The Other Tree (8 page)

“No. But I know who we got our tablet from. And where you can find him.”

* * *

A blue light strobed slowly across the room as the scanning laser crawled over the clay tablet. Docker’s eyes reflected electric blue as he watched, unblinking.

“How many more?” he asked.

“Just the radiotrophic isotopic scan on the verso,” replied Roman as her fingers beat rapidly across the touchscreen.

The black and chrome-banded scanner hung over the small tablet like a huge, predatory insect, the glowing slit charging up for the final scan. With a deep hum, the blue light filled the room again, sliding across the clay.

Halbert watched the proceedings with a sense of unease. The SinaCorp delegation had performed over a dozen tests and scans on that tablet, without giving any reason for their intense interest. In his experience, obsession led down a dangerous path, usually to poverty, ridicule, and poor hygiene. However, the smartly dressed professionals before him represented a different brand of obsession. It was the difference between a crackpot wielding a stick of stale bread, and a sniper with a scud missile. In Prada.

As the scanner light faded, Roman sat very still for a moment, staring at the touchscreen from behind dark sunglasses. Her expression was unreadable, but every muscle seemed to tense as she resisted the urge to say something. Halbert leaned forward, and Roman flicked off the screen. Bale dismantled the scanner with practiced efficiency, folding it neatly into a guitar-sized case.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Vesina,” said Docker. “Good luck with your toad problem.”

“Wait—” said Halbert, as Bale lifted the tablet carefully into a foam case. “Where are you taking that?”

“We’ll be borrowing your artefact,” said Docker. “I’m sure your patrons won’t miss it.”

“We would normally expect security on such a rare item,” said Halbert, with the distinct feeling that he was stepping off a cliff in the hope of sprouting wings.

Docker gave Halbert a smile, but his eyes held a completely different message. Bale and Roman finished packing the equipment into cases resembling luxury hand luggage. They stood to attention behind Docker.

“Of course,” said Docker. “I’ll have SinaCorp make a special delivery to the museum tomorrow.”

With that, the SinaCorp delegation left, leaving Halbert with the ominous feeling that it might be a good time to change occupations, and possibly continents.

* * *

Chris ran up the damp green stairs two at a time.

Her mind was bubbling with the kind of excited righteousness that led people to declare “I’ll show them! I’ll show them all! Who’s crazy now?”

Admittedly, some of this had to do with the fumes from Rnynw’s acetate markers, but most of it stemmed from Chris’s determination to prove that superior funding would not be the deciding factor in the race to find the Tree of Life. Chris wanted to believe in things like persistence, passion, and
being right
. All those years of pushing trolleys and skulking around basements had to have been the right choice, it had to mean something. It had to mean she’d been working towards the right moment—
this
moment, not just a sign that she hadn’t been good enough, smart enough, tough enough, to have achieved more.

Chris leapt up the last few stairs and froze at the sound of footsteps trampling down the upper staircase. She swung back down the stairs and threw herself to the floor, peering through the polished teak banister.

As the footsteps drew nearer, Chris saw Fabian descend the stairs into the hallway, followed by Docker, the woman wearing sunglasses, and the dourer of the two fit men she’d seen earlier. The SinaCorp trio was carrying an assortment of cases, and one slim briefcase had a thin silver chain attached to the handle, disappearing up Docker’s sleeve.

Chris experienced a brief pang of regret at not having continued with Wushu lessons in primary school. Once she had discovered it would take over thirty years of training before she could paralyse people with two fingers, she had given it up, having found that she could do pretty much the same thing with belladonna.

Fabian held open the door to the museum hall.

“Mr. Bale, Ms. Roman, after you.”

The dour man and the woman with shades glided through. Docker paused in the doorway and turned around towards the staircase, as though responding to a noise.

Chris held her breath as Docker stared down the silent hallway, and she wondered briefly whether she was actually in danger of anything aside from acute embarrassment and possible charges of trespassing. Finally, Docker smiled, apparently to himself, and the door clicked closed as he left.

Chris waited a few long beats before slipping quietly into the reception hall. There was a late-afternoon trickle of visitors in the main hall, and she could see the loose crowd subconsciously parting as Docker and his group headed towards the main doors.

“Chris!”

She saw Luke marching across the hall towards her, looking irate. Chris sprinted across the floor and pushed Luke quickly behind a giant large-print medieval text for vision-impaired monks.

“I’ve been trying to call you for the last half hour,” said Luke, waving his phone.

Chris peered anxiously around the text, watching as Docker and his team left the museum.

“You were supposed to be done with that when I got back,” said Luke.

“SinaCorp,” said Chris. “They have the Sumerian tablet.”

“Did I miss the part where this turned from fanciful archaeological expedition to espionage thriller? It’s like that terrible vampire road movie all over again.”

Luke followed Chris as she walked cautiously out of the museum, stepping into the warm afternoon light.

“I was going to mention,” began Chris. “SinaCorp have a team looking for the Tree of Life.”

Several pieces of information slotted neatly into place for Luke, like crucial blocks in a Tetris game.

“But I wasn’t expecting to run into them,” continued Chris quickly. “Except at the very end, and I was definitely going to have told you by then.”

Luke put his hands in his pockets, his gaze skimming across the wide sandstone street, the buildings painted in a molten afternoon glow. A light breeze floated through from the bay, carrying the smell of salted fish and sea spray. “Really,” was all Luke said.

“Do you like underdog stories?” asked Chris with a hopeful smile.

Luke realised why he’d felt the urge to hide under his desk the day she’d come by. Hers wasn’t the kind of madness you saw from miles away, involving public nudity and running down the street with other people’s undergarments on your head. It was the kind of madness that made someone stand alone in front of a hostile legion, wielding a banner that read “And your mother, too!” It was the kind of madness that made you believe pride, hope, and love could win against wealth, power, and hard weaponry. It was the kind of madness that got people killed.

If you weren’t careful around such people, it could be infectious.

“Well, I bribed some centurions and got mistaken for a homeless man,” said Luke. “How did you go?”

“It’s that linty trenchcoat you wear.”

“It’s a long jacket. And it’s wool.”

Chris looked at the coat sceptically—it looked vaguely like a wild ancestor of the domesticated cardigan.

“I think I have a lead,” said Chris. “The Sumerian tablet was donated to St Basilissa’s in 1748 by Ferdinand Abbaci, a Garden of Eden nut.”

“There seem to be a lot of those,” said Luke.

“They say he was a local shipping merchant, spent a fortune trying to locate Eden. Died an impoverished recluse. The ruins of his mausoleum and chapel are supposed to be somewhere just outside the city.”

“Lyon’s Crossing,” murmured Luke. “I think I know where to find it.”

* * *

The door to the hotel suite opened a crack and Emir slipped inside, closing the door silently. He turned around and stopped dead.

The room was a mess.

The contents of bags were scrunched and scattered, and pieces of disassembled equipment had been strewn about the floor.

“Man! Where have you been?” said Stace from the midst of the disaster zone, clutching his head. “You know I can never get stuff to fit back in the bags!”

“Sorry,” said Emir, quickly scooping up stray objects and folding equipment back down to size. “I had some stuff to do.”

“Docker wants us ready yesterday, and you know how snotty he gets—”

“I know.” Emir slid something which resembled a rocket launcher into a stylish tote.

Stace studied Emir for a moment, watching the introspection oozing from his colleague.

“Don’t brood, mate,” said Stace. “Is it a girl? A guy? Bad boscaiola?”

Emir slotted assorted knives into a concealed rack, lowering it into a suitcase and replacing the false bottom.

“Do you wonder, about SinaCorp?” asked Emir. “I mean, all this great equipment, but the casualties are still so high…”

“That’s why the pay is so frickin’ amazing. Danger money, man. Wanna see a picture of my fiancée?”

“No!” said Emir quickly. “You just…keep packing.”

The door swung open, and both Emir and Stace had their guns drawn by the time Roman strode into the room, tossing her equipment onto the bed. Bale and Docker followed close behind her.

Docker’s gaze scanned the tidy room.

“All ready,” said Emir, zipping up what appeared to be a golf caddy made from Kevlar.

“There’ll be a slight delay,” said Docker, looking at Emir. He turned to the others. “Await further instructions.”

* * *

They had been forced to park the car when the dirt road became just dirt. A horse and carriage could have negotiated this way once, but the path had since been reclaimed by fallen trees and rising saplings. On the drive over here, Chris had brought Luke up to speed with a “SinaCorp is Evil” lecture, complete with illustrations, henchman nicknames, and, in Stace’s case, a printout of his sprawling online profile and engagement photos. She’d had to cut it short after Luke yelled for the third time “Don’t scrapbook and drive!”

Lyon’s Crossing was a lightly wooded area, smelling of fresh sap and crushed leaves. The dirt here was light and dusty, but when Chris dug a little deeper, it became a rich, crumbly loam.

“What are you doing?” asked Luke.

“Nothing,” said Chris, patting the dirt back into place. “Just looking at an interesting plant.”

They walked quickly through the pale trees, racing against the dying light. The rough pathway steadily narrowed, becoming a faint trail of trampled grass. Insects began to chirp as the orange light sank lower.

“You say a homeless guy told you about this?” said Chris.

“You say an eccentric curator told you about this?” returned Luke.

Perhaps there’s an advantage to throwing money around and having people proffer things on shiny platters
, thought Chris as she stumbled over a protruding root.

She slapped at a hovering mosquito.

“Do they have dengue fever in Italy?” asked Chris.

“Did you even read the travel guide aside from the food sectio—”

Chris drew a sharp breath, and Luke followed her gaze. The grassy hill sloped upwards, and a crumbling structure stood upon the peak, silhouetted against the red sky. As they approached, they could see the remains of a small chapel, built from smooth blocks of pale granite.

Through the door, they could see that huge sections of the elegantly domed roof had caved in, littering the dirt floor with broken slate. The walls had also crumbled away in places. Inside, four short rows of wooden pews lined a wide aisle, the timber long since rotted into mulch, still bearing the faint odour of frankincense. It looked as though the marble altar had been broken up and carted away, leaving only the jagged stumps of its legs.

The ruined chapel lay silent aside from the shuffling of crows perched atop the crumbled walls. Chris’s gaze was drawn to the large mosaic above the tabernacle, still vivid beneath the grime. Colourful tiles depicted a large tree standing in a bountiful garden, its branches spread wide across the chancel wall. Glassy red fruit hung from its branches, catching the light of the setting sun.

“Towards the end, he had Eden motifs everywhere,” said Chris. “Sigils, banners, inscriptions. He started to believe they were protecting him, holding death at bay.”

There had been a note of detached fascination in Rnynw’s voice as she recounted Abbaci’s final years, but Chris felt a twinge of empathy with the man. Even now, she tried not to think of what Liada must have gone through, feeling the cold, hollow desperation growing as she sank closer to the end, knowing there was no escape, no save, no reset button. Just a final, irreversible end.

Chris shivered, sweeping her gaze around the chapel.

“Apparently, he was buried with a custom-made talisman around his neck—” said Chris.

Luke looked briefly alarmed.

“But we’re not that desperate,” said Chris quickly.

Luke trod towards the partially collapsed walls of the chapel, inspecting mosaic Stations of the Cross that bore no resemblance to the events of the crucifixion. Instead, they depicted disturbingly unfamiliar scenes of fire, floods, and bloodied swords. Each station portrayed a different calamity, like glimpses into the mind of a man obsessed with death. Luke pulled out his digital camera and photographed the various mosaics.

Chris searched the empty alcoves of the chapel, every hollow space now filled with decomposing leaves. She looked up into the small cupola, long broken into a jagged skylight. Sunset tinged the sky a soft purple, and the evening stars were starting to glimmer.

“There’s nothing Sumerian or map-like in these mosaics,” said Luke.

There were two kinds of people in the world. Those who looked up, and those who looked down.

Chris scraped her foot into the damp mulch on the floor.

A pale smudge shone through the mud.

She grabbed a fallen branch and began to scrape away the rotting leaves. Seeing Chris, Luke grabbed a fallen slat of wood and did the same, slowly exposing a pale floor, tiled in another colourful mosaic.

As the sun sank into a hazy smear on the horizon, amber light washed across the chapel floor, finally revealing an intricate design of glazed tiles. The mosaic depicted a large circle, enclosing several concentric circles, marked with irregular lines and obscure pictograms. Above the outer circle, in lapis-blue tiles, were two neat lines of angular cuneiform text.