Adella patted her on the shoulder.
“So, for all these years, the constellations have been just maps of these caves?” my father asked.
“Yup,” Mary said confidently.
“At one time, knowing how to navigate these caves might have been vitally important,” Pierre suggested. “Maybe mapping that information onto the stars was the best way of passing it on.”
“And since these are the roads to the underworld,” Isabella added, “each cave probably had its own significance.”
“Well, let’s just hope Mary’s right about the significance of this one,” my father said.
Mary led the way into the Corvus cave, her flashlight beam bouncing ahead of her. I got out mine as well.
At about a hundred feet in, we found a blackened torch in a cast-iron sconce. My father took out his lighter and lit it. The torch flared up brightly, creating a flat world of shadows on the cave’s obsidian walls.
Beside the sconce was another symbol.
“Taurus,” Mary said. “That’s interesting. I think that means we’re entering the second section of the cave.” She considered this. “Corvus is kind of a squarish pattern, but I bet this cave goes around three hundred sixty degrees, like the wheel of the zodiac, and ends up somewhere below where we started.”
“So each sign is thirty degrees of the celestial longitude?” I said.
“Right. I think.” Mary continued on ahead.
After another hundred feet or so, we came to another torch. My father lit it with the first torch, but left it in its sconce.
“That’s Gemini.” Mary pointed at the symbol illuminated by the torch’s flame.
We continued on around, my father lighting torches as we went. It did feel like we were following the arc of a circle. When we reached Libra, what should be the 180-degree mark, the cave widened, and the path was now lined with white stones.
“Look.” Mary took the torch from my father and picked up one of the stones. “It’s a skull.” She pointed down the path. “There’s, like, a million of them.” She looked at the skull thoughtfully, then handed it to Adella. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” Adella frowned.
“And look at that.” Mary directed the torch at a shelf in the cave’s wall. “Gruesome.”
Two skeletons were bound together by chains.
“That’s some kinky stuff.” My father rattled their leg irons.
“It’s an ancient form of torture called ‘the Body of Death,’” Pierre said. “To punish murderers, they’d chain the guilty party hand in hand, cheek to cheek, with the decaying body of the person they killed.”
“Not really my cup of tea.” My father stepped back. “Well, we’re certainly on the road of the dead.”
From that point onward, the path was much more harrowing, with steep descents and unstable rocks to climb over. Some sections of the cave opened up into rooms like grand cathedrals adorned with thousands of skulls; others narrowed into cramped, bone-littered conduits.
Completing the wheel of the zodiac, we returned to Aries—but, as Mary had predicted, well below where we had started. The “Aries” torch was set in the wall at a dead end: to our right was nothing but solid wall, and to our left was a crystal lake, its mirrored surface disappearing into the darkness.
Beneath the torch sat an old rowboat. “Well, let’s see if this thing floats,” I said. I picked it up and set it in the water, every sound I made reverberating off the walls of this vast chamber.
“That thing looks like it hasn’t been used in a hundred years,” Adella said.
“Yes, but age isn’t always an indicator of performance.” My father winked at Adella.
Adella smiled back warily.
“When the top Raven echelon come down here,” Pierre said, “I expect they bring their own boats.”
“You sure they even come down here?” My father looked around. “You sure this isn’t just a big fat Raven canard?”
“Oh, it’s here,” Mary said. “The scrolls and the formula are both here.” The torch’s flames reflected in her eyes. She turned and walked along the shore.
“Mary?” Adella asked. “You seem quite confident of that.”
“Huh? Oh, it’s just a feeling. And—I found a paddle.” She handed me a decrepit piece of wood.
“Thanks,” I said dubiously.
“All right, so how do we do this?” my father asked. “I doubt that boat can handle more than two.”
“How about Henry rows us one at a time?” Mary suggested.
“Splendid idea,” my father said. “And since you two are the Chosen Ones, you get to go first. Tell us if it’s worth the trip.”
Mary nodded. “The Descendants will do that.”
• • •
At the other side of the lake, the cavern narrowed into a low-ceilinged waterway. Using the paddle to push off the walls, I propelled us through a pitted, serpentine tunnel. At one point, something scurried along the wall and into the water. Mary tried to follow it with her torch, but it was gone. Soon the tunnel widened again and opened onto another cavern. The water came to an end here as the ground rose upward, and I beached the boat on a rocky shore.
“You hear that?” Mary asked. “Sounds like snakes.”
We got out of the boat and started toward what appeared to be a glass wall some thirty feet from the shoreline. As we approached it, we could see that the wall, made up of individual panels, was sealing off an alcove of the cave. With each step, objects on the other side of those panels started to take shape, and soon we realized we were looking at several mummified bodies, an altar, and upon that altar, a large white chest.
“I think it’s some kind of pressurized room,” I said, running my fingers along the cool Plexiglas panels. “My guess is they’re using an inert gas to preserve the stuff inside. That’s the hissing noise you thought was snakes.”
“It’s kind of creepy the way they’re just sitting there like that, isn’t it?” Mary pointed at the fully clothed, shriveled-skin corpses. She rapped on the glass wall. “This thing’s like one of those dioramas you see in a museum.”
“I just wonder how the Ravens get inside here,” I said, examining the wall’s construction. “Do they just remove one of these panels and reseal it when they’re done?”
“Done with what?”
“Worshiping, or whatever it is they do down here. I’m just saying, there’s no door.” I pressed the heel of my palm against the glass. “Should I break it?”
“Not until Adella’s here. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Good point.”
We returned to the boat.
“You sure you’re okay staying here?” I asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
I climbed into the boat. “Torch, please.”
“I need the torch.” She looked alarmed.
“I’m just teasing.” I took out my flashlight.
“Good. Because you weren’t getting it anyway.”
“Now, you sure you’re okay—”
“Yes—for the hundredth time.”
“You know…” I paused. “What if that wall’s actually there to keep the mummies in?”
Mary stared at me. “I hope your boat sinks.” She kicked the bow of the boat and set me adrift.
“Then how would you get back?” I laughed, my voice echoing off the rock chamber’s walls.
“I’d swim it. It’d be worth it.”
Torch in hand, Mary watched as I paddled away.
“Henry?”
“What?”
“Hurry back.”
“I will.”
• • •
It took over half an hour, but I eventually got everyone across. I pulled the boat onto the shore and, with my last passenger, my father, walked over to join the others by the glass wall.
“Titanium and aluminum,” Pierre said to me, running his fingers along the frame of one of the Plexiglas panels. “And there’s some kind of RTV or something bonding it to the rock
. Also, the room being positively pressurized explains the liquid nitrogen tank on the back of the main building.” He looked up as if imagining the tank directly above us. “They must have drilled the lines straight down through the rock.”
“Well, it won’t be pressurized much longer,” I said. “Step back.”
Everyone moved aside, and I kicked in one of the Plexiglas panels and snapped away its broken sections. Holding my breath, I went inside, shut off the nitrogen line, and stepped back out. We waited a few minutes for oxygen to filter into the room, then we all went in.
Adella knelt down next to one of the corpses. It was dressed as all the mummies were: suit, tie, and a woolen overcoat. She removed some paperwork from its vest pocket.
“Deutsches Reich Reisepass,” she said. “A Nazi era passport. This man was Herman Schmaltz.” She handed the passport to me. After collecting similar documents from the rest of the men, she stood. “Well, this is what became of the original Eureka Group. Every one of these men was a well-known scientist.”
“What do you think happened?” Mary asked.
“A suicide pact?” I suggested. “Maybe they were worried about how German scientists would be treated after the war.”
“Could be,” Adella responded.
“I’ve heard rumors,” Pierre said, “that the Eureka Group members were discovered along with the scrolls. Of course, those rumors also claimed that their hearts had been devoured by ravens.”
“Well, I don’t see any holes in any of their chests,” my father said. “But let me get this straight. From what I understand, Herman Schmaltz and his pals”—he gestured at the corpses—”returned the scrolls to this cave, killed themselves for whatever reason, and then that Russian general, Ivan Gorinevsky, comes along, finds the Eureka notebook in Berlin—the one you guys eventually ended up with—he figures out the encryption, and discovers this place with these bodies.”
“That’s sounds about right,” Adella said.
“Okay. So assuming he found the formula and the scrolls in that chest, why preserve this place as if it were a crime scene? For God’s sake, why leave these bodies here?”
“I think I know.” Mary rested a hand on top of the marble chest. “He was obsessed with this place—like an archeologist with a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. He actually wanted that moment of discovery preserved.” She looked at Adella. “That’s my guess, anyway.”
“That’s quite a guess,” Adella replied.
“It makes sense, though,” I said. “His obsession is probably what got the Raven cult started.” I stepped beside Mary and cautiously lifted the lid off the chest. “Let’s just hope he preserved this place in every detail.” I set the lid down on the altar.
Mary shone her flashlight inside the chest. On top was a set of file folders wrapped in oilcloth and bound with wool cord. The folders contained both typed and handwritten documents, a great deal of it mathematical in nature.
“I believe this is for you.” I handed the stack of folders, along with my flashlight, to Adella. She sat down with them on the floor, using Herman Schmaltz’s overcoat as a cushion.
I removed a thin strip of cedar, apparently used as a separator, from the chest and lifted out another set of folders, each of them labeled with a language: French, German, English, Latin, and Modern Greek. I placed them on the altar and opened the English version. Mary aimed her flashlight at it so I could see.
The title page read: “Conversations with Apollo by Parmenides of Elea. English Translation by Allen K. Weiss, 4/3/1943. Commissioned by the Eureka Group c/o Herman Schmaltz.” Across the top of the page, in flowery script, was penciled, “The Scrolls of Velia.”
“So those are the translations,” my father said. “But are the originals also included?” He and Mary peered into the chest. I looked over Mary’s shoulder. At the bottom of the chest was a leather-encased package. Engraved on it, rather crudely, was “The original Scrolls of Velia – treat with extreme care.”
“That’s quite possibly 2,500-year-old parchment in there with Parmenides’s handwriting on it,” my father said.
“Cool,” Mary said.
I returned my attention to the translation. Everyone but Adella crowded around me.
In the translation’s preface, Herman Schmaltz explained how Conversations with Apollo ties into Parmenides’s only other known work: On Nature. Using a translation by John Burnet from 1908, Schmaltz suggested that On Nature was about Parmenides’s journey into the caves and his awakening to Apollo’s way of seeing the world.
“Listen to this part from On Nature,” Mary said, reading beside me. “… the daughters of the Sun, hasting to convey me into the light, threw back their veils from off their faces and left the abode of Night. The abode of night—that must be the mansion of the night Dr. Schmaltz included in his encrypted message.”
“We’re in the mansion of the night,” Adella said, not looking up from her own documents, half of which were now spread across Herman Schmaltz and another of the mummified scientists. “These caves—and this cave in particular.”
“What does this part mean?” I asked. “One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is. In it are very many tokens that what is is uncreated and indestructible; for it is complete, immovable, and without end. Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for now it is, all at once, a continuous one.”
“Holy crap,” Mary said. “Could this guy be any more vague?”
“It’s a poem,” Adella said. “And no doubt some of its clarity has been lost in translation. But what he’s saying is that ‘change and motion’ are illusions, that nothing is created and nothing is destroyed. All things that can exist, do exist; all things that can’t exist, don’t. The universe is a continuum of space and time. And Conversations with Apollo—which, according to what I’m reading here, expands on that idea—was the catalyst for the Eureka Group’s efforts to develop general relativity into a geometric explanation of all things. Dr. Schmaltz states that with this one notion in mind, so many perplexing problems throughout history seemed to fall into place: Zeno of Elea’s paradoxes, Aristotle and St. Thomas’s prime movers, Descartes’s Dualism, and even Edgar Allen Poe’s concept of ‘nevermore’ in ‘The Raven’—to name just a few.”
“Listen to this part,” I said. “Dr. Schmaltz claims that, according to Conversations with Apollo, Apollo told Parmenides that the universe was a marvel of unbounded potential and that he was entrusting him with a gift that demonstrates that potential. Dr. Schmaltz says that Parmenides referred to the gift as Pandora’s Box.” I moved the paper closer to Mary’s flashlight. “In pencil, he wrote: ‘Apollo’s gift is enclosed with these documents.’”
“Does he mean the scrolls?” Mary asked.
“I don’t think so.” I turned the page and read for a moment. “He says that the gift awaits the descendants of Apollo.”
“Dr. Schmaltz said that?” Adella asked.
“Yes. He states here that it’s written in the scrolls. So I’m pretty sure he’s talking about something other than the scrolls.”
“There’s a gift in there from Apollo? For us?” Mary looked into the chest.
“Hold on,” my father said abruptly. He looked at Mary. “If that thing’s anything like a box of cereal, you just know it’s going to be all the way at the bottom.”
Mary smiled, handed my father the flashlight, and reached into the chest.
“Easy,” I said as she lifted the leather-encased scrolls out and set them on the altar.
Mary and I looked into the marble chest. In an open cavity in the bottom sat an object about the size of a brick, wrapped in a light blue fabric. The fabric was pristine, smooth as silk, and clinging to whatever it enclosed like Saran Wrap.
“Well, it’s definitely not gold,” Mary said, lifting it out. “This thing’s as light as a feather.”
She held the block in the palm of her hand and peeled back its blue covering.
“It looks like an ingot of platinum.” My father
took it from her. “Wow—you’re not kidding. This thing’s light.” He rotated it. “It just seems to be… a block.”
“But it was referred to as Pandora’s Box,” Pierre said, accepting the object from my father. “Doesn’t that imply it’s some kind of container?”
“It says here,” I said, “that Dr. Schmaltz couldn’t identify the material or its purpose. He mentions again that it was left in Parmenides’s care for the descendants of Apollo.” I turned the page. “Hang on.” I stared at the words in front of me. I read them twice. I looked at Adella on the floor. “Are you sure about this guy?”
“What guy?” She looked up.
“Dr. Schmaltz.”
“He was a genius. Why?”
“Well, he says here—let me just read it: ‘Parmenides’s mention of the “sailors of the stars” in Conversations with Apollo is clearly a reference to space travelers. I believe Apollo, and eleven other men and women of human form (though clearly more advanced both physically and technologically) visited our planet 2,500 years ago. There are many other indications of this likelihood in Parmenides’s work, including his detailed portrait of the nighttime departure of the gods from Mount Olympus.’”
“Okay, so he was imaginative.” Adella looked at the block in Pierre’s hands. “According to mythology, wasn’t Pandora’s Box a jar? A pithos?”
“And wasn’t it supposed to be filled with evil?” Mary asked.
“Perhaps,” Isabella said, “in the absence of the actual object, our understanding of the nature of Pandora’s Box has been distorted over the years.”
“But still, why would Apollo leave this for you?” Pierre asked.
“I have no idea.” I looked at the lustrous gray block—and in some ineffable way, I sensed the thing calling to me, like a cat wanting to be picked up.
“Here.” Pierre offered it to me, perhaps sensing something as well.
Hesitantly, I took it. Holding the block in one hand, I touched its surface.
My finger sank into the metal as if into water.
“Whoa,” my father said, looking over my shoulder. “How’d you do that?”
The Scrolls of Velia Page 17
