Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True Part 6

CHAPTER 7.

Wild Science THE S SITt.u.r.dS' MORALE COLLAPSED IN S ST. LOUIS. THEIR WORLD always seemed to be ending. Rapture felt degraded and confused by the "w'ich en w'y talk" of the metropolis. She had lost her ability for "sperit voicen" and seemed fatigued at heart. Hephaestus teetered into the gutter. Where up to this point the trials of travel had brought them together in their quest to reach Texas and learn the secret of the "salvation" letter, now all the distractions and pressures of the city and their changing roles seemed to bring them undone. Each in a private way was homesick for their old life, as much as that had seemed a burden in the past. Each felt somehow to blame, especially Hephaestus. always seemed to be ending. Rapture felt degraded and confused by the "w'ich en w'y talk" of the metropolis. She had lost her ability for "sperit voicen" and seemed fatigued at heart. Hephaestus teetered into the gutter. Where up to this point the trials of travel had brought them together in their quest to reach Texas and learn the secret of the "salvation" letter, now all the distractions and pressures of the city and their changing roles seemed to bring them undone. Each in a private way was homesick for their old life, as much as that had seemed a burden in the past. Each felt somehow to blame, especially Hephaestus.

The lame patriarch's dalliance with Chicken Germain had been his first betrayal of marital fidelity and had been instantly apprehended by his wife the moment he staggered back to the stable. In Rapture's mind there was an unbridgeable difference between chugalugging moonshine and doing the jellyroll with an "oagly" cathouse madam who consumed fried chicken by the plateful. The root witch in her was quick to take retaliatory action, concocting a noxious salve and applying it to Hephaestus's manhood when he fell asleep. The next morning he experienced the kind of profound contrition that only a severe mix of pain and embarra.s.sment can elicit. Since then his condition had improved but had not cleared, and his mood remained sullen and dejected. He was angry with himself for what he had done, angry with his wife for what she had done to him, and angry with Lloyd for keeping his head and becoming the family breadwinner. It was not right, and undermined what fragile dignity he had left.

Lloyd's answer to this tension was to throw himself with full force into his work on the medicine show and into his secret studies at Wolfgang Sch.e.l.ling's bookshop. While back in Zanesville Mabel Peanut and Irma Grimm battled to teach their students the multiplication tables, Lloyd considered the implications of a pendulum being perfectly isochronous when describing a cycloidal arc. In one sitting, he consumed and appeared to understand a complex dissertation on celestial mechanics. Even the densest algebraic equations were soon rendered in exact visual form on a graph. In Sch.e.l.ling's experience, for sheer power of processing and retention the boy had no equal.

The book and map seller nourished the lad's hunger for learning with the Poetics Poetics of Aristotle and the metaphysics of Kant, but Lloyd much preferred the researches of Gauss and Coulomb into magnetic induction and resistance. While other bright boys his age would have delved into the adventures of Sinbad or the Swamp Fox, Lloyd opted for the scientific treatises of Swedenborg. His weakness lay in the area of magic, and Sch.e.l.ling's shop was more than able to accommodate these diversions with dusty grimoires, Books of the Dead, and volumes devoted to alchemy and divination. of Aristotle and the metaphysics of Kant, but Lloyd much preferred the researches of Gauss and Coulomb into magnetic induction and resistance. While other bright boys his age would have delved into the adventures of Sinbad or the Swamp Fox, Lloyd opted for the scientific treatises of Swedenborg. His weakness lay in the area of magic, and Sch.e.l.ling's shop was more than able to accommodate these diversions with dusty grimoires, Books of the Dead, and volumes devoted to alchemy and divination.

Hour by hour Sch.e.l.ling imagined that he could see the boy's mind changing shape to accommodate the new learning and, despite his best efforts to remain remote and uninvolved, when the usual look of forlorn acknowledgment swept across the prodigy's face one afternoon at closing time the humped scholar found himself providing take-home reading-which Lloyd began to indulge in by candlelight when his feuding parents had finally dropped off to sleep.

The first work he devoured was on thaumaturgy, the engineering of ingenious machines for the purposes of theatrical or religious magic. It included the triumphant contrivances of Hero and Vitruvius, and John Dee's panic-causing stage effect of a mechanical flying beetle in Aristophanes' Peace Peace. The second book was about Sir Joseph Banks, Captain Cook's botanist and science officer, who smuggled into his cabin a woman, dressed as a boy, to be his "a.s.sistant." It cheered Lloyd to learn that a man of science could also be a man of l.u.s.t, and when the book described Banks as a "voyager, monster-hunter, and amoroso," he decided that that was what he would dedicate his life to becoming.

Apart from a dog-eared j.a.panese pillow book, he did not find many books to t.i.tillate his erotic senses, but he did find descriptions and drawings of the mechanical iron hand designed by Gotz von Berlichingen in 1505-the Little Writer, the ingenious automaton conceived by Pierre Jacquet-Droz and his son, in the 1760s, as well as Vaucanson's miraculous mechanical digesting duck.

Lloyd rather felt his beaver was not altogether an inferior creation, but he resolved to become ever more ambitious. In response, he filched some items from a dustbin and a jeweler's workshop and one afternoon presented his host and patron with a foot-high clockwork mannequin modeled on Andrew Jackson and armed with a whittled dowel flintlock that fired a mung bean. After that, the bookseller began showering the youngster with more than books. From the nether reaches of the dusty warren came horseshoe magnets, lengths of coiled copper and chemical solutions, lenses and grinding tools, professional carving implements, and a miscellany of objects to further entice the boy's imagination. Lloyd responded with a dollhouse incorporating hidden pa.s.sages and optical illusions, and a miniature paddle wheeler with a high-pressure steam engine that, in proportionate terms, produced twice the power using less than half the normal fuel. An ear trumpet attached to a night watchman's knuckle-duster and some homemade gunpowder became a handheld cannon capable of projecting a load of ball bearings. (Lloyd field-tested it against the Rovers and the Mud Puppies, two warring gangs of urchins, who were less visible on the streets thereafter.) When he set to work on improving the primary battery cell developed by J. F. Daniell, Sch.e.l.ling's eyebrows stayed raised. Most significant of all, Lloyd proved that what the book merchant had taken to be a toy was at minimum a very sophisticated toy. It was a hand-size locomotive that appeared to be made of gla.s.s, which Sch.e.l.ling said had come from Austria. Lloyd recalled the story St. Ives had told him about the crystal orchids of Junius Rutherford, and performed a series of experiments. He revealed that the object responded to the energy of the sun and posited that the gla.s.s was really some form of disguised plant material. Sch.e.l.ling was careful to put the locomotive under lock and key after that, and he began to consider that it might be wise to do the same with Lloyd. Such a development prompted the bookseller to relax his rule about private confidences, and he began soliciting information about Lloyd's family and their plans. He was pleased that the boy was as forthcoming as he was.

The problem Sch.e.l.ling perceived was that the lad's interests flitted from subject to subject-one minute daguerreotypes,the next ideas for an internal-combustion engine. Of far greater concern, however, was an incipient sadism that the book merchant found despicable.

Deciding that Lloyd's education required something other than scientific literature and handbooks of magic, the humped man provided an ill.u.s.trated volume on Greek mythology. On the way back to the stable after closing, Lloyd trapped a wharf rat, which he named Theseus. The next day he built a maze for the rat to explore, but when the rodent failed to extricate itself Lloyd attached one of his battery wires and proceeded to torture it with electricity. Sch.e.l.ling was left to perform a merciful extermination. The next day when the bookseller inquired what the child was clutching in a damp handkerchief, Lloyd replied, "A cat's brain."

Sch.e.l.ling was forced to admit that his protege's moral intelligence lagged far behind his mental apt.i.tude. When he quizzed the boy to describe what his special field of interest was, Lloyd muttered, "Wild science."

"What do you mean by that?" the bookman queried.

"The life of machines," Lloyd said with a shrug. "The machinery of life."

Sch.e.l.ling was taken aback to learn that a further inventory of the subjects that exuded fascination for the prodigy included ghosts, dreams, and the female anatomy. When asked what he would most like to accomplish, given his prodigious gifts, Lloyd replied, without a hint of irony or self-consciousness, "Design a female playmate who will remain forever young, communicate with the dead, formulate a detailed map of the mind, and perhaps travel to other worlds."

Fortunately, Lloyd had to use the privy in the back lane, so Sch.e.l.ling was left to splutter to himself. Then he sneaked a peek at the boy's notes. In the beleaguered two-penny Buffalo book, he found an amalgam of symbols, numbers, and marginalia-from mathematical calculations and sketches depicting various mechanical actions to a chain of hierograms that made him gawk. These emblems spiraled through a series of schematic drawings that merged existing and imaginary machines with animals and insects, along with humans and mythological beasts in graphic s.e.xual poses. Lloyd returned and picked up his work just where he had left off without noticing the disturbed look on Sch.e.l.ling's face.

While his education under the bookseller's patronage progressed at the speed of thought, out on the medicine-show circuit the brisk sales of LUCID! were beginning to fall off. From long experience, Mulrooney sensed that the "hole was pretty well fished out" and the solution was to move on, upriver to Hannibal, Quincy, Rock Island, maybe even St. Paul. Of course, Lloyd could not go. The Sitt.u.r.ds' way led west and south, yet the boy's share of tonic sales was still nowhere near enough to pay for all three fares on the Missouri.

Mulrooney encouraged the prodigy to improvise more flamboyant expressions of his talents with an "enterprise point of view" in mind. Lloyd answered with theatrical exhibitions of magnetism, mirrors, and various volatile chemicals, which stimulated both consternation and raucous applause but did not lead to further sales. However, when he unveiled a flock of soaring toys and wind flyers public interest took a decided turn. These were simpler than the ones he had made in Zanesville but more elegant in their efficiency and less labor-intensive to produce. They had the added benefit of being disposable, which encouraged repeat purchases. They achieved an instant local vogue. Children and grown-ups alike were smitten by the sleek white arrows and bird-shaped creations. Prices varied, depending on the size and the materials, but the sudden popularity of the flying toys brought the Sitt.u.r.ds momentarily back together again, as Lloyd, Rapture, and the repentant Hephaestus were forced to work side by side in order to keep pace with demand as clubs and compet.i.tions sprouted wings. Yet even this success was not enough to satisfy Lloyd. His inclinations and impatience spurred him on to new heights.

The next phase started with a caged dove, a lamb, and a rooster. While gathering his things to leave Sch.e.l.ling's bookshop one afternoon, Lloyd stumbled upon a volume on the history of ballooning, which began with the story of the Frenchman Pilatre de Rozier launching the first animals in a balloon of paper and fabric, then making a solo ascent himself a few months after-followed later by a true free flight in a balloon designed by the famous Montgolfier brothers in 1783.

In the early hours of the next day, Lloyd launched his own straw fire-fueled balloon made of butcher paper and hat wire, sending aloft one of the stable mice he had nabbed. He watched with pride as it disappeared in the vicinity of the Nicholson grocery store. (Unbeknownst to the boy, the balloon bounded about in the framing of a rooftop water tank before crashing near the Wheaton drugstore, to the mystification of a clerk named Balthus Tubb, who would go to his grave puzzling over the singed vermin that fell from the sky and hit him in the head.) Reading how kites had been used in ancient China to elevate fireworks for military purposes set off fireworks of its own inside the boy's mind. With funding from Mulrooney, Lloyd began constructing, demonstrating, and selling kites as big as himself along the levee as part of the medicine show's new program. The sight of the creations trembling on their tethers over the river brought whistles from the packet steamers and cheers from the freight-loaded flatboats. The size of the kites grew, and so did their efficiency. When the Fourth of July came, Lloyd incorporated his emerging capabilities into a pyrotechnic display along the riverbank. Mulrooney handled the ticket sales and was delighted at the takings. Sch.e.l.ling was circulating in the crowd that night, too, but he was far from delighted.

The next day at closing time, the humpbacked bibliophile b.u.t.tonholed the wunderkind and said, "My boy, I have someone who would like to make your acquaintance. Someone I think it would be very strategic for you to meet. She is known as Mother Tongue. She is elderly and eccentric, but if favorably disposed toward you-and I believe she will be-she could become an invaluable...sponsor."

"Why?" Lloyd asked.

"Because of your unique abilities. And because she is eccentric. I would like you to meet me at the old ferry landing at midnight tonight."

"Midnight?" Lloyd cried. "What will I tell my mother and father?" Although he protested, he was beginning to think that he did not owe his parents any explanation for his actions anymore.

"You must not tell them. You must wait until they are asleep and slip out."

"But why so late-and where does this Mother Tongue live?"

"I can only say that she is eccentric, as I have told you. But she is is worth meeting. Trust me," the bookseller replied, and the lump on his back twitched. worth meeting. Trust me," the bookseller replied, and the lump on his back twitched.

"All right," Lloyd agreed, and turned to head home, thinking all the while that his own fortunes seemed to rise in proportion to the fall in his parents'. It stung him, though, how they were forever undermining his elation, flinging filaments if not cables of guilt and responsibility at him, needing him yet holding him back. But from what? Perhaps the answer to that question was about to take more than a dream's shape.

CHAPTER 8.

Midnight Is a Door LLOYD ARRIVED AT THE OLD FERRY LANDING DEAD ON THE APPOINTED time. A full moon reflected off the wharf and the chimneys of the docked boats, giving the Mississippi a sickly silver sheen. Sch.e.l.ling was waiting for him. Two stevedore-muscled black men were on board a cramped, decrepit steam launch with him-one at the helm, one standing guard. Despite the warm summer night, the boy shivered. time. A full moon reflected off the wharf and the chimneys of the docked boats, giving the Mississippi a sickly silver sheen. Sch.e.l.ling was waiting for him. Two stevedore-muscled black men were on board a cramped, decrepit steam launch with him-one at the helm, one standing guard. Despite the warm summer night, the boy shivered.

Stoked with cottonwood and cypress, the boiler of the dilapidated boat powered the craft out into the current. The telltale silhouette of a yawl rowed off south beyond them, and a beaming coal barge loomed out toward the Illinois side. Beyond that, no one appeared to be on the water except for them and the moonlight.

Sch.e.l.ling handed Lloyd a strip of dark muslin. "Please blindfold yourself."

"Why?" Lloyd asked, the hair rising on the back of his neck.

"You will see," Sch.e.l.ling replied. "Trust me."

Lloyd flopped down on a crate and wrapped the cloth around his head as he was instructed. This was not at all what he had expected, but the familiar sounds of the boat surging through the river filled him with a confused sense of resignation and antic.i.p.ation. Surely this man meant him well.

He listened hard, trying to picture their progress away from St. Louis. The hiss of the gauge c.o.c.k. The low rumble of the mud valves. At first he was sure they were headed upriver, and then they turned, and perhaps again. Twice Sch.e.l.ling raised him up and spun him around, as if to further disorient him. Not a word was spoken between the humpback and his dark-skinned crew. On and on the boat plowed. Then drifted.

At last it became clear that they were docking. There were all the sounds of pulling into a wharf: the change in the rhythm of the machinery...backwash...scrambling of hands and legs...ropes heaved. Lloyd was lifted onto some sort of pier (by one of the Negroes, he surmised) and pushed gently but forcibly into a seated position. After several minutes, he heard the clip-clop of a horse's hooves and the clump of a wagon. He was hoisted again in one graceful maneuver and set down in what felt like a dogcart. He could tell that Sch.e.l.ling was beside him by the scent of the witch hazel. Reins jingled. The cart rattled off on a rutted, hard-packed road.

They rode for perhaps twenty minutes. When the blindfold at last came off, and Lloyd's eyes had got used to seeing again, he saw that they had come to a dismal clearing back off from the river, set on a cliff. A forbidding wall of pines ringed the lumpy open ground, which was studded with shapes that brought to mind his chapel cove back in Zanesville.

"What is this place?" he asked.

"A slave cemetery," Sch.e.l.ling answered. "At least, it appears to be."

He stepped down out of the dogcart and helped the boy to the ground. With his eyes growing more alert, Lloyd saw that the moonlight rained down across a field of primitive graves-rock markers, splintered wooden crosses, and iron bars. The eerie call of a screech owl echoed through the trees.

"Why are we here?" the boy asked, feeling a ghostly presence rising like mist from the stumps and stones.

The antiquarian did not respond but instead looked around the perimeter of pines, listening hard. Then he lit a lucifer match and held it above his head. In the still, soft air it glowed white-gold for a few seconds before he shook it out. A moment later, a flicker of light answered back from the cliff side and a whip-poor-will called from a tangle of rosemary to the west.

"All right," Sch.e.l.ling decided, and directed the boy toward a grave marked by a slab of granite that in the glare of the moon Lloyd saw had gouged into its surface the words HIC JACET HIC JACET. With unexpected agility and strength, Sch.e.l.ling bent down and heaved the slab to one side, revealing a st.u.r.dy wooden ladder descending into the blackness beneath the burial ground.

Lloyd was alarmed at this discovery, but intrigued.

"Wait a moment," Sch.e.l.ling commanded, and disappeared down the ladder.

Lloyd heard another match crack and saw a faint flare from below. There was the clunk of a chain, then a lock clicking, and a door being pried open. Sch.e.l.ling's head reappeared out of the ground. "Come," he whispered.

Pale light streamed to meet them now, and Lloyd followed the man down ten rungs into what he took to be a crypt but which smelled like some kind of root cellar. As soon as he stepped off the ladder and had his feet planted, he saw that this "cellar" opened up into what looked like a gallery of natural catacombs, only the first of which was lit by a lantern. The air was cool but surprisingly dry. As his eyes became adjusted to the shadows, Lloyd saw that the chambers stretching into the distance were filled with paintings and statues, row upon row of shelves lined with leather-bound books, stuffed animals, skeletons, weapons, scientific instruments, and unidentified machines.

"High ground," Sch.e.l.ling announced. "Part of a cave system that the river can't reach. It has been used for many purposes in the past, but now it serves as our hiding place."

"Who are you hiding from? And what...is...all this?" Lloyd asked.

"It's but a Main Street museum of anatomy compared to what it was," Sch.e.l.ling answered somberly.

"Where...where did all the things come from?"

"Europe, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia. Ma.s.sachusetts. All over the world."

"Are they yours?" the boy asked.

"I am the custodian and cataloguer, but the collection belongs to the Spirosians. Mother Tongue will explain. Are you ready to meet her?"

"I...guess...so," Lloyd answered. Up to now he had supposed Mother Tongue to be some senile member of the Illumination Society. What if she was something else?

Sch.e.l.ling lit a hurricane lantern and steered him past a Chippendale cabinet on which perched a dented conquistador's helmet. A curve in the rock wall brought them to a flight of steps hacked into the clay stone. The humped man motioned for the boy to follow.

The stairs led down to a landing that was flooded with the light from a golden candelabrum that took the shape of a tall, full tree. On each branch burned a thick green candle, and between the spitting and dripping of the wax Lloyd heard the gentle lap of water below. Outside the aura of the tapers, the cave ceiling opened up like a tunnel that had been blasted to make way for a train, and then narrowed to a tight stricture on the other side of a large obsidian-dark pool. Floating in the water before him was a small ornate steamboat stained with moss and algae. All its windows were dark except one. A black man dressed as a coachwhip stood beside a gangplank that led from the landing to the riverboat, holding an oil lamp.

"Mother Tongue is expecting you," Sch.e.l.ling told him. "Blazon will be your escort. I will wait for you here."

Lloyd was gripped with such a blend of apprehension and excitement that he could barely move, but move he did, into the black man's lamplight and over the gangplank, half thinking that the weird boat would evaporate the moment he stepped foot on board. It did not, but it looked as if it might well sink-or had sunk and been raised from the depths of the river. In the stillness of the cave, Lloyd imagined that he could hear the very nails aching in the swollen planks.

The man called Blazon remained stone-silent but led him straight to the central parlor on the main deck where the lamp shone. Then, just as he was opening the weather-beaten wooden door, the most miraculous thing Lloyd had ever seen in his life happened. Everything around him burst alight, so suddenly that he thought the boat was in flames. He let out a giant gasp, which seemed to please Blazon. The boat was not on fire but shimmering with tiny prisms that looked as if they were made of isingla.s.s and filled with lightning. By what means the prisms came to life Lloyd could only guess, but as instantly as they had ignited they expired and he found himself blinking hard. He heard Blazon close the door behind him, then his own heartbeat.

A single gla.s.s oil lamp with extended wick stood on a walnut table beside an old cane plantation chair and a ladder-back rocking chair made of pine. Seated in the cane monstrosity was the oldest woman Lloyd had ever seen. Her hair was pure white and thick. Her face, which was the color of blancmange, was fantastically wrinkled, yet she sat upright without a hint of palsy, dressed in a cool-looking long white dress, like a southern lady about to serve tea. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a weary haircloth sofa on which a mangy c.o.o.nhound was fast asleep.

"Come," the old woman called to him, indicating the ladder-back.

"The lights..." Lloyd said, but he couldn't complete his question.

He found himself meandering toward the rocking chair as if in a trance and, once seated, was startled when one of the runners pressed down on the tail of a cat-but not like any cat he had ever encountered. It was hairless. Sleek of body, its skin was rose-pink, becoming the color of pencil lead on its paws, with a face that reminded Lloyd of a mask, and remarkable slitted eyes that were as green as his own.

"Curiosity!" the old woman commanded, and the cat leaped into her lap. "You are always putting yourself in harm's way."

Lloyd tried to ease himself back into the chair, glad that the hound hadn't stirred. When he managed to settle, he was again shaken by the old woman's eyes. He had noticed from across the room that she wore no spectacles, which had surprised him, given her obvious age, but he was surprised still further to find her now looking straight at him with eyes as green as the cat's-and his, too. As green as absinthe, but clear.

The room was silent but for the purring of the feline and what he imagined to be the trip-hammer of his heart. He wanted to know about the lights...what he was doing there. He tried to remain still. The old c.o.o.nhound slept on.

At first the woman's green eyes stabbed at him like darning needles, but gradually the intensity of her scrutiny eased. There was no decaying odor of ravaged flesh or incontinence about her, as he had experienced with the older Zanesville biddies; rather, a clean simple scent of lemon verbena. Despite the alien surroundings and the circ.u.mstances that had brought him there, he began to feel rea.s.sured. Until the ancient lady spoke.

"You've already been with a woman, haven't you? A grown woman."

"How did you know that?" Lloyd cried. "Can you read minds?"

"I've heard that you can," the woman answered, and her face a.s.sumed an inscrutable smile. "Can you guess how old I am?"

"Eighty?" Lloyd tried, afraid that he might offend her.

"Fiddlesticks!" She laughed.

"One hundred, then."

"Oh, I'm every bit of that." She sighed. "Every bit and then some."

"I think you're the oldest person I've ever seen," Lloyd admitted.

The old c.o.o.n dog dozed.

"I am. And I don't know how much longer I have. So let me cut off the gristle and get to the meat. There's nothing wrong with your discovery of your manhood, even if you are still a child. The first experience of the flesh is a great challenge for everyone, but it is a special trial for males and you have pa.s.sed yours. That may bode well. You are destined to run well before yourself in many ways. Now, before I tell you the things you were brought here to hear I will let you ask me one question. What would you like to know about-the lights?"

Lloyd pondered for a moment, feeling for the woman's intent.

"I think you'll tell me about the lights," he replied at last. "What I'd like to know is how you get this boat through such a narrow pa.s.sage."

The woman gave the cat a long, deep stroke.

"The boat never leaves this grotto. Nor do I. It wouldn't be safe for me to move about anymore."

She clutched the hairless animal tighter and lowered her voice.

"And I don't mean to frighten you, Lloyd, but there may come a time, sooner than you think, when it won't be safe for you to move about so freely, either."

Lloyd shifted in his chair, unable to turn his gaze from the woman's eyes, which reached out and embraced him, her words filling the spa.r.s.ely furnished room like the shadows that closed in around the lamp.

CHAPTER 9.

The Hunger for Secrets "DID I I SCARE YOU SCARE YOU, LLOYD?" M MOTHER T TONGUE ASKED AFTER A moment of silence. "Or is your hunger for secrets so great that you are immune to fear?" moment of silence. "Or is your hunger for secrets so great that you are immune to fear?"

Lloyd tried to feel in his mind, reaching inside and then outward into the shadows for some sense of his dead sister's protective presence. Why was there a museum under a graveyard and a riverboat stuck inside a cliff? How did the darkness suddenly burst into light? A wave of fatigue washed over him and he longed to snuggle with the dog on the rough couch.

"We'll see," he answered at last, not wanting to show that he was scared-and scared because he did not know why. "Who are the Spirosians?"

Mother Tongue gave another one of her odd smiles.

"The movement dates back to very olden times in Europe and the Middle East, but it draws its strength from even longer ago, in ancient Greece and Egypt. It is based on the thought of one exemplary man, Spiro of Lemnos. Some stories tell that he was a hermaphrodite-both a male and a female. But that may be just a legend. We do know that he was a Phoenician by birth-sometimes called a son of Atlantis, the original philosopher-scientist. But he was also a pract.i.tioner of what some might describe as magic. A man of unique genius. The superior of Thales, Pythagoras, and Archimedes, and greater than all those who followed-Leonardo, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton. He saw more deeply into the mysteries of life than anyone else before or since. In fact, his ideas were so far ahead of his time that he was constantly in danger of persecution, imprisonment, and death. So he concealed his discoveries and teachings in a secret language-hierograms embedded in beautiful, intricate puzzles that he called Enigmas. No one knows how he came by this language or the design for these puzzles, but there is a myth that this knowledge was given to him by the G.o.ds. Others believe he stole it."