Chapter 4
Nikko wandered through his father's apartment and adjoining offices and workrooms, passing a bean-filled ball from hand to hand. He was looking for Juliet. Between the story she had told him before his graduation and the story he had heard from his father after the ceremony, he was sure there was a lot both she and Cal weren't telling. He had tried asking Cal, but the older man had clammed up on him, wheeling himself off in with a sour look on his face and locking himself into the Veritas building rooms he was staying in.
As he rounded the corner of a doorway, he saw Juliet leaning over something and examining it closely with a hand lens. She was alone for once: the first time since the graduation that he had seen her so. Glancing over his shoulder, he put the ball into his pocket and crept up behind her. As he reached her, Nikko craned his neck to see what artifact she was examining, expecting to see the section of the ring of truth his father and the others had retrieved from Alaska. Instead, he was surprised to find a roll of parchment stretched out on the desk, its characters resembling an odd mixture of Arabic and Hieratic symbols.
"Did they bring that back from Alaska?" Nikko asked suddenly, making Juliet jump in surprise.
"Don't you ever knock?" Juliet drawled, glaring at him over her glasses.
"There's no door!" Nikko protested, gesturing towards the doorway to verify his claim. It was true: there wasn't. "And how else am I supposed to find out what's going on around here? Nobody tells me anything any more!"
"Well don't look at me: I'm still waiting to be graced with the details of their last trip myself and I get paid for being here!"
"Ah, so the parchment's not from Alaska then!" Nikko grinned at having acquired the answer Juliet had seemed reluctant to give.
"No," Juliet sighed, resignedly, "it isn't."
"Then where?" Nikko persisted. "The Holy Land? That trip you were telling me about before?"
Juliet turned away from him and back to the parchment. She sighed.
"Juliet, tell me! Come on: what do you think I'm gonna do? Run off to Dorna with it?"
"Hardly," Juliet muttered, perusing the document again, her mind flashing back to the many encounters they had had with the ancient secret society Dorna. Being both ruthless and determined, with an apparently bottomless supply of funds, Dorna had hounded their every attempt to acquire pieces of the Ring of Truth, as well as several other important finds even before the Veritas team had any notion of such articles' importance. Juliet shrugged. "I think they would have made a move already if it was something they wanted."
"So it's not connected to the ring?"
"I don't know," the young woman admitted thoughtfully, removing her glasses and raising the parchment to eye level, "I have no idea what it is yet."
"What does my Dad think?"
Juliet put the parchment down and turned away again, heading for another part of the room: the bookcases on the far wall.
"He doesn't know!" Nikko exclaimed, "He doesn't, does he?"
"I don't want to waste his time on something that is probably no more than a meaningless puzzle!"
"What makes you so sure it is meaningless? It could be just the clue he's looking for!"
"Nikko, things that have meaning to your father usually have meaning to other people too: people who tend to try, rather violently, to obtain those things for themselves! Nothing of that kind has happened to us since we found the parchment, so I assume, therefore, it is meaningless," Juliet paused and raised a finely-shaped eyebrow, "in that sense anyhow!"
"You said 'we'," Nikko continued, "You mean you and Cal? Was this something you found when you were stuck down in those catacombs?"
"How do you know about the catacombs?" Juliet asked sharply, turning to look at Nikko, her eyes narrowed.
"Dad mentioned something. He was a bit sketchy on the details, but he said you were down there for about a month!"
Juliet's gaze softened a little and she turned back to the bookcase. For a few moments she was silent, her head tilted and her eyes flicking along the line of volumes. Eventually she selected one, pulled one out and thumbed through the index. Finding something useful, she opened the book to the correct page and handed it to Nikko.
"Hold this," she ordered, turning back to repeat the process with another volume, "Since you're so determined to be a part of things you can help me translate the parchment."
"I'll have to hear the full story of how you found it."
"Fine," Juliet sighed, knowing better than to argue with Nikko now that he had seen the scroll, "Just keep it to yourself for now."
"What, I can't even tell Cal? I thought you found it together?"
"Yes, we did, but he doesn't know I'm looking at it without him. I didn't want to bother him with this until he was fully recovered. He's got enough on his plate with the stuff they brought back from Alaska. The Eye of Horus wasn't the only artifact they found out there you know."
"Surely he'd understand..." Nikko began, but Juliet cut him off caustically.
"Cal doesn't seem to understand much these days!"
"Since when?" Nikko cried, rolling his eyes in frustration before lowering his voice to continue, "What is this? What's going on between you two? There's more to this than a simple slip off the jet steps! Something happened between you two out in those catacombs! Something big! Dad said there was a period where they didn't see Cal on the videophone for an entire week and Cal himself keeps hinting that he messed up last time you two worked together. What happened? Did he go haring off on his own or something? Did you? Tell me!"
