The Voynich Manuscript had never been closer to being deciphered – by him, Winston Twain – since its creation.
A noise made Twain turn – the back door to his garden study had swung open.
“Hello, who’s there?” Twain called out. “Natalie, is that you?”
Silence.
“Hello?”
He peered down the dark hall to the back porch and was about to dismiss his premonition when he detected motion at the edge of his awareness. Twain’s eyes widened in horror as a hulking figure stepped from behind an antique armoire.
“Good morning, Professor Twain,” the huge, hirsute man named Sia Amieri said, in a hoarse, heavily-accented whisper that was almost inaudible. “We need to talk.”
Twain’s pupils dilated to the size of pinheads.
He swallowed with difficulty – he knew what a visit from the menacing giant meant, and he understood instantly that this was going to be the last day of his life.
Present Day, Lucca, Italy
Steven’s mind raced over the implications of a call from Professor Winston Twain. He’d forgotten about the letter he’d sent about his tentative theories on the possible origin of the Voynich Manuscript – a document that was a legend wrapped in an enigma. Steven had spent the better part of a year studying it, but had made no more progress than anyone else, which was to say, none at all. Over time, his interests had shifted elsewhere, and that period of mourning for his wife, interspersed with feverish efforts to untangle the manuscript’s puzzling code, had receded into a hazy memory.
Steven pulled down the road leading to the main terminal of the Scuola Paracadutismo Lucca, the parachuting academy that was his ultimate destination this morning. For its elaborate name, there wasn’t much to it. The total campus consisted of a very small hangar with a tiny office attached on the periphery of the airport. Several Pilatus PC6 single engine airplanes were taxiing toward the runway, while one plane – the plane he would be jumping out of – prepped for take-off. Steven killed the momentary twinge of fatalism in his mind that intruded when he saw it and resumed his former ruminations.
Winston Twain and the Voynich Manuscript.
Twain and the Voynich were practically synonymous in the cryptology community. The man was near-legendary in certain circles, considered equal parts savant and dreamer, due to his near-compulsive fixation on decrypting that which had stumped his peers for decades.
A bouncing young brunette in a short denim skirt and a pink tank top approached him as he wheeled to a stop in front of building. She brandished a clipboard and seemed to float with each step.
“Are you
Dottore
Cross?” the girl asked cheerfully in Italian, beaming a smile.
“Yes,” Steven replied in near-fluent Italian.
“We were waiting for you!”
“I got held up on the road.”
“Okay, no problem. But we have to hurry. We’re on a tight schedule.”
She led Steven directly to the airplane and introduced him to the pilot, Tomaso Caldieri, and his ‘jump-buddy’, Paolo. A third man, Giorgio, nodded silently from the rear of the plane.
“Sorry I’m late,” Steven said.
“No problem,” Tomaso assured him. He finished his pre-flight checklist and turned to regard Steven, who had climbed into the back of the plane and was hurriedly donning an orange jumpsuit Paolo had handed him. “Let’s do some flying, shall we?”
“And jumping,” Paolo chimed in.
They closed the transom door, and within a few seconds the engine sputtered to a start before leveling to a roaring hum. After a brief taxi, the little plane sped down the runway and was airborne.
“We’ll be at twelve thousand feet in about fifteen minutes,” Paolo said to Steven as they soared into the sky. He was already putting on his parachute and preparing Steven for his first tandem jump. Paolo briefly took him through the drill. He would harness himself to Steven and they’d skydive together, with Paolo manning the chute and Steven, presumably, enjoying the ride.
Steven was doing this for one reason: a desire to push the envelope and experience things he’d shied away from. Antonia had been a big believer in trying new things, and since her death, Steven had made it a point to schedule something that took him out of his comfort zone at least once every ninety days, as a tribute to her memory as well as a mechanism to force him out of the doldrums that had become his customary state since the accident. So far, he’d conquered scuba diving, had learned to rappel, had run a marathon, and acted as a mentor to several underprivileged kids in Florence. Today was skydiving.
“Don’t worry,” Paolo said, smiling. “Very rarely does anything go wrong.” Paolo had mistaken Steven’s silence as fear.
“That’s very comforting,” Steven said, as he snapped back to the present and fiddled with the harness around his chest and waist.
“Accidents are almost unheard of. The odds are very much in our favor,” Paolo said. It sounded almost like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to reassure Steven. “So here’s how this is going to work, Dr. Cross.”
“Call me Steven.”
“What’s going to happen, Steven, is in about two minutes, Giorgio here will slide the door open, and then Tomaso will give us a Go-Green on that light.” Paolo pointed to the small bulb above the door. “We’ll take a moment, and then it’s boom, out of the plane!”
“How long until we get to the ground?” Steven asked.
“Terminal velocity is between a hundred and twenty and two hundred miles per hour, give or take wind, drag and a few other things, but I’d say it will be about eight minutes. It also depends how long you want to freefall – how long we drop before I pull the chute.”
“I’ll leave that up to you.”
Paolo grinned, then turned Steven towards the door and harnessed himself to Steven’s back. Giorgio gave a thumbs up.
“One last question,” Steven said over his shoulder.
“Fire away.”
“What if something does go wrong? Like the chutes fail to open?” Steven asked.
Paolo contemplated the question. “If that happens, you’ll never have to worry about anything ever again.”
Sensing that Steven was less than amused, Paolo cleared his throat and unfastened the harness. Free of Steven once again, he turned and patted two handles on his parachute.
“This is the ripcord. It deploys the main chute.” Paolo gestured to the white handle.
Steven nodded.
“And this, what they call the lolly-pop, is the secondary emergency ripcord.” Paolo tapped it for emphasis. “Now you know where both ripcords are. Ready to jump?” Paolo asked, moving to reconnect himself to Steven.
“Might as well get it over with.”
The plane reached its cruising altitude and the green light illuminated. Giorgio gave an okay sign and then pulled open the plane’s sliding panel. Wind pummeled Steven’s face, and in spite of the goggles he winced involuntarily.
Paolo negotiated both of them toward the opening. Steven looked down and saw miles of nothingness.
Then he felt a push in the small of his back, and he was falling, face first into the void. His stomach churned, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.
“Relax!” Paolo screamed at him over the roar of wind.
They dropped for seemingly ever towards the ground below. Paolo hadn’t pulled the chute yet, determined to give Steven his money’s worth. Steven forced himself to calmly look down at the approaching earth, and for a moment it felt like he was floating, though his intellect told him that they’d already achieved terminal velocity, as did the way the wind tore at his jumpsuit.
He almost began to enjoy the odd sensation when a massive jolt slammed into him, and he felt pain lash his face as something tore across it. They abruptly spun into a spiral, and Steven spat something out of his mouth.
A feather.
He craned his neck and saw a ragged flock of geese, stunned and panicked, hundreds of feet above him as Steven and Paolo continued their fall. Then the birds were out of sight, continuing their journey.
Steven’s focus became a dizzy whirl of confusion. He was no longer floating in a quasi-dream state. They were tumbling out of control. The spinning was disorienting, and he battled to stay calm even as the shriek of the wind deafened him.
“Paolo!” Steven screamed.
Paolo didn’t answer.
Steven yelled again, but still got no response. He elbowed his expert savior several times, to no avail. Paolo was either unconscious or dead.
The ground was approaching faster. Steven drew a deep series of breaths and forced himself to concentrate on reaching the rip cords he knew were on either side of Paolo’s harness.
He groped behind his back with his right hand, trying to get to the main handle, but his arm couldn’t quite make it no matter how he strained, and the ripcord remained out of reach by a scant few inches. It wasn’t working. He shifted to his left arm and stretched for the lolly-pop handle of the emergency chute.
No go.
He looked down at his harness and calculated that one of the connecting straps would have to be detached so his arms had more flexibility. Steven intuitively understood the risks involved, but didn’t see an alternative.
He reached to the harness clip on his left side and pulled the safety belt release.
With a lurch, half of his body now dangled from the one remaining strap securing him to Paolo. He supposed it was too late to wonder about how many foot pounds of resistance a single belt could take before snapping – hopefully at least several more than he was about to subject it to.
Steven turned on himself, still tumbling head over heels in tandem with Paolo without any perspective or line of sight, and concentrated on the emergency handle.
His left arm now free, his fingers felt for the grip. They felt the distinctive form and wrapped around it, and he yanked the cord as hard as he could.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then his whole body jerked abruptly upwards, and something in the small of his neck tweaked painfully. He looked up to see the chute opening above and grabbed at Paolo’s harness just in case the sole strap was preparing to give way. Fortunately they were still connected.
Reassured he was secure, he returned his gaze to the ground, now only six hundred feet below. He fought to adjust himself so that when he landed it would be on his feet. That turned out to be easier than he’d anticipated; with the braking effect of the chute he had more control. Now the trick would be to avoid snapping his spine when he slammed into the ground with Paolo unconscious.
The earth drew closer, and he made out three people below, hands outstretched, waiting to assist him.
He hit the ground upright, and while there was a jolt, there was no anticipated pain of a twisted ankle or sprain. But almost instantly his legs collapsed under him and he rolled on the ground atop Paolo’s body before coming to a stop, spitting out dust.
“
Mierda
!” someone yelled, and suddenly three pairs of hands were pulling at him, unsnapping harness straps and the cords linking Paolo’s pack to the parachute.
“Never seen anything like that!” another man said.
Steven tried to stand up, but couldn’t. Visions of himself paralyzed in a hospital bed flashed across his mind, and then he realized it was because he still had two hundred plus pounds of Paolo strapped to him.
“Unbelievable. I’ve heard of bird-strike on small planes, but nothing like this,” yet another man exclaimed in Italian.
“One for the record books,” the first declared as he fumbled with Steven’s harness.
The men heaved Steven, struggling for breath, free from Paolo, then he abruptly found himself standing on very shaky legs.
“Are you all right?” a burly man asked as he put both hands on Steven’s shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes.
Steven nodded, then collapsed onto both knees and vomited.
“Your equilibrium’s shot. It will take a while to get adjusted. The nausea’s normal,” the man explained.
Steven managed a nod as spasms racked his body, and it was with relief that he finally heard the approaching ambulance arriving from the nearby hospital.
After an hour of observation and an X-ray of his neck, Steven was released with instructions to take aspirin for any pain and to come back if the discomfort lasted more than a couple of days. He’d declined the offer of a whiplash collar – the attending physician had said it was optional in his case. No permanent damage had resulted from the strike or the hard landing, and the doctor had put a Dramamine patch below his ear to control the dizziness before signing him out. Paolo wasn’t so lucky – his spine had been badly twisted after hitting a goose, and one of his legs was fractured in three places following the landing.
The front desk nurse in the emergency room called him a taxi, and Steven sat on the bench by the sliding glass doors, an ice bag held to his still-aching neck. Minutes dragged by. He extracted his cell from his windbreaker and dialed his office number.
Gwen answered. “I’m guessing from the caller ID that you made it in one piece?”
“You’re a funny lady.”
“I’m told that all of the time. I’m thinking of buying a tent and taking it on the road.” Gwen paused. “How was it?”
“It was close.”
Gwen’s tone changed to one of genuine concern. “You’re kidding…”
“No, I’m not. I wish I was. I’ll tell you all about it later,” Steven said. “Listen, did Professor Twain ever call back?”
“No. Where are you? Are you all right? Do you need anything?” Gwen sounded disturbed.
“I’m fine. Mostly. Listen, do me a favor. Look the Professor up and see if you can locate his number. His full name is Winston G. Twain. If my memory serves, he’s in the Palm Springs area of California. I wrote him a letter a year ago, but that’s all I can remember. Palm Springs, or Palm Desert. If you can’t find him, I can root around for the address in my desk. I probably still have it,” Steven said.
“Okay. You don’t sound so hot. You’re not coming into the office today, are you?”
“I’ll play that by ear,” Steven replied. A siren drowned out the call for a few moments.