Chapter 20
After finding the first meander, Yumi convinced Aida to make one more stop at the British Library, to pacify Mo and make sure
their GPS showed them following up on his suggestions. “Let’s get it out of the way,” Yumi said as she nudged a foot-weary
Aida into a black cab. Ultimately, Aida had to admit she was glad they did. She had long wanted to view the Magna Carta. There
were also the Beowulf manuscript, fragments of da Vinci’s and Emily Bronte’s notebooks, manuscripts from Virginia Woolf and
Sylvia Plath, and even a Gutenberg Bible.
Finally, they ended their day at a gin bar in Soho near the hotel. Without the comfort of using Vulcan’s enchantment, the
conversation felt stilted. “What was your favorite thing you saw today?” Aida asked her friend as she fumbled to keep the
conversation going.
Yumi thought for a moment, then launched into a list of things that had excited her during their first foray into London.
Aida was about to ask her to narrow down her list when a blanket of calm enveloped her, muting the sounds of the restaurant
around her and focusing her attention. There was a god nearby.
She didn’t look around the room. She didn’t kick Yumi under the table. Instead, she smiled and pointed out that Yumi needed
to pick one favorite thing, not twenty.
“Yes, sir, Ms. Vacation Police.” Yumi saluted her. Aida registered some relief that Yumi didn’t notice anything strange about her or her response.
“The cast room at the V&A,” she said, and ignoring Aida’s instruction of only one thing, she began to list all the statues
in the massive room that had caught her attention.
The calm grew heavier. Aida went through the motions, rolling her eyes at Yumi at one point, teasing her at another, and giving
her facts about Michelangelo’s sculpture of David when her friend began to talk about the museum’s copy. Aida didn’t dare
seek out the source of the calm, and she burned inside to turn her head and see which one was spying on them. She didn’t think
it was Mo—he didn’t seem like someone who could contain his commentary on their conversation—which meant it was Apate or Discordia.
But why? Did they suspect something? Had she slipped up and forgotten to set Vulcan’s charm on one of their conversations?
Eventually, Yumi realized that something wasn’t right with Aida. “You’re off your game, Aida. I feel like you are barely listening
to me.”
“I’ve been responding,” she said.
“Yes, but you lack enthusiasm. I must have tired you out dragging you all over London today.”
Aida nodded. At least that was true. “I am exhausted.”
The calm now seemed like a lead weight. Wherever the god was, they were very close. “Very exhausted. Maybe we should turn
in early tonight.”
“Party pooper,” Yumi said, but she didn’t argue for one more drink, which she often did on nights when Aida was half-hearted
about being out. She pulled her jacket off the back of the chair and put it on.
The heavy calm followed them on their walk all the way back to the hotel.
Aida resisted turning to see who it might be for fear of catching their attention.
The calmness gave her a sense of reason as well, and she knew that if they were to throw MODA off their trail, she needed to truly act as though they were just on vacation, unaware of any supernatural gods that might be fluttering around them.
When they crossed the threshold into the hotel, the calm feeling abruptly winked out, and the panic it had pushed downward
came roaring back into her consciousness. Only then did she turn to see who might be behind her, but no one was there.
Back in the suite, they collapsed on the circular couch in the sitting room. Yumi flipped on the television and Aida immediately
began texting her friend, waving at her to look at her phone. She explained what happened at dinner and on the walk to the
hotel.
I wondered why you were being so strange.
We need a code word, so I can tell you, Aida texted.
Yumi stared off at a distance for a moment then typed, If you can touch me, tap me three times. Or ask me “do you remember the time when . . .” and make something up. I’ll know.
They saw neither hide nor hair of any gods in the following days. To be safe, they peppered in the other places Mo mentioned,
and while they were interesting, as expected, none yielded a meander, whereas Yumi’s instinct to target locations with connections
to antiquities proved useful. Finding a meander at the British Museum in the floor of the Elgin Marbles room was a given,
seeing as how the ancient temple pieces had been plundered from the Parthenon in Greece. In Room 32 of the National Gallery,
Aida spied an elaborate meander in the cornice. At the interior entrance to the National Portrait Gallery, another meander
decorated the cornice around the room.
They were stymied about the fifth meander until they heard about the Sir John Soane’s Museum and the nineteenth-century architect’s collection of ancient Roman and Greek items. It was off-season and a weekday, so they had the museum mostly to themselves, which was good because the rooms were small and cramped.
The museum was a meander in itself, a discombobulated maze of rooms full of statues and paintings.
Everywhere they turned, there was something amazing to look at.
And sure enough, they found a meander in the cornice encircling the domed skylight in the No. 13 Breakfast Room.
“Thank the gods,” Yumi said as she lifted the lens toward the ceiling.
Aida nudged her friend. “Maybe don’t invoke them while we are doing this,” she whispered.
“Ahh, right,” she said, pocketing the lens and pulling out her phone for photos.
After snapping pictures, they wandered through the museum a bit more, partly to play the guise of sightseers and partly because
the house was so fascinating. But when they reached the Sepulchral Chamber and stood viewing the 3,300-year-old sarcophagus
of Egyptian Pharaoh Seti I, Aida couldn’t take it anymore. She motioned for Yumi to mask their phones.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
Yumi’s normal level of exuberance was missing. “Fuck. I really don’t know. Finding the meanders was an adventure. I’m confident
I can figure out the key, but having a vague IP address isn’t necessarily enough to track down Pandora. And then, what will
we do when we get there? I mean, come on, Aida, we’re meddling in something much bigger than us. We could die.”
She said these last few words in a whisper. Aida was surprised to see tears gathering in her friend’s eyes. Yumi was always
positive, energetic, and ready to tackle anything that was headed her way. Aida had always admired her bright way of looking
at the world. She didn’t know what else to do but to enfold her friend in her arms.
Yumi cried into Aida’s shoulder for a minute or so, then finally let go, wiping away her tears with her thumbs. She looked
at the sarcophagus and cracked a grin. “I think we could use a change of atmosphere.”
Aida put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “No kidding, Yumi. The atmosphere down here is so heavy, even the mummies are going to start shedding tears.”
Yumi laughed. “Well, let’s hope they don’t demand tissues. I don’t think the museum staff is ready for that!”
Back on the streets of London, Yumi returned to her regular upbeat self. “I booked an Airbnb not far from here. I need to
get cracking on figuring out this key.” She patted her backpack. “Let’s go.”
“You really did book an Airbnb?” Aida was incredulous.
Yumi shrugged. “Yeah, this morning. I didn’t want to try finding the key using the hotel network. If we’re going to die, I
don’t want it to be because I did something so reckless to lead them to us.”
After setting their phones to misdirect, Yumi led Aida down Oxford toward Soho. They wound through the busy streets until
her GPS led them to a little art gallery. The owner had the key and led them upstairs to a cute one-bedroom flat. Yumi immediately
set up shop at the dining room table.
“And here we go.”
As she worked, Yumi gave Aida a blow-by-blow, overly technical explanation for how she would do the pattern recognition, which
included using some sort of software and writing some code to overlay the patterns in various ways that she could view through
the lens.
“This is going to take some time,” she said, wrinkling her brow in frustration.
Aida watched her for a while, then eventually crashed out on the long leather couch for a nap. It seemed she’d barely fallen
asleep when a whoop from Yumi awakened her.
“I found it! I found it!”
Aida rushed to her friend’s side. Yumi handed her the lens. The glowing blue meander was, as Vulcan said it might be, a chaotic
mess on the screen.
“That was pretty fast,” Aida said, shocked that it was so easy.
“Well, I gave you the Scotty treatment.” Yumi laughed.
Aida stared at her blankly.
“Like in Star Trek. Scotty always told Kirk fixing the ship was impossible or that it would take days to do what was needed. Then he’d fix it
in a fraction of the predicted time.”
Aida remembered all the afternoons when she was young, watching Star Trek with her father on their gold-colored couch. She rolled her eyes, annoyed at herself for not catching the reference.
“Okay, then, Scotty, now what?” She handed the lens back to Yumi.
“We have to find Pandora. Let me try the IP address again. If we’re lucky, I can get past the firewall and it’ll lead us straight
to her this time.”
Minutes passed, each one stretching longer than the last. Yumi’s hopeful expression slowly turned to one of confusion, then
concern. “This doesn’t make sense,” she muttered. “The IP address is bouncing all over the place. London, then Berlin, now
it’s showing up in Tokyo. It’s like it’s being deliberately obfuscated.”
“Can’t you narrow it down?” Aida asked, trying to hide the worry in her voice.
Yumi shook her head. “It’s like chasing a ghost. Whenever I think I’m getting close, it jumps to a new location.”