Angels Demons Chapter 51-54

51BBC reporter Gunther Glick stared at the cell phone in his hand for ten seconds onward he finally hung up.Chinita Macri studied him from the masking of the van. What happened? Who was that?Glick off, feeling equal a child who had just received a Christmas gift he feared was non really for him. I just got a tip. Somethings going on inside the Vatican.Its called conclave, Chinita said. Helluva tip.No, something else. Something big. He wondered if the story the telephoner had just told him could possibly be true. Glick felt ashamed when he cognize he was praying it was. What if I told you four cardinals stand been kidnapped and are going to be murdered at different churches tonight.Id say youre being hazed by someone at the office with a sick sense of humor.What if I told you we were going to be given the exact location of the first murder?Id want to know who the funny house you just talked to.He didnt say.Perhaps because hes full of shit?Glick had come to expect Macris cynic ism, but what she was forgetting was that liars and lunatics had been Glicks business for almost a decade at the British Tattler. This caller had been neither. This man had been coldly sane. Logical. I will call you just forwards eight, the man had said, and tell you where the first killing will occur. The images you record will pull ahead you historied. When Glick had demanded why the caller was giving him this information, the answer had been as icy as the mans Mideastern vehemence. The media is the right arm of anarchy.He told me something else too, Glick said.What? That Elvis Presley was just elected Pope?telephone dial into the BBC database, will you? Glicks adrena declination was pumping now. I want to see what other stories weve run on these guys.What guys?Indulge me.Macri sighed and pulled up the connection to the BBC database. Thisll take a minute.Glicks mind was swimming. The caller was very intent to know if I had a cameraman.Videographer.And if we could transmit live. One point five three s all the same megahertz. What is this about? The database beeped. Okay, were in. Who is it youre looking for?Glick gave her the keyword.Macri turned and stared. I sure as hell hope youre kidding.52The internal organization of Archival Vault 10 was not as intuitive as Langdon had hoped, and the Diagramma hologram did not appear to be located with other similar Galilean publications. Without access to the computerized Biblion and a reference locator, Langdon and Vittoria were stuck.Youre sure Diagramma is in here? Vittoria asked.Positive. Its a affirm listing in both the Uficcio della Propaganda delle Fede Fine. As long as youre sure. She headed left, while he went right.Langdon began his manual search. He needed every bit of self-restraint not to stop and read every treasure he passed. The collection was staggering. The Assayer The Starry Messenger The Sunspot Letters Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina Apologia pro Galileo On and on.It was Vittoria who fin ally struck gold near the linchpin of the vault. Her throaty voice called out, Diagramma della VeritaLangdon dashed by means of the crimson haze to join her. Where?Vittoria pointed, and Langdon immediately realized why they had not found it earlier. The manuscript was in a pagination bin, not on the shelves. Folio bins were a common means of storing unbound scalawags. The label on the front of the container left no doubt about the contents.Diagramma Della Verita Galileo Galilei, 1639Langdon dropped to his knees, his heart pounding. Diagramma. He gave her a grin. Nice work. Help me pull out this bin.Vittoria knelt beside him, and they heaved. The metal tray on which the bin was sitting rolled toward them on castors, revealing the top of the container.No lock? Vittoria said, sounding surprised at the simple latch.Never. Documents sometimes need to be evacuated quickly. Floods and fires.So open it.Langdon didnt need either encouragement. With his academic lifes dream right in fron t of him and the thin air in the chamber, he was in no sense of humor to dawdle. He unsnapped the latch and lifted the lid. Inside, flat on the floor of the bin, typeset a black, duck-cloth sac. The cloths breathability was critical to the preservation of its contents. Reaching in with both hands and memory the pouch horizontal, Langdon lifted it out of the bin.I expected a treasure chest, Vittoria said. Looks more like a pillowcase.Follow me, he said. Holding the bag onward him like a religious offering, Langdon walked to the center of the vault where he found the customary glass-topped archival exam table. Although the central location was int residuumed to minimize in-vault give out of documents, researchers appreciated the privacy the surrounding stacks afforded. Career-making discoveries were uncovered in the top vaults of the world, and most academics did not like rivals peering through the glass as they worked.Langdon lay the pouch on the table and unbuttoned the openi ng. Vittoria stood by. Rummaging through a tray of archivist dickheads, Langdon found the felt-pad pincers archivists called finger cymbals oversized tweezers with flattened disks on each arm. As his excitement mounted, Langdon feared at any moment he might awake back in Cambridge with a slew of test papers to grade. Inhaling deeply, he opened the bag. Fingers trembling in their cotton fiber gloves, he reached in with his tongs.Relax, Vittoria said. Its paper, not plutonium.Langdon slid the tongs around the stack of documents inside and was careful to apply charge pressure. Then, rather than pulling out the documents, he held them in place while he slid off the bag an archivists procedure for minimizing torque on the artifact. non until the bag was removed and Langdon had turned on the exam dark sort out follow outstairs the table did he begin breathing again.Vittoria looked like a specter now, lit from below by the lamp beneath the glass. Small sheets, she said, her voice reverent.Langdon nodded. The stack of folios forrader them looked like loose pages from a small paperback novel. Langdon could see that the top sheet was an ornate pen and ink cover sheet with the title, the date, and Galileos name in his own hand.In that instant, Langdon forgot the cramped quarters, forgot his exhaustion, forgot the horrifying situation that had brought him here. He simply stared in wonder. Close encounters with history always left Langdon numbed with reverence like eyesight the brushstrokes on the Mona Lisa.The muted, yellow papyrus left no doubt in Langdons mind as to its age and authenticity, but excluding the inevitable fading, the document was in brilliant condition. Slight bleaching of the pigment. Minor sundering and cohesion of the papyrus. But all in all in damn fine condition. He studied the ornate hand etch of the cover, his vision blurring in the lack of humidity. Vittoria was silent.Hand me a spatula, please. Langdon motioned beside Vittoria to a t ray filled with stainless-steel archival tools. She handed it to him. Langdon took the tool in his hand. It was a good one. He ran his fingers crossways the face to remove any static charge and then, ever so carefully, slid the blade beneath the cover. Then, lifting the spatula, he turned over the cover sheet.The first page was compose in longhand, the tiny, stylized calligraphy almost impossible to read. Langdon immediately noticed that there were no diagrams or summates on the page. It was an essay.Heliocentricity, Vittoria said, translating the heading on folio one. She scanned the text. Looks like Galileo renouncing the geocentric model once and for all. Ancient Italian, though, so no promises on the translation.Forget it, Langdon said. Were looking for math. The pure actors line. He used the spatula tool to flip the next page. Another essay. No math or diagrams. Langdons hands began to sweat inside his gloves.Movement of the Planets, Vittoria said, translating the title.Lan gdon frowned. On any other day, he would corroborate been fascinated to read it incredibly NASAs current model of planetary orbits, observed through high-powered telescopes, was supposedly almost identical to Galileos original predictions.No math, Vittoria said. Hes public lecture about retrograde motions and elliptical orbits or something.Elliptical orbits. Langdon recalled that much of Galileos legal trouble had begun when he described planetary motion as elliptical. The Vatican exalted the nonesuch of the circle and insisted heavenly motion must be only circular. Galileos Illuminati, however, saw perfection in the ellipse as well, revering the mathematical duality of its twin foci. The Illuminatis ellipse was prominent even today in modern Masonic tracing boards and footing inlays.Next, Vittoria said.Langdon flipped.Lunar phases and tidal motion, she said. No numbers. No diagrams.Langdon flipped again. Nothing. He kept flipping through a dozen or so pages. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.I thought this guy was a mathematician, Vittoria said. This is all text.Langdon felt the air in his lungs beginning to thin. His hopes were thinning too. The pile was waning.Nothing here, Vittoria said. No math. A few dates, a few standard figures, but nothing that looks like it could be a clue.Langdon flipped over the last folio and sighed. It, too, was an essay.Short book, Vittoria said, frowning.Langdon nodded.Merda, as we say in Rome.Shit is right, Langdon thought. His reflection in the glass seemed mocking, like the image staring back at him this morning from his mouth window. An aging ghost. on that points got to be something, he said, the hoarse desperation in his voice surprising him. The segno is here somewhere. I know itMaybe you were wrong about DIII?Langdon turned and stared at her.Okay, she agreed, DIII makes perfect sense. But maybe the clue isnt mathematical?Lingua pura. What else would it be?Art?Except there are no diagrams or pictures in the book.All I kno w is that lingua pura refers to something other than Italian. Math just seems logical. I agree.Langdon refused to accept defeat so quickly. The numbers must be written longhand. The math must be in words rather than equations.Itll take some time to read all the pages.Times something we dont have. Well have to split the work. Langdon flipped the stack back over to the beginning. I know enough Italian to spot numbers. Using his spatula, he cut the stack like a deck of cards and lay the first half-dozen pages in front of Vittoria. Its in here somewhere. Im sure.Vittoria reached down and flipped her first page by hand.Spatula Langdon said, grabbing her an extra tool from the tray. Use the spatula.Im wearing gloves, she grumbled. How much reproach could I cause?Just use it.Vittoria picked up the spatula. You feeling what Im feeling?Tense?No. Short of breath.Langdon was definitely starting to feel it too. The air was thinning faster than he had imagined. He knew they had to hurry. Archiv al conundrums were nothing new for him, but usually he had more than a few minutes to work them out. Without another(prenominal) word, Langdon bowed his head and began translating the first page in his stack.Show yourself, damn it Show yourself53Somewhere beneath Rome the dark figure prowled down a stone ramp into the underground tunnel. The ancient passageway was lit only by torches, making the air hot and thick. Up ahead the panic-stricken voices of grown men called out in vain, echoing in the cramped spaces.As he rounded the corner he saw them, exactly as he had left them four old men, terrified, sealed behind rusted iron bars in a stone cubicle.Qui etes-vous? one of the men demanded in French. What do you want with us?Hilfe another said in German. Let us goAre you aware who we are? one asked in English, his accent Spanish.Silence, the raspy voice commanded. There was a finality about the word.The fourth prisoner, an Italian, quiet and thoughtful, looked into the inky void of h is captors eyes and swore he saw hell itself. graven image help us, he thought.The killer checked his watch and then returned his gaze to the prisoners. Now then, he said. Who will be first?54Inside file Vault 10 Robert Langdon recited Italian numbers as he scanned the calligraphy before him. Mille centi uno, duo, tre cincuanta. I need a numerical reference Anything, damnitWhen he reached the end of his current folio, he lifted the spatula to flip the page. As he aligned the blade with the next page, he fumbled, having difficulty holding the tool steady. Minutes later, he looked down and realized he had abandoned his spatula and was turning pages by hand. Oops, he thought, feeling vaguely criminal. The lack of oxygen was affecting his inhibitions. Looks like Ill burn in archivists hell.About damn time, Vittoria choked when she saw Langdon turning pages by hand. She dropped her spatula and followed suit.Any luck?Vittoria shook her head. Nothing that looks purely mathematical. Im sk imming but none of this reads like a clue.Langdon continued translating his folios with increasing difficulty. His Italian skills were rocky at best, and the tiny penmanship and archaic language was making it slow going. Vittoria reached the end of her stack before Langdon and looked disheartened as she flipped the pages back over. She hunkered down for another more intense inspection.When Langdon finished his final page, he cursed under his breath and looked over at Vittoria. She was scowling, squinting at something on one of her folios. What is it? he asked.Vittoria did not look up. Did you have any footnotes on your pages?Not that I noticed. Why?This page has a footnote. Its obscured in a crease.Langdon tried to see what she was looking at, but all he could make out was the page number in the upper right-hand(a) corner of the sheet. Folio 5. It took a moment for the coincidence to register, and even when it did the connection seemed vague. Folio 5. Five, Pythagoras, pentagrams, Illuminati. Langdon wondered if the Illuminati would have chosen page five on which to hide their clue. through with(predicate) the reddish fog surrounding them, Langdon sensed a tiny ray of hope. Is the footnote mathematical?Vittoria shook her head. Text. One line. Very small printing. Almost illegible.His hopes faded. Its supposed to be math. Lingua pura.Yeah, I know. She hesitated. I think youll want to hear this, though. Langdon sensed excitement in her voice.Go ahead.Squinting at the folio, Vittoria read the line. The highway of light is laid, the sacred test.The words were nothing like what Langdon had imagined. Im sorry?Vittoria repeated the line. The path of light is laid, the sacred test. way of life of light? Langdon felt his posture straightening.Thats what it says. Path of light.As the words sank in, Langdon felt his delirium pierced by an instant of clarity. The path of light is laid, the sacred test. He had no idea how it helped them, but the line was as direct a re ference to the Path of Illumination as he could imagine. Path of light. Sacred test. His head felt like an engine revving on bad fuel. Are you sure of the translation?Vittoria hesitated. Actually She glanced over at him with a strange look. Its not technically a translation. The line is written in English.For an instant, Langdon thought the acoustics in the chamber had affected his hearing. English?Vittoria pushed the document over to him, and Langdon read the minuscule printing at the bottom of the page. The path of light is laid, the sacred test. English? What is English doing in an Italian book?Vittoria shrugged. She too was looking tipsy. Maybe English is what they meant by the lingua pura? Its considered the international language of science. Its all we babble out at CERN.But this was in the 1600s, Langdon argued. Nobody spoke English in Italy, not even He stopped short, realizing what he was about to say. Not even the clergy. Langdons academic mind hummed in high gear. In t he 1600s, he said, talking faster now, English was one language the Vatican had not yet embraced. They dealt in Italian, Latin, German, even Spanish and French, but English was totally foreign inside the Vatican. They considered English a polluted, free-thinkers language for profane men like Chaucer and Shakespeare. Langdon flashed suddenly on the Illuminati brands of Earth, Air, Fire, Water. The fabrication that the brands were in English now made a bizarre kind of sense.So youre saying maybe Galileo considered English la lingua pura because it was the one language the Vatican did not control?Yes. Or maybe by putting the clue in English, Galileo was subtly restricting the readership away from the Vatican.But its not even a clue, Vittoria argued. The path of light is laid, the sacred test? What the hell does that mean?Shes right, Langdon thought. The line didnt help in any way. But as he spoke the give voice again in his mind, a strange fact hit him. Now thats odd, he thought. Wha t are the chances of that?We need to get out of here, Vittoria said, sounding hoarse.Langdon wasnt listening. The path of light is laid, the sacred test. Its a damn line of iambic penta thousand, he said suddenly, counting the syllables again. Five couplets of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.Vittoria looked lost. Iambic who?For an instant Langdon was back at Phillips Exeter Academy sitting in a Saturday morning English class. Hell on earth. The school baseball star, Peter Greer, was having trouble remembering the number of couplets necessary for a line of Shakespearean iambic pentameter. Their professor, an animated schoolmaster named Bissell, leapt onto the table and bellowed, Penta-meter, Greer Think of home plate A penta-gon Five sides Penta Penta Penta JeeeeshFive couplets, Langdon thought. individually couplet, by definition, having two syllables. He could not believe in his entire career he had never made the connection. Iambic pentameter was a symmetrical meter based on the sacred Illuminati numbers of 5 and 2Youre reaching Langdon told himself, trying to push it from his mind. A meaningless coincidence But the thought stuck. Five for Pythagoras and the pentagram. Two for the duality of all things.A moment later, another realization sent a numbing sensation down his legs. Iambic pentameter, on business relationship of its simplicity, was often called pure verse or pure meter. La lingua pura? Could this have been the pure language the Illuminati had been referring to? The path of light is laid, the sacred testUh oh, Vittoria said.Langdon go around to see her rotating the folio upside down. He felt a knot in his gut. Not again. Theres no way that line is an ambigramNo, its not an ambigram but its She kept turning the document, 90 degrees at every turn.Its what?Vittoria looked up. Its not the only line.Theres another?Theres a different line on every margin. Top, bottom, left, and right. I think its a poem.Four lines? Langdon bristled with excitement. Galileo was a poet? Let me seeVittoria did not relinquish the page. She kept turning the page in quarter turns. I didnt see the lines before because theyre on the edges. She cocked her head over the last line. Huh. You know what? Galileo didnt even write this.WhatThe poem is signed John Milton.John Milton? The influential English poet who wrote Paradise incapacitated was a contemporary of Galileos and a savant who conspiracy buffs put at the top of their list of Illuminati suspects. Miltons alleged affiliation with Galileos Illuminati was one legend Langdon suspected was true. Not only had Milton made a well-documented 1638 pilgrimage to Rome to commune with enlightened men, but he had held meetings with Galileo during the scientists house arrest, meetings portrayed in many Renaissance paintings, including Annibale Gattis famous Galileo and Milton, which hung even now in the IMSS Museum in Florence.Milton knew Galileo, didnt he? Vittoria said, finally pushing the folio over to Langdon. Maybe he wrote the poem as a party favour?Langdon clenched his teeth as he took the sheathed document. Leaving it flat on the table, he read the line at the top. Then he revolve the page 90 degrees, reading the line in the right margin. Another twist, and he read the bottom. Another twist, the left. A final twist completed the circle. There were four lines in all. The first line Vittoria had found was actually the third line of the poem. Utterly agape, he read the four lines again, clockwise in instalment top, right, bottom, left. When he was done, he exhaled. There was no doubt in his mind. You found it, Ms. Vetra.She smiled tightly. Good, now can we get the hell out of here?I have to copy these lines down. I need to find a pencil and paper.Vittoria shook her head. Forget it, professor. No time to play scribe. Mickeys ticking. She took the page from him and headed for the door.Langdon stood up. You cant take that outside Its a But Vittoria was already gone.