Ian Caldwell - The Rule of Four

I rise from my chair, too excited to sit.

Since then, Paul says, everyone who's tried to interpret it has been using nineteenth— or twentieth-century tools to pick a fifteenth-century lock. He leans back and exhales. Until now.

He stops himself, breathless, and falls silent. Footsteps shuffle in the hallway, muffled by the door. I look at him, stunned. Slowly the things of reality, of the true outside, begin to penetrate again, returning Savonarola and Francesco Colonna to a bookshelf in my mind. But there remains an uneasy interaction between the two worlds. I look at Paul, and realize that somehow he has become the crossroads between them, the ligature binding time to itself.

I can't believe it, I tell him.

My father should be here. My father, and Richard Curiy, and McBee. Everyone who ever knew about this book and sacrificed something to solve it. This is a gift for them all.

Francesco gives directions to the crypt from three different land-narks, Paul says. It won't be hard to find the location. He even gives the dimensions, and lists everything in it. The only thing that's missing is the blueprint of the lock to the crypt. Terragni designed a special cylinder lock for the entrance. It's so airtight, Francesco says, that it will keep robbers and moisture out for as long as it takes someone to solve his book. He keeps saying he's about to give the blueprint for the lock, and the instructions for opening it, but he always gets distracted, talking about Savonarola. Maybe he told Terragni to include it in the final chapters, but Terragni had so many other things to worry about, he didn't do it.

And that's what you were looking for at Taft's.

Paul nods. Richard says there was a blueprint in the portmaster's diary when he found it thirty years ago. I think Vincent kept it when he let Bill find the rest of the diary.

Did you get it back?

He shakes his head. All I got was a handful of Vincent's old handwritten notes.

So what are you going to do? I ask.

Paul begins reaching for something else under the desk. I'm at Vincent's mercy.

How much have you told him?

When his hands return to view, they're empty. Losing patience, he moves his chair backward and lowers himself to his knees. He doesn't know any details about the crypt. Only that it exists.

I notice faint tracks across the floor, ruts that trace quarter-circles back to the metal legs of the desk.

Last night I started making a map of everything Francesco said about it in the second half of the Hypnerotomachia. The location, the dimensions, the landmarks. I knew Vincent might come looking for what I'd found, so I put the map where I used to keep the best work I did in here.

There's a clink of metal against metal, and from the far corner of the desk bottom, Paul produces a screwdriver. The long swatch of tape that secured it to the underside dangles like a weed in his hand. He peels the tape off, then swivels the desk toward us. The front legs slide along the grooves in the tile floor, and suddenly the ventilation duct comes into view. Four screws hold the grille to the wall. The paint has been chipped on all of them.

Paul begins unscrewing the grille. One corner at a time, the vent comes undone. When he reaches into the duct, then removes his hand, he's holding an envelope stuffed with papers. My first instinct is to look out the window of the carrel, to see if anyone's watching us. Now I understand the sheet of black paper that covers it.

Paul opens the envelope. First he pulls out a pair of photographs, each one worn from handling. The first is of Paul and Richard Curry in Italy. They are standing in the middle of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, directly in front of the Fountain of Neptune. Blurred in the background is a copy of Michelangelo's David . Paul is wearing shorts and a backpack; Richard Curry is wearing a suit, but his tie is loose and his collar is unbuttoned. Both of them are smiling.

The second picture is of the four of us, from sophomore year. Paul is kneeling in the middle of the photo, wearing a borrowed tie and holding up a medal. The rest of us are standing around him, with two professors in the background, looking amused. Paul has just won the annual essay contest of the Princeton Francophile Society. We three have shown up as figures from French history to support him. I am Robespierre, Gil is Napoleon, and Charlie, in a huge hoop dress we found at a costume store, is Marie Antoinette.

Paul seems to make nothing of the pictures, placing them gently on the desk as if he's used to seeing them. Now he empties the rest of the envelope. What I mistook for a stack of papers is actually a single large sheet, folded over several times to fit inside.

This is it, he says, unwrapping it on the surface of the desk.

There, in tiny detail, is a hand-drawn topological map. Elevation lines run in uneven circles, with rough directional markings in a faint grid. Near the middle, written in red, is an angular object shaped like a cross. According to the scale in the corner, it's roughly the size of a dormitory.

Is that it? I ask.

He nods.

It's enormous. For a second both of us sit in silence, trying to absorb it.

What are you going to do with the map? I ask, now that the carrel is bare.

Paul opens his hand. The four small screws to the ventilation duct roll like seeds in his palm. Put it somewhere safe.

Back in the wall?

No.

He leans down to screw the face of the duct back in, and looks as if a calm has settled over him. When he rises and begins to pull the sheets of paper from the wall, one after another the messages disappear. Kings and monsters, ancient names, notes he never meant anyone else to see.

So what are you going to do with it? I say, still looking at the map.

He crumples the other sheets in his hand. The walls are white again. After sitting down, and folding the map along its creases, he says very evenly, I'm giving it to you.

What?

Paul puts the map into the envelope and hands it to me. He keeps the pictures for himself.

I promised you'd be the first to know. You deserve to be.

He says it as if he's just keeping his word.

What do you want me to do with it?

He smiles. Don't lose it.

What if Taft comes looking for it?

That's the idea. If he does, he'll come looking for me. Paul pauses before speaking again. And besides, I want you to get used to having it around.

Why?

He sits back. Because I want us to work together. I want us to find Francesco's crypt together.

Finally I understand. Next year.

He nods. In Chicago. And Rome.

The vent whirs one last time, whispering through the grille.

This is yours is all I can think to say. Your thesis. You finished it.

This is so much bigger than a thesis, Tom.

It's much bigger than a Ph.D. dissertation too.

Exactly.

Now I hear it in his voice. This is just the beginning.

I don't want to do this alone, he says.

What can I do?

He smiles. Just keep the map for now. Let it burn a hole in your pocket for a while.

It unnerves me, how light the envelope is, the impermanence of what ['m holding. It seems to argue against the reality of all of this, that the wisdom of the Hypnerotomachia can sit in the fold of my palm.

Come on, he says finally, glancing down at his watch. Let's go home. We need to pickup some things for Charlie.

He takes down the last remnant of his work with one final swoop of his arm. There is no more trace in the carrel of Paul, or of Colonna, or of the long trail of ideas connecting them over five hundred years. The sheet of black paper on the window is gone.

The last question the recruiter from Daedalus asked during my job interview was a riddle: If a frog falls down a fifty-foot well and has to climb his way out, making three feet of progress every day, but slipping back two feet every night, in how many days will he escape?