Chapter Fourteen

1960/Venice

June 23rd. 1960. Ancient Era

Venice. Italy.

Carl Scott bit his bottom lip, with an expression that seemed to have aged him a couple of decades in a matter of hours.

He was sweating profusely and his new cream-colored shirt, which matched his pants, was slightly soaked in the back, giving him an unpleasant feeling. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, and protected himself from the sun with a white hat.

"Why couldn't we meet somewhere else?" he asked, wearily.

"You're asking me? I wasn't the one who came up with the idea," Jack replied, with a smirk as he chewed on a toothpick.

Jack could really pass for a tourist on the spot. He was wearing shorts, sandals and a turkish-colored shirt with some of the buttons undone. Without pausing, he looked back. "If you're feeling hot, what about our friend here," he asked, turning around. "You don't feel hot, Mr. Ishida?"

"I'm getting cooked," said a voice in a dry tone.

The two were accompanied by a Japanese man, dressed in an all-black suit. He had a handsome face and his hair was combed back with hair gel. Still, beads of sweat beaded Ishida Yanagida's pale forehead. It was the first time Scott had seen him in person, but Jack had talked about him enough in the past months.

All three carried black briefcases with them.

Carl Scott felt that his briefcase weighed a ton, even though it was rather light. He sighed in disgust and with his free hand took off his glasses, which he put in one of his pants pockets.

The summer was really humid and heavy that year in Venice. There had been more precipitation than usual, which was worse around midday, where the sun was so punishing with evaporation that it seemed to have turned the whole city into a kind of open-air sauna. Although, that didn't seem to stop the tides of tourists in the place, which made the three feel as if they had stepped into a can of sardines.

Carl Scott looked at Jack and sighed, then shook his head.

It had been months since they had met. And even though they were working together, that didn't take away the strange feeling that he still didn't know everything about Jack. Even though, every few months, they changed identities moving between countries, Scott couldn't help but feel that strangeness around him.

It had already been a miracle that the Agency hadn't opened an investigation on Scott, when Jack appeared out of nowhere in Tokyo, summoning him to the Ichigaya Intelligence Center. But it seemed more stranger to Scott, when the Agency itself was in charge of putting Jack's papers in order.

The day they met, after he told Scott his strange story, Jack gave him an extra message, which was to reach a certain person in California. Whatever the meaning of the words Scott sent, it turned out that within three days Jack was released from the custody of the Japanese Police.

What was more, Scott had received orders from Langley to continue his work, but this time with the mysterious subject. From the last days of December until now, the two of them became a sort of a team, traveling in different parts of the world.

Making noise, Jack called it.

Touring countries, looking for components, making links. Jack seemed to be a fountain of knowledge and a trickster who was very good at persuading people, not to mention his eccentricities. On one occasion, he had woken Scott up by throwing a battery of firecrackers into his room. That time Scott had to apologize to the hotel management for firing his service weapon, in fright because he thought they were under attack.

But at least, now there was a change in Carl Scott status within the Agency. Out of nowhere, he had gone from being an analyst to a clandestine agent. A spy. He was moving fast with that guy at his side, there was no denying that.

The truth is that Carl Scott didn't seem to have to be there, except to save him from getting into trouble. In just a few months they had been to more than ten different countries. The Agency seemed really interested in Jack, as they had him write constant reports of their activities. He couldn't blame them, anyone would be suspicious of such a character, but Carl Scott couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity for some reason. Besides, he didn't seem to want to talk about his past.

The missions, that both were carrying out, had to be kept under strict secrecy, and it seemed that only a handful of people in the Agency knew what it was all about. Those who also provided them with the funds, so that both could move with some freedom in their travels.

The missions they both carried out were, to say the least, worthy of appearing in the pulp magazines Carl Scott remembered reading as a child. He had never been particularly interested in subjects such as archeology or relics, but the truth was that many of those missions were aimed at recovering certain artifacts, of which only Jack had any idea where they were. Although the latter was not always accurate, and on more than one occasion both had fled without being able to carry out their mission.

A pulley mechanism lost in Siberia, a strange tube lost in a forgotten small town in Australia, a series of bronze plates in a Nepalese Buddhist temple and a pair of crystal glasses from a tomb in Tanzania. These were some of the artifacts they had been recovering.

As far as Carl Scott knew, it was all for building something. If what Jack had told him was true, it was all part of the plan and because of the Agency's interest in Jack, Carl Scott had no reason to doubt it.

However, what Carl Scott had realized was that the world was much stranger than he had thought he understood.

From the feys he had already heard about, to stranger things had appeared before his eyes in the last few months. He saw the world in a new way, though he didn't know if he was happy about it. These were strange days for him.

Whatever it was, he had to continue his mission together with Jack and for the rest he would not have to worry. However long it all lasted, perhaps in the future it would be nothing more than an anecdote to tell his grandchildren. Although due to the secrecy agreement he doubted that anything would ever come out of his lips about it all.

Carl Scott decided not to worry about it anymore, at least for the time being.

And so, they had arrived in Venice.

They had arrived at Marco Polo International Airport in the morning, and had to wait for a couple of hours while the flight that would bring Ishida Yanagida arrived.

It had taken them some time, but they had finally arrived at the agreed meeting place.

They passed the Palazzo Ducale and crossed the Ponte della Plagia, dodging a crowd of tourists with cameras. While to the right rested some gondolas, bobbing on the water.

"That's it," Jack said, pointing ahead.

The place they were headed for was a café, located about fifty meters from them, called Bar Dandeli, located inside a luxury hotel. It had a few tables outside with umbrellas, that were barely occupied. But inside it was quite busy.

If Scott expected to be in the shade inside, he was wrong. Because the people waiting for them waved to them from one of the tables outside. At least the umbrella was something. But Scott stopped and looked at Jack in disbelief.

"You never told me he was a priest."

"More strange things have been seen."

No, I don't think so..., Scott thought.

The people waiting for them were, in fact, a jovial-looking priest, who must have been in his early forties, along with another man in a short-sleeved plaid shirt, and a bushy mustache that Scott thought looked like a hairy caterpillar, because it moved over his upper lip as if it had a life of its own.

"Seems like it's been years since the last time," Jack said, greeting the priest with a friendly handshake.

"Just some months, son," the priest said, in English with a clear Italian accent.

"Bah, no son. You know I don't like it," then he turned to his two companions. "Father Verneti, this is Mr. Carl Scott and I believe you have already met Mr. Yanagida."

"It's a pleasure, Mr. Scott," Verneti said greeting him and turned to see Ishida Yanagida. "It's good to see you again, Mr. Yanagida."

Ishida simply saluted with a bow. "Same to you, father. Doctor DiMati, it's good to see you again."

DiMati, the man with the bushy mustache, saluted as well, but either the heat had him too overwhelmed, or he was simply too comfortable sitting in his chair, as he barely had the strength to reach out his hand.

After the protocol exchange the newcomers ordered a cool drink, while they got ready for the business that had brought them together that day.

"So you were Pierson's companions? I mean when he was arrested in Tokyo," Scott asked. The priest and DiMati looked at Jack quizzically.

"Yes, I told him Zegrus was just a fake last name," Jack nodded.

"Pierson? Then is your real last name?" Verneti asked.

"You could say that it is. I'm already dead, to the world anyway. I have to thank the Royal Agency of Intelligence for at least providing me with some papers, which allow me to move around freely enough."

"So, is what you told us about your death, real? That you blow up yourself?" Verneti asked.

"It wasn't like that, it was an experiment. But, as you can see, I'm quite alive." Jack drew a sort of cynical smile on his face, and gave Scott a sidelong glance.

What do you mean you blew yourself up? Scott thought, looking suspiciously at Jack

The truth was, on one of the trips they had made to the United States, they had passed by the Agency's base in California. That had been the only occasion, where Carl Scott had seen Jack show an emotion. And that was when he asked to Carl Scott go with him to visit the JPL facilities. A place they did not enter, because at the last minute Jack did not want to go in. And he was just content to watch the place from the outside, although it was obvious that he was having emotions at that moment. Carl Scott didn't ask him why, and Jack didn't tell him either.

"I still think I owe you an apology for what happened in Tokyo," Father Verneti said to Jack.

"Don't worry about. It was for the best. After Ishida gave me the money to travel to Europe, to meet you, my goal was for us to meet Mr. Scott, the one here. This couldn't be possible if we didn't have extra help from the RAI, and the DoD."

"Wait a minute. Are you going to tell me you were planning on getting arrested?" Scott asked Jack, incredulously.

"Of course. Dr. DiMati had ties in the past to Russia, the last thing we needed was for him to be arrested in Tokyo for inquiries. I already had the money Ishida gave me to move through Europe, which was going to be suspicious, with the fake passport I entered the country with. I was simply the decoy so, that the two of them could contact the Yanagida family without any problems."

Verneti took the floor and explained. "I had already heard about the relics and jewelry missing in World War II so, if I was correct, the likelihood of finding the Yanagida family dagger in Italy had several probabilities. To find the dagger was to prove the goodwill, to have Satou Nobuyama's research and the stone at our disposal."

Scott looked at Ishida. "You really gave him all that money to move around Europe, without any problems? It was a small fortune and, on top of that, it was left in the hands of the police."

"Mr. Pierson made me ten times that, on the second day he arrived, and several times that in the days that followed."

"How's that?" DiMati asked, chuckling.

"He guesses horse racing numbers."

Scott stared at Jack.

"Anyway. I think we'd better get down to business. You never know what might happen in this kind of business," Ishida pointed out, looking around.

"I'm sorry, but no one has yet explained to me the reason we had to come to Venice just today, we were supposed to meet next week."

"Just a convenient vacation spot, and to make our exchange out of our points of origin. It was better to do it unexpectedly, in case someone was following us," Ishida explained.

"As I said, Mr. Scott, last year we met Mr. Zegrus. Sorry, Pierson. It was at the end of September, just a few days before he was apprehended in Tokyo, and he told us about his plan. Which, as far as we can see, everything he's told us is correct so far."

"Plan?"

No matter how he looked at it, since the day he had met Jack, Carl Scott's life had changed. If what he had told him was true.…

"We are making history, Mr. Scott." Verneti took out a briefcase he had kept hidden under the table, and passed it to Ishida. Ishida looked at the priest and Verneti nodded gravely. "It took us some time, but we got it a couple of weeks ago. That's why we contacted you."

Ishida accepted it, and opened it. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw the contents. Scott looked at it and saw that it was some sort of richly decorated dagger, with a guard and scabbard inlaid with what appeared to be jade. Ishida pursed his lips and took it, checking it several times and pulled it out of the scabbard, to look at the blade that seemed to have something written on it, that Scott couldn't quite make out. That object had nothing to do with the search that Scott and Jack were carrying out, but even so, thanks to that object, something else had been accomplished.

"This dagger has been in my family for three hundred years," Ishida explained to Scott and Jack.

"It was among some of the belongings left behind during the passage through Italy of some soldiers," Verneti expounded.

"The rat route..." mused Scott.

"No one is blameless during a period of war. I suppose neither are you, with the operation to get scientists to America to help in the space race against the Communists," Verneti replied, arching an eyebrow.

"The dagger disappeared in 1944, by a traitor to the family, who was in Germany during the last days of the war and then fled. That explains how it ended up in Italy. Anyway, it's good to have it back in my family. I thank you, Father Verneti."

Ishida closed the briefcase and, setting it aside, passed his own briefcase to the priest. He opened it carefully, and there, resting in a specially made case, rested a dark, crystalline-looking stone, with a straighter edge.

"Here's our little girl," DiMati said, peering into the case.

"One part at least. Please take care of it," Ishida said.

"I will. I promise you, young man," Verneti nodded and closed the briefcase. "And the other part?"

Jack gave Scott a sidelong to his briefcase. "It will go with us."

"So, your people have their own project for the second half?"

"Yeah, we'll at least give it a shot. Our project is a little different from yours. We are not looking for immediate results."

"Nothing assures that we will have immediate results either," Verneti shrugged.

"Well, we'll have to wait almost two decades for some progress," Jack admitted.

"If what Mr. Pierson has said is true, then this is the right thing to do, and what my uncle would expect. The technology of his time made it impossible, but now, you can probably get results faster," Ishida said, turning to DiMati.

"That's what we expect and hope for, young man."

"It's what we all hope for," Jack agreed, and then looked at Verneti. "What are the Vatican's views on this investigation?" he asked.

"There are some enthusiasts but, honestly, I think they expect too much."

"What do you mean?" Ishida asked.

Di Mati laughed. "There are some who believe that our little project will be able to see into the past up to the time when the Common Era began."

"Excuse me?" Jack asked, incredulous.

"I've tried to explain, but I think some people expect too much of this," Verneti smiled and looked at Ishida. "When we were in Tokyo, I spent days studying your uncle's papers. And if what he thought is correct, then the stone could only connect to times, when the stone itself has been there. He found the stones in 1880 so, if what he thought, and the visions he had were correct, then it could only mean that the stones serve as a conduit in time, to a time when the stones have been."

Carl Scott had been hearing a lot of strange things for months, but they had finally come to the point he discussed during their first conversation with Jack in Ichigaya. If what he had told him that time was true. Then it was all about something both fantastic and terrifying at the same time.

"What do you mean by a conduit?" Scott asked. "Forgive my ignorance, but I want to hear it from you being a priest. Is it true what you are planning?"

Verneti and DiMati smiled and the priest was the first to begin.

"You see, I'm not sure if you know this. But I teach a professorship in ancient pre-polyphonic music. Basically it is the study of the earliest attempts at music of our civilization. But it also encompasses certain aspects of instrumental music as well."

Jack had told him that Verneti was certainly a professor, and that he had ties to the Catholic universities in Rome.

"Jack told me something," Scott admitted. But he never told me he was a priest.

"If I'm honest with you, when I was a kid I was always attracted to music. But for other reasons. Besides my fascination with harmony, and how music can influence certain behaviors in human beings, one aspect that always interested me was the concept of the ancient magicians and alchemists, that one of the Music of the Spheres."

The truth was that for Scott the term didn't mean anything, but his face must have shown that he didn't quite understand what he was referring to.

DiMati took a sip of his drink, much of which was absorbed by his living mustache, and explained. "The basic concept is that everything in the universe is governed by harmony. The planets, the stars, the distances between them. The macrocosm is a mirror of the microcosm and vice versa. Everything is connected, by a kind of harmony that, if it were to be understood, would be like finding the unifying theory of physics. Music, after all, is a mathematical language as well. Many alchemists went crazy looking for it, and there were real treatises that tried to find it, but little or nothing concrete. Even the Magus Pope, Sylvester II, even had among the people around him alchemists interested in it, in addition to the automata."

"I see..." nodded Scott. "Interesting." Popes in ancient times flirted with magic? That was something he hadn't heard in the catechism classes his mother sent him to when he was little.

"If you want, imagine it this way. Our solar system would be a symphony orchestra where the sun is in turn the director and also someone on the music team."

"…"

"Well imagine it with rock. I guess you like Rock&Roll? Imagine all the planets in the solar system as if they were part of a band where each one plays a different instrument. Each with different frequencies and harmonies. It's a crude example but it works. But imagine it on a larger scale now. Include, star clusters, galaxies. The basic theory is that they are all somehow connected to form a symphony that expresses the beauty and order in the cosmos."

"Doesn't that go against entropy?"

"No. On the contrary. Entropy always seeks to homogenize a system," DiMati said with a shrug.

"Anyway," Verneti continued. "That was one of the reasons, I began my studies in music. Eventually, though, I put it aside, to focus more on the antiquity of early melodies. As I studied more and more, and with the development of concepts such as slower sound propagation in hyperdimensional geometry spaces, where the fourth dimension intervenes, I was led to wonder exactly what would happen if we could capture the sound of the past, or perhaps the future."

"Basically... hear audio from another time?"

"It's not such a weird concept." DiMati took the floor, crossing her arms. "The first attempts at chronocameras began in Edison's time. Not to mention retrocognition. And, in the area of capturing voices, for some years now there have been attempts to establish a discipline that supposedly captures voices of deceased persons, such as instrumental psychophonics for capturing metaphonies."

"Yes." continued Verneti. "Specifically, in my area, I experimented for several years with various types of machines, that would allow me to hear voices from the past but, unfortunately, I got very few results. I knew I might be right so, I kept experimenting with designs for a phonographic oscillograph. One of the ideas that haunted me was, what kind of sounds I could pick up if I got results? It would have to be sounds from the place where I put the machine. But I still got very poor results, although I did find that propagation through a liquid medium gave better results, albeit in such a short time that it could barely be measured in less than a second. It was not unlike when we see lightning and then hear thunder. But, in the reverse direction, there were two occasions where we picked up a sound before the cause that generated it occurred."

Bullshit, Scott thought, arching an eyebrow. That last part he had understood perfectly. If what the priest was saying was true, it was like discovering something that had the arrow of time reversed. Jack glanced sideways at him, knowing he understood that.

"Anyway," Verneti continued. "Then, I met Dr. DiMati, who is an expert in physics and works with electronics."

"Yes, well. I'm interested in the project, but seen from another point of view."

If what Verneti was saying could have any semblance of reality, someone with credentials closer to the hard sciences had to have some reason to go along with it.

"Which one would that be?" Scott asked, interested.

"The one of the image. Capturing light emissions from a given point in time. I should clarify that I'm talking about almost infinitesimal distances. Basically, a moment in the past that happened nothing ago."

"Seeing into the past, capturing positrons?" Ishida asked.

"Those are pretty bold, but interesting postulates. Or into the future. But, as I told you, they are very small intervals of time."

"Like a time machine?" Scott ventured.

"More like a time observer," DiMati pointed out.

"We called it a Chronovisor," Verneti said.

"Chronovisor?"

"Yes, you see. We measure time with clocks, or make forecasts of what we'll do in an hour, or a few days. But time is a concept. In physics, the direction of time is somewhat different. What would happen for an observer outside the three dimensions we move in? Perhaps, time would be different for that observer. A machine has limitations only in the technology applied but, who knows, maybe what we're doing here is the kickoff for something much bigger in the future, that can actually capture images and sound from both. The past and the future."

DiMati finally leaned forward and explained, "We, humans, move in the direction towards the future, and we are limited by our own biology. But, a machine is different. If we apply concepts, like the one proposed by Funnymann and Wheiler, about perhaps electrons and positrons being the same, but moving in different time directions, we could be on the doorstep of deciphering the true meaning of time."

"… and the stones would help with that?"

"Yes. Many of the ideas that Satou Nobuyama wrote about time, are incredibly interesting and tie in with ideas that we have. Not to mention, the machine designs in his schematics. These are things that are decades, or a hundred years away, from being able to build something like that, because it requires an enormous amount of energy. Although, I suppose if like Jack said the U.S. DoD is interested in this, it's because they too have seen that they can profit from something." Verneti said, smiling.

"I did the same thing Satou Nobuyama did," continued DiMati, "of putting the two stones together, as he recounts in his diary, and I must say that nothing happened. It is not that I am suspicious. There are too many parts of it that are too serious, to think that they were mere hallucinations. It's just that maybe there is something in the stones that makes them work the same way he put in his diary. If what he proposed in his diaries was true, then the stones are something that have a relationship to the concept of time, and the so called tokihedron and the Savitronic Cycle."

Toki-what and the Savit-who? Scott thought.

"It's a pity he is no longer here, to shed more light on the matter."

"May I ask a question?" Jack asked.

"Yes, please," Verneti invited.

"Why did the Vatican fund the research?"

"They have their reasons. I've already stated my terms, and the limitations I'm going to get with my research. From a certain sector there is an interest that I can find out the whereabouts of certain objects that were lost in the Second War, but apparently they don't quite understand that, if what we are looking for here is correct, then the stones could only connect us to times when the object has been present. It is not as if it could point to a specific moment in time, and tell us what happened at that time. And in the remote case that that would be possible, I have serious doubts that the human mind would be able to process all the information. One cannot forget concepts such as the psychological arrow of time and the second law of thermodynamics, even though they are probabilistic concepts".

For a priest, Verneti was well versed in the physical sciences, Scott thought. Although he was unaware that there were branches of study in music such as acoustical physics that dealt with the study of effects such as sound propagation.

"Can I ask a question now?" asked DiMati, looking at Jack.

"Shoot."

"What did you mean you couldn't get results for another twenty years?"

"Just a forecast. You said it yourselves. Our technology is better than it was a couple of decades ago, but we still have a lot of limitations."

"You're trying to build a real time machine on the other side of the pond?"

"Who would want a time machine, when you can simply observe the future?" asked Jack, giving a chuckle and glanced sideways at Scott.

"Or the past," DiMati said, and pulled a cigarette from his tobacco holder and lit it.

At that moment, the smile on Jack's face wiped off, and he made a frightened face that only Scott could see for a split second. He had already realized that for some reason Jack seemed to hate cigarettes.

"We are but men sitting in a cave trying to make meaning out of the shadows we see reflected in the rock walls. In a time of major technological advances we tend to run into social decline. Tell me if that is not proof that the universe itself conspires," DiMati said philosophically.

Carl Scott asked DiMati for a cigarette and lit it. He wasn't much of a smoker but he couldn't deny that it amused him to see Jack nervous.

"Although it is also true that in times of war or disaster, ironically, science often makes progress," Ishida argued.

"No, it's simply that we are too dumb and never learn from past mistakes," Jack said warily, looking at the cigarette in DiMati's mouth and then looked at Scott, with his cigarette between his fingers.

Scott felt he was being watched and looked at him as well. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing...," Jack said, wrinkling his lips.