The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (21 page)

I stepped away from
Disillusioned
and began surveying more of the chapel. In my compulsion to reach the sculpture of Christ, I had scarcely noticed the chapel’s details upon first entering. Now, they were critical.

“What parts of this chapel are works of di Sangro’s own hand?” I asked.

Alyssa took my arm and led me back toward the entrance before pointing to the amazing frescoed ceiling.

“Look at the colors,” she said. “Di Sangro didn’t paint the ceiling, but he invented the paints. Nobody understands how they have remained so well preserved for so long. Baroque period frescoes never look this good unless they have been actively restored. Except for this one. It’s timeless.”

We then stepped into a small alcove along the side of the chapel, and I realized I was looking at di Sangro’s tomb.

“Look at the inscription,” Alyssa prompted.

“What?”

“It was written by Raimondo di Sangro himself,” she teased.

“So?” I asked. Aside from the fact that it seemed a bit self-promoting, heralding di Sangro as “gifted,” “extraordinary,” and “famous,” I had no idea what she was getting at.

“The inscription on this tomb was produced chemically. To this day, nobody knows how. He must have used some form of acid, or something similar, but it’s not documented. What is clear is that it was
not
chiseled.”

Alyssa then pointed to the floor beneath the tomb, and I noticed for the first time how anachronistic it was in this setting. The contrasting light and dark shapes reminded me of an M.C. Escher pattern, something totally out of place among the baroque style that was prevalent throughout the chapel.

“Are those…
swastikas
?”

“Alternating with concentric squares,” Alyssa said. “The swastika in ancient tradition symbolized cosmic movement. The concentric squares refer to the tetragon of the elements—earth, fire, wind, and water.

“This pattern, which in di Sangro’s time covered the
entire
floor, represents the difficulty of the path that one must follow to gain knowledge.”

Alyssa led me toward a staircase, and we began to descend. “Raimondo di Sangro was brilliant,” she said, “and, apart from the Church, his contemporaries acknowledged this, but many of them feared him. He was ahead of his time and, on top of that, absolutely secretive about his actions. Not a good combination for building trust or dispelling myths. He gained a reputation fairly comparable to Victor Frankenstein.”

We entered a small basement beneath the chapel, and I understood why.

Two display cases in a small round underground chamber each held a human corpse. Both bodies stood erect. One was a man. The other a pregnant woman.

Their entire circulatory systems were wrapped, immobile, around their skeletons, having emerged from hearts forever frozen to their open chests. The skeletons stood intact, and the intricate networks of tiny veins and arteries crossing their faces reminded me of the netting I had just seen carved from marble and covering the
Disillusion
figure.

“
Oh, my God
,” I said, venturing closer. “Are they real?”

“The skeletons are definitely real,” Alyssa said. “The fetus in the woman’s womb
was
most definitely real, until it was stolen a number of years ago.”

“
Stolen?
” I asked, feeling a sudden wave of nausea.

I redirected my gaze again to the webbing of veins over the male corpse’s face, and I wondered how it could have been achieved in the eighteenth century.

About a decade ago, a traveling scientific exhibit passed through San Diego. The exhibit was called
Bodies
. It featured anatomical models similar to those one would observe in a high school science class, except that they were real. One could wander through the various sections of the exhibit and observe,
in situ
, the entire circulatory system, the respiratory system, the reproductive systems of both males and females—even neurons.

The bodies of the exhibit were preserved using a technology called plastination, a brand new preservation technique that had been invented at the turn of the twenty-first century for the specific purpose of preserving the bodies. As I stood in the basement beneath Raimondo di Sangro’s chapel, I realized the
Bodies
exhibit had precedent more than two centuries prior.

“How did he do this?” I asked incredulously.

“Legend held that these were two of di Sangro’s servants who had angered him. The belief was that he preserved the circulatory systems by injecting the victims with mercury while they were still alive.”

“Is that part true?” I asked.

“He certainly did have an affinity for science, as you have seen. And he also had an affinity for using mercury, as I mentioned about the scrolls. But how he made these, nobody knows. Chemical analyses have yielded evidence of all sorts of organic substances associated with the capillaries and veins, including beeswax. So it appears that these models are, um, partly real. The rest is a mystery.

“Di Sangro’s palace was adjacent to where this chapel was built. He had a laboratory in the basement of the palace. His contemporaries documented strange noises and strange flashes of light coming from the laboratory at all hours of the night. It’s really no wonder they were afraid of him. And he moved secretly between his lab and the outside world through an underground tunnel connecting the laboratory under the palace to this chapel basement.

“Officially, the tunnel no longer exists.”

“And unofficially?” I asked.

“Where do you think we’re going?” Alyssa said and pushed aside the display case containing the pregnant female.

I had begun to feel like I was in a dream, but reality quickly returned when we emerged from a short tunnel and into a modern laboratory. I felt a deep breath force its way into my constricted airway, and I suddenly relaxed in the familiar environment.

“Wow,” I said. The equipment was brand new. There were no damaged linoleum floor tiles or discolored countertops—the ghosts of chemical spills—or piles of dust bunnies behind computers. At 2:15 a.m., the lab was unoccupied. Rarely had I seen a lab so new entirely devoid of activity. Had it not been for the characteristic hum of a functional laboratory, the objects before me might have been theater props.

“This is the laboratory I have set up dedicated solely to work on the nardo document,” Alyssa said. “Before I contacted Jeff, I wasn’t sure what needed to be done or who was going to run the project. I knew roughly what types of studies we’d want to do but had no idea how to do those studies myself. However, I knew I’d get
someone
to lead the effort if not Jeff.

“The equipment is brand new and is just now almost in place. Jeff only began hiring scientists over the last couple of weeks. A few people have been qualifying machines and developing protocols.”

I ran my eyes once again over the gleaming machinery.
Of course
, I thought, as the realization struck me, but I asked anyway. “Where did all the money for this come from?”

Alyssa looked surprised. “Well, most of it came from
you
!”

A basic biological laboratory costs millions of dollars in set-up expenses alone. The six-figure salaries of Ph.D.-level staff and the exorbitant costs of consumables can easily reach millions per year.

I now understood where our money had gone.

Together, Jeff and I were incredibly wealthy. But to build and maintain a research facility without the help of additional investors would quickly drain our collective life savings.

Jeff had gambled it all on the Vesuvius isotope.

“Gosh, where are those trash bags?” I asked, the events of the day finally taking their toll.

“You read my mind,” Alyssa said. “I can give you a proper tour tomorrow, but right now I’m hitting a wall. I need a bath and a good night’s sleep.”

“That makes two of us,” I said, bending one arm to assess any residual pain from the bends.

We each grabbed a handful of large black trash bags and re-entered the tunnel. We walked through it in silence, the dim lighting along the walls guiding our way, each of us deep in thought and too tired to speak. We stepped into the underground chamber containing di Sangro’s mysterious corpses, and Alyssa pushed the female back into position before we ascended into the chapel.

As we walked back through the chapel, something caught my eye that made me forget my exhaustion. I could not believe I had not noticed it the first time through this area. Among the statues of the virtues, and not far from the netted
Disillusion
I had observed earlier, stood another veiled sculpture, a counterpart equally as impressive as
The Veiled Christ
.

In sharp contrast to the Christian Savior, this statue depicted a woman very much alive and standing erect. Her posture was both self-confident and defiant. She leaned against an enormous plaque, which was broken across the corner where her arm rested. The thin veil enveloping her form did nothing to conceal her body; her breasts were thrust forward, her shoulders back, and her face was cocked to one side. The woman’s eyes were half closed. Over her hips was casually slung a garland of roses.