by Brandt Legg
“Same as Nostradamus.”
“Yes, but not the same king.”
“Of course not,” Rip said. “Although they lived at the same time, Nostradamus was only sixteen when Leonardo died in 1519. Nostradamus lived until 1566.”
“Could theirs be the same Eysen?”
“I hope not.”
“Listen to this,” Gale said, reading from the screen again. “‘The Salvator Mundi, a haunting, twenty-six inch oil-on-panel painting, depicts Christ as Savior of the World. He is presented in half-length, facing front, lightly bearded with auburn ringlets, and dressed in Renaissance-era robes.’ This is the good part. ‘Christ’s gaze is fixed on the spectator while he holds a crystal sphere in his left hand and offers benediction with his right.’”
“They don’t call the sphere an Eysen?” Rip asked.
Gale smiled. “Very funny. It goes on, want to hear more?”
“I love it when you read to me.”
Gale blew him a kiss. “‘The painting had been long believed to have been destroyed, having disappeared sometime around 1763.’”
“Because it depicted an Eysen,” Rip said, this time serious.
She nodded. “Maybe. ‘It resurfaced in 1900, acquired by Sir Charles Robinson, but it was attributed to Bernardino Luini, a follower of Leonardo, and not by the master himself. The next time it is heard about was in 1958 at Sotheby's in England, where it sold for a hundred-twenty-five dollars!’”
“A steal,” Rip said, reviewing details about Leonardo’s life.
“Yes, remember? They didn’t know it was a Da Vinci.”
“After 1958?”
“‘It disappeared again, for almost fifty years. It showed up at a small auction house in the US.’ That’s when it gets crazy. ‘After extensive restoration, and now attributed to Leonardo, it was auctioned by Christie's in New York in late 2017, and brought a record price for any artwork.’”
“How much?”
“An anonymous purchaser paid $450 million.”
“And they didn’t disclose the purchaser,” Rip said. “How many people could drop nearly half a billion dollars on a little five hundred year old painting?”
“Booker.”
“Yeah, and I wouldn’t be surprised. We should ask him if he has it.”
“There’s another twist,” Gale said.
“Isn’t there always?”
“‘There is a consensus among scholars,’” she read, “‘and art experts agree that the glass sphere Christ holds symbolizes the world. However, there is controversy surrounding the orb since it does not refract light in the way an actual glass sphere would. This has led to certain art historians disputing that the Salvator Mundi is actually the work of da Vinci.’”
“I don’t follow their logic.”
“Apparently there is considerable research and evidence that Leonardo was well versed in the science of optics. ‘Among his many surviving notes and diagrams, there are numerous references to optics. Therefore, the experts claim that if Leonardo was the painter, he would have depicted the solid glass orb with proper distortion of objects behind the curved glass.’”
“I can explain it,” Rip said.
“‘One of da Vinci’s modern biographers suggests that the master made a conscious choice to omit the distortion.’ He says that “bypassing the natural laws of optics allowed the artist to show the miraculous nature of his subject matter.” While another scholar says it was simply religious etiquette that guided da Vinci, who would not want to distort a portrait of Christ.’”
“They’re all wrong,” Rip said. “It doesn’t reflect light as a solid clear orb would because it’s an Eysen, which is not subject to the normal laws of physics.”
Twenty
Once the guardians finished scanning all the equipment in Trynn’s lab and downloading everything from the facility’s crystal-mind networks, they completed their search.
“Surprised we didn’t find anything?” one of the guardians asked Tracer.
“No, the guy is too smart.” His dark hair, worn a bit too long for his position, framed a perpetually skeptical face. “But there are enormous quantities of digital-materials stored here, capable of astronomical computations and data-capture. Soon it will be reviewed by those on The Circle with knowledge of such things.”
The man looked at the giant pod banks that had been used to store everything they’d duplicated. “The Circle has time for this?”
“They have a few thousand people to dissect it, but Shank oversees anything related to Eysens or Trynn.”
“Are you just about finished?” Trynn asked. “This is disruptive to our work.” Trynn knew who would be reviewing his data, and that they would look for any excuse to damage his reputation, or worse, to indict him for defying The Circle. Banishment.
He glanced at the Terminus clock. Thirteen days. This raid is not helping. But he knew it could just be one out of a million things eroding the time humanity had remaining.
“I just have a few more questions, a little more detailed to your situation.” Tracer had been there before, and understood that Trynn was an important and respected scientist who had many contracts within the government, yet the man was also suspected of great crimes.
“Do you have any scientific background?” Trynn asked, already knowing the answer. One of his assistants looked across the room and caught his eye. He could see she was nervous, and gave her a reassuring glance, nodding slightly as if to say everything would be okay.
“Are you conducting any far future manipulations?” Tracer asked, ignoring Trynn’s question.
“No.”
Tracer scanned Trynn with a blue light. Trynn knew it was a kind of polygraph reader, and if it read anything but blue, he would be taken away.
Tracer nodded, as if annoyed the light had not turned red.
“Are you working on anything that defies any Circle decree?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Answer yes or no.”
“The Circle issues a great number of decrees. I have not read them all, have you?”
“I ask the questions.”
“Yes, then please ask one that makes sense.”
Tracer looked as if he’d like nothing more than to forcibly take Trynn into custody. “Are you working on anything that defies any Circle decree issued specifically toward you or your work.”
“No.”
Blue light.
Tracer stared at Trynn, his expression making it clear that he did not believe the scientist in spite of the blue light.
“Do you dislike me, Trynn?”
“No.”
Red light.
Tracer suppressed a laugh, but couldn’t help but smile. “Okay, smart guy. You win again, but I’ll be back.”
“Looking forward to it.”
Red light.
Back at the Arc’s office, Tracer made his report in person.
“Do you believe him?” she asked.
“Not even a little. I’m just not sure how he’s beating the reader.”
She waved a hand, as if that would be a simple thing for Trynn. “He was raised by Etherens.”
Tracer nodded. He had been in charge of the recent investigation into a very young Etheren man trying to incite others to overthrow The Circle. In earlier times, the man would have been counseled, maybe banished, but in this case, he was shot dead while ‘resisting arrest.’ Tracer had not been the one who’d fired the fatal blast, but he’d been at the scene. Yet, in recent years, Tracer had killed seven people. A number that would have been unheard of before the discovery of the Terminus Doom. Guardians would work for their entire careers, centuries, and never terminate anyone, with the rare exception of a stray Havlos.
“Perhaps something in the confiscated data?” Tracer theorized.
“Shank and Jenso will search, but they will discover nothing,” she said. “He’s too careful.”
“Forgive my bluntness, Arc, but if you are so certain he is violating—”
“We have created a god-like society. One in which every problem can be solved, every secret discovered, every question answered, yet for all the glory of Cosegan culture, it is still made up of individuals. And no matter how perfect a civilization we create, individuals will still vary, still have their own ideas, separate and unique from those of the greater whole. These individuals will find their own, the others like them with whom they share things in common. Those groups will then pursue things separate from society’s agenda.”
Tracer shook his head, unsure how that answered his question.
“Our culture crests in its god-like enlightenment, but some will lag, fall victim to stray ideas, thinking they might be right simply because they believe those ideas belong to them.”
“Of course,” he replied, not knowing what else to say.
“What about the globe runner?”
“Nothing. It’s been twenty-four hours. She drowned.”
“Not without a body.”
“The canyons are sheer there. She could not have exited the water without being detected.”
“Then where is her body? And, more importantly, her globotite?”
“We’ll fish it out of the Lows tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow Trynn will have the globotite that girl was carrying.”
He cocked his head, brows pinching.
“Find her, find where she’s going, and find Trynn’s real lab.”
“Real lab?” Tracer echoed.
“He’s obviously conducting his work from another location. He cannot conceal it in his official facility. There is somewhere else. Follow him day and night. Contact me the moment you locate it, no matter when, understand?”
“Yes, of course.”
“The very moment!”
Twenty-One
Jofyser knew when he became a globe runner that the risks were great. Two of his friends had already been captured and vanished, another was missing, possibly dead. Many more were in hiding. Gone were the days when they could conduct their operations under cover of night. Globotite was too rare, and in far too great a demand, and time too short. There were not enough globe runners to afford the safer nighttime routes. And today, in the high sun, he had drawn the most dangerous route of all—the city handoff. Solas was not a normal city, it was the Capitol, it held the great hall, the massive science and technology campuses, and the highest concentration of guardians in the world.
He checked the time by the sun, and said a silent prayer.
Because so many were now on the watchlist, only certain globe runners could go through the city from the wild Etheren lands. Jofyser was one who still had that freedom. Still, the city always made him nervous.
The outdoor trade area was a place that might’ve been recognizable in Rip and Gale’s time, a bustling center of activity filled with merchants, shoppers, tourists, and travelers, a great mix covering several hundred acres. Only the backdrop of the tall glowing towers, spirals of light reaching into the clouds, combined with the futuristic wares being traded, made it different from a 21st century open air market.
Located on the edge of Solas and filled with high-tech stalls, the market was a trade zone which meant not just Cosegans and Etherens, but many Havloses could also be seen mingling and trading. With more than twenty thousand people in attendance, it was easy to blend in. And Jofyser knew just where he was going.
He found the stall, if one could call it such. It was more like a shimmering tent, flexing panels of light shifting in the wind, a translucent kind of shelter that somehow allowed sunlight and privacy at the same time. Inside sat a man he recognized. The two had known each other since childhood. The trader was selling a rare kind of berry and all things made from it.
“Etheren jam,” Jofyser said, smiling as he picked up a small jar, looked at it closely, and asked the price. “Agreed,” he said upon hearing the reasonable sum. Funds would automatically transfer. Cosegans had no physical money, just exchanges of values that were constantly updated and monitored by AI.
Still in the shop, Jofyser opened the lid and found a hollow in the middle of the jam. He carefully pulled out a small pouch and slid it deep into his pocket, where a velcro-like catch would hold it into place. Another globe runner had left the pouch there a short time ago.
He thanked the trader and left, knowing that once he departed the throngs of the hectic market, the real risky part would begin. Traveling through the city would be quicker in a light vehicle, but all of them had been retrofitted with scanners which would detect the globotite immediately. Like all Cosegan cities, Solas had translucent, elevated, moving sidewalks.
“Safer on the ground,” he told himself, skipping the first upward ramp. The tallest structures were sonic-supported, which meant going the long way around. That’s where, unexpectedly, he found himself facing a guardian patrol.
“Stop, please,” one of them said, checking his strandband.
Jofyser had no choice but to comply.
The strandband’s data base cycled through millions of holographic images in an instant. “Hmm, no match.”
The two guardians looked at one another.
“I’ll check mine,” the other said, engaging his strand. “Same result.”
“It seems you don’t exist,” the senior of the two said to Jofyser, staring at him closely. “Are you an Etheren?”
“Yes,” Jofyser answered honestly, saving his lie for future questions.
“What is your business in the city today?”
“I came for the market.”
“The market is that way,” the man said, pointing in the direction from which Jofyser had come, and now looking a bit more suspicious.
“I know, I was just doing a bit of sightseeing. It has been a long while since I’ve been to Solas. I was a boy the last time.”
“That might explain why you aren’t in the system.”
Jofyser nodded.
“Well, we’ll have to get you registered.”
“Okay,” he said, trying to sound helpful and innocent. Several people looked toward the guardians and Jofyser as they were passing, but nothing dramatic appeared to be occurring, and they quickly continued on.
“We can’t do it here. We’ll have to take you to the Official.”
Jofyser had heard of the Official. It adjoined the Great hall and contained the records of every Cosegan who had ever lived. “Oh, can I do that another day? I have to get home.”
“But you are sightseeing, right?” the other guardian said. It was not unusual for city Cosegans to be a little suspicious of Etheren Cosegans, even before the Terminus Doom and the globotite crisis.
“I was just about out of time.”
“Then why weren’t you in a goeze?” he asked, referring to the common levitating light vehicles shared by Cosegans.
“Being from the outlands, I enjoy being among the light of the city, feeling and absorbing it firsthand.” This was a complete lie, but he delivered it with sincerity, and the guardians assumed that all Etherens would marvel and admire, even envy, their light cities, as opposed to the untamed wilderness from which they came.
“I’m sorry,” the senior guardian said. “No one can be unregistered, and particularly Etherens, especially in these times. I’m sure you understand.”
Jofyser nodded, trying not to think of the globotite in his pocket. It was now fight or flight. Quickly assessing their minds telepathically, he knew they were only an eight minute walk to the Official. He could also tell that one of them was about to ask him if he had any knowledge of illegal globotite mining operations or smuggling. Looking around, well out of his element, he had to imagine the buildings and walkways to be trees and paths in the forest.
It’s just a jungle of light, he told himself.
Then he bolted.
Twenty-Two
Shanoah looked out over the large control towers and more than two hundred launch pads. As with all Cosegan structures, the Imaze Space Summit was dominated by light. However, due to
the nature of their missions, it featured many other construction techniques. The largest towers were manufactured of special alloys engineered specifically for Imaze crafts and fused with light and sound. Her direct ancestors had been on earlier explorations and exchanges of both the second and third wave interplanetary missions that took place more than 100,000 years earlier. Those exhibitions discovered and brought back the metals and minerals used to make the alloys employed in the Imaze ships.
A series of glowing 3D holographic “historics” popped up throughout the public areas of the Summit, detailing past missions in as much detail as the viewer cared to see. As a little girl, Shanoah had devoted hours each week to studying the historics throughout the center. The Imazes had begun the program thousands of years before the Terminus Doom was discovered, and well before Shanoah was born.
With her chic, thin body, full lips, and spiraling, high-voltage energy, Shanoah always looked the part of an advanced thinker. She’d been raised by parents perfectly suited for her future. Her father had been a space explorer, as had six generations of his family before him. Shanoah’s mother was a renowned scientist whose lectures and writings were widely studied.
Whenever Shanoah stood at the launch platform, she thought of her life and wondered how different it might have been if she’d been born to Etheren parents. Her life had already gone past her mother and father’s. She wasn’t just a scientist and space explorer, she was an Imaze, a group of Cosegans who used and manipulated the laws of physics to travel not just through space, but space time.
Shanoah waited nervously, not liking review days. The Arc always made her feel inferior, one of the rare few with that power.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told herself. “The launch is in twenty-four hours.”
Shanoah had risen through the ranks due to her brilliant scientific mind, calm, cool capacity under pressure, and, perhaps in large part because she was the most well-liked scientist of her generation. Her knack of making almost anyone feel as if they were on her same level of intelligence, freely allowing others input until they agreed with her own ideas, and how she was always willing to share the credit while being quick to take the blame, won many admirers. Although brilliant, she was not the brightest Imaze, but her vast knowledge and ability to make immediate, accurate decisions, coupled with an unwavering determination to see a mission through, to never give up, endeared her to both superiors and subordinates. All of those traits led to her position as the leader of the Imazes, and made her relationships easy among colleagues and officials, with the notable exception of the Arc.
