Stift Melk an der Donau (on the Danube)
Austria
The present
Joseph Steinburg, Ph. D., stood at the two-story entrance facing the afternoon sun. In front of him, the hill on which the first part of the monastery had been built in the tenth century dropped precipitously into the rushing gray waters of the Danube. Behind him was the library. Fifty-foot-high book-lined walls ran the three-hundred- foot length of the huge room.
From the chapel below came the vesper chants of the thirty or so monks who still occupied that part of the baroque abbey not presently used as a parochial school. He paid no attention, if, in fact, he even heard.
Were it not for the boat pushing barges upstream and the cars humming along the highway across the river, Steinburg could have been anywhere in time within the last millennium.
He wasn't thinking about that, either.
He could only ponder the strange discovery that had occupied him for the last two days.
A year ago the abbey had begun the awesome task of creating a computer index of the library, including the two thousand-plus volumes that dated back to the ninth through the fifteenth centuries. Last week one of the graduate students had discovered a number of bound parchments in ancient Hebrew, perhaps misplaced in the panic to hide all things of value that ensued when, in 1683, Kara Mustafa and his two hundred thousand Turks laid siege to Vienna, just fifty miles to the east. Although the Turks were forced to withdraw only three months later, these documents had, most likely, not been returned to their proper place, remaining with what were at the time current religious writings. The Church had asked Steinburg, part-time archeologist and full-time professor of ancient Hebrew history, to translate and date the documents.
From the heavy parchment and ink, Steinburg guessed the physical pages themselves could be as old as Melk. But the events they described were older, much older. The unusual syntax, phrases borrowed from pharaonic Egyptian, indicated that someone had painstakingly translated a chronicle from, say, 1500 to 1200 b.c. Or, to be politically correct, b.c.e., before the Common Era. In any event, before Hebrew itself was recognizable as a written language.
A cautious man, Steinburg turned around and walked back inside to one of the rolling ladders on rails, climbed to the top tier, and examined the exact area where the material had been found. Sure enough, the neighboring volumes all dated from the mid- to late-seventeenth century.
Once back on the parquet floor, he returned to the table where the parchments were unrolled. He pulled on the surgical gloves that protected the documents from any acid that might be contained in the moisture of his skin, then turned to the laptop on which he was composing a draft of his translation. He was aware of the irony of the anachronism, using electronic transcription in a place where manuscripts had been hand-copied for centuries.
But how did these documents come to be here in Austria in the first place?
If Steinburg had to guess, a pursuit he loathed as a professor but had to embrace as an archaeologist, he would say the ancient parchment had found its way to Europe as a trophy of the Crusades, most likely the third, when Duke Leopold V had held the English king, Richard the Lionheart, for ransom at his castle at Durnstein, just a few kilometers down the Danube, where ruins of its towers could still be seen. Possibly these pages had been brought to Melk from the centuries-old castle of some former crusader for safekeeping before the Turks breached the castle walls. A number of families in this area dated their ancestry back that far.
Steinburg sighed his relief at having at least theoretically solved the mystery of the papers' origin.
How the Church-or, for that matter, the world-was going to solve the consequences of his discovery was another issue.
Two hours later, he stood and glanced around the room.
Ancient or not, the facts narrated in the documents could have very contemporary implications.
Serious implications.
Implications far beyond the halls of abstract academia or the dusty pages of history.
He could simply return the documents to oblivion in their place among the top row of books and leave Melk, hoping his translation of both Hebrew and old German would likewise be lost in obscurity. But somehow that didn't seem a satisfactory option. Part of his compensation for his work was right to publish his findings in his choice of scholarly journals. The information had value to some people if published, perhaps even more if not.
At any rate, he had no intent of shunning the acclaim his work would earn. The purpose of academia was to disseminate knowledge, like a breeze laden with the parachutes of dandelion seeds. How it was used was not his to question.
He had not noticed that a frail glow from electric sconces now illuminated the cavernous room, the sun having long set. He wondered if the abbey's lightbulbs were intentionally dim to simulate the candles that had burned here for centuries.
He stood, nodding as though reaching an agreement with himself. Reaching into his computer's traveling case, he produced a disk and copied the notes he had spent the last two days inputting. Then he e-mailed the draft of his translation to his home computer. Better backup than a disk. Tomorrow he would print out both his translations along with his notes, and send it to the abbey.
But for now…
Well, he could look forward to at least a modicum of academic recognition, perhaps even more than his cousin, the scientist.
Then he had an idea.
Documents in hand, he walked out of the library, down several halls, and across a courtyard to where by day a gift shop sold souvenirs, books, and religious medals. Behind the shop was a small office, one to which Steinburg had been given a key yesterday when he needed to send a fax. The door to the outside was closed and bolted for the day but yielded easily to his key. If he remembered correctly…
Yes, the fax machine was also a photocopier. Closing his mind to the potential damage that might be done to the documents, he carefully placed them one by one on the glass plate.
His cousin in Amsterdam had mentioned a project that might make these old writings interesting. But if he sent these, Benjamin would have them for months, perhaps a year before Steinburg could publish. Not a problem. His cousin Benjamin was also a professor, but of some sort of exotic science. Analytical chemistry, theoretical physics-Steinburg wasn't sure.
He opened the desk and extracted a bulky envelope and a roll of stamps. He quickly jotted a note requesting the copies either be destroyed of hidden until he published. He estimated the stamps required, addressed the envelope, and dropped it in the sack of mail to be picked up the next day.
He smiled. That ought to get him back for the unintelligible formula his cousin had published last year, a theoretical equation that had caused a mild stirring in scientific journals. These Hebrew scrolls were going be bigger, much bigger than Benjamin's theory.
The two had been friendly rivals since childhood, and now Steinburg would be one up.
A glance at his watch told him he would be late getting home to Vienna. Locking the office, he returned to the library, exited away from the river, crossed a courtyard, and found his ancient but immaculate Volkswagen Beetle in a gravel parking lot now deserted by the daily tour buses. He drove out the gate, away from the abbey's manicured grounds, and onto the road leading to the bridge. In his rearview mirror, Melk's twin towers and dome were fading in the growing dusk.
By the time he reached the narrow bridge high above the Danube, Steinburg had an idea which publications would be given the opportunity to see his work.
His thoughts were interrupted by a pair of lights behind him. From their height above the road it had to be a truck.
Strange. Trucks were expressly forbidden on this bridge.
And the damn thing was speeding, too.
Steinburg realized what was going to happen only an instant before the crunch of metal against metal sent the Volkswagen crashing into the side railing of the bridge.
He felt a jolt of fear. No way was that rampart going to hold, to keep his car from smashing through into the void below.
He was quite right.