It had taken him considerably longer to grasp the meaning behind the design that Archimedes had died for, but as he began to do so, peeling away the layers of the mystery, Apollonius understood why the mathematician had been willing to risk capture in order to see his work completed. What he could not understand, even ten years later, was why the black-eyed man would have wanted to destroy it.
Perhaps the answer to that riddle would become clear once he entered the vault.
That it was a vault, a storehouse of secrets, he could only infer. His study of the design had revealed many things to him — secrets woven into the fabric of human belief, hidden in the mathematical precision of the universe — but sometimes those messages were ambiguous, contradictory.
The journey had been long and full of peril, but the design he had glimpsed and studied and ultimately completed had not led him astray. He had found the vault right where he knew it would be. From a distance, he thought he was approaching a city, with great red towers looking out across the wilderness. An abandoned city, surely, for only savages inhabited the land through which he passed — foragers and hunters who moved with the seasons and followed the animal herds. As he drew near, he saw that the towers and pillars were merely rock formations, the citadels and fortresses carved from the landscape, not by men, but by the gods. What better place to hide the secrets of the cosmos?
Unfortunately, where was not as important as when, but there too, the design had not failed him.
He had crossed oceans in ships, and trekked across barren landscapes on foot, always guided by the stars, counting the days. As the voyage stretched out into weeks and months, he began to despair of reaching his destination in time. If he failed, the task would fall to someone else, and perhaps what he had learned would illuminate the path of some distant descendant. Or perhaps not. The design was more than just a map, more than just a key to unlock the door. It was a test of intellect, of worthiness.
A test he had passed, evidently. He was not late.
Apollonius approached the cave on the morning of the vernal equinox. It looked like nothing more than a scalloped recess, scooped out by the elements, a place for wild animals to take refuge from the sun, but up close he saw that it was a concealed passage leading deeper into the great fortress-shaped rock.
He coaxed his tinder into a flame on the end of a brand and crawled into the sloping passage. The red rock seemed to constrict around him, so tight that his shoulders were scraped raw, but he kept moving, kept pushing the torch ahead of him to light the way, trusting that the design had not led him astray. If he was wrong, if the passage closed in even more, he would be caught like a fish in a net, unable to extricate himself.
I’m not wrong, he told himself. This is just another test.
He shoved the torch forward again. The smoke from it was filling the passage, stinging his eyes, but it had not been smothered which meant that there was plenty of air to keep it burning. He pushed it out further and was about to squirm forward again when the flame abruptly disappeared, leaving him in darkness.
He whispered a curse, but kept moving forward, groping for the torch. Instead, his hands found nothing, not even the stone of the passage. He pondered this for a moment before grasping the significance of it. He had reached the end of the passage and the entrance to a much larger cave. He felt warm, humid air on his face, and heard the trickling of water all around. The torch, he surmised, had fallen down into the darkness to be extinguished in an unseen pool on the cavern floor.
No matter. He had several more in a sack which he dragged along behind him. He probed the darkness until he found the edge of the precipice. The walls beyond felt smooth, curving gently away, and although the cavern floor was out of reach, from the drip of water, he knew that it was not too much of a drop. He kept crawling until he was able to lower himself down, and then simply let go, sliding the rest of the way to splash into the knee-deep water.
Working by touch alone, careful to keep his equipment dry, he got another torch lit, and in its faint orange-yellow glow, got his first look at where Archimedes’ design had brought him.
The cavern was not large, the walls only a stone’s throw apart, but the space was completely open. He realized immediately that he was standing inside a sphere too perfect to be the work of nature. Strange relief patterns, squares of varying depth, adorned the walls, forming a maze through which dribbles of water oozed down the walls to accumulate at the bottom of the sphere. At the very center of the pool, where the water was surely deepest, his first torch now rotated lazily.
The water must be draining out there, he thought. Otherwise, this whole chamber would be flooded.
After a moment of watching the torch spin, he realized that the water was draining away faster than the seepage replenishing it.
This revelation filled him with excitement. He understood now how his predecessor, the man who had unknowingly launched him on this quest, must have felt on that day when he had grasped the relationship between volume and density while bathing, a day that, if the stories were true, had seen him running naked through the streets shouting “Eureka! Eureka!”
The chamber would be dry soon, and then he would use Archimedes’ design to unlock the vault.
“This is not for you.”
The voice startled him, nearly causing him to drop his second torch. He whirled toward the opening high on the wall above, seized by fear, his hand instinctively seeking the sheathed dagger that hung from his belt, but there was no one there.
Those words. He remembered them vividly, too. Was that all this was? His imagination running wild? The sound of the water playing tricks on his ears? The ghost of a memory, reaching out across the years to frighten him?
He took a deep breath, then another, and when his racing heart was becalmed, he turned back to the center.
The man with black eyes stood there.
Ten years had passed and the boy Apollonius had grown up, but the man with the face that looked like nothing and no one, and the eyes that seemed to drink the life out of anyone who gazed into them, had not changed at all. He looked exactly the same as he had that fateful night when he had put his sword through the chest of Archimedes of Syracuse.
The same sword that he held in his right hand.
Apollonius threw up his hands in a show of surrender. “Mercy, sir. Please. I’ve come so far.”
“I know,” the man replied, his voice as flat and emotionless as his visage. “I had hoped that you would fail.”
“But why? I have passed the test. I am worthy to enter the vault.”
“This is not for you.”
The blade flashed and the torch fell from Apollonius’ hands, plunging the chamber once more into darkness. As his life drained away, along with the water in which he lay, Apollonius heard a sound like the grinding of a millstone. The vault was opening, but he would not live to see what lay within.
First Officer Jeanne Carrera was surprised to see Captain Seth Norris already seated in the cockpit, idly thumbing through a printed weather report. Norris was punctual, always arriving on time but he rarely showed up early and never got to a plane ahead of her.
“Turning over a new leaf?” she remarked as she stowed her carry-on.
“Hmm?” Norris glanced up and offered a polite smile.
“You’re early. You’re never early.”
He shook his head dismissively. “Traffic was lighter than I expected. I made good time.”