The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone (8 page)

Chapter Sixteen

D
arrell’s heart thumped like a Fender bass laying down a funk riff. If they were right, Heinrich Vogel had been murdered by the goons from the cemetery. By natural extension, if the two guys at the other table had managed to tail them from Vogel’s apartment, they must be killers too.

He knew all too well from movies how things went from here.

The men would follow them into the street. They’d corner them in a filthy alleyway. They’d wait until no one was watching, pull out automatic weapons with silencers, utter a couple of German words, and—
thit-thit!—
end of story.

“Those guys are killers,” he whispered. “We need to pay our bill and get out of here. Far out of here. Like home. Or Hawaii. I vote for Hawaii.” Both stone men were staring at him now. “Oh man . . .”

“What are we going to do?” Becca asked, her head bent low.

A young man carrying a tray with four giant water jugs on it suddenly appeared at their table with Frau Hempel, who whispered cheerily at the kids, “Gather your things. I think you had better come with me.”

“Is there a back way?” asked Lily. “The last place we escaped from had a back way.”

“There’s a way,” said Frau Hempel, “but it’s not in the back.”

The moment they threw their bags over their shoulders and got up from the table, the two men pushed their chairs back and stood. In a move that baffled Darrell even as he saw it happen, the waiter with the water jugs jerked awkwardly between the tables. Then his feet twisted, the tray tipped, and the four glass jugs crashed onto the men’s table and exploded.

One of the men screamed like a lady, while the other tried to follow the kids but slipped in the water and fell. Then the waiter flailed and slipped, dragging the screamer into the pile. Frau Hempel tugged the Kaplans into the room behind the counter and shut the door firmly.

“Kurt is training to be a clown,” she said. “He thanks you for the opportunity to try his act. This way.”

They dashed through another door and down a narrow set of steps into the cellar of the cafe. It was ancient, half carved out of rough stone, half finished off in diamond-shaped oak shelves holding hundreds of wine bottles.

“Quickly now, and hush,” she whispered, putting her finger to her lips. They followed her to the end of the wine shelves and turned a corner into a small alcove. Tugging a lever on the topmost shelf, she stood back as the shelving sprang out about twelve inches.

She clicked a light switch, revealing a passageway leading steeply under the tavern. Strung along the ceiling of the passage was an electrical cord, dipping every few feet to a bare lightbulb. The bulbs cast only enough light to see that the passage went on and on.

“These tunnels were built by East Berliners trying to escape under the Wall to the West,” Frau Hempel said. “They are cold and wet and nasty. But they are seldom traveled now. That’s why there are so many rats. They have made their own metropolis under Berlin. A rat city.”

Wade shivered. “An underground city of rats. Wonderful.”

She laughed. “But these tunnels will get you out of here faster than any other way.” From upstairs there came the sound of shouting and wood cracking.

“Thank Kurt for us,” said Wade, moving into the passage.

“We owe him,” Becca added. “And you.”

Frau Hempel smiled. “Kurt’s also a wrestler, so he’ll be fine. Now, take the passages, making right turns when you have the opportunity, and you will come up near . . . well, you’ll see. You will be miles from here and safe. Good luck. Be careful. Now go!”

Dr. Kaplan hugged her. “You’ve saved us.”

As they followed the dim light, hurrying down the tight passage into the first turn, Darrell really hoped that they wouldn’t lose themselves, wandering forever and ever in the unending darkness . . . of an underground city . . . of rats.

Chapter Seventeen

A
n underground city of rats.

As Lily hustled forward in the dark with no clear view of the way ahead because they were all taller than her, she knew—she
knew
—that those creepy little fur balls were just waiting to sink their needle teeth into her slim pink ankles.

Rats were all she could think about. They took over her mind like spies had taken over Darrell’s. Rats and spies. And murder. Murdering rat spies. Why not? This was hardly Texas.

The tunnel got narrower still. And smellier. She growled so softly she was sure no one heard her.

Why isn’t anyone talking?
Hello! Aren’t you as scared as I am? Actually, I doubt that. I can do scared like nobody else.

“We’re going back to the cemetery now, right?” she mumbled. “After we get out of here? We’re going to find a cab or something and go back to the tomb?”

“Right,” Darrell said over his shoulder. “The blade of the sundial points to something inside.”

“Maybe the Magister’s Legacy,” Wade said. “Or the relics. It all goes back to Copernicus and how the earth moves.”

Everyone is so smart. Like they have libraries for brains. Get me aboveground where I can get some Wi-Fi, and I’ll show you smart.

“Let’s get there ASAP. Even a cemetery in the rain is better than being underground with an army of giant rats . . .”

“Who said anything about
giant
rats?” Wade said.

“Any rat is a giant rat, as far as I’m concerned—”

“Kids . . .” Roald huffed, slowing his steps. “The lightbulbs end up ahead. We’ll have to hold hands to not get lost.”

“Or maybe Lily could just hum,” Darrell said. “Since she’s at the back, we’ll always know we’re together—”

“Hey,” Lily snapped. “I could lead, you know.”

“I’m just saying I’m not real sure about the holding hands thing,” Darrell said. “So many questions. Whose hand will I hold? Which hand? How tight? Plus holding hands makes me think of skeleton bones. I don’t want to touch bones . . .”

“You,” said Lily, “are weird—”

“I hear something,” said Wade. “Listen . . .”

There was the noise of traffic above them. Cars, the rumbling of streetcars and trucks, the zipping of motor scooters. Then a sound from far behind. Footsteps?

“Keep going,” said Becca. “Lil, take my hand.”

They hurried on as best they could. Every so often, the ceiling soared and they saw levels of girders beneath the streets, the half-finished excavation of subway tunnels, maybe, and odd circles of light that Lily couldn’t keep from saying looked like solar eclipses, which she thought sounded smart, until Wade explained they were merely rings of street light around manhole covers. Fine. Manholes. Tunnels. Cemeteries. Rats. Murder. Whatever.

If I survive tonight, this is all going into my blog.

Roald slowed and faced them. “A stairway,” he whispered as he pointed to a narrow set of iron steps, nearly as steep as a ladder, clinging to the wall. “It must go up to street level.”

“The street is good. That’s where they keep the air,” Lily said, aware how lame the joke was but not caring.
Just get me out of here!

Becca nudged her. “I’m so going to gulp it in.”

“I’ll check it out,” said Dr. Kaplan.

“Me, too.” Darrell grinned at Wade. “You stay.”

“Why me?” Wade asked.

“I’ll wait,” said Becca, breathing shallowly.

“I will, too,” said Wade.

“I’m not staying down here a minute more than I have to,” Lily said. “Sorry, Bec. I’m going up.”

Darrell and his stepfather took the stairs up slowly in single file, and she followed, stepping as softly as she could. She couldn’t look down. At the top stood the doorway of a small room built of cement blocks. A plank door stood at the end of it, ringed with faint light.

Roald knocked on the door. Nothing. Then he turned the knob. “Locked solid.” He glanced back down the steps. “There might be another exit later on down the tunnel.”

“No,” said Lily. “Please, we’re not going back down here. Isn’t there something—”

Darrell suddenly kicked the door hard with his foot. The knob fell to the floor with a clank, and the frame cracked. “Like that?”

“Darrell,” Roald groaned. “My gosh, your foot!”

“It’s fine,” Darrell said, pretending to limp across the small room but grinning all the same.

Lily grinned back, pushing lightly against the door. It opened a sliver. A heavy, warm farmyard stink rushed through. She peeked around the door. “Oh . . .”

“Oh?” said Darrell.

She nodded. “Oh, as in, ‘Oh, we’re at the zoo.’”

“No way.” Darrell pushed the door wide. Before them stood a long, wide corridor, dimly lit and lined with vertical bars on both sides. Cages. There was little movement from inside the cages. At the opposite end of the corridor stood another door. A chatter of voices was coming from behind it, mixed with the occasional sound of a car or scooter motor.

“This could be our way to freedom,” Darrell whispered. “As long as we don’t wake up the animals—”

The steps creaked as Becca and Wade crept to the top.

“More footsteps in the tunnel,” Becca said. “I guess Kurt couldn’t hold those guys off forever. We need to get out. Now.”

Without a choice, they entered the caged corridor as quietly as they could. Wade tried to close the door firmly behind them, but thanks to Darrell, the knob was gone.

It took a single step for them to realize that they were in some species of ape house. There were enormous hairy gorillas curled in lumps and sleeping under pale pink light, while smaller chimps and spider monkeys scurried up and down fake trees or lolled on mounds of artificial grass.

Dr. Kaplan raised a finger to his lips and eased forward to the far door. Darrell crouched behind him, followed by Lily, with Becca and Wade behind her. For once, thought Lily, she wasn’t the last one.

Halfway to the door and breathing through her mouth, she remembered why she hadn’t been in a zoo for years and realized she didn’t miss it.

Just then, a motor scooter zipped by outside, beeping. A monkey shrieked in response, jumping up and down. Before they could get all the way down the corridor, the hall erupted with screeching, and things were suddenly flying through the air.

“They’re throwing poops!” Lily shrieked. “Get out of here!”

They plowed full speed into the far door and burst through it, butting their way through a squad of zoo guards who had converged on the ape house.

“Hey!” the guards yelled.
“Halten Sie! Es ist verboten!”

“We’re sorry!” Dr. Kaplan called out as they ran.

“No need for a refund—thanks!” Wade added.

A guard blew a shrill whistle and alarms went off in three locations as they raced down the paved paths to the nearest exit. Just as the perimeter lights began flashing, Roald helped them over the fence and dragged them down the sidewalk. He whistled at the first cab that came down the street. It shrieked to a stop. “Get in! Hurry!” he cried.

“St. Matthew’s cemetery,” Becca said as they jumped in.

“Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof!”
Lily added in what she felt was a pretty decent accent, until the driver replied, “Certainly, Miss.”

The cab took off as a half dozen zoo security carts jerked to a stop on the sidewalk and more alarms rang. Guards swung their fists and shouted after them, but they were already spinning around the corner.

They had made it.

Chapter Eighteen

S
itting on the padded seat in a warm cab was heaven after what Lily was already calling “the rat and monkey–poop adventure.” She wanted to enjoy the warmth, but as usual, the others were brainily rushing ahead of her, connecting dots, making guesses, whatever.

“So, Dad. Copernicus,” said Wade. “Sixteenth century. Tell us everything you know about him.”

“Yeah, and don’t skimp on the legacy and the twelve relics part,” Darrell added, nudging Roald while nodding at the taxi driver. “And you should probably whisper.”

“Is the Copernicus Legacy even a historical thing?” asked Becca. “I mean, I know we’re being followed, so there has to be something, but now that we know it’s Copernicus, does the first message mean more? The kraken and the relics?”

“Hold on,” Roald said, obviously trying to pull himself together. He slipped his notebook from his pocket and held it up to the passing street lights. “Good thing I kept this. Heinrich’s course in the history of astronomy was my first of many with him. He covered it all. Here it is. Copernicus,” he breathed. “Copernicus . . .”

For the next seven minutes, as the cab roared from street to street in the dead of night, they listened to what he knew.

“He was a mathematician, born in 1473, in Toru´n, Poland. There are blanks in what we know about him, what kind of person he was. Mostly we have public documents. He did most of his calculations on the movement of the stars and planets based on his knowledge of mathematics, and on unaided observation. The telescope hadn’t been invented yet.”

“That was Galileo, right?”

“Good memory, Wade. Yes. Sixty or so years after Copernicus. There were instruments, of course. Astrolabes and sextants and compasses used by sailors to plot the movement of stars, and Copernicus knew all about those, I’m sure.

“The key thing he discovered was that Earth moves around the sun. Before he figured that out, everyone believed that Earth was the center of the universe, and that all the planets, the sun, the stars, everything, revolved around it. Copernicus proved, through math and simple observation, that it couldn’t be so.”

“The Earth moves in the Haus of Kupfermann,” Becca said.

“Exactly.” Roald flipped over a page, then another. “Earth really
had
to orbit the sun for any of the numbers to make sense. It was the only way to explain the movement of the stars and other planets.”

Lily’s heart was still
ka-thump
ing too hard from their ape encounter to make complete sense of it all. She knew about Copernicus. That was basic astronomy. Before Copernicus, astronomy was a kind of cult science, right? Astrology. Alchemy. Almost a kind of magic. She’d heard of all that in school. Copernicus was a big deal because he finally said that we weren’t the center of the universe. Which must have bothered a lot of people.

“Copernicus was one of the truly modern thinkers,” Roald was saying. “His students called him Magister—Master—and we call him a revolutionary for a good reason. Nothing was quite the same after people really understood what he had discovered. That Earth is just one of many planets. Not that special.”

Becca had been looking out at the wet streets when she turned to them. “Didn’t he only publish his discovery just before he died? Isn’t that part of his story? That he was worried what people would say?”

That sounded really familiar. Lily turned on her tablet.

“That’s true,” Roald said as the taxi entered a patch of slow traffic. “He was troubled about the effect on society of his revolutionary discovery. The Catholic Church was very powerful, and he was a canon, a kind of church teacher. He was finally convinced on his deathbed by a young astronomer to publish his work. I forget his name—”

“Rheticus,” said Lily, holding up her tablet so that everyone could see. “He showed up near the end of Copernicus’s life and—” Without a warning, the screen went black. “Hey!”

The cab driver braked the car abruptly, nearly sending Wade into Becca’s lap, as a large silver SUV roared past them at high speed.

“My apollo cheese!” the driver said. “Some pipples is rude and do not sink of uzzer pipples!” After the silver SUV sped by, a second black one, then a third, shot after it as if they were part of a caravan. They tore around the corner and disappeared.

Lily stared aghast at her blank computer screen. “Please don’t die on me now.” She swiped her fingers across the glass.

Just as the driver pulled back onto the street, the screen blinked twice and glowed as before.

“And we’re back!”