Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (12 page)

Inside. Cool and timeless silence. Jess trembled, senses heightened by adrenaline and pain. A soft amber glow drew her eyes upward to see—

Electric lightbulbs, tripod-mounted, high along the walls to her right and left.

Jess heard Su-Lin’s voice now. It was as if she were speaking to her from some great distance, and not from right beside her.

“Those were installed fifty years ago. The soot from torches was damaging the stonework.”

Su-Lin took her to a battered wooden chest against the stone-block wall.

Draped over the chest were three separate garments. A simple white linen shift. A long white linen cape, sleeveless, with purple edging and braided purple threads. An ornate vest, also sleeveless, near-rigid with glittering metallic embroidery of oak leaves, red and green and gold.

Religious clothing.

The long sleeveless outergarment was like the cope worn by certain priests in Christian ceremonies, and the decorated vest, though embroidered with leaves, not crosses, was an
amphibalus,
similar to the chasuble worn
by Catholic priests when celebrating Mass or Holy Communion. Like most priestly garb, their design was an echo of druidic times.

Jess’s wounded fingers were clumsy to obey her as she struggled out of boots, then jeans, then travel shirt and underwear. She shivered, naked in this ancient, hallowed place.

Jess turned to see Su-Lin by a stone basin on the far right wall. She held out a natural sponge.

The basin held cool water. Jess plunged both hands in to rinse them, then dabbed them with the sponge. She winced as each cut stung.

“Alum,” her cousin said. “To stop the bleeding.”

When Jess had finished, she held out her hands, and Su-Lin bound them in scarlet strips of cotton.

Only then did she help Jess don her shift, the
amphibalus,
and finally the cape.

Su-Lin stepped back, assessing her. Then she beckoned Jess to follow her into the long central hall of the cross-shaped shrine.

Still barefoot, Jess walked on smooth limestone tiles worn with two distinct trails. How many generations of defenders had followed this path before her?

Ahead, where an ordinary church would have had its altar, the long aisle ended in another wall, unornamented. Centered in that wall was a pair of doors, oak again, bound by iron. There was no latch to seal them.

Su-Lin put her hands on the doors and looked back. “Jessica, you will follow as others have before you.” Again, the words sounded ceremonial. “You will arrive by a way you know not. You will be led in paths you have not traveled. Darkness will be made light before you, and what is broken will be mended. These things will you do for our Family, and you will not forsake it.”

The Secret.
Jess nodded, ready for her turn. Her burden.

The inner doors swung open.

“The Chamber of Heaven . . .”

Jess breathed those words, barely audible, as she turned slowly in a circle, awed, reverent.

Each modern replica of this room that she’d seen before—whether here in Zurich or Hong Kong, Rome, everywhere—had resembled this one: circular, its walls plain stone, its ceiling midnight blue, a painted hemisphere of stars and constellations. In its center, a round table ringed by twelve chairs, signifying the equality of those who would sit there.

But this ancient inner sanctum . . . this chamber . . . almost a millennium and a half older than any of the others . . . it was that much closer in
time to the real Chamber of Heaven in which the First Gods had made their Promise to the Family.

Her gaze traveled up to the dome high above the chamber’s curved walls of stained limestone blocks. The ceiling’s plaster was cracked in places, the vivid colors of its sky and stars faded in the dim electric light. She looked down to a floor black with age.

Jess’s chest tightened with emotions she could barely contain. It was an incredible reaffirmation of her faith. To see that the Family of today had preserved the knowledge of this site so precisely over the centuries. Such respect for continuity of knowledge. Direct evidence that made it so much easier to believe that the rest of the Family’s traditions from the time of the First Gods had also survived their passage through the ages.

“Over all that time . . .” Jess marveled. “Nothing’s changed.”

Su-Lin took Jess’s arm. “Not quite.” She guided Jess to the room’s central table and positioned her behind the high-backed, carved oak chair marked with the symbol of Jess’s Family Line. “Look closer.”

Jess put her bandaged hand on the chair before her. Not fifteen hundred years old, but what piece of furniture could last that long and still be in use? The chairs, she decided, had been replaced over the centuries, but they were still oak.

She turned her attention to the table, to check if that wood had also been—

Her eyes widened.

“The table,” she said. “It’s stone.”

“Look closer,” Su-Lin said again.

Jess moved the chair aside and touched the table’s surface with two of her uncut fingertips. The cool stone felt smooth, honed. “Granite . . . fine grain . . . this green cast’s common to Switzerland, so I’d say it’s local. But why would it not be—”

Her fingertips stopped as they reached one of the twelve lines that radiated from the table’s center, dividing it into twelve wedges. All the lines she’d seen before on the oak tables in the Family’s replica chambers were either painted on or made of inlaid wood or metal strips.

Jess turned to her cousin. “The lines are engraved. Is that what you meant?”

Su-Lin said nothing.

Jess turned back to the old stone table. A moment later, she caught her breath in surprise. She’d missed something else. Something significant.

In every modern Chamber of Heaven, the oak tables had been identical. Each of the twelve sections of the table bore a different symbol—a representation of the constellations. Not those of the common zodiac but
those of the Family; to this day Family astronomers still argued over where the twelve celestial patterns fit among the stars.

“The constellation silhouettes, they’re not—”

“They’re not constellations.”

Jess stared at her cousin, shocked. She’d just contradicted a basic fact of Family history that Jess had been taught since childhood. “But . . .”

“Look closer, Jessica.”

Bewildered, Jess looked again at the table’s surface, then, after a moment’s thought, chose the concave design on the segment closest to her. It was the Blossom constellation—a large circle atop a small circle atop a horizontal bar. What else could it be?

She bit her lip in frustration. It was clear she was still being tested, but she had no idea what was expected of her.

After a moment, Su-Lin pulled one of the chairs away from the table, revealing a purple-cloth-wrapped package, the size of a small shoebox. She picked up the package and carried it to another segment of the table whose indentation Jess had been taught was the constellation of the Archer’s Bow.

Reverently unfolding the richly colored cloth, Su-Lin uncovered a pitted black metal object, which she placed in the indented symbol. It fit perfectly.

She looked at Jess inquiringly.

“Is it a meteorite?” Jess asked.

Su-Lin’s only response was a repetition of that maddening instruction. “Look closer.”

Her professional knowledge challenged, Jess walked around the table and picked up the object. It was surprisingly heavy, but she was relieved to discover that it
was
a meteorite, and it had an endcut. The fact that the dark stone was cut made it a “half individual” in the parlance of her field. She studied the diagram inscribed on its flat surface, recognized it.

“It’s a heliocentric solar system, so it dates around . . . third century
B.C.E
.”

Her cousin shook her head.

Jess felt a flash of annoyance. “I can’t date it precisely without a lab. How much older?”

“Nine thousand years.”

The impact of those words struck the sound-hushed chamber like rolling thunder after lightning. “It’s not possible.”

“Even so.” Su-Lin waved a hand at the other segments of the table. “It’s our belief that the so-called constellation silhouettes painted or inlaid on our wooden tables are, in reality, two-dimensional outlines of three-dimensional
hollows designed to hold twelve different objects. One of these twelve objects is that meteorite.”

“Our belief?” Jess’s grip tightened on the meteorite. Was Su-Lin saying the defenders didn’t
know
what the twelve symbols really were? Or what they really meant?

Then, at last, like countless others before her, she assumed her burden as she learned the truth.

“The Secret’s lost,” Su-Lin said, “and not even the defenders know where to find it.”

Ironwood stepped through the airlock of the alien spacecraft.

Someday,
he thought.
Someday
. . . Then his casino’s tidal wave of sound slammed into him and the illusion was destroyed.

Bells chimed, electronic tones warbled up and down the scales, sirens screamed, and, woven through it all, was the omnipresent rush of what pros called the sound of rain—the raucous dance of coins against coins as they tumbled from slot machine hoppers into hard metal payout trays. Of course, these days, only a handful of the slots on the casino’s main floor operated with coins. The majority of them used player cards, electronically deducting dollars and cents in small and regular amounts, occasionally adding back large sums, but invariably according to finely tuned gaming equations that guaranteed slightly more deductions than additions, except for the lucky few.

Because of those player cards, the sound of money that filled the air surrounding Ironwood—the sound of wealth and luck and dreams come true—was itself a recording, an illusion, no different from the green-skinned alien drink hostesses in their silver miniskirts, his dealers and croupiers in their Space Service uniforms, and his personal favorite: the soaring Syd Mead architectural flourishes evoking the inside of a fantastical otherworldly vehicle.

“Welcome back, sir!”

And so it begins.
Ironwood nodded to Osman Mirza, manager of his Atlantic City Encounters Casino & Resort. The slim young man in a sober black suit had charged on the double through a throng of tourists. In his wake fluttered two executive assistants in narrow pencil skirts and steep stilettos never meant for running. All were slightly out of breath. As they ought to be.

As a matter of personal policy, Ironwood never gave his employees advance notice of impromptu visits to his properties. They had to be prepared to see and welcome him at any time.

“No one broke the bank yet, Ozzie?”

Mirza gestured out at the sea of flashing lights and noisy electronic
misdirection. “No, sir. Statistical analysis shows we’re dead-on our rate of—”

Ironwood thumped Mirza’s narrow shoulder. “Don’t mind me, son. You’re doing a fine job.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mirza said, relieved. “Your suite is ready.”

“I know it is. But I’m going to the Red Room first. Tell J.R. when he comes in.”

Mirza blinked, and the two executive assistants shared a sudden furtive glance.

“Your son is here?”

“Junior’s watching them park the bus.” Limousines were too small for Ironwood’s liking, so he kept his offices in a fleet of buses. “Like a rock star on tour,” the
Wall Street Journal
had said in a recent profile. “Tell him where I’ll be. And tell him I said he’s to get his backside in there ASAP. No side trips.”

“As you wish, Mr. Ironwood.”

Ironwood walked on, oblivious to the noisy groups of dreamers who enriched him with their gambling, dreaming his own dream.
Someday
. . .

Officially, the Red Room was the smallest of Encounters’ six main gaming areas. It was located off a corridor that did nothing but loop around a set of upscale shops, and as such it seemed to be an afterthought in the meticulously designed resort complex. As a result, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission accepted without question that the Red Room wasn’t utilized as a full-time gaming area but was instead what Ironwood’s management team called a research facility. A place where new games and technologies were tested. Naturally, that use required safeguards, falling within the same security procedures protecting the casino’s counting rooms.