Old Earth (2 page)

Water slowly began to rise up the neck. This was not surprising. He had done this much before. Beyond the boulder is where he would truly test his hypothesis.

He chronicled his experiment in a journal, including a sketch of the apparatus and the high point of the water.

After carefully wrapping and returning everything to his satchel, with his bare hands he began to dig at the spot where the cooler air flowed to the outside. Dry dirt fell away around the larger obstruction. After thirty exhausting minutes, he’d cleared an opening around the boulder and was able to crawl forward.

Now he lit a bronze olive oil lamp designed for him by a friend from Firenze—artist and engineer, Bernardo Buontalenti.

The lamp housed a well that would provide fuel for many hours. Its forward-facing high lip shielded the flame from any breeze.

The professor strapped his satchel to his feet and crawled past the big rock. He pushed the lamp forward, looking above and ahead, hoping that the opening he had created would widen. It did.

He wriggled some fifteen body lengths forward and was relieved when he could rise up on all fours. Soon he was able to crouch.

The air was getting cooler, even damp. He decided to take another reading, repeating the process, warming the tube, turning it over and inserting it through the cork and into the cruet. This time he noted that the liquid only rose to roughly three-quarters its previous height.

The scientist was pleased. His apparatus affirmed his theory. The warmer it was, the higher the water would rise. The reverse was true with the cold. He was able to gauge temperature.

Now to venture farther.

Twenty paces beyond he could walk upright. Another thirty paces, and feeling colder himself, he repeated the experiment. The water rose to only half the height of the first reading. Satisfied, he was ready to return to daylight and warmth, however he was also intrigued by the remarkable rock formations in the cave. He felt compelled to continue. The professor walked for two more minutes. That’s when he reached the fork.

He automatically took the left spur. Well into this new tunnel, he heard the echo of his footsteps. The walls had widened well beyond arm’s length. He lit a second oil lamp. His eyes slowly adjusted to the additional light.

“My God!” he exclaimed. This wasn’t the gate to hell. He felt as if he’d just been allowed to gaze upon heaven itself.

How could such beauty exist
? he thought
. What words could describe it?
Yet for all the marvels before him, he pressed onward through a grotto so vast that Italy’s most magnificent cathedrals might fit within. There were fanciful crystalline hanging rock formations in brilliant shades of green, blue, yellow and orange that resembled icicles kissing their own reflections rising from the cavern floor.

He stopped to document his impressions as best he could, describing the glorious world he had entered. The professor wrote about a dark blue lake, undisturbed by rocks that cut through the surface, and a whimsical landscape that seemed shaped by the Almighty himself

He no longer felt the cold.
What lay ahead?
With no worry that his lamps would immediately run out, he continued for what seemed an eternity. In some respects it was. For deep in the cavern he saw another passageway that opened into a space more amazing than the last.

Though he couldn’t have realized it, this was a defining moment in time. His scientific curiosity now controlled his feet. He inched forward, raising the lamp in his left hand high overhead.

He was a brilliant man, but suddenly he felt small, insignificant. He’d come to the cave to test his heat doctrine suppositions. Now, he struggled for the meaning of things far greater.

This day changed the course of his research. The experience led him to raise infinite questions about how and why things occurred, not only underground, but high above.

The professor from Pisa returned with readings from his
thermoscope
which many would credit him for inventing. But there was much more at work in his mind and his mind’s eye; secrets that set the course for what would become a challenging and contentious life for Galileo Galilei.

P
ART
O
NE

One

LONDON, ENGLAND
PRESENT DAY
EARLY SPRING

“Secretum,”
the old man declared.

Martin Gruber lived a life of secrecy, following the path of his predecessor and those in the same position generations and centuries before. Now, after four decades, it was close to the time to pass the secrets on and relinquish the tremendous responsibility.

“
Secretum,
” he stated again.

Colin Kavanaugh listened as he knew he should. This lecture, like all of Gruber’s, was conveyed with deliberate intent behind closed doors in the headquarters of
Voyages
, the most well-respected travel magazine in the world. Gruber didn’t pause for comment or debate. It was always a diatribe, covering old ground and revealing new ideas. Every word had meaning, even those unsaid between the ellipses.

“Trust no one. Know everything. Have eyes and ears around the world. Put nothing in writing—ever. But read into everything. Follow the leads, yet never leave tracks. Don’t allow anyone into your world, but enter everyone else’s.”

The octogenarian publisher was close to believing that Kavanaugh would make a worthy heir apparent. He was a trusted disciple, though egocentric.
Perhaps
, Gruber thought,
that’s what the times demanded
.

“Be guided by the undying belief that
secretum
is what you must live by.
Secrecy.
Faithfully, unquestioningly, and with true devotion of purpose. Your life and your life’s work will be shrouded in secrecy.”

“Yes, sir, I understand.” Kavanaugh relished the day he’d succeed the old man.

“But enough of my pontificating,” Gruber said, changing both the subject and mood. “How about lunch?”

“I was hoping you’d ask.”

“Good. Today, I have an exquisite mousse foie gràs paired with a 2010 Côte de Brouilly Gamay.”

“From our May issue,” Kavanaugh remarked.

“Yes indeed. Wonderful article and the winery was most appreciative. They sent us a case. I’ve been anxious to try it with you.”

Gruber pressed a button on his phone. “Ms. Dunbar, we’re ready. You may send in our delights.”

“Certainly, Mr. Gruber.”

The voice was obedient and respectful. Kavanaugh had never heard anything but proper business etiquette from Gruber’s secretary. Felicia Dunbar was efficient, but not someone he could ultimately live with after he transitioned into the job. Of course, he kept that to himself.

Such was the world that would soon be Colin Kavanaugh’s. Aristocratic, formal, civilized. He was eager to publicly helm
Voyages
, reinventing the print and online magazine for younger travel demos. More than that, he believed he was ready to take on the additional burden. The private job. The one that demanded age-old
secretum.

• • •

Martin Gruber grew up in England, raised to honor civility, duty, and religion. He would be buried in his freshly pressed Brooks Brothers three-piece suit, his Oxford shirt crisply starched, and his hand-made Stefano Bemer shoes polished to a mirror-like finish. All his earthly needs would be put in order. What he didn’t arrange ahead of time, Felicia Dunbar would complete.

The doctors told him he had two to three months. Gruber took out his pocket watch, wound it in the company of the younger editor of
Voyages
, believing that his physicians didn’t know a damned thing.

His thin gray hair and moustache were accented by large black glasses. Although he’d lost a few inches off his former five feet ten inch self, he never added them to his thirty-two inch waist. On the outside Martin Gruber did everything possible to appear fit. Inside, the cancer was progressing. So, if it were a matter of only months, Gruber was going to listen to his cravings because the doctors had nothing interesting to tell him.

“I shall finally indulge in all temptations and excesses we’ve recommended for our readers, my boy.”

Kavanaugh was hardly a boy. Moreover, at forty-four, he was fully nine years older than Gruber was when he assumed the mantle as publisher and
all
that went with it.

Colin Kavanaugh, like Martin Gruber, had studied at King’s College in London, and through a religion and philosophy professor, was encouraged to take a special off-campus curriculum taught by teachers from the Pontifical Scots College in Rome. The lessons were not in the catalogue or even sanctioned by the college. Rather, they were quietly offered on an invitation-only basis at a retreat in Bracciano, a small town thirty kilometers northwest of Rome.

The school itself was founded December 5, 1600 by Pope Clement VIII, principally to provide religious education to young Scotsmen, who could not receive a Catholic education because of the laws against Catholics at home. Other than the two times it was shut down—when the French invaded Rome in 1798 and during World War II—it has remained a well-respected institution, renowned for sending priests to Scotland.

However, the special, private program, which carried no course credit or affiliation, provided open-air education in a very closed environment.
Secretum
. It offered a way to screen for potential candidates who could answer a most important calling.

Colin Kavanaugh went to the head of the class. He was diligent, determined, and above all else, someone who exhibited true courage of his convictions. It brought him to the attention of people he’d never met.

Now twenty-two years later, he sat with his boss and mentor, enduring what he hoped would be one of the last of Gruber’s harangues and sharing one of the last of his boring meals.

Kavanaugh was six feet tall, bald, trim, and more in tune with today than Gruber’s fascination with antiquity. Of course, that would change, too. As publisher, he would have to adjust his habits somewhat, review the worthiness of his friends, and take his obligations to heart. Colin Kavanaugh was still learning what was important and what wasn’t, what was worthy of further review and what was destined for the shredder. There was so much to figure out. But he was hungry to take over. Kavanaugh was determined to further contemporize and upgrade the publication and leave
Condé Nast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler
and
Food and Wine
irrelevant in the marketplace. He had the guts and intellect to do it. He loved traveling, spoke four languages, and summered in Rome, wrapping himself in the traditions and rituals.

Indeed, the Catholic Church exerted a strong influence over Kavanaugh. Early on, his mother had hoped he would become a priest. His father knew otherwise. Colin was devout on Sundays, but he did love his Saturday nights. His annual visits to Rome brought him rewards of both.

However, now Colin Kavanaugh was thinking less of his ongoing affairs and more about the powerful job he would inherit. His mind went back eighteen months to when Martin Gruber told him his plan.

“So, what do you think, my boy?” Gruber had asked across the desk.

“Like I’ve been hand-picked by God for the best job.”

He could still hear Gruber’s laugh. It was a hearty, big laugh. Then it abruptly stopped. With chilling authority came a declaration that Colin Kavanaugh only recently understood.

“Oh, not by God. And it’s far from the best job. But make no mistake, you should consider it the most important job in the world.”

Two

SPRING 1755
ALTAY MOUNTAINS
SOUTHERN SIBERIA, RUSSIA

Close to Russia’s border with Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan, a rock face rises thirty meters above the Anuy River. This by itself is not unusual. But when the light hits the base correctly, an opening to a cave becomes visible. Today, it is known as Denisova. It contains more history than has ever been reported.

The name is owed to a hermit who lived there in the eighteenth century. Dionisij, or the more anglicized
Denis,
was something of a character. He rarely came out of the shadows, but those who saw him would never forget. He had long, scraggly hair and a filthy, knotted beard. The river provided his food supply, his bath and his toilet, though he fished more than he bathed.

Prior to Dionisij’s time, Neolithic herdsmen huddled within the cave, bracing themselves against the cruel Siberian winters, unchanged for thousands of years. They left drawings, evidence that they were there and what they experienced.

Dionisij inhabited the cave’s main chamber, away from the wind. It offered him some comfort and a spiritual sense, for atop the high arched ceiling was an opening that shot seemingly holy shafts of sunlight downward.

After his third winter, Dionisij grew tired of digging through the river ice that was the thickness of two hands. He decided to become more of a hunter than a fisherman. He sharpened his spears as his ancient ancestors had and sat in wait within his lair.

Days and nights went by with no red meat in sight except for a cold fox that was attracted by his fire. It came closer; then, sensing danger, it left. A squirrel tested the opening, but it too was skittish. Finally, a rabbit, brave enough to explore the source of the light and the warmth, ventured further. This would be his dinner.

However, Dionisij’s throw went wide. The rabbit dodged, scurried past him and ran deeper into the cave.

Dionisij’s hunger fed his quest. He lit a torch from his fire and followed the rabbit. He had no frame of reference of how far he walked, but he was captivated by what he saw.

First, staggering rock formations. Then a lake, a magnificent lake seemingly with no end. He touched the water. It was warm as if God himself had breathed on it.

The hermit continued, forgetting his hunger pangs. He came to another tunnel. It was tight, but navigable.
Why hadn’t I explored more before?
the hermit wondered.