Seventy-eight
Katrina touched the smooth surface and held the light to her hand. There wasn’t a speck of dust.
“The properties are amazing. It repels dirt and disrupts electrical pulses in its realm. How, Father?”
Eccleston affirmed Katrina’s observation. “Science I can’t explain. But rest assured, it’s surely science. No matter what Denisova or the old priest thought, this isn’t the devil’s work. Galileo recognized it.” He paused. “No, he understood it. He got inside. Now we have to.”
McCauley began to feel along the wall he couldn’t see. So did Alpert and Eccleston. They gradually spread out, McCauley to the left touching middle-to-high; Katrina below him, the priest to their right. It was the left that brought results.
“Got it,” McCauley said. The base of the prime pyramid was embedded at roughly waist level, angling upwards into a triangle, meeting at a point marked by one indentation.
“Okay, okay. So prime numbers are the universal standard that can reach across all space and time, right?”
“Correct,” Eccleston said.
“And although we don’t know who inserted the prime pyramids or why, I suspect the what begins right here. This is it. This is the lock. We need to figure out the key.”
“Galileo wrote about la chiave, the key,” Eccleston exclaimed.
“Yes, but he didn’t leave it,” Katrina added.
“Perhaps so it wouldn’t be so easy for others,” the Vatican scientist deduced. “But there are some number games related to primes that a mathematician would know. And Galileo was a mathematician.”
“My God,” McCauley said, “I used to do them in grad school. One of them dealt with squaring any prime bigger than five. Then add— ”
“Seventeen,” Eccleston interrupted, “and divide by twelve.”
“And?” Katrina asked not knowing the trick, and not being able to work the problem so quickly in her head.
“There’s always a remainder of.6,” McCauley said.
“Or .5 on a calculator,” Eccleston added. He went through a few easy examples. Each time the remainder turned out the same.
“Okay, so what do we do with that?” she continued.
They couldn’t come up with any solutions. Everything in the pyramid was representative of whole numbers, not fractions.
“All this way and we can’t get any further” Katrina was disappointed. “What did Galileo know that we don’t know.”
“Not know. What did he try that we haven’t tried?” Eccleston thought for a moment. “I remember another prime number brain teaser,” he said. “Even easier. Square any prime number larger than three. Subtract one. See what happens.”
McCauley tried it once with five, then again with seven and eleven. He smiled. Katrina was doing the same with numbers of her choosing. This time she got the formula. “It’s always divisible by twenty-four!”
“Right. The remainder is twenty-four. So back to the pyramid. Where can we find twenty-four?”
McCauley removed the prime pyramid cheat sheet from under his sweater He shined his light on it. “Whoops, twenty-four isn’t a prime number.”
“No,” Eccleston said looking over his shoulder. “But there are twos and fours. Fourth row there’s both. I’ll try them.” Eccleston pressed the indentations. Nothing happened.
“Maybe we add up numbers to get twenty-four.” Katrina suggested. “I’ll show you.”
She pointed to the number one at the apex, then another one on the second row. “One plus one equals two,” she explained. Then add the next two on the second row. That’s four. So, twenty-four?”
“We’re here, let’s try,” Eccleston said lightly.
The priest started at the top, pressing each of the perfectly imprinted notches in the unknown metal. Finishing on the second row, he stood back and waited.
Again, nothing.
“Too simple and too complicated at the same time,” McCauley offered. But the key has to be hiding in plain sight. Galileo got it.”
McCauley scanned his sheet one more time. “We can add up the numbers, but do the numbers add up to anything?”
“In the prime pyramid they always do,” Eccleston explained.
“Right, but what if the answer is already in the prime pyramid. Back to what we were trying before. If it’s related to the mathematical equation let’s just go to the answer in its most simplest form.”
“Alright, here and here,” Eccleston said, pointing to the number two on the second row and the four on the fourth row. “That’s where they first appear.”
“My thought exactly,” McCauley said.
The Yale professor returned to the black wall, felt for the correct orientation and began to count as he touched the first two depressions followed by the four on the row two down. “One, two and one, two, three, four.”
Quinn McCauley was filled with anticipation, but once more, the supposition failed.
“It’s a dead end,” Katrina reluctantly admitted.
McCauley stared straight ahead silently. He couldn’t see a thing, which suddenly made the answer all the more clear to him. He smiled.
“Take my light, Katrina.” With self-assurance he asked, “Twenty-four, right?”
“Well…” Now, Eccleston wasn’t any more confident than Katrina. “Twenty-four if….”
“Good, just checking. He flexed his fingers. “Twenty-four it is.”
Extending two fingers on his left hand and four fingers on his right, he felt for all of the notches he had just touched one at a time. Finding them, he eased back. “Here goes.” With another deep breath, he gently pressed them simultaneously. “Twenty-four,” he whispered.
Five seconds of disappointment. Five seconds of wondering if he had found le chiave, or ever would. Then their ears suddenly began to ache as air pressure in the cave changed. They heard a muffled sound beyond the wall, like hydraulics or a motor. Then they felt air flowing towards them, first at foot level, then gradually higher to above their heads. Though they couldn’t yet see, a large section of the wall containing the prime pyramid rose.
Compelled by curiosity, and in the priest’s mind, probably some faith, the trio ventured forward. Without realizing it, they held hands and entered…somewhere.
Moments later, the perfect black began to lighten. First to an appreciable black, then a dark gray through increasing lighter tones, and ultimately to the whitest white they’d ever perceived. The change occurred over more than a minute, allowing their eyes to adjust. Soon they realized they were within a vast environment, but they could no better judge it by height, width, or depth than the black that had preceded it. It had no visible light source, yet everything — the ceiling, the walls, the floor — were illuminated to the same bright white level.
“Amazing,” Katrina said.
“Extraordinary,” Eccleston exclaimed.
“Where are we?” McCauley managed
“When are we?” Eccleston proposed. He didn’t have the chance to explain himself.
“Turn around slowly! Very slowly!”
It was a sharp order from a voice at the entrance to the chamber. Demanding, insistent. Most of all, threatening.
Seventy-nine
“Dr. McCauley, Dr. Alpert and Fr. Eccleston. I commend the three of you on your quest. Thank you for lighting the way.”
A man stepped forward. He held a semi-automatic pistol in his right hand and a flashlight that wasn’t working in his left.