The Faculty Club Part 15

He gave me a look that said Enough.

"Time to rebuild."

I ignored him.

"What if there's a way?"

"What do you mean, a way?"

"What if I had something . . . a piece of information . . . that might make the V and D reconsider? They can take four people one year. Why not? Then I'm back on track."

Until this moment, Miles had been serious, but he never lost his basic good humor. But now, he spoke very slowly, all the color gone from his voice.

"Tell me exactly what you mean."

I pulled out the obituary. I showed him the picture and explained the story.

His voice sounded strange.

If I didn't know better, I'd think Miles--all six foot seven of him--was nervous.

"Have you told anyone else about this?"

"No. n.o.body."

He looked at me hard, then nodded.

"There's someone you need to meet."

Miles and I walked side by side through the university, a cold wind moving in from the north, hands deep in our pockets. The fresh air seemed to lighten his mood.

"Who are we going to see?" I asked again.

"Chance Worthington," Miles repeated.

"Who is Chance Worthington? Is he a student?"

"Not exactly."

"How can you not exactly be a student?"

"Chance's status with the university is unclear."

Miles laughed and slapped my back.

It turned out Chance had been on campus as long as Miles, without collecting a single degree. This was a rare feat, considering Miles had done undergrad, law school, and now part of his PhD here. Chance was an on-again, off-again reporter for the campus paper and for whoever else would publish his articles: alternative weeklies, alien-invasion tabloids, ranting socialist leaflets. Unlike most college reporters, Miles explained, Chance wasn't satisfied with covering can drives and campus protests over the plight of the penguins. He'd taken numerous leaves of absence to travel around the world, to places with violent conflicts or exceptionally pure weed. He had a pile of letters from the administration that he was afraid to open, but they were still cashing his checks.

Miles was one of those people who collected odd friends. In high school, you could count on him to know every lost soul in the Ol' South Pancake House, our twenty-four-hour hangout after debate matches. He knew the quiet truckers and the self-t.i.tled lesbian cowgirls. He knew the Vietnam vets and the old hippies who still occasionally yelled at each other across the room. He knew the black debutantes, who always arrived in gowns from a glittery circuit of events we'd never see. I pretty much kept to my friends at Ol' South, with my coffee and my German pancakes, out of shyness. But Miles could sit down at any booth and talk and laugh for hours.

"You guys are gonna love each other." Miles grinned, warming to the event.

We met at Chance's place, an off-campus "co-op," which was basically a hippie dorm where you cooked your own food and didn't have to shower.

Chance Worthington took a long drag off his joint and pa.s.sed it to Miles. His eyes were bloodshot. His hair moved in wild curls. He tapped his middle finger nonstop on the table. He bit at a nail, then started tapping again.

Finally, he stopped tapping. He took another quick hit, pa.s.sed it to Miles, and relaxed back into his chair.

"So, whad'ya have for me?"

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"You guys are gonna love each other," Miles said again, examining the glowing tip of the joint. He laughed and started coughing. "What Chance means, I think, is start at the beginning." Miles offered me the joint. I waved it off.

"Well, I got this invitation--"

"Skip to something interesting," Chance interrupted.

"What?"

"I don't want to hear any tea party c.r.a.p. Give me something new."

I looked at Miles. He nodded, then wiggled his eyebrows.

"Okay . . ." I said. I thought about my tour of Mr. Bones's house. "How about the Capuchin Crypt?"

"Commissioned by Pope Urban the Eighth's brother in 1631, creepy bones and so forth, blah, blah, blah. What else?"

This guy was getting under my skin.

"I saw a map to a place called Bimini."

"Do you even know where Bimini is?"

I had a hint of a memory, something out of elementary school adventure books, but then it was gone.

"No," I said.

Chance made a big show of sighing.

"In the Bahamas, supposedly." He smiled. "But they didn't find what they were looking for."

"What were they looking for?"

"Ah, but you were supposed to tell me something new. I'm not your teacher."

"Fine. What about King's water?"

"What about it?"

"Well, you know, the n.a.z.is were coming. They dissolved the n.o.bel Prizes . . ."

"That's what you know about King's water?"

"It's not true?"

"Of course it's true. The story's on the n.o.bel Prize website, for c.r.a.p's sake. You're not exactly through the looking gla.s.s here."

I gave Miles a who is this guy look. Miles smiled and turned to Chance.

"The story does relate to pa.s.sing through."

"But the money's on trans.m.u.tation."

"All right, c'mon guys," I said, "you know I don't speak Pot."

Chance looked at me. He stopped tapping his finger. He sighed and shook his head.

"You raise an interesting topic. It's just that King's water has a long history. Much longer than World War Two."

"Okay. I'm listening."

"Well, aqua regia--King's water, as you call it--was invented around ad 800 by a Persian alchemist named Jabir ibn Hayyan. The same man who discovered hydrochloric acid."

Chance lit a cigarette and blew a sour cloud between us.

"What do you know about the alchemists?" he asked me, his face drifting in the smoke.

"Not much. They were sort of New Age scientists, but from the Middle Ages."

"In a sense. They were the first chemists. They invented gunpowder. Metalwork. They made inks and dyes and alcohol. They were also philosophers, physicists, mystics, astrologers, you name it. This wasn't exactly an era of specialization. You can trace alchemy back to ancient Egypt, Rome, China, Greece, India, Arabia. Their motto was Solve et Coagula: 'Separate and Join Together.'"

"Okay. So that's King's water, right? Separate and join together? They did it."

"Sadly, no. Hayyan saw King's water as part of a much larger quest; in fact, the central quest of alchemy. The trans.m.u.tation of metals."

"Turning lead into gold."

"Exactly. King's water was like an ancient attempt at reverse engineering. If you could dissolve gold, maybe you could figure out how to build gold . . . The alchemists, including Hayyan, were searching for what they called the Philosopher's Stone: a substance that would turn something worthless into something precious."

"So this is all about money?"

"Ha! Never underestimate money. I can crack almost any story by asking: 'Who profits from this?' But, no, in this case I think there is something more.

"The alchemists survived a long time. Thousands of years. They survived the fall of Rome and Greece. They survived the Crusades. The Spanish Inquisition. Some people think it's because they were clever about hiding their true intentions."

"Which were?"

I leaned in. It was all hocus-pocus bulls.h.i.t, but the guy could tell a story. Even Miles was quiet now, a half-smile on his face.

"The alchemists' texts are dense. Some of them don't even have words, just symbols. And nothing ever means just one thing. There are whole alchemy books dedicated to decoding alchemy books.

"Did they want to turn lead into gold? Sure. Who wouldn't? But what if that was just a cover for something else?"

"Like . . ."

"See Paracelsus. Alchemical Catechism. 'When the Philosophers speak of gold and silver, from which they extract their matter, are we to suppose that they refer to the vulgar gold and silver? By no means; vulgar silver and gold are dead, while those of the Philosophers are full of life.'"

"What does that mean?"

"Many people believe 'lead and gold' were metaphors for 'vice and virtue.' What if the Philosopher's Stone wasn't about material trans.m.u.tation? What if it was about something immaterial, metaphysical even?"

"A substance that would make evil people good?"

"That's one theory."

"Why would they need to hide that? Who wouldn't want everyone to be good?"

"Soulcraft, at that time, was the domain of powerful inst.i.tutions. The Church. The King. To lose that kind of authority . . . But . . ." Chance used his cigarette to light another. He ground the b.u.t.t out on the table. "Maybe you're more right than you know. Maybe virtue and vice were just another layer of metaphor, in a quest for something even more sought after. What if the Philosopher's Stone actually turned weak, vulnerable, sinful flesh into . . ."

The memory clicked. I knew what Bimini was.

". . . into something that never dies," I said. I smiled. "Bimini. Ships in the Bahamas . . ."

"Ponce de Leon." Miles nodded.

" 'Peter Martyr saith that there is in Bimini a continual spring of running water of such marvellous virtue that the water thereof, being drunk, maketh old men young.'"

Chance recited it from memory, his eyes stoned, half-closed.

"'Let us go where we can bathe in those enchanted waters and be young once more,'" Miles replied. "'I need it, and you will need it ere long.'"

"Peter Martyr was secretary of the prothonotary under Pope Innocent the Eighth, archpriest of Ocana under Pope Adrian the Sixth," Chance added. "Friend of Columbus and Ponce de Leon."

I felt the disconnected pieces swirling, snapping into place.

"What about amaranth?" I asked. "She quoted Milton."

" 'Immortal amarant, a flower which once, in paradise, fast by the tree of life, began to bloom; but soon for man's offence, to heaven removed.'"

For man's offense. Adam and Eve--they ate from the forbidden tree: virtue fell to vice, and man was cast from Paradise and became mortal.

"The ancient Greeks ground up amaranth petals to treat infections," Miles said. "Across the world, the ancient Chinese did too."

Immortality . . . to beat death . . .

The obituary!

Were things like this really possible?