Unknown 9

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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  Print ISBN: 978-1-9992297-0-2

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-9992297-1-9

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  First Edition

  To the Quaestors

  Humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality.

  —R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

  FACT

  Ettore Majorana, an Italian physicist born in Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century, was considered by many of his peers to be a genius on the level of Einstein and Newton.

  In 1932, at the age of twenty-six, Ettore proposed a radical theorem to help solve the greatest mystery of modern-day physics, the theory of everything: a universal law that would unite the principle of general relativity with the strange workings of quantum mechanics. To this day, Ettore’s hypothesis has been ignored in favor of competing ideas.

  On the night of March 25, 1938, for reasons unknown, Ettore boarded a ship in Palermo. When the boat arrived in Naples, he was nowhere to be found—and was never seen again.

  A famously reclusive scientist, nearly all of his work remains lost or deliberately hidden, though speculations abound as to the nature of his research and the cause of his disappearance.

  The theory of everything remains unsolved.

  PROLOGUE

  TYRRHENIAN SEA

  PALERMO–NAPLES ROUTE

  March 1938

  Unused to the roll of the open sea, Ettore Majorana kept losing his footing as he hefted the leather satchel across the upper deck of the mail boat. Ettore was a theoretical physicist, not a sailor. Nor did he travel well. Adding to his disorientation, the ship at night was very dark, as dark as the Sicilian hilltops upon which he had stargazed as a boy.

  When at last he managed to right himself, he clutched the satchel to his chest as if it were a long-lost child. Brine from the day’s journey coated his tongue and crusted his lips. He had spent the afternoon leaning into the rail, gazing fiercely at the horizon and cringing as each new vessel approached, wondering if they had come for him.

  Using the whisper of red luminescence from the port sidelight, he edged along the deck, all too aware of the restless bulk of the sea at his side. How easy to slip forever into that secret embrace. Inside the pocket of his wool coat, his fingers rubbed against his palm, over and over, a subconscious response to the stress of his decision.

  The scouting journey from Palermo to Naples had revealed the private areas of the ship at night, invisible to the pilothouse and cabin windows. No one else was about. It was just Ettore, the salt and the sea, the unblinking cosmic eye of whoever or whatever had put the universe into motion—and the device in his satchel, built to probe the nature of that celestial machine.

  Though built by a select group of scientists and engineers from the Society—Nikola Tesla himself had lent a hand—the device was conceived and designed by Ettore. Maybe now the world, which had so long ignored his theorems, would listen.

  Or maybe other worlds would hear.

  Ettore knelt beside a stack of wooden crates, the high sidewall of the pilothouse at his back. He eased the leather bag to the deck. A chill swept across him, and not just from the icy wind. Not even he understood the full nature of what was about to happen. The math and physics, yes. But the reality?

  That raised the question, of course, as to the nature of reality. Einstein had taken the world through the looking glass and proven how little mankind really knew. Was reality this vast new spectrum of subatomic particles and electromagnetic waves hidden from the human eye—or something even more than that?

  Was the march of human knowledge nearing the end line or just setting out on the journey?

  Or perhaps mankind had seen all this before, eons ago, the knowledge lost in time or buried in the Arctic ice, a doomed cycle of enlightenment and loss.

  That last bit of speculation did not sound as crazy to Ettore as it once would have. Because he had seen things. Objects from the past, in the possession of the Society. Things that made him question the course of human history. Things that had driven him to the limits of his sanity and compelled him to finish the project.

  An icy gust of wind lashed his exposed face. Ettore’s hands trembled so much as he unzipped the bag that he paused to collect himself. He had told the others they could test it first, in a safe house, with their charts and monitors and instruments. Stefan would have been there, of course, in the shadows, slipping an arm across Ettore’s shoulders in the familiar, authoritative way of a master protecting his chattel.

  Yet Ettore had disobeyed them. The blueprint he had given Stefan was misleading, and the very thought of the betrayal caused Ettore’s pulse to hammer against his chest.

  No. I must not turn aside.

  Everyone thought he was weak. Frail and unstable. And perhaps he was. Yet two things drove him to press through his fear and open the satchel, extracting a silver sphere surrounded by a gangly mess of filament wires: desperation, and the one thing in life that moved him above all else, his sole fountain of strength in the face of adversity.

  Curiosity.

  Ettore had an aching desire to know what lay behind it all, to discover what had imagined the beauty of the cosmos, caused the music of the spheres to ring, formed the galaxies into spirals, conceived of genes and chromosomes and neurons, made the numbers align as they do.

  The numbers. It was always the numbers. Speaking to him for as long as he could remember, whispering at the dinner table when he was a child, revealing themselves during his music lessons, demanding his attention. It was as if those arithmetical symbols were not just mental constructs but actual living entities. He did not fully understand it, could not give voice to the feeling. It was simply an itch he had to scratch, a pressure in his skull that threatened to drive him mad if left untended.

  There was a pattern to it all; he could feel it. To everything. And he might have discovered an important piece.

  Soon he would know for sure.

  With his mind on his invention, freed from his constant worry of the people who would surely pursue him to the ends of the earth, his hands ceased to tremble as he untangled the wires—fine quartz string coated with silver—and attached the ends of the electrodes to his body at the twelve meridians. Once finished, he sat cross-legged and held the silver bauble, about the size of a cantaloupe, in his hands. A moment of profound reflection overcame him.

  What would
he see, once it began?

  Would the place Stefan called the Fold reveal itself at last?

  Were Ettore’s calculations correct or the product of a diseased and desperate mind?

  He took a deep breath to exhale his fear. A final glance at the sky revealed a swarm of stars flickering in those inky depths. They appeared so close together, yet an unfathomable distance separated each and every one.

  Achingly alone, yet part of something greater.

  With a serene smile, feeling truly at peace for the first time in his life, Ettore absorbed the sway of the ship as he pressed his fingers into the trigger points of the device.

  Pinpricks of electricity flowed through him, and the silver sphere began to glow.

  PART ONE

  Bologna, Italy

  1

  A serpent with mouths gaping at both ends loomed atop the arch of the portico, carved into centuries-old stone, its belly distended by a globe depicting a flattened distortion of the continents. The portico, one of thousands in the city, heralded the entrance to a lecture hall at the University of Bologna, the oldest institution of higher education in Europe.

  Beneath the carving, Dr. James Corwin, professor emeritus of theoretical physics and astronomy at Duke University, guest lecturer for the week in Bologna, emerged carrying a brown leather briefcase and leaning on a mahogany cane that matched the color of his skin. A group of students and colleagues gathered around him. His lecture on Lorentz transformations and the geometry of space-time had drawn quite the crowd. Bologna was a wonderful city for academics: full of bright and eager students, a distinguished roster of international scholars, and gastronomical delights by which to relish the long sultry evenings. Dr. Corwin loved to discuss the latest theories while lingering in a mouthwatering salumeria, or a wine bar built into a medieval cellar.

  This city, he thought. Its timeless colonnades and courtyards, flowers in the windowsills, families strolling arm in arm. A window to a bygone era.

  The crowd lingered beneath the portico for some time. Eventually his colleagues wandered off, and then the younger professors. A slender postdoc, at least forty years his junior, stepped forward from the remaining students. She wore bangles on her wrist and a sleeveless yellow dress.

  “And what is your opinion?” she asked in that formal lilting accent of the Italian elite. They were debating the merits of string theory versus loop quantum gravity, the two theories with the most promise for marrying relativity with quantum mechanics. Most physicists were fierce proponents of one or the other.

  “Have you not read my papers?” Dr. Corwin said, bemused.

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  She tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ears. Her mousy face possessed a proud, uncompromising intelligence that reminded the professor of Andie. She was about the same age and build too. But the similarities ended there. This young woman had innocence and privilege stamped all over her, a softness to her gestures that spoke of European gentry and private schooling and summers at Lake Como. Not the borderline obsessive drive of the woman he thought of as almost a daughter. Not the fierce independence born of necessity. Not the soul-churning insecurity of a child abandoned by her mother.

  “I know you disfavor M-theory,” she said, “but I thought I would take the opportunity to ask you in person. If that is okay?”

  “I prefer to let my research speak for itself. I also prefer not to think too hard on an evening as lovely as this, at least before my first beer. But let me pose a broader question: Why favor a single theory?”

  She blinked. “The current unification theories have no experimental backing. I did not think you would approve.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I . . . don’t understand.”

  “Macro- and microphysics, string theory and quantum gravity—are they not different facets of the same gem? I doubt the true shape will come in a blinding flash of inspiration, but by forging a diamond out of generations of research. Choose a theory that interests you,” he advised, “and hack away.”

  After a thoughtful nod, the postdoc thanked him and left on the back of a scooter with a long-haired young man with glasses and tattooed forearms. After watching them disappear, Dr. Corwin realized the crowd had dispersed and he was alone on the street. How had he let this happen? The passion of the Bologna academics had swept away his good sense.

  Darkness had crept into the city. Zawadi was nearby, and that should have put him at ease. Yet out of sight meant out of mind. As a child fears a closet at night, with a growing dread of dangers unseen, Dr. Corwin feared this lonely street a few thousand miles from home. Except the monsters he feared—the human monsters—were all too real.

  No, not monsters, he thought. Monsters act without cause or purpose, and single-minded belief was the hallmark of his enemies. As twisted as he thought their logic was, he knew they felt the same about his own.

  Only a handful of people, his inner circle, knew of the invention. He was letting his fears control him.

  And yet. Best to take precautions.

  He tried the imposing iron-studded wooden doors at the entrance to the lecture hall. Locked. Scanning the street revealed a corridor of limestone buildings, proud but graying, on either side of the pedestrian-only thoroughfare. In place of sidewalks, tunnels of high arched porticos formed ground-floor walkways that disappeared into the darkness. Bologna had miles and miles of these elegant shaded arcades. The signature of the city.

  Though no one was in sight, a feeling of being watched overcame him. Was this a product of his imagination? Paranoia springing from the import of his invention?

  In this part of the old city, a maze of towers and cobblestone courtyards that took naturally to the gloom, he could have blinked and imagined he was in Renaissance Europe. Dr. Corwin stood still for a moment and listened, leaning on one of the mauve pillars supporting the porticos. Nothing but distant laughter and the coo of a pigeon.

  Just calm down, he told himself. No one knows yet. I’ve barely tested it.

  He tried to call for a taxi but couldn’t understand the dialect of the first operator who answered. The second told him it would be an hour wait. After promising himself to be more careful, Dr. Corwin limped forward on his cane, toward the city center. The libraries under Society protection were too far away. A half an hour walk at least. The closest place he knew to grab a taxi was near Tower Asinelli, at the other end of Via Zamboni. Maybe he should have downloaded Lyft or Uber like the younger generation, but as much as he embraced technology, some habits die hard.

  A group of local men appeared in the distance, walking right toward him. They had a rough look about them, far too unkempt and dissolute to have been sent by them.

  The stares of the men lingered as they passed. One, an emaciated man with crooked yellow teeth, offered him drugs. This area of Bologna was seedier at night than Dr. Corwin had realized. Though he did not fear common street thugs, he lowered his head and tried to walk faster, his joints and bad knee creaking.

  The street emptied again. His isolation in the maturing darkness became a tangible thing. All of the ground-floor entrances—the gelato shops and cicchetti bars and university buildings—were shuttered. Canvas shades concealed the windows on the higher stories. The busy core of the city center, merely blocks away, felt like the other side of the Korean DMZ. If his legs were younger, he would have broken into a sprint.

  Scolding himself again for his childish fears, he drew on his past for strength. James Gerald Corwin was no simple professor. Born into poverty, his mother had worked four jobs to put him through a Catholic school in Kingston, Jamaica. A gifted student from the start, James had scratched and clawed his way to an Oxford degree. His brilliance led to contact by the Society, and a lifetime of extraordinary adventures followed.

  Though aging, his mind was as sharp as ever, and he was far from ready to embark on that final journey into the unknown. There were too many secrets to uncover, mysteries of the universe to so
lve. He was closer than ever to some—closer than he had even realized. If it would not have raised eyebrows at Duke, he would have canceled the Bologna trip. He yearned only to return home and pour every ounce of his energy into the project. It was meant to be a novelty, a testing ground, but the theorems had exceeded his wildest expectations.

  A car door shut nearby, followed by footsteps slapping on stone, too swift for normal pedestrians. Dr. Corwin had just passed one of the gaps between porticos that signaled an alley, and he couldn’t resist any longer. He took out his phone and tried the number he knew by heart.

  It rang and rang.

  Unease swept through him. Zawadi would answer at once if nearby.

  Where is she?

  Half a block away, he spied a narrow piazza in front of a brick basilica. Deciding not to take any chances, he hobbled forward as fast as he could, pushing through the pain, cursing his knee. The footsteps drew closer as he entered the courtyard. The mournful face of an ivory woman atop the church gazed down on him in the moonlight.

  Parked cars filled the cobblestone piazza. Bicycles were chained to iron posts along the perimeter, and leftist political graffiti defaced the grimy stone walls. He decided to hide behind a blue Škoda, positioning himself with a view of Via Zamboni through the passenger mirror. An archway on the far side of the piazza led to a connecting side street.

  Moments later, they came for him. A man and a woman. Locals, very attractive, dressed in smart evening clothes. They could be just a couple enjoying a night on the town—except for the way they veered purposefully off the street and right into the courtyard, their eyes in constant motion. The woman had a hand inside her purse; the man was gripping something in his pocket.

  In that moment, Dr. Corwin knew someone had betrayed him, perhaps even Zawadi herself. They knew what he had made—and they had come for him.

  Dr. Corwin reached inside his briefcase and grabbed the handle of his Taser. He had carefully hidden his invention, but no doubt they wanted to stash him in a safe house and try to extract information. He had taken precautions against that too.