by A. G. Riddle
They stopped in the middle of the room, and Lin said, “What we’re about to do here is very important. Many lives are at stake. You must not reveal anything I’m about to tell you or what occurs after.”
The librarians went wide-eyed. Lin waited for everyone to nod.
“We’re looking for a book. A first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
The female librarian spoke up. “Which first edition?”
“What do you mean?” Lin asked.
“Well, the first print run was planned for two thousand books. But they were scrapped at Carroll’s direction.”
“Elaborate.”
“The publisher, The Clarendon Press, now MacMillan, sent Carroll fifty advance copies in June of 1865—copies the author could give away. But when the illustrator, John Tenniel, saw them, he told Carroll that he was dissatisfied with the way his drawings were printed. Carroll asked for the advance copies he had sent out to be returned, and he told MacMillan to sell the rest of the two thousand books as waste paper.”
“He was a perfectionist,” Lin said, almost to herself.
“Yes. ‘First Alice,’ as the editions are called, are exceedingly rare. Sixteen of the known copies are in institutions. Another five are in private hands. Christie’s auctioned a copy last year. Bidding reached almost two million dollars, but it failed to sell.”
“Yes,” Lin said. “That’s the edition we’re looking for. Are there any copies here at Oxford?”
“Of course. Carroll was one of the dons of the university. It was written here. There’s a copy at the library in Lady Margaret Hall. Another in the closed stacks at Weston. And the last is upstairs, in the Duke Humfrey’s Library.”
“Good. We’ll form three teams—each led by one of the three of us,” Lin motioned to Peyton and Avery, “and accompanied by a librarian.”
Lin assigned Peyton to the upstairs location, and Peyton knew why: safety. Most of the SAS troops were located here, and going outside was a risk; Yuri or his men could already be in Oxford, waiting to ambush them.
The female librarian, who introduced herself as Eleanor, led Peyton upstairs. The Duke Humfrey’s Library was incredible. Stacks of books on dark-stained wood shelves stretched the length of a two-story room. The hazy, midday light blazed through the window. Peyton recognized this place as well, and she placed it this time: this was the library used in the Harry Potter movies. The setting had served as a turning point in so many of the stories.
“Here it is,” Eleanor said.
She spread a cloth on a nearby table and donned white cloth gloves. She withdrew a silver key from her pocket, opened a glass cabinet, and gently withdrew a small red volume. There were no words on the cover, just an emblem in the center: a circle, engraved in gold, containing the silhouette of a girl with flowing hair holding a pig. Three golden lines ran around the cover’s edges.
Gripping it with both hands, Eleanor turned the book so Peyton could see the back cover, which also had a round golden emblem, this one containing an illustration of a Cheshire cat. She then set the book on the table and glanced at Peyton, who nodded for her to proceed.
Eleanor opened the book.
The title page read:
ALICE’S
ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
by
Lewis Carrol
With Forty-Two Illustrations
by
John Tenniel
Eleanor continued turning the pages gently, past the table of contents and to the first page of chapter one, which was obscured by a see-through piece of trace paper. It looked as though someone had begun tracing something, but stopped. Eleanor turned past the loose page, revealing the illustration and text below it.
The chapter heading read: DOWN THE RABBIT-HOLE. The illustration featured a rabbit standing upright wearing a waistcoat and holding an umbrella. He was peering at a pocket-watch.
“I’ve never seen an original copy with vellum pages,” Eleanor said.
It was a beautiful volume, but Peyton was more interested in that sheet of trace paper. “Can you hold that paper up to the light?” she asked.
Eleanor removed the semi-transparent page from the book and held it so the light from the two-story window shone through it.
Peyton activated her comm. “We’ve got something here.”
Her mother responded instantly. “Say nothing more over the radio. Avery, retrieve your book, but don’t open it. We’ll meet back at the Divinity School.”
Eleanor carefully returned the trace paper to the book. “Should we go back down, or…?”
“No. We’ve got time. Keep going.”
Eleanor continued turning pages. There were more pieces of trace paper—one for each illustration at the beginning of the first five chapters.
“What are these?” Eleanor asked.
“I don’t know.” But Peyton had a sense of it now. Dr. Paul Kraus had left this here—these were his bread crumbs. What they meant, she didn’t know.
When all three teams had gathered in the ornate room in the Divinity School, Lin dismissed the librarians and SAS troops, requesting that they remain sequestered in the Duke Humfrey’s Library above. The two Navy SEALS led Nigel into the room, where the three first-edition Alice copies lay on a long table.
“We searched the other two,” Lin said. “No markings or notes.” She held up the first page of trace paper Peyton had found. “This is what Kraus wanted us to find.”
Avery was unimpressed. “An incomplete drawing?”
“It’s complete enough,” Lin murmured.
She took a sheet of paper from her coat pocket and began drawing. Peyton didn’t recognize what it was at first, but when Lin sketched the Strait of Gibraltar, she realized Lin was making a map of Western Europe.
Lin placed the trace paper on top of her crudely drawn map. The lines met for the most part.
“A map,” Nigel said. “We’ll need to get a detailed—”
“I know where this is,” Lin said.
The group fell silent.
“It’s in northern Spain, outside Santillana del Mar. There’s a cave there that once changed our understanding of human history. And I think it’s about to once again.”
“The Cave of Altamira,” Nigel said.
“Yes. I believe that cave is our rabbit hole.”
Chapter 27
Yuri’s plane was flying thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic when his sat phone rang. It was Melissa Whitmeyer, the Citium’s best remaining analyst.
“We’re tracking Lin Shaw’s plane off the coast of Spain. It’s losing altitude.”
“Likely destination?”
“Santander.”
That didn’t make sense. Unless—
Whitmeyer answered his unspoken question. “We checked. There’s no record of Shaw ever visiting there.”
“What about Kraus?”
Keyboard keys clacking.
“No. The Beagle never stopped there either.”
“Interesting.”
“We’ll be out of sat range in thirty minutes. Shaw might know that. She could be stopping to change planes.”
“Next flyover?”
“Two hours. We’ve got most of the satellites tasked to coordinate the Looking Glass transfer in rural areas.”
That was a problem. If he couldn’t figure out where Lin Shaw was going, he was going to lose her.
“Keep digging. On Shaw and Kraus. And activate everyone we have in Western Europe. I want the planes on the tarmac and ready.”
Chapter 28
They landed in Santander, a port city on Spain’s northern coast, and drove southwest on the A-67. Their entourage had grown. The SAS troops had followed them to Spain, and been joined by just as many soldiers from the Spanish Army’s Special Operations Command. Adams and Rodriguez were still with them, as was Nigel.
Peyton stared out the SUV’s window at the rolling green countryside. It was beautiful, almost like a rainforest: damp and cloudy, with lush ve
getation unrestrained by civilization. The terrain grew mountainous as they moved inland. One of the Spanish special forces remarked that Spain was the second most mountainous country in Europe. Only Switzerland had more mountains. Peyton was happy to have the conversation; the others all seemed lost in thought, perhaps contemplating what they’d find at the Cave of Altamira.
The sun was setting when they arrived at the cave complex. Vehicles broke from the convoy as they entered. One blocked the access road, while two others barricaded the entrances and exits to the car park. The remainder parked at the visitor center, which was set into the hill and had a flat roof covered in grass, making it almost disappear into the landscape.
Lin forbid any of the SAS or Spanish troops from accompanying them into the cave, so they set about establishing a defensive perimeter and making camp inside the visitor center. The museum section of the visitor center had a large room with rough stone walls and ceilings, replicating the cave Altamira’s prehistoric residents had inhabited, and its plate-glass windows looked out on the green, hilly countryside beyond. The troops seemed to like it; they unrolled their sleeping bags there and laid down their packs. Their piles of munitions and supplies contrasted bizarrely with the exhibits and informational placards.
Lin led their group up the paved walkway toward the cave mouth as the last rays of sunlight retreated over the hills. The entrance to the cave was rectangular and framed with timbers, like an open doorway into a grassy hill. Large mature trees towered on both sides.
Inside, they flicked on their lanterns. The two SEALs were the only guards they had brought with them. Their defensive plan relied entirely on the troops surrounding the entrance and visitor center.
The temperature dropped quickly as they ventured deeper into the cave. The narrow passageway soon opened into a large chamber with a long glass case that held stones and informational cards. There was a small alleyway to the right, another vast chamber to the left, and two large openings dead ahead. One wall held colorful silhouettes of handprints in red and black, as if the Altamirans were waving at them across thousands of years. Other walls held paintings of what looked like horses, goats, and wild boars. On the ceiling was a large mural of a herd of steppe bison.
Peyton found the art breathtaking, almost otherworldly. The others also appeared to be transfixed—except for Lin, who had set her lantern on the long glass case and taken the book from her pack. Peyton was a little worried about the moisture in the cave affecting the rare tome, but with the fate of humanity on the line, she decided to let it slide.
“Now then,” Lin said. “Peyton found the map to Altamira at the start of chapter one. I think the symmetry of our expedition and the story is lost on none of us. Alice follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, landing herself in a large room with many doors. Those doors are either too large or too small. She grows and shrinks, in both cases too much so to fit through the doors and passageways. Altamira has over a thousand meters of known tunnels, and they indeed shrink and expand. The going ahead will likely be difficult.”
“You’ve been here before?” Peyton asked.
Lin didn’t look up. “Yes.”
“When?”
“A long time ago.” Peyton sensed that her mother was eager to avoid further questions.
Lin gently turned the pages to the sheet of trace paper at the start of the second chapter. She peeled it back, revealing the illustration beneath.
The title below the illustration read, THE POOL OF TEARS. The first line of the text read, “Curiouser and curiouser!”
Lin had acquired a map of the cave’s tunnels in the visitor center. She pulled it out now and placed the trace paper over it. “As I thought,” she said. “It’s another map.”
She led them to the back of the room, where an alcove branched to the left and a wide passageway lay to the right. They took the passage, and kept left at a fork. The walls and ceiling were adorned with more paintings, animals in flocks and some alone. They had walked about three hundred feet when Lin stopped and studied the trace paper atop the map.
“It’s close.”
She held her lantern up and searched, walking slowly. She eyed a narrow opening in the wall. “Through here.”
They had to stoop and then crawl. The rock grew damper the farther they traveled. Suddenly, the tunnel opened into an irregular-shaped chamber, like a skewed pentagon.
“Dead end,” Nigel muttered.
Lin walked along the perimeter of the room. “Doubtful.”
“In the book,” Avery said, “Alice grows tall and hits her head on the ceiling. Her tears pool, and when she shrinks, she swims out.”
Peyton studied her, surprised.
Avery shrugged. “My dad used to read it to me.”
“Cute,” Nigel said. “What does it mean?”
Lin had stopped at a small indentation in the stone wall. “Bring a canteen.”
Adams stepped over to her, canteen uncapped and held out.
Peyton peered around him. In the lantern’s dim light, she saw Lin reach into a ledge and grab a small object. A figurine of a mouse.
“Alice meets a mouse as she swims through her own tears,” Avery said.
Lin nodded absently and tipped the canteen slightly, pouring water into the crevice where she had found the mouse. She paused every few seconds and listened. Peyton listened too, hearing only water trickling beyond and dripping. But after the seventh time Lin stopped pouring, a click sounded beyond the stone wall.
Peyton understood then: the crevice must lead to a tank that, when filled, activated a mechanism that unlocked the hidden door.
Lin pushed against the wall. It gave, revealing a hidden room beyond.
Chapter 29
Conner peered through the peephole in the front door. X1 soldiers stood outside, two on the stoop, two others cupping hands at their temples and gazing through the bay window.
The man on the stoop activated his radio. “One forty-five is empty.”
They walked across the lawn to the next home. They were simply evacuating the street, clearing residents in the path of the fire.
Conner exhaled. He would have to wait for the troops to move on—and for Desmond’s memory to complete. But they were safe for now.
Yuri was waiting in the hotel when Desmond arrived, sitting in an armchair by the floor-to-ceiling windows. Desmond sat in the other chair, ignoring the fact that he was soaking with sweat from his morning run.
“I see it, Yuri. All of it. I know what it means.”
As usual, the older man’s voice was emotionless. “Start at the beginning, Desmond. It’s important. This is your final test.”
“Test before what?” Desmond wanted to hear him say it.
“Admission to the Citium. And the things you want.”
“The things you promised me? Peyton. My brother.”
“Yes.”
Desmond stood. He felt like a PhD student defending his thesis. In many ways, that’s what Yuri’s bizarre training had been like: grad school for some master of the universe course.
“Western Europe took over the world five hundred years ago. They had an advantage none of the rest of the world understood. They had you, Yuri.”
“I’m old, but I’m not that old.”
“Not you per se—but people like you. The Citium. Scientists. Thinkers.”
“Start at the beginning, Desmond.”
“All right.” He took a moment, gathered his thoughts. “There have been three pivotal events in human history. These… anomalies created the world we live in. Your three questions—their purpose was for me to find these events and understand them. And I know why. Because they are the key to understanding the future—what’s going to happen to the entire human race.”
Yuri nodded. “Go on.”
“The first event occurred somewhere between seventy and forty-five thousand years ago. Somewhere on Earth, a human developed a new ability. A cognitive breakthrough. They possessed a mind that thought differen
tly. That human had the ability to imagine something that didn’t already exist. Our predecessors created tools, but those were mostly reactive, incremental steps that were almost obvious. This event signified the birth of fiction—a mind that could literally simulate a reality that didn’t exist. A reality radically different from the human’s own. This human could render possible futures, imagine what life would be like if something existed. That was the transcendental mutation.”
“Evidence?”
Desmond smiled. “All roads lead to Australia. That’s what your first question was about: concrete evidence, perhaps our earliest, of a human imagining a fictive future and making it a reality. Not just painting it on a cave wall. Somewhere in South Asia, roughly fifty thousand years ago, a prehistoric human, whose name we will never know, stood on a beach, stared at the ocean, and imagined something they had never seen before, a device that had never before existed on Earth: a boat. An invention that would carry their people to a land they had never seen, a place they didn’t know for a fact was even there. We know only that this person did in fact build that boat or raft and crossed vast expanses of open sea with their people. And they landed here, in Australia, becoming the first human to ever set foot on this continent.
“The reward was unimaginable. Big game. An endless buffet of animals that were attuned to their environment, but were completely unprepared for the invaders. And that’s the irony of these intrepid Australians—the original colonists of this continent. They missed the second revolution: agriculture. They feasted on the megafauna, contributed to the Quaternary extinction event the Beagle found evidence of. But when the food was gone, their populations stayed small. Fragmented, each tribe adapting to its environment. They plateaued. When the next invaders arrived, fifty thousand years later, they were the prey.”
“Why?”
“Agriculture, and the cities it brought with it, brought further changes to human brains, and especially culture. Beginning twelve thousand years ago, for the first time in history, our ancestors planted roots, literally and figuratively. Instead of chasing game and gathering their sustenance, never knowing where their next meal would come from, we had a sustainable source of calories, renewable and controllable.”
