The Festival of Bones: Mythworld Book One (15 page)

“I told him you were the Rector of the University,” said Michael with a broad smile. “Sometimes it helps to have influential friends.”

Galen looked at Michael in surprise, then at Jude, who was staring absently out the window. Was the mistake intentional? Had Jude said something about the address on his invitation, or was it just an exaggeration to nudge the driver?

He decided that was it—there was no way for Michael to know of his plans, and, he admitted with an inward smile, Rector did sound more impressive than Vice-Rector.

Michael touched him on the shoulder. “Hey—are you okay?”

“He may be having trouble breathing,” Jude said neutrally, and Galen suddenly realized he’d absentmindedly been fingering the scar on his throat.

Dropping his hand, he shook his head. “No—I’ll be fine. It’s not the run. It’s more the absinthe.”

“Yeah,” said Michael rubbing his temples. “If I’d have had any idea we’d be jogging across the city, I’d have stuck to the creme soda.”

Galen turned to Jude, his arms crossed authoritatively. “I think we’ve evaded our pursuers—we have a few minutes, and I want to know exactly what has happened here, or I’m going to summon the authorities as soon as the bus stops.”

Completely untroubled by the request, Jude relaxed in the seat across from the academics and crossed his legs. “What would you like to know?”

“The trepanning,” said Galen. “Start there.”

“Yeah,” said Michael, hoping his bulk made him as imposing as the image Galen seemed to project so easily. “Start there.”

“Fine,” said Jude. “Have either of you ever heard of a man named Phineas Gage?”

Blank looks from both men. They didn’t know the name.

“One morning in September, in the year 1843, Gage, who was a construction foreman for a railroad, was preparing a powder charge to blast away bedrock when it accidentally exploded, sending a three-and-a-half foot iron tamping bar straight through the front of his skull.

“Rather than be instantly killed, as a couple of thousand years of Barbarian research has demonstrated is the usual result of driving a steel implement through one’s skull, Gage survived, and lived for more than a decade longer. But, he was not the man he was—his personality had been irrevocably changed.

“Prior to the accident, he had been a respected, trusted, friendly, and capable man; afterwards, he became crass, antisocial, mean-tempered, filthy, and a terrible liar.”

“Not to question the comparison,” said Michael, “but if I’d had an accident like that, I rather think I’d be a little out of sorts myself.”

“Out of sorts was to be expected,” Jude replied, “but in Gage’s case, it seemed to be a complete severing of the parts of his brain which controlled morals and ethics.”

“I’m starting to grow familiar with conditions of that sort,” Galen said harshly. “What does that have to do with trepanning?”

“Well, trepanning is just a more precise form of what happened to Gage,” Jude explained. “Generally, trepanning stops before the brain is penetrated, but I’ve always thought that’s a little flaky, and not as effective as actually entering a lobe.”

“Where did you learn the practice?” Michael asked. “At Meru?”

“Yes—the U’s were particularly adept at it. Melvin let them practice on him all the time.”

“And your point in doing this to a group of your own students?” Galen fumed. “Were you trying to turn them into bad-tempered liars?”

Ignoring the barbed remark, Jude continued. “There was another aspect to Gage’s transformation that was largely unknown. About three years after the accident, Gage disappeared for several days. He was found about six miles outside of Moab, Utah, where he had been digging a great pit. When he was eventually questioned several weeks later, he claimed that he was digging to China.”

“Why did it take several weeks to question him?” Michael asked.

“Because,” said Jude, “when he was found, he was speaking a language no one understood, and it took the good fortune of encountering a passing Hopi Indian to even begin a translation.”

“He was speaking Hopi?”

“No—he was speaking
Anasazi
,” said Jude. “A language no longer spoken because the last peoples who spoke it disappeared more than six hundred years ago.”

“Anasazi?” Galen asked, confused. “I’m afraid I don’t know the tribe.”

“No surprise there,” said Jude. “Don’t take offense,” he added quickly as a scowl crossed Galen’s features. “Not many would know of them. ‘Anasazi’ is actually a Navajo word meaning ‘Ancient Ones’. They supposedly came into their own as a culture around 6000 B.C., and were pretty stable as far as Indian cultures go. They fished, farmed, invented canal systems, painted pictures on rocks, and built fairly civilized settlements. Then, around 1300 A.D., they disappeared. Just vanished off the face of the earth.”

“No wonder you’re interested,” said Galen. “You seem to have some experience with vanishing.”

“Some,” Jude admitted.

“What does this have to do with trepanning?” Michael pressed.

“It’s just a theory, mostly,” said Jude, “but the effects deep trepanning had on Melvin was to facilitate his ability to mimic letterforms of various rare languages—all of which he retained.”

“Okay,” said Michael, looking to the front of the bus as it pulled alongside the stop at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, “but that could just as easily be explained as his having an exceptional visual memory.”

“Perhaps,” said Jude, rising to exit the bus, “but then that wouldn’t explain how Melvin managed to acquire a facility for certain letterforms before he ever saw a manuscript in the language.”

* * *

“So,” Michael began as they crossed the avenue to the cathedral, “you were trying to bring out of the students a subconscious facility for language?”

“Something like that,” Jude said, nodding. “Based on Gage, someone who had never learned anything other than English, I concluded that the ability had to be genetic—something akin to racial memory. I also concluded that Melvin’s abilities and Gage’s sudden aptitude for Anasazi were connected by the sole commonality of having had a hole drilled into their heads. So, the next step was to try it out myself. Fortunately,” he finished, grinning, “there are very few things a college student will not do for money.”

“And the man at Obscuro’s show?” Galen said. “What about him?”

“Oh, Bertram? He works for me,” said Jude, grinning broadly at the looks on their faces. “What surprises you? Every good magician worth his hat has a plant in the audience, in the event he gets a tough room. It’s all part of the show, really.”

Michael dropped back as they neared the cathedral and nudged Galen. “Geez,” Michael whispered, “I really, really hope he offers his employees medical coverage.”

“Dental covers it,” Jude said over his shoulder. “It’s really just a matter of how deep you drill.”

* * *

Vienna’s most famous landmark, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, was begun in Romanesque style in 1147 and reconstructed in Gothic style between 1304 and 1450. The church’s southern tower is 450 feet high and dominates the city’s skyline; the more ambitious northern tower, however, was never completed, but was topped off with a dome when a builder working on the tower fell to his death. The prevailing (and more romantic) rumor was that the builder, a young man by the name of Hans, made a pact with the Devil. The arrangement was that if Hans could build the tower on his own within a single year, he would win the hand of his master’s daughter in marriage, and when the task grew difficult and he despaired of prevailing, a stranger offered to help him finish on the condition that he never utter a holy name for the rest of the year. Hans agreed, and things progressed well until the lady who inspired the deal visited the site. Hans called her by name—Maria—which, as the name of the Mother of God, violated his pact. The scaffolding fell, and Hans was killed. The tower stayed as it was, unfinished.

The lesser-known rumor involved the whereabouts of Hans’ master on the day in question, a hammer, and three pins from the scaffold—but it was never verified as fact.

As Michael, Jude, and Galen walked around the cathedral, Michael began to feel as if he were on that scaffolding, and worse, that he himself had pulled the pins. He shook it off and tuned in to Galen and Jude’s conversation.

“What good is it to stop here?” Galen was saying. “Shouldn’t we be going to the police?”

“I thought we could double back to Langbein’s, or perhaps to the University. And as to the police—think about it,” said Jude. “Other than making lots of noise, and illegal entry of Professor Langbein’s residence, they haven’t actually
done
anything.”

“But, won’t the fact they’ve all had holes drilled in their heads at least cause some suspicion?”

“Why? You tried to suspend them last week, and that got put down in a hurry—and besides, I’m the one who started the whole thing, so we’re not likely to get any sympathy.”

As if to punctuate the statement, a loud howling erupted into the air—and it was coming from the street behind them.

Tires squealing, another of the Nightline busses pulled up to the curb they had just left, and sixty students dropped off of the roof and poured out of the doors. Spotting their elusive prey, the howling began anew and they began crossing the street at great speed.

“Shoot,” said Michael. “I forgot all of the students have passes.” He jumped off of the steps, grabbing at Jude and Galen, who seemed on the verge of collapse. “Come
on
—here we go
again
.”

* * *

One thing can be said for the Viennese propensity for adding statuary to their public squares—it provides many opportunities for fugitives to pause and catch their collective breath.

“Hey, you know Mozart is buried here?” Michael whispered from behind a statue of Mozart.

“Be quiet!” Galen hissed from behind his own statue. “Do you want them to find us?”

“Sorry. I just thought you’d be interested.”

“He wasn’t buried here—you’re thinking of the cemetery of St. Marx,” whispered Jude. He was smaller than the others, so he was hiding behind a public water fountain.

“Oh—thanks.”

“Shut
up
!”

Four minutes passed, then five, then six, before the sounds of their seemingly relentless pursuers died away. One by one, the trio stood, stretching cramped and overworked muscles. Michael checked his watch—it was nearing 6 A.M., and the faint cracks of dawn were beginning to show through the cloud cover above and on the horizon. The Michaelerplatz where they had taken refuge was near the northern end of the Hofburg—they had come nearly full circle.

“One thing I still don’t understand,” said Galen. “Why are we being pursued? If they consented to the procedure, then why have they suddenly become this … Pack of animals? And if that big fellow works for you, then why is he chasing us, fangs bared?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” said Jude absently, “and the only explanation I’ve been able to come to is that something new has entered the air, so to speak. When U trepanned Melvin, he could instantly assimilate the language of a new book which had not even made it off of Kailas and into Meru. I think the same thing may be happening here.”

Michael and Galen looked at each other as the spark of an idea fanned into a mutual flame. “The Palimpsest.”

“That’s my thinking, too,” said Jude. “Where is the document, anyway?”

Michael’s first reaction to this was to check his pockets—always a good response when someone asks you where something is, since pockets are a good place to keep things. His next reaction was to chide himself for checking his pockets, since the manuscript was far too large to fit into a pocket. His third reaction came at the same instant Jude and Galen were feeling their first reaction morph from shock into dread, which coincidentally, was the same thing Michael felt just before he blacked out.

The manuscript, the
Prime Edda
, the palimpsest, was gone.

* * *

“Hit him again. Or better yet, let me do it.”

Michael came to as Jude was holding him by the shoulders and tapping him on the cheek. Behind them, Galen was pacing back and forth, fuming.

“I can’t believe it,” the musician spat. “First he spills alcohol all over a priceless …”—he paused to emphasize the word—“… 
priceless
document, an invaluable …” —another pause—“… 
invaluable
manuscript, and he loses it. What were you
thinking
, Langbein? What could you possibly have been thinking?”

“I was thinking the same thing you were, Galen,” Michael retorted. “We were in a bit of a hurry, remember?”

“Do you have any idea at all where you may have lost it?”

“Ah, no, not really,” said Michael. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Okay,” said Jude, assuming control of the situation, “here’s what I think we should do. Whether they’re chasing me out of misplaced anger, or they’re after the book because they’re channeling Norse Gods, any interest they had in you two should be gone if I leave.”

Michael nearly choked—that would be a fine finish to the night. If Jude vanished, then they’d have no evidence that the events of the past several hours had ever happened, never mind that the greatest literary discovery of his career had literally slipped from his grasp.

“I’m not going to vanish,” said Jude. “I’m going to disappear—and I can do that better without the two of you. I think you should take a seat at a coffeehouse and try to regain your strength, while I see what I can do about locating the manuscript. Whatever the result, I promise I’ll return for you before noon. Agreed?”

With a final livid glare at Michael, Galen nodded his assent. He was too tired to make a protest, even if he had a better plan, which he didn’t.

Michael wanted to go looking for the book himself, an act of contrition and redemption, but the night had taken its toll on him as well, and he acquiesced.

Cafe Central was minutes away under the soft orange sky; minutes after that, Galen and Michael were seated and starting their first pot of coffee, and Jude was gone.

* * *

At twenty of twelve, after three hours of bleary-eyed glowering and mute silence from Galen, Michael decided to extend an olive branch. “So, uh, got any plans for the day?”