The heat ray simulations, like several other displays and dioramas in the supposedly interactive museum, was currently closed for repairs. Jade now understood the reason for the negative reviews on the travel guide website. It wasn’t that the museum was run down. In fact, the space was bright and welcoming, with vibrant colors utterly unlike the subdued earth tones of the Archaeology Museum. It wasn’t really even that so many exhibits were out-of-order. Rather, the most disappointing thing about the Arkimedeion was how it failed to live up to its potential. An entire museum dedicated to one of the greatest minds in scientific history, and nothing worked. It was hard to believe in the legend of Archimedes when the reproductions of his most famous inventions were non-functional.
“No matter,” Paolo said, waving a dismissive hand at the broken exhibit. “You will like the stomachion.”
“With a name like that, I’m sure I’ll love it.”
Paolo led them up the stairs to another bright room with more vivid primary colors, and not much else. He gestured to the table in the center, which displayed a rectangular mosaic composed of differently colored triangles.
“That’s the… um…stomachatron?”
“Stomachion,” Paolo repeated. He went to the table and began picking up the individual triangles and rearranging them. “Is an ancient Greek game. You create different shapes. Animals. Houses. Anything the mind imagines.”
Jade now saw that the almost psychedelic wallpaper in the room was actually made up of hundreds of different variations on the arrangement of the geometric tiles. “It’s like a tangram puzzle.”
“Si, si. Archimedes, he uses it to test complex mathematical ideas. He wrote book, all about how he uses stomachion, but…” He shrugged. “We have only part. The rest is lost.”
“Speaking of lost books, can you tell us anything about the Vault of Archimedes?”
Jade thought she saw surprise flicker across the museum guide’s face. “Vault?”
“With a timelock that only opens once every thousand years.”
Paolo’s smile returned. “Ah, a new story. I have never heard this one before.”
“I think we can take that as a ‘no,’ then,” Kellogg said.
Paolo opened his mouth to reply, but then looked away suddenly. “Ah, more guests. Please, enjoy the stomachion. Perhaps, you can tell me more about this Vault before you go.”
“Actually,” Jade said, “I think we’ve seen enough.”
She followed Paolo out onto the balcony overlooking the guest lobby, but stopped short when she caught a glimpse of the two men who were just starting up the stairs. Her instincts screamed an alarm.
It was not merely that the two men with dark complexions and full beards seemed to fit perfectly the stereotype of what she imagined their attackers in Scotland must have looked like under their ski mask. Looks could certainly be deceiving. Rather, it was the none-too subtle aura of menace that radiated from them. They both looked ready to explode into violence.
Paolo called out to them in his typically friendly manner but before he could finish his greeting, they reached him and brushed past him like he wasn’t even there.
Jade shrank back into the stomachion room. “Company’s here. We need to find a back door.”
Kellogg stared back, dumbfounded, so Jade grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the exit. His reflex to resist slowed her down just enough to allow the two bearded men to reach the landing at almost the same instant she and Kellogg stepped out. The reaction was instantaneous. The gazes of the two men fixed on Jade like a missile-lock.
“Run!” she shouted, and then without waiting to see if Kellogg would follow suit, she spun on her heel and sprinted away, heading deeper into the exhibits. After a few seconds of searching on the run, she spied a red exit sign on the ceiling. Unlike several of the other signs she had passed, this one did not point to the stairs behind them, but to a destination somewhere further inside the museum. Fire stairs, or perhaps an exterior fire escape in the rear of the building. Jade swerved toward the sign and then glanced over her shoulder to see how close the pursuit was.
Too close.
Although Jade was a good ten yards ahead of the closest assailant, Kellogg’s earlier hesitation had put him within their reach. In the instant she looked back, Jade saw the lead pursuer reaching out to snag hold of Kellogg’s collar.
Without stopping, Jade snatched up a gold-colored sphere — about the size and weight of a bowling ball — and spun it around, heaving it like an over-sized Olympic shot put. As she released it, she shouted, “Duck!”
The warning was not only unnecessary but overly optimistic. The sphere arced through the air with agonizing slowness, and then, as gravity overcame what little inertia Jade had been able to give it, dropped suddenly, almost straight down, to strike the ground a few feet to Kellogg’s left with a resounding thump. After releasing the sphere, Jade’s own momentum carried her completely around, and for a moment, it was all she could do to stay on her feet and not go careening into the rest of the geometric display.
Nevertheless, the attempt was not entirely futile. The two men hesitated, prepared to take evasive action if needed, giving Kellogg a few precious seconds’ lead. Jade got back on an even keel, and with Kellogg now beside her, sprinted in the direction indicated by the exit sign. They rounded a corner and Jade saw, about fifty feet away, a metal door marked with the words “Fire Exit” in both English and Italian.
Jade’s flickering glimmer of hope was extinguished as the door suddenly swung open to reveal two more bearded men.
Great, Jade thought. Reinforcements.
The surprise of the two men at discovering the fleeing figures charging headlong toward them barely gave Jade enough time to avoid a collision. She veered to the right, and then using the wall like a swimmer making the turn at the end of a lap, rebounded back the way they had come, snaring Kellogg’s arm in the process and whipping him around.
The abrupt reversal caught the two pursuing men completely off guard. One of them made a half-hearted attempt to tackle Jade as she shot by, but Jade just lowered her head and plowed through like a football player charging the scrimmage line. She made glancing contact and felt a sharp pain in her scalp as the man’s hands snagged a few strands of her hair, and then she was past them both, running at full speed back toward the distant landing. Kellogg likewise made it past the two men, slipping between them with unexpected gracefulness.
Jade’s dismay at realizing that the odds against them had doubled since the confrontation in Scotland was at least partially offset by the fact that, unlike the cramped tunnels in the fogou, their assailants were behind them and there was plenty of room to maneuver. But as she reached the landing, the balance tilted against her once more. Two more men stood in the reception lobby, temporarily waylaid by an extremely agitated Paolo. One of them looked up, spotted her, and cried out in alarm.
Jade looked around frantically for some other avenue of escape. Kellogg skidded to a stop beside her, likewise searching for an alternate exit but there was nowhere else to go. Then Jade spotted the golden sphere she had thrown earlier, rolling aimlessly toward them.
“I hope second time’s the charm,” she muttered as she reached down and gave it a shove toward the stairwell. The orb cracked loudly on the first step, bounced slightly, cracked again on the next tread, picking up speed and energy as it descended one step at a time. “Go!”
The rolling orb did not appear especially menacing but the two men coming up the stairs balked like it was the rolling boulder from an Indiana Jones movie. Paolo still shouting angrily at the intrusion as he gave chase, broke into a smile at the strange sight. He raised his fist in the air and shook it. “Si! Archimedes would be proud.”