The Barbary Pirates

“It’s the moon, don’t you think?” I proposed.

The inventor shook his head. “Look, it’s attached to an elegant curved frame of some kind, as graceful as their murals of flowers, but attended by small figures. This isn’t a celestial object, gentlemen. It’s some kind of machine.” His finger traced the rays emanating from the crescent and followed them to one of the ships. There was a blossom of color above the vessel that I’d assumed was a representation of a dyed sail, but Fulton, perhaps mindful of his peculiar use of his bagpipes, had discerned something else. “I think it’s setting these ships on fire.”

I felt a chill then, as if I’d seen the snake undergirding Eden. People had lived here in peace, yes. But perhaps their peace was sustained behind the shield of some kind of weapon so terrible that it could ignite any enemy vessel that approached too close.

“But this idea has been attributed to the great Archimedes,” Fulton said. “Surely this is much too early for the burning mirrors.”

“The burning mirrors? What are you talking about, Robert?”

“There are accounts from ancient history, originally written by Lucian two centuries after Christ and later relayed to us by medieval writers. Lucian wrote that during the Roman siege of Syracuse in 212 B.C., the Greek mathematician Archimedes constructed a mirror, or lens, that could focus the sun’s heat on enemy ships. The Greek was a mechanical genius who also devised a giant pincer that could crush Roman ships like a monstrous claw. In the end the Romans prevailed and burst into the city, and Archimedes was killed by an ignorant soldier while he drew his mathematical figures in the sand. His genius was lost, but the legend of a heat ray persisted. Some called it Poseidon’s spear, or Neptune’s trident.”

I startled. Such words had also been inscribed in the gold foil I’d found in North America.

“Many have dismissed it as fable,” Fulton went on, “and nobody has attributed it to earlier times than Archimedes. But what if the brilliant Greek got the idea for his mirror from a place like this?”

“From Atlantis?”

“Perhaps.”

“Could it work?” said Smith.

“Who knows? But if it did, and if you could find it today, it might have the ability to ignite modern ships that are even more vulnerable, thanks to their dependence on sails and gunpowder. They’d light like a torch, and blow up like a magazine. Here is a weapon that never needs to be reloaded, and is tireless as the sun.”

“I barely escaped the French flagship L’Orient when she blew up at the Battle of the Nile,” I recounted. “The blast was so titanic that it actually halted the battle for a quarter of an hour. It was the most terrible thing I’ve experienced. Well, one of them, anyway.” I’d accumulated a lot of memories the past few years.

“So this could tip the domination of the Mediterranean, if it existed,” Fulton said. “But a mirror would have to be huge to have the power to burn a ship. There’s nothing like that in this hole, no room big enough, and no way to get it out if there were.”

“So what is down here?” Smith asked.

We proceeded to look. There were eight rooms in all, dirt cascading into the two at each end of the complex as indication this old city had been only partially excavated. Each was emptier than a cell. Except for the murals, there was nothing. The floor was hard-packed dirt, and search as we might we could find no more traps or hidden tunnels. The ceiling was earth braced by mining timbers. When we poked at it, all we got for our trouble was grit in our eyes. The street stopped at that slope of dirt. To go that way we’d have to be like worms, and I didn’t fancy getting wedged into some wormhole, wondering about hidden treasure as I slowly withered to a husk. Yet there was no way to retreat, either, unless we could levitate up the shaft. As my companions had complained, it appeared that I’d succeeded only in trapping us in a slightly bigger grave, as barren as the sarcophagus above.

“It’s already been robbed,” Cuvier theorized. “I suspect we’re centuries too late. These knights, or whoever they were, got the mirror first.”

“Then why is there no record of its being used?” Fulton asked. “And why are so many people after us? Are we all chasing a myth? That picture is of the burning mirror, gentlemen, and that is an ancient weapon. There has to be something to it.”

Our light kept burning lower. I tried to think, always a difficult task. Why the church, sarcophagus, trap, tunnel, excavation, and persistent pursuit if there was nothing down here?

Then it occurred to me.

“The fourth room,” I proposed.

I led them back to it and we shone our ebbing candle on the mural in there. At first glance it seemed no different from the others—flowers, birds, and brilliant color—except I realized the color was slightly too bright. The lines of the mural were less sinuous somehow, less assured, as if the artist who’d copied them had not shared the gaiety that comes from living in a sunny place of perpetual peace behind a death ray that warded off all enemies. A talented but sweating Knight Templar, perhaps, pressed into service to hide a critical clue in plain view. I thought of the stone tablet and rotting shield in the Dakota territory of North America that bore enigmatic references to this “Og.” Or the misleading signal in the City of Ghosts. Or mathematician Monge’s dismissal of my sacred medallion at the Great Pyramid. Always there was a distraction.

I took my tomahawk and swung at the mural. A crack appeared.

“Gage, no!” Cuvier cried. “This artwork is priceless!”

“On the contrary, Georges. This mural has no value at all. It’s a medieval facade, a fakery.” And I swung again and again, making a spider’s web of cracks, and then chipped at the edges to pry the stucco off the underlying stone. “It’s a ruse.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think this was painted by the ancient people who built this place. I think medieval knights, or someone else, put it here to cover something up.” I hoped I was right, because all I was uncovering was rough- looking stone.

But then I spied the edge of something leathery. There was a sheet of parchment sealed between stucco and rock! I fingered its edge and peeled it as much as I could.

Then we heard a murmur of sound, distant clanks and grunts, and Fulton darted out to listen from the buried street. “Someone’s coming!”

There was Latin writing on the parchment behind the mural.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Smith, buy me time to get this parchment pried loose!”

The Englishman darted away with his blunderbuss again.

The old document was surprisingly pliable, but the sheepskin had bonded to wall and mural like glue. It could only be peeled off a little at a time. Cuvier used my rapier to scrape from the other side, the false painting flaking away.

I heard the roar of Smith’s gun, shouts, and answering shots.

“Hurry,” the French scientist muttered unnecessarily.

Then we heard a whoosh and crackling. I sniffed. Something was burning again.

Smith rushed back in. “Fulton is as mad as you are, Gage. He’s set the mine’s shoring on fire with his bagpipes. There’s so much smoke we can’t see a damn thing. Neither can our enemies, I suppose.”

Cuvier slid the rapier behind the parchment like a razor and at last the document, about eighteen inches square, came free. I’d no idea what it said, given that it was in Latin, and there was no time for us to translate in any event. I slid it inside my shirt and nodded. “What happens when the timber burns through?”

“The earth will collapse on all this beauty,” Cuvier said.

“And on us,” Smith amended.

We hurried out to the main street. Fulton had backed down it, coughing. Flames seemed to be racing along