Book of Secrets

by Chris Roberson

  "There are many dangerous people in the world," he said firmly, and then turned and closed the door. We later heard the front door open and close, and the car started and driven away. We didn't see him again until the next night, and he never mentioned it again.

  I didn't sleep for a week. All thoughts of fighting crime were gone. I never wanted to leave my room again.

  It was late afternoon when I finally pulled into a spot on Guadalupe, across from the University of Texas. I dodged the teenage kids on the street begging for change or cigarettes, and crossed the intersection to the campus.

  It was finals week, if I was reading correctly the expression on every student's face I saw. Aside from a few sorority sisters rushing to the undergraduate library, an Asian couple discussing Shakespeare in low tones and an Indian engineering student asleep on his textbook, the West Mall was deserted as I made my way to the liberal arts buildings. Clustered together in a defensive fashion, like the deans and profs had circled the figurative wagons to stave of the attacks of irrelevancy from the business and engineering departments across the campus, the buildings housing the liberal arts had a certain rustic, old world charm. Like hairy armpits on women, or the Black Death. I barely ducked a flying dialectical necessity coming up the stairway to the central building, and narrowly missed being smacked in the eyes by a moral imperative as I skirted my way around the philosophy department. Like most ivory towers, it was dangerous to visitors.

  The Department of Middle Eastern Studies was squirreled away in a corner on the third floor of the saddest of the buildings, just past the broken water fountain on the left. The bulletin board in the hall out front advertised guest lectures from professors who were simply ordinary on their own distant campuses, and notices about invitations for ordinary professors to lecture at distant schools. There was a film series of Socialist Feminist Cinema from Jordan, and a question-and-answer session with the Deputy Secretary of the Coalition to End Genital Mutilation in Yemen. I was sorry I'd missed that.

  The wooden door creaked on its ancient hinges as I entered, and I stepped into the familiar aroma of stale air, dusty books, and a hint of patchouli. Behind the reception desk was a young woman in a tight-fitting tank top, Italian wrestler pants and more tattoos than the Ninth Fleet. She looked up at me around her eyebrow rings, and ran a hand over her close cropped scalp. I watched her take me in a single glance – the rumpled suit, the scuffed boot, the eight dollar haircut – and I could just tell she didn't approve. I might not have been the Man, but she could tell I was on a first name basis with Him.

  "Yes," she snarled. "Are you lost?"

  I have uncanny luck with receptionists. It never fails.

  "I'm here to see Michelle Orlin," I answered.

  She sneered.

  "Doctor Orlin is grading exams," she said, "and can't be disturbed. I'm sure, if you have important business, she can arrange to see you some other time."

  Behind her was a half-opened door, and before I could answer it swung wide and a flurry in faded denim and paisley came bounding into the room.

  "Spencer!"

  I smiled, catching the receptionist's eye.

  "I thought I heard your voice!" The flurry came into focus, all five foot eight of her, her long tangled hair spinning around her like a nimbus.

  "Howdy, Michelle," I said.

  She hurried around a chair and came up to lock me in a bear hug. For someone so slight, she had a pretty mean grip.

  "How the hell have you been?" she asked. "I haven't seen you since… New York?"

  "Sounds about right," I answered, gently pushing her to arm's length and looking down into her eyes. "So you reconsider that offer yet?"

  She smiled devilishly and chucked me a light tap on the chin.

  "Still trying to make an honest woman of me, huh?" She stepped back and crossed her arms, cocking her head to one side. "I know I don't have to remind you of the one flaw in your master plan."

  "I'm convinced I could straighten you out, baby," I replied, "just give me half a chance."

  I could feel the receptionist's every orifice clench from where I stood and resisted the temptation to see for myself. I resisted, and failed. A quick glance her way and her gaze showed me the million ways she was planning on emasculating me. I had a notion, and ran with it.

  "I'm not selfish, you know," I directed at the scowling tattoo, "I'll share her with you if you want."

  Michelle slugged me in the arm and managed a frown for all of five seconds.

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," she scolded, "God's gift to women, scourge of the lesbian."

  I just shrugged.

  "Come on back."

  She turned and started back for her office. I followed, pausing briefly to blow a kiss to the receptionist. She practically convulsed with rage, but kept her seat.

  "Okay, Spence, what's this all about? I know you didn't just come to shoot the shit."

  Michelle, one of only two people in the world I let call me "Spence", was leaning back in her chair, her knees folded up to her chin, one arm resting over them. Her free hand pulled at her tangled hair, teasing out the knots one bit at a time. On the desk in front of her were stacks of exam books, a few dozen stapled groups of paper, and a half-dozen ash trays full to capacity. Smoking had been regulated right out of state buildings years before, but since few of the University officials had any idea where the Middle Eastern department was, much less visited, Michelle figured she was safe.

  I sat back in the antique wooden chair, the thing I came to show her resting on my knee. I lit up a cigarette and started in.

  "Okay, okay, you got me. I need help, and I think you're the only one who can give it to me." I took a drag on the cigarette and let that sink in.

  "The only one?" she asked. "Or the only one who's still speaking with you?"

  "The only one," I answered simply. "I don't need someone to post bail, or do my laundry, or feed my cat–"

  "You don't have a cat," Michelle interrupted, her eyes narrowing.

  "I need help only you can give me," I finished.

  She leaned forward in her chair, dropping her feet to the floor.

  "This should be good," she said.

  "I hope so."

  Like a corny magician at a birthday party, I reached down out of her line of sight behind the desk and brought it back up with the plastic bag, which I'd kept out of her view up till now. Inside, untouched, was the ancient and yellowed paper with all the tiny markings. I dropped it unceremoniously on the desk in front of her and sat back. I watched her eyes widen.

  "What is that?" she asked, her voice breathless.

  "I don't know, babe," I answered. "I was hoping you would tell me."

  Fifteen minutes and a half-dozen cigarettes between us later, Michelle had at least part of an answer.

  "It's old," she pronounced. I was beginning to wonder if I'd come to the right place.

  "And...?" I prompted.

  "It's very old," she added. "Very, very old."

  I sighed and stubbed out a cigarette.

  "Fascinating," I drawled.

  "I mean it, Spence, this is really a find. Based on the grammatical structures, the syntax, even the penmanship… I'd place it at Eighth, Ninth Century tops." She still hovered over it, a magnifying glass in hand. Her last cigarette, untouched on the ashtray, had burned to the filter.

  "Yeah, but what is it?"

  "Um, paper," she said, sarcasm dripping.

  "Okay, short questions. Language?"

  "Definitely Arabic."

  "O-kay," I said. "And it says…" I paused, waiting for her to jump in.

  "What, all of it?" she asked. "Do you know how long it took me to do my translation of the Rubaiyat? And that was after two years of studying the grammar and vocabulary. This isn't a menu, Spencer; I can't just recite it to you." I watched her glasses begin to slip down her nose, but she was so worked up she didn't even notice.

  "Do you have a general idea?" I asked calmly.

  "Sure." She
paused and held the paper up to the light, still sheathed in plastic. "Where did you get this?" she breathed.

  "That's not important. What does it say?" I paused for a beat, then added, "In general terms?"

  "Okay, okay, let's see." She pushed her glasses back up on her nose, brought the magnifying glass in close, and then hunched over the page. "Here's something about some scandal, some secrets revealed… some hidden order of men… something about the northern secrets, or the northern mysteries… the book of the one eye… no, 'god'… the one-eyed god…. the revels of the infidels… the god in chains… and…"

  Her finger froze over a scribble, and her mouth hung slack. She slowly sat upright, her finger still frozen in place, her mouth open.

  "Shit," she whispered.

  "What," I asked, leaning over her. "What?!"

  "Aeschylus," she said quietly. "Shit."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  She slowly drew her hands in towards her, as though not to upset the air around her, and folded them in her lap. She stared into space for a long minute, and then turned her head to look at me.

  "Where. Did. You. Get. This?"

  "I. Can't. Tell. You." I answered, mocking her serious tone. "What. Does. It. Say?"

  She sighed heavily, her shoulders dropping. "How much do you know about ancient literature?" she asked.

  "I had to read Huck Finn in high school," I answered.

  "Ancient, you philistine," she countered. "Ancient Greek literature."

  "Like the man said to the tailor, 'Eumenides?'"

  "Aeschylus."

  "Nah, nah, the tailor says, 'Euripides?'"

  "Shut. Up." She took a deep breath. "Aeschylus, the acknowledged father of the Greek theater; only something like seven of his plays have survived. Dozens of his plays, praised by the ancient world, are totally forgotten to us." She had lapsed into lecturing, but she was a professor so I forgave her. "Of the ones we have, several survived only in translations made later by Arab scholars." Her eyes darted briefly to the paper, and then back to mine. "When discoveries like those are made, it's like… finding Atlantis, for Christ sake, or George Washington's teeth. Something everyone had read about, but which had been thought lost forever."

  "Uh huh," I hummed, pretty much at sea.

  "This paper," she continued, and then gestured awkwardly to it with her chin. "This paper," she repeated, "mentions Aeschylus… by name… and then starts talking about the 'revels of the chained god'. That's how they understood plays, Spencer, as 'revels'. The Muslim world had nothing of the kind, and they just thought of them as some pagan debauchery."

  "Uh huh," I repeated.

  "The chained god," she insisted. "Don't you know what that means?" She could tell I didn't. "Prometheus, you barbarian, Prometheus. One of the surviving plays of Aeschylus is Prometheus Bound, which tells how the god Prometheus was chained to a mountain for helping mankind. It's regarded as one of the true classics of the ancient world. We know… we know that Aeschylus wrote two sequels, three in all–"

  "Prometheus II: No More Mister Nice God?"

  "Shut up, I'm thinking… talking… whatever. Listen. If this is what I think it is" – and this time she didn't even bother jutting her chin at the paper; we both knew what she meant – "then this could contain a fragment of one of the lost Prometheus plays. Maybe both. And from the length… both sides… um…" She did some quick math. "It could well be more than any of the other fragments found before. Maybe even the whole fucking play! Or BOTH!"

  She paused, and then seemed to calm down by will of force. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, gazing over at the paper with love in her eyes. "Shit," she finally said. "I'm going to be famous."

  Fifteen minutes later I was back outside, less the page. Michelle had agreed to translate it fully, try as much as possible to identify its origins, and come up with some idea of what sort of book it was a part of. In exchange, she would get full publication and "finder's" rights for the completed text, which seemed to her more than sufficient. Before I'd even made it out the door, she was pulling dictionaries and concordances from the shelves, and had begun work on the assignment. I left quietly, pausing only to leer at the receptionist before going back outside.

  On my way across campus, I passed the undergraduate library and, realizing that I had a couple of hours to kill, headed over. Something Michelle had said while doing her quick and easy translation had caught my attention and suggested someone else I might talk to, but if he was working at his regular schedule it was much too early in the day to come calling.

  Once inside the library, packed to the rafters with panicky college kids trying desperately to fit a semester's worth of knowledge into a single evening, I made for the elevator and headed up to the classics section.

  With the help of a very friendly and quietly attractive librarian, I ended up with a stack of books and found my way to an empty table. Spreading them out in front of me, I got to work. Having realized in the course of Michelle's lecture that I knew nothing of use about Greek myths, plays, or writers, I figured it would be useful to see what I could find out about all the names she was dropping. If the contents of that page were any indication of the nature of the book, it might give me some idea who had taken it, and what I was after.

  I took a book off the pile at random and flipped it open to the index. There was nothing about Aeschylus, but a couple of listings for Prometheus, so I hunted them down. After a few lines in blank verse about the various and sundry evils of mortal man, the writer went to town:

  "But Zeus in the anger of his heart hid the means of life, because Prometheus the crafty deceived him; therefore he planned sorrow and mischief against men. Zeus hid fire; but that the noble son of Iapetos stole again for men from Zeus, whose counsels are many. In the hollow of a fennel-stalk Prometheus slipped it away, so that Zeus who delights in thunder did not see it. But afterwards Zeus the cloud-gatherer said to him in anger:

  'Son of Iapetos, surpassing all in cunning, you are glad that you have outwitted me and stolen fire – which will be a curse to you and the generations to come. But I will give men as the price for fire an evil thing in which they may all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction.'

  So said the father of men and gods, and laughed aloud."

  I looked over the page to make sure I hadn't missed anything, and I hadn't. Hadn't really caught anything, either, but that was to be expected. I really don't speak poetry all that well, and about the most I'd got out of it was that this Prometheus guy had given people matches, and the head honcho was concerned about how it would affect their job performance. I skimmed down for the next reference, which came a few dozen pages later:

  "With shackles and inescapable fetters Zeus bound Prometheus to a pillar – Prometheus of the labyrinthine mind – and Zeus sent a long-winged eagle to swoop on him and devour his liver; but what the long-winged bird ate each day grew back and was restored to its full size."

  Not much better, but I was beginning to get the picture. After stepping beyond the boundaries of his job description by giving humanity a light, Prometheus was transferred out of the home office to one of the branch locations. Not a cherry assignment, it appeared. I flipped back to the index again, but came up short. The book went back on the pile, and I started in on another.

  The next selection, not a translation like the first but a kind of mythological Yellow Pages written in English of all things, had quite a bit about our boy. I found the chapter devoted to him, and checked out what Robert Graves had to say about him:

  "Prometheus, the creator of mankind, whom some include among the seven Titans, was the son either of the Titan Eurymedon, or of Iapetus by the nymph Clymene; and his brothers were Epimetheus, Atlas, and Menoetius."

  Then, just when it started to get good, Graves seemed to forget all about Prometheus, and started in on his big brother, Atlas. There was a whole section about him, the big fellow who broke some divine law or other and was sentenced to hol
d up the sky. He didn't say who'd been holding up the sky until then, and I wondered if it was really necessary, or just busy work. Then, just before he lost me all together, it turned back to Prometheus.

  "Prometheus, being wiser than Atlas, foresaw the issue of the rebellion against Cronus, and therefore preferred to fight on Zeus's side, persuading Epimetheus to do the same. He was, indeed, the wisest of his race, and Athene, at whose birth from Zeus's head he had assisted, taught him architecture, astronomy, mathematics, navigation, medicine, metallurgy, and other useful arts, which he passed on to mankind. But Zeus, who had decided to extirpate the whole race of man, and spare them only at Prometheus's urgent plea, grew angry at their increasing powers and talents."