfields, and destroy fighters on the ground. But they are poor tacticians with little grasp of rudimentary strategy. It will not be long before this… blitz is over.”
If we were back at Bletchley, Ernst’s reasoning might boost my confidence, but it’s hard to be optimistic when I can see the devastation up close.
Edith Clayton and the Wisdom of Athena Page 18