Contents

The Gutenberg Rubric

Nine

KEITH SPRANG AWAKE when the plane touched down in Frankfurt and felt fantastic—at least by comparison. Things weren’t hurting as badly and he was thinking clearly when they stood to get off the plane. He waved away the offered wheelchair and they walked through passport control with the only difficulty being a border agent curious about his bandages. Keith was scanned and then they both passed through into Germany. They were met on the other side of passport control by a tall man to whom Keith spoke in German. Keith greeted him as Günther and they were escorted to a waiting Mercedes. Günther tossed their bags in the trunk and got in the front to drive. Maddie kept the archival box containing the stolen pages and manuscript with her. Inside the car, Frank was waiting for them.

“No trouble getting that through Customs?” he asked, pointing at the box.

“None at all,” Keith said. “They were more concerned that I might be carrying drugs under my bandages than that I was transporting stolen manuscripts.”

“They can be strange about transporting antiquities,” Frank said, “but printing seldom raises an eyebrow.” Frank paused and looked at Keith strangely. “What do you mean stolen?”

“You’ve brought manuscripts in before?” Maddie interrupted.

“In and out,” Keith said. “Usually we’ve had certificates and authorization to transport early printing, but there have been instances…”

“Speaking of which… stolen?” Frank repeated.

Keith had his phone open. No sooner had the phone found a signal than it began to chime with text messages.

“Somebody wants to reach us,” Keith said.

“Who is it?” asked Maddie.

“About a dozen messages from Agent Fry demanding that we call him at once. Either we’re suspects or something else has happened.”

“Well, don’t ignore it,” Frank said. “What did you steal?”

Keith entered the number. “You probably have messages on your phone, too, Maddie,” he said as he waited for it to connect.

“I don’t know if I even have service in Europe,” Maddie said as she pulled her phone from her bag and powered it on. By the time her phone started chiming with incoming text messages, Keith had Agent Fry on his line.

“Where the hell are you?” Agent Fry demanded at once.

“In Germany,” Keith responded.

“I hope you aren’t visiting any libraries.”

“Not exactly,” Keith said. “We are investigating some old manuscripts. What’s up?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know about the bombing at the National Historical and Genealogical Archives,” the agent growled.

“Wait! Bombing of what? We were just there,” Keith said.

“Imagine that!” Fry shouted. “You were just at the Kane Memorial Library when it blew up. You were just at the NHGA when it blew up. What library are you heading for now?”

“We’re headed into Mainz, Germany to the Gutenberg Museum,” Keith answered. “You don’t really think we had anything to do with this, do you?”

“Anything to do with it? Yes. Responsible for it? No,” Agent Fry said. “The NHGA was bombed just after you visited it. Same kind of explosives and trigger. Exactly what got you out of a hospital bed to travel to Indiana?”

“I went to see my grandfather and while we were there we…” Keith hesitated. He didn’t really want to go into any detail about what they were really after. “We were doing some family research and decided to go visit the library,” he finished lamely.

“And this family research has taken you to Germany now?” Agent Fry asked.

“We’re visiting friends,” Keith answered. “My PhD advisor lives here. We have some questions about an old manuscript.”

“And will your visit include any libraries?” Fry pushed.

“Yes,” Keith answered.

“Well don’t,” Fry said. “I think the bomber is following you. I don’t know why or how, but I have a feeling you do.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“The latest note,” Fry said. “Somehow I think this is going to be important to you and I don’t know why. I have a notion to have you picked up and put in protective custody until I get there. I am leaving in 20 minutes so give me your hotel name and I will meet you there as soon as I arrive.”

“We’re on our way to Mainz,” Keith said. “We’re staying at the Sheraton. It’s just two blocks from the museum.”

“There will be plain-clothes police in the hotel,” the agent said. “They are there for your protection. I want to be there before you enter that museum.”

Keith nodded his head as he looked at his grandfather and Maddie and then realized that the agent couldn’t hear him.

“Can we visit a friend?” Keith asked.

“I don’t see any problem with that,” Fry said. “But don’t try to lose the agents who will be following you.”

“What does this note say?” Keith asked.

“I’ll tell you when I get there,” Fry said. “Do not go to the Gutenberg. Understand?”

“Yes.” Fry broke the connection before Keith could ask anything else.

“This is going to be more difficult than I thought,” Keith said. “Homeland Security thinks we are being followed by the biblio-terrorists. They don’t want us to go to the museum until Agent Fry gets here. He wants us to stay in the hotel, but said we could go to a friend’s house.” Keith looked meaningfully at Frank. Frank nodded.

“I’ll make the arrangements,” Frank said. “Why don’t I drop you at the hotel and take the package with me. That way when you walk over to Dr. Schneider’s house you won’t be carrying anything suspicious—or stolen.”

“It’s some pages we found at the NHGA,” Keith explained sheepishly. “We didn’t have time to check them out properly.”

“You two may be a bad influence on each other,” Frank said shaking his head.

“Do we have time for a nap before we do anything else?” Maddie asked around a yawn she couldn’t seem to stifle.

“That’s a good idea,” Frank said. “An hour nap, then a cup of strong coffee, and then come to meet us.”

“I’m sorry I can’t take you into the museum this afternoon,” Keith said. “I was looking forward to showing you the exhibits. I thought perhaps you’d like to pull a page from the Gutenberg press.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Maddie asked.

“There is no evidence that the press was the one Gutenberg or Schoeffer used,” Keith responded. “But there is a print shop set up in the museum that is pretty authentic with a press representative of the same era. You’ll love it.”

“Well, tomorrow after Agent Fry gets here we can go in,” Maddie sighed. After a few moments, Maddie asked, “What are we really doing here, Keith?”

“I think you know,” he said. “We’re looking for the secret concealed in the Gutenberg rubric.”

“You know something you haven’t told me,” she said. “You might not know what the secret reveals, but you know what it is.”

“That’s only partly true,” he said. He closed his computer and stretched out on the bed next to her. “Unfortunately, over the years we’ve learned not to talk about our suspicions. People would discredit our personal qualifications in whatever work we were doing.”

“It’s all about alchemy, then.”

“Yes,” Keith responded, “but probably not what you would expect.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ve told you that there were two parts of Gutenberg’s mystery. He hid part of the secret in the mysterious other book and part of it in the rituals of the guild. But that only explains how he was hiding the secret,” Keith said. “Nothing really says what he was hiding.”

“You mean that you don’t actually know what you’re looking for?”

“We know there is a book or books or manuscript involved. According to the stories, it or they contain a big secret Gutenberg held.”

“What was he, Colonel Sanders?” she laughed. He joined her. He knew very well why these stories were never told outside the Guild. But now that he’d started telling her he couldn’t back down just because she gave a predictable response.

“The proper name of the Guild is The Worshipful Society of Typefounders and Alchemists,” Keith said.

“You don’t really think there’s an alchemical formula that will turn lead into gold,” Maddie said

“Not lead into gold alchemy,” Keith said. “Gutenberg was protecting something he considered too dangerous to share, but too important not to. He was sued three times that we know of, twice over a secret project he kept from his partners.”

“I only really know two things about alchemy,” Maddie said. “The transmutation of base metals into rare metals, and the so-called philosopher’s stone that gave eternal life.”

“I’m sure some of the early members of the Guild hoped that was what it would lead to,” Keith said. “Gutenberg was a metallurgist and alchemist, true, but he was as close as we can come to a chemist in the pre-Newton world. He combined elements in unexpected ways that surprise even modern chemists. His ink, for example, has never been surpassed for blackness and permanence. Its composition shows minute traces of various heavy metals in it. His formula for lead type was used pretty much intact for 500 years until phototypesetting began to take over the industry. Guild lore says that he could mix the formula for lead type without using scales.”

“So, you are saying that perhaps he invented or discovered some other alloy?” she asked.

“Alchemy changes the state of a substance,” Keith said hesitantly.

“What do you mean by the state? You mean like water, can turn to ice, or steam?”

“Sort of,” Keith said. “But those are strictly a liquid, solid, gas function of temperature. They aren’t permanent states. I should say allotrope instead of state. It’s more like turning sand into glass. You can look into the sand all you want but you won’t see through it. But when you melt it and it re-solidifies, suddenly you are looking right through the sand. And it stays that way. It doesn’t turn back into sand. It has to do with how the molecules line up with each other.”

“There’s more to glass than just melted sand.”

“You can make glass out of just sand or silica, but you have to heat it to over 4000 degrees. If you add sodium carbonate to the sand though, it reduces the melting point to only 1500 degrees. Some upscale restaurants cook steaks over an 1800 degree flame,” he said.

“So you could make glass in a kitchen.”

“A form of glass. But soda lime glass is water soluble, so it makes a pretty poor window,” Keith laughed.

“What else do you add?”

“It depends on the type of glass you want to ultimately have. Mostly heavy metals. Most commonly, you add lead for crystal, boron if you want to make the glass impervious to heat, barium, magnesium, or other things. Glass ends up being about three quarters silica and the rest a combination of other elements,” Keith said. “When there is lead or other heavy metals in the mix, it lowers the melting point, too—down to about 1400 degrees.

“Then you could say that making glass is a form of alchemy.”

“It uses many of the same principles and even has some of the same ingredients as lead type. Each of the elements has a higher melting point than the combination of the elements together.” He loved this subject and was as likely to go on talking about it all afternoon as to take a nap. She smiled at him and moved closer.

“I’ve got an example,” she said. “The closer I get to you, the lower my melting point becomes.”

“That’s more than chemistry,” Keith said.

“Show me.” Eventually they slept.

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