“Shall we add nothing of its true history?” Father Marquette paused. “To help decipher it.”
Father Realini knew that would not be necessary. The book, and the key, when put together, would be all that was needed to know the truth.
“No,” Father Realini said. “And we needn’t worry about how it got from Bacon to the Emperor. It is easy to reconcile that Bacon’s things were confiscated during his imprisonment.”
“They lived three hundred years apart.” Father Marquette said in a sing-songy voice as if to say ‘it won’t sound authentic.’
“Fine. Then someone must have had it during the interim.”
“Who?” Father Marquette asked.
The question hung in silence, but only for a moment.
“I have it!” Father Marquette turned and looked at Father Realini. “We shall say it was John Dee. It has been widely rumored that he had some of Bacon’s personal papers.”
“But he didn’t. They have always been with the church.”
“Yes, I know that, Father Realini.” He pointed at himself, then pointed to Father Realini. “And you know that, but many people don’t. We shall appeal to their ignorance.”
“Yes. That is easy to do,” Father Realini agreed.
Father Marquette nodded at Father Realini. “So. It was sold to the Emperor by John Dee.” Then he paused his pen, and glanced at Father Realini. “For how much?” he asked.
“One thousand lira.”
Father Marquette sat still.
“Well, write that.” Father Realini pushed Father Marquette’s shoulder.
“They would not have had lira in the 1500s.”
“And what would they have had, Father?”
“Ducats.” Father Marquette turned around on the stool and faced Father Marquette.
“Well, write that.”
“How many ducats?”
“Oh, Holy Mother of God. I don’t know. One thousand.”
“That would have been too much.”
“What would have been a fair amount?”
“For an Emperor?”
“No, for the Emperor’s cook! Of course for the Emperor.”
“600 Ducats,” Father Marquette said, and then with a nod added, “Gold ducats.”
“Well, write that and be done with it.”
Father Marquette lifted his feet off the floor and swirled himself around to face the desk. He wrote for a few more moments and then ended the letter with a flourish. “Finito!” He looked up and smiled at Father Realini.
Father Realini took the letter and blew on it to dry the ink. He folded it and put it in his pocket. Reconsidering, he took it out, handed it to Father Marquette, and said, “Here, sit on it.”
“What?”
“It must look old. Not as if it was written today.”
Father Marquette gave a nod and stuck it under the mattress of his cot and sat on top. Sitting for what he believed an appropriate amount of time. Retrieving it from the folds of the bed, they continued to fondle and fan it, caress it and crease it for better than an hour. Leaving it in the desk, they left for morning worship and work, agreeing to meet in the Library in three hours.
“Where’s the letter?” Father Realini asked.
Father Marquette gave Father Realini a vacant look. He had just come around to the Library from the garden where he had supervised spring planting, at the agreed upon time.
“You have the letter,” Father Marquette said.
“I do not have the letter. That was your responsibility.”
Father Marquette checked the pockets in his cassock. Pulling it back, he checked his pants pocket. He patted his hands over his body as if it could be hidden there. His eyes lit up. He pulled off his tuftless biretta and peered inside of it, the last vesture of his priestly garb where the letter could have been hiding. Nothing. His eyes searched the face of Father Realini.
“Oh, my Lord. Father in Heaven, help me.” Father Realini stomped one foot and on the other spun around in a circle, holding his forehead with his hand. He stopped as the window that faced the front of the Villa came into view. “Oh no,” he screeched. He could see Rector Bershoni scurrying out to meet the black car slowing pulling up the long curved driveway.
Father Realini grabbed Father Marquette and shook his shoulders. “You have to go get it.”
“What? I don’t have time to get it,” Father Marquette said, following Father Realini’s gaze out of the window.
Father Realini turned Father Marquette around and starting pushing him out the door.
Father Marquette made his legs stiff and his back straight. “No. Stop! I don’t have time.”
“If you would cease with the talking,” Father Realini said, turning to look out the window and seeing a man with a moustache climb out of the back seat. “You could make it.” He gave Father Marquette a big push that made him fall forward and only missed hitting the ground by putting his arms out and bracing himself on the wall in front of him.
“Go.” Father Realini said between clinched teeth. “Run like the Devil himself is chasing you.”
Father Marquette started off slowly, Father Realini walking behind him, shooing him with his hands. He followed Father Marquette until he rounded the first corner of the long hallway that led back to the sleeping rooms and with a scowl growled, “Get,” and gave Father Marquette another push.
The entire time Father Marquette was gone, Father Realini paced from the window in the library, out of the room, trotting to the end of the hallway where Father Marquette had disappeared, and then back again to the window. Each second being drawn out by worry about the letter they had forged getting back in time to be placed in the book. They needed to get that book out of the Library and out into the world. To be found. To be decoded. He knew it. And, now, it was by God’s grace that the Collegio Romano was short of money and decided to sell some of its holdings discreetly. Including, he would make sure, the manuscript.
He was standing at the end of the hall, peering around the corner, wringing his hands, his heart pounding, when he heard two voices at the other end of the corridor. One he recognized was Rector Bershoni’s voice.
That man coming today, the one moving ever so much closer to where he stood, was a rare book dealer from London. He would not take such a book, jumbled with what appeared to be nonsense, and pictures of naked women and plants that had never before been seen on this planet, unless it had some history. Some intrigue. He and Father Marquette had given it that. A letter stating that Emperor Rudolph II of Germany had purchased it for six hundred gold ducats because he believed it to be the work of Roger Bacon was sure to sway him.
Finally, Father Marquette came dashing around the corner on the polished wood floor. Wind scooped up through his long black cassock, his ferraiolo flying off his shoulders while he held onto his biretta.
“Hurry!” Father tried to whisper as loud as he could. “Hurry, they’re almost here.”
The gentleman didn’t take long to look over the library’s books. He seemed to know just what he wanted and was out in no more than twenty minutes.
“Well, did he buy it?” Father Marquette peeked around the corner of the library door.
“Yes. Yes, he did. Come in Father Marquette.”
“Who was he?”
“I told you. A book seller. A seller of rare books.”
“Yes, I know that. But, what was his name?”
“Voynich. Wilfrid Voynich.”
Chapter Eleven
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
June 17, 2011
Dr. Sabir had several theories on how mankind would ultimately find out the truth about his origins. The first was the ability to travel in space and return to the ruins of Mars. The second would be the discovery of more manuscripts. And the third way, he thought, would be the finding of a remnant of the people who came here. Untainted knowledge held, through hundreds of thousands of years, by isolated people. Perhaps an oral history. But he hoped something written. Although he
thought last contact by our ancestors, or “Ancients” as I liked to call them, was more recent than that, possibly ten to twenty thousand years ago.
His first theory, the idea of space travel, he thought was not something that would happen before the twenty-first century.
He was wrong about that.
Although it was only a couple of decades after he wrote his theories in 1949 that we went to the moon, man had yet to travel to, and excavate, Mars. Something my brother Greg had once told me I needn’t worry about happening anytime soon.
Still, pictures showing the ‘Face of Mars,’ as it has been named, were believed by some to be ancient ruins on the face of the planet. Those pictures had opened up discussions on what could have been there. Dr. Sabir and I, separated by generations, had learned from the AHM manuscripts the Ancients had tried to cover up what was left. They’d hoped that the ruins would somehow tunnel themselves underground. That they would sink. The ancient writer of the AHM manuscripts admitted that that hope was thin. With the lack of a living ecosystem, many things would probably protrude from where they had buried them. Where they had tried to dispose of them. Vegetation that would usually decay over the years, leading to groundcover, would be absent. There would be no floods to push soil over the ruins, because the oceans were dry. No trash build up, no volcanoes to spew their ash, no one to come and build over what they had left. From recent pictures of Mars’ surface, their attempts had decidedly failed. Something up there was stubbornly staying visual. But until someone got up there, no one could say for certain what it was. Well, except for me.
But as an archaeologist and anthropologist, Sabir thought finding evidence of the migration in writings and artifacts the best course of action. He didn’t believe there was such a thing as out-of-place artifacts (OOPArt). Although the term OOPArt was not a phrase back when he left his notes, and usually now only used by those that push ancient astronaut theories, I knew that’s what he meant, and I agreed with him. After having translated the AHM manuscripts, I guess technically, he and I both were ancient astronaut theorists. So, why not use the term?
Dr. Sabir believed that everything was in its place. How improbable, he wrote, is it that they left something behind? Not very. Apparently they hadn’t completely hidden their remains on Mars. Good chance, he thought, that they didn’t hide them all that well here on Earth either.
He thought that man had already discovered a few. The 10,000 year old petroglyphs in Val Camonica, Italy. The Inca’s ancient airplanes found in the coastal regions of South America, or even the 20,000 year old drawings from the caves of Pech Merle in France. All over the world there was evidence that they had left behind. Some folks believed it meant that prehistoric man was in awe of some sky dwellers that flew spacecraft. Only problem with that theory was that the people here on Earth were never in awe or reverence of the “aliens,” because they had been the ones that came down in those spaceships. The reason they drew those petroglyphs, made cave drawings, and made the airplanes was probably because they were just depicting their history.
And certainly there were probably manuscripts hidden or buried that told more of the story of our migration. But who knew where to look? I had spent a lifetime searching for ancient biblical artifacts. Now what? Should I be a Martian archaeologist? Looking for ancient artifacts from Mars? Dr. Sabir thought there would be clues. Clues leading us to the answers.
God I hoped not.
I don’t want to have to go around figuring out clues. I am no good at that. I just needed something that would tell me what I needed to know. I’ll dig for it, translate it, but please, God, don’t let me have to piece clues together.
That reminded me about the Book of Enoch.
Dr. Sabir thought that the Book of Enoch held clues and could be used as proof of the existence of man on Mars. The book was a non-canonized text of a man who lived probably six thousand years ago. Enoch’s genealogy could be found in our Bible. The book was found in Cave 2 at Qumran and was a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls’ excavation. The AHM manuscripts I ultimately translated were found in Cave 4. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption since they were found so close together that the Book of Enoch would have something to do with the AHM manuscripts. If one manuscript about man’s origin was kept by the Essenes and hidden away in the caves, it was likely that others would be too.
The Book of Enoch did describe ‘other worldly’ events, but most scholars believed that those events had to do with God. No one equated the Book of Enoch with anything but the Bible. Except, of course, the alien astronaut theorists. Everything they saw proved that there were extraterrestrials. Not that they ever said the ancient astronauts were from Mars. But the fourth planet in those manuscripts I translated couldn’t mean anything else. And now, per Dr. Sabir, the Book of Enoch had to do with man and Mars. I had to believe him.
But more importantly, if I understood his sketchy notes correctly, Dr. Sabir said he had found scientific proof.
Before he had turned his information over to Dr. Yeoman, Dr. Sabir wrote how he had sought counsel with the person on the Dead Sea Scrolls Translation Committee who was translating the Book of Enoch. He thought it may be part of the evidence he needed to prove mankind’s origins. He also thought, if he could connect the two after revealing that we came from outer space, he could prove that there had been no evolution of man. To prove, he thought, without revocation, that there was a God.
Of course I didn’t believe in evolution. And, I had a hard time with the possibility that any of this might have to do with Christianity, or that proof of life originating on Mars was in the Book of Enoch. Even though the book was not canonized, it still, I thought, couldn’t be part of Christianity. I had told my brother Greg, when I first translated the AHM manuscripts that what was written in them had nothing to do with God. That it was pure science. But it seemed that now Dr. Sabir’s “proof” was trying to beckon me away from my grounded beliefs. I dug my heels in deep and decided to analyze how that lost book could mean that.
The Internet wasn’t what I needed. I already knew that the Book of Enoch was supposedly an ancient Jewish religious work, written by Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. And, it told of a vision that he had. But I needed more. I did have cursory knowledge of non-canonized books like Thomas, books of the Maccabees and the Book of Enoch. But I needed some “scholarly” information.
I decided to call my friend, Simon Melas.
Chapter Twelve
Simon Melas was an anthropologist, archaeologist and linguist. He taught at MIT and had been their poster boy when it came to anthropology. He’d helped them get recognition in areas other than engineering. He could have been Guess’ poster boy, he was just that good-looking. About ten years my junior, Simon was six-foot, tanned, with olive-colored skin and dark features. He had beautiful green eyes that were mesmerizing. Shoulder-length, coal black hair, and was thin with an athletic build. And, he was smart. An unusual combination.
A few years back Simon told me he was taking a sabbatical to study lost books of the Bible. It had been rumored that he had been forced to leave MIT because he had misappropriated grant money. I wasn’t sure where he was now, but in his work, he’d always been at the head of the pack. And, he spoke my language. Hopefully his timetable for studying the lost books so far had included the Book of Enoch.
Simon, after Dr. Margulies, was my closet colleague. We had written several scholarly articles together. We went on digs together, studied artifacts together. In the archaeological world we were a pair. If someone googled me, his name would pop up there somewhere as well. That was before he was MIT’s golden boy and I became the curator of Cleveland’s Ancient History Museum. Nowadays we didn’t keep in touch so much. It had been a good while since I spoke with him. I paged through my address book, found a number for him, and picked up the house phone. Then, I thought, what would I say?
‘Oh, hi Simon, I found that homo sapiens originated on Mars, and I need to find out more about the Book of Enoch bec
ause I believe it tells their story.’
That sounded crazy.
I hung up the phone. My eyes darted around in my head. I drummed my fingers on the desk. What the heck, I thought. My new book would be out soon. So why not just go for it? I dialed the number.
“Hey, Simon, It’s Justin Dickerson,” I said after he picked up.
“Hey, yourself! How are you?” I could hear the smile in his voice. “It is so nice to hear from you. I’ve missed you.” He hesitated. “You must want something. Sadly, that’s the only time you call me.”
He was the biggest flirt. I liked it though.
“Actually, Simon I was just calling to hear your voice.”
“Really?” He sounded intrigued. “And where is that husband of yours?”
“I’ve killed him so that I can be with you.”
“Ha. Ha. Good. I was recently on a dig, and I have the perfect sarcophagus for him. They will never find him, and our future colleagues will be so confused when they dig him up and find 2,000 year old bones in a 4,000 year old box.”
“Simon. I see you’re still awful. It’s a good thing I have a husband to protect me from the likes of you. And, you’re right. I do need something from you.”
“Tell me what you need.”
“Tell me about the Book of Enoch.”
“It was found with the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
“Don’t tell me anything I can find out on the Internet or that I already know. You’re the expert. I need something useful.”
“Really, that wasn’t helpful? Because I wrote that on the Internet. At least for Wikipedia. That wasn’t enough for you?”
I laughed. It figured he was the Wiki author.
“Actually, now that I think about it,” he said, slowly. “People do keep editing it. No telling what it says now. I wouldn’t mind so much if they knew what they were talking about. So, why are you wondering about the Book of Enoch?”
Irrefutable Proof: Mars Origin I Series Book II Page 6
