Seven Wonders (5 page)

Sloane felt her way down the cobblestones, running the flashlight over the stone walls to her right and left, moving much more cautiously since she’d narrowly avoided the ditch and the poisonous vines. It wasn’t oak leaves she’d ditched the two Polizia for, though she wouldn’t have been surprised to find an oak sapling or two poking out from one of the numerous creases and gashes that she’d seen all over the hypogeum. From the very moment she’d set foot in the Modern Wonder, she’d been awed by vastness of the place, the scale of something built so goddamn long ago. But unlike other tourists who found their way into the Colosseum, it wasn’t the architecture or the history that truly enthralled her. It was something that most tourists would hardly notice at all.

To Sloane, the subterranean tunnels were as fascinating as any imagined gladiator battle. Even without the help of a tour guide, she could make out the various notches and holes in the stone that were the remaining evidence of the machinery that had once functioned literally beneath the scenes: vertical shafts that had once held cages that could be lifted into the arena, depositing men, wild beasts, even scenery. Elevators, complex pulleys, hydraulics, most of it controlled by capstans—giant wheels pushed by slaves like enormous gears in the biggest watch ever constructed.

And even more incredible, as Sloane picked her way through the tunnels, pulling farther and farther from the Polizia, was the evidence of runoff canals she could see, often at waist level, dug right into the sides of the tunnels. She’d read in guide books that the entire arena could be flooded for the
naumachiae
, mock ocean battles that had involved small warships sailing
through water as deep as nine feet.

But Sloane’s fascination with the mechanics of the hypogeum was mainly academic; what truly thrilled her were the incredible wonders she was seeing within the cracks, seams, and cubbyholes dug into the ancient stone. She’d read about what she was seeing, but until she’d climbed under the rope and the bright red PERICOLO! sign—a warning she didn’t need her grandmother to understand—and had started to observe the true diversity sprouting from every nook and gash in the elaborate tunnels of travertine stone, she didn’t truly believe it could be real.

Sloane wasn’t the first scientist to come to the Colosseum to study plants. According to the guidebooks, the Colosseum had one of the strangest botanical collections of any place on Earth. Vines, shrubs, and even trees had been found growing through the ancient ruins, a diversity that had yet to be adequately explained by modern science.

The first recorded study of the Colosseum’s plants had been done way back in 1643 by a scientist named Domenico Panaroli who had listed over six hundred and eighty different species. Barely two turns in the first tunnel Sloane had crawled through, she wondered if old Domenico had undersold the place. She’d lost count after a hundred different species—some from as far away as China’s South Sea, and some, like the deadly poisonous cousin of nightshade she’d almost stepped into, exceedingly rare. But it wasn’t just the diversity of species that intrigued Sloane; she could imagine that many seeds had been inadvertently carried on the hooves and in the coats of the various animals brought into the arena, or that the millions of tourists and spectators who’d wandered through the place over the centuries had acted as human vectors, depositing seed specimens as they went. What surprised Sloane—and bothered her, as she began to think it through—was the diversity of
time periods
the various species represented. Plants with DNA ages hundreds to thousands of years apart growing right next to each other in seams in the tunnel walls, sometimes woven together in impossible tangles.

It was just this sort of mystery that had led her to the Colosseum in the first place. The envelope that was now sitting on the tiny desk in her hotel room had been sent to her by an Italian professor of botany she’d met online in a plant DNA chat room. (That such a place even existed would have given Christine a month’s worth of material, but Sloane couldn’t have cared less.) The envelope the man had sent her had contained a single seed he’d collected at the opening of one of the runoff drainage tunnels deep in the second level of the hypogeum—a single seed that Sloane had analyzed down to its DNA core.

A single seed that contained proteins much older than it should have, older than the Colosseum itself. In fact, that single seed had contained DNA fragments that—if Sloane’s science was correct—predated the construction of the city of Rome.

So Sloane had immediately begun the process that had led her, three weeks later, to a narrowing tunnel in the depths of the hypogeum. She was certain that analyzing the DNA history of this bizarre seed, and the plant it must have come from, would be just the sort of research to secure continued funding for her work—and maybe jump her right to that full professorship.

Her calves still burning from the trip across the ditch, she came to another bend in the tunnel and another gradual slope downward. The roof seemed to be getting lower as well; she had to bend a few inches at the waist to keep the top of her high ponytail from touching the curved stone panels, or catching on what was left of the rusting iron clamps that held them in place. This was the fifth, maybe sixth turn in tunnel since she’d entered the runoff channel pictured on the back of the envelope, the place where her Italian colleague had found the strange seed. The fact that she’d entered the tunnel in the first place had surprised her; the Italian professor had been content with the single seed, rather than chancing what could very well have been an unexplored section of the hypogeum. But Sloane was determined; a seed was one thing, a living plant would be her own Holy Grail.

As she turned the corner and shined the miniature flashlight down into the narrowing space, she saw something that made her forget about the heat tearing through her calves.

The vine twisting and tangling across two connected slabs of stone was unlike anything she had ever seen before. Red-tinged, almost leafless, it was covered in thorns, many as big as her thumb. She racked her brain for any memories of anything even remotely similar as she quickly covered the distance. There was a vine she’d seen in a textbook, incredibly rare, something that had been discovered growing at some sort of religious shrine near an Egyptian village along the Nile, that had a similar red tinge to it. And another vine, with thorns of a similar shape, that she’d read about explorers documenting during a trip through Equatorial New Guinea.

But now that she was only a few feet away, reaching into her backpack to retrieve her latex gloves and her plastic specimen containers, she knew that what she was looking at had never been written about in any textbook. As she pulled the gloves on over her long fingers, holding the flashlight in her teeth, she could even make out a few of the vine’s little seeds hanging beneath reddish bulbs between some of the thorns—the same shape, color, and texture as the seed her colleague had found at the entrance to the runoff.

Sloane was looking at something both new and very, very old. Still not daring to touch the plant, even gloved, she followed its structure with her eyes. Twisting and turning, she traced it up the stone to a seam at the very top, right against one of the iron clamps, where the vine seemed to disappear into the very structure of the tunnel wall.

Curiouser and curiouser
. She glanced up toward the ceiling at the tiny fissures still letting wisps of early sunlight into the confines of the tunnel. Not much light, but certainly enough for the processes of photosynthesis. Plants grew in some of the deepest caves ever found, and thousands of feet below the surface of the oceans. Unlike humans, plants had found ways to survive in the harshest climates imaginable.

But as Sloane moved even closer to the vines—her face now just inches away from the angry-looking red thorns and leafless stems—she noticed something even more peculiar than the way the vine seemed to vanish into the stones.

She wasn’t sure, but she thought she could make something out behind the tangle of vine, something carved right into the wall of the tunnel. She couldn’t imagine that anything man-made would rival the botanical beauty she had just discovered, but she found herself intrigued enough to take a look.

With extreme care, doing everything she could to avoid the thorns, she gingerly began pulling the red vines apart. At first, it was difficult; the vines seemed to pull back against her, and twice her hands almost slipped, her gloved fingers almost touching one of the oversize thorns. But then the vine started to give way. A moment later, she’d gotten through the twists and tangles and found herself face-to-face with a visage carved directly into the ancient stone wall.

A woman’s face. Vaguely African, wearing what appeared to be an Egyptian headdress. Beneath the face, also carved into the stone, were row after row of Roman letters and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Christ
. As a botanist, Sloane had studied a little Latin and Greek to better understand the various names of the plants beneath her microscopes, but apart from that, her grasp of ancient languages was pretty weak. The hieroglyphics were just pictures to her. But she could make out some of the Latin; specifically, halfway down the lettering, she recognized a single name:
Cleopatra
. Beyond that, her best guess was that the writing was some sort of dedication to the famed female pharaoh.

She paused, her gloved hands still holding back the vines. She wasn’t certain, but she believed that Cleopatra would have been born right around the time of the construction of the Colosseum. She knew from the movies and television shows Christine had gabbed on about that Cleopatra had some sort of romantic involvement with a couple different Roman leaders:
Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. But other than that, she couldn’t fathom why someone had carved a picture and dedication to Cleopatra into one of the greatest Roman constructions.

As she pondered the question, her gaze drifted back to the hieroglyphics. Most of it was strange squiggles and incomprehensible shapes; but then her eyes settled on an image that was strangely familiar:

Two opposing snakes twisted together, intertwined in what appeared to be a double helix. At the very bottom, the tail of one of the snakes twisted off in the wrong direction—but other than the tail, the snakes seemed to be in a very close approximation to the shape of DNA.

Sloane smiled, chiding herself for letting her own mental character color what she was looking at; the double helix was a fairly common geometric image, and it wasn’t always associated with DNA. In fact, double helixes had been popping up in artwork, archaeology, and mathematical modeling since well before the discovery of DNA. Sloane remembered reading somewhere that there were even ancient Sumerian tablets imprinted with double helixes, dating back more than eight thousand years.

Still, the image was incredibly compelling. As Sloane peered closer, she noticed that there were tiny scratch marks along both snakes, segmenting
them into seven perfectly symmetrical pieces. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she reached forward with a finger and brushed it along the errant tail.

With a start, she realized that the tail wasn’t simply carved into the wall; it was attached to the stone by some sort of internal mechanism—and it was movable. Even the slightest pressure of her gloved finger against the tail caused it to shift a few centimeters.

Almost by reflex, she used a second finger to push the errant tail back toward its symmetrical opposite, completing the perfect double helix. With a click, the tail locked into place.

There was a two second lag—and then suddenly, the sound of stone grinding against stone reverberated through the tunnel. The stone face of Cleopatra trembled—and then slid down, disappearing beneath the tangle of red vines.

In Cleopatra’s place, Sloane found herself staring at a vivid, brightly colored painting. The painting was nearly twice as large as the face that had covered it, much of it hidden behind the vines that Sloane could only partially hold back. But she could clearly make out an incredible scene: a group of women carrying what looked to be white javelins, marching out of an incredibly detailed forest. The women were impressive; warriors, obviously, girded for war. But Sloane’s attention was drawn to the forest. Some of the plant life she could recognize; ancient fronds from various palm families, cedars and fig trees from different parts of the Middle East, Baobabs and Mesquites from the Horn of Africa. Others were complete mysteries. And then she saw the red vines, curling around the warrior women’s feet, nearly covering the ground where they were walking on their way out of the forest.

She realized it wasn’t a forest, it was a garden. These disparate trees and plants wouldn’t be found together, wouldn’t survive together, unless they had been brought there, planted, and tended.