Brahman said disdainfully. "He did not know that only the gods can do that.
Give him a knife. Let him try once again to pierce my body."
An expectant murmur ran through the crowd. A grinning fakir stretched
out a knife to Fedor, who struck it from the man's hand. The knife clattered
as it fell on the stone paving.
"If only I had the knife the old man hid." Fedor thought. "But
evidently that is not to be. Say your last prayers, naval lieutenant."
"Remove the shroud," said the Brahman.
When the shroud was lifted, a naked corpse was revealed lying at the
bronze feet of the goddess.
Lightning streaked from the fingers of Kali.
A scream of horror rang through the hall and was then echoed and
re-echoed time and again. The corpse had come to life. It quivered and
stirred at the feet of the terrible goddess.
"Look here, one and all!" the Incorporeal Brahman shouted. "The goddess
refuses to accept the death of my finest pupil. He hovers between life and
death. The time has not yet come for his reincarnation! But if Kali is to
return him to life she must receive a sacrifice in exchange!"
Twelve attendants marched up to the pool in single file. Each carried a
pitcher on his shoulder, the thick, dark, odorous contents of which he
poured into the pool.
"We have brought you precious oil as a sacrifice," the Incorporeal
Brahman intoned, turning to the goddess. "Will you accept this bloodless
sacrifice?"
There was a sound of gurgling. The water in the pool began to boil. The
oil gathered into a dark ball, then streaked through the water to the
opposite side of the pool, throwing up a fountain. For an instant the pillar
of oil stood motionless, then it collapsed, sprinkling the crowd with
fragrant drops.
"The goddess rejects a bloodless sacrifice!" cried the Mahatma Ananga.
"She gives it to you with her blessing. She demands a human sacrifice. Those
pilgrims who were chosen by the sacred lightning have been given a happy
reincarnation. Their death was a joy to them. But this foreigner will meet a
terrible death, for he is alien to our gods and will be given the lowest
reincarnation. His soul will pass into the body of a blind worm that gnaws
away at seaside cliffs!"
The water in the pool began to seethe. A bright flame appeared on top
of it.
"See, the goddess agrees!" shouted the Incorporeal Brahman. "The water
has turned to fire! May the foreigner die without bloodshed.
Kali herself will give him death. Place him at the feet of the goddess,
beside my pupil. Let everyone see the goddess take the life of one man and
transfer it to another man!"
Fedor desperately ran his eyes across the crowd. The faces were
hostile. "This is the end, Fedor Matveyev," he said to himself. "Here come
the fakirs. Now they'll seize you-"
"Watch out, Fedor!"
Suddenly he was gripped by a feeling of grim merriment. He stared
eagerly at the back of the hall, where the light was dim.
Something flew over the heads of the crowd and fell at Fedor's feet. In
a flash he bent down, snatched up his knife by the handle, and plunged it
into the breast of the Incorporeal Brahman. He felt the cloth of the robe
resist as it tore.
A spreading patch of blood stained the white robe of the Mahatma
Ananga. He wheezed, choked and would have fallen if Fedor had drawn his
knife from the wound. But Fedor did not release the handle. He realized in a
flash that if the Incorporeal Brahman fell he would sink through the ground,
creating a miracle that would spoil everything.
His ears failed to register the shouts of the crowd, and he did not
know what was going on behind his back. All he felt was that the Mahatma
Ananga was growing heavier and was slipping sideways.
Death had returned the usual properties to the body of the Incorporeal
Brahman. Although Fedor firmly clasped the handle the knife pulled itself
out of the body. No longer supported by the knife, the body dropped to the
stone floor with a dull thud.
An instant of eerie silence was followed by cries of rage and fear.
Ram Das ran up to Fedor and seized him by the arm.
"This way!" he cried. "Hurry!"
IN WHICH A STAR ABOVE THE WATER TURNS OUT TO BE A SHIP'S LIGHT
Fedor let the helm slip out of his hands. It did not matter since he
could see nothing whatsoever in the utter darkness. Besides, it was raining
violently.
The powerful current swept the small boat downstream. The heavens split
open with a sound like the ripping of a sail. Streaks of lightning lit up a
wide, swollen river, uprooted trees and a thick wall of rain.
"We're being carried by the current," he thought. "Let's hope we hold
out until dawn." He sat in the stern, trying to shield Bharati from the rain
with his body. The girl's head was in his lap. She was trembling. Fedor
stroked her wet hair. He could find no words with which to comfort her.
Jogindar Singh's body lay on the deck, his white robe a blur in the
black night. His strong arms lay by his side. Never again would those arms
wield an axe.
The Sikhs had failed to find Lal Chandra. The sly Brahman had escaped
through secret passages. Almost immediately after, armed men began to
encircle the temple. The Brahmans and rajahs had evidently stationed them
nearby in case something went wrong. Shots rang out in the courtyard of the
temple and in the dark passageways. The Sikhs brandished their curved
daggers.
Ram Das had led Fedor unnoticed out of the temple and down to the
stream, where Bharati and her father were waiting. They set out in the
direction of the Sutlej in the rain, stumbling over the rocks in their path.
Shots sounded behind them. Suddenly Jogindar Singh pitched forward to the
ground with an anguished cry. Fedor picked him up and carried him on his
back. He and Bharati pushed through thickets for a long time before they
finally reached the Sutlej. There Bharati found the sailboat, tied to a
boulder.
Dawn came at last, the grey light revealing a rain-spattered river the
colour of yellowish mud. Bharati, petrified by sorrow, sat beside the body
of her father.
It took every ounce of Fedor's strength to guide the boat towards a
small island. Near the shore he leaped into the water and then dragged the
boat up onto the wet sand.
In the tiny cabin under the deck he found an axe. The carpenter had
seen to it that the boat was fully equipped. Fedor hacked out a shallow
grave in the rain-soaked earth and tenderly laid the body of Jogindar Singh
in it. After covering the grave with earth he built a mound of stones on top
of it.
Bharati's rigid face frightened him. It would be easier for her, he
thought, if she would give way to tears. He touched her shoulder. Silently,
she turned away from the grave, and silently she climbed back into the boat.
Waist-deep in the water, Fedor tugged at the boat to free it from the
sand. His feet sank in the silt. Finally he gave a push that took his last
strength. Dislodged, the boat slid forward into the river.
Suddenly he heard Bharati scream in terror. Turning his head, Fedor saw
that her face was drained of colour. She was pointing at something with a
hand that trembled, keeping up a piercing cry. Fedor swung round to see a
long brown log heading rapidly towards him. Suddenly the log opened a
monstrous mouth lined with sharp teeth.
Fedor pushed off from the bottom as hard as he could and scrambled up
onto the deck of the boat. That very instant he heard teeth snap behind his
back. Before he could catch his breath Bharati flung her arms round his
neck, buried her head on his chest, and burst into tears. She sobbed
convulsively, her thin shoulders quivering under his hands.
"You must be careful," she whispered through her tears. "I have no one
else but you now. Promise you will take care."
Fedor guided the boat back into the mainstream. He had never seen a
crocodile before, although he had heard much about them. He recalled a
sentence from one of the first books he had read in childhood. "The
crocodile is an aquatic reptile which weeps as it kills and eats its
victim." Fedor gave a wry smile as he remembered the crocodile's terrifying
jaws. He did not think it likely that such a monster would mourn its
victims.
After two days of rain the sun reappeared. Meanwhile, they had reached
the Indus, and the mighty river was steadily carrying them towards the sea.
Fedor now tied up the boat on the bank for the night. He built a
campfire over which Bharati prepared their simple meal.
At the end of a week Fedor noticed that the river was growing wider;
the water was turning clearer by the hour. Finally there came a morning when
the boat ceased to move at all. The incoming tide was preventing the river
from reaching the sea.
That meant the ocean was near. The light northerly breeze carried with
it a tang of salt air.
Fedor raised the foresail, woven of strong palm leaves. Then he lowered
the heavy copper-bound sliding keel into the water and hauled in the sheets.
The sound of water gurgling underneath the boat filled his heart with joy.
The water grew lighter and bluer until it was the colour of the sky.
The banks receded farther and farther, fading into a haze. Finally, a long
blue sea wave picked the boat up, rocked it gently, and then smoothly passed
it on to the next wave. They had reached the sea!
Fedor gave a deep sigh of relief and smiled at Bharati. The girl smiled
back at her blue-eyed, good-natured, merry god.
"Where are we going now?" she asked.
Fedor had given the matter a good deal of thought. He remembered
Bharati's father saying that if he turned to the right he would reach
Karachi, which Persian merchants visited frequently. To turn to the left
meant sailing southeast towards the Portuguese possessions.
The idea of travelling across Persia worried Fedor. Although it was the
shorter route he had heard, in Lal Chandra's house, vague rumours that
things were not quiet in the land of the Persians.
No, it would be better to sail to Diu. Portugal was far away from
Russia and had no reason to quarrel with her.
And so Fedor turned to the left and sailed southeast, following the low
coast.
Bharati grew more cheerful. The sea breezes put colour in her cheeks.
She boiled rice and baked freshly-caught fish on the hot clay of a small
hearth that Fedor had fashioned at one of their stopping places on the
Indus. She quickly learned to handle the sails and was soon able to sail the
boat single-handed, giving Fedor an opportunity to snatch a few hours of
sleep.
The wind rose. Whitecaps rippled and foamed on the high waves. The mast
swayed, the boards creaked. The boat lay on its side, the deck half in the
water.
Bharati pressed close to Fedor.
"Why don't you go down below?" he said. "You'll get wet."
The girl shook her head. "I'm not afraid of anything when I'm with
you."
"Then hold on tight. Otherwise you may be washed overboard. We're going
to be shaken up properly."
Fedor knew that it would be far from easy to ride out a storm at sea in
their small craft.
But Bharati trusted him, and he would do everything he could to protect
her. This was not his first storm at sea. He still remembered how the
Caspian Sea had boiled and raged beneath his ship.
With great effort Fedor managed to take down the sail. He folded it and
covered Bharati with it.
The wind continued to rise as night fell. The sea was a black, howling
wall. It tossed the boat like a nutshell from wave to wave, up and down, up
and down.
Fedor's sole aim now was to hold the bow into the waves. If he turned
broadside to them, the waves would capsize the boat at once. It was a good
thing that Jogindar Singh had followed Fedor's instructions to the letter
when making the boat. A boat without a deck or keel would have sunk long
since.
With Bharati's help he fashioned a floating anchor. He took down the
mast, laid it beside the spanker-boom, wrapped both of them in the sail, and
tied the bundle together. He attached one end to a long rope tied to the
prow. Then he threw the heavy bundle overboard. The prow immediately swung
into the wind. Held by the floating anchor, the boat barely moved and
offered the storm no resistance. The raging wind simply streamed around it.
Fedor opened the hatch.
"Down below, quick!" he shouted. He pushed Bharati in front of him and
jumped down inside after her, banging down the cover of the hatch and
fastening it.
It was dark in the little cabin but at least it was dry and they were
out of the wind.
The boat pitched and tossed, up and down, up and down. They lost all
sense of time. Had the night come to an end? Or had two nights passed? All
they heard was the thunder of the waves and the creaking of the deck boards.
"Are you asleep, Bharati?"
"No."
"Feel all right?"
"Y-yes."
Fedor rose and groped about in the dark, swearing as he knocked his
head and banged his knees. Then he struck flint against steel, there was a
shower of sparks, and a tiny red glow appeared. Fedor blew on the tinder,
lit the oil lamp, and looked at Bharati's pale face.
"Feel all right, dear? Not seasick?" "No," she whispered obstinately.
The setting sun warmed his back. A northerly wind drove lazy waves
ahead of it. The storm was over.
But it did not make any difference now.
Fedor sat in the stern, stubbornly holding the boat to an eastward
course. The coastline was still invisible. He had no idea of how many days
and nights they had been sailing in the Arabian Sea.
Bharati lay at his knees. That morning he had poured the last drops of
water in the pitcher through her parched, compressed lips.
Alas, Fedor Matveyev! You are evidently not destined to reach your
native land. Can it really be that you escaped death from lightning in the
temple only to die an agonizing death at sea?
Bharati lay with closed eyes. Fedor anxiously bent over her to reassure
himself that she was breathing. One thought was uppermost in his mind: I
must save her.
Night fell instantly, without twilight. The black sky was soon spangled
with bright but remote stars.
The gentle rocking of the boat made Fedor feel drowsy, but he knew that
if he fell asleep it would be the end. With a tremendous effort he shook
himself awake and swept his eyes across the sea. What was that large reddish
star that hung so low in the sky on the port side? Why was it so low? And
why did it sway? Fedor sprang to his feet to take a better look at the star.
Why, it was a ship's light! "Bharati! Wake up! A ship!" As if to confirm his
words the wind brought them the sound of a guitar and snatches of a song.
Fedor jumped down into the cabin. He rummaged about searching for an Indian
gunpowder rocket. There it was! He tied it to a stick which he attached to
the bow. Striking flint against steel until his hands bled, he produced fire
and brought the tinder up to the rocket. A hissing red arc soared across the
dark sky.
IN WHICH FEDOR'S MYSTERY REMAINS UNSOLVED
The January frost had thickly iced the small windowpanes and was making
the pine logs of the walls creak.
It was warm inside the house. The long table standing against the wall
was covered with samples of ore, metal and coal, draughtsman's
paraphernalia, manuscripts, and vessels containing powders and liquids. In
the corner stood a machine which was unique in that part of Russia. It
consisted of a lacquered disc covered with shiny strips of metal and set
between two supports topped by copper spheres, a belt drive and a handle.
The room was shrouded in semi-darkness. Candles cast a yellow light on
a grey head. A goose quill scratched across rough paper. Although the winter
evenings were long they were not long enough for Fedor Matveyev. He had not
yet succeeded in unravelling the old mystery.
Fedor went over to the machine and turned the handle. With a dry
crackle a thin streak of violet-coloured light flashed between the spheres.
He sank into an armchair, folding his lean hands, hands that had
swollen veins but were still strong. His thoughts turned to the past. It had
been a long and hard journey from India to Russia. After sailing a seemingly
endless time along the coast of Africa the Portuguese frigate had landed
them in Lisbon. From there they had travelled by sea and by land, through
many countries, without a penny to their name, until they finally reached
St. Petersburg. But they had not been able to leave their ship on arrival,
for the Neva River had risen and flooded the city. It was said that the tsar
himself travelled up and down the flooded streets in a boat, helping to
rescue the drowning.
How frightened Bharati had been of the cold and foggy northern city
covered with seething water!
Soon after, there came the staggering news of the tsar's death.
Fedor dutifully reported his escape from captivity, but no one had any
attention to spare an unknown lieutenant. Those were the days when the
succession to the throne was being decided. Finally someone advised Fedor to
go to the new town of Ekaterinburg and see Wilhelm de Hennin, the managing
director of a chain of factories in Siberia and the Urals, who was said to
be interested in anyone with a knowledge of mining and building.
On the way to Ekaterinburg Fedor and Bharati stopped oft at Zakharino
to see Fedor's parents. His father and mother were not particularly pleased
to have a daughter-in-law brought from overseas. They did not like her long
face or her narrow hips, or the fact that she was as 'dark as a Gypsy and
carried herself with dignity. But since their son was going away soon they
said nothing. They insisted that Bharati be christened in the local church
and that her name be changed to Anna. They gave Fedor some money for his
journey not much, true, but still it was something.
At Ekaterinburg Fedor was made to feel welcome and appointed to the
post of chief mechanic. His job was to supervise mining machinery,
water-wheels, and dams, and the construction of new factories; also, he was
put in charge of the fire brigade. He was given living quarters, and a new
life began for him. He performed his numerous duties faithfully.
Russian food and long Russian winters fattened Bharati, made the colour
of her skin lighter and put roses in her cheeks. She reared their children
and did her household chores conscientiously, making liqueurs and preserves
and laying in supplies of honey for the winter. She learned to speak a
fairly good Russian. When she and Fedor visited his parents a few years
later the old people received her more graciously.
As the years passed the operation of the mines engrossed Fedor more and
more. His fair hair became streaked with silver. His children were growing
up. Fourteen-year-old Alexander, the eldest son, was preparing to leave for
St. Petersburg to enter a military school there.
But he had not yet unravelled the mystery. True, he had discovered what
the mysterious force that made the lightning was. Reading all the books he
could find on this subject, he had learned that about one hundred years
before, in 1650, a certain Otto von Gericke, burgomaster of the town of
Magdeburg in Germany, had placed a smooth ball of sulphur on a whirling
axis, and by rubbing it between the palms of his hands had made the ball
glow and crackle.
In 1709, the Englishman Francis Hawksbee had substituted a glass sphere
for the sulphur ball and also produced sparks with a crackle. Mikhail
Lomonosov had mentioned this machine in a poem about the many uses of glass.
A revolving glass sphere crackles and makes flashes of light, Similar
unto those of thunder in the night.
Fedor also discovered that the ancient Greeks had obtained sparks by
rubbing a piece of amber with a flannel cloth, and the name of the
mysterious force came from the word electron, the Greek for "amber".
It was clear that the force in Lal Chandra's lightning machine was
electricity, but what a far 'cry from Hawksbee's harmless sparks! Fedor's
disc machine produced far stronger sparks than Hawksbee's ball but it could
not be compared with Lal Chandra's machine. How had the Brahman made the
electricity so terribly strong that it killed people and caused corpses to
quiver?
It was evidently all a matter of being able to accumulate electricity
in vessels containing a liquid. With a mental picture of everything he had
seen in India always before him, Fedor conducted experiment after experiment
with metal vessels into which he poured various liquids and then connected
to his machine, but nothing came of it.
During a trip to St. Petersburg Fedor went to the Academy of Sciences
to talk with Mikhail Lomonosov, the brilliant young scientist who had
recently been appointed professor of chemistry there. Fedor had heard much
praise of Lomonosov.
"There is as yet no science of electricity, sir," Lomonosov told him.
"But I hope there will be. I advise you to see Richman. He is in charge of
our electricity experiments. He is a foreigner, but he does not put on airs.
Both Richman and I believe that the electricity obtained through friction is
the same force as lightning. We are on the eve of extremely interesting
discoveries' 174
Through Lomonosov's good offices Fedor wag able to visit the "chambers
for electric experiments", one of the first electricity laboratories in the
world.
Richman listened to Fedor's story with interest and made many notes.
Like Lomonosov, he was engaged in a systematic study of electricity,
particularly atmospheric electricity. Lomonosov was searching for the "true
cause of electricity and how to measure it", realizing that a theory of
electricity could not be built up without precise data.
In 1753 Richman was killed by lightning while he was measuring the
electric force of lightning discharges.
Lomonosov was showered with reproaches and threats.
"They wanted to shield man against God's wrath-lightning-but God
punished them for their audacity!" cried his opponents.
Although it took a long time for news to reach the Urals, Fedor closely
followed events in St. Petersburg.
"I'd laugh if I didn't feel like crying instead," Fedor remarked to his
wife. "Remember how the Brahmans in India made lightning to deceive the
people? Russia's equivalent of the Brahmans are angry because others wish to
find out what lightning is. If our Brahmans got their hands on electricity
they'd very soon reveal their true nature. No, I feel it's a blessing that I
did not tell anyone about my experiences in India or about my experiments."
"Please give up your experiments, Fedor dear," said Bharati, alarm in
her dark, almond-shaped eyes. "Ever since Herr Richman was killed I have had
no peace of mind."
"No, I won't give up," Fedor said. "If my life is not long enough my
children will continue the experiments. They, or their descendants, will
live to see a better day."
The candles began to sputter and Fedor trimmed the wicks. The log walls
crackled in the severe frost. In the next room Bharati softly sang the same
mournful song she had sung so long ago beside the temple of the formidable
goddess Kali.
Fedor closed his eyes. People and events of those distant days came to
life again in his mind's eye.
The old man chained to the wall in the tower-he had probably carried to
the grave his great secret of how to make the human body incorporeal.
The oil that flowed in a long stream through the water of the pool. The
Incorporeal Brahman. Perhaps he had dreamed it all.
The candles shed a flickering yellow glow on the silvery head. The
goose quill scratched on the rough paper.
"I conclude this epistle on the twelfth day of January in the year of
Our Lord 1762. I think that if the need should arise it would be best of all
if you were to seek assistance in the Academy of Sciences, from Professor
Mikhail Lomonosov, inasmuch as he is well versed in science.
"My last wish, my son, is that the forces of electricity should not
come under the power of those insatiable mongrels who are concerned solely
with their own personal benefit instead of with the welfare of their
country."
Forgive me, Newton!
The concepts you created still
guide our physical thinking,
but we now know that for
a deeper understanding of world relations
we must replace your concepts with others.
Albert Einstein
IN WHICH CONTRADICTORY OPINIONS OF FEDOR MATVEYEV'S MANUSCRIPT ARE
EXPRESSED; REX, NOT HAVING AN OPINION OF HIS OWN, HOWLS IN ACCOMPANIMENT AS
YURA AND NIKOLAI SING
"I've deciphered the manuscript, and translated in into modern
Russian," said Val. "I found it very interesting because the eighteenth
century is just my field. Shall I begin?" She looked at Boris Privalov. He
nodded.
They were gathered on the porch of a country cottage with a flat roof
and whitewashed walls. The intense heat of late afternoon penetrated through
the patterned leaves of the fig tree that grew beside the porch.
Every summer Privalov and his wife Olga rented the same seaside
cottage, not far from town. She spent all her time there, while he came out
for the weekends.
On this occasion he had brought four guests along without giving his
wife warning. They were Pavel Koltukhov, Yura, Nikolai and a girl named Val,
whom Olga had never met before; also, there was an enormous,
ferocious-looking dog.
They had travelled down in a crowded suburban train and arrived hot and
dusty. After a refreshing shower they settled themselves on the porch. Olga
brought out platters of grapes and figs. "Don't trouble yourself now, Olga,"
said Privalov. "We'll all pitch in later on to prepare supper.
Just sit down and relax. You'll hear a fascinating story."
"Hear ye, brethren, hear ye," chanted Yura, swinging a foot as he sat
on the railing of the porch.
Privalov put up a hand to silence him. "All right, Val," he said.
Val opened a red folder, carefully lifted out Fedor Matveyev's
manuscript, and laid it to one side. Then she picked up a sheaf of
typewritten pages and began to read.
Val read the last word and turned the page over. For a few moments
Privalov and his guests sat silent, engrossed in those extraordinary events
of two centuries ago, about which they had just heard from the lips, as it
were, of Lieutenant Fedor Matveyev of the Russian Navy.
"Thank you, Val," Privalov said softly. He rose and went over to the
wall to switch on the ceiling light.
"A remarkably interesting story!" exclaimed Olga. "I can clearly
picture him. Do you think it's all really true?"
Pavel Koltukhov snorted. "It's all nonsense," he said. He lit a
cigarette and let out a thick cloud of smoke.
Privalov asked Val to read, in the original eighteenth-century Russian,
the section in which Fedor Matveyev described how he had first flung
himself, knife in hand, on the Incorporeal Brahman. She found that page of
the manuscript and read, slowly: "I stabbed him in the heart, but the whole
knife, and also my hand along with it, went through his flesh as though it
were thin air. A second later he vanished from the room, passing straight
through the closed door. The door was made of wood, at least two inches
thick, and was bound in iron."
Koltukhov gave another snort. "Nothing but a fairy-tale." He took the
manuscript from Val and neatly copied a dozen lines or so from it into his
notebook.
Privalov woke up just as the sun was rising. He tiptoed across the
squeaky floor of the porch and down the steps into the garden. The sand was
cold under his bare feet. The trees cast long shadows across him as he
walked. In a corner of the garden he saw Nikolai, illuminated by the faint
rays of the sun, sitting on the low stone barrier of the well. The red
folder containing Fedor Matveyev's manuscript lay open on his knee.
"Well, what do you think of it all?" Privalov asked as he came up and
sat down beside Nikolai. He yawned loudly. "You didn't say a word all last
evening."
"I'm wondering about Matveyev's knife." Nikolai glanced at Privalov.
"Why couldn't it be true? Why couldn't they have accidentally stumbled on
the specifications of a machine that made matter penetrable?"
"There you go again, Nikolai. Just forget all about penetrability. They
didn't know enough two hundred years ago to-"
"But, Boris, by accident, I mean. Fedor Matveyev clearly describes a
machine of just this kind in the tower room in which the old man was chained
to the wall. He only saw it for a few minutes and his description is very
vague. Here's the place in the manuscript. Listen," Nikolai read slowly: "
'A wire spiral, something like an Archimedes' spiral, cut out of a thin
half-twist of silver.' What do you think that half-twist contraption into
which the old man thrust Matveyev's knife could have been, Boris? I believe
it must have been some sort of a high-frequency output inductor."
Boris Privalov smiled. "It's all very vague, Nikolai, much too vague,"
he said, laying a hand on the young man's shoulder. "I'm far more interested
in the stream of oil that flowed through the pool. Remember? In this case
the description of the apparatus is fairly clear. There were big
electrostatic generators switched on parallel with electrolytic capacitors
of an enormous capacity or, as Fedor Matveyev put it, 'copper vessels to
collect the mysterious force'. If they really did make oil flow through
water in a compact stream- well, that means they'd solved the problem of a
power ray and the building up of surface tension. But those reflectors in
the pool, I mean, their shape-"
"Yes, shape," Nikolai said, following his own train of thought. "The
shape of the inductor, devil take it!"
"But look, Nikolai. The Hindus just hit on it blindly. But we won't be
groping in the dark the way they did. This isn't the eighteenth century,
thank goodness. We need a theoretical foundation. I told you what Professor
Bagbanly said, didn't I? Let's have no more of this primitive tinkering with
spirals. An installation has to be set up, and we'll need your help."
Nikolai nodded. "But what about the manuscript?"
"We'll send it to the Academy of Sciences."
Nikolai closed the folder with an angry gesture and climbed to his
fe3t. "So we just forget about the whole thing, is that it?" he asked
bitterly, turning and walking towards the porch, tall, lean and tanned.
Privalov followed him with his eyes, then lifted his shoulders in a
shrug.
(The beach was crowded, for it was Sunday. The suburban trains spewed
city dwellers out of their stuffy carriages by the hundreds and the
thousands. All the places under the awnings and umbrellas were occupied; the
white sand was thickly covered with tanned bodies.
Boris Privalov and his friends settled themselves at the water's edge,
where the sand was a bit cooler. Lazy waves lapped at their feet.
Val put on her bathing cap and waded slowly into the water. Yura and
Nikolai plunged into the waves and were soon racing each other to the buoy.
Rex, who did not like to bathe, barked at them for a while, urging them to
come back, then lay down and stuck out his tongue as far as it would go.
Olga Privalov set up her beach umbrella and lay down in its shade with
a book.
Pavel Koltukhov folded a page from a newspaper into a hat which he
perched on his head as he stretched out on the sand beside Privalov.
"I'd like to borrow one of your engineers for a couple of days, Boris,"
he said. "What for? To dabble in resins?"
"Let me have Jura. He seems a clever lad." "Certainly. But see to it
that he has time to do his own work too." "Naturally."
"What was it you copied out of the manuscript last night?" Privalov
asked a few minutes later. "Seek and ye shall find," Koltukhov answered
vaguely. Then he started telling Privalov how necessary it was to draw up,
without delay, a cost estimate of the research involved in the transcaspian
oil pipeline project. The murmur of his voice put Privalov to sleep.
Nikolai and Yura came running out of the water, their bodies dripping.
"If Nikolai keeps it up we'll have to put him in a straightjacket,
Boris," Yura said as he flung himself onto the sand. "He insists that Fedor
Matveyev was telling the truth when he talked about an incorporeal man."
"Oh, shut up!" muttered Nikolai. But Yura continued: "Anyway, I'm sure I had
the last word. I asked him this: if that old wizard really possessed the
property of penetrability then why didn't he sink through the ground?"
Privalov lay on his back on the sand, his eyes closed blissfully against the
sun.
"Do me a favour, boys" he said in a drowsy voice. "Stop pestering me."
The bountiful sun was spreading hot gold over the beach. Two or three
clouds hung in a sky pale from the heat. A suburban train blew its whistle
close by, and soon another eager crowd of city dwellers streamed from the
station to the beach. They moved in a file along the water's edge, a gay,
perspiring throng. Koltukhov grumbled as some of them stepped across his
lean shanks.
One of the passers-by halted as he caught sight of Koltukhov. Rex
raised his head and growled.
"Is that you, Pavel?" the newcomer asked.
Koltukhov looked up. Above him stood Nikolai Opratin.
"Why, hullo there," said Koltukhov lazily, lifting his hand in
greeting. "Lured by the sea and the sun too, eh?"
Opratin courteously raised his straw hat to each member of the group in
turn, then went off to change into his swimming trunks. When he returned he
stretched out on the sand beside Koltukhov.
"What's new, Pavel?"
"Nothing much. We heard an Indian fairytale yesterday." Koltukhov then
proceeded to give a humorous version of Fedor Matveyev's adventures in
India.
"The damned fool!" Privalov thought. "Still, why make a secret of it?"
He removed his eyeglasses and went into the water.
Opratin listened to Koltukhov with a smile. But the moment Koltukhov
jokingly mentioned Fedor Matveyev's knife the smile vanished and Opratin's
face grew strained and attentive.
"Let me interrupt you for a moment, Pavel, but that knife-You say the
manuscript describes how it was given the property of penetrability?"
"Oh, that's all nonsense," said Koltukhov. "It's just a fairy-tale. The
only thing I can put stock in is the electrostatic generator. That sort of
thing was well within the scope of the eighteenth century. By the way-" Here
Koltukhov felt he was making a very neat transition to the one topic he
wanted to talk to Opratin about. "By the way, I hear you have a powerful
electrostatic generator at your Institute. Mind if I drop in from time to
time and use it? I'll try not to impose on you."
"By all means," said Opratin. "What will you be using it for?"
He never got an answer, for Koltukhov launched into reminiscences of
his adventurous youth.
Val came running up. She pulled off her bathing cap, shook out her dark
hair, and sat down beside Olga.
"Is she the one, did you say, who translated the manuscript?" Opratin
asked Koltukhov in a low voice.
"That's right. Would you like to meet her?"
"That was a most interesting find you made," Opratin said to Val after
Koltukhov had introduced him to her. "It isn't every day that an original
manuscript from Peter the Great's time turns up."
Opratin then entered into a lively conversation with Val. Yura gave
them a sidelong glance, called to Rex, and headed for a large rock nearby.
Nikolai joined him there. Dangling their feet in the water they began to
sing, in mock earnestness, a plaintive old Russian ballad.
"What are you waiting for, Rex?" Yura said sternly.
The dog threw back his head, gave a convulsive yawn, and then began to
howl softly in accompaniment.
Val glanced towards the two young men and shrugged.
The dreary song went on and on for a long time.
As the hardware in Cooper Lane became more and more sophisticated Yura
said, with a click of his tongue, gazing proudly around the room:
"Wonderful! Even Faraday never had a home laboratory like ours."
Despite the obvious advantages of the laboratory over Faraday's they
were not making any progress worth mentioning. The two young men created
electrical fields of various kinds around the "mercury heart", which beat
conscientiously but showed no signs whatsoever of increasing its surface
tension.
A breakthrough of some kind was definitely needed.
One day Nikolai invited a young engineer from the Institute's
automation department named Hussein Amirov to drop in and take a look at the
"mercury heart". Hussein spent a whole evening testing the oscillator on
different frequencies. "Nice little toy you've got here," he said to
Nikolai. "But there's something wrong with the operating conditions. I'll
think about it."
The next morning he phoned Nikolai. "Look here, old man, your mistake
is that you're not letting the high frequency through in pulses. You'll have
to put in a tuning-fork breaker." Soon after, Nikolai installed a
tuning-fork. An electromagnet kept its prongs in constant vibration, and the
contacts on the prongs closed and disconnected the circuit. Movable weights
attached to the prongs regulated the frequency of the oscillations.
Pulses had been a good idea. But Nikolai and Yura could not manage to
hit on a combination of high frequency and breaker frequency that would
cause the mercury heart, contracted by increased tension, to stop beating.
On the other hand, perhaps no such frequency existed at all.
One evening the two were busy as usual with their installation,
experimenting with a new series of frequencies. And as usual, the results
were disappointing.
"We can sit here from now to doomsday and still neither of us will ever
be another Faraday," Yura said to Nikolai, pushing back his chair noisily.
"You're right," Nikolai agreed with a sigh. He shook his fist at the
"mercury heart". Then he took out Fedor Matveyev's manuscript from his
briefcase. He had borrowed it from Privalov for the evening. It was to be
sent to Moscow the next day with an accompanying letter by Professor
Bagbanly.
"Is the half-twist spiral in that manuscript still preying on your
mind?" Yura said. "What do you think it might lead you to?"
"You know what as well as I do. If we could increase the surface
tension of liquids it means-"
Yura waved his hand impatiently. "I didn't have that in mind. According
to Fedor Matveyev the knife acquired penetrability after the old man who was
chained to the wall thrust it into that spiral. Do you really think-"
"I don't think anything. All I want is to find a new form of inductor."
Nikolai carefully turned the pages of the manuscript.
"Let's have a look at the last page, where he writes about Mikhail
Lomonosov," said Yura.
They read in silence for some time.
"That damned half-twist spiral!" Nikolai exclaimed, rummaging in his
pockets for his cigarettes. "What are you doing that for?" he asked Yura,
who was holding a sheet of the manuscript up to the light.
"Look! Some sort of drawings."
Pencil lines were visible on the back of the last page. The lead had
rubbed off almost completely, only the faint traces of lines pressed into
the thick paper by the point of a hard pencil could be seen.
"Why, that's our box! But there's more than one."
A firm hand had drawn three boxes, one below the other, and indicated
their sizes. Two of them looked like the box in which Fedor Matveyev's
manuscript had been preserved, while the third was square and flat. There
was an inscription under each drawing. All three boxes bore the letters A M
D G, evidently meant to be engraved. Below the letters was a drawing of a
crown, and below that, in smaller script, the letters J d M.
"Our box should have the same letters on it, don't you think?" Yura
picked up the box and examined it. "Yes, here they are. We didn't notice
them before because the lines were filled with rust."
Nikolai frowned. Where had he seen those letters before? He went over
to the bookcase and ran his eyes over the titles on the backs of the books.
Finally he pulled out Vicomte de Bragelonne and started leafing through it.
"My memory didn't let me down," he remarked with satisfaction. "Listen:
'Bewildered, Baizerneaux de Dmoutlezun leaned over his shoulder and read, A
M D G...'."
Taking the book from Nikolai, Yura read aloud the footnote, a grin on
his face: " 'Ad majorem Dei gloriam. To the greater glory of God. The motto
of the Jesuits.' But what's J d M? It isn't in the book. What a lot of
puzzles Lieutenant Fedor Matveyev has given us to solve!"
"We need a system," said Nikolai. He took a sheet of paper and quickly
wrote:
Boxes Inscriptions Size of boxes in drawing
Length Width Height
1 La preuve 9 1 3/4 1 3/4
2 La source 9 1/2 2 2
3 La clef de mystere 4 4 1/2
Yura rubbed his hands vigorously. "That's a good idea. Now we'll
translate the inscriptions. Call up Val. She knows French."
"Well," Nikolai said after talking with Val, "la preuve means 'the
evidence', la source means 'the source' and la clef de mystere means 'the
key to the mystery'."
"The key to the mystery, you say?" Yura took a caliper and measured the
height, length and width of the iron box. "It's 257.5 by 54.2 by 54.2
millimetres. Get out your slide-rule and calculate the ratio. Divide 257.5
by 54.2."
"It's 9 1/2 by 2 by 2," said Nikolai. He glanced at his chart. "Our box
with the manuscript is the one called 'the source'."
Х'Well, that's clear," said Yura. "Now, what's the unit of measurement
used in the drawings? If we divide 54.2 by two we get 27.1 millimetres. The
English inch is equal to 25.4 millimetres. So-"
"So it isn't in inches. We'll come back to that later. Now let's
systematize what we know."
They draw up another table:
"Someone put the manuscript in the box that finally came into our hands
and ordered two more boxes, one for 'the evidence' and the other for 'the
key to the mystery'. It probably wasn't Fedor Matveyev. It's hardly likely
he would go in for Jesuit mottos. Who was it, then? What's hidden in the
other boxes? And where are they?"
Inscriptions Size of Boxes Remarks
In the scale on In millimetres
the drawings
Length Width Height Length Width Height Missing
Evidence 9 1 3/4 1 3/4 243.9 4 7.4 47.4
Source 9 1/2 2 2 257.5 54.2 54.2 Our box
Key to the
Mystery 4 4 1/2 108.4 108.4 13.55 Missing
Yura and Nikolai spent a number of evenings in a fascinating search for
the key to the enigmatic inscriptions. A M D G told them that Jesuits had
been directly involved in the affair. What the letters J d M meant, though,
was a complete mystery.
In the public library they found a book on heraldry from which they
discovered that the crown on the boxes was a count's crown. They realized
that J d M were the initials of some count, the "d" standing for "de".
Next they settled down to read everything they could find about the
Jesuits.
Yura and Nikolai had a big notebook in which they entered all kinds of
information on things like radio circuits, photography hints, sailboat
designs, poetry, designs of scuba gear and underwater guns, data on surface
tension and so on.
Now they put into it copies of the drawings of the three boxes with the
following commentary:
(a) The old French inch is equal to 27.1 millimetres.
(b) This inch was abolished in France on the 19th Frimaire in the
eighth year of the Republic, that is, on December 10, 1799, when the metric
system was adopted.
(c) The inscriptions were made in a pencil with a lead of ground
graphite mixed with clay and baked, much like modern pencils. Pencils of
this type appeared after 1790.
Deductions
1. The type of pencil shows that the inscriptions were made after 1790.
The measurements were made before 1799, when the metric system was
Give him a knife. Let him try once again to pierce my body."
An expectant murmur ran through the crowd. A grinning fakir stretched
out a knife to Fedor, who struck it from the man's hand. The knife clattered
as it fell on the stone paving.
"If only I had the knife the old man hid." Fedor thought. "But
evidently that is not to be. Say your last prayers, naval lieutenant."
"Remove the shroud," said the Brahman.
When the shroud was lifted, a naked corpse was revealed lying at the
bronze feet of the goddess.
Lightning streaked from the fingers of Kali.
A scream of horror rang through the hall and was then echoed and
re-echoed time and again. The corpse had come to life. It quivered and
stirred at the feet of the terrible goddess.
"Look here, one and all!" the Incorporeal Brahman shouted. "The goddess
refuses to accept the death of my finest pupil. He hovers between life and
death. The time has not yet come for his reincarnation! But if Kali is to
return him to life she must receive a sacrifice in exchange!"
Twelve attendants marched up to the pool in single file. Each carried a
pitcher on his shoulder, the thick, dark, odorous contents of which he
poured into the pool.
"We have brought you precious oil as a sacrifice," the Incorporeal
Brahman intoned, turning to the goddess. "Will you accept this bloodless
sacrifice?"
There was a sound of gurgling. The water in the pool began to boil. The
oil gathered into a dark ball, then streaked through the water to the
opposite side of the pool, throwing up a fountain. For an instant the pillar
of oil stood motionless, then it collapsed, sprinkling the crowd with
fragrant drops.
"The goddess rejects a bloodless sacrifice!" cried the Mahatma Ananga.
"She gives it to you with her blessing. She demands a human sacrifice. Those
pilgrims who were chosen by the sacred lightning have been given a happy
reincarnation. Their death was a joy to them. But this foreigner will meet a
terrible death, for he is alien to our gods and will be given the lowest
reincarnation. His soul will pass into the body of a blind worm that gnaws
away at seaside cliffs!"
The water in the pool began to seethe. A bright flame appeared on top
of it.
"See, the goddess agrees!" shouted the Incorporeal Brahman. "The water
has turned to fire! May the foreigner die without bloodshed.
Kali herself will give him death. Place him at the feet of the goddess,
beside my pupil. Let everyone see the goddess take the life of one man and
transfer it to another man!"
Fedor desperately ran his eyes across the crowd. The faces were
hostile. "This is the end, Fedor Matveyev," he said to himself. "Here come
the fakirs. Now they'll seize you-"
"Watch out, Fedor!"
Suddenly he was gripped by a feeling of grim merriment. He stared
eagerly at the back of the hall, where the light was dim.
Something flew over the heads of the crowd and fell at Fedor's feet. In
a flash he bent down, snatched up his knife by the handle, and plunged it
into the breast of the Incorporeal Brahman. He felt the cloth of the robe
resist as it tore.
A spreading patch of blood stained the white robe of the Mahatma
Ananga. He wheezed, choked and would have fallen if Fedor had drawn his
knife from the wound. But Fedor did not release the handle. He realized in a
flash that if the Incorporeal Brahman fell he would sink through the ground,
creating a miracle that would spoil everything.
His ears failed to register the shouts of the crowd, and he did not
know what was going on behind his back. All he felt was that the Mahatma
Ananga was growing heavier and was slipping sideways.
Death had returned the usual properties to the body of the Incorporeal
Brahman. Although Fedor firmly clasped the handle the knife pulled itself
out of the body. No longer supported by the knife, the body dropped to the
stone floor with a dull thud.
An instant of eerie silence was followed by cries of rage and fear.
Ram Das ran up to Fedor and seized him by the arm.
"This way!" he cried. "Hurry!"
IN WHICH A STAR ABOVE THE WATER TURNS OUT TO BE A SHIP'S LIGHT
Fedor let the helm slip out of his hands. It did not matter since he
could see nothing whatsoever in the utter darkness. Besides, it was raining
violently.
The powerful current swept the small boat downstream. The heavens split
open with a sound like the ripping of a sail. Streaks of lightning lit up a
wide, swollen river, uprooted trees and a thick wall of rain.
"We're being carried by the current," he thought. "Let's hope we hold
out until dawn." He sat in the stern, trying to shield Bharati from the rain
with his body. The girl's head was in his lap. She was trembling. Fedor
stroked her wet hair. He could find no words with which to comfort her.
Jogindar Singh's body lay on the deck, his white robe a blur in the
black night. His strong arms lay by his side. Never again would those arms
wield an axe.
The Sikhs had failed to find Lal Chandra. The sly Brahman had escaped
through secret passages. Almost immediately after, armed men began to
encircle the temple. The Brahmans and rajahs had evidently stationed them
nearby in case something went wrong. Shots rang out in the courtyard of the
temple and in the dark passageways. The Sikhs brandished their curved
daggers.
Ram Das had led Fedor unnoticed out of the temple and down to the
stream, where Bharati and her father were waiting. They set out in the
direction of the Sutlej in the rain, stumbling over the rocks in their path.
Shots sounded behind them. Suddenly Jogindar Singh pitched forward to the
ground with an anguished cry. Fedor picked him up and carried him on his
back. He and Bharati pushed through thickets for a long time before they
finally reached the Sutlej. There Bharati found the sailboat, tied to a
boulder.
Dawn came at last, the grey light revealing a rain-spattered river the
colour of yellowish mud. Bharati, petrified by sorrow, sat beside the body
of her father.
It took every ounce of Fedor's strength to guide the boat towards a
small island. Near the shore he leaped into the water and then dragged the
boat up onto the wet sand.
In the tiny cabin under the deck he found an axe. The carpenter had
seen to it that the boat was fully equipped. Fedor hacked out a shallow
grave in the rain-soaked earth and tenderly laid the body of Jogindar Singh
in it. After covering the grave with earth he built a mound of stones on top
of it.
Bharati's rigid face frightened him. It would be easier for her, he
thought, if she would give way to tears. He touched her shoulder. Silently,
she turned away from the grave, and silently she climbed back into the boat.
Waist-deep in the water, Fedor tugged at the boat to free it from the
sand. His feet sank in the silt. Finally he gave a push that took his last
strength. Dislodged, the boat slid forward into the river.
Suddenly he heard Bharati scream in terror. Turning his head, Fedor saw
that her face was drained of colour. She was pointing at something with a
hand that trembled, keeping up a piercing cry. Fedor swung round to see a
long brown log heading rapidly towards him. Suddenly the log opened a
monstrous mouth lined with sharp teeth.
Fedor pushed off from the bottom as hard as he could and scrambled up
onto the deck of the boat. That very instant he heard teeth snap behind his
back. Before he could catch his breath Bharati flung her arms round his
neck, buried her head on his chest, and burst into tears. She sobbed
convulsively, her thin shoulders quivering under his hands.
"You must be careful," she whispered through her tears. "I have no one
else but you now. Promise you will take care."
Fedor guided the boat back into the mainstream. He had never seen a
crocodile before, although he had heard much about them. He recalled a
sentence from one of the first books he had read in childhood. "The
crocodile is an aquatic reptile which weeps as it kills and eats its
victim." Fedor gave a wry smile as he remembered the crocodile's terrifying
jaws. He did not think it likely that such a monster would mourn its
victims.
After two days of rain the sun reappeared. Meanwhile, they had reached
the Indus, and the mighty river was steadily carrying them towards the sea.
Fedor now tied up the boat on the bank for the night. He built a
campfire over which Bharati prepared their simple meal.
At the end of a week Fedor noticed that the river was growing wider;
the water was turning clearer by the hour. Finally there came a morning when
the boat ceased to move at all. The incoming tide was preventing the river
from reaching the sea.
That meant the ocean was near. The light northerly breeze carried with
it a tang of salt air.
Fedor raised the foresail, woven of strong palm leaves. Then he lowered
the heavy copper-bound sliding keel into the water and hauled in the sheets.
The sound of water gurgling underneath the boat filled his heart with joy.
The water grew lighter and bluer until it was the colour of the sky.
The banks receded farther and farther, fading into a haze. Finally, a long
blue sea wave picked the boat up, rocked it gently, and then smoothly passed
it on to the next wave. They had reached the sea!
Fedor gave a deep sigh of relief and smiled at Bharati. The girl smiled
back at her blue-eyed, good-natured, merry god.
"Where are we going now?" she asked.
Fedor had given the matter a good deal of thought. He remembered
Bharati's father saying that if he turned to the right he would reach
Karachi, which Persian merchants visited frequently. To turn to the left
meant sailing southeast towards the Portuguese possessions.
The idea of travelling across Persia worried Fedor. Although it was the
shorter route he had heard, in Lal Chandra's house, vague rumours that
things were not quiet in the land of the Persians.
No, it would be better to sail to Diu. Portugal was far away from
Russia and had no reason to quarrel with her.
And so Fedor turned to the left and sailed southeast, following the low
coast.
Bharati grew more cheerful. The sea breezes put colour in her cheeks.
She boiled rice and baked freshly-caught fish on the hot clay of a small
hearth that Fedor had fashioned at one of their stopping places on the
Indus. She quickly learned to handle the sails and was soon able to sail the
boat single-handed, giving Fedor an opportunity to snatch a few hours of
sleep.
The wind rose. Whitecaps rippled and foamed on the high waves. The mast
swayed, the boards creaked. The boat lay on its side, the deck half in the
water.
Bharati pressed close to Fedor.
"Why don't you go down below?" he said. "You'll get wet."
The girl shook her head. "I'm not afraid of anything when I'm with
you."
"Then hold on tight. Otherwise you may be washed overboard. We're going
to be shaken up properly."
Fedor knew that it would be far from easy to ride out a storm at sea in
their small craft.
But Bharati trusted him, and he would do everything he could to protect
her. This was not his first storm at sea. He still remembered how the
Caspian Sea had boiled and raged beneath his ship.
With great effort Fedor managed to take down the sail. He folded it and
covered Bharati with it.
The wind continued to rise as night fell. The sea was a black, howling
wall. It tossed the boat like a nutshell from wave to wave, up and down, up
and down.
Fedor's sole aim now was to hold the bow into the waves. If he turned
broadside to them, the waves would capsize the boat at once. It was a good
thing that Jogindar Singh had followed Fedor's instructions to the letter
when making the boat. A boat without a deck or keel would have sunk long
since.
With Bharati's help he fashioned a floating anchor. He took down the
mast, laid it beside the spanker-boom, wrapped both of them in the sail, and
tied the bundle together. He attached one end to a long rope tied to the
prow. Then he threw the heavy bundle overboard. The prow immediately swung
into the wind. Held by the floating anchor, the boat barely moved and
offered the storm no resistance. The raging wind simply streamed around it.
Fedor opened the hatch.
"Down below, quick!" he shouted. He pushed Bharati in front of him and
jumped down inside after her, banging down the cover of the hatch and
fastening it.
It was dark in the little cabin but at least it was dry and they were
out of the wind.
The boat pitched and tossed, up and down, up and down. They lost all
sense of time. Had the night come to an end? Or had two nights passed? All
they heard was the thunder of the waves and the creaking of the deck boards.
"Are you asleep, Bharati?"
"No."
"Feel all right?"
"Y-yes."
Fedor rose and groped about in the dark, swearing as he knocked his
head and banged his knees. Then he struck flint against steel, there was a
shower of sparks, and a tiny red glow appeared. Fedor blew on the tinder,
lit the oil lamp, and looked at Bharati's pale face.
"Feel all right, dear? Not seasick?" "No," she whispered obstinately.
The setting sun warmed his back. A northerly wind drove lazy waves
ahead of it. The storm was over.
But it did not make any difference now.
Fedor sat in the stern, stubbornly holding the boat to an eastward
course. The coastline was still invisible. He had no idea of how many days
and nights they had been sailing in the Arabian Sea.
Bharati lay at his knees. That morning he had poured the last drops of
water in the pitcher through her parched, compressed lips.
Alas, Fedor Matveyev! You are evidently not destined to reach your
native land. Can it really be that you escaped death from lightning in the
temple only to die an agonizing death at sea?
Bharati lay with closed eyes. Fedor anxiously bent over her to reassure
himself that she was breathing. One thought was uppermost in his mind: I
must save her.
Night fell instantly, without twilight. The black sky was soon spangled
with bright but remote stars.
The gentle rocking of the boat made Fedor feel drowsy, but he knew that
if he fell asleep it would be the end. With a tremendous effort he shook
himself awake and swept his eyes across the sea. What was that large reddish
star that hung so low in the sky on the port side? Why was it so low? And
why did it sway? Fedor sprang to his feet to take a better look at the star.
Why, it was a ship's light! "Bharati! Wake up! A ship!" As if to confirm his
words the wind brought them the sound of a guitar and snatches of a song.
Fedor jumped down into the cabin. He rummaged about searching for an Indian
gunpowder rocket. There it was! He tied it to a stick which he attached to
the bow. Striking flint against steel until his hands bled, he produced fire
and brought the tinder up to the rocket. A hissing red arc soared across the
dark sky.
IN WHICH FEDOR'S MYSTERY REMAINS UNSOLVED
The January frost had thickly iced the small windowpanes and was making
the pine logs of the walls creak.
It was warm inside the house. The long table standing against the wall
was covered with samples of ore, metal and coal, draughtsman's
paraphernalia, manuscripts, and vessels containing powders and liquids. In
the corner stood a machine which was unique in that part of Russia. It
consisted of a lacquered disc covered with shiny strips of metal and set
between two supports topped by copper spheres, a belt drive and a handle.
The room was shrouded in semi-darkness. Candles cast a yellow light on
a grey head. A goose quill scratched across rough paper. Although the winter
evenings were long they were not long enough for Fedor Matveyev. He had not
yet succeeded in unravelling the old mystery.
Fedor went over to the machine and turned the handle. With a dry
crackle a thin streak of violet-coloured light flashed between the spheres.
He sank into an armchair, folding his lean hands, hands that had
swollen veins but were still strong. His thoughts turned to the past. It had
been a long and hard journey from India to Russia. After sailing a seemingly
endless time along the coast of Africa the Portuguese frigate had landed
them in Lisbon. From there they had travelled by sea and by land, through
many countries, without a penny to their name, until they finally reached
St. Petersburg. But they had not been able to leave their ship on arrival,
for the Neva River had risen and flooded the city. It was said that the tsar
himself travelled up and down the flooded streets in a boat, helping to
rescue the drowning.
How frightened Bharati had been of the cold and foggy northern city
covered with seething water!
Soon after, there came the staggering news of the tsar's death.
Fedor dutifully reported his escape from captivity, but no one had any
attention to spare an unknown lieutenant. Those were the days when the
succession to the throne was being decided. Finally someone advised Fedor to
go to the new town of Ekaterinburg and see Wilhelm de Hennin, the managing
director of a chain of factories in Siberia and the Urals, who was said to
be interested in anyone with a knowledge of mining and building.
On the way to Ekaterinburg Fedor and Bharati stopped oft at Zakharino
to see Fedor's parents. His father and mother were not particularly pleased
to have a daughter-in-law brought from overseas. They did not like her long
face or her narrow hips, or the fact that she was as 'dark as a Gypsy and
carried herself with dignity. But since their son was going away soon they
said nothing. They insisted that Bharati be christened in the local church
and that her name be changed to Anna. They gave Fedor some money for his
journey not much, true, but still it was something.
At Ekaterinburg Fedor was made to feel welcome and appointed to the
post of chief mechanic. His job was to supervise mining machinery,
water-wheels, and dams, and the construction of new factories; also, he was
put in charge of the fire brigade. He was given living quarters, and a new
life began for him. He performed his numerous duties faithfully.
Russian food and long Russian winters fattened Bharati, made the colour
of her skin lighter and put roses in her cheeks. She reared their children
and did her household chores conscientiously, making liqueurs and preserves
and laying in supplies of honey for the winter. She learned to speak a
fairly good Russian. When she and Fedor visited his parents a few years
later the old people received her more graciously.
As the years passed the operation of the mines engrossed Fedor more and
more. His fair hair became streaked with silver. His children were growing
up. Fourteen-year-old Alexander, the eldest son, was preparing to leave for
St. Petersburg to enter a military school there.
But he had not yet unravelled the mystery. True, he had discovered what
the mysterious force that made the lightning was. Reading all the books he
could find on this subject, he had learned that about one hundred years
before, in 1650, a certain Otto von Gericke, burgomaster of the town of
Magdeburg in Germany, had placed a smooth ball of sulphur on a whirling
axis, and by rubbing it between the palms of his hands had made the ball
glow and crackle.
In 1709, the Englishman Francis Hawksbee had substituted a glass sphere
for the sulphur ball and also produced sparks with a crackle. Mikhail
Lomonosov had mentioned this machine in a poem about the many uses of glass.
A revolving glass sphere crackles and makes flashes of light, Similar
unto those of thunder in the night.
Fedor also discovered that the ancient Greeks had obtained sparks by
rubbing a piece of amber with a flannel cloth, and the name of the
mysterious force came from the word electron, the Greek for "amber".
It was clear that the force in Lal Chandra's lightning machine was
electricity, but what a far 'cry from Hawksbee's harmless sparks! Fedor's
disc machine produced far stronger sparks than Hawksbee's ball but it could
not be compared with Lal Chandra's machine. How had the Brahman made the
electricity so terribly strong that it killed people and caused corpses to
quiver?
It was evidently all a matter of being able to accumulate electricity
in vessels containing a liquid. With a mental picture of everything he had
seen in India always before him, Fedor conducted experiment after experiment
with metal vessels into which he poured various liquids and then connected
to his machine, but nothing came of it.
During a trip to St. Petersburg Fedor went to the Academy of Sciences
to talk with Mikhail Lomonosov, the brilliant young scientist who had
recently been appointed professor of chemistry there. Fedor had heard much
praise of Lomonosov.
"There is as yet no science of electricity, sir," Lomonosov told him.
"But I hope there will be. I advise you to see Richman. He is in charge of
our electricity experiments. He is a foreigner, but he does not put on airs.
Both Richman and I believe that the electricity obtained through friction is
the same force as lightning. We are on the eve of extremely interesting
discoveries' 174
Through Lomonosov's good offices Fedor wag able to visit the "chambers
for electric experiments", one of the first electricity laboratories in the
world.
Richman listened to Fedor's story with interest and made many notes.
Like Lomonosov, he was engaged in a systematic study of electricity,
particularly atmospheric electricity. Lomonosov was searching for the "true
cause of electricity and how to measure it", realizing that a theory of
electricity could not be built up without precise data.
In 1753 Richman was killed by lightning while he was measuring the
electric force of lightning discharges.
Lomonosov was showered with reproaches and threats.
"They wanted to shield man against God's wrath-lightning-but God
punished them for their audacity!" cried his opponents.
Although it took a long time for news to reach the Urals, Fedor closely
followed events in St. Petersburg.
"I'd laugh if I didn't feel like crying instead," Fedor remarked to his
wife. "Remember how the Brahmans in India made lightning to deceive the
people? Russia's equivalent of the Brahmans are angry because others wish to
find out what lightning is. If our Brahmans got their hands on electricity
they'd very soon reveal their true nature. No, I feel it's a blessing that I
did not tell anyone about my experiences in India or about my experiments."
"Please give up your experiments, Fedor dear," said Bharati, alarm in
her dark, almond-shaped eyes. "Ever since Herr Richman was killed I have had
no peace of mind."
"No, I won't give up," Fedor said. "If my life is not long enough my
children will continue the experiments. They, or their descendants, will
live to see a better day."
The candles began to sputter and Fedor trimmed the wicks. The log walls
crackled in the severe frost. In the next room Bharati softly sang the same
mournful song she had sung so long ago beside the temple of the formidable
goddess Kali.
Fedor closed his eyes. People and events of those distant days came to
life again in his mind's eye.
The old man chained to the wall in the tower-he had probably carried to
the grave his great secret of how to make the human body incorporeal.
The oil that flowed in a long stream through the water of the pool. The
Incorporeal Brahman. Perhaps he had dreamed it all.
The candles shed a flickering yellow glow on the silvery head. The
goose quill scratched on the rough paper.
"I conclude this epistle on the twelfth day of January in the year of
Our Lord 1762. I think that if the need should arise it would be best of all
if you were to seek assistance in the Academy of Sciences, from Professor
Mikhail Lomonosov, inasmuch as he is well versed in science.
"My last wish, my son, is that the forces of electricity should not
come under the power of those insatiable mongrels who are concerned solely
with their own personal benefit instead of with the welfare of their
country."
Forgive me, Newton!
The concepts you created still
guide our physical thinking,
but we now know that for
a deeper understanding of world relations
we must replace your concepts with others.
Albert Einstein
IN WHICH CONTRADICTORY OPINIONS OF FEDOR MATVEYEV'S MANUSCRIPT ARE
EXPRESSED; REX, NOT HAVING AN OPINION OF HIS OWN, HOWLS IN ACCOMPANIMENT AS
YURA AND NIKOLAI SING
"I've deciphered the manuscript, and translated in into modern
Russian," said Val. "I found it very interesting because the eighteenth
century is just my field. Shall I begin?" She looked at Boris Privalov. He
nodded.
They were gathered on the porch of a country cottage with a flat roof
and whitewashed walls. The intense heat of late afternoon penetrated through
the patterned leaves of the fig tree that grew beside the porch.
Every summer Privalov and his wife Olga rented the same seaside
cottage, not far from town. She spent all her time there, while he came out
for the weekends.
On this occasion he had brought four guests along without giving his
wife warning. They were Pavel Koltukhov, Yura, Nikolai and a girl named Val,
whom Olga had never met before; also, there was an enormous,
ferocious-looking dog.
They had travelled down in a crowded suburban train and arrived hot and
dusty. After a refreshing shower they settled themselves on the porch. Olga
brought out platters of grapes and figs. "Don't trouble yourself now, Olga,"
said Privalov. "We'll all pitch in later on to prepare supper.
Just sit down and relax. You'll hear a fascinating story."
"Hear ye, brethren, hear ye," chanted Yura, swinging a foot as he sat
on the railing of the porch.
Privalov put up a hand to silence him. "All right, Val," he said.
Val opened a red folder, carefully lifted out Fedor Matveyev's
manuscript, and laid it to one side. Then she picked up a sheaf of
typewritten pages and began to read.
Val read the last word and turned the page over. For a few moments
Privalov and his guests sat silent, engrossed in those extraordinary events
of two centuries ago, about which they had just heard from the lips, as it
were, of Lieutenant Fedor Matveyev of the Russian Navy.
"Thank you, Val," Privalov said softly. He rose and went over to the
wall to switch on the ceiling light.
"A remarkably interesting story!" exclaimed Olga. "I can clearly
picture him. Do you think it's all really true?"
Pavel Koltukhov snorted. "It's all nonsense," he said. He lit a
cigarette and let out a thick cloud of smoke.
Privalov asked Val to read, in the original eighteenth-century Russian,
the section in which Fedor Matveyev described how he had first flung
himself, knife in hand, on the Incorporeal Brahman. She found that page of
the manuscript and read, slowly: "I stabbed him in the heart, but the whole
knife, and also my hand along with it, went through his flesh as though it
were thin air. A second later he vanished from the room, passing straight
through the closed door. The door was made of wood, at least two inches
thick, and was bound in iron."
Koltukhov gave another snort. "Nothing but a fairy-tale." He took the
manuscript from Val and neatly copied a dozen lines or so from it into his
notebook.
Privalov woke up just as the sun was rising. He tiptoed across the
squeaky floor of the porch and down the steps into the garden. The sand was
cold under his bare feet. The trees cast long shadows across him as he
walked. In a corner of the garden he saw Nikolai, illuminated by the faint
rays of the sun, sitting on the low stone barrier of the well. The red
folder containing Fedor Matveyev's manuscript lay open on his knee.
"Well, what do you think of it all?" Privalov asked as he came up and
sat down beside Nikolai. He yawned loudly. "You didn't say a word all last
evening."
"I'm wondering about Matveyev's knife." Nikolai glanced at Privalov.
"Why couldn't it be true? Why couldn't they have accidentally stumbled on
the specifications of a machine that made matter penetrable?"
"There you go again, Nikolai. Just forget all about penetrability. They
didn't know enough two hundred years ago to-"
"But, Boris, by accident, I mean. Fedor Matveyev clearly describes a
machine of just this kind in the tower room in which the old man was chained
to the wall. He only saw it for a few minutes and his description is very
vague. Here's the place in the manuscript. Listen," Nikolai read slowly: "
'A wire spiral, something like an Archimedes' spiral, cut out of a thin
half-twist of silver.' What do you think that half-twist contraption into
which the old man thrust Matveyev's knife could have been, Boris? I believe
it must have been some sort of a high-frequency output inductor."
Boris Privalov smiled. "It's all very vague, Nikolai, much too vague,"
he said, laying a hand on the young man's shoulder. "I'm far more interested
in the stream of oil that flowed through the pool. Remember? In this case
the description of the apparatus is fairly clear. There were big
electrostatic generators switched on parallel with electrolytic capacitors
of an enormous capacity or, as Fedor Matveyev put it, 'copper vessels to
collect the mysterious force'. If they really did make oil flow through
water in a compact stream- well, that means they'd solved the problem of a
power ray and the building up of surface tension. But those reflectors in
the pool, I mean, their shape-"
"Yes, shape," Nikolai said, following his own train of thought. "The
shape of the inductor, devil take it!"
"But look, Nikolai. The Hindus just hit on it blindly. But we won't be
groping in the dark the way they did. This isn't the eighteenth century,
thank goodness. We need a theoretical foundation. I told you what Professor
Bagbanly said, didn't I? Let's have no more of this primitive tinkering with
spirals. An installation has to be set up, and we'll need your help."
Nikolai nodded. "But what about the manuscript?"
"We'll send it to the Academy of Sciences."
Nikolai closed the folder with an angry gesture and climbed to his
fe3t. "So we just forget about the whole thing, is that it?" he asked
bitterly, turning and walking towards the porch, tall, lean and tanned.
Privalov followed him with his eyes, then lifted his shoulders in a
shrug.
(The beach was crowded, for it was Sunday. The suburban trains spewed
city dwellers out of their stuffy carriages by the hundreds and the
thousands. All the places under the awnings and umbrellas were occupied; the
white sand was thickly covered with tanned bodies.
Boris Privalov and his friends settled themselves at the water's edge,
where the sand was a bit cooler. Lazy waves lapped at their feet.
Val put on her bathing cap and waded slowly into the water. Yura and
Nikolai plunged into the waves and were soon racing each other to the buoy.
Rex, who did not like to bathe, barked at them for a while, urging them to
come back, then lay down and stuck out his tongue as far as it would go.
Olga Privalov set up her beach umbrella and lay down in its shade with
a book.
Pavel Koltukhov folded a page from a newspaper into a hat which he
perched on his head as he stretched out on the sand beside Privalov.
"I'd like to borrow one of your engineers for a couple of days, Boris,"
he said. "What for? To dabble in resins?"
"Let me have Jura. He seems a clever lad." "Certainly. But see to it
that he has time to do his own work too." "Naturally."
"What was it you copied out of the manuscript last night?" Privalov
asked a few minutes later. "Seek and ye shall find," Koltukhov answered
vaguely. Then he started telling Privalov how necessary it was to draw up,
without delay, a cost estimate of the research involved in the transcaspian
oil pipeline project. The murmur of his voice put Privalov to sleep.
Nikolai and Yura came running out of the water, their bodies dripping.
"If Nikolai keeps it up we'll have to put him in a straightjacket,
Boris," Yura said as he flung himself onto the sand. "He insists that Fedor
Matveyev was telling the truth when he talked about an incorporeal man."
"Oh, shut up!" muttered Nikolai. But Yura continued: "Anyway, I'm sure I had
the last word. I asked him this: if that old wizard really possessed the
property of penetrability then why didn't he sink through the ground?"
Privalov lay on his back on the sand, his eyes closed blissfully against the
sun.
"Do me a favour, boys" he said in a drowsy voice. "Stop pestering me."
The bountiful sun was spreading hot gold over the beach. Two or three
clouds hung in a sky pale from the heat. A suburban train blew its whistle
close by, and soon another eager crowd of city dwellers streamed from the
station to the beach. They moved in a file along the water's edge, a gay,
perspiring throng. Koltukhov grumbled as some of them stepped across his
lean shanks.
One of the passers-by halted as he caught sight of Koltukhov. Rex
raised his head and growled.
"Is that you, Pavel?" the newcomer asked.
Koltukhov looked up. Above him stood Nikolai Opratin.
"Why, hullo there," said Koltukhov lazily, lifting his hand in
greeting. "Lured by the sea and the sun too, eh?"
Opratin courteously raised his straw hat to each member of the group in
turn, then went off to change into his swimming trunks. When he returned he
stretched out on the sand beside Koltukhov.
"What's new, Pavel?"
"Nothing much. We heard an Indian fairytale yesterday." Koltukhov then
proceeded to give a humorous version of Fedor Matveyev's adventures in
India.
"The damned fool!" Privalov thought. "Still, why make a secret of it?"
He removed his eyeglasses and went into the water.
Opratin listened to Koltukhov with a smile. But the moment Koltukhov
jokingly mentioned Fedor Matveyev's knife the smile vanished and Opratin's
face grew strained and attentive.
"Let me interrupt you for a moment, Pavel, but that knife-You say the
manuscript describes how it was given the property of penetrability?"
"Oh, that's all nonsense," said Koltukhov. "It's just a fairy-tale. The
only thing I can put stock in is the electrostatic generator. That sort of
thing was well within the scope of the eighteenth century. By the way-" Here
Koltukhov felt he was making a very neat transition to the one topic he
wanted to talk to Opratin about. "By the way, I hear you have a powerful
electrostatic generator at your Institute. Mind if I drop in from time to
time and use it? I'll try not to impose on you."
"By all means," said Opratin. "What will you be using it for?"
He never got an answer, for Koltukhov launched into reminiscences of
his adventurous youth.
Val came running up. She pulled off her bathing cap, shook out her dark
hair, and sat down beside Olga.
"Is she the one, did you say, who translated the manuscript?" Opratin
asked Koltukhov in a low voice.
"That's right. Would you like to meet her?"
"That was a most interesting find you made," Opratin said to Val after
Koltukhov had introduced him to her. "It isn't every day that an original
manuscript from Peter the Great's time turns up."
Opratin then entered into a lively conversation with Val. Yura gave
them a sidelong glance, called to Rex, and headed for a large rock nearby.
Nikolai joined him there. Dangling their feet in the water they began to
sing, in mock earnestness, a plaintive old Russian ballad.
"What are you waiting for, Rex?" Yura said sternly.
The dog threw back his head, gave a convulsive yawn, and then began to
howl softly in accompaniment.
Val glanced towards the two young men and shrugged.
The dreary song went on and on for a long time.
As the hardware in Cooper Lane became more and more sophisticated Yura
said, with a click of his tongue, gazing proudly around the room:
"Wonderful! Even Faraday never had a home laboratory like ours."
Despite the obvious advantages of the laboratory over Faraday's they
were not making any progress worth mentioning. The two young men created
electrical fields of various kinds around the "mercury heart", which beat
conscientiously but showed no signs whatsoever of increasing its surface
tension.
A breakthrough of some kind was definitely needed.
One day Nikolai invited a young engineer from the Institute's
automation department named Hussein Amirov to drop in and take a look at the
"mercury heart". Hussein spent a whole evening testing the oscillator on
different frequencies. "Nice little toy you've got here," he said to
Nikolai. "But there's something wrong with the operating conditions. I'll
think about it."
The next morning he phoned Nikolai. "Look here, old man, your mistake
is that you're not letting the high frequency through in pulses. You'll have
to put in a tuning-fork breaker." Soon after, Nikolai installed a
tuning-fork. An electromagnet kept its prongs in constant vibration, and the
contacts on the prongs closed and disconnected the circuit. Movable weights
attached to the prongs regulated the frequency of the oscillations.
Pulses had been a good idea. But Nikolai and Yura could not manage to
hit on a combination of high frequency and breaker frequency that would
cause the mercury heart, contracted by increased tension, to stop beating.
On the other hand, perhaps no such frequency existed at all.
One evening the two were busy as usual with their installation,
experimenting with a new series of frequencies. And as usual, the results
were disappointing.
"We can sit here from now to doomsday and still neither of us will ever
be another Faraday," Yura said to Nikolai, pushing back his chair noisily.
"You're right," Nikolai agreed with a sigh. He shook his fist at the
"mercury heart". Then he took out Fedor Matveyev's manuscript from his
briefcase. He had borrowed it from Privalov for the evening. It was to be
sent to Moscow the next day with an accompanying letter by Professor
Bagbanly.
"Is the half-twist spiral in that manuscript still preying on your
mind?" Yura said. "What do you think it might lead you to?"
"You know what as well as I do. If we could increase the surface
tension of liquids it means-"
Yura waved his hand impatiently. "I didn't have that in mind. According
to Fedor Matveyev the knife acquired penetrability after the old man who was
chained to the wall thrust it into that spiral. Do you really think-"
"I don't think anything. All I want is to find a new form of inductor."
Nikolai carefully turned the pages of the manuscript.
"Let's have a look at the last page, where he writes about Mikhail
Lomonosov," said Yura.
They read in silence for some time.
"That damned half-twist spiral!" Nikolai exclaimed, rummaging in his
pockets for his cigarettes. "What are you doing that for?" he asked Yura,
who was holding a sheet of the manuscript up to the light.
"Look! Some sort of drawings."
Pencil lines were visible on the back of the last page. The lead had
rubbed off almost completely, only the faint traces of lines pressed into
the thick paper by the point of a hard pencil could be seen.
"Why, that's our box! But there's more than one."
A firm hand had drawn three boxes, one below the other, and indicated
their sizes. Two of them looked like the box in which Fedor Matveyev's
manuscript had been preserved, while the third was square and flat. There
was an inscription under each drawing. All three boxes bore the letters A M
D G, evidently meant to be engraved. Below the letters was a drawing of a
crown, and below that, in smaller script, the letters J d M.
"Our box should have the same letters on it, don't you think?" Yura
picked up the box and examined it. "Yes, here they are. We didn't notice
them before because the lines were filled with rust."
Nikolai frowned. Where had he seen those letters before? He went over
to the bookcase and ran his eyes over the titles on the backs of the books.
Finally he pulled out Vicomte de Bragelonne and started leafing through it.
"My memory didn't let me down," he remarked with satisfaction. "Listen:
'Bewildered, Baizerneaux de Dmoutlezun leaned over his shoulder and read, A
M D G...'."
Taking the book from Nikolai, Yura read aloud the footnote, a grin on
his face: " 'Ad majorem Dei gloriam. To the greater glory of God. The motto
of the Jesuits.' But what's J d M? It isn't in the book. What a lot of
puzzles Lieutenant Fedor Matveyev has given us to solve!"
"We need a system," said Nikolai. He took a sheet of paper and quickly
wrote:
Boxes Inscriptions Size of boxes in drawing
Length Width Height
1 La preuve 9 1 3/4 1 3/4
2 La source 9 1/2 2 2
3 La clef de mystere 4 4 1/2
Yura rubbed his hands vigorously. "That's a good idea. Now we'll
translate the inscriptions. Call up Val. She knows French."
"Well," Nikolai said after talking with Val, "la preuve means 'the
evidence', la source means 'the source' and la clef de mystere means 'the
key to the mystery'."
"The key to the mystery, you say?" Yura took a caliper and measured the
height, length and width of the iron box. "It's 257.5 by 54.2 by 54.2
millimetres. Get out your slide-rule and calculate the ratio. Divide 257.5
by 54.2."
"It's 9 1/2 by 2 by 2," said Nikolai. He glanced at his chart. "Our box
with the manuscript is the one called 'the source'."
Х'Well, that's clear," said Yura. "Now, what's the unit of measurement
used in the drawings? If we divide 54.2 by two we get 27.1 millimetres. The
English inch is equal to 25.4 millimetres. So-"
"So it isn't in inches. We'll come back to that later. Now let's
systematize what we know."
They draw up another table:
"Someone put the manuscript in the box that finally came into our hands
and ordered two more boxes, one for 'the evidence' and the other for 'the
key to the mystery'. It probably wasn't Fedor Matveyev. It's hardly likely
he would go in for Jesuit mottos. Who was it, then? What's hidden in the
other boxes? And where are they?"
Inscriptions Size of Boxes Remarks
In the scale on In millimetres
the drawings
Length Width Height Length Width Height Missing
Evidence 9 1 3/4 1 3/4 243.9 4 7.4 47.4
Source 9 1/2 2 2 257.5 54.2 54.2 Our box
Key to the
Mystery 4 4 1/2 108.4 108.4 13.55 Missing
Yura and Nikolai spent a number of evenings in a fascinating search for
the key to the enigmatic inscriptions. A M D G told them that Jesuits had
been directly involved in the affair. What the letters J d M meant, though,
was a complete mystery.
In the public library they found a book on heraldry from which they
discovered that the crown on the boxes was a count's crown. They realized
that J d M were the initials of some count, the "d" standing for "de".
Next they settled down to read everything they could find about the
Jesuits.
Yura and Nikolai had a big notebook in which they entered all kinds of
information on things like radio circuits, photography hints, sailboat
designs, poetry, designs of scuba gear and underwater guns, data on surface
tension and so on.
Now they put into it copies of the drawings of the three boxes with the
following commentary:
(a) The old French inch is equal to 27.1 millimetres.
(b) This inch was abolished in France on the 19th Frimaire in the
eighth year of the Republic, that is, on December 10, 1799, when the metric
system was adopted.
(c) The inscriptions were made in a pencil with a lead of ground
graphite mixed with clay and baked, much like modern pencils. Pencils of
this type appeared after 1790.
Deductions
1. The type of pencil shows that the inscriptions were made after 1790.
The measurements were made before 1799, when the metric system was