Michael White - Equinox

The Guardians hid the ruby sphere in a secret vault to which the only access was via an underground labyrinth. They built this close to their meeting place and ensured that the only ones who could pass through the labyrinth were those who possessed the secret knowledge needed to succeed in completing a series of tests. Almost a thousand years later, the city of Oxford grew up on this site.

'The ruby sphere remained in its hiding place until the seventeenth century when Christopher Wren was commissioned to build the Sheldonian Theatre. He discovered the labyrinth, but did nothing about it. However, a couple of decades later Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest alchemist of his or indeed any age, stumbled across the vital clues about how to find the sphere from a document that had passed through the hands of another alchemist a couple of centuries before him, a man named George Ripley.'

Charlie leaned back in the chair and blew smoke towards the camera.

'This was almost a disaster. The sphere possesses genuinely awesome power and Newton was a genius, obsessed with elucidating the secrets of the universe at whatever cost. With the sphere, he had the chance to fulfil his dream.'

Charlie paused for a moment and stubbed out his cigarette. 'I suppose you're wondering what all the fuss is about? What's so special about this ruby sphere? Why is it so important that people would give their lives to protect it? Murder to possess it? Well, the sphere is the key to finding the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Life, the ultimate dream of the alchemist. No one really knows who made the sphere. It is at least as old as the early Egyptian civilisation and some have speculated that originally it's not from this world. By reading an incantation which is inscribed as one continuous coil around the surface of the sphere, the adept can call upon the Devil to turn the lifeless contents of the crucible into the mythical and most cherished Stone.

'Now, I wouldn't blame you, Laura, if you think this is all a load of crap. But whether or not you believe the ruby sphere can be used to conjure up the Devil, there are those who really do believe, and today, in Oxford, a group of powerful alchemists are trying to prove it. They don't have the sphere, but they do possess some of the secrets they need.

'And I imagine you're trying to figure out what the link is between Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century and this group in the twenty-first. Perhaps you're wondering why I've given you a copy of Newton's secret encoded work, and you must also be trying to understand what I have to do with all this, and why my life is in danger.

'Newton, you see, was the forebear of the present-day group. He called his cabal the Order of the Black Sphinx. This was the name originally used by the early Egyptian alchemists who first used the sphere. He formed what has been called an Unholy Trinity with his lover, the medic Nicolas Fatio du Duillier, and their mutual acquaintance, James Boyle, the younger brother of the great Robert Boyle. The link between Newton and his friends and the present Order of the Black Sphinx is the conjunction of the planets. Newton found a way to obtain the ruby sphere about eighteen months before a five-body conjunction in 1690. The next time the conjunction occurred Professor Milliner had acquired some of the secret lore of the Order and tried his hand. Today, the Order are trying to repeat Newton's experiment.

'And what is this experiment? I'm assuming you have worked that out. The ruby sphere tells the adept to gather five organs, each to be taken from a young woman at precisely documented times. In place of each organ a metal coin is left, an Ancient Egyptian Arkhanon depicting five women — the five victims. These organs are preserved and used at a preordained hour. Placed on the points of the pentagram, they are central to the enactment of a ceremony which, if successful, will call upon the Devil to appear and to impart the secret of how to create the Philosopher's Stone.

'Newton and his friends succeeded in gathering the organs after murdering five young women in Oxford. The organs — a heart, a brain, a pair of kidneys, a gall bladder and a liver — were preserved according to the techniques passed down by the original members of the Order, Egyptian alchemists skilled in the art of mummification and preservation. This was du Duillier's speciality. He had made a detailed study of the processes and had done his best to duplicate the ancient techniques. The ritual was to take place in a chamber beneath the Bodleian Library — a part of the labyrinth of the Guardians. Newton and his friends reached this chamber through a hidden entrance in the wine cellars of Hertford College, close to the Bodleian. It was vital to complete the tests created by the Guardians of the fifth century, but they could do this relatively easily because Newton had the information handed down to him in the manuscript written by George Ripley. It was only thanks to the intervention of the Guardians in the nick of time that Newton was thwarted.

'From what I've learned of them, the existence of the Guardians is even more secret than that of the Order of the Black Sphinx, and they have been more successful — up until now. In Newton's time, the Guardians were led by Robert Boyle. . Yes, ironic, isn't it, that James was a key figure in Newton's group. Robert Boyle was helped by Newton's great rival Robert Hooke and a man named John Wickins, who had been Newton's closest associate, his roommate, a man who had been planted in Cambridge as a young student, specifically to keep an eye on Newton.'

Charlie peered intently at the camera. 'The present-day Order of the Black Sphinx is behind the murders of the young women in Oxford. Their members include a trained killer, a man known only as the Acolyte. They are gathering organs and preserving them, and this time they have twenty-first-century technology at their disposal. Their intention is the same as Newton's and Milliner's — to perform an occult ritual when Mars, Venus and Jupiter are in conjunction with the sun and the moon. This will occur on 31 March, the day after tomorrow, at 1.34 a.m.

'And what did I have to do with all this?' Charlie shifted in his seat before answering his own question. 'Remember my visit to New York, Laura? I was there representing the Order. You see, the Order of the twenty-first century have never had the ruby sphere. Other than the Guardians, Isaac Newton and his companions were the only men to have seen or touched the precious thing since Hypatia's day. And when their cabal was shattered in 1690 the sphere was reclaimed and hidden by Robert Boyle. Furthermore, all Newton's papers on the subject were destroyed. All, that is, except for one, a short encoded document entitled Principia Chemicum , a copy of which you now have in your possession.

'This is the document that I obtained for the Order in New York. They knew they could almost certainly never get hold of the sphere in time for the conjunction, and without it their efforts would be futile. However, the leader of the Order, a man I have never met and whose identity has remained a secret, found out about Newton's manuscript and the information it contained — among other things, a linear version of the inscription.'

It was time for another cigarette. 'Let me explain. I said there was an inscription on the sphere. It consists of a single line of Egyptian hieroglyphs etched in a spiral around the sphere from one pole to the other. The makers of the sphere were keen to prevent the knowledge contained within the inscription reaching anyone but the initiated. So they used a cunning form of encryption called steganography — in other words, a physical code. What I mean is that the message, the incantation that must be used in the ritual, had to be read on the sphere by looking at the symbols vertically from top to bottom, not around the spiral. It's an ancient technique called a scytale.