Nomad (2 page)

“Over a thousand years,” Jessica said in a low voice to her mother, Celeste, standing beside her. She took a sip of white wine from the almost-empty glass in her hand.

“Puts other royals to shame,” Celeste whispered back. “Even the Hapsburgs managed only what, six hundred years?”

Jessica paused to admire her mother’s olive skin bronzed from years doing geological fieldwork, her blond hair proudly streaked with gray—still a beauty even in her mid-fifties. No wonder their tour guide Nico kept staring at her.

Catching her own reflection in a window, Jessica had to admit that she’d gotten her good looks from her mom. Almost a mirror image of photographs she’d seen from when her mom and dad got married. Jess hoped she’d look so good in middle age, but a part of her doubted she’d even live that long. Just making it to twenty-six was an accomplishment.

“A fortification has stood on this mountaintop, at the western edge of the Chianti region, for time beyond history.” Nico smiled at an elderly couple, the only other people in their small tour group. “The original foundations are built atop ruins that date back thousands of years. The wine cellars are built in three-thousand-year-old Etruscan caves that burrow deep into the mountain below us.”

In front of Jessica, one particular dagger caught her attention—bejeweled with rubies and sapphires, its glitter hypnotic. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered under her breath.

Nico, the tour guide, heard her and smiled. “Ah, the Medici dagger. A gift to the Baroness Ruspoli by the Medici family in 1434 following the Ciompi revolts in Florence, for their support in defeating the Albizzi family.” He paused, allowing the group to have a closer look. “In the next room,” Nico continued in a loud voice, walking around the corner, “we move up through the centuries…”

Jessica stopped to look out the window. Rolling mountains stretched into the blue distance. Dense green forests covered the landscape, of course with groves of olive trees and iconic cypress standing at attention, but also oak, juniper, and thickets of fir trees amid the bursting lines of grape vines. Nothing like the dusty roads and baked orange hills most people imagined of Tuscany. More like the mountains of the Catskills in upstate New York where she grew up, where her family had their own cottage, or did have, far back in time. Jessica pushed a memory from her mind, of a face disappearing into a black hole ringed in white.

Celeste stood behind Jessica. “So when can I meet Ricardo?” she asked. “Is he coming out to meet us? Is this the big secret?”

Her mother had flown in from JFK and landed the previous morning at Fiumicino, Rome’s main airport. Jessica had said she had a special surprise.

Jessica took a deep breath. “No, you’re not going to meet Ricardo. That’s over.” She couldn’t tell her mother the real reason she dragged her out here. Not yet.

“Over?”

“Over. I broke up with him.”

“You’re a wandering nomad, you know that, Jess?” Her mother’s lips pressed tightly together. “When are you going to settle down?”

“Settle?” Jess clucked. “Mom, please…I’m happy. I like my life.”

Celeste winced, crinkling her nose. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”

Jess exhaled, silently counting to five. Maybe this was a mistake. “It’s okay,” she muttered, turning from the window. She followed the tour guide into the next room, finding row upon row of muskets, revolvers, and a whole range of everything in between.

Celeste came up behind Jess and caught the look in her eye. “Your favorite,” her mother whispered, “guns.”

Jess contained herself this time, trying to ignore the passive aggressive tone. “I’m done with all that,” she whispered back, but they both knew it wasn’t true.

“The Ruspoli family were experts in weapons, building many of these themselves,” Nico explained, seeing all four of his tour group had made it into the room. “From the Dark Ages, through the Renaissance and up to the late 19th century, the Ruspolis operated their own gun smithy. Renowned the world over for their precision weapons, they were major suppliers of the Genoese crossbowmen that signaled the end of armed aristocratic knights in the Middle Ages.”

Celeste pursed her lips and changed topics. “So what did you want to talk to me about at brunch?”

Jess sighed. It had taken three glasses of prosecco at brunch for her to bring up her problem, but she was interrupted by the announcement of the start of the crypt tour. Jess gulped down the remainder of her fourth glass of wine and put it down on a shelf near the entrance. She was drunk, just as she'd hoped she would be. Pulling her mother away from the other people in the tour group, she said under her breath, “I’m in trouble.”

Celeste knitted her eyebrows together. “What kind of trouble?”

“The kind that involves me going to jail.”

3

R
OME,
I
TALY

BEN SETTLED INTO his chair, putting his espresso down on the café table. Behind him a buzzing growl erupted, and he turned to see a scooter loaded with two riders, one of them clutching a brown bag of groceries, roaring toward him. He flinched backward, the mirror of the scooter flying just inches from his face.

A close call. A near miss. But he was none the worse for it, except for a jolt of adrenaline to go with his caffeine.

Shifting his seat closer to the wall, Ben watched the scooter disappear down the cobbled street in a haze of blue exhaust. In the stifling air, a fetid aroma wafted from garbage piled near the corner. The collectors were on strike. Unseasonably hot weather for Italy in early October. Looking up, he admired the French-shuttered windows lining each story of the tiny alley up to three stories above him, cables and wires stretched like jungle vines from one side to the other with a thin blue strip of sky beyond that. A flock of birds fluttered across the rooftops.

If there were ever a day for alcohol at breakfast, today was that day, but Ben kept to coffee. The meeting the night before had been short, with Dr. Müller giving precious little information except that he needed Ben to help assemble a trusted group.

Ben hadn’t seen Müller in years before last night, not since Müller was his thesis advisor at Harvard. Ben heard the old man had gone into the private sector; either that or retired. Apparently not.

Dr. Müller wanted Ben’s data; that’s why he needed him. Ben both loved and hated being in charge of the exoplanet group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Sometimes there was excitement, like when he co-discovered one of the first planets orbiting another star in 1992. But ten more planetary discoveries took ten more years of drudgery after that.

In the last decade, though, the floodgates had opened with the development of new telescopes and sensing systems. Now the list of exoplanets—planets that orbited stars other than our Sun—stretched into the many thousands, with dozens of them similar in size and orbit to Earth. What they were looking for now wasn’t a planet, but a lot of the data they’d collected could be used for what Dr. Müller needed.

Ben still had a headache.

The night before had been a celebration of sorts. This year was a big event for the International Astronomical Union, one hundred years since its inception. Five thousand astronomers and physicists from all over the world assembled here in Rome, back at the place it all started—in Italy four hundred years ago when Galileo turned his telescope skyward and championed the idea that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the solar system.

“So this is where you’re hiding,” said someone behind Ben.

Turning, he discovered the smiling face of Roger—the graduate student attending the IAU meeting with him—looking down at him with a quirky grin. Dr. Müller had made it clear that only a small group of senior people was to be included at this point, so Ben couldn’t say anything to Roger yet. He did his best to smile.

“What, the Grand Hotel isn’t grand enough for you to enjoy your coffee there?” Roger said, laughing. “You look terrible. Too much
vino
last night?”

“Maybe.” Ben shrugged limply. “You know what it’s like when us old boys get together.”

“Sure.” Roger sat opposite Ben, his hands wide apart on the table. A white-aproned waiter wheeled out of the café entrance and Roger mouthed, “Espresso,” while pointing at Ben’s empty cup and saucer.

Ben held up a finger, requesting his third. The waiter nodded and turned back.

“Are you going to the seminars this morning?” Roger asked, pointing at the IAU meeting schedule open on the table between them.

Ben stared at the thin strip of blue sky between the rooftops overhead. Was destruction really coming? With dozens of countries with active space programs, hundreds of spacecraft and telescopes peering into space, how could it be possible to miss something like this? Did this thing suddenly appear from nowhere? It seemed impossible, but Dr. Müller promised more answers at the meeting later this morning.

Even after thirty years as a professional astrophysicist, Ben was amazed at the detail of the universe that humans had managed to construct, all by staring up into the sky and by peering through tiny devices. A collection of fantastical objects—dwarfs, red giants, black holes, dark nebulae—sounded more like fantasy than reality. But it seemed the fantasy was about to deliver a cold dose of reality.

“Earth to Ben. Are you going to the seminars this morning or not?”

Ben caught himself staring up, lost in thought. Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, he turned and met Roger’s quizzical smile with an awkward grin.

“Sorry, coming back to Rome brings up a lot of memories. I honeymooned here.” He folded his arms. “And to answer your question, no, an emergency meeting was called last night.”

“An
emergency
meeting? At the Union?” Roger snorted. “What, they want to turn Pluto back into a planet?”

The waiter appeared as if by magic and hovered over the table. He delivered their two espressos before vanishing again.

Ben picked up his cup and took a sip, resisting a strong urge to spill the beans. “Something big must be up.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Ben did his best to look mystified. “They invited all the senior exo-hunters, that’s all I know.”

“And they didn’t invite me?” A frown flitted across Roger’s face, but his smile returned and widened. He picked up his espresso. “Must be above my pay grade.”

“Must be,” Ben agreed grimly. This was above everyone’s pay grade. He finished off this third espresso, savoring the richness, and tapped his cell phone screen. Swearing under his breath, Ben stood and patted Roger on the shoulder. “And I’m late. Can you pay?” His brain was still recovering from an excess of wine and lack of sleep, all of that wrapped in a tight fist of anxiety.

Roger nodded and picked up the program schedule. “Sure, it’s your expense budget.”

“Thanks.” Ben squeezed Roger’s shoulder and strode off down the alleyway, turning the corner to the Grand Hotel.

A uniformed attendant nodded at him, saying, “
Buon giorno, Professore Rollins
,” and stepped back to pull open a large glass-and-brass door.

Air-conditioned coolness swept over Ben as he walked onto the thick carpet of the hotel’s entranceway. Glittering chandeliers hung beneath gilt frescoes. Hurrying up the expansive main staircase, past a menacing lion marble statue, Ben stared at an image of God painted on the ceiling. The Creator hurled bolts of fire down at mankind from the heavens.

Someone grabbed Ben by the shoulder, almost spinning him around. “Identification please.”

A large man in a dark suit held him gently but firmly in place. Ben produced his IAU all-access conference pass. The man nodded and held up some kind of scanner, and Ben tried to wave his pass in front of it.

The man grabbed his hand. “Sorry, I need a DNA scan, Dr. Rollins,” he said as he pressed Ben’s thumb against the device.

“Hey!” Ben tried to pull away, but the man held him firm until the machine pinged.

“Apologies, but I have orders.” The big man stared impassively at Ben. “Please step inside, sir.”

Ben saw complaining would be wasted, and the man was polite if firm. Shaking his head, Ben pushed through the doors to the main ballroom. Even more elaborate crystal chandeliers hung under dazzling sky-blue frescoes. Desks arranged in neat rows lined each side of the room. Ben decided to stand at the back.

Dr. Müller had already started his presentation.  The lights dimmed and a projector displayed the blue-and-white NASA logo next to the bright red block letters of JPL—the famous Jet Propulsion Laboratories. The group of five astronomers from the previous evening had expanded to thirty. Many, Ben realized on a quick sweep, recommended by him.

“…everyone has heard of the Pioneer Anomaly?” Dr. Müller asked from the front of the room.

Everyone in the room nodded at Dr. Müller’s question, murmuring their familiarity. When the Pioneer spacecraft—the first probes launched into the outer solar system—reached the edges of interstellar space in the 1980s, they accelerated at rates that couldn’t be explained by the sun’s gravity alone. After two decades of guesswork, the commonly accepted solution was a slight acceleration from their internal heat radiating into the ultra-vacuum around them, but still many people weren’t convinced.