“Well, who wouldn’t want that?” Gallo tried to fill her voice with disdain.
Kenner’s eyes narrowed. “We both know that’s not as preposterous as it sounds, Augustina. I’ve seen the proof with my own eyes. I know that you and George have as well.”
There was no point in challenging the assertion. “There’s one thing that I still don’t understand. Why did you take Queen Hipployte’s girdle?”
Kenner’s smile was all the proof she needed that his claim of being an unwilling conscript in Tyndareus’s plan was pure fiction. “Let me show you.”
He clicked the computer mouse to minimize the window with the page from the Heracleia, and brought up a photo of the belt. Gallo immediately saw that Fiona’s description had been spot on. The black leather had been elaborately tooled, with a rectangular border adorned with strange figures and a large central illustration that looked familiar. “Is it a map?”
“Not just any map.” Kenner traced his finger along the squiggly line at the right of the image, which bowed outward in the middle before looping back and angling away in a south-easterly direction. “Don’t you recognize that?”
Gallo consulted her mental map of the Mediterranean region. The bulge might have been intended as a primitive rendering of the Turkish peninsula, but the continuous landform depicted on the other half of the map looked nothing at all like the Greek Isles. She shrugged.
Kenner’s finger moved up and tapped what looked like the narrow mouth of a large fjord. “This is the Strait of Gibraltar, if that helps.”
The hint opened Gallo’s eyes. What she had taken to be a small inlet was actually the entire Mediterranean Sea. The bulge below was the northern half of Africa and the opposing landform was the coast of the Americas.
It was a map of the Atlantic rim, made almost 2,500 years before Columbus.
“Are you familiar with the Piri Reis map?” Kenner asked.
The name rang a bell, but Gallo shook her head.
“In 1513, a Turkish admiral named Piri Reis drew a map of the world, which included an astonishingly accurate depiction of an ice-free Antarctica — three hundred years before the continent was even discovered and long before satellites gave us a look beneath the ice — along with a detailed map of the entire coastline of the Americas. He claimed to have been informed by ancient charts dating back to at least 400 BC, which had survived the destruction of the Library at Alexandria and had been handed down through various institutions of the Muslim world.” He tapped the screen again. “This is a nearly perfect match to the Piri Reis map.”
The longer Gallo looked at it, the more obvious it became. She could distinguish the triangular protrusion that was the coast of Brazil, the recessed outline of the Caribbean Sea, even the dangling phallic shape of Florida, reaching out toward but not quite touching the Yucatan peninsula. The map also showed mountain ranges and inland basins in relief, but aside from a few cryptic lines occupying the open ocean between the continents — it might have been letters in some unknown language, or something else entirely — there were no labels on the map itself.
She glanced at the outer edges again and realized that the figures shown there were a stylized version of Minoan Linear A, almost identical to the figures carved on the Phaistos Disc.
Fiona would know how to read that, she thought, and then she almost started visibly as she realized what the other inscription was.
The Mother Tongue.
She doubted Kenner had any idea what those mysterious lines signified. She suspected that without a working knowledge of that all-but-extinct language, the map and all its revelations were essentially worthless. The Mother Tongue would keep the secrets of the map far more effectively than the Herculean Society ever could.
Suddenly, she didn’t feel quite as bad about bargaining her assistance for Fiona’s safety. The important thing now was to keep Kenner and Tyndareus from realizing that the young woman might be the only person alive who could understand what the map said.
The Minoan writing on the border would be a bit of a challenge for Gallo, since her specialty was the Classical Greek period. It was also something of an anachronism. She knew enough about the proto-history of the Greeks to know that the Minoans, despite being a sea-faring people, had never ventured beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
But Alexander did, she thought.
She turned back to Kenner. “That’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t answer my question.”
“Come now, Augustina. Surely you see the significance of this. Herakles’s quest to retrieve Queen Hippolyte’s belt was really about obtaining this map. A map of the entire globe. This opens up a world of new possibilities. Herakles’s journeys could have taken him anywhere. With this map and the complete account of his Labors, we will be able to pinpoint the exact locations of the places he visited.”
Gallo thought about what she and Fiona had been attempting in Greece. They had been acting on the same assumptions as ancient historians who used their incomplete knowledge of the world to identify the places where the ancient hero had performed his deeds. As much as she hated to admit it, Kenner was on the right track.
“I take it you are interested in finding a specific destination?”
The direct question took some of the wind out of Kenner’s sails. He pursed his lips as if trying to formulate an answer that would dovetail with his pretense of being a fellow hostage.
Gallo pressed her advantage. “You told George that you were looking for a way to make your own chimeras. That’s what you’re after, right?”
Kenner let out his breath in a sigh. “Those myths are evidence that the ancients knew how to recombine and engineer the DNA of living creatures, something that we are only just beginning to understand now. Herakles found a source, a mutagen that could make differentiated cells behave like stem cells. A genetic blank slate just waiting to be filled in. I intend to find it as well.”
“Why? So that you can make monsters, too?” She could tell by his wounded expression that she had gotten the last part wrong. “No, that’s not it. You think you can find the secret of immortality. A fountain of youth for your creaky old taskmaster.”
Behind her, Rohn cleared his throat, a none-too-subtle warning that she was being too defiant.
“Would that be such a terrible thing?” Kenner replied. “I’m going to find it, with or without your help. I would prefer the former.”
Gallo nodded slowly. Kenner had at last revealed the truth. He did not need her to help translate the Heracleia after all. This was personal. He was trying to use the situation to win her over. In his own twisted way, he still harbored the love he had once professed all those years ago.
She wondered what the mysterious Mr. Tyndareus would do when he figured out that he had been duped into playing cupid. Whatever the outcome for Kenner, it would certainly not be as bad as the fate that awaited her and Fiona.
“As would I,” she said. “Let’s get to it then.”
23
Uncertainty about the fate of Gallo and Fiona robbed Pierce of any sense of triumph at surviving the carnivorous vines.
But survive they had. Even Cooper, who had experienced prolonged exposure to the acidic secretions, and who spent most of the trek back to the road unconscious on the shoulder of the man who now went by the name Erik Lazarus, would make a full recovery without even a scar to remember the ordeal.