“Is it possible that their experiments were just creating some kind of funky mutations in the plants that were already there?”
“Maybe. Even that would be a pretty significant discovery for the time, but they tried to control for all the variables, and they were convinced that they were actually giving life to inanimate matter.”
“Okay, let’s say I believe all that. What’s Rainer’s angle?” King turned his gaze to Sasha. “You were with him. Did you get a sense of what he wants from all of this?”
Sasha’s eyes remained riveted on the screen, as if the information there was far more interesting than anything King had to say. She clicked to the next page, her eyes moving back and forth as she read.
“Black Death,” she said finally. “The plague. Guo Kan, the Chinese general who fought with Mongols, got his hands on an al-Tusi’s urghan. His experiments with it created the organism responsible for the Black Death outbreak in the fourteenth century.”
“That’s exactly why Bacon and al-Tusi encoded the manuscript,” Parker added. “It’s a how-to manual for creating new kinds of life. They were afraid of what might happen if it fell into the wrong hands.”
“I thought that could happen only at that one special place, the prime location.”
Parker shrugged. “The effect is most pronounced at the source. They weren’t able to replicate their experiments when they left the area. But maybe there are other places on Earth with the same properties. Or maybe it just takes longer to see results; the Black Death didn’t show up until several decades after Guo’s death.”
King pondered this possibility for a moment then switched gears. “Does the book say what’s so special about this ‘Prime’ place?”
“Bacon speculated that it might be some kind of confluence of Earth energy. He had only a vague understanding of what that meant, but we know there are invisible rivers of geo-magnetic energy called Telluric currents that run through the whole planet. Crystals — like the ones he was using — align themselves magnetically. Maybe that provided the extra boost needed to start life.”
Sasha shook her head. “The Prime is important because it is the original source. Every living thing on Earth is mathematically connected to it.”
There was a hint of mania in her voice, and King knew he had to tread carefully. He had no idea what she was talking about, but Parker was nodding. At least it makes sense to someone, he thought. “So, bottom line, if the wrong person goes to this Prime place and plays the wrong song, all hell breaks loose, and that’s a bad thing. Do Rainer and company know all this?”
Sasha appeared to consider for a moment. “I don’t think so. That wasn’t the direction they were going. But they understand that the urghan is the key to deciphering the manuscript.”
King’s hand moved to his pocket where he’d stashed al-Tusi’s parchment. It was the only one of its kind, aside from the digital copy he’d sent to Parker.
The Voynich manuscript…the Prime location…the origin of life on Earth — none of that was really important. What mattered was that Rainer needed the information on that parchment, and King knew the rogue Delta operator would move Heaven and Earth to get it.
When he came for it, King and Chess Team would be waiting.
FORTY-FIVE
King was wrong in one respect. Parker had been glad to have him in the room, because it had given him someone to talk to. Sasha didn’t seem the least bit interested in conversation. After King left, Parker watched her reading and tried in vain to come up with a way to break the awkward silence. He was surprised when she spoke up.
“You figured this out?”
He shook his head quickly. “No, you did all the work. I just plugged in the variables from what al-Tusi wrote.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything.” Something like a smile twitched across her face, and she nodded toward the door through which King had just passed. “Do you think he understood any of it?”
“Jack’s a smart guy. But truthfully? It’s a lot to swallow. The source of life? It seems a little farfetched.”
“You’re right.” She looked at the screen thoughtfully. She was silent for a long time. “I want to go there,” she said finally. “To the Prime. I want to see it for myself; to know if it’s true.”
Parker stifled an urge to laugh. She was serious. “I think Jack has a different set of priorities.”
She crossed her arms, looking almost petulant. “Your team was supposed to be helping me, remember?”
“Sasha, we solved it. Isn’t that enough?” He already knew the answer. The quest to understand the Voynich manuscript had come to define her life, and now, with the ultimate goal in sight, he was telling her to back off. He sighed. “You said that all life is mathematically connected to the Prime. What did you mean by that?”
“Why do you ask?”
“If I’m going to sell Jack on the idea of finding the Prime, I’m going to need a more persuasive reason than just to satisfy your curiosity.”
It must have been the right thing to say, because when she looked at him, there wasn’t a trace of irritation in her expression. “Life is a mathematical process. Each of us is the product of countless permutations that began with the Prime event.
“Think about your own life as a mathematical expression. You are the product of DNA from your two parents. And they are each the product of two. We are each the result of millions of such computations, and our DNA contains all those factors.”
He nodded to indicate that he understood, but he still didn’t see what she was driving at.
“But at some point, the process flips. The branches of the family tree start coming together and the number of factors reduces down to primes.”
“Adam and Eve.”
She inclined her head. “Figuratively speaking. Somewhere in history, all humans share a common ancestor, or, put another way, a prime factor. Of course, the prime factor for humans is just one point on a much larger continuum, but that too can be mathematically reduced to a prime factor—the Prime factor.”
“Okay, I get that. Everything starts with something, chicken and egg. But that’s not what you meant by a connection, is it?”
She pursed her lips. “Life is more than just the mathematical distribution of genetic material. There’s something else involved that we still don’t understand; some component or catalyst that got the whole thing started. It’s in every living thing; it’s what separates living cells from organic matter and a living human from a dead corpse. And the really remarkable thing is that this life-force — whatever you want to call it — is the same now as it was at the beginning.”
“You mean it’s the same kind of energy, right?”
She shook her head. “The same energy, undiluted and indivisible.”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s like using one candle to light another. The original candle might die out, but as long as you keep lighting candles, it’s the same original flame you started with. It goes on forever.” She turned her head. “Are you familiar with quantum entanglement?”
“Two particles interact, then separate but remain connected, no matter how far apart they are.”
“Everything in the universe is entangled because all the matter in the universe originated with a single event, the Big Bang. But living things are quantum entangled in a very specific way, linked to the Prime event. Every living thing on Earth is connected, through time and space by quantum entanglement, to the Prime. It’s like we’re all plugged into it by an invisible extension cord. Do you see now why finding and protecting the Prime source is so important?”